"It appears that the Discovery Institute has stolen a page from Creation Science Evangelism's playbook. They have filed DMCA take-down orders against our critical analysis of Icons of Evolution videos. Later, the discovery Institute followed suit and made similar claims against our critique of Case for a Creator.
As with our response to the very same nonsense instituted by Creation Science Evangelism, we ask that you bear with us as we seek legal counsel to craft a proper response."
The video, which criticizes the Discovery Institute extensively, can be found here on google video. (Be warned it is 90 minutes long and may take some time to load).
After all the talk about hearing both sides and free speech, Discovery Institute files Copyright claims to silence one of its toughest critics. (Even though D.I. owns the copyright, this should fall under "Fair Use"). What hypocrisy.
Since they can't silence me, I'm going to criticize some of the video propaganda they uploaded to youtube. The first thing that should be addressed is their video, The Truth about the Dover Intelligent Design Trial.
Claim #1 I.D. is NOT a relabeling of creationism
Barbara Forrest read through several drafts for the I.D. textbook Of Pandas and People. In them, she found that while the originals said, "Creator, Creation, Creationists" the later drafts said, "Designer, Design, Design Proponents". The intermediate drafts contained the phrase "cdesign proponentists" indicating that the writers had done a messy job when replacing 'creationists' with 'design proponents'.
Claim #2 Intelligent Design is backed by peer reviewed articles
Which ones? Stephen Meyer publish a paper, however, it was not reviewed by anyone else, and was later retracted by the Journal. I'm going to quote from the Dover Trial Script to show why Judge Jones may have thought I.D. had no peer reviewed articles behind it:
Rothschild: And, in fact, there are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred, is that correct?
Behe: That is correct, yes.
Anytime that an IDer claims that peer reviewed articles support ID, CHECK IT OUT!Claim #3 Judge's Decision was copied verbatem from the attorneys.
Michael Behe was recently a guest on Point of Inquiry, and if you listen to the interview, you will hear him concede that a Judge copying from what the attorneys give them and pasting it in their ruling is a common practice. (Listen to Michael Behe here, at the time of writing he is the fifth person listed on the page).
More to come on the Discovery Institute.
Talk to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They were apparently very helpful when Kent Hovind tried to pull this sort of stunt. Oh, and try to talk to people at the NCSE they may be of assistance.
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