Shermer debates Dembski on CNN

Via Telic Thoughts, I've discovered this debate (warning: 27 MB Windows Media video file) between Michael Shermer and Bill Dembski on Daryn Kagan's program on CNN. It amazes me to what lengths "intelligent design" advocates will go to deny it when asked point blank if the "intelligent designer" behind "intelligent design" is God. In this case, Dembski demurred that "there is an intelligence involved" in evolution. He even went to far as to admit that the "designer" could be an alien intelligence. But what drew my attention most of all and made me want to blog about this interview is that Dembski made an astounding speculation that, instead of God, it could be a "natural intelligence built into the world" that is responsible for "design."

To me that sounds an awful lot like the Gaia hypothesis. I wonder how long conservative religious advocates of ID will stick with the concept of a "designer" if adherents like Dembski, in their zeal to avoid being labeled "creationists," trot out on national TV New Age, even pagan, ideas about about what this "intelligence" might be. Look for a comeback of old-fashioned young earth creationism if that happens.