Friday, October 09, 2009

 

Taking In the Viewpoint


Heh! I reported before that the IMAX theater at the California Science Center in Los Angeles had been rented to show the Discovery Institute's pet piece of propaganda Darwin's Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Explosion.

Not so fast!

It seems that the Center has cancelled the screening and accompanying prayer tent meeting, entitled "The Darwin Debates: A Forum for Dialogue." The Center cites unspecified "issues related to the contract."

Naturally, the DI is claiming pressure from "Darwinist censors" and from "the Smithsonian Institution, which clearly was upset by publicity promoting the screening that mentioned the true fact that the Science Center is an official 'Smithsonian Affiliate.'”

The last charge is notably and expectedly unaccompanied by any evidence on that point but, on the other hand, as I noted previously, the Institute was burned by the DI once before (not to mention its complete misrepresentation of the Richard Sternberg affair) and the Institute could hardly have been pleased by the second attempted hijacking of its reputation by a pseudoscience.

But most interesting of all is the DI's claim that the Center's action was "viewpoint discrimination."

Funny, I thought ID was science, not a "viewpoint."

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Update: Abbie at ERV has a line on what those unspecified "issues related to the contract" might be.
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Comments:
Just out of curiosity, is there a reason why the Discovery Institute is renting space in museums and science centers in order to show their anti-science movie?

You don't suppose there's an ulterior motive, do you?


 
Why, only a cynic could think that that!

... Or a realist ...

;-)
 
Naturally, the DI is claiming pressure from "Darwinist censors" and from "the Smithsonian Institution,

Ah well, live to fight another day, I guess. Or century. 15th century. 1st century, whatever.
 
Hey that's not fair, Darwin's Dilemma has real scientists in it and appears in museums and science centers, so it must be legitimate science, right? Right?
 
"Viewpoint discrimination" - is it a bad thing to recognize distinctions between viewpoints? Or has political correctness now insisted that all viewpoints are to be entitled to equal standing?

TomS
 
When in doubt, creationists are always willing to go all post-modernist / social constructivist on ya.
 
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