Discovery Institute Tries to Weasel Out of Dover
The Discovery Institute, the think tank behind Intelligent Design, has a piece on their weblog in which they try to disassociate themselves from the creationist clusterfuck that the Dover Panda Trial has become.
PZ Myyrrzz likens them to rats leaving a sinking ship. An apt comparison, methinks.
Their main claim is that they never advocated mandating teaching ID, just assisting teachers who voluntarily brought up the subject:
The guidebook focused on supporting teachers who wanted to teach about intelligent design, not on the defensibility of requiring teachers to teach about intelligent design. This is a crucial distinction. Indeed, the guidebook clearly states that “to summarize, the safest course is one in which a school board permits [not “requires”] a biology teacher to teach the full range of scientific theories about origins.” (emphasis added)
That’s a direct quote. Their words, their punctuation. The fact that they needed to add “not “requires”” should be a big hint that they’re just playing semantic games to make it sound as if they weren’t all about shoving ID down the public’s throat.
Now that I think about it, Bill Buckingham tried this as well during the Panda trial, when he said that he didn’t actually raise money to buy creationistID textbooks, but just stood up in church and said that gosh, wouldn’t it just be keen if there were enough money to buy a bunch of books?
This is also the technique used in Bible apologetics when bibliolaters desperately try to twist the Bible to mean what they want it to say.
Look, guys, just give it up. Nobody with any brains is buying this. You don’t have any science, so you have to baffle the rubes with bullshit. You don’t have a legal leg to stand on, so you’re resorting to hair-splitting. ID has been exposed in court as content-free wishful thinking; now you’re pointing fingers at the people who did what you always said ought to be done, in order to give yourselves implausible deniability.
Just face facts: Intelligent Design Creationism not only isn’t science, it’s also bad theology. Or are you thinking that if you deny knowing who the Intelligent Designer is three times before the cock crows, that that’ll prove it’s Jesus?