Back in 2003, an intelligent-design advocate named Francis Beckwith wrote a book, Law, Darwinism, and Public Education, published by Rowman and Littlefield.
Although Beckwith was clearly out of sympathy with Darwinism, the point of the book wasn't about biology. It was about the establishment clause of the first amendment of the Constitution. Beckwith's view was that "intelligent design" was an alternative scientific hypothesis, and that accordingly it is appropriate -- and not even remotely an official establishment of religion -- to teach that hypothesis as one distinct from Darwinism within public schools.
That book might have gone unnoticed -- like lots of other books saying the same thing -- had it not been taken up by an enthusiastic review (technically a "book note,") in the Harvard Law Review for January 2004. The reviewer, one of the student editors of the HLR, was Lawrence VanDyke.
The note, appearing in such a high-visibility periodical, caused a firestorm. VanDyke wrote: "Consequently, apart from erosion of their philosophical proselytism what have Darwinists to fear from a little [intra-school] rivalry? After all, the ideological defeat of naturalistic evolution at the hands of the ID movement would nicely illustrate 'survival of the fittest' -- it could be Darwinism's last vindication."
There are lots of levels of crap in those two sentences, the blatant rhetorical conflation of the survival of the fittest gene lines with survival of the fittest memes is but one of them.
In the resulting furor, VanDyke was pretty thoroughly shown up as a fool. And, it should be noted, Beckwith has backed off of some of his own pro-ID arguments in the years since.
http://romereturn.blogspot.com/2010/03/intelligent-design-and-me-part-ii.html
Tomorrow I hope to say something about why it has not been entirely antiquarian of me to bring up this exchange from 15 years ago just now.
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