George Will On Intelligent Design And The Rudder-Less Republicans...

New York Post Online Edition: postopinion

DOVER, PA. & THE GOP: SEEKING RENT, GOD

By GEORGE F. WILL

November 17, 2005 -- "THE storm-tossed and rudder less Republican Party should particularly ponder the vote last week in Dover, Pa., where all eight members of the school board seeking re-election were defeated. This expressed the community's wholesome exasperation with the board's campaign to insinuate religion, in the guise of "intelligent design" theory, into high school biology classes, beginning with a required proclamation that evolution "is not a fact."

But it is.

And President Bush's straddle on that subject — "both sides" should be taught — although intended to be anodyne, probably was inflammatory, emboldening social conservatives. Dover's insurrection occurred as Kansas' Board of Education, which is controlled by the kind of conservatives who make conservatism repulsive to temperate people, voted 6-4 to redefine science. The board, opening the way for teaching the supernatural, deleted from the definition of science these words: "a search for natural explanations of observable phenomena."

"It does me no injury," said Thomas Jefferson, "for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." But it is injurious, and unneighborly, when zealots try to compel public education to infuse theism into scientific education. The conservative coalition, which is coming unglued for many reasons, will rapidly disintegrate if limited-government conservatives become convinced that social conservatives are unwilling to concentrate their character-building and soul-saving energies on the private institutions that mediate between individuals and government, and instead try to conscript government into sectarian crusades."

Ah but George, we live in exibitionist times. No longer is religion a private enterprise between ourselves and our gods, it MUST be proclaimed as THE driving force, THE sun source of all knowledge, THE only way to conduct one's life, THE thing to teach children of ALL denominations.

Jefferson was only several levels of evolution ABOVE the dolts who would proclaim that THEIRS is the real deal out of the hundreds of religious interpretations of why-is-the-sky-blue, and using HIM as an example is hardly fair.

Just ain't kosher.