Thought-provoking, Pat; thanks.
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!
I agree: a well-done bit of writing.
One note in passing, something that is a bit of a bugaboo for me. You wrote about "a speech by Discovery fellow John West that quickly cut the Nazi’s six million victims to 'hundred of thousands.'"
It's worse than that. The actual figure for victims of the Holocaust is between ten and twelve million: six million Jews, and somewhere between four and six million "undesirables" from other social/ethnic groups.
I'm sure West would claim that technically he was correct: ten million is certainly many "hundreds of thousands." But that's not the way it's usually phrased, and it's not the way most people will understand what he did say. The impression of his words was to cut the number of Holocaust victims by over ninety percent. Disgusting.
Thank you for this great piece of writing. This post has made me realise just how dirty and manipulative the ID movement is (I am not a US citizen).
Thanks, Pat. Excellent piece.
What a great post!
I've read the Dover Ruling and how of their followers overlook the fact that the Disco Boys dropped it like it was hot is beyond me. I wish that I could've listened in on that conference call was like: "Yeah, they've figured out that we're forwarding a religious agenda. Time to think up a NEW scam.."
Much as they continue to delude themselves about the nature of their faith, they managed to delude themselves into believing that they had some rational or legal ground on which to stand. They don't and they know it but, of course, that won't stop them from continuing their efforts.
Simply one of your best posts ever. This one is a keeper.
Thanks, Pat. Actually, I should be in York sometime in early Fall. Clifford's Tower was just added to the itinerary.
Loathe as I am to defend John West, consider the possibility that when he referred to "hundreds of thousands of supposed social undesirables," in the context of eugenics and forced sterilization, he meant to refer to the specific subset of Nazi victims who were disabled or otherwise considered defective for reasons other than race or ethnicity.
(This does not diminish my reflexive reaction whenever a Christian propagandists brings up the Nazi genocide.)
But, wait, there's more.
Harold Ahmanson is also the money behind the Institute for Religion and Democracy which has, as it's goal, the destabilization of mainline Protestant denominations in the US and their reconstruction as conservative Chritian institutions.
The IRD plan is probably the furthest along in the Episcopal Church where they have nearly suceeded in establishing a parallel Anglican province dedicated to the same biblically literalist ideas of the Discovery Institute.
See http://www.edow.org/follow
A very interesting post, thanks. I'm really inspired by RSR's sense of propriety. How many people could write that much about the Discovery Institute without once using the phrase 'f*ckin nitwits'?
RSR mentioned the upcoming World Congress of Families, an international convention for "far-right anti-immigrant zealots who claim Muslims and other immigrants are contributing to the "demographic destruction" of Europe, extreme homophobes, misogynists, and anti-abortion fanatics.." He didn't mention that with the exception of host Poland's homophobic president, the US is the only country with an official representative.
We are sending Assistant Sec. of State Ellen Sauerbrey, a standout in the vast field of unquailfied, unconfirmed Bush 'recess appointments.' Heading the State Department bureau of Population, Refugee & Migration, she pushes abstinence for AIDS prevention and has prevented all but a handful of Iraq's 2,000,000+ war refugees from soiling our shores.
But in keeping with RSR's lofty example, I won't even think of calling her a 'f*ckin nitwit.'
Go to Google Trends and do the following analysis:
www.google.com/trends
First, search on "discovery institute"
Then, "discovery institute", "intelligent design"
Then three terms: "discovery institute", "intelligent design", "evolution"
Watch as the Discovery Institute sinks into obscurity following Kitzmiller, December 2005.
Kitzmiller completely clobbered "intelligent design" and that's no more clearly demonstrated than by the DI playing the Nazi card. What's next, pyramid power? Magic healing crystals? Energy vortexes? Alien abduction?
Excellent post.
