The Voice Of Unreason
by tristero
Blogger ate an earlier post I did on David Klinghoffer's Jerusalem Post article in which he attempts to align "intelligent design" creationism with Orthodox Judaism.* So, I will just quickly note that among other "goodies," David's article features a tactic common to the right when they lie or argue for a particularly awful idea, namely the adoption of a facade of sober-minded, above-the-fray thoughtfulness. In this case, David Klingoffer does both. He lies about a particularly awful idea:Yet more than a few people on the traditional side of the religious divide are vocal critics of intelligent design (ID), the scientific framework in which doubts about Darwinism are currently being expressed and worked out.
The lie, of course, is that David knows that in Kitzmiller v. Dover, Judge Jones ruled that "intelligent design" is nothing more than the religious doctrinee of creationism and that there is nothing scientific about "intelligent design" creationism in the slightest. And David well knows that the vast majority of mainstream scientists concur.
And the bad idea here? Why, evangelizing to Israel for "intelligent design" creationism, of course. Doesn't Israel have enough troubles as it is?
I'll leave it to you to marvel at the incredible density of deceit packed into David's column, not to mention his sheer ignorance of science. My favorite: ID belief is an "increasingly confident minority view among scientists." Not that "a vanishingly small minority of scientists" have anything good to say about ID, but that it is a minority view. Not that the small minority (out of which David can muster up not a single scientist trained in the specialized areas of evolution, genetics and species formation) is increasing, but rather that their confidence is.
My interest in David Klinghoffer is not because I think he is a particularly influential or effective writer. Rather, it is because his efforts to disguise his far-right political agenda as religion are so crude as to make it obvious what he is really up to. By the time you're slick enough to lead a mega-church, as Ted Haggard did, you've managed to bury the political implications underneath all the hosannas and praise the Lords so that casual outside observers who don't know where the action lies will mistake it for non-political and therefore harmless religious observance.
With David, it's always about far-right politics. The lengths he will go to to advance extremist memes are genuinely astonishing, if not downright revolting. Here, for instance: It would be a presumption to assert that God caused the Holocaust, or allowed it to happen, in order to punish European Jewry for their increasingly widespread devotion to secularism. In any given historical event, we can never know God’s true intention. But it would also be a presumption, and a worse one, to assert that such a punishment was not what He had in mind. It is that latter presumption of which most Jews, including many religiously observant ones, are guilty today. Anyway, if He did intend that event as a punishment, a warning, or a lesson, it would fit the Bible’s pattern neatly. The Jews liquidated by Nazi Germany were not only, or even mostly, Reformers and secularists. Many deeply pious Jews perished as well, for they were often the last to seek escape from rising Nazi power.
You read that correctly. David here is arguing that maybe the Holocaust happened because God was punishing the Jews, all Jews, because some Jews were too "secular." And he skirts quite close to saying that the Jews he thinks are too "secular" deserved the gas camps. His message is unmistakeable: if Jews want to be absolutely certain to avoid another Holocaust, they better do something about the deadly "secularists."
To say the least, a few people begged to differ. Klinghoffer's reply to them is also worth a read; just be sure that you haven't eaten anything for at least two hours before you try.
Again, the issue is not so much David himself as it is how his blatantly obvious attempts to disguise his loopy politics as religion provide us with insight into how the slicker boys and girls go about it. Still, that Klinghoffer would try to export "intelligent design" creationism to Israel is truly unforgivable.
*Klinghoffer is employed by the Discovery Institute which should surprise no one. Where else could he work, after all?