Tag: Melanie Phillips

Poor beleaguered Melanie Phillips!

May 4, 2009 • 3:00 pm

Thanks to an alert reader, I’ve learned that Melanie Phillips has responded to the spate of criticism she got for her recent Spectator article claiming that intelligent design grew out of science, not religion.  She got it in the neck from bloggers and readers for that, most especially for her moronic claim that ID is not a form of creationism.  Now she has posted a long response to her critics, distancing herself somewhat from ID but still claiming that it’s not creationism.  She mentions Michael Behe as one of the scientific IDers, asserting that “He is not a Creationist.” Does she know that he once said that new species were “poofed” into being by the designer? If that ain’t creationism, I don’t know what is.

Ms. Phillips claims she’s the victim of a “secular inquisition.”

I hold no particular brief for ID, but am intrigued by the ideas it raises and want it to be given a fair crack of the whip to see where the argument will lead. What I have also seen, however, is an attempt to shut down that argument by distorting and misrepresenting ID and defaming and intimidating its proponents.

One way of doing so is to conflate ID with Creationism. I wrote below that this is wrong, since ID comes out of science and creationism comes out of Biblical literalism. This provoked Charles Johnson on LGF to accuse me of being either duped or dishonest. Johnson – who has become unhealthily obsessed with ID and Creationism in recent months — says I am wrong to say that ID is based on science rather than on religion, and wrong to say that it is different from Creationism. . .

Dogma is certainly what is on the other side of ID in this fight – a materialist dogma which, posing as the standard-bearer of reason against obscurantism, actually embodies irrationality and a kind of intellectual fascism. It is a secular inquisition – as the reaction to my post makes all too plain.

On the other head, maybe she’s just ignorant and biased, like the Inquisitors themselves.

UK columnist defends intelligent design

May 2, 2009 • 7:05 am

Lest anybody say that creationism isn’t a problem in the UK (and this is something I heard repeatedly while lecturing about evolution on the Queen Mary 2), have a look at this week’s Spectator column by the British conservative writer Melanie Phillips.  She makes the absurd claim that intelligent design is not the same thing as creationism, and asserts that Judge Jones was flatly wrong in finding them similar.

Whatever the ramifications of the specific school textbooks under scrutiny in the Kitzmiller/Dover case, the fact is that Intelligent Design not only does not come out of Creationism but stands against it. This is because Creationism comes out of religion while Intelligent Design comes out of science. Creationism, whose proponents are Bible literalists, is a specific doctrine which holds that the earth was literally created in six days. Intelligent Design, whose proponents are mainly scientists, holds that the complexity of science suggests that there must have been a governing intelligence behind the origin of matter, which could not have developed spontaneously from nothing.

Really? ID comes out of science?  Which scientists did the work that led to the hypothesis of intelligent design? And  what about the doctored ID textbook in which the word “creationism” was simply replaced by the words “intelligent design”? Why is it that the biggest supporters of ID are evangelical Christians?  And if she thinks the proponents of ID are “mainly scientists,” she should look again.

Ms. Phillips has a track record of attacking evolution; here’s another example:

But evolution is not a fact. It is a theory with holes in it. What Emmanuel questions in its religion classes, and may question in its science classes, is scientism, the doctrine that says the only questions worth asking are the ones that science can answer.

This is an extremely dubious doctrine which many scientists themselves think is anti-science. Scientists such as the physicist Stephen Hawking still haven’t managed to produce their grand theory of everything that can explain the mysteries of creation.

And evolution certainly does not have all the answers. It does not explain human self-consciousness; it does not explain altruism; it does not explain how existence began.

Scientists like Dawkins say such questions are unanswerable and therefore should not be asked. But this attitude is not only the height of arrogance – when it translates into telling faith schools what they cannot teach and what pupils are not allowed to think, it becomes totalitarian.

Her article is hardly worth refuting, but it’s important in showing that seemingly intelligent and influential people in the UK buy into forms of creationism. As I’ve said repeatedly to Brits, the problem in their country is much worse than they realize.  And The Spectator should be ashamed of itself.  This is not a matter of opinion; it’s a matter of fact.