Comments on Greg Cootsona and ID

False. DI initially supported imposing ID Creationism on students, and published a book on how to do it, titled “Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curricula.”

Then, of course, several DI fellows, including Stephen Meyer, signed on as expert witnesses in the Kitzmiller case. If you’re “opposing” something, it’s a bit weird to put yourself in the position of actively working to promote it. It’s not clear, and probably never will be, why the DI enthusiastically embraced the Kitzmiller litigation and then dishonorably left their client in the lurch. But they did.

Regarding @Cootsona’s reading list, I would say that the books which best display what the DI and ID Creationism are about are not the relatively well-written but highly deceptive ones like Darwin’s Doubt; they are instead the really trashy ones like Zombie Science, Darwin’s House of Cards, and Foresight. If the DI had even the slightest hope of achieving scientific respect for ID Creationism, it would never have published these books; they are a clear sign that the DI is basically in the business of conning fundamentalists out of cash.

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I made no claim one way or the other about some purported “initial” position. What I said was:

My statement is true, for anyone who knows: (a) the meaning of the English word, “mandated”; and (b) Discovery’s repeated and emphatic public statements at the time of the Dover trial and since. The fact that you haven’t bothered to read Discovery’s repeated and emphatic public statements is your problem, and nobody else’s.

But I’d much rather hear what Greg has to say, since his is a voice we don’t hear from on this site. I’m trying to have a civilized discussion with him. If that can’t be held here, because of partisan interruptions from atheists, I’ll simply take the discussion to Greg privately, Christian to Christian.

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I’ve always suspected that they got a close enough look at the Dover board and decided that they were too obviously religious in their motivations, for them to pass muster at trial. Admittedly, I also suspect that anybody sufficiently incautious to sign on for such a venture would be insufficiently cautious to pull it off.

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Remember before their Dover debacle Dembski was always writing how he desperately wanted Darwinism to be put on trial, a real legal trial. He called it his Vise strategy and even published a photo of a Darwin doll with its head crushed in a vise. I suppose the old adage “be careful what you wish for lest you actually get it” held true again. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Can you point to a public statement by the DI, either (i) between the time the board announced its policy and the trial, or (ii) before the completion of the trial, that stated that “ID should not be mandated by school boards”?

“We have always been at war with Eastasia.”

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I remember that, and how quickly he ran away when he discovered that he would have to answer questions of his own, without his own personal lawyer to back him up.

LOL. Good one!

No, I’ve read them. However, I have also read the original materials which show what their positions were at the time. You are simply wrong. DI did advocate forcing children to learn ID. DI did support the Dover Area School Board’s attempts in that regard. Later, DI changed its position and started trying to cover its prior position. Uncritically accepting the statements of an organization like the DI, which never opens its mouth for any purpose other than to lie, is foolish.

“Partisan interruptions by atheists,” indeed. You told him things which are demonstrably, as a matter of record, false. I corrected those things. If you would like to relay DI falsehoods to him uninterrupted, yes, I’d suggest you do it privately.

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No, I am correct. The statements are there on the DI website. Are you literate? If so, read them.

Please provide the list of public documents put out by DI that demonstrate this. Even they are not on the DI site currently, if they ever existed, as you claim they did, you should be able to find them on the Wayback machine or perhaps you saved copies on your computer. (I’m sure that if they ever existed, NCSE thugs would have carefully copied them all for future polemical use, so you could try writing to them.) In short, let’s see the textual evidence.

And by the way, make sure they are public documents from the time period I specified.

Hardly demonstrably, since you have demonstrated nothing. Indeed, in all the thousands of words you have published about ID and the the DI, the proportion of interpretive filter – your interpretive filter – to data is astonishingly high. Demonstration comes from data, not from interpretive filter. I value your interpretive filter at zero. I discount everything that flows from it. Give me data that contradicts my point, or surrender the point.

I have read them. I have also read the original materials from the time of the events. The DI is lying to cover its tracks.

“Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curricula,” a book published by the DI. Despite having already cited this to you, I’ll skip asking you whether you’re literate.

I’ve posted, in other threads, the materials from the docket of the Dover case, illustrating that the DI got on board enthusiastically and provided the defense multiple expert witnesses. You were a participant in those threads, and I assume you are already aware of their content. The facts in Dover are well established as a matter of record: the DI got in as deep as it could possibly get in, and then ran away. Having run away, it announced that it had never really been on board in the first place.

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Were they there “on the DI website” before the trial finished (and support for ID in public schools became untenable)?

Point us to the URL, and we’ll use Wayback Engine to check.

Are you naive?

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Some lawyer you are, if you don’t that such charges must be substantiated.

Date of publication, please. Do you have a cover image?

