{"id":15715,"date":"2008-05-31T09:35:44","date_gmt":"2008-05-31T13:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/15715.html"},"modified":"2008-05-31T09:35:44","modified_gmt":"2008-05-31T13:35:44","slug":"discovery-institute-tries-to-cut-down-forrest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/discovery-institute-tries-to-cut-down-forrest\/","title":{"rendered":"Discovery Institute tries to cut down Forrest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by Morbo<\/a><\/p>\n

The neo-creationists who espouse “intelligent design” have hit a rough patch. In 2005, they lost<\/a> a federal lawsuit over the teaching of ID in a Pennsylvania public school. “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” the documentary that was supposed to put ID on the national stage, was a critical flop<\/a> and commercial failure. <\/p>\n

ID advocates claim to be sophisticated thinkers promoting cutting-edge science. They’re not, and just behind them lurk a band of knuckle-dragging young-Earth creationists who keep doing embarrassing things like opening multi-million museums<\/a> showing dinosaurs and humans strolling around side by side. (All that’s missing is Fred Flintstone yelling, “Willllllma!”) <\/p>\n

What’s an ID advocate to do? How about launch a crude personal attack against a prominent critic? Sure, that always works!<\/p>\n

The target in this case is Barbara Forrest, coauthor of the book Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design<\/i><\/a>. In the book, Forrest and Paul R. Gross rip the mask off the ID charade, proving that it’s all about religion, not science. That really annoyed the ID backers.<\/p>\n

A university professor, Forrest lives and teaches in Louisiana. Recently, she has been speaking out against a proposed law<\/a> there that would allow teachers to use “supplemental materials” when discussing evolution so as to promote “academic freedom.”<\/p>\n

This is the latest stunt from the ID crowd. I have to admit, it’s pretty clever.
\n
\nTheir plan is to slip their theology into the classroom and undermine Darwinian evolution under the cover of legitimate instruction — thus spreading ignorance in Louisiana and other states. It’s a sneaky ploy because to most people, the use of “supplemental materials” to promote “critical analysis” sounds reasonable.<\/p>\n

But in this case it’s not. Would we waste time teaching our children alternatives to the germ theory of disease? Why bother offering “supplemental material” critical of the existence of gravity? Should we allow “criticism” of the history of the Holocaust in the classroom? After all, some cranks write books saying it never happened. Shouldn’t our children hear both sides?<\/p>\n

The Discovery Institute, the nation’s leading organization pushing ID, is apoplectic over Forrest. Recently, the Institute issued an entire paper attacking her<\/a>. Among their charges, they note that Forrest is — gasp! — non-religious. She sits on the board of the New Orleans Secular Humanist Association.<\/p>\n

So let me get this straight: If anyone has the temerity to point out that Phillip E. Johnson, a former law professor who almost single-handedly launched the ID movement, once pointed out that his goal is to use ID to bring people to “the truth” of Jesus Christ, that person is a religious bigot who impugns the motives of the Discovery Institute. Yet it’s perfectly acceptable for the Institute to attack Forrest for her lack of belief.<\/p>\n

The Discovery Institute promotes lousy science and makes a sloppy attempt to dress up its fundamentalism in an ill-fitting lab coat. That’s bad enough. But there’s another reason why its “supplemental materials” must be kept out of our public schools: The group plays dirty and is unethical. It sets a poor example for children everywhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by Morbo The neo-creationists who espouse “intelligent design” have hit a rough patch. In 2005, they lost a federal lawsuit over the teaching of ID in a Pennsylvania public school. “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” the documentary that was supposed to put ID on the national stage, was a critical flop and commercial failure. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}