But ID Isn’t Creationism, Nosirree!
IDists’ favorite pastime, apart from slagging evolution, appears to be distancing themselves from young-earth creationists, even though the differences are legion:
Age of the Earth:
YECs: 6,000-10,000 years old.
IDs: No comment.
Identity of the designer:
YECs: Jehovah, god of the Bible.
IDs: No comment.
Scientific merit of ideas:
YECs: Evolution is just as much grounded in faith as the belief in a magic man in the sky, so the two are equally valid.
IDs: ID is just as scientific as evolution, if not more so. Is too!
Does evolution occur?:
YECs: Only to a limited extent.
IDs: Only to a limited extent.
Common descent?:
YECs: Only to a limited extent. But there’s no way humans can be related to any other species.
IDs: No comment, though humans almost certainly aren’t related to any other species.
Resolving difficulties: how do you explain X?:
YECs: Evolution doesn’t explain X!
IDs: Evolution doesn’t explain X!
See? The two are worlds apart! There’s no way anyone could see any similarity between the two, unless maybe they had a few pounds of pattern-matching circuitry between their ears.
So anyway, a few days ago, the ID the Future podcast promoted a new edumacational web site, TrueU.
Which seems like the right time to bring up Dr. Sidethink’s corollary to Murphy’s Law:
Anything Labeled “Truth” contains more bullshit than stuff labeled “Bullshit.”
At any rate, the reason IDtF was promoting TrueU is that Stephen Meyer is one of the authors, in addition to being the director of the Disco ‘Tute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, ID’s main faith tank.
If you poke around TrueU, you’ll see that it’s mainly concerned with kids heading off to college and losing their faith (and selling DVDs in the process).
Oh, did I mention that it’s also a project of Focus on the Patriarchy, an explicitly-Christian, right-wing, homophobic organization?
Yeah, this is the sort of thing that makes it really hard not to crack up when IDiots claim not to be creationists, so I won’t even try. It’s like they’re saying “Sure, he’s fucking me in the ass, but he’s standing on the floor, so technically we’re not in bed with each other.”