How Right-Wing piggies try to kill Darwin theory

[happydreams]

Whackos at the Discovery Institute try to kill Darwin.


In 1998, members of a Seattle nonprofit think tank drafted a secret five-year plan with an ambitious goal: to "defeat scientific materialism" and "replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God."

By the end of the stated five-year period, the benevolent conspirators had seen much of their goal accomplished. There was widespread public debate with materialist Darwinists. Dozens of books had been published presenting a non-Darwinian alternative theory of life. There was widespread respectful press coverage of their cause, with innumerable supportive op-ed columns in mainstream media, cover stories in the national newsweeklies, and even a widely broadcast PBS documentary. School authorities in 10 states were looking into adopting some or all of the recommendations for high-school science curricula. So well was the campaign going that in 2004, some of the original antimaterialism advocates were confident enough of eventual triumph to predict in detail a complete meltdown of Darwinian science by 2025—the 100th anniversary of the notorious "Monkey Trial" of 1925.

However unlikely their optimism at the time, it looks a great deal more unlikely today. In December, a federal judge presiding over another case of Darwin versus faith in a public-school system handed the antimaterialists a defeat so sweeping—in the form of a judicial decision so detailed and so trenchant—that even the most passionate advocates of faith-based science seem stunned and confused about the future of their cause. They'll be back. But in this time of their momentary disarray, it seems appropriate to look back over the short but rocketlike rise to media celebrity of the idea called "intelligent design" and the small, dedicated band of true believers who sold the concept to the wider world.....more

A very interesting read on the operations of these people.


http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/0605/discovery-darwin.html...

[MadMaddie]

1. I read the article in Seattle Weekly..

These guys have nothing better to do with their time....

[Akbar]

2. How About A Compromise

Why can't we all agree that people like this simply never evolved like the rest of us?

[happydreams]

3. LOL! This could be why they want to do away with Darwin:

They are atavistic throwbacks born without a conscience!! :bounce:

[Angry Girl]

4. Link correction - add .html

http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/0605/discovery-darwin.html

[Angry Girl]

5. Founder of the Discovery Institute bankrolled ES&S (vote counting!)

Howard Ahmanson, Board of Directors - Discovery Institute
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=23&isFellow=true

At Diebold, the election division is run by Bob Urosevich. Bob’s brother, Todd, is a top executive at "rival" ES&S. The brothers were originally staked by Howard Ahmanson, a member of the Council For National Policy, a right-wing steering group stacked with Bush true believers. Ahmanson is also one of the bagmen behind the extremist Christian Reconstruction Movement, which advocates the theocratic takeover of American democracy.

The four companies are interconnected; they are not four "competitors". Ahmanson has large stakes in ES&S, whose former CEO was Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. When Hagel ran for office, his own company counted the votes, and his victory was considered "an amazing upset". Hagel still has a million dollar stake in ES&S.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHI411B.html

The press was all over this... NOT! *sob*

Great article, thanks for the post, HD!

[Skeptor]

7. A few years ago, I would have said that only America would privatize

prisons and elections. But now in Australia we have US private prison operators running not only prisons but immigration detention centres. So maybe we can look forward to soon being hooked up even closer to the Republican war machine than we already are.

I hope that Larry Chin's complaints might amount to a false conspiracy theory, but if the absence of scrutiny and the courts' reluctance to pry into the technology are even half as bad as reported, there is a seeerious problem.

Either way, Larry proves himself worth paying attention to with the following prediction:
""If Bush retains control of the White House, we can expect a neocon fascist dictatorship or martial law emergency regime in 2005 or 2006,"
Well, the gangsters are being coy about it, but last time I checked, secret and illegal mass surveillance, mass detention without trial, and arbitrary judicial process all fit neatly within the category of government once quaintly referred to as tyranny. Never mind Al Qaida, the greater threat is the gang that stole the election from Al Gore.

[happydreams]

10. Christian Reconstruction Movement want to do away with

the Constitution and impose biblical law. Hmmmm....isn't that treason?

