Intelligent design and popular culture: Clean, new stuffed toys ...

Marvin Olasky comments on growing awareness of staged photography in Lebanon:

Here are just three examples of pro-Hezbollah staged photography courtesy of Reuters, the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse:

- Photos of bombing sites with clean and undamaged toys and stuffed animals perfectly positioned in front of them for maximum poignant impact. It's possible that Mickey Mouse and others merely sprung up at those spots, but it's much more likely that their placement was the product of intelligent design.

[ ... ]

Most major newspapers and magazines have not admitted their complicity, but three cheers for Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times, who noted that the stuffed toys poised atop rubble were "miraculously pristinely clean and apparently untouched by the devastation they purportedly survived. (Reuters might want to check its freelancers' expenses for unexplained Toys "R" Us purchases.)"

Sounds like a plan, that last point.

Various pundits have taken to wondering in print what use the design inference is in science. Well, they might want to look at how it works in the blogosphere to get some tips. Olasky is not very hopeful that the legacy media will learn anything, but we will see.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

O’Leary’s comments on Francis Beckwith, a Dembski associate, being denied tenure at Baylor.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

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