More on the pretty dull '4 Nails in Darwin's Coffin'

A couple of others have a few words on the '4 Nails' presentation I posted about the other day ("4 nails in the coffin containing the remains of the Discovery Institute credibility") It's rare that the DI would step in it so easily, but when they do, it's nice to know there will be folks to point it out to them.

My favorite reporter, author, and blogger -- Lauri Lebo -- had a few choice words in her post on Religious Dispatches. In "4 (More) Nails in Discovery Institute’s Coffin". She points out that their presentation is also fairly typical of the tactics they have been using for years:

" . . . one of Discovery Institute’s featured tactics is to pretend that Darwin’s theory exists in a vacuum and that the scientific world has learned nothing in the past 150 years "

As we all know that their tactic to demolish Darwin will automatically elevate Intelligent Design (ID) to the only workable theory (please note the extremely heavy sarcasm in that last statement). A point that has been made by many that the tactic of attacking Darwin does little to effect modern evolutionary theory, and their toothless attacks on the theory of evolution has done even less to push their pet idea of ID. The real problem is they have yet to bother actually supporting their idea and elevate it to the level of a hypothesis let alone a scientific theory. This really does keep their evolution attacks impotent.

Ms. Lebo also linked to the SMU professors response ("Big Problems With Intelligent Design") and end her post with

"Still, after looking over all this, I do have one question. If the DI folk argue that evolution can’t account for the living diversity of the 60 million year time span of the Cambrian explosion, what exactly are they arguing? Are they saying that the omnipotent designer intentionally created all those various extinct life forms just to kill them off later?"

I think the nearest thing I have seen as an answer to her question is that the DI folks really don't care to offer an actual alternative explanation -- all they care about is closing the door on evolution -- which does follow the strategies laid out in their wedge document, as espoused in the goals set in that document:

• "To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural, and political legacies"
• "To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God"
  

In addition to Ms. Lebo's post, another poster was at the presentation and offers this YouTube video:
I hope you watch it, it was interesting to actually hear part of the presentation and also to hear the poster's comments. Plus there are a few other related videos that are just plain hilarious like the 30 part series "Why do people laugh at creationists."