New year, new blog

Now that my class is over, I'm going to try to expand this from a "politics and media" blog to an "anything goes" blog, and see if I can keep it going for a while.

So, first up: Interesting stuff in The Corner today concerning Intelligent Design theory. John Derbyshire: "ID theory posits that certain features of the natural world CAN ONLY be explained by the active intervention of a designing intelligence." (Emphasis mine.) Um, no, it doesn't. I sent him an e-mail to that effect, but apparently mine was one of about a billion, so it got lost in the shuffle. He did print a few, and sounded a bit miffed that anyone would question his judgment on this subject. No big deal -- miffedness is his stock in trade, and serves him quite well on other topics that he's more familiar with.

All the same, I think I'll adapt my response and reprint it here. Because, as I said, "No, it doesn't."

***

This is the definition provided by the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (the ID organization with which Michael Behe is affiliated):


"1. What is the theory of intelligent design?

The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."

As you can see, there's no "can only be explained" there, only an "are best explained," which sounds reasonable to me.