Thoughts in a Haystack

Well, the Discovery Institute is having trouble keeping its story straight again.

Commenting on "Evolution Sunday," an event intended to combat what over 10,000 Christian clergy have called a false dichotomy: that people must choose between religion and modern science, the DI’s Bruce Chapman and John West are quoted by Robert Crowther as follows:

"Evolution Sunday is the height of hypocrisy," says Bruce Chapman . . . "Why do Darwinists think it is not okay for people to criticize Darwin on religious grounds, but it is just fine to defend him on religious grounds?" ...

Chapman pointed out that increasingly the only time religion is brought up in the debate over evolution is when Darwinists falsely charge that anyone criticizing Darwin’s theory is religiously motivated.

"We maintain a list of hundreds of scientists who are skeptical of Darwinian evolution because of the unresolved scientific problems with the theory, not because of any so-called religious motivation," said Chapman. The Scientific Dissent From Darwinism is available on the Institute’s website at http://www.discovery.org/.

"This isn’t science versus religion, it’s science versus science," added West.

First of all, no mainstream supporter of evolutionary theory has, to my knowledge, said that it is "not okay for people to criticize Darwin on religious grounds." What they have said is that it is not okay for people to pretend that religion is science and that it is especially not okay to do so in order to sneak religion into public schools in violation of the Constitution. The Three DI Stooges may protest all they like but they and the rest of the IDeologists had their chance to strut their supposedly scientific, non-religious stuff in front of Judge Jones in the Dover case and could not cut the mustard before a conservative Republican jurist.

Even more tellingly, Phillip Johnson, the DI’s "Program Advisor" for the Center for Science and Culture had the following to say recently at Campbell University (a Baptist institution):

Intelligent design has caused controversy throughout the world. A federal judge ruled recently that intelligent design cannot be taught in biology classes in a Pennsylvania school district because the teaching of the Bible does not belong in science classes, but Johnson isn’t concerned about the theory being taught in public schools.

"We want to discredit Darwinism," Johnson said. "This theory has had an enormous impact on secularization because it eliminates the Creator. We thought that if the theory of evolution was cast into doubt, it would have a big cultural impact, just as it did when it was discovered."

Trying to discredit Darwinism because it eliminates the Creator is apparently the DI’s idea of science. I’d like to think that Johnson is being this candid because he recognizes that the attempt to get ID into public schools is dead but it is just as likely that it is a case of the DI message changing based on who the audience is.

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Thanks to Pat Hayes for finding the report on Johnson's talk and posting it at his excellent blog, Red State Rabble..