Intelligent design and popular culture: Chucking Johnson?

A friend sends me this item from Urban Dictionary:

Chuck Johnson

Verb: related to Godwin's law and Godwinism's. To 'Chuck Johnson's' is to label a person, group or philosophy with the reductio ad Hitlerum* tag as means to close down debate.

Chuck: transitive verb, meaning to a: toss , throw, Noun: Short for Charles

Johnson: refers to the owner of the news aggregating, formally conservative, anti jihad site and now anti-creationism pro Darwin website Little Green Footballs. Which has become synonymous with personality cults, blogtatorship and calling previous colleagues and acquaintances of long and respected standing fascists, Nazis, Racists or ID'er (derogatory term for a belief in creationism. For simply having web links or opinions on their own personal web pages which he/CJ disapproves of.

I must confess, I don't really understand "little green footballs" at all.

I did not start covering the intelligent design controversy because I was especially right wing, had a hidden agenda, or was in anyone's pay, but because the legacy mainstream media was doing such a lousy job that any well-informed freelancer** with a blog could do better.

I do, however, remember the weird moment when "Chuck" (the "biggest" little green football?) decided that the scientists who think the universe shows evidence of design were somehow allied with Islamic fascists. I commented on that here.

The reality is quite otherwise. Muslims who want to grow in their faith, while divorcing the politics of extremism, are attracted to intelligent design precisely because it demonstrates that the universe is both God-guided and rational. However, that is entirely independent of conspirazoid claims about the Discovery Institute in Seattle.

A Muslim friend reminds me, at times, that traditional Muslim families in his neighbourhood love "Little House on the Prairie" reruns, but definitely do not admire "Sex in the City." Well, I share their tastes. And anyone who wants to make a conspiracy out of that can go right ahead.

By the way, if you want to know what's going on in Canada's political culture, your first stop should be Deborah Gyapong's blog. Gyapong, a reporter at the Parliamentary Press Gallery, knows the score.

[*reduction ad Hitlerum = Tell the world that your opponent in some dispute would have endorsed Hitler and the Holocaust. It is an excellent way to seriously complicate and throw confusion into a discussion about, say, which firm should get the contract for fixing potholes on paved highways (come spring) or whether a doofus dressed up as an erect penis should be lecturing about sex at a girls' high school. People used to say "He's the Devil's man!" Now they say "He's Hitler's man!" It amounts to the same thing, really. It is not, in itself, an argument.]

**freelancer = see PayPal button. This is an independent news desk. Support is always appreciated.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

ID controversy grows in Muslim world

Turkish journalist Mustafa Akyol, who now has his own site, The White Path, has been writing about the intelligent design controversy from a Muslim (and generally favorable) perspective.

By contrast, Ahmed K. Sultan Salem, a PhD student at Stanford,"sort of" attacks ID at Islam On Line, eventually concluding,

Two arguments can be made. The first is that ID is an impediment to science as it moves from the deficiency of the current hypotheses to a statement that we will never succeed in explaining the phenomenon scientifically. This can be countered by another argument that ID, by showing the inadequateness of current explanations, may help awaken the scientists from their intellectual slumber, something that often takes place given the inertia of the scientific culture (and other cultures). ID can be a motivator for scientists to think outside the box and try to propose alternative hypotheses. It is extremely unlikely that all the scientists will take an ID result and stop hunting for naturalistic explanations. The point is that ID may harm science, but ignoring it may also harm science. After all, everything has its share of merits and demerits.

Um, yeah, but on a scale of one to ten, Ahmed, ... ?

Bill Dembski comments that Salem's piece "is probably the most ambivalent article about ID that I’ve ever read." Maybe a conflict of loyalties?

Meanwhile, Muslim anti-evolutionist Harun Yahya has also attacked the ID advocates, for unrelated reasons. Who said the world was a simple, straightforward place?

By the way, Akyol crossed swords recently with Robert McHenry at Tech Central Station, on the ID controversy.

(Note: In the interests of disclosure: I have written written for Islam on Line.)

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.