Thanks to Steve Reuland on Panda's Thumb for alerting me to this site via his excellent post on Intelligent Design vs. Creationism. His table will help you keep these entirely different belief systems straight in your mind.
The link is to a very enlightening interview with Phillip E. Johnson. Mr. Johnson is the Intelligent Design movement's leading propagandist and a very scary man. Here's a little quote from the interview with him:
Indeed, my philosophy is, when I do a serious debate, to play for a draw because I do not want my opponent and the audience going away saying, "That is one clever lawyer who can make you look like a fool in a debate." I want them to go away saying, "There’s more to this than I thought. We ought to do this again." All you have to do is get the right issues on the table and then you win. You don’t have to worry about it, because Darwinism is wrong, and it will self-destruct.
You see, they don't really care if they win their debates. Or their court cases. Because they have gotten the issues out there. And enraged the voting religious public. Which is an extremely effective political strategy, as Thomas Frank has detailed in "What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America".
I have one of Phillip Johnson's books, "The Right Questions". One of the blurbs on the back informs us that in this book "the leader of the Intelligent Design movement broadens his critique of Darwinism into an attack on numerous well-known social and political attitudes." Inside, the first chapter is "Biology and Liberal Freedom - The Right Questions About Science, God, and Morality." (But please remember, although Mr. Johnson has been described as the leader of the ID movement, ID is not about religion...) Chapter Two is "The Word of God in Education - The Right Questions About the Religious Foundations of Education". (See disclaimer following Chapter One.)
You may be interested to know that the last chapter is entitled "The Ultimate Question". However, I do not think it in any way connects to the Ultimate Answer of LIfe, the Universe, and Everything, which we already know to be 42. No, this Ultimate Question is about the most important event in human history. I wasn't able to locate the most important event in human history but I did learn the following.
- Christian theism is THE correct worldview.
- Ghandi? Who's going to think he's so great after India and Pakistan fight a nuclear war?
- The genome project - probably going to be remembered as a very expensive delusion.
- Muslims - nonpragmatic, prone to believing their religious worldview is the correct one and trying to force it on everyone else. (Ahem...)
- Science - devoted to ideological causes and has abandoned the search for truth.
- America - "in the mid-twentieth century abandoned the complex religious understanding that had served the nation well until that time."
How did that last one happen? It was "the cultural triumph of Darwinism" that did in our pure-hearted religious folk. "...dogmatic scientific materialists...set about driving the Christians to the margins of society, denying them influence in government, education, or cultural life"
But "faith thrives in the long run when we are persecuted." So just get those Christians feeling like they are persecuted, even though Christianity dominates political, educational, and cultural life in this country, and watch those poll numbers climb.
5:29:59 PM 
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