Creationists Just Can’t Help Quote-Mining

Creationists Just Can’t Help Quote-Mining

From a post by the Discovery Institute:

Darwinists in Florida are in a tizzy trying to figure out why they oppose the proposed Academic Freedom Act in their state. Sometimes they claim the act isn’t needed because no one who questions Darwin is being denied academic freedom. Other times they insist the act should be rejected because academic freedom is nothing but “smelly crap.”

(emphasis added.)

If you play follow-the-link, you’ll find the original quotation from Florida Citizens for Science:

This academic freedom stuff is merely the next evolutionary step as anti-science folks continue their attempts to shove creationism into the public school classroom. First, there was blatant creationism. Next there was intelligent design. Both failed miserably. Now comes along academic freedom. Same smelly crap, different packaging.

Clearly, in this context, what the Florida Science writer meant was that the Discovery Institute’s new “Academic Freedom™” initiative was the same crap as “Intelligent Design™”, with a new name, not lowercase academic freedom. I swear, these people can’t stop lying and quote-mining. Is it a hobby with them? An addiction? What? Do they even realize they’re lying?

Oh, and I just reread my old post about what I thought creationists would do after the Dover trial.

Clearly, I’m no prophet. Yes, I said that “Creationism 3.0 [would be] even more vague”, and the push for “Academic Freedom™” fits the bill, but I was wrong in the specifics. In particular, I didn’t think creationism could get more vague than ID.

I think it’s because I misunderstood creationists’ priorities. I thought they were primarily interested in pushing religion, but evidently they realize that religion can push itself just fine, thank you. What they really want is to undermine evolution.

I made a number of other failed predictions in that post; for instance, saying that there would be a schism between the young-earth creationists who find IDers too conciliatory, and the IDers who think the YECs are either embarrassingly ignorant, or too blatant to pass legal muster. But Ben “Expelled” Stein’s recent get-together with Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis dispels that notion.

Still, I suppose it’s progress. In retrospect, we’ve come a long way since the day when John Scopes was put on trial for teaching evolution. I won’t pretend for a moment that that the people who are offended at the thought of not being the reason for creation will go away, but perhaps they can be kept at bay in most places and most times.