Making Monkeys of Conservatives

[[S C I E N C E]] * Ross Douthat argues, at The New Republic Web site, that far from being a godsend to America's right-wing creationists, the trendy theory of “intelligent design”--which hypothesizes some sort of divine hand behind Darwinian evolution--“will probably prove a political boon to liberals, and a poisoned chalice for conservatives.” He continues:

Like the evolution wars in the early part of the last century, the design debate offers liberals the opportunity to portray every scientific battle--today, stem-cell research, “therapeutic” cloning, and end-of-life issues; tomorrow, perhaps, large-scale genetic engineering--as a face-off between scientific rigor and religious fundamentalism. There’s already a public perception, nurtured by the media and by scientists themselves, that conservatives oppose the “scientific” position on most bioethical issues. Once intelligent design runs out of steam, leaving its conservative defenders marooned in a dinner-theater version of Inherit the Wind, this liberal advantage is likely to swell considerably.

And intelligent design will run out of steam--a victim of its own grand ambitions. What began as a critique of Darwinian theory, pointing out aspects of biological life that modification-through-natural-selection has difficulty explaining, is now foolishly proposed as an alternative to Darwinism. On this front, intelligent design fails conspicuously--as even defenders like Rick Santorum are beginning to realize--because it can’t offer a consistent, coherent, and testable story of how life developed. The “design inference” is a philosophical point, not a scientific theory: Even if the existence of a designer is a reasonable inference to draw from the complexity of, say, a bacterial flagellum, one would still need to explain how the flagellum moved from design to actuality.

Republicans beware: Douthat suggests that “liberalism’s science-versus-religion rhetoric is only likely to grow more effective if conservatives continue to play into the stereotype by lining up to take potshots at Darwin. ... Terri Schiavo, sex education, stem cell research--on any issue that remotely touches on science, a GOP that’s obsessed with downing Darwin will be easily tagged as medieval, reactionary, theocratic.” So what else is new?

READ MORE: “Jesus Would Vote Democratic,” by Linda Valdez (The Arizona Republic).