Creationist Propaganda at National Review

Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 5:32:06 pm PDT

Discovery Institute obfuscator John G. West gets a platform to promote creationist propaganda in the National Review, with a headline right out of the grievance theater handbook: Louisiana Confounds the Science Thought Police.

This is the current line of Dishonesty Institute hooey; it’s all about “academic freedom,” you see. Creationism? Where? No creationism here! We’re just speaking truth to the power of Big Science and their evil Thought Police!

But after denying that “intelligent design” has anything to do with religion, West makes the classic zealot’s mistake, and blurts out the real agenda in compulsive fashion:

Facts have implications. If it really is a “fact” that the evolution of life was an unplanned process of chance and necessity (as Neo-Darwinism asserts), then that fact has consequences for how we view life. It does not lead necessarily to Richard Dawkins’s militant atheism, but it certainly makes less plausible the idea of a God who intentionally directs the development of life toward a specific end.

Oops! So I guess it is about promoting religion, then?

John Derbyshire sees right through the Discovery Institute scheme, even if the other NRO people don’t: Patsy Jindal.

See, the Discovery Instutute does not want any Louisiana school boards bringing religious instruction into science lessons. Heaven forbid! They would never encourage that. Absolutely not! Why, that would be wrong.

All they do is encourage state legislators to pass, and clueless governors to sign, laws that tempt local boards to unconstitutional behavior. The sucker school boards are then on their own, stuck with spending their taxpayers’ dollars on the defense of hopeless lawsuits. But, you know, the Discovery Institute had absolutely nothing to do with it. Nothing! Not a thing! All they did was offer some mild support to a perfectly harmless bill. Heck, they didn’t even lobby the Governor. From that same news story:

At the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that promotes intelligent design and backed the new education act, senior fellow John West said he and his colleagues did not directly lobby Jindal.

The creationists have pulled off their little stunt once again, and Bobby Jindal has been their patsy.

(Hat tip: Occasional Reader.)