Bill O'Reilly joins the liberal Darwinist media
This is the funniest thing I’ve read all week. Yes, it’s even funnier than young-earth creationist and Discovery Institute fellow John Mark Reynolds attempting to argue that J. K. Rowling is wrong about Dumbledore being gay. (It’s fascinating to watch Reynolds blithely employ interpretive principles derived from the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy and apply them to the Harry Potter texts to argue against the very ‘deity’ that created them, J. K. Rowling. It’s a short circuit in Reynolds’s brain, just like young-earthism. But that’s another story.)
Anyway, here’s the funniest thing: First the DI tells everyone to watch Ben Stein on the O’Reilly Factor. But apparently neither Stein nor O’Reilly got the memo about how ID isn’t about religion or God creating things. They both think it is for some reason. And yet they clearly are not part of the evil Darwinist liberal media. Wherever could they have gotten the idea? I mean, it’s not like hundreds of clear statements from ID advocates connecting ID to God, creationism, and conservative evangelical apologetics should have lead them astray.
Here’s the actual text of the latest missive from the Discovery Institute Media Complaints Division:
Intelligent Design is Not Creationism (No Matter What Bill O’Reilly Thinks)
Monday night Ben Stein showed up on The O’Reilly Factor to talk about his forthcoming documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, and the fact that scientists are being persecuted for simply questioning Darwinism in some cases, or for researching and advancing the theory of intelligent design in others. Interestingly, I would bet that none of the scientists who will appear in Expelled (and by all accounts there will be a LOT of them) are creationists. Unfortunately, Bill O’Reilly simply conflates intelligent design with creationism, mistakenly defining it as an attempt to find a divine designer. Not so. (see here, here and here to start) Compare O’Reilly’s misunderstanding with this letter from a guy who clearly gets it.
It was unfortunate too that Ben referred to the “gaps” in Darwin’s theory, as if those are the only issues that intelligent design theory addresses. To be sure there are shortcomings with Darwinism, the scientific literature of late is full of them. However, intelligent design also provides a robust, positive case and a serious scientific research approach. This is the news that O’Reilly’s viewers need to hear about.
Posted by Robert Crowther on October 24, 2007 12:04 AM
The really hilarious bit is that even from the preview of Expelled it is clear that Ben Stein knows this is about God and divine intervention in science – Stein says so right in the preview. So why was the DI surprised at what came out on The Factor? The guys at the DI have been talking out of both sides of their mouth for so long they can’t keep it straight themselves when they’re supposed to be pushing the religious apologetics and when they’re supposed to be denying that that’s what they’re doing.