'Intelligent design' is not a scientific concept. It's a religious concept. And because I don't subscribe to that particular brand of religion, I feel that I and my daughter, my family, are being ridiculed, and my daughter feels the pressure. I reserve the right to teach my child about religion... And I have faith in myself and in my husband and in my pastor to do that, not the school system."
-- Christy Rehm, a plaintiff in the ACLU's intelligent design case taking place in Dover, Pennsylvania
Thursday, October 20, 2005
To support
the families in Dover Pennsylvania who are suing the school board not to teach intelligent design: American Civil Liberties Union.
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In her review of Michael Ruse's book "The Evolution-Creation Struggle" in New Scientist (30 Jul 2005), Karen Armstrong points out the novelty of the "scientific" view of the Bible that led to intelligent design. (I've given extensive quotes since New Scientist articles disappear behind the subscription wall quite quickly.)
She says, "Until the advent of the modern period, nobody would have regarded the six-day creation story as a literal, historical account." That was because, "[in] the pre-modern world, it was generally understood that there were two ways of arriving at truth. Plato called them mythos and logos. Neither was superior to the other. Logos (reason; science) was exact, practical and essential to human life. To be effective, it had to correspond to external reality. Myth expressed the more elusive, puzzling aspects of human experience. It has often been called a primitive form of psychology, which helped people negotiate their inner world."
She closes her review as follows: "In the pre-modern world, it was considered dangerous to mix mythos and logos, because each had a different sphere of competence. Much of the heat could be taken out of the evolution versus creation struggle if it were admitted that to read the first chapter of Genesis as though it were an exact account of the origins of life is not only bad science; it is also bad religion."
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