# Discovery Institute May Have Hit a New Low?

**URL:** <https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/discovery-institute-may-have-hit-a-new-low/13415>\
**Category:** Conversation\
**Tags:** Science, Design, Communication\
**Created:** [March 18, 2021, 1:07am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/discovery-institute-may-have-hit-a-new-low/13415 "2021-03-18T01:07:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Michael\_Callen](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/michael_callen/32/897_2.png) [@Michael\_Callen](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Michael_Callen)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2021, 1:07am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/discovery-institute-may-have-hit-a-new-low/13415/1 "2021-03-18T01:07:43Z")

</div>

Wow, here are some interesting comparisons being made by the Discovery Institute.

> **[In the Name of “Academic Freedom,” a Scientist Calls for Punishing...](https://evolutionnews.org/2021/03/in-the-name-of-academic-freedom-a-scientist-calls-for-punishing-creationists/)**
>
> The practice has a sordid history. There’s always a rationale — for example, in labeling Israeli businesses, or those doing business with Israel, to be avoided.

> If you were to apply the othering approach in academia today, how might you begin? Well, you’d take a disfavored idea — creationism, for example.

Be wary when one is overly critical of you, but overly generous in regards to themselves.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rumraket](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/rumraket/32/9328_2.png) [@Rumraket](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Rumraket)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2021, 11:50am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/discovery-institute-may-have-hit-a-new-low/13415/2 "2021-03-18T11:50:25Z")

</div>

What’s next? Pilots are required to have valid certificates from institutions that teach competent piloting? When just anyone can’t get a job as a pilot, and they’re discriminated against based on their qualifications, what has the world come to? This “othering” of non-pilots in the pilot business is obscene.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jesse\_England](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/jesse_england/32/8195_2.png) [@Jesse\_England](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Jesse_England)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2021, 2:19pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/discovery-institute-may-have-hit-a-new-low/13415/3 "2021-03-18T14:19:08Z")

</div>

As a Christian ID supporter who believe in a old earth and common decent who also likes peaceful science I wish we can just all get along while respecting our disagreements and having conversations about them

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![CrisprCAS9](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/crisprcas9/32/9145_2.png) [@CrisprCAS9](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/CrisprCAS9)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2021, 2:19pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/discovery-institute-may-have-hit-a-new-low/13415/4 "2021-03-18T14:19:37Z")

</div>

So the Discovery Institute is arguing that creationist institutions shouldn’t be accredited at all? Okay, sounds good to me.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![swamidass](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/swamidass/32/3_2.png) [@swamidass](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/swamidass)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2021, 3:50pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/discovery-institute-may-have-hit-a-new-low/13415/5 "2021-03-18T15:50:05Z")

</div>

What is interesting about this particular article is that it blatantly misrepresents the WSJ article, which is currently (but not for long) behind a paywall. This article will have an impact among the uninformed, but ultimately this is a dangerous game they are playing.

I only need to convince secular accreditors to follow their existing policy (CHEA and SASCOC). If either one is convinced, there are downstream impacts, whatever ENV thinks about it.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![stlyankeefan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/stlyankeefan/32/3773_2.png) [@stlyankeefan](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/stlyankeefan)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2021, 4:34pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/discovery-institute-may-have-hit-a-new-low/13415/6 "2021-03-18T16:34:14Z")

</div>

Klinghoffer really did miss the point, which is disappointing because he’s smarter than that. He wrote some good stuff when he was at National Review.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Michael\_Callen](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/michael_callen/32/897_2.png) [@Michael\_Callen](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Michael_Callen)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2021, 4:34pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/discovery-institute-may-have-hit-a-new-low/13415/7 "2021-03-18T16:34:15Z")

