This one is amazing, even for creationists. We found it at the creationist blog of the Discovery Institute, and it’s titled Rescuing Evolutionary Theory from Darwinian Mythology. It has no author’s by-line. Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us for emphasis, and occasional Curmudgeonly interjections that look [like this]:
On a new episode of ID the Future [Ooooooooooooh! A Discoveroid podcast!], historian of science Michael Keas begins a two-part conversation with Robert Shedinger, the Wilford A. Johnson Chair of Biblical Studies and Professor of Religion at Luther College —
Whoa — wait a minute! This podcast thing is a conversation with a religion professor? Okay, that’s how the Discoveroids do things. Let’s get on with it. They’re still describing Shedinger:
— and author most recently of The Mystery of Evolutionary Mechanisms: Darwinian Biology’s Grand Narrative of Triumph and the Subversion of Religion.
Wowie — that is an impressive title! They don’t say any more about the book, but we couldn’t resist looking for it. here it is at Amazon.
After that they tell us:
Shedinger reports on the contrast between Darwin’s private view of his theory of natural selection and the public view as detailed in his published work.
What? Darwin secretly didn’t agree with his published work? We never heard that before. This is big news! The Discoveroid post continues:
Shedinger also notes the deficiency in evidence for Darwin’s proposal, despite claims to the contrary from his followers and evangelizers today.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA! There’s virtually no evidence for evolution! Wowie! Now we’re starting to understand this Discoveroid post. The Discoveroids aren’t even pretending to make sense! Very refreshing!
And now we come to the end:
Download the podcast or listen to it here. [Link omitted!]
You gotta admit, dear reader — that was a lot of fun!
Copyright © 2023. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
This from the Amazon blurb: “The mechanisms driving the evolutionary process truly remain a mystery more than one hundred fifty years after Origin of Species, a fact that can free religion scholars to think in more creative ways about the positive contributions religious reflection might make to our understanding of life’s origin and diversity. ”
AND this imprimatur from Behe: “Maybe, just maybe, Darwinian evolution has been a bit oversold. Luther College religion professor Robert Shedinger dives into contemporary documents as well as the historical record to show that the theory’s impressive public facade is belied by frank private admissions that even top scientists are unsure of what is the mechanism of evolution. The implications for religion scholars are immense.”
Immense, I tell you!
Evangelizers, mythology. Implication that if Darwinism is a religion then it must be crap duly noted.
Once again, there is negativism. There is something wrong, we are told, with natural selection. Yet, for all of the millennia of the design argument, we have yet to learn what happens, how or why or where, or could, or should or would, or cannot etc. under the assumption of intelligent design or creation. How does it come to be that the human body is most similar to the body of chimps and other apes, among all of the varieties that life on Earth takes?
Oh, by the way, there have been observations on life in the wild, and experiments in the lab, testing natural selection. And there have been alternative or supplemental mechanisms proposed, such as sexual selection, etc.
How about some theories of evolution, alternative or supplemental:
Natural Selection
Sexual Selection
Neutral Molecular
Endosymbiosis
Acquired Chaeacteristics
Orthogenesis
Elan Vital
Omega Point
What was that 19th century about pentads or some such?
I see that Puck Mendelssohn has left a review of Shedinger’s book on the South American river site, generously allowing it two stars. He says all that needs to be said, and it amounts to “not quite as bad as some, but pretty bad.” Anyone who reads it fairly will be unlikely to be impressed with Shedinger’s maneuvers.
Which is, of course, the problem. “Anyone who reads it fairly” will not include any of its target audience.
TomS, were you thinking of “hoist by his own petard”, from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”? A petard being a sort of shaped explosive charge affixed to a wall or portal, meant to blow it in, which if it went off prematurely would “hoist” the engineer trying to place it. Hence, metaphorically, the result of an advocate attempting an argument that has the reverse effect of the intention.
@Dave Luckett
I was thinking of a taxonomy of life based on groups of fives – the specialist term that I was thinking of based on the Greek “penta”. But now I think of the Latin “quinque” – something like “quinel”?
@TomS: the quinarian system? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinarian_system
@Glenn Branch
Thank you, yes, the Quinarian system
My degrees in geoscience evangelizing allowed me to pick locations for dozens of wells over the course of my career. I talked money managers into drilling my wells by referencing the magical, supernatural sciences of seismology, sequence stratigraphy, micropaleontology, structural geology and of course geophysics. It is all hocus pocus compared to talking donkeys and the magical beard man in the sky.
@och wil
*micro*paleontology, fine. But not *macro*.
It’s a pretty common (and empty) rhetorical tactic by creationists and other religious fundamentalists to describe science and reason as religious. They don’t seem to realize what a self-own that is.
@Paul D.
Many of them would not describe their own beliefs and practices as “religion”. As I recall, the Jack Chick comic “Big Daddy” makes a point of that.
Big Daddy is the one where the kid proves Jesus holds together the atoms. That is one smart kid.
Oh, good old Robert Shedinger! That book of his really was a stinker, and yes, as Dave Luckett notes, I did generously give it two stars because Shedinger appears to be more of a moron than a fraud. But the longer he hangs around with the DI, and the deeper he digs his hole, the more it suggests that I was mistaken in giving him that extra star…