Or so those who tote the ideas of intelligent design, such as David Warren of the Ottawa citizen, would have you believe . He recently wrote an article called The Limits of Atheism in which he describes what he thinks is a century long conspiracy among atheistic materialism. The conspiracy is deeper than he thinks, It is mostly prevalent among scientists. Apparently that is not who should be telling us things about science, I had no idea.

The intelligent design "debate" has been going on since the theory of evolution was proposed. It was originally under the name of creationism, which was unapologetically religious and unequivocally unscientific. In the 90's the advocates of Creationism reclaimed the idea under the name Intelligent Design which was suppose to be scientific. The theory goes like this, the design of life can be explained in no other way than a deity or in other words natural selection cannot explain how life came to be as it is today. For centuries Darwin's theory was without a means to explain genetic traits and therefore not well excepted. Then in the 1900's when Mendel's genetic research was discovered which allowed purposed genetic heredity. The theory was further supported by the discovery of DNA in 1940 and its structural discovery in 1953. The invention of the mass spectrometer in 1940 and the discovery about its use in radiometric dating in 1950 gave an evolutionary time line to know how gradual the change. Over the last fifty years science has only agreed more and more with the theory of evolution. What was it that exactly said in David Warren's article that so offends one who believes in science?

Many claims were made throughout the article, such gems as when referring to people who defend evolution "when a writer finds he has hit such a nerve, he can also know that he is approaching a great truth." This is a genius statement, that means the greatest truths ever told were those who say things that offend. So when a white supremacist claims a person is inferior based on race then that person isn't offended because of the sheer ignorance of the statement, they are offended because they are inferior. Great offense does not make for great truths. He also asks why should we care about his misunderstanding and misrepresenting evolutionary theory? There are several reasons, many have a vested interest in the truth. I care deeply about the truth, so much so that when someone tries to force truth into there narrow views I get offended. Now it is time to learn of the great conspiracy.

The evolution conspiracy has been going on since the beginning of evolutionary theory. Powerful people purposely restrict the research of intelligent design. As Mr. Warren said

The establishment wants such research to be stopped, because it challenges the received religious order, of atheist materialism. Any attempt, or suspected attempt, to acknowledge God in scientific proceedings, must be exposed and punished to the limit of the law; or by other ruthless means where the law does not suffice.

We all have heard of the case of "Doctor" Kent Hovind who was imprisoned for ten years. This was obviously because of his position on the theory of ID rather than his theory of paying taxes or in his case not paying taxes. We also know of the great riot of 1990 when at a national scientific meeting someone muttered "Darwin was wrong", three dead and ten wounded. It is well known that scientists would rather agree with science than disprove evolution. Something like that would win the Nobel prize and no one wants that. Lets take one more look at the vastness of this conspiracy. It exists from the supreme court to a humble scientist. Has been going for 100 years and between many fields of science. If you believe in an old earth you would have to dismiss biochemistry, ecology, genetics, biology, archeology and physiology. (if you believe in a young earth you also throw out cosmology and earth sciences)

The truth is there is no conspiracy other than that presented by the Discovery Institute whose known doctrine is to "reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist world view, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions." which is to dismiss the scientific method in favor of ignoring the information that disagrees with you and only presenting what agrees with a Christian world view. It is near crazy to believe that such a conspiracy among science would be nearly impossible since science by definition is self correcting. There is even no debate among the scientific community. It is very telling that this author lists Michael Behe as a scientist and then describes "other very qualified scientists" as the rest of them. There is a list of scientists who do not believe in evolution that has gotten 600 signatures. There is also a list of scientists named Steve who do believe in evolution, this list has 800 signatures. A final thought would be to challenge Mr. Warren's claim that science doesn't claim to god because of some fear of god or fear of the consequences. The truth is that Science makes no claim about the supernatural. Science tells us about the natural ways of the universe as such that which cannot be defined by the universe cannot be scientifically proven.

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