QUOTE(lilburne @ Fri 21st January 2011, 11:11am)
Back in the mid 80s I was the duty chemist in a chemical factory on the night shift. I had a young guy as an assistant which they used to call "Basher" as he could be found testifying in the shopping mall at the weekend and doing the same in the pubs in the evening. Nice enough kid and we sort of got on OK - until this one night when there was little to do, and he was bored and wanted something to read. Without thinking I gave him the latest issue of the "
New Internationalist" to read, it was sponsored by Oxfam, Save The Children, and Christian Aid, amongst others.
Anyway he took one look at it, put it down, walk out of the lab and I never saw him for the rest of the shift, also he didn't speak to me for a month. The reason was that particular issue had articles on dinosaurs and fossils.
A long time ago a picked up a book on Creation Science - it sat unread on a bookcase among thousands of others. When studying in a liberal university, a friend was doing an essay on a related topic, and I offered to lend her the book for her interest. When I brought it in for her, I was seen with it in the common room. What happened next astounded me: liberal, broad-minded people, responded with scorn and anger to the very idea anyone would even read the book. It was book-burning anger.
I am NOT (and never have been) a proponent of Creation Science, but it struck me that had I entered that same liberal common room with a copy of
Mein Kampf people would have given me the benefit of the doubt, and perhaps even applauded a broad reading scope of even objectionable books.
Intelligent liberals tolerate horoscopes, Scientology, new-age mantras, feng shui, and any other amount of unscientific mumbo-jumbo. Why is it that ID so causes their blood to boil? If they are so confident of the strength of the intellectual argument against it, why are they so bloody defensive? (Even here in the UK, where there is no history of interference with education.)
Kelly is correct, if the anti-ID position is so strong, then gaming the article should be utterly unnecessary.