Discovery's Creation [The rise & fall of the Discovery Institute]

Seattle Weekly ^ | 01 February 2006 | Roger Downey

[plain talk]

I have been consistent. As I said I have responded at least once to a Creationist for exactly the same thing. Nice try.

[editor-surveyor]

It figures that destructive and misleading propaganda like this would come from a radical leftist Seattle paper.

Always consider the source.

[highball]

I have been consistent. As I said I have responded at least once to a Creationist for exactly the same thing. Nice try.

Consistent? Hardly. You whinge about posts being too long, unless you agree with the politics of the person who posted it. Then you're silent on the subject.

Oh, but you claim that you said something once. No evidence, of course. But you claim that you said something once, and that somehow excuses hypocrisy.

Very cute. Not terribly convincing, but cute.

[plain talk]

I have chastised Christians for the exact same thing. It's bad form.

[LiteKeeper]

DI in disarray? demoralized? Who in the world has the author been talking to? I don't get that sense AT ALL!

[highball]

I have chastised Christians for the exact same thing. It's bad form.

Oh, now it's plural? Not "at least once"?

Here's your chance to show it. Elsie has been doing a massive cut-and-paste on these threads.

If you're going to complain, and maintain that it's not about the point of view but the length of posts, here's your chance.

[PatrickHenry]

Placemarker

[highball]

DI in disarray? demoralized? Who in the world has the author been talking to? I don't get that sense AT ALL!

I don't know about "disarray," but there is a certain desperation to the movement, after getting caught in an ill-advised end run around the Constitution.

There's a reason creationists haven't come out against the series of lies told in the name of their cause, after all. We don't yet know why that should be so, but I suspect they're so short of allies they can't afford to drop any, not even the perjurers and crooks.

[plain talk]

I have a better suggestion. Why don't you prove you're not really such a jerk after all?

[Doctor Stochastic]

Clara Bow and Michael Jackson?

[AndrewC]

Always consider the source.

And check facts. Here is a rebuttal.

The Seattle Weekly Proves There Is Nothing New Under The Sun

Great is the power of steady misrepresentation; but the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long endure. -- Charles Darwin, Origin of Species

The Seattle Weekly's Roger Downey has labored and produced a mouse. And, his mouse is a laughable, funhouse-mirror distortion of reality. But what else can you expect when you realize that he didn’t actually do any research, but essentially just cuts and pastes crazy assertions and outrageous claims from our critic's blogs. Even though in the constellation of Seattle journalism and news publications the Weekly is (generously) seen as a lesser light, this piece demands a response.

...

The Weekly’s piece (not unlike its predecessors at Wired and Salon) is full of unfounded assertions and -- in spite of the second hand sources even-- lazy errors of fact.

Here are just a few of them:

• Dr. Stephen C. Meyer is not still teaching at Whitworth College; he resigned four years ago (that’s why we don’t list this on our website).
  
• Contrary to Judge John E. Jones' opinion, there are at least seven peer-reviewed articles supportive of intelligent design, as Roger (and the judge) could have seen by reading our amicus brief in the Dover case, or check our website.
  
• We never professed ignorance of the "Wedge" document; it's been on our website, along with our rebuttal, for years. Your story's titillating tidbit about the copy boy who purloined a Discovery staffer's fund raising letter and presented it breathlessly to the World Wide Web as some secret plan (now expanded by Downey to a "founding document") actually shows how puerile and paranoid Darwinists are when faced with opposition. Downey reports that the paper was stamped "TOP SECRET" and "NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION" yet the very pictures of it on the Weekly website show that isn’t true.
  
• Downey reports:

  The intelligent-design movement began at a conference of proponents and antagonists of Darwinian evolution at Baylor University in 1992, but the phrase didn't enjoy wide circulation until it was taken up by the Discovery Institute in 1998 as a central tool in a five-year plan to challenge Darwin in the press, in the courts, and in the schools.

  This isn't just wrong, it is stunningly wrong. There was no such conference about ID at Baylor University in 1992. ID originated long before that, at numerous places where scientists like Dean Kenyon, Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley and others were developing and researching the theory. Discovery's Center for Science & Culture was started in 1995 not 1998. For a brief, but accurate history of intelligent design go here.

...

Let me emphasize one question of "fact". From the Seattle article.

The mail room was also the copy center, and a part-time employee named Matt Duss was handed a document to copy. It was not at all the kind of desperately dull personnel-processing document Duss was used to feeding through the machine. For one thing, it bore the rubber-stamped warnings "TOP SECRET" and "NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION." Its cover bore an ominous pyramidal diagram superimposed on a fuzzy reproduction of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel rendition of God the Father zapping life into Adam, all under a mysterious title: The Wedge.