Is the text of this book – which I presume was not a long one, probably more like a pamphlet in length – available in electronic form, for people to read?

Have you a copy of the book yourself? Have you ever held a copy of the book in your hands?

Individual ID proponents made their own individual decisions whether to appear as expert witnesses. They were not sent by order of Discovery, as if Discovery had the power to order their participation. Apparently you don’t understand the difference between a “Fellow” of an organization and an employee.

Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curricula: A Legal Guidebook

The Authors

David K. DeWolf , Professor of Law, Gonzaga University School of Law, Spokane, Washington. B.A., Stanford University, 1971; J.D., Yale Law School, 1979. Prof. DeWolf is a Fellow of the Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture. He is the author of Washington Tort Law and Practice (West Publishing, 1993) as well as Washington Contract Law and Practice (West Publishing, 1998). He practiced law in Spokane Washington as well as in Santa Rosa, California prior to joining the Gonzaga faculty in 1988. Prof. DeWolf has written on constitutional law regarding religion in public schools as well as issues of tort law and public policy.

Stephen C. Meyer, Director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture. Associate Professor of Philosophy at Whitworth College. B.S. (Physics and Geology), Whitworth College, 1980; Ph.D. (History and Philosophy of Science), University of Cambridge, 1990. Formerly a geophysicist with the Atlantic Richfield Company, Prof. Meyer completed his Ph.D. dissertation on origin-of-life biology and the methodology of the historical sciences. He has contributed to numerous technical journals and scholarly books. In addition to his scholarly articles, Prof. Meyer has written many editorial features in newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, The L.A. Times, and The Chicago Tribune.

Mark E. DeForrest, Instructor, Central Washington State University, Ellensburg, Washington. B.A., Western Washington University, 1992; J.D., Gonzaga University School of Law, 1997. He is the author of “Civil Disobedience: Its Nature and Role in the American Legal Landscape,” Gonzaga Law Review 33 (1997-98): 653, as well as a co-author (with Professor James M. VachŽ) of “Truth or Consequences: The Jurisprudential Errors of the Militant Far-Right,” Gonzaga Law Review 32 (1996-97): 593 .

Originally published in 1999, 5 years before Kitzmiller v. Dover. Another silly Eddie claim shot down by cold hard facts. :slightly_smiling_face:

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There are many, and you can find on them on the site, with dates, by exerting a modicum of effort, but just for starters, here is a statement by Seth Cooper, an Attorney who worked for Discovery during the very period you are asking about:

“in all my time at Discovery Institute I consistently held to our public policy position that public schools should not mandate the teaching of the theory of intelligent design.”

You can find this statement in a letter of Cooper written just after the Dover trial. See:

Is Attorney Cooper lying in this statement? Do not answer in the affirmative unless you have proof that he is lying.

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Try here.

Read the date Edward! This was published the day after the decision was given in the trial.

“We have always been at war with Eastasia.”

And yes Edward, attorneys lie all the time.

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Read the context, Timothy! It refers to his activities at Discovery from long before the trial even started. He confirms, from his personal involvement, that the Discovery policy from 2003-2005 was that ID should not be mandated.

Are you saying that his memory was bad? Are you saying that he misunderstood the DI policy? That they lied to him about their policy, and he believed the lie? Or that he himself is lying about the policy during that period?

Substantiate your answers. Your mere opinion, as you already know, is worthless to me, as I consider you an academically untrained quack with no particular intellectual talent or accomplishment in any field of human endeavor. Your judgments, I value at nothing. Give me facts. Is he lying? Is he mistaken? If so, prove it. Or stop discussing the subject.

So Attorney Puck Mendelssohn here lies all the time? How do you know he’s not lying now? Why do you trust one lawyer but not another?

What a coincidence, that’s the view of you most every pro-science poster here holds. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I believe I’ve already answered this:

I found it, no thanks to you, but to the links from others here. Then I looked it up on Amazon as well. Both the online text and the Amazon page clearly show that the book was not published by the DI, but by FTE. And the imprint is quite visible on the Amazon cover art. There’s no excuse for you not to have noticed this, given the detailed study you claim to have put into these matters.

So one of your basic facts is wrong, and you expect us to trust the rest of your argument? How about a retraction?

Second, having now looked at the online text, I am having trouble finding where the book advocates mandating the study of ID. So even if it were a DI book – which it wasn’t – it wouldn’t seem to support your charge. How about nailing down some passages to justify the term “mandate”? Then at least we could blame the dastardly FTE for wanting to mandate ID, in 1999. How that would get you to the DI wanted to mandate ID, in 2005, only a logic-free mind can imagine. But I guess lawyers make a lot less use of logic than TV viewers of Perry Mason might suppose.

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