On Friday, Michele Bachmann (R-MN) — incredibly, a Presidential front-runner for the Republicans — said this:

I support intelligent design [...] What I support is putting all science on the table and then letting students decide. I don’t think it’s a good idea for government to come down on one side of scientific issue or another, when there is reasonable doubt on both sides.^*

Terrific. But then, in a sense, I agree. That is, when Intelligent Design proponents actually have any science, they should speak up. And if there were any reasonable doubt that would be fine too. But they don’t, and there isn’t.

And ID isn’t science, it’s religion. It was even ruled to be religion by a judge — a conservative Republican judge — so teaching it would be in violation of the Constitution that Representative Bachmann is sworn to uphold.

Just sayin’.

^*Incidentally, this quote from her is in response to a question asking her to name Nobel Laureates who support Intelligent Design; she previously made the claim that many do. Note that in her answer quoted above she totally dodges the actual question; she never names a Nobel prize winner who supports ID. Actually, there are a couple who apparently do, but then no doubt some Nobel Prize winners are religious in one form or another… and many have believed in very dubious things. Having a Nobel is not inoculation against nonsense. Interestingly, having said that, I have seen no evidence that any Nobel Laureates in biology favor ID over evolution, however.

Anyway, I’m not a big proponent of "my expert is bigger than your expert"; that’s just a version of argument by authority. In the end, ID must be judged on its merits, and as has been shown countless times, it has none.

This sounds about right.

I like the cartoon, though I’m not a huge fan of Scott Adams himself; his creationist/Intelligent Design leanings make that difficult. Some people say he’s a gadfly, just trying to get people to think. But I’ve never found his arguments persuasive, and they’re generally just repetitions of some of the more basic (and easily debunked) ID claims. PZ Myers has dealt with him any number of times, and a web search will yield all sorts of interesting results.

Life is full of such conflicts; Jenny McCarthy is actually very funny when she’s not trying to infect the world with measles, Oprah does a lot of actual good work in contrast to her support of McCarthy, and Fred Phelps… no, my mistake. Phelps is just 100% awful.

Tip o’ the tie tip to my brother, Sid.

Guillermo Gonzalez is an astronomer who thinks Intelligent Design creationism is a scientific theory. Iowa State University is an educational institution where he wanted to help spread such silliness. ISU is also a place that said Gonzalez could take his nonsense elsewhere, and denied him tenure.

Discovery Institute is a "think tank" full of people who like to lie and say that creationism is correct. They whined and moaned when ISU told Gonzalez to take a hike. Gonzalez appealed to ISU, hoping that they would be foolish enough to say "Golly, maybe we should throw hundreds of years of scientific discovery out the window!"

They didn’t. In a 7-1 decision they told Gonzalez that his hike can still be taken.

As I said before, that is 100% the correct decision. Tenure is given for many reasons, but one criterion is how well the candidate will represent the University. Supporting Intelligent Design would reflect very poorly on ISU. They know that, so they dumped him. Well that, plus a host of other problems they had with Gonzalez.

I’m sure the Disco ‘tute will have some sort of golden parachute to soften the blow to Dr. Gonzalez. But I hope that other institutes (the real kind) will look to ISU as an example of how to deal with a shoddy track record and science blinded by faith.

Hat tip to Aetiology.