Stranger Fruit: Luskin either slips up or is telling lies

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John M. Lynch is an Honors Faculty Fellow at Barrett the Honors College at Arizona State University. He's also affiliated with ASU's Center for Biology & Society. When he's not an historian of anti-evolutionism, he's an evolutionary morphologist. Much to his surprise, in 2007 he was named the Arizona Professor of the Year. No doubt his students were surprised as well.

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« A Darwinian Debt | Main | Decision »

Luskin either slips up or is telling lies

Category: Anti-evolution
Posted on: January 11, 2006 7:09 PM, by John Lynch

Casey Luskin, lawyer and program officer for public policy and legal affairs at the DI has this to say about the El Tajon creationism class:

Intelligent design is different from creationism because intelligent design is based upon empirical data, rather than religious scripture, and also because intelligent design is not a theory about the age of the earth. Moreover, unlike creationism, intelligent design does not try to inject itself into religious discussions about the identity of the intelligence responsible for life. Creationism, in contrast, always postulates a supernatural or divine creator.

Umm. Strange. The DI, whom Luskin represents, has ~~said~~ approved of the following in the past:

The Discovery Institute is one of the major proponents of intelligent design, the idea that a divine being orchestrated the evolutionary process.

Let me repeat, ID is "the idea that a divine being orchestrated the evolutionary process" and "Creationism ... always postulates a supernatural or divine creator". A divine being … i.e. a deity … i.e. a god … i.e. a being of supernatural powers or attributes.

Casey, ID is creationism. Get over it.

Comments

Umm, the DI didn't say that ... the authors of the article did. The article was written at Law.com and taken from the Fulton County Daily Report, as it indicates at the top of the link you provided. The brief web search that I did of the authors indicates that they have no affiliation with the DI.

A better conclusion than that somebody "slipped up" or is "telling lies" is that the DI linked to a news article that they may not endorse 100%, don't you think?

Posted by: Macht | January 11, 2006 8:10 PM

Fair enough, but given the DI's propensity to jump on any misrepresentation of ID, I'm guessing that either (1) someone screwed up, or (2) this is what they are comfortable with.

Actually, it does not really make a difference. By attacking naturalistic explanations, they are admitting that super-naturalistic explanations are required (by definition). Supernatural powers imply a deity. Either way you cut it, they're screwed.

Posted by: John Lynch | January 11, 2006 8:20 PM