Seattle Times congratulates Kansas

The Seattle Times published an editorial Tuesday that was reprinted in the Lawrence, Kansas, Journal World today: Seattle applauds Kansas vote

The basic take-home point: Intelligent Design is dead as an attempt to disguise creationism as science.

Oh yes, it is alive and well as a cultural and religious force among anti-evolutionists - that problem still exists. But all this talk about there being anything to ID as science has been rejected by the courts, rejected by the voters, and rejected and ignored due to lack of any substance or relevance by the world of science.

The Seattle-based Discovery Institute has hitched their wagon to a sinking ship (pardon the mixed metaphor.) The only places they have made any temporary progress is when they has tried to use political bodies that were so far out of the mainstream that their successes, such as they have been, were bound to be short-lived.

Here are some excerpts from the editorial:

Angry parents and disgruntled voters in Kansas turned back another attempt to blend religion and science in the classroom. Keep up the fight. …

Darwin’s views on the origin of the species are indeed a theory, ripe for vigorous scientific prodding and poking. But challenges to those propositions have come from proponents of so-called intelligent design, who lay off the complexity of life to the work of an unnamed, unidentified supernatural designer.

Evolution’s critics defer to a creator instead of taking on Darwin with science.

Setbacks with voters and in the courts are taking the steam out of a point of view that is best left to a philosophy or religion class. …

Kansas voters rightfully reclaimed control of their science classes. Creationism has been repackaged with an intimidating veneer of scientific what-ifs.

Another part of the story that does not get repeated often enough: The judge in the Dover case noted he heard testimony from scientific experts who said Darwin’s theory “in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.”

Voters in Kansas acted in the best interest of a sound education, separating science and religion.