Cdesign proponentsists

For those that followed the Dover Trial closely, this should be old news. But if you don’t know what Cdesign proponentsists is, then you’ve got to read it for yourself to find out.

A little background first: During the Dover Trail, the plaintiffs subpoenaed the publishers of the book Of Pandas and People for any early drafts they had of the text. What they discovered was shocking.

The publishers had done a find and replace with a word processor to change the words creation to design. A witness for the plaintiffs, Barbara Forest, illustrated this at the trail with the following graph. The red line is usage of the creationist and the blue line is intelligent design.

Click for full size

“What happened in 1987″ would be a good question for anyone that can read graphs. The answer is simple. The supreme court ruled in Edwards v. Aguillard that teaching creation science was unconstitutional. (Creation science is of course the idea that if you look at the scientific evidence, it supports a young Earth, instantaneous creation, etc.)

Now it seems that ID proponents didn’t like this comparison too much. On October 6th 2005, here’s what Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute wrote:

“Forrest is playing word games, without looking at the meaning of the words.”

[…]

At the time the authors began work on Pandas, there was no widely accepted way to describe the scientific position being advocated there,” said Luskin, “namely that there are indicators of design in nature, that scientists should remain open to the possibility of intelligent causes, and that such evidence does not tell us the identity of the designer.”

So what was “the scientific position being advocated”? Here are excerpts taken from the early drafts, the emphasis is obviously mine. These were put up on the web by the National Center for Science Education on November 7, 2005.

Creation Biology (1983), p. 3-34:
“Evolutionists think the former is correct; creationists because of all the evidence discussed in this book, conclude the latter is correct.”

Biology and Creation (1986), p. 3-33:
“Evolutionists think the former is correct, creationists accept the latter view.”

Biology and Origins (1987), p. 3-38:
“Evolutionists think the former is correct, creationists accept the latter view.”

Of Pandas and People (1987, creationist version), p. 3-40:
“Evolutionists think the former is correct, creationists accept the latter view.”

Of Pandas and People (1987, “intelligent design” version), p. 3-41:
“Evolutionists think the former is correct, cdesign proponentsists accept the latter view.”

A search and replace to change “creationists” to “design proponents” went awry, and we ended up with cdesign proponentsists. So Cdesign proponentsists represents a rare transitional fossil in the evolution of creation science.

This is old news! I thought I’d put it up today simply because many of my readers may be unaware of the fossil evidence for intelligent design. I can think of no funnier or more poignant example of ID’s true beginnings than this.

So the next time someone tells you that ID is science, ask them about Cdesign proponentsists.