Seattle's Proponents of Intelligent Design Celebrate a Successful Year of Ensnaring the Book-Buying Public
Seattle's Discovery Institute, the nonprofit think tank that's become infamous locally and in national media for fomenting the anti-Darwin "intelligent design" movement, is crowing today about a successful year in selling (literally) its ideas.
Are you going to believe this guy? Or...
Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, published in June by Discovery Fellow Stephen Meyer (shown at right), has cracked Amazon's Top Ten list of science books of 2009. The list is ranked by customer orders through October. But the news isn't all good for Discovery.
...this guy?
Jerry A. Coyne's Why Evolution is True is holding down the #5 spot. Robert Wright's The Evolution of God (which argues that a Divine Being is basically a notion we've evolved to believe in) is at #4. And Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution is a strong #2. Darwin himself (seen at left) is out-selling them all, with countless editions of his 150-year-old Origin of Species (though the Amazon best-seller list is limited to books published in '09).
Still, the #10 slot is not half bad. Especially for a book that, according to Amazon reviewers, can be enjoyed even by readers with a "relatively weak background" in biochemistry and statistics. (For the record, no biochemistry is required to appreciate science book #9--The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life by Alison Gopnik.)
A graduate of Whitworth College in Spokane, Meyer is perhaps best known for having managed to place a pro-ID article in a peer-reviewed biological journal several years ago--an event that resulted in many calls for the peer who did the reviewing to be sacked. Scientists seem equally unimpressed with Meyer's latest work, which argues that the complex coding in our DNA "points powerfully to a designing intelligence." Following a recent appearance by Meyer at the University of Oklahoma, his views were summed up by one commentator as follows:
1) This shit [i.e., biology] is confusing
2) ???
3) GOD DID IT!
Discovery's battle against evolution continues tonight at Seattle Pacific University, where the institute is sponsoring an evening with a G.K. Chesterton impersonator named John Chalberg. He'll be attempting to tear Darwin a new one with some of the early-20th-century thinker's anti-evolution bon mots.
Meanwhile Meyer has become a favorite guest on Dennis Miller's radio show and will be in the studio with the neo-con comedian for a full hour on Dec. 2. Meyer has not had equal luck getting Richard Dawkins to engage in a debate.
5 comment(s)
Caloy says:
The old belief systems of the human, sapien mind are very hard to let go of. The comfort in the knowledge of a Big Daddy in the Sky who will embrace all of us (who stay in the special club) with open arms after we perish is a tough idea to let go of. This urge to covet this notion is an animal instinct that will never be abolished in some of our brethren. The world and our Universe is and will remain wonderful and inspirational in its natural state, regardless of how one relates to it. Amen.
Posted On: Tuesday, Nov. 17 2009 @ 1:56PM
Reginald Selkirk says:
How sad that they measure their success by their ability to lie to children.
Posted On: Tuesday, Nov. 17 2009 @ 2:45PM
RickK says:
The following is signed by over 12,000 Christian CLERGY:
"We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as "one theory among others" is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children."
From the Butler College Clergy Letter petition. This petition demonstrates that intelligent people of all backgrounds understand that "intelligent design" is a pack of lies.
Stephen Meyer, author of "Signature", is also an author of "The Wedge", a Discovery Institute strategy paper for eroding American science education.
If we want to surrender our independence, if we want to raise children too ignorant to compete in the global economy, then the Discovery Institute has the strategy to show us how.
Posted On: Tuesday, Nov. 17 2009 @ 5:46PM
M.Wilsn says:
It's unfortunate that science has been redefined to exclude those who might have the 'ignorance' or 'naïvité' to believe in any sort of supernatural origin for the universe and life in it. I once thought that anyone who didn't believe in Darwinism was a crank, that is, until I actually read what these 'cranks' were saying, in context. The ghettoization of ideas is anti-intellectual, and presenting only one concept of human origins is contrary to the ideals of America. Free speech can be ridiculed, but it shouldn't be arbitrarily relegated to the dust-pile because we disagree with it.
Posted On: Friday, Nov. 20 2009 @ 8:06PM
RickK says:
The scientific process presents exactly the same barriers to Intelligent Design as it does to any other idea.
For example, the scientific community rejected Warren and Marshall when they said stomach ulcers were caused by a virus. But Warren and Marshall had something that the Intelligent Design crowd lacks - evidence.
ID has no mechanism, cannot be observed, cannot be tested and makes no predictions. ID doesn't get a "special pass" to legitimacy just because a bunch of religious people REALLY WANT it to be true.
And M.Wilsn, you cannot deny that ID proponents have a well-documented history of distorting the truth and outright lying to press their agenda. That doesn't help their case (as demonstrated in Dover).
In the end, all ID needs is an actual theory with real evidence - that's all. Until then, it has no place in science.
Posted On: Sunday, Nov. 22 2009 @ 4:23AM