Thoughts in a Haystack

Unsurprisingly, Robert Crowther is over at the Discovery Institute's Ministry of Misinformation, mangling the message of Alan I. Leshner, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and executive publisher of the journal Science, that I linked to earlier today. Crowther crows about Lesher's statement that the weaknesses of evolutionary theory should be taught and complains that Lesher misrepresents the position of the conservative board members and the DI by saying that it is their intent to teach ID in Texas classrooms.

The devil, as they say, in the details. Lesher is speaking about the scientific weaknesses in evolutionary theory, none of which come close to calling the core of the theory into question. That's why Crowther conveniently ignores Lesher's full statement about the DI:

In addition, there is no scientific controversy. Mainstream science and medical organizations in the United States and worldwide, representing tens of millions of scientists, accept evolution as the best explanation for how life developed on Earth.

Yes, the anti-evolution campaign has lined up a small number of scientist supporters, but most have no expertise in biology or evolution.

On the other hand, as I have noted before, outside of an argument from analogy which is merely an updated version of Paley's watch, there is nothing to ID except their claims of phony "weaknesses," borrowed wholesale from "creation science." Troy Britain at Playing Chess with Pigeons previously produced an excellent two part post demonstrating how the "weaknesses" claimed by the IDers, as contained in the "Leader's Guide" (a fairly large pdf file) offered at the official Expelled website, contains all the same old tired creationist "arguments" against evolution. Teaching the DI's version of "weaknesses" is teaching creationism.

The one thing ID supporters can certainly never teach is honesty.
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