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To: UK_Jeffersonian
BS. Is there any point in reading further?

Well, we'd like to know why the statement that creationism's influence is growing across the globe is BS.
12 posted on 04/13/2010 6:50:54 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind
Well, we'd like to know why the statement that creationism's influence is growing across the globe is BS.

The intelligent design "movement" was the last hurrah of creationism. It was a movement concieved, bankrolled and largely populated by conservative christians who publicly insisted that it had nothing to do with religion at all.

Epic fail.

That it failed to attract any significant base of support among scientists and professors came as no surprise to anyone not already bewitched by its philosophical chicanery.

What was surprising was its failure to accomplish its real goal: to drive a big enough "wedge" (as Phillip Johnson put it) of public opinion between what he saw as philosophical naturalism and the classroom that ID would end up having to be taught despite, and contrary to, the opinions of the vast majority of scientists and researchers.

In a nation like the US where the majority of the population believes in some sort of special creation, this seemed a very real possibility, which is why the reaction from Eugenie Scott & Co. was so vehement.

But what happened?

School board members who attempted to introduce ID found themselves looking for work after election time even in conservative counties. Judges with conservative track records on other issues failed to see the validity of ID as a legitimate scientific theory. Scholars and theologians at conservative schools who were initially excited by it came to find its arguments uncompelling enough that they were not willing to trumpet them publicly. The few researchers who remained publicly supportive of ID were denounced by their own collegues and exist as borderline academic pariahs.

In short creationism (along with its red-headed, back-stairs stepchild the ID movement) failed in an environment more ripe for its success than any other western, democratic country on the planet. It failed to a degree that I think surprised even its most vehement detractors.

If creationisms attempt at intellectual respectability cannot succeed in conservative, religious colleges or rural Pennsylvania, it cannot succeed anywhere.
25 posted on 04/13/2010 7:51:47 AM PDT by UK_Jeffersonian
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