“Humphrys suggested that Intelligent Design might be considered a kind of middle ground between Darwinism and Creationism.”

But Millinarianism is the ultimate resolution to all intractable issues.

Ask me not what It is for It surpasses all human understanding.

Inevitably, I think all heretics of the true belief should be burned at the stake if it were not illegal to do so.

Get lost, Melanie. Intelligent Design has clear religious motivations and is therefore not credible as a purely scientific theory.

Please return to the hole that you crawled out of.

“The Dover trial comprehensively demolished ID’s claim to be scientific theory”

Remarkable insight into the scientific method you have there, Unity.

Phlogiston?

No mystery here – the Spectator’s just slowly going full Republican. Sensationalist, whackjob bullshit attracts madly enthusiastic wingnuts in very large numbers, and before you know it they’ve eaten you alive and are living in your house. There’s no such thing as a short-term, circulation-boosting flirtation with right wing nutters – once you’ve invited them in, it’s only a matter of time before they take over and boot out everyone who doesn’t conform to their crazy ways. Pod people, vampires, pick whatever comparison suits you best.

Remarkable insight into the scientific method you have there, Unity.

My insight into the scientific method is fine, thanks, and the assert that the Dover trial buried ID’s claim to be a scientific theory is a perfectly reasonable one if you’ve read the transcripts and the judge final ruling.

The argument from design is a bit a zombie really. It keeps coming back, thanks to creationist’s utter lack of imagination, despite having been been comprehensively pulled to piece by both Hume and Darwin, long before Judge Jones got around to savaging it.

Jones, BTW, is a conservative Republican and a Bush appointee, just to show that there is some hope for the American right…

What has happened to LibCon recently? This site used to be interesting, especially for a right-winger such as myself, and a great way to read things from another viewpoint. It now just seems to be filled with smears, baseless accusations and incoherent rants (such as this article). Please sort it. I enjoy reading well-written articles with which I disagreed but could accept the authors view – sadly there’s been a severe lack of these lately.

Laban’s right. The Dover trial did not demolish ID’s claim to be genuine science. Biologists had long since achieved that, and you can’t demolish rubble.

What Dover did was make the whole demolition public, and accesible to the layman, breaking open the highly technical issues in biochemistry where IDists like to camouflage their wackiness.

The conclusion of the court was:

we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science. We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980’s; and (3) ID’s negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community

Conclusive proof in ID is surely that African elephants’ ears look like Africa, while Indian elephants’ ears look like India. This can’t be a coincidence! The people demand to know the truth. About elephants’ ears.

My vote is a ‘debate’ on the merits of plate tectonics – by way of abiotic oil, naturally.

It is sad in the extreme to see the British Right following the US Rigth down the path to batshit craziness and insanity. Makes for comedy until these people get anywhere near the levers of power and then the pain begins for everyone else.

I don’t often say this – but thank heaven for the One Nation Conservatism tradition – it might just prevent a wholesale slide into Republican style stupidity.

The UK is not the US – despite the best efforts of Nelson and Mad Mel to make it so.

Unity, maybe Nelson will champion Vril as the solution to Peak Oil and global warming.

“What the hell, why not take on the big one and have a crack at reviving the geocentric model of the universe – or would [that] be pushing things too far?”

Not far enough! Come on, let’s go the whole hog:
http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/Flatearthsociety.htm

I don’t often say this – but thank heaven for the One Nation Conservatism tradition – it might just prevent a wholesale slide into Republican style stupidity.

I was thinking that the other day. In contrast to all this I’m positively nostalgic about the One Nation Tories.

The ‘blogs4brownback’ blog may be a well-crafted piece of satire, but the fixedearth.com site it links to, and takes much of its stuff from, is perfectly serious. And it’s an ideal fit for The Spectator – it’s run by a friend of a Republican State Senator, whose wife ran his election campaign:

State Rep. Ben Bridges denies writing the memo, which attributes the Big Bang theory to Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism.

Bridges has long opposed the teaching of evolution in Georgia classrooms and has introduced legislation requiring only that “scientific fact” be taught.

Marshall Hall, president of the Fair Education Foundation, says the Republican lawmaker gave him approval to write the memo, which has been distributed to legislators in several states, including California and Texas.

The memo asks readers to challenge the “evolution monopoly in the schools” by logging onto Hall’s anti-evolution Web site, http://www.fixedearth.com .

