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Dear Young IDists, It is a great honor that I accept the post as the new senior editor of the Intelligent Design Undergraduate Research Center. We must never forget those who have worked so hard to give us these wonderful opportunities to serve our respective communities. To all those who were active in IDURC even before I'd heard the name Phil Johnson, thank you. It would be a cliché to say that we stand on the shoulders of giants, but there can be no denying that Intelligent Design (ID) is here to stay. Worse for evolutionists, it is growing. Yes, ID is one of those unique concepts that can capture the mind and the soul, much like John Hammond in Jurassic Park predicted that his dinosaurs would capture the imaginations of millions of children. (Luckily, all but a couple of those kids would never get the opportunity.) For over a year after I first seriously started exploring the world of ID, I would read book after book at an unstoppable pace. I spent a tremendous number of hours mindfully searching the Net, exploring sites like ARN and others, and then delving into discussion groups and getting blasted because I knew next to nothing. But defeat was merely an impetus for gaining more knowledge. Each rout was followed shortly thereafter by more voracious reading, fact-checking, and background research. I suspect similar stories could be told by many of those reading this. That is the beauty of ID. Dogmatic evolution has been so ingrained in the public mind and seemingly immortalized in school and on television that the challenge ID poses to it can be described as nothing less than revolutionary. Looking back through history we find many examples of revolutions. These included the Scientific Revolution, of course, but there others: the American Revolution and the French Revolution. Each of those cases involved, or continues to involve, an exportation of those revolutions to other places and peoples. The American Revolution was fought largely because the British government wouldn't give us a proper voice in Parliament. In other words, we had problems with what they were doing and they wouldn't heed. For good or bad (now is not the place; e-mail me), America has since tried to share American ideals throughout the world. The French Revolution was a total mess (go figure), what with the reign of terror and all of that. After the initial phases of taking over, the French revolutionaries tried to export their revolution into neighbouring countries by invading them with armies. Their sheer force succeeded early on, but the other Europeans trounced them afterwards (a deeply-rooted tradition that continued for about two hundred years). Now, why all this history? What possible relevance could it have? Well, let's suppose that ID is indeed a revolution. What should be done with it? If we believe we are right and if we have the evidence to support it (and I believe we do), then why shouldn't we try to share what we have learned with others? Of course, we must do this carefully. We cannot dummy-up reports like we were a Soviet printing press. We must present our theories as theories, our hypotheses as hypotheses, and our facts as facts. The way we present our case is as important as what our case actually is. We cannot go around releasing anger out on our neighbors, smashing them with our armies. We must have patience. We must engage them intelligently and respectfully. For many of us those are probably elementary lessons to draw from the history of revolutions, but let us not forget: we are young, bold, and restless. On the other hand, embittered evolutionists who cannot fathom how any intelligent person could still doubt their sacred theory often assist us in losing our cool. And with those gems of unfortunately rather obvious wisdom (I was feeling especially profound earlier on, but the sense has past), I now move onto more meaty material. If you are a student (elementary, middle, high, college/university) who is skeptical about the claims of evolutionary theory and are interested in Intelligent Design theory, then please join our e-mail-based discussion group, where you will meet others that share this common interest and are eager to intelligently discuss this topic. No spam, no irritating diehard evolutionists whose sole goal is to disrupt any creative thought that goes against their philosophical bias. Please go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/idurc and sign up. This is just a first step. Remember, folks, we are on the shoulders of giants. Let's see what we can do. Sincerely, Tristan Abbey |
