Thoughts in a Haystack: Flapping In the Wind

Monday, December 26, 2005

Flapping In the Wind

The Discovery Institute is having the devil's own time keeping the big tent staked down, especially since Judge Jones’ decision blew through like Katrina.

As noted before, Rush Limbaugh agrees that ID was a pretense to get creationism into public schools. While the DI is trying to put that down, Cal Thomas has come out and called ID a "sham attempt to take through the back door what proponents have no chance of getting through the front door." [12/27/05 - Add as another critic from the right James Q. Wilson, the chairman of American Enterprise Institute’s Council of Academic Advisers, who has now said that Judge Jones "rightly criticized the wholly unscientific nature" of Intelligent Design .]

The American Family Association of Pennsylvania is excoriating Rick Santorum for toeing the DI line by (a little belatedly) opposing the mandatory teaching of ID and blaming the Thomas More Legal Center for the debacle in Dover.

And while Hugh Ross, the founder of Reasons To Believe, has never been a supporter of ID, he is attacking the whole concept of ID, and, by implication, the Discovery Institute, from within the Evangelical community. Reasons to Believe has issued a press release that says:

"Leading proponents of 'intelligent design' claim that judges and justices are motivated by an anti-Christian bias and a misguided application of the United States Constitution," says Dr. Hugh Ross, astronomer, founder and president of the science/faith organization, Reasons To Believe. "In the context of scientific credibility, these court judgments against 'intelligent design' cannot be construed as the audacious judicial moves many people make them out to be."
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"As currently formulated, 'intelligent design' is not science," says internationally respected biochemist, Dr. Fazale 'Fuz' Rana. "It is not testable and does not make predictions about future scientific discoveries." Dr. Rana is the Vice President for Science Apologetics at Reasons To Believe and a leading expert in origin of life research.

Ross and Rana then go on to hump their own supposedly scientific "creation model" that one can only suspect will be the "next big thing" in the creationist camp if Reasons to Believe gets its way.

Meantime, Kansas Board of Education Chairman, Steve Abrams, who presided over one of the DI’s few recent success stories, the change in that state's science curriculum standards, came down with a case of Buckingham foot in mouth disease and got himself quoted as saying:

Eventually people will have to choose between the Bible's explanation for life on Earth or evolution, which is just dogma.

All-in-all, it has been a lousy year for the Discovery Institute.

Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 10:45 PM

Comments:

Maybe the Discovery Institute should hire some scientists instead of lawyers and economists. For an organization pushing a revolution in Science, the Discovery Institute is surprisingly lacking in them. Of the President, Vice Presidents, Board of Directors, Senior Fellows and Adjunct Fellows, their education is: 7 lawyers, 5 economists, 4 historians, 4 business admin, 4 authors/journalists, 3 philosophy majors, 2 political scientists, and 1 communications. There are two from Microsoft with computer science degrees, one medical doctor, and one person with a degree in philosophy of science who worked as a geophysicist, the closest they have to scientifically trained people. No chemists, physicists, or biologists. If you want a legal debate, you hire lawyers. If you want science, you hire scientists.

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