“Indisputable evidence – long hidden but now available to everyone – demonstrates conclusively that so-called ’secular evolution science’ is the Big Bang, 15-billion-year, alternate ‘creation scenario’ of the Pharisee Religion,” says the memo, which has Bridges’ name on it. “This scenario is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic ‘holy book’ Kabbala dating back at least two millennia.”
…
The league sent a similar letter to a Texas lawmaker who circulated the memo to members of the Texas Legislature’s budget-writing committee.

State Rep. Warren Chisum told The Dallas Morning News in Thursday editions he was trying to do a “Good Samaritan” deed for Bridges. “If that’s a sin, well, shoot me,” he told the newspaper.
…
Hall, a 76-year-old retired high school teacher who said his wife ran Bridges’ election campaign, said neither the memo nor his Web site is anti-Semitic. “I think they tar people with that brush a little too readily,” he said.

Associated Press

Geocentrism has got to be The Spectator’s next contrarian crusade.

“In contrast to all this I’m positively nostalgic about the One Nation Tories.”

At least they didn’t want to tear-up/smash/burn/trample/send-into-the-wilderness any and every document or institution with the word ‘Royal’ in its title. Unlike the current bunch of treasonous so-and-sos. To the Tower with the lot of ‘em!

Sunny: I was thinking that the other day. In contrast to all this I’m positively nostalgic about the One Nation Tories.

Nostalgia is all you’re going to get, I reckon – as in Michael Heseltine: Last Chance to See.

My money is on the Spectator making out that gayness is a disease curable by voltage and a good woman.

Any bets?

Anything to do with mad Mel is not worth bothering with. The woman is bonkers.

And like all bonkers right wingers she attracts an army of stupid people who would follow her over a cliff.

“I don’t often say this – but thank heaven for the One Nation Conservatism tradition – it might just prevent a wholesale slide into Republican style stupidity.”

One nation Conservatism died with Thatcher. It has long gone. Call me Dave can pretend he supports it, but the Tory party as a whole has become the English Republican party. Nutty as fruit cakes.

20 – Thatcher wasn’t a One Nation Conservative. And she hasn’t died. Good analysis otherwise…

Tim Jerk

“Thatcher wasn’t a One Nation Conservative. And she hasn’t died. Good analysis otherwise…”

I did not say she was. Try reading what I said again, then maybe you will see that I said that “one nation Conservatism died with Thatcher.” Meaning she destroyed it.

And where did I say that Thatcher has died?

Sorry you can’t understand basic English.

Oh I don’t know, Tim – Thatcher being among the league of the Undead would explain a great deal.

23 – It would explain her ‘Mummy Returns’ schtick back in 2001 I suppose…

Yeah, that and her zombie-ish cadence.

Thatcher being among the league of the Undead would explain a great deal.

Hence the only good argument for giving her a state funeral is if the ceremony is televised and includes staking her into the coffin and burying her under a rose bush.

@27 Sorry the church has been sold off. Try Tesco’s

Oi, Sally’s comment I was replying to has disappeared!

Was my point about Thatcher that bad it needed taking down?

I know he was a bit of a lefty, but surely The Spectator must recognise that Lysenko has much to offer when we contemplate the food shortages of the 21st Century?

The fact that Mad Mel is seen as fit to grace its pages tells us a lot about the Spectator’s (lack of) commitment to rationality. That’s about it, really.

Redpesto – Heseltine’s not a one-nation Tory, he’s a no-nation Tory.

When Boris Johnson asked him how he saw Britain’s future in Europe, his reply was : “Who now remembers or cares about Wessex and the kingdoms of the Heptarchy ?”

Mr Johnson paraphrased Mr Heseltine’s view as saying that “one day Britain will be to Europe as Wessex is to Britain: just folded in, forgotten, a fossilised relic of a former division, nothing but the quaintly named province of a single state.”

Unity,

“staking her into the coffin and burying her under a rose bush”

I call “dibs” for that job! And I’ll even provide my own pointy piece of wood and a spade.

*and* I won’t charge anyone £75 for doing it – my services will be provided on a purely pro bono basis…

frolix22@31
Melanie Phillips is a regular on the Moral Maze. Does that invalidate anything you might hear on the BBC then?

“Fangs are sharpened only when there is something to gnaw on. Domestic hens have wings only for flapping. The same law is true for hens and for ideas: nourished on chopped meat cutlets they lose their teeth, like civilized, cutlet-eating man. Heretics are necessary to health; if there are no heretics, they should be invented.”
Yevgeniy Zamyatin.