</div>

Certainly, that’s a very good suggestion and one that seems like a no-brainer. But to compare / contrast this situation to The Scarlet Letter in an environment where comments are not allowed is the opposite of that. It is disrespectful to make an outrageous comparison and finish by invoking the Chinese social credit system and Big Tech’s censorship. It’s just pouring gasoline on the situation and lighting a match. The desire is to get an emotional response, and to NOT have a conversation about it.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![T\_aquaticus](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/t_aquaticus/32/1249_2.png) [@T\_aquaticus](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/T_aquaticus)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2021, 4:36pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/discovery-institute-may-have-hit-a-new-low/13415/8 "2021-03-18T16:36:11Z")

</div>

The Discovery Institute seems to have forgotten that accreditation is a privilege, not a right.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![nwrickert](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/nwrickert/32/810_2.png) [@nwrickert](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/nwrickert)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2021, 5:08pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/discovery-institute-may-have-hit-a-new-low/13415/9 "2021-03-18T17:08:00Z")

</div>

> [@stlyankeefan](#):
>
> Klinghoffer really did miss the point

Er, no. He made exactly the polemical point that he wanted to make.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![swamidass](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/swamidass/32/3_2.png) [@swamidass](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/swamidass)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2021, 5:18pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/discovery-institute-may-have-hit-a-new-low/13415/10 "2021-03-18T17:18:15Z")

</div>

@Jesse_England many of us can.

There are institutions that benefit from conflict. For us to move past the conflict, we have to rework these institutions.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![stlyankeefan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/stlyankeefan/32/3773_2.png) [@stlyankeefan](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/stlyankeefan)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2021, 5:22pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/discovery-institute-may-have-hit-a-new-low/13415/11 "2021-03-18T17:22:25Z")

</div>

Good point.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Puck\_Mendelssohn](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/puck_mendelssohn/32/11849_2.png) [@Puck\_Mendelssohn](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Puck_Mendelssohn)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2021, 9:02pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/discovery-institute-may-have-hit-a-new-low/13415/12 "2021-03-18T21:02:02Z")

</div>

Wow, that is a bit of a new low, though “new lows” are the Dishonesty Institute’s traditional specialty so it would be disappointing to see them get through a week without one.

As for creationism being labeled, well, sure. All of us go around with labels associated with our academic institutions. I had an easier time finding a job after going to Penn law school than I would have if I’d gone to Widener, just down the road a bit, or Rutgers, just across the river. Nobody supposes that there are no good lawyers who come from those places, but the quality of an institution is assumed to have some predictive value that’s helpful in hiring. And when an institution teaches outrageous nonsense, that will both please those who want to employ believers in outrageous nonsense and displease those who don’t. What’s not to like? Why should anyone think that covering this up provides some sort of social good?

But, of course, as always, the DI is a culture-war club, and while Casey Luskin is no longer there to be its Boy George, Klinghoffer clearly knows the beat.

> [@](#):
>
> The contemporary BDS movement directed against the Jewish state…
> 
> * * *
> 
> …the woke Giant Food chain on the East Coast…
> 
> * * *
> 
> …like the one that physicist Eric Hedin writes about in his new book Canceled Science.
> 
> * * *
> 
> …some atheists’ notion of “national norms.”
> 
> * * *
> 
> Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne and the Freedom from Religion Foundation…
> 
> * * *
> 
> The Chinese government, perhaps, offers a preview of what’s to come.
> 
> * * *
> 
> … increasingly aggressive censorship by Big Tech, racial indoctrination in the workplace, and state-imposed lockdowns…

It’s a smorgasbord of red-baiting, atheist-fearing, liberty-hating BS of just the type that the culture war has always been about. Joshua’s proposal cannot just be a good idea in relation to academic standards – it has to be portrayed as a part of The Big Lie that the communists are using to tear our society apart from within.

These people are the ideological brothers of the people who tried to overthrow our government on January 6.

