Today's Amarillo Globe-News utilized the newspaper's favorite technique-- a misleading headline-- along with a potpourri of logical fallacies to feature Phillip Johnson, a well-known pseudoscientist and fraud. Johnson espouses a Trojan Horse "philosophy" named intelligent design:
Intelligent design utilizes scientific-sounding language to attempt to discredit modern biological science: ID distiguishes itself from overtly religious creationist dogma, however: most ID arguments are cast in entirely secular terms, without appeals to religious authority nor any explicit claim about the identity of the "Intelligent Designer(s)."Well, that's the claim, anyway. Of course, an appeal to religious authority is inherent in the very term "Intelligent Design"-- I doubt that Johnson and his band of tricksters are imagining the world was created by 2001: A Space Odyssey's mysterious advanced alien civilization. But reporter Brandi Dean got punk'd by Johnson, and our fave newspaper plastered the headlie across the page "Intelligent Design theory questions evolution without relying on Biblical creation."
Here's a question: if Johnson isn't saying-- as he claims-- that "the Christian God-- or any god in particular-- created the world," why's he speaking at Trinity Baptist Church at 8:20 and 10:50 am on Sunday morning? He's delivering a freaking sermon titled "Is God Real or Imaginary" at a Southern Baptist Church! And he wants us to believe he's leaving the question open?
Futhermore, Brandi Dean writes a nightmarishly misleading sidebar story ("Texas science class are teaching evolution"), in which she pens the following headscratcher:
In July 2004, The Barna Group found that 59 percent of 1,618 randomly selected adults thought creationism should be taught in school. A November National Geographic article, "Was Darwin Wrong," said the belief that God alone, without evolution, produced humans, has never been held by less than 44 percent.Classic bandwagon fallacy: a majority of people think we should teach pseudoscientific creationist dogma in schools, so we should. A majority of people think God created the universe in six days, so He must've.
Of course, nearly 100 percent of my senior English students think they shouldn't have to write a research paper. But a classroom isn't a democracy : the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills requirements say they have to write a research paper, and the TEKS say they have to study post-Medieval biology.
I read the paragraph to my S.O. and asked her what she thought the National Geographic article was about, based on Ms. Dean's sentence. She said it sounded like NG was questioning the validity of evolution. And, of course, that's exactly what it sounded like.
Thankfully, unlike Ms. Dean, I'd actually read the article. The cover does indeed feature the provocative headline. But when you open up the magazine, you read a short paragraph that fills half the page:
"NO. The evidence for evolution is overwhelming."Punk'd again. Ah, the Amarillo Globe-News. Too many fish, too small a barrel.
SPACEDARK
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