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 SpeciesThe 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.
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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.
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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 |