It reminds me of a fascinating film to which a book by Rick Perlstein guided me: Operation Abolition, a red-scare film made by the HUAC and the FBI, in which all manner of people are smeared with the accusation that, by seeking racial justice, the right to organize a union, or freedoms on college campuses, they have really been serving the secret goals of the Communist Party. The film is bizarre to watch, from a 2021 perspective, because although this is the story the FBI and HUAC hope to put across, it now fails completely and all one can see is out-and-out harassment and violence directed against political dissent. But pieces like this one by Klinghoffer mirror it: we still have these anti-liberty elements in our culture and they are still red-baiting and all the rest of it. The details have changed; but those who would tear down our culture have not.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![swamidass](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/swamidass/32/3_2.png) [@swamidass](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/swamidass)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2021, 9:05pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/discovery-institute-may-have-hit-a-new-low/13415/13 "2021-03-18T21:05:10Z")

</div>

> [@Puck\_Mendelssohn](#):
>
> …some atheists’ notion of “national norms.”

Ironically, “national norms” is lifted strait from TRACs policy.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![swamidass](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/swamidass/32/3_2.png) [@swamidass](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/swamidass)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2021, 9:16pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/discovery-institute-may-have-hit-a-new-low/13415/14 "2021-03-18T21:16:35Z")

</div>

They are syndicating this one:

> **[In the Name of 'Academic Freedom,' a Scientist Calls for Punishing...](https://stream.org/in-the-name-of-academic-freedom-a-scientist-calls-for-punishing-creationists/)**
>
> Punishing creationists in the name of academic freedom is a dangerous concept that could be expanded to any area of education where out-group ideas are discussed.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Art](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/art/32/3805_2.png) [@Art](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Art)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2021, 10:08pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/discovery-institute-may-have-hit-a-new-low/13415/15 "2021-03-18T22:08:15Z")

</div>

> [@Puck\_Mendelssohn](#):
>
> … the DI is a culture-war club, and **while Casey Luskin is no longer there** …

Um.

> **[Dr. Casey Luskin Is in the Building! | Evolution News](https://evolutionnews.org/2021/01/dr-casey-luskin-is-in-the-building/)**
>
> The secrecy is really a lesson about the parlous state of academic freedom under Darwinist domination, especially here in the United States.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![swamidass](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/swamidass/32/3_2.png) [@swamidass](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/swamidass)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2021, 10:08pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/discovery-institute-may-have-hit-a-new-low/13415/16 "2021-03-18T22:08:51Z")

</div>

Did anyone object to him getting a PhD? I didn’t.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Puck\_Mendelssohn](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/puck_mendelssohn/32/11849_2.png) [@Puck\_Mendelssohn](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Puck_Mendelssohn)\
**Post date:** [March 18, 2021, 10:27pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/discovery-institute-may-have-hit-a-new-low/13415/17 "2021-03-18T22:27:29Z")

</div>

> [@Art](#):
>
> Um.

Oh, geez. I figured he’d disappeared down a Habitrail somewhere.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jesse\_England](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/jesse_england/32/8195_2.png) [@Jesse\_England](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Jesse_England)\
**Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 3:02am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/discovery-institute-may-have-hit-a-new-low/13415/18 "2021-03-19T03:02:19Z")

</div>

I know That’s why I like peaceful science even though I like intelligent design it gives me some hope for the future of these conversations and that’s why I don’t 100% like and fit in the labels creationists or evolutionists (being a good Christian is far more important) I wish the debate were more sophisticated unlike the nye vs ham debate more RTB style and peaceful science types dialogues

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Argon](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/argon/32/3896_2.png) [@Argon](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Argon)\
**Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 2:40pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/discovery-institute-may-have-hit-a-new-low/13415/19 "2021-03-19T14:40:18Z")

</div>

“Klinghoffer stokes faux outrage, strays distant from the facts at hand” is the headline equivalent of “Dog bites man”.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Puck\_Mendelssohn](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/puck_mendelssohn/32/11849_2.png) [@Puck\_Mendelssohn](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Puck_Mendelssohn)\
**Post date:** [March 19, 2021, 6:37pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/discovery-institute-may-have-hit-a-new-low/13415/20 "2021-03-19T18:37:36Z")

</div>

As is “Klinghoffer, while working for creationist organization and advancing creationist agenda, denies being a creationist.”

[Next page](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/discovery-institute-may-have-hit-a-new-low/13415.md?page=2)