No stamps on the cover page. Check the other pages,( http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/0605/discovery-wedge.php) no stamps on them.

In addition, check for yourselves, at Whitworth college in spokane(unless there is more than one such) here, http://www.whitworth.edu/Directory/FacultyStaff/index.aspx, for Stephen C. Meyer. There is one Stephen(Flegel), one Meyer(Susan), and 3 Stevens(none Meyer), but NO Stephen C. Meyer.

OH RATS! I found a stamped copy of the Wedge document cover page. I got it from Bill Burkett at the Kinko's here in Abilene.

 
TOP SECRET

NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION

[highball]

I have a better suggestion. Why don't you prove you're not really such a jerk after all?

Easier to sling insults than actually defend your statements, isn't it?

I don't blame you. I wouldn't want to have to defend your statements, either....

[RightWingAtheist]

Are you sure you belong here? You sound like you'd be more at home in the reality-based community

[TheWriterTX]

In truth, these threads have been very informative for me. I'm not a fence sitter at all. I have come to reconcile these two approaches based on my own personal experiences.

While there are "holes" in Darwin's theory of evolution, there is an overwhelming body of evidence to support it. I just happen to think that God had a hand in starting it all, and nudging things along. (FTR, I believe that the ToE deserves to be in the classroom; I don't support the teaching of ID until there is a substantial body of credible evidence to support it - we are nowhere near that at this time, and may never be there).

Quick story...after several unsuccessful years of trying and praying, I had given up on having any children. Finally, I turned to God and asked Him which way He wanted me to go: adopt, wait, or not have children and be a parent figure to other people's children. Show me Your will, God, and I will obey, just give me a sign.

Two weeks later, a little voice inside my head kept saying, "Tonight!" It wasn't one of our usual nights, and my ovulation test kit said I wasn't ready, but the persistent sensation continued. I called my husband and told him forget about the overtime, be home by midnight...tonight was the night!

My husband and I woke up knowing that I was pregnant. An EPT confirmed it two weeks later. Three of my children made it into this world; in the case of all three, both my husband and I looked at each other the following morning and agreed that I was pregnant. Ironically, the same could not be said for the two that didn't survive.

Now perhaps it was my sensitivity to the chemical changes that begin immediately upon conception, or my husband possibly possessing superior olfactory abilities that allowed him to detect the chemical change through scent, that explains why we both knew we were going to have another child. Nevertheless, we both believe God had a hand in bringing us together on those nights, and sparked life within me.

Last November, I gave birth to our third (a son), another blessing from God. Aside from his slightly darker eye color, he is IDENTICAL in looks to my first son, despite 5 years separating them. Newborns' faces can change rapidly as they grow; even his changes are identical to my first son. I have to write his name on the back of all his pictures, because if I were to show you a picture of my firstborn, and then my second son, you would easily believe they are the same child.

That is evolution. That amazing family resemblance is the combination of my husband's DNA and my DNA. If anyone other than my husband had fathered my child, he would not be a miniature copy of his older brother. The DNA of the father would alter the child's appearance, body type, etc.

So you see, I don't have a problem with either. I don't think the two have to be antithetical to each other. I don't discount the impact of evolution in the formation of our world, while at the same time firmly believing that God grants life and shaped the world around us.

If you get to know me better, Senator, you will find that I am typically NOT this agreeable to many things. I have very sharp, distinct, very ultra-conservative views on a wide variety of issues. I probably should not be posting this, because I'm sure to catch flack from one side or the other!

[LiteKeeper]

Urban myths - totally untrue.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the rebuttal!

[Havoc]

The darwinian equivalent of a VRWC.. lol

[Skywalk]

I'll wait for creationist whining about Elsie's 'spam' posts...

[Skywalk]

"Anything written by the Seattle Weekly is total and complete garbage."

"I think he had a hard time at first," says David Brewster, founder of Seattle Weekly and an ally during Chapman's Seattle City Council days.

There's no doubt the Seattle Weekly is a leftist paper. The problem is, the article above is not filled with the usual invective and actually approaches the subject with some degree of empathy on a human level. That isn't to say that the article is 100% accurate, nor would a paper in right-leaning paper be the same. But simply dismissing a fair-toned article because you don't like that it isn't positively glowing about DI suggests that you will attack and ignore ANYTHING that doesn't support your ultimate objectives, which is why no one actually RESPONDS and DISSECTS Ich's posts but just complains cuz they're "so long."