So I dusted off the Pitiful and Laughable Intelligent Design Creationist Dissemblers links today and found a classic Luskinism in which Casey takes Nature to task for its brown-shirted propaganda campaign to defend evolution at all costs (scroll down to sidebar for link).

Excerpted from Luskin’s article:

In his acclaimed book Evolution: The History of an Idea, the respected historian of evolution Peter J. Bowler explains that the journal Nature was originally founded in the late nineteenth century by T. H. Huxley and others for the express purpose of promoting a “campaign” to support Darwinism:

By exploiting their position in this network, Huxley and his friends ensured that Darwinism had come to stay. (Ruse, 1979a). They controlled the scientific journals–the journal Nature was founded in part to promote the campaign–and manipulated academic appointments. Hull (1978) has stressed how important these rhetorical and political skills were in creating a scientific revolution. The Darwinists adopted a flexible approach which deflected opposition, minimized infighting among themselves, and made it easy for others to join their campaign. Many, like Huxley himself, were not rigidly committed to the theory of natural selection; they were simply anxious to promote the case for evolution.

(Peter J. Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea, pg. 185 (University of California Press, 3rd ed., 2003).)

Nature has remained adept at using “rhetorical and political” tactics as part of a “campaign” to support Darwinism, and thus it comes as no surprise that the latest issue of Nature contains an editorial praising the National Academy of Science’s new version of Science, Evolution, and Creationism because it “summarize[s] the reasons why evolution is in effect as much a scientific fact as the existence of atoms or the orbiting of Earth round the Sun.” Such statements are saddening because they elevate evolution to the status of an unquestionable dogma and thus threaten the prestige of science as an objective voice in society.

and…

The title of Nature’s editorial is “Spread the word: Evolution is a scientific fact, and every organization whose research depends on it should explain why.” Again, we see politics at work: they think scientists should defend evolution because their “research depends on it.” It seems that what Bowler called Nature’s “rhetorical and political” defense of evolution has only increased–to the point of religion-like dogmatism–over the past century.

Along with the usual dissembling, Luskin employs his favored stylistic device: Dr. Evil style quotes, e.g. “rhetorical and political.”

Well, yes, I admit it is more than a little sophomoric for me – a wise old matriarch – to take pot shots at an ID’er’s quirks of writing (to my oh-so-commendable credit, I haven’t barraged him with foul language – yet), but artificial emphasis via quotation marks does not deflect from the foundations of Nature’s editorial: evolution is evidence-based.