RE: Findings on Hostility at Smithsonian Noted in NRO Article

[Rick Duncan]

Mark and Sandy are just making my 1A point for me. They ridicule and disparage ID in an attempt to marginalize it and keep it out of the public square. Let me put the question this way for Sandy and Mark: Do they really believe it would violate the EC for a public school to assign, say, Behe's Darwin's Black Box for a high school science class? Is this really the same thing as wanting to teach "malevolent design" or "the Protocols of the Elders of Zion" in public school?

.It just makes me all the more certain that the attempt to suppress ID is merely a product of cultural power. Phil Johnson calls "scientific naturalism" the new "established religious philosophy of America" and goes on to say that "like the old [established] philosophy, the new one is tolerant only up to a point, specifically the point where its own right to rule the public square is threatened." He continues: "The establishment of a particular religious philosophy does not imply that competing philosophies are outlawed, but rather that they are relegated to a marginal position in private life. The marginalization is most effective when formal; government actions are supplemented by a variety of intimadating acts by nongovernmental institutions such as the news media."

 

I think Phil is right. His book, Reason in the Balance, is still my "must read" for college students thinking about law school.

 

Cheers, Rick

Rick Duncan
Welpton Professor of Law
University of Nebraska College of Law
Lincoln, NE 68583-0902

"When the Round Table is broken every man must follow either Galahad or Mordred: middle things are gone." C.S.Lewis, Grand Miracle

"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered." --The Prisoner

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