The Discovery Institute Has a Strange Idea of 'Free Speech'

I really had a hard time reading this foolish post. Little davey 'klingy' klinghoffer is trying to equate the outcry supporting professional football players exercise of their freedom of speech with The Discovery Institute's (DI) desire to teach religion as if it were science in science class! Here is klingy's post: "Freedom on the Football Field – How About in the Science Lab?"

After briefly discussing what's been happening on the football field, klingy says this:

"But I can’t help noticing that many of those suddenly rushing to the barricades for free speech have said nothing about a far more disturbing reality. As we know from years of reporting and hearing from scientists and science instructors in private, the machinery of censorship arrayed against Darwin skeptics is formidable, yet little remarked upon. Most people are hardly aware it exists. Some atheist scientists candidly justify it, or call for more."

Before addressing the idea of censorship, I have to ask, does anyone simply number the DI as a Darwin skeptic?  That is not what the DI is.  They are not simply skeptical of Darwin's work, they are trying to tear down all of science to make it more religious.  Those aren't my words, those are the words from their own guiding document!  Here's a screenshot from it:

These people are not the simple skeptics they call themselves here, but are part of a religious ministry trying to replace actual science.  OK, now on to this idiotic idea they are being censored.

I have to ask what censorship?  Freedom of Speech does not mean you get to publish anything you want, wherever and whenever you want to publish.  If there really was censorship, then would the DI been able to publish their myriad of books, articles, their own pseudo-journals and website postings of their pseudo-scientific concept of Creationism/Intelligent Design?  No!  No one is stopping them from expressing themselves, often to a nauseating level.  They publish everywhere except in the one area where their ideas will be taken seriously as science, scientific journals.

While they like to cite this as an example of censorship, that is very far from the truth.  Scientific journals have scholarship standards, and the Discovery Institute has refused to meet those standards.  I have posted this before, and it still applies:

"Religious studies professor examines Intelligent Design academically", Dr. Mark Chancey, Chair of the Religious Studies Department at SMU said:

"Many religious groups-Christian and other-do not regard evolutionary theory as a threat. For many people of faith, science and religion go hand in hand. When scholars criticize ID, they are not attacking religion. They are only asking ID proponents to be transparent in their agenda, accurate about their representations of scholarship, and willing to play by the same rules of peer review and quality control that legitimate scholars and scientists around the world follow every day."

Little klingy, it's not censorship keeping you relegated to the popular press and religious imprints for your publishing, but your own refusal to be transparent in your scholarship and follow the same methodology actual scientists follow for publications.  If your Freedom of Expression was really being abridged, then where you currently publish would be closed to you as well.  But I can walk down the Christian section in my local book store and see many of your books.  The fact I cannot find them in the Science section isn't censorship, but the testament to what your books represent.

Little klingy ends with this:

"In biology as in cosmology, an ultimate question is at stake: the origin of life and of the universe, with many vital issues downstream from that, including ethics and the meaning of being human. I’m not aware of any comparable stakes in the game of football. Yet about Darwinist censorship you won’t hear a peep across a vast swath of the media, including writers who are currently standing, or kneeling, in solidarity with the pampered athletes, beset by a “troubling assault on free speech.” Pardon me while I gag on the irony."

The only irony is reading this foolishness in which you misdirect and try to redefine the concept of the freedom of speech.  As I said, Free Speech does not mean scientific journals are required to remove their standards of scholarship just so you can publish in their journals!  Free Speech does not mean you can demand a place at the science classroom lectern!

Follow the actual scientific methodology, use real peer-review -- not your bastardized version of it -- and address the actual critiques instead of simply dismissing them.  If you would do these things, you may actually get published in real scientific journals and be taken seriously by scientists as scientists.  But your refusal sends a very different message, one requiring you to use tactics such as imaginary censorship.  But if you did follow the rules of science, that would mean you will have to support your religion with more than just wishful thinking and unsupported conjecture.

To the DI, you need to remember that real science demands evidence.  Failing to provide such evidence is what keeps the you in the religious corner of the bookstore.  It's not censorship keeping you out of the science classroom and scientific journals, but your own continuous failure to provide any evidence.  The real question isn't are you being censored, but is your failure an unwillingness to play by the rules of scientific methodology, or the inability to do so.