Maybe the man is getting loopy in his old age, in which case somebody ought to gently shuffle him out of the broadcast studio permanently. You may recall that Rev. Pat Robertson blamed the ACLU and feminists (among others) for the September 11 terrorist attacks. I yield to nobody in my disagreement with both of those groups, but since Mohammad Atta and his merry men were not First Amendment fetishists, nor did they believe in "equal work for equal pay," that remark was more than unfair.
Pat has also expressed support for nuking the State Department. Today, Pat thinks that the little town of Dover, Pennsylvania might get smited for throwing out politicians they don't like:
Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson warned residents of a rural Pennsylvania town Thursday that disaster may strike there because they "voted God out of your city" by ousting school board members who favored teaching intelligent design....Having worked for a company owned by an eccentric religious megalomaniac, I feel like I have some insight into Robertson's mentality. He has been around for so long, commands such a vast not-for-profit empire, and has absorbed so much criticism (deserved and undeserved), that he knows he can say pretty much whatever he wants without any consequence. Otherwise, why would he presume to know God's motivations for permitting a particular evil?"God is tolerant and loving, but we can't keep sticking our finger in his eye forever," Robertson said. "If they have future problems in Dover, I recommend they call on Charles Darwin. Maybe he can help them."
Reverend Robertson, for the sake of the religion you profess, I beg you: please shut up.
Update: Blogs4God expresses similar thoughts at greater length, with a bonus critique of a cretinous editorial by USA Today that "intelligent design is the scientifically untestable theory that life forms and the universe are so complex that a higher being must have been involved in making them. Put another way, it's creationism with clever new packaging."
Creationism is the belief that the earth is only a few thousand years old and that all life sprang de novo from the hand of God. Intelligent design accepts that the earth is millions of years old, but attempts to show that it is mathematically improbable that mere chance can explain the emergence of new species, or the formation of complex biological processes at the molecular level. In that sense, it is falsifiable: orthodox Darwinians simply have to show that all of the staggeringly complex biochemical reactions within higher organisms could be the result of chance.
I'm a little disquieted to hear that he's involved with a center for Christian visitors being developed in partnership with the Israeli tourism ministry. Can anything good come from Pat Robertson?
I agree totally with Mr.E Johnson, this man has been a self appointed moralistic asshole since I first learn about him back in the early 80's.
I don't know that I'd go that far, KM, but there is something really strange about Robertson. Running for president was one indication.
Intelligent Design proponents really ought to be going to the labs, going to the funders with ID experiments that are undeniably scientific. As these get funded, the critique that ID is not science will be exposed for what it is, pseudoscientific nonsense.
You can run the same experiment and reverse the hypothesis and null hypothesis to make it in support of either evolution or ID. It would be an interesting experiment in itself to submit for grant funding with 50% of your proposals arranged one way and 50% of the proposals arranged the other way. For the funders, they should approve the experiment in exactly the same patterns no matter which way the hypothesis/null hypothesis statements are arranged.