As evidence that some people do swallow the Nazi=evolution=atheism tripe, just this week there appeared a letter to the editor of the York (PA, just down the road a piece from Dover) Daily Record that noted
With prayer, the Bible, and creation-supporting science removed from government schools, what remains is humanistic indoctrination. I was unsurprised to hear about the failure of godless abstinence teaching, as students are taught no accountability to God for their actions.and
Our government-sanctioned genocide of more than 47 million people towers over Nazi Germany's estimated 21 million.
Great post Pat. Very telling on the hypocrisy of the DI, but not surprising. I can't wait for their attack ferret Luskin to wet his pants in an explosion of his persecution complex when he reads this.
A thanks to Doc Bill, I wasn't aware of the Google Trends function. My graph didn't show y-axis labels; is there some assumed value or is it just relative?
The obvious response from the creationists and the Johnsonites is that Darwin must have perfected time travel before anyone else.
Then he could go back to cause this tragedy for which is clearly to blame.
Hmmmm, could we come up with "Sympathy for the Darwinist" as a new theme song?
From what I can gather the Google Trends are relative.
However, flatlined is flatlined.
Customer: ID is dead!
DI Shopkeeper: No it isn't. It's, uh, sleeping. Yeah, that's the ticket, it's sleeping. Now, as I was telling the Queen the other day...
Follow the money-
Howard Ahmanson, a wealthy Californian who is heir to the Home Savings bank fortune.
Note that word: heir....
Now we have to watch out for Ivy League"C" students and nutty second gen millionaires. It does prove that old chestnut: a fool and his money are soon parted.
'"If people come from monkeys," bellowed one speaker who clutched a Bible in one hand while speaking in the practiced cadences of a street-corner preacher, "then why are there still monkeys?"'
If I had a dime for every idiot who thought that was a coherent argument...
Three of the GOP Presidential candidates raised their hands when Chris Matthews asked, "Who doesn't believe in evolution?" (Wrong question, but never mind.) Guess who raised their hands.
BROWNBACK, Huckabee and Tancredo.
http://thumbsnap.com/v/br56VGDC.gif
And all of them were for zygote rights vs. a woman's right to choose.
Great post!
Wow, that is informative and scary as hell.
Who had his first job abolished by a Kansas Court? BROWNBACK.
http://www.theantisam.com/
http://www.rainbowtel.net/~bryan...bryants/
abb.htm
and, especially: http://www.rainbowtel.net/
~bryan...s.htm#character
Ag commissioner Brownback didn't believe that Alar was such a toxic substance - so when he, alone, defied the national ban on that pesticide and apple ripening agent, he brought national scrutiny on himself and his position.... an unelected twit demonstrating The Peter Principal at work.
My favorite answer to the Monkeys question is, "If you descended from Europeans, how come there are still Europeans?"
That was pretty stinky Troll Bait that Pat dumped out there.
I wonder what took so long? Must have been upwind...
No, Lar, I won't be visiting your site but thanks for the offer.
Dear Larry, this blog ain't your billboard. If you have a comment, make it. If you want to take out an ad, hire an advertising firm.
Others have posted links here -- why can't I?
Are you sure that you want me to dump my whole article right here?
Forget it -- those who want to see my rebuttal to your post know where to find it.
Larry Fafarman - I can see your work every morning and I don't even have to log on to the Internet - I just watch as I flush and there goes your argument.
Go away - it is a shame that flushing alone doesn't make *you* disappear.....
It's worse than that. The actual figure for victims of the Holocaust is between ten and twelve million: six million Jews, and somewhere between four and six million "undesirables" from other social/ethnic groups.
Actually, it's even worse than that. On top of the 11 (give or take a million) by Germany, there's comparable numbers from Stalin, not to mention a certain wall in southern asia built entirely by slaves that claimed the lives of another few hundred thousand, and, if simply killing millions of one race of people counts as a holocaust, then we also need to count our atomic annihilation of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Is Larry F, here?
I usually restrain myself, but it's worth chancing a deletion by directing asome advice to him: "See a doctor or drop dead, soon."
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