“Intelligent Design Wins Another Nobel Prize”

Last updated on: October 13, 2018 at 1:15 pm by Dan Peterson

“Intelligent Design Wins Another Nobel Prize” 2018-10-13T13:15:28-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Kolob Canyon, in Zion National Park, between St. George and Cedar City, Utah
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LOL. That blog title will work like catnip on a few of my online critics.

Fairly often, somebody on the internet of whom I’ve never heard will confidently and sneeringly observe that, as a certified religious fanatic and a demonstrable fundamentalist loon, I reject evolution. Sometimes, when I gently respond that I don’t actually deny evolution, the person in question will then quickly suggest that nothing that I might say about my beliefs on the topic should be trusted. I reject evolution, and that’s that. No matter what I say or what I claim to believe. I’m too dishonest to be permitted to speak for myself. And, for good measure, I believe that the earth is only about six or seven thousand years old — something that, so far as I can recall, I never believed even when I was a child. (I loved dinosaurs then, and studied them a lot.)

When, years ago, I replied with a tinge of exasperation to a fellow who was insisting online that I am a young-earth creationist that there was almost certainly nobody on the planet better equipped to know what I believe than I am, and that I would really appreciate being conceded the right to speak for myself, he responded quite huffily and (to my lasting astonishment) with entire seriousness: No, he said, I understand you better than you understand yourself. He was, by the way, a complete stranger to me, as far as I know. He was posting anonymously, and he never even suggested that we had ever met.

A few days ago, I posted an entry here about the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry that was recently awarded to a trio of two American scientists and a British researcher:

““Directed Evolution” and the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry”

One of my more zany and intellectually sloppy perpetual critics wondered, when that Prize was announced, whether I would try to avoid talking about it — because, you see, I deny evolution. (Or something like that.) Curiously, I’ve noticed that, in the intervening time since I commented on it, he’s had nothing more to say on the subject.

Funny, that.

Here are five more links to articles responding to that Nobel Prize:

“Word Games with Evolutionists”

“Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Intelligent Design?”

“It’s Not “Evolution” — A Nobel Prize for Engineering Enzymes”

“Intelligent Design Wins Another Nobel Prize”

“How the 2018 Nobel Laureates in Chemistry Harnessed Intelligent Design”

Although there are places on the internet where it’s quite confidently assumed that I’m a fully committed devotee of “Intelligent Design,” I haven’t yet actually said where I come down on the issues that it addresses, nor indicated what use I’m likely to eventually make of the reading I’ve been doing on the subject. (I have a very specific purpose, of which I’ve said nothing to this point.) I remain, however, very interested and hugely entertained by the debates that it engenders. And I’m amused by the sometimes angry and insulting comments that are made about me when it’s discovered that I’ve been reading the works of heretics. Few medieval inquisitors, I suspect, were more hypersensitive to the slightest whiff of unorthodoxy than are some of the folks who patrol my blog regarding this subject.

Posted from Cedar City, Utah

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