Physicist David Heddle does us all a favor by nicely summing up why the Discovery Institute and its minions should be shunned by Christians everywhere:
- Deception (The Wedge Strategy.)
- Evangelism by deception (Even worse, also the Wedge Strategy and document.)
- Unsupported claims of imminent victory, also known as false prophecy.
- Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, by ungracious press release.
- Collaboration in the “culture wars” with heretics.
- Bizarre and silly pretenses of legal expertise, shown to be so much hot air by subsequent…
- Sir-Robinining.
- Juvenile, flatulence-laden (and then deskunked) animations mocking a federal judge.
- Publishing, in a tizzy fit, the names, addresses and home phone numbers of the Baylor Board of Regents. (Due to the Potemkin character of the Uncommon Descent web site, the link no longer exists.)
- Resource wasting, mean-spirited, childish, unseemly referrals to Homeland Security.
- Fostering an unbiblical science vs. faith false dichotomy.
- Fostering an atmosphere of whining, Christian victimhood.
He goes on: “Anecdotally, I tell anyone who cares to ask either at the national lab I work at or at my university where I teach physics that I think the universe was intelligently designed by God. In fact, I have had many such discussions. I have never endured any adverse consequence. Of course, I don’t ever state that ID is science, because it isn’t. And I don’t ever state that my ID related writings should be part of my professional evaluation—because they aren’t science. The last thing I would want is for my scientific evaluation to be partly based on things I have written about ID. Or my theological writings in general, of which the ID writings are a proper subset. And I don’t state that I should be allowed to put my ID views in the physics curriculum. Which would be dumb, because they are not science. And I don’t believe that the university should be required, in some misuse of the concept of academic freedom, to host my writings on its server.”
Well said.