"I THINK I'LL MAKE A LEMUR TODAY"

Via John at AmericaBlog, we see that Charles Krauthammer has a column today which rips Intelligent Design to shreds:

Let's be clear. Intelligent design may be interesting as theology, but as science it is a fraud. It is a self-enclosed, tautological "theory" whose only holding is that when there are gaps in some area of scientific knowledge -- in this case, evolution -- they are to be filled by God. It is a "theory" that admits that evolution and natural selection explain such things as the development of drug resistance in bacteria and other such evolutionary changes within species but also says that every once in a while God steps into this world of constant and accumulating change and says, "I think I'll make me a lemur today." A "theory" that violates the most basic requirement of anything pretending to be science -- that it be empirically disprovable. How does one empirically disprove the proposition that God was behind the lemur, or evolution -- or behind the motion of the tides or the "strong force" that holds the atom together?

In order to justify the farce that intelligent design is science, Kansas had to corrupt the very definition of science, dropping the phrase " natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us," thus unmistakably implying -- by fiat of definition, no less -- that the supernatural is an integral part of science. This is an insult both to religion and science.

Whoa... wait, bacdafucup, CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER???

Yep. In fact, this shouldn't be a surprise. In July, Krauthammer was among 15 prominent conservatives surveyed by TNR's Ben Adler on the subjects of evolution and ID. The article is now behind TNR's subscriber wall, but if I recall, Digby posted some of the responses. Here's Krauthammer's:

Whether he personally believes in evolution: "Of course."

What he thinks of intelligent design: "At most, interesting."

Whether intelligent design should be taught in public schools: "The idea that [intelligent design] should be taught as a competing theory to evolution is ridiculous. ... The entire structure of modern biology, and every branch of it [is] built around evolution and to teach anything but evolution would be a tremendous disservice to scientific education. If you wanna have one lecture at the end of your year on evolutionary biology, on intelligent design as a way to understand evolution, that's fine. But the idea that there are these two competing scientific schools is ridiculous."

There you have it. Of the conservatives surveyed, only a couple of them are as unequivocal as Krauthammer regarding their acceptance of evolution and the rejection of ID as science (Richard Brookhiser gets a gold star, and William F Buckley and Jonah Goldberg each get a solid B+).