Death to the Swing Voter
Subject: The Trouble With Quibbles
Re: " Culturebox: Alan Wolfe Turns Evangelical"
From: Philip Gold
Senior Fellow
Discovery Institute
Date: Tue Oct 10 3:54 p.m. PT
I am not now, nor have I ever been, a creationist. I may have been a good Judeo-Christian once; the fossil record is unclear. I am, however, affiliated with Seattle's Discovery Institute. We are the bastion of the Intelligent Design movement, as Judith Shulevitz noted—and more grievously misunderstood than Al Gore trying to explain what he really meant when he said he invented the Internet while under fire in 'Nam.
Point First. Discovery is a conservative place with a strong religious perspective. Many of its members are ardent Christians. Some aren't. This has no impact on the scientific validity (or lack thereof) of Intelligent Design. After all, something can be true even if Al Gore says it.
Point Second. The essence of Intelligent Design is the attempt to investigate and study evidence of intelligent design in the physical and biological worlds, without positing or inquiring into the nature and intent of the designer.
Point Third. Darwinian materialism is a mid-19th-century construct that, virtually alone among scientific theories, remains immune to criticism. Indeed, the Neo-Darwinians notwithstanding, the paradigm has been almost stagnant for a century and a half. An awful lot of evidence that should have been found hasn't popped up. A lot of quibbles with the theory have. To dismiss these as "minor" is to ignore the fact that, historically, paradigms crack when enough minor quibbles add up to a big major quibble.
Point Fourth. Intelligent Design is usually presented as half of the God versus Darwin debate. More is involved. Of the three great 19th-century thinkers who gave us so much of our modern world—well, Karl Marx's risky scheme has been composted, while Sigmund Freud's been sliced, diced, chopped, and pureed. These three men had one thing in common: mono-causal reductionism, explaining the world in terms of a single Super-Cause, whether class conflict, sexuality, or blind chance. Both postmodernism and common sense have shown us how much more is involved. No limits, dude.
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Subject: The Case Against the Book Club
Re: " The Book Club: Books on Divorce"
From: Maggie Gallagher
Director
Marriage Program
Institute for American Values
Date: Mon Oct 9 10:47 a.m. PT
Katha Pollitt dismisses The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier and Better-Off Financially as a "clip job." Your readers should know that Katha Pollitt, a committed anti-anti-divorce warrior, has already repeatedly publicly condemned me, the Institute for American Values, and more importantly anyone else who thinks we should try to do something about high rates of family fragmentation.
