Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum has previously supported the teaching of Intelligent Design in public schools. He even tried to add an amendment to the No Child Left Behind law that would encourage this. Now that voters in Dover, PA, have turned out all school board members who supported teaching Intelligent Design, Santorum has quickly shifted his position.

The Beaver County Times reports:

Santorum’s comments to The Times are a shift from his position of several years ago, when he wrote in a Washington Times editorial that intelligent design is a “legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in the classroom.”

But on Saturday, the Republican said that, “Science leads you where it leads you.”

Santorum even said that “mistakes have been made in the Iraq war” and that some of those mistakes originate with the White House. He doesn’t come right out to say that President Bush has made mistakes, but he’s clearly distancing himself from the aspects of the Republican Party which he didn’t just previously support, but actually led. He’s up for re-election in 2006 and he’s already trailing badly, so this is no surprise. I just hope that his challenger emphasizes these shifts so that voters don’t forget what sort of person Santorum is.

In related news, Jason Rosenhouse reports at The Panda's Thumb that even the Templeton Foundation is starting to back away from Intelligent Design. Quoting the Wall Street Journal:

Foundation staff members now say that intelligent design hasn’t yielded as much research as they’d hoped. Mr. Templeton, who chairs the foundation and will turn 93 later this month, believes “the creation-evolution argument is a waste of time,” says Paul Wason, the foundation’s director of science and religion programs. Mr. Wason adds that Mr. Templeton is more interested in applying the scientific method to exploring spiritual questions such as the nature of forgiveness. Nevertheless, staff members remain reluctant to dismiss intelligent design entirely, in part because the doctrine’s popularity could help achieve the foundation’s goal of persuading evangelical Christians to pursue scientific careers. The foundation also complains that academia is too quick to censor the doctrine. [emphasis added]

Intelligent Design hasn’t yielded as much research as they’d hoped because it hasn’t yielded any real scientific research at all. It’s not a form of science, it’s a form of theological hand-waving and as a consequence all it’s yielded is more ways to wave one’s hands around an insist that science isn’t complete in its explanations of all aspects of life and, therefore, some sort of unnamed God must exist. It's not even good theology, much less genuine science.

 

Read More:

• Evolution vs. Creationism
• Science vs. Religion
• What is Intelligent Design?
• What is Science?