[Skeptor]

6. You can do something to materially combat the fundamentalist tsunami

by assisting Michael Schermer, @ www.skeptic.com in his campaign "Help us keep Religion
out of the Science Classroom!". In his current weekly newsletter, Michael outlines just how well funded the fundies are, and suggests that we-of-another-view "Consider these recent developments:

A prominent Catholic cardinal recently published a New York Times editorial suggesting — contrary to long-standing church policy — that evolution and the Catholic faith are incompatible.

A county in Tennessee wants to require textbook stickers that insist that evolution is unproven.
Language has been included in Bush’s No Child Left Behind law that says students should be exposed to “the full range of scientific views that exist” — suggesting that the theory of evolution is seriously flawed.

Bills have been introduced in Alabama and Georgia to encourage the introduction of Intelligent Design in science classes. They have already been approved in Kansas, Minnesota, New Mexico and Ohio.

Lawsuits are being filed across the country at state and local levels to challenge the teaching of evolution in the classroom."

This is serious, folks! In Iran it's the headscarf for women (or else) and 40 lashes for laughing out the wrong side of your face. In America, it's indefinite imprisonment without due process for sneezing the wrong way into a hidden microphone planted illegally on the orders of a crusading, "nucular"-powered prezident who's on the IDiot bandwagon. The disease is even on the rise in my own country, with the former Minister for Education nominated for an Australian Skeptics' Bent Spoon Award as a consequence of his declared soft-spot for ID being taught in science classes.

The ceiling of intellectual standards is being lowered at the same time as the water's rising due to global warming. Don't you just envy those non-progressive types their lack of fear of suffocation?

[BiggJawn]

8. Calling an outfit that says something like....

..."replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God."
A "Think Tank" is ludicrous!

And after they take over, Jeebus is gonna come back, rip the guts out of us Atheist folk, and take "His Chosen Ones" to a new world, presumably to to foul THAT one up like they have this one....

[happydreams]

9. LOL. An oxymoron that.

[Dogmudgeon]

11. Beyond the Lab Coat and the Clerical Collar

A lot of people here have the opinion that "Darwin vs Creationism" (or ID or what have you) is simply religion versus science.

But it's NOT just about religion and science. Religion and science are the proxies. It's about POWER -- the power that the religious fanatics want to seize and lord over us. The power to have their will done in the classroom, as it is in their craven hearts -- with tribute paid by a corrupable government. But the proxy in other cases has been the same entity of science we now depend on to refute the lies on which tyranny sits, like an usurper king on his blood-stained throne. Science is no more immune to rape than is religion, though religion is older and has a far longer pedigree. But Tyrants are practical men. In the old USSR, it was science that was prostituted to justify power grabs, as anyone who has read up on Lysenkoism knows. And Hitler had Hörbiger's Welteislehre and his hollow-Earth "scientists" who approved of mass murder, universal degradation, and genocide.

In this particular fight, science is on the side of those of us who want to drive a stake through the heart of the vampiric "Fundagelical" movement. In the 1980s in Poland, fighting for the right to worship was used to liberalize the government of Poland, and eventually was part of the downfall of Communism and its anti-scientific "Socialist Science" lie. A whole generation of young Poles professed devout Roman Catholicism, and were still able to rock-and-roll. As the factotums of Communism babbled on about how irrational Solidarity was, it prevailed anyway. And as Communism itself crumbled, a few rebel scientists (like Andrei Sakharov) became many.

Communism predicted the establishment of a world-wide Workers' Paradise by 1950; several Nazi Party propagandists made 1970 their target date for a Volkische world. The various goals of newer tyrants -- 2025, in this article -- mean just as much, and will matter just as little.

Scientific work is important. Religions, of themselves, may not be, but many of the underlying impulses of the beneficial side of religion, are. No, it's the lust for power -- the power to turn people into puppets without rights or dignity -- that drives tyranny. And tyrants will exploit whatever they can -- science, reason, art, faith, love, myth, or madness -- to maintain their grip on their vassals.

Science will be quite helpful in our quest to keep freedom alive, but the fight isn't particularly against religion. The impulse to tyranny is what must be checked, fought, and mastered, if we would dare claim Civilization.

--p!