Cornell's Intelligent Design Club Protests Infiltration by Magazine Reporter under guise as student

Cornell University IDEA Club ^ | 10/04/2006

[SirLinksalot]

Letter to the New Scientist

October 4, 2006

Ithaca, NY

Dear Editor of New Scientist,

I am the president of the Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) Club at Cornell University. In late September, 2006, we were contacted by someone writing us saying “I am a student at Cornell and am interested in coming to an IDEA meeting” and identifying herself as “Maria.” This person subsequently wrote us via e-mail using the e-mail address “Cel Biever < XXXXX@gmail.com>.” At the time I was surprised at the incongruency between her assumed name and email, and later discovered that Celeste Biever is a New Scientist reporter who is presently interviewing numerous people for a story about intelligent design.

As a club, we promote a civil and informed discussion of intelligent design where all viewpoints—whether hostile or friendly—are always welcome. Therefore we are happy to have anyone come to our meetings, including hostile reporters. But it appears that your reporter acted unethically and lied to us about her identity and falsely claimed she was a Cornell student in an unnecessary ruse to obtain information from us. Is it your policy to have your reporters misrepresent their identities?

Sincerely,

Hannah Maxson, President, IDEA Cornell

[LiteKeeper]

Your reply, and its tone were totally unnecessary. The club representative said they were willing to have open, civil discussions. And yet, you think it is necessary to throw mud.

Shame on you!

[reagan_fanatic]

That's pretty high-profile

And stupid. Did she not think she would be caught? I thought these people were smarter than that.

[hosepipe]

[ What on earth was this New Scientist reporter hoping to find ? A prayer meeting ? a secret ceremony where an image of Charles Darwin was being desecrated ? ]

She was/might have been lurking to hear(from them) that Darwin saw women as baby factories and men as sperm banks.. which is pretty much the truth.. Little wonder leftists are almost universally Darwinists(to some extent).. and not a few RINOS..

Could be a clue why most democrats are WOMEN... and abortion is quality control..
You know, of the factory..

[cdcdawg]

seems to me that I.D. is more like a school of criticism than a theory. It points out difficulties for evolutionists (and they immediately begin sounding like fundamentalists in their own right), but doesn't offer up scientific explanations of its own. I.D. has yet to explain anything to me, but it has presented some interesting questions for the materialists.

[Cicero]

Are you suggesting that this reporter is a detective and that a student club to discuss Intelligent Design is the equivalent of the Mafia?

I'd say that the reporter is a Darwinist paranoid.

[GSlob]

Having not read her story [and has her story even been written?] I find it difficult to speculate that she could write anything new, or even informative, about ID, or how she would be writing it. As I mentioned before, no information there. Thus I do not know how sinister her spin would be. At best [if practiced in a nursing home], ID is harmless, and at its worst [if practiced in a school] is harmful to this country scientific and technological leads. OTOH, I could easily believe that the ID'ers themselves could present juicy pieces to write about.

[GSlob]

I do not need to suggest anything - thanks for your attempt at thinking on my behalf. See # 26.

[Fester Chugabrew]

I can see why a person might want to divest themselves of the baggage attendant to being a reporter if only to see how they and their ideas are received. It does make a difference.

[PAR35]

Since I do not see a [for example] police undercover agent working as a "plant" in, say, the Gambino family as unethical [the Gambino family is, or could plausibly believed to be, harmful], I reject your argument. The same "is, or could plausibly believed to be, harmful" applies to this misnamed "idea" as well.

So now your position is that anyone who disagrees with your theology is engaged in organized crime?

Sounds like you fundamentalist secular humanists are the real religious threat.

[GSlob]

Render to Caesar... the secularists live in the Caesar's world, and couldn't care less about religion until it intrudes on that world. See # 26.

[cdcdawg]

So why would this reporter have used this tactic? That really seems to be the question here. I think everyone gets that you think ID'ers are big, dum dum, goofy, poo poo heads, or something. I think they also see that anything having to do with ID, you take to be a launching sequence for you to pronounce that ID'ers are big dum dum, goofy, poo poo heads, or something or whatever. That seems to be close to the response that Darwinists most often give ID. I don't know how many debates and exchanges I have observed where the Darwinist gets creamed, and comes off looking like an old-style religious zealot, mostly because he/she can't deal with being challenged. That is why ID is a growing movement. You guys are too busy calling people "creationists" or "neo-creationists" or big dum dum, goofy, poo poo heads, to actually engage in a debate. It's almost like they would rather try to dig up dirt on ID'ers by infiltrating their organizations than actually address the questions ID raises (it's almost like that; I mean, if we actually had an example of this, it would be one thing).

[GSlob]

"You guys are too busy calling people [...], to actually engage in a debate. "
No point in a debate with an idiot: people might overlook the difference. Just make sure that the harm that idiot may cause is contained to himself.
Re: reporter's tactics: the subject of the report, as I would guess [no actual knowledge of that reporter] would be NOT ID, but the ID'ers. And if I were to write about a person, the last thing that person should know about me is that I'm about to write about him/her, or s/he would start putting the best foot forward, striking poses and preening [which I would be writing about, too] - in the worst traditions of sports and pop-culture "celebrities". So, to see them au naturelle [in the natural state, and I do not mean undressed] one needs to sneak on them.

[Mad Dawg]

I've only read one article purporting to advocate so-called Intelligent Design. It was not at all anti-Darwinian, anti-natural selection, or any of the stuff that gets creationists and evolutionists at each other's throats.

