Darwinism and popular culture: Sister Eugenie explains it all for you

Just when you thought that the intelligent design controversy was about whether Darwinism can do all that the Darwinists claim, friend David Rice draws my attention to this June 30 Ring of Fire radio show featuring Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., among others:

Eugenie Scott, Executive Director Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, with the inside story about the Discovery Institute, the well-financed "think tank" promoting intelligent design and other far-right causes.

He listened to it, and notes,

Politics, folks, it's all about politics. Eugenie, true to form, goes political in this interview to discuss the "stealth" tactics of the Discovery Institute to establish a right-wing political agenda and basically a theocracy. She doesn't discuss the evidential claims of ID at all; this was ALL about motives. The double standard lives on. She's done it again and I hope she keeps it up.......the NCSE is loosing big time.

She says that ID backers are "right wing libertarians" and that the Wedge document is a "road map to theocracy".

To conserve your time, David advises, "Hit the "Hour 2" link on the right. Jason Alexander talks politics for a little and then Eugenie Scott appears at the 18 minute, 24 second mark."

To conserve your sanity, I suggest asking yourself how people could possibly be theocrats and libertarians at the same time.

Like, I'm this bigtime theocrat so I am going to MAKE you go to church. On the other hand, I am also a libertarian, so it's no problem if your church is the Whoop-de-DOO!! Lounge and Strip Bar. Or, by registering on the Internet, you can get your waterbed declared a church. It's all good for business, right?

I think we better get back to what's wrong with Darwinism myself.

Head for the hot tub!: Theocracy looms

When I first started researching the intelligent design controversy, an earnest individual warned me that the ID guys might be fans of a deceased American fundamentalist (?) named Rousas Rushdoony, a guy who really did want to start a theocracy.

As it happens, I knew about Rushdoony vaguely, as a local poli sci prof had written briefly about his "Dominion theology" a decade earlier in a Canadian church press rag. No link panned out, of course, and dying in 2001 probably limited the guy's influence.

Now I see where a Brit anti-ID group is fronting Rushdoony. If they can't raise a better scare than this, ID must be pretty safe.

Debunking the nonsense generally, Rich Lowry writes in Free Republic:

Purveyors of the theo-panic love to exaggerate the influence of the bizarre Christian Reconstructionists who actually want an American theocracy. As New York Times religion writer Peter Steinfels notes in a review of the spate of new books, Christian Reconstructionists play "a greater role in the writings of the religious right’s critics than they ever have in the wider evangelical world." He notes that the flagship evangelical journal, Christianity Today, almost never shows up in these books, because, inconveniently, it is "moderate, reflective and self-questioning."

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.