Red State Rabble babble about Discovery Institute

A post titled "Discovery's Disturbing Legacy" on the Red State Rabble blog is a long smear of the Discovery Institute and other critics of Darwinism. That post is so full of lies that I scarcely know where to begin in refuting them.

The post described the following public testimony at a Kansas hearing for the new state science standards:
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"Auschwitz did not come from the Nazi high command,” John James confided to the crowd, "it came from the teachings of the scientific and philosophical worlds, which produced nihilism, and I submit to you that much of that, if not vast proportions of it, came due to the teaching of evolution which, in turn, produces nihilism. So what are we doing? Are we producing little Kansas Nazis?"

IMO it is better to have that point of view than to believe -- as Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham Foxman believes --- that any discussion of a possible link between Darwin and Nazism should be considered taboo. Anyway, my Darwin-to-Hitler posts here show that the connection between Darwin and Hitler is undeniable.

Red State Rabble said,

Jones' ruling was a humiliating defeat for Discovery because it knocked the legs out from under that carefully crafted strategy.

"Humiliating defeat"? LOL. Jones' ruling is one of the most thoroughly discredited court decisions in American history -- even many articles in mainstream law journals have been attacking it.

RSR said,

The depth of Discovery's crisis was revealed by a series of embarrassingly lame attempts to label Jones, an observant Lutheran and conservative Republican appointed to the bench by George Bush

If judges typically bend over backwards -- as Judge Jones did -- in an effort to show that their backgrounds are no indication of bias, then IMO it would have been better if the Kitzmiller v. Dover case had been decided by a radical godless blasphemous Clinton-appointed Democratic fundy-hating atheistic Darwinist. As for Jones being an "observant Lutheran," he said in his Dickinson College commencement speech that organized religions are not "true" religions.

RSR said,

When the activist judge label failed to stick, Discovery attempted to smear his ruling as plagiarized.

I am not against Jones' "plagiarism" per se -- what I am against is the one-sidedness of his plagiarism. The ID-as-science section of the opinion was virtually entirely copied from the plaintiffs' opening post-trial brief while ignoring the defendants' opening post-trial brief and the plaintiffs' and defendants' answering post-trial briefs. If the defendants' arguments were really bad, there was all the more reason for Jones to address them in order to refute them.

The Kitzmiller decision is a dud. For example, "Monkey Girl," a generally highly touted book about the case, has attracted only 19 customer reviews on Amazon.com in the three months since the book's release. A highly touted new book about a popular subject would have attracted hundreds of customer reviews in that time.

RSR said,

Thwarted by the court in their central strategic objectives, increasingly shunted off to the side by the news media, at odds with their creationist allies, and unable to produce any credible science of their own, the Discovery Institute has now adopted a cynical Plan B: If you can't build your own house, you may as well tear your neighbor's down.

"Shunted off to the side by the news media"? Intelligent design is now a bigger topic than ever -- and the publicity over the Kitzmiller trial is a major reason for that.

RSR said,

Discovery’s Plan B has popped up with increasing frequency over a number of months, but got its official launch with speeches in Washington and Philadelphia earlier this week by Discovery fellow John West that quickly cut the Nazi’s six million victims to “hundred of thousands.”

That's ridiculous. I have never seen either of the Discovery Institute's websites -- here and here -- engage in holocaust denial or revisionism.

RSR said,

This week’s events were preceded by the broadcast of “Darwin’s Deadly Legacy,” a production of Coral Ridge Ministries, on Christian television last August. The program, which explicitly links the crimes of Hitler to Charles Darwin featured Discovery fellows Richard Weikart, Jonathan Wells, Phillip Johnson, and Michael Behe.

That is better than just burying our heads in the sand in regard to the Darwin-to-Hitler question, like the ADL's Abraham Foxman wants us to do.

RSR said,

If what Weikart, West, Coulter, and Discovery say is true, one might think that Jewish organizations would welcome their support. However, just the opposite is true.

Some Jews and Jewish organizations did actually support Coral Ridge Ministries, which produced the "Darwin's Deadly Legacy" TV show. One leader of a Jewish organization actually apologized for Foxman's vitriolic attack on Coral Ridge Ministries.

RSR said,

Next week, Discovery is participating in the World Congress of Families in Warsaw. In doing so, they are joining with a motley crew of far-right anti-immigrant zealots who claim Muslims and other immigrants are contributing to the "demographic destruction" of Europe, extreme homophobes, misogynists, and anti-abortion fanatics who, holding life sacred, call openly for the murder of abortion providers.

Unless the above charge can be proven, it borders on libel.

A Panda's Thumb post supporting the RSR post is here.
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