You might have a hard time explaining your interest to “new atheist” Sam Harris. Having just received a courtesy hard cover copy of his The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values (Free Press, 2010), I looked at the index and noted that the reader seeking information about intelligent design theory is referred to: Creationist “science.” Harris may well have written the index himself (?).
Well, following the page references, on p. 34, in the midst of a discussion of why it is wrong to think there is moral equivalence between typical human views of murder and Jeffrey Dahmer’s*, we read,
It is, perhaps, worth remembering that there are trained “scientists” who are Biblical Creationists, and their “scientific” thinking is purposed toward interpreting the data of science to fit the Book of Genesis. Such people claim to be doing “science,” of course, but real scientists are free, and indeed obligated, to point out that they are misusing the term. Similarly, there are people who claim to be highly concerned about “morality” and “human values,” but when we see that their beliefs cause tremendous misery, nothing need prevent us from saying that they are misusing the term “morality or that their values are distorted.
So, ID theorists, you are all just Bible thumpers with labs/computers. And Darwin doubting atheists/agnostics exploring design, you are just chums with people who can be compared to those who cause tremendous misery. A scientist said it. It must be true. You must repent either of interest in design in nature or of interest in Sam Harris.
*I doubt whether cannibal and necrophiliac Dahmer is a good example of moral equivalence in North American society; after all, he was sent to prison for life (and murdered there). I haven’t read the book yet, but if this is representative of the author’s insight, it’s all best taken in sparing doses.
(Note: Here’s the post on atheist and agnostic ID sympathizers, recently stuck to the top.)