Consequently I don't understand this antipathy. And it looks like something worse than antipathy, you and Gslob seem to be saying that since Intelligent design seems stupid and dishonest to you it is moral to be dishonest with those who are looking into it.

SO it seems the either you would have to agree that it would be moral for Creationists to be dishonest in their dealings with you, or not. If not, then presumably your being right about Evolution and all that confers a moral status on you higher than that enjoyed by your opponents.

The only other group I've heard about lately that takes that stand (namely: because we are right we are not subject to the same moral laws as others) are the Islamofascists.

Interesting. I didn't realize this controversy was so violent.

[Mad Dawg]

I thought these people were smarter than that.

Well, certainly! Yes! They ARE! They are smart, and the ID and Creationist people are dumb. And they're not only DUMB they're dangerous to the progress of science. They are dumb, dangerous, evil, and sick in the head.

Consequently holding onto and advocating an opinion which scientists disagree with is justification for a lower moral status. It is the right, it is the duty of people who believe in something like Darwinism (and I'm one of those people, generally) to insult, mock, degrade, lie to, and in general inhibit the freedom to act of Creationists and ID proponents.

That's called "rational", and it's something the people who think that something called God might have taken an active role in history do not understand. People like that should just go back into their caves and only come out when the Darwinists have a little pent up anger and want to vent it, as the Spartans did on their Helots.

As I say, that's rational. You, regrettably, are not.

/sarc

[My2Cents]

Now, did deviousness evolve, or was it the result of the fall as recorded in Genesis?

[DannyTN]

She's really a closet ID'er and was just going incognito to avoid persecution from militant evo faithful.

[SirLinksalot]

Author, Denyse O'Leary ( author of the book, By Design Or By Chance?: The Growing Controversy On The Origins Of Life ) is aware of this case and posted this as an afterthought :

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I don’t think it wrong in principle for a reporter to go undercover.

A lot depends on two things: whether the public interest is at stake and whether key information could be obtained otherwise.

SNIO SNIP

Undercover media investigations have often served the public interest by exposing rackets, corruptions, shoddy practices, and deceptions, in situations where it was really true that the information could not be obtained in any other way.

So here is where the issue gets tricky, in my view: Celeste Biever’s editors may very well honestly believe that

1. All IDEA clubs are run by six-day creationists,

2. They are lavishly financed (of course!) by fundie whackjobs, and

3. Their real purpose is to impose theocracy on the United States.

Brit toffs unashamedly display amazing ignorance of North America. I supposes it is harmless if it helps them forget their own massive societal failures.

So now: What if the New Scientist editors assume that the IDEA clubs are actually deceiving the public when they say, no, that’s all nonsense.

In that case, Biever’s story editor will think it’s no good asking the IDEA-ers for information. The reporter must go under cover in order to catch them “really” doing what the editors think they do.

The first thing we need to see here is that New Scientist is so reflexively materialist that it actually ran a feature in March 2005 on “13 Things That Don’t Make Sense” - and the placebo effect, of all things, was number one on that list.

The placebo effect just means that your beliefs about the effectiveness of a treatment can play a major role in the treatment outcomes.

For decades now, drug makers have had to demonstrate that their proposed remedy performs better than a placebo - not because placebos do not work but precisely because they do.)

However, the placebo effect doesn’t “make sense” if you are a materialist and therefore you need to assume that the mind either does not exist or is powerless.

The effect makes complete sense to me, but then I am not a materialist.

So the editors of New Scientist are exactly the sort of people who would be unable to believe that anyone could see evidence of design in the universe or life forms unless they were ignorant, stupid, or insane, or wicked - and presumably, unlike Richard Dawkins, they would rather consider that.

I respectfully suggest that, for self-protection, the IDEA clubs work hard at keeping their focus on the study of ID and not gradually morph into an outreach of the evangelical Christian community from which so many ID enthusiasts currently come (though that is changing).

Don’t misunderstand. I think such outreaches are socially invaluable and often irreplaceable.

Indeed, for that precise reason, the temptation will always exist. There is no shortage of troubled youth out there, and they do benefit greatly from discovering that there really is a purpose for their lives.*

But the study of design in nature will suffer if IDEA clubs lose focus.

In other words, I don’t think IDEA clubs need worry much about infiltration by journalists if they keep their focus firmly on the formal study of ID. Indeed, if they succeed - after a while - no one will want to send an investigator because the investigator will disconfirm the rumors - which is precisely what detractors don’t want.

As for misrepresentation, usually if a medium wants to misrepresent, it should do as little story research as possible.

Case in point: Recently, I was informed that some people who are (ahem) NOT fans of ID believe that I am getting money or favors from the Discovery Institute. I told my informant no.

Now, that person probably did want to know the facts of the case. But as for some others, … aw shucks, a great rumor - down in flames! For all I know, some wish I had never been asked. The conspiracy theorists can still take a whack at it, of course, but such sources are credibility suicide.

*I was surprised to discover that my own book, By Design or by Chance?, which investigates the origin and development of the ID controversy, in fact had that precise effect on some readers, even though I hadn’t particularly intended it to. So there’s no getting away from the “purpose in life” effect, but keeping a focus on formal ID is critical for IDEA clubs.

[My2Cents]

No man knows the day nor the hour of The Coming of The Great White Handkerchief.

When it does, what will be your excuse?

[peyton randolph]

When it does, what will be your excuse?

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seasonal allergies.

[My2Cents]

Best of luck to you.