Europe Bitch-Slaps the Discovery Institute

October 5th, 2007 Jemmy Button Posted in News |

DISHONEST ATTEMPTS BY THE DISCOVERY INSTITUTE, its UK proxy organisation Truth in Science, and its Creationist bedfellow Harun Yahya to introduce Creationism/Intelligent Design into the science curricula of European Schools have been resoundingly smacked down by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Meeting in Strasbourg on 4 October, the Assembly passed by a vote of 48 to 25 the revised draft of the Committee on Culture, Science, and Education resolution on The dangers of creationism in education.

The Executive Summary of the Resolution reads:

Creationism in any of its forms, such as “intelligent design”, is not based on facts, does not use any scientific reasoning and its contents are definitely inappropriate for science classes.

However, some people call for creationist theories to be taught in European schools alongside or even in place of the theory of evolution. From a scientific view point, there is absolutely no doubt that evolution is a central theory for our understanding of life on Earth.

The Assembly calls on education authorities in member states to promote scientific knowledge and the teaching of evolution and to oppose firmly any attempts at teaching creationism as a scientific discipline.

The concluding proposal of the Resolution is contained in Article 18:

18. The Parliamentary Assembly therefore urges the member states, and especially their education authorities:
18.1. to defend and promote scientific knowledge;
18.2. strengthen the teaching of the foundations of science, its history, its epistemology and its methods alongside the teaching of objective scientific knowledge;
18.3. to make science more comprehensible, more attractive and closer to the realities of the contemporary world;
18.4. to firmly oppose the teaching of creationism as a scientific discipline on an equal footing with the theory of evolution and in general resist presentation of creationist ideas in any discipline other than religion;
18.5. to promote the teaching of evolution as a fundamental scientific theory in the school curriculum.

The Council of Europe has issued an English translation of a press release, Council of Europe states must ‘firmly oppose’ the teaching of creationism as a scientific discipline, say parliamentarians. A recorded webcast of the press conference (chiefly in French) is also available.

An earlier draft of this resolution, which did not come before the Assembly for a vote, was wildly denounced by Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute as yet more persecution by the Darwinian Thought-Police, as reported in our own Darwin Central blog at Criminalizing Creationism (13 Aug 2007). By truncating key phrases in his quotations from that draft, Attorney Luskin grossly misrepresented this resolution as a legislative ‘criminalization’, and omitted any mention of the resolution’s affirmation of Creationism as an appropriate topic in courses on religion.

Dishonest claims by the DI notwithstanding, the resolution proposes no legislation whatsoever, but is intended to encourage appropriate standards in science education. Of course, as the Discovery Institute’s ‘Wedge Strategy’ is precisely to undermine “scientific materialism” in favour of “a broadly theistic understanding of nature,” it is hardly surprising they will no doubt exhibit great wailing and gnashing of teeth at the Council of Europe. Nor is it surprising that the Discovery Institute, founded by Christian Reconstructionists, should make common cause with the fundamentalist Islamic Harun Yahya. As DI Fellow Dr. William A. Dembski noted, in his introduction to Mere Creation (1998):

Rather than look for common ground on which all Christians can agree, propose a theory of creation that puts Christians in the strongest possible position to defeat the common enemy of creation, to wit, naturalism. Throughout history common enemies have been invaluable for suspending in-house squabbles and uniting people who should otherwise be friends. Although approaching creation through its common enemy may seem opportunistic, it is quite illuminating.

We’ve read enough of the Discovery Institute’s blogs now that we could readily write one on their behalf: the essential ingredient is a truly heart-rending account of ‘persecution’ at the hands of the Darwintern, the world’s most far-reaching conspiracy ruthlessly suppressing astrology, orgone accumulators, and perpetual energy machines which the brave mavericks of this world keep building in their garages. But we’ll leave it to the DI’s bank of paid publicist bloggers to earn their salary.

It can’t be long before the DI writes blogs claiming that “Darwinists” were seen with smoking pistols on a grassy knoll in Dallas in 1963, bundling Elvis into a spacecraft in 1977, and planting detonation charges in the WTC in 2001.