In her last post, Denyse O’Leary commented on how ID has been very, very good to her:
Speaking for myself, I was a completely obscure trade mag hack and textbook editor (though a reliable and accurate one) until I began to wonder whether the whole of the history of life can be explained by natural selection acting on random mutations and whether that Brit toff Darwin was really the greatest man in history. Now, all sorts of people have an opinion about me who aren’t even sure of my age, sex, or nationality.
She isn’t the only one. While I was still an expert witness in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case, I attended the deposition of Barbara Forrest, who, after Ken Miller, was the star witness for the other side. I decided to bring Forrest’s book (Creationism’s Trojan Horse, coauthored with Paul Gross) to the deposition and asked her to sign it just before I left. Here is the inscription:
Indeed, what is she thanking me for? If ID is such a vicious evil, a more appropriate inscription might have read:
To Bill,
You malignant subverter of science, you despiser of all that is wholesome and right. May you rot in hell, if there is such a place (which I doubt).
With all good wishes,
Barbara Forrest
But she didn’t. She thanked me. Why was that? Because, at a deep level, she realizes that her professional advancement (she is now an endowed professor — she was largely unknown, like O’Leary, before entering this debate) and, indeed, her reason for having any sort of intellectual career worth talking about is that she has become a principal opponent of ID. What’s more, my contributions to ID have been seminal in that regard, giving her an adequate foil against which to devote her energies (why else does she devote three pages of the index — over 100 references — to yours truly?). To make a career attacking something, the object attacked has to be sufficiently dangerous and threatening. My colleagues and I have provided her with precisely such an object.
When I was in second grade, I had a crush on Joan Gillespie. To show my affection, I was mean to her and kept thinking up ways to be mean to her. Fortunately, I outgrew that childishness. When it comes to ID, Darwinists have yet to do so.
Deep down, Darwinists love ID.