Simply Irresistible

In an earlier post we noted that it's very difficult for Darwinists to avoid the language of intelligent design. Here's an example courtesy of Telic Thoughts:

Khammash and collaborators...have used mathematical modeling to show how the complex workings of the heat-shock [of E. coli] response reflect features that make the protein repair fast, robust and efficient. "It is how, if you had a good engineer, the process would be designed," he says.

Darwinists are not unaware of the public relations problem this sort of loose talk poses for them as they wage the war against the intrusions of Intelligent Design thinking into their domain. Paul Nelson quotes one writer, Rudy Raff, who urges his fellow materialists to avoid "play[ing] into the hands of ID propagandists. For instance, be careful about using teleological words to describe biological entities in our teaching and writing. Calling cells 'machines that do X,' or describing biological structures as 'well-designed to do Y' will be duly cited in ID propaganda as one more biologist supporting design."

Nelson has a little fun with this in his blog, but the point is that it is almost impossible for biologists to do what Raff enjoins. Biological systems are so obviously designed that the language of purpose and intention cannot be avoided. The only refuge for the Darwinian is to argue that the design is only apparent, not real.

This is the reason that, as Richard Lewontin once put it, materialists cannot "let a divine foot in the door" of our public schools. Students are given to believe by their teachers that natural selection and mutation can work miracles of organization and complexity. If, however, they're told that there is dissent about this among scientists, that many believe that the wonders of living things point to an intelligent agent, many, if not most, students would find that hypothesis irresistible.

The Darwinists' greatest fear is that if ID is allowed an official mention in American classrooms, there will be wholesale defections among young people from the Darwinian assertion that natural processes are sufficient to explain all of life and that no Mind is needed.

Resistance to ID is not motivated by a desire to protect science from the intrusions of religion, as we are commonly told. It's motivated by a desire to insulate one philosophical view of life, naturalism, from another.