Discovery Institute’s Triumph #5 for 2013

The great year-end news lull continues. While many would regard it as a blessed relief, your Curmudgeon’s humble blog demands stories about creationist idiocy. So we’ll turn again to a major source of that commodity — the Discoveroids — described in the Cast of Characters section of our Intro page.

As you already know, 2013 is a year in which the Discoveroids have accomplished nothing at all in furtherance of their theocratic goals — see What is the “Wedge Document”? They are nevertheless driven by fund-raising necessity to post about their Top Ten events of the year.

Yesterday we wrote about their glorious event number six — Discovery Institute Embraces Martyrdom. Today they’re moving on to number five, and this new item appears at their creationist blog: #5 of Our Top-Ten Evolution Stories of 2013: Introducing a New Intelligent Design Curriculum, Discovering Intelligent Design.

As before, their new post isn’t original. It’s a word-for-word repeat of something they posted back in May, about which we wrote Hey Louisiana — Here It Is! Because their latest post is merely one of their oldies, we’ll repeat some of what we originally said in response. We wrote:

We have great news for the schools in Louisiana, which are already primed to allow “supplementary materials” in science class, thanks to the Louisiana Science Education Act …

The Discoveroids were proclaiming the good news of a book — Discovering Intelligent Design — published by their in-house vanity press, the Discovery Institute Press, and written by “home school educators Gary and Hallie Kemper [of whom no one ever heard], and Discovery Institute research coordinator Casey Luskin.”

BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Casey is the Discoveroids’ “research coordinator”! But we shouldn’t laugh. It’s a very demanding job. Casey oversees what must be the Discoveroids’ extensive research program, which seeks to: (1) search for the intelligent designer; (2) describe the designer’s precise nature; (3) explore the designer’s technology; (4) document each of the designer’s miraculous interventions into the natural order; (5) learn the designer’s motives; and (6) devise experiments to test all of the foregoing. And he somehow does all of that in spite of the “bullying” of the Darwin lobby. Casey is a true hero of science.

Curiously, the Discoveroids’ announcement of Casey’s book had said:

While DID [Discovering Intelligent Design] is strictly scientific in its content, it is not recommended for use in public schools.

They never explained their lack of recommendation, but that disclaimer is consistent with their often-repeated claim that they’re not trying to get their “theory” taught in public schools. Oh no — heaven forbid! That would invite another court case like Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, a case they are all but certain to lose. Instead, they merely want the “academic freedom” to teach the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution. That “yes and no” approach is one of many logical pretzels their weird approach to stealth theocracy seems to demand.

Well, dear reader, since there’s nothing new here, there’s not much else to be said. But it’s worth noting that as trivial as this vanity press publishing event may seem to us, it’s one of the Discoveroids’ greatest triumphs of the year. Our fervent hope is that the next year will be as wonderful for them as this year has been.

Copyright © 2013. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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