No, not at all. No guilt by association. I think most of us, including me, are just trying to get straight answeer to the questions you are struggling to answer here:
In my conversations with DI leadership, it is my sense that the answers are (1) they regret the embarrassment they suffered, (2) the stance has not softened, and (3) there is not anything they would disagree with in that document. Of course, maybe I am wrong, but I suppose I’d like clearer answers that (likely) neither @Agauger nor @pnelson can give us.
This is not, however, guilt by association It, rather, is legitimate and unanswered questions hanging out there for two decades now.
Yet the DI is still pursuing the identical goals the document outlined as their strategy. Go look at the DI’s “Evolution News” blog. There’s an article about how the DI is sponsoring “academic freedom” legislation which will allow teachers to introduce any unscientific horsecrap (i.e ID) into public school classrooms. There’s an article about school science standards and how the DI is working to change them and give ID equal time. There’s a link to the “Dissent From Darwin” DI propaganda piece which you’re too embarrassed to discuss. Then there’s the nonstop attacks on actual evolutionary science by the likes of Klinghofffer and Chaffee.
We know you weren’t there and had nothing to do with setting the Wedge goals but you and Nelson are there now and are complicit in the DI’s ongoing anti-science political shenanigans.
Children, children… scold all you want, but the fundamental issue is whether ID is “anti-science,” or not, or just “anti-philosophical naturalism and scientism.” As a strategy, it has been hailed by atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel as having been responsible for sharpening and moving along the debate. Old Uncle Harry wasn’t completely off his rocker, and the DI is officially against asking public schools to only offer ID in science education, asking only instead that they be allowed to “Teach the Controversy.” I am glad of the exchange, and absolutely against the non-religiously neutral position of scientism.
Since there isn’t any scientific controversy over the main tenets of evolutionary theory except the faux one the DI dreamed up themselves doesn’t that make the DI rather dishonest?
I believe the phrases in the U.S. Constitution underwent similar, seemingly unsavory, iterations, before we settled on “all men are created equal” – among other things.
@Timothy, I guess you didn’t notice this afternoon.
It’s easy to say, all you need is an electron donor and a phosphate donor, an electron acceptor, a carboxyl carrier. But have a look at the structures of these gnarly cofactors. There is some serious shifting of charge going on. You would think it could have been done much more parsimoniously, and without the labyrinthine cross-referencing biosynthetic pathways (though maybe not, if they all require the same kinds of chemistry)!
Does anyone have suggestions for how biosynthesis might have been bootstrapped without these cofactors? Especially ATP, which is absolutely critical to so many functions in the cell?
I’ve read suggestions for that. We don’t know if they’re true, but yes there are suggestions for that.
One proposal I came across recently suggested acetyl thioesthers:
Goldford JE, Hartman H, Smith TF, Segrè D. Remnants of an Ancient Metabolism
without Phosphate. Cell. 2017 Mar 9;168(6):1126-1134.e9. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2017.02.001
@Timothy_Horton What do you imagine scientific controversy is except 2 or more people discussing more or less heatedly? It’s not pistols at dawn or dueling pipetmen. It’s discussing papers.
CLAVDIVS
(Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus)
79
Exchange between Richard Thompson, lawyer for the defendant school in Kitzmiller v Dover, and Mark Ryland of the Discovery Institute — Part III of the American Enterprise Institute “Science Wars” sessions on Intelligent Design, 21 October 2005
MARK RYLAND: The Discovery Institute never set out to have a school board, schools, get into this issue. We’ve never encouraged people to do it, we’ve never promoted it. …
When asked for our opinion, we always tell people: don’t teach intelligent design. There’s no curriculum developed for it, your teachers are likely to be hostile towards it, I mean there’s just all these good reasons why you should not to go down that path. If you want to do anything, you should teach the evidence for and against Darwin’s theory. Teach it dialectically.
RICHARD THOMPSON: I, I think I should respond… First of all, Stephen Meyer, who is he, he is your, is he the president?
MARK RYLAND: He is the Director of the Center for Science and Culture.
RICHARD THOMPSON: OK, and David DeWolf is a Fellow of the Discovery Institute.
MARK RYLAND: Right.
RICHARD THOMPSON: They wrote a book, titled “Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curricula” [DeWolf 1999]. The conclusion of that book was that:
“Moreover, as the previous discussion demonstrates, school boards have the authority to permit, and even encourage, teaching about design theory as an alternative to Darwinian evolution – and this includes the use of textbooks such as Of Pandas and People that present evidence for the theory of intelligent design.”
…and I could go further. But, you had Discovery Institute people actually encouraging the teaching of intelligent design in public school systems. Now, whether they wanted the school boards to teach intelligent design or mention it, certainly when you start putting it in writing, that writing does have consequences.