Thoughts in a Haystack: Bottom of the Barrel

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Bottom of the Barrel

The once-mighty Discovery Institute has come down to this!

Where once it was hard to peruse a newspaper without seeing some panjandrum of the DI's Ministry of Misinformation waxing oratorical on ID or proclaiming the imminent demise of everything that that had ever issued from Charles Darwin's intellectual loins, they now do battle with ... wait for it ... headline writers!

It seems that Robert Crowther is exercised over a "report" by that citadel of journalism, the Woodland, California Daily Democrat, in an article entitled "Evolution vs. 'Intelligent Design' debated" that:

... only Dr. Maureen Stanton, professor and chairwoman of the UC Davis Department of Evolution and Ecology, will "debat[e]" intelligent design vs. evolution. Apparently that’s the meaning of debate to some Darwinists.

If you go to the article itself, however, the word "debate" appears only in the headline and it is pretty obvious that no debate is, in fact, being advertised. Dr. Stanton's appearance is called a "presentation" and noted to be part of the "Cutting Edge of Science Lecture Series." Nor does the full title of Dr. Stanton's lecture seem in anyway to mislead: "Evolution vs. Intelligent Design: Which is Legitimate Science?" So it seems it was only the person who penned the headline ... and the overheated imagination of Mr. Cowther ... who might have thought a debate was involved.

Poignantly, apparently that’s the meaning of "controversy" to the DI nowadays.
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Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 10:02 PM