Intelligent Design Proponent Makes Another Stupid Argument

Posted by PZ Myers at 6:31 AM on July 16, 2009.

Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute has published an opinion piece in the Boston Globe in which he makes a rather anachronistic argument for ID: Thomas Jefferson was a supporter. I knew the creationists were sloppy scholars and had a poor grasp of history and science, but this is getting ridiculous.

Here, I have to help them out.

They do overlap a bit in time, but Jefferson was 33 years in the grave before Darwin got around to explaining how we don't need a designer to explain the living universe. I rather suspect that no ship was dispatched from Virginia to Shropshire to get young Charlie Darwin's rebuttal of the 1823 claim, either. It's even less likely that Jefferson's zombie rose up in 1859 to take a quick gander at these new ideas spreading through biology and decided, nah, he likes intelligent design better.

I could be wrong. Maybe the Biologic Institute has been holding seances and has received Jefferson's imprimatur — I wouldn't put it past them. Otherwise, though, Meyer is making a ludicrously stupid argument.

By the way, even if the DI had Jefferson's revivified head in a jar, and it was making anti-evolutionary pronouncements, it wouldn't make a bit of difference to evolutionary biologists. Doctors might be excited, though.

Blake is even more succinct.

Tagged as: religion, evolution, intelligent design, darwin, discovery institute

PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris. He runs the science blog, Pharyngula.