Peter Williams Dissects Richard Fortey's "Rant" against Intelligent Design
Over at ID Plus, Peter Williams has an excellent analysis of Richard Fortey's article against ID. Fortey's article was subtitled "Why I hate this intelligent design story. It's simply IDiotic" and it concludes, "Darwinists are readily labelled. There should be an equivalent term for the proponents of Intelligent Design. May I suggest IDiots." In "Richard Fortey rants at straw man of ID," Peter Williams writes in response, "While Darwinists provided their own name, this childishly rude title does not allow the proponents of the ID theory to choose their own name for their theory. Descending to name-calling is not going to help the Darwinist cause shift the appearance of 'a threatened Establishment'! Rather, it confirms it." Williams is correct: the term Darwinists is not uncommonly used by "Darwinists" when they are describing themselves, so they "provided their own name." Moreover, there is no comparison between the common term "Darwinist" and the pejoritave insult, "IDiot." Read Williams' point-by-point analysis here.