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.