Centre for Intelligent Design, and 'respected' think tanks

The new British Centre for Intelligent Design is launching a summer school to educate and enable activists to carry the message. Subjects to be covered are the scientific (astronomical, mathematical, genetic, biochemical, nanomachines etc) basis for ID, the truth about the Dover trial and much else. The need for this is highlighted by the continuing media and Darwin activist campaign to prevent ID arguments being heard, so that Darwinian theory dominates our culture by default, appeals to authority and endless repetition of speculation and falsehood as fact.

One of the strangest things about the debate, apart form the mainstream media's reluctance to cover it, is the fact that many Christian organisations seem to take the side of the enemies of the Christian religion in refusing to acknowledge the evidence of design we see in the created things. Alistair Noble writes an effective rebuttal against an attack on ID by one such organisation Ekklesia. These people claim to be a Christian theological think tank but I only ever hear them cited by the Liberal-Left BCC sniping at mainstream, i.e. Bible believing, Christianity. Are they really Dawkinist moles? It would hardly be a surprise to find that some of the sixties and seventies liberals and crypto-communists who have been on a long march through the establishment to slowly undermine and destroy British Christendom would have furthered their goal by joining the church. The theory that many senior churchmen are actually working covertly to destroy the church from within has considerable explanatory power and fits with scriptural prophecy.

http://www.c4id.org.uk/

Noble's esay on the above link is well worth reading in full. He demonstrates the usual lazy inaccuracies, off the shelf cliches and oft repeated smears and sneers in the Ekklesia article in question. He asks why a purportedly Christian organisation specifically refuses to see evidence of design in the natural world, when clearly not only the Bible writers but also the founding fathers of most of the natural sciences (men like Pasteur, Galileo, Kepler, Maxwell, Newton etc) not only saw design but were inspired by it. Noble writes that the illusion of non-design goes against everything we can observe in nature. It is utterly counter intuitive, has not been observed, and has no credible mechanism. Darwin only made it appear to work by all kinds of special pleading and appeals to faith, but now that we know how much sophisticated and purposeful information is contained in each cell, the idea of undesigned life is contrary to all reason, since we observe that meaningful information is only ever seen to arise from intelligent sources. Only. Ever. No exceptions.

I really think this question needs to be asked-why are even Christians who accept evolution (whether for fear of being called names, don't realise how much it matters so haven't thought about it, or because they haven't heard the evidence against) so nervous about even going so far as to say 'well the cosmos and living things  LOOK designed!' Perhaps they are nervous about where that might take them, for example a creationist might ask 'If as you say God created through evolution, where are the hymns praising Him for it?' Of course, no such hymn could be written, and parodies apart, as far as I know none has been. Following the evidence wherever it goes can be scary, so perhaps zero tolerance of Darwin dissent is the most comfortable option for the Christian who doesn't want to get into a fight.

NB 'Think tank' seems to be just a fashionable term for some mutually selected like minded friends who have a common view, and the ability to articulate it in corridors of influence and power. I have no idea who chooses which think tanks get quoted and which get ignored. Probably the Guardian readers at the BBC. Someone noted that when the BBC introduces a spokesman from a conservative minded think tank, they are introduced as a 'right wing' think tank, but when they introduce a left wing think tank, it is introduced as a 'respected' or 'influential' think tank, never a left wing one. Similarly, ID supporters are always assumed to be motivated by (usually Christian) religion, but the athiesm of most of the promoters of Darwinism is usually glossed over or considered irrelevant. Stephen Meyer made this point (in his book  Signature in the Cell) about an interview he had with Eugenie Scott, where Meyer's Christianity was made the main issue (thus preventing the merits of his mathematical and genetic arguments about ID being discussed) but Scott's atheism was taken as a given and irrelevant to her promotion of evolutionism. In this context, atheism can be seen as a science stopper.

Sophisticated brainwashing can work well, especially when it comes from respected sources over a long period of time, but crude brainwashing can still be effective if enough people are sufficiently dumbed down. If anyone has any doubts about dumbed down Britain, just take a look at the front covers of the magazines and newspapers people are buying.