A victory for faith

Over at The Nation, Katrina Vanden Heuval says something that I've been saying for years. Regarding the Dover decision, she says

This is obviously a victory for science. What is less obvious is that it is also a victory for faith.

The most pernicious aspect of the ID movement is its commingling of science and faith, its attempt to use science and mathematics to prove the existence of an intelligent designer. Not only does this undermine science, it undermines faith, which by its very definition is "a belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence." If ID scientists were to prove, for example, that the double helix is the stairway to heaven, then the existence of God would cease to be an article of faith and become instead a scientific fact.

By drawing a bright line between science and faith, Judge Jones has done as much to protect faith from science as he has done to protect science from faith.

More like this

Chris Mooney has posted his latest salvo in his ongoing discussion with Jerry Coyne. Sadly, I think he has muffed it pretty badly. Coyne, of course, can take care of himself. I am inserting myself into this discussion simply because I think this is an important and interesting topic. So let's…
Peter Hess, Faith Project Director for the National Center for Science Education, argues that it is. He makes his case in this paper in the University of St. Thomas Journal of Law and Public Policy I learned of the article from this post over at Josh Rosenau's blog. Josh writes, “I think that…
A while back, Mark Hoofnagle coined a term that I like very much: Crank magnetism. To boil it down to its essence, crank magnetism is the phenomenon in which a person who is a crank in one area very frequently tends to be attracted to crank ideas in other, often unrelated areas. I had noticed this…
What a year it has been for the Discovery Institute and the Intelligent Design movement! Below the fold, I detail the advances that ID has made in the short time since Judge Jones delivered his ruling in Kitzmiller v. Dover. January Dembski: Just as a tree that has been "rimmed" (i.e., had its bark…