One thing that doesn't get mentioned enough.. is that we simply laugh at people who believe that made up bullshit, and desire to place it along side real science. It's one thing to believe in "God", but it's quite another to completely make up their own version of science and try to present it as a credible alternative to real science.
Fundamentally, religious people are very open to conspiracy theories. They feel marginalized and excluded. They think that the great body of science in the history of the world is simply a religion on it's own, completely made up as their own religion is made up, therefore, their religion should be presented along side of the religion of science.
I'm totally not kidding.
The problem comes when we are too politically correct to call them "crazy". When you are too shy in calling them fundamentally insane, out of some sense of not wanting to appear like an asshole, that gives them an inch of rope to cling on to, and one more inch closer to placing their insanity on the same level as real science.
Call them crazy, because they are. Here's is the way a very articulate scientist does it;
Dear Dr. Klinghoffer:
Thank you for this interesting and courteous invitation to set up a debate about evolution and creationism (which includes its more recent relabeling as "intelligent design") with a speaker from the Discovery Institute. Your invitation is quite surprising, given the sneering coverage of my recent newspaper editorial that you yourself posted on the Discovery Institute's website:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/02/
However, this kind of two-faced dishonesty is what the scientific community has come to expect from the creationists.
Academic debate on controversial topics is fine, but those topics need to have a basis in reality. I would not invite a creationist to a debate on campus for the same reason that I would not invite an alchemist, a flat-earther, an astrologer, a psychic, or a Holocaust revisionist. These ideas have no scientific support, and that is why they have all been discarded by credible scholars. Creationism is in the same category.
Instead of spending time on public debates, why aren't members of your institute publishing their ideas in prominent peer-reviewed journals such as Science, Nature, or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences? If you want to be taken seriously by scientists and scholars, this is where you need to publish. Academic publishing is an intellectual free market, where ideas that have credible empirical support are carefully and thoroughly explored. Nothing could possibly be more exciting and electrifying to biology than scientific disproof of evolutionary theory or scientific proof of the existence of a god. That would be Nobel Prize winning work, and it would be eagerly published by any of the prominent mainstream journals.
"Conspiracy" is the predictable response by Ben Stein and the frustrated creationists. But conspiracy theories are a joke, because science places a high premium on intellectual honesty and on new empirical studies that overturn previously established principles. Creationism doesn't live up to these standards, so its proponents are relegated to the sidelines, publishing in books, blogs, websites, and obscure journals that don't maintain scientific standards.
Finally, isn't it sort of pathetic that your large, well-funded institute must scrape around, panhandling for a seminar invitation at a little university in northern New England? Practicing scientists receive frequent invitations to speak in science departments around the world, often on controversial and novel topics. If creationists actually published some legitimate science, they would receive such invitations as well.
So, I hope you understand why I am declining your offer. I will wait patiently to read about the work of creationists in the pages of Nature and Science. But until it appears there, it isn't science and doesn't merit an invitation.
In closing, I do want to thank you sincerely for this invitation and for your posting on the Discovery Institute Website. As an evolutionary biologist, I can't tell you what a badge of honor this is. My colleagues will be envious.
Sincerely yours,
Nick Gotelli
P.S. I hope you will forgive me if I do not respond to any further e-mails from you or from the Discovery Institute. This has been entertaining, but it interferes with my research and teaching.
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