On Describing IDiots as Creationists

This is from Satirizing Scientism a blog whose goal is "Mocking Scientism, Evolutionism, and the Arrogance of the Academy." A posting from last month has advice for evolutionists [Presenting: An op-ed piece from Dr. Strangelove].

5. Do not hesitate to mischaracterize ID's motives. Although ID proponents, unlike creationists, are really quite good about sticking to scientific arguments, it is to your advantage to not distinguish between the two. In fact, we recommend that you always append the term "creationism" to ID so that it reads intelligent design creationism.

Since we have succeeded in getting the courts to discredit creationism (thank you, ACLU!), this has the effect of (a) immediately attributing religious motives to ID, (b) implying that that ID has no more scientific basis than creationism, and (c) immediately diverts the discussion away from scientific evidence to fears of Taliban-like imposition of religious dogma. Because scientists are objective and open-minded, dogma should be ours to impose and hopefully that will increasingly be the case.

I'm one of those people who use the term "Intelligent Design Creationism."¹ I think it's quite appropriate to distinguish between various forms of creationism. There's Young Earth Creationism, Old Earth Creationism, and Scientific Creationism, so why not Intelligent Design Creationism? What all three have in common is belief in a creator. Theistic Evolution is another example of creationism.

It's extremely difficult to draw nice neat boundaries around these various kinds of creationism—especially Intelligent Design Creationism and Theistic Evolution Creationism. However, it's quite easy to distinguish between all forms of creationism and real science.

There is another point of view on this issue. Some people, including many theists and some atheists, think that the word "Creationist" should be reserved for Young Earth Creationists who believe in the literal truth of the Bible. By this definition, the other theists who believe in a supernatural designer would not be creationists even though their "designer" is also a creator, and, in fact, the same God that the Young Earth Creationists believe in.

From this perspective, the advocates of Intelligent Design can avoid being called creationists and they can continue to pretend that their beliefs are scientific and have nothing to do with God.

The Theistic Evolutionists also like this tactic. It allows them to avoid the creationist label as well. Accommodationists tend to avoid referring to Theistic Evolution as an example of creationism but they often dump Intelligent Design into the creationist tent. The logic behind this is to steer clear of alienating theistic evolutionists by pointing out that they are creationists. Apparently, theistic evolutionists are insulted when confronted with the truth.

---

1. Those who believe in Intelligent Design are characterized as IDiots—this is just a short-hand way of referring to them since "Intelligent Design Creationists" is too hard to type.