The Discovery Institute Needs to Send Out another Big Tent Memo

Poor Robert Crowther of the Discovery Institute laments the way the media has been treating Intelligent Design in the Florida school board wars:

"This CBS News report falls immediately into the hole of stereotyping the debate over evolution as simply a religious issue. The reporter ominously opines: "How did life begin? The question often divides faith and science." This is an all too familiar setup for an Inherit the Wind style treatment of the issue — as if the only questions about Darwinism are religious ones. Not so. There are a lot of scientific questions at play in this debate — indeed, all of the serious questions about the evidence are scientific."

Well Robert, perhaps you need to send another Big Tent (tm) memo to all those people who keep talking about how this debate is going to bring God back into the classroom, and how those people are good Christians who believe the Bible, and how their enemies are the evil atheists (or "Darwinists" in the current lingo). Here's Dennis Bennett, the superintendent in Dixie County:

"We just wanted to get it on the record that we’re a Judeo-Christian community, and we believe in academic freedom..."

Or how about Ken Hall, a School Board member in Madison County:

"I'm a Christian. And I believe I was created by God, and that I didn't come from an amoeba or a monkey"

Really Robert, are you vying for a slot next to the guy who thinks pro wrestling is real? Do you expect us to believe Miss America is about talent too? Intelligent Design is all about religion and politics, oh, and selling books, and it always has been. Even the lame sciency comments in the article show that. No one who has spent 5 minutes reading about evolution could make the statements those people make.

"Indeed, intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory" - William Dembski