Politicized Scholars Put Evolution on Defensive (Xian Rt. funds Institute)

[DeepModem Mom]

New York Times:
Politicized Scholars Put Evolution on the Defensive
By JODI WILGOREN
Published: August 21, 2005


SEATTLE - When President Bush plunged into the debate over the teaching of evolution this month, saying, "both sides ought to be properly taught," he seemed to be reading from the playbook of the Discovery Institute, the conservative think tank here that is at the helm of this newly volatile frontier in the nation's culture wars.

After toiling in obscurity for nearly a decade, the institute's Center for Science and Culture has emerged in recent months as the ideological and strategic backbone behind the eruption of skirmishes over science in school districts and state capitals across the country. Pushing a "teach the controversy" approach to evolution, the institute has in many ways transformed the debate into an issue of academic freedom rather than a confrontation between biology and religion.

Mainstream scientists reject the notion that any controversy over evolution even exists. But Mr. Bush embraced the institute's talking points by suggesting that alternative theories and criticism should be included in biology curriculums "so people can understand what the debate is about."

Financed by some of the same Christian conservatives who helped Mr. Bush win the White House, the organization's intellectual core is a scattered group of scholars who for nearly a decade have explored the unorthodox explanation of life's origins known as intelligent design.

Together, they have mounted a politically savvy challenge to evolution as the bedrock of modern biology, propelling a fringe academic movement onto the front pages and putting Darwin's defenders firmly on the defensive....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/21/national/21evolve.html?ei=5094&en=88f0b94e7eb26357&hp=&ex=1124596800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all

[DBoon]

1. Stalin had Lysenko

Bush has "intelligent design"

Stalin's endorsement of bogus anti-Darwinian ideology had disasterous consequences for Soviet agriculture.

I'm afraid intelligent design will end up wrecking US science in the same way

[depakid]

9. Both were delusional

The communists of that era and Republicans today share a great deal in common. Neither has any sense of ethics whatsoever- and neither had any appreciation for science and rational economics (much less the logical blending of the two).

In the next decade, America will suffer even harder that the Soviets have. And deservedly so.

[damntexdem]

2. But the Creationist yahoos are themselves upset with ID!

As in Dover, PA, where they abandoned the DI because it wanted to cling to not identifying the 'Designer.' Meanwhile, the KS School Board majority still spouts ID, but also spout Genesis. Let's hope that more and more of the Christian right will find the DI's political facade too religiously-incorrect to cling to.

[HereSince1628]

3. This recent episode of ID eruption in the GOP is a DIVERSION

Let's not take the bait. The content of public and private school curriculum isn't in the scope of the president.

If the GOP is so stupid that they want to propose a funding system that demands ID, let spend their time proposing it.

We've got a bunch of issues like ending US military occupation of Iraq, getting the budget deficit under control, investigation of Mr. DeLay, and such.

[ihelpu2see]

4. Why should Evolution be on the "Defensive" that is just media

crap talk.... Even as recently as this spring evolution as described by Darwin was found in reef fish off of the coast of Sunny Southern Calif.

[K-W]

5. I think they mean that evolution advocates have been forced to fight back.

Rather than ignore

[wellst0nev0ter]

11. "Shape of the Earth - Views Differ"

stupid fuggin Screw York Times, tell the truth for chrissakes stop bending over for "balance".

[wli]

6. these freaks are quacks and need to be laughed out as appropriate n/t

[HereSince1628]

7. I think a national laughing campaign could actually work.

[DeepModem Mom]

10. LOL! I wish we COULD laugh away this lunatic fringe...

that has taken over our country.

[MaineYooper]

12. we should all be touched by His noodly appendage

http://www.venganza.org/index.htm

edited for spelling (moodly- sheesh!)

[Dudley_DUright]

8. Scholar is not a word that leaps to mind when thinking of the

Discovery Institute IDiots.

[Cocoa]

13. "the love child of Jerry Falwell and Ayn Rand"

what a fantastic quote. :wow:

But the evolution controversy has cost it the support of the Bullitt Foundation, based here, which gave $10,000 in 2001 for transportation, as well as the John Templeton Foundation in Pennsylvania, whose Web site defines it as devoted to pursuing "new insights between theology and science."

Denis Hayes, director of the Bullitt Foundation, described Discovery in an e-mail message as "the institutional love child of Ayn Rand and Jerry Falwell," saying, "I can think of no circumstances in which the Bullitt Foundation would fund anything at Discovery today."

[kineneb]

14. Evolution=Science, Creationism=myth

Let us call mythology what it is: mythology. Creator god, back of turtle, tears from the rain god, whatever- they are all myths to explain reality. The world-tree is just as relevant.

If they insist on Armegeddon, then I want Gotterdammerung, complete with thunder. Valhalla sounds so much more interesting.