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The headquarters of the "intelligent design" creationist movement, the Center for the Renewal
of Science and Culture (CRSC) at the Discovery Institute
(Seattle, WA, USA), periodically sends its members on speaking tours. As described in the CRSC's long-range
planning document, the purpose of these tours is two-fold. First, to gain popular (not scientific)
support for the idea that science can demonstrate the existence of a creator-God, the God of Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam. Second, and equally important, to lend academic respectability to its mission by staging
these presentations at well-known academic institutions. This tactic allows the CSC to claim, falsely, that "intelligent
design is being considered seriously at leading academic institutions".
So, on November 2-4, 2000, the Discovery Institute brings
its speakers to Yale University. The event is co-hosted by the so-called "Rivendell
Institute", an off-shoot of the Campus Crusade for Christ. Although it is not an academic entity of the University,
nor does it have an academic goal, creationist web postings are calling Rivendell "just as much an Institute as any
other at Yale." The event is well-advertised by Discovery Institute-affiliated
sources.
[The web pages cited above are archival versions from 10-29-2000. The following
are current links to: the Discovery Institute
(DI), the DI's Center for Renewal of Science and Culture -- now
called the Center for Science and Culture
(CSC), the affiliated Access Research Network (ARN),
and Yale's Rivendell Institute.
Comparison of the roster of speakers at Yale with the list
of CRSC staff members and associates reveals a non-coincidental overlap. Also, non-coincidentally, several of these
speakers are presenting a press conference ("Media Lunch") in New York
City the day before coming to New Haven.
Comparison of the speakers at the Yale event with those at a previous CRSC presentation (chosen
at random), the "Mere Creation" conference at Biola University in 1996,
again demonstrates a roster chosen from the ranks of CRSC members. While not improper per se, this demonstrates that these
"conferences" are not academic conferences, but rather "traveling road shows" in which the CRSC pitches
its propaganda. It is certainly true that a small number of critics, selected by the CRSC, participate in these events.
It is hard to think that these critics provide other than a cover of fairness, the token opposition or "exception which
proves the rule."
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