Nasty Little Man

ID'ers just won't go away. Like herpes.

LA Times: 1st suit in state to attack "Intelligent Design" filed

Speaking Freely, Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and The Questionable Authority have all opined on this situation.

From Dispatches:

There have been two syllabi for the course so far. The first syllabus was incredibly blatant in advocating creationism and looks as though it was thrown together on the back fo a cocktail napkin. It includes a list of some 19 creationist videos to be shown and not a single resource on evolution to be used. Perhaps the most amusing thing about the original syllabus is that it includes as a speaker "Francis Krich - evolutionist". Apparently, someone recommended to the teacher that she ask Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA along with James Watson to speak to the class. Good idea, except for the fact that he's dead.
...
The second syllabus tried to sand away some of the obvious rough edges from the original, but it's still pretty bad. It puts a veneer of balance over the top, but it is still clear that the teacher plans on advocating creationism. For instance, the wording of the first two items under section 3, "Why is this a movement and why is it gaining momentum?" and "Why is it so threatening to society, the educational system, and evolutionists?" clearly is setting up to make the typical argument from IDers that a "growing number of scientists" (never mind that they keep referring to the same few year after year) are supporting ID (never mind also that they never produce an actual theory of ID or any research to support it) and that their movement is "threatening" to some Darwinian orthodoxy that jealously guards its privileged position. That argument is nonsense, of course. The threat is to science education and it comes in the form of an aggressive public relations campaign on the part of ID advocates, not from any actual scientific work they've ever done that challenges the validity of evolutionary theory.

ID'ers make terrible criminals. They've left behind fingerprints, DNA samples, and the bloody glove. (They would probably contend that the bloody glove was planted by some atheist, heathen evolutionist.) They are so overzealous that they can't hide their tracks.

posted by Kinder Gentler Little Man @ 2:40 PM