This is intended to work with the
article Page put up regarding Intelligent Design Creationism. Which BTW was dead on balls accurate PP. Gold Star for you!
I've been working in this area for years, it is I suppose what one could call my Signature Issue. Some minor clarifications to the comments I've seen, and some common Myths Vs Facts below the fold.
Myth-The Discovery Institute's
Center for Science and Culture (DI CSC) is funded chiefly by the [Bill] Gates Foundation (BGF), and Bill Gates
Fact-The number one sponsor of the DI's CSC are a couple by the name of Rebecca & Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., heir to a California Savings and Loan Fortune. Mr. Ahmanson has no affiliation whatsoever with Bill Gates or MSFT. He's a weird, reclusive, eccentric guy who suffers from a severe form of Tourette's Syndrome and, somehow, the oily DI CSC wormed their way into his confidance and have him conned; for the time being.
The number one MSFT sponsor of the DI is Paul G. Allen. The Gates Foundation has reportedly made what is for that mountain of money a few small potatoes contributions. I've seen figures as high as one-million in the prior year and as low as fifty-thousand. I've seen copies of documentation that looked legit backing the figures in the lower range rather than the higher, regardless of what you may read in the papers. From unconfirmed anecdotal stories I've heard that Gates is not a Creationist or an IDCists, at least not openly, and he thinks it's silly; he doesn't give a shit about the issue either way. He set up the BGF to help charities and reap some modest tax benefits, and that's all he cares about.
The decision about where the BGF sends piddling donations are not made by Bill Gates solely or even on a day-to-day basis. They're made by a Board of Trustees who are heavily influenced by, you guessed it, Paul G. Allen. Allen is the MSFT connection to the DI CSC, not Gates.
In defense of Paul Allen, who I think is an idiot for funding the DI BTW, he gives a lot of money to a lot of causes and in far greater amounts than he donates to the DI. Some of those causes are even flakier, but not all. And the DI CSC is a chicken-feed, freak sideshow, for his wealth. Allen almost single-handedly funded the legendary aircraft designer Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne: Black Sky Program which won the X-prize in 2004 and it cost twenty times as much as anything he's ever given the DI CSC. So you have to take the good with the bad. It is his money.
Myth-The DI CSC is made of Young Earth Creationists (YEC). See Dkos list of various forms of Creationism here.
Fact-Most of the members of the DI CSC studiously avoid stating anything definite about any branch of science whatsoever. But for most of them, if you pin them down, they'll tend to support Old Earth Creationism in some form. The Founder of the DI CSC, Philip Johnson, is an Old Earth Creationist. The two greatest 'scientific thinkers' of the org are Micheal Behe and William Demsbki (See DKos Diary on both here). Behe has stated publicly in print he accepts common descent including the common descent of humans and other species. Demsbki appears to be more cagey, but he to seems to accept the age of the earth and what he and the entire DI CSC often call micro-evolution; which means just about any damn kind of evoluton they need it to mean at any given time.
The DI CSC is an umbrella organization that derives a good bit of their grassroots support from Young Earthers. For this reason they do not volunteer their views on YEC easily and have a tendency to superficially adopt whatever views the audience du jure happens to embrace. These guys are a PR and marketing firm. That's all they are
Myth-The Theory of IDC and the DI CSC are on the verge of taking over science in the public K-12 classrooms.
Fact-They'd like very much to do exactly that. But the fact is a tiny band of ragtag, underpaid core individuals--usually less than five people at any one time--operating on a shoestring, have stopped the entire DI CSC and other creationist challnges cold in their tracks in every single conflict I'm aware of for the last fifty years. Currently this includes Eugenie Scott, Director of the NSCE and a real, super sweet, scary smart, hilarious lady with wicked sense of humor, and my friends Wes Elsberry, and Nick Matzke.
In addition there are probaly less than two dozen bloggers, of which I am a small player, who fight this shit out constantly anywhere we can find it. Of greater import than myself are PZ Myers, Ed Brayton, Jason Rosenhouse, and Reed Cartwright, just to name a few. Most of the degreed folks with the expertise group blog at The Panda's Thumb and run the Talk Origins Site.
The reason this tiny group of people has been so successful against the might of the Christian Mega-churches and a few misguided billionaires is 1) They're just that damn good. And 2) There's really nothing advantageous for corporate interests in screwing up biology in public high school. Thus, there are no real serious lobbyists with corporate giga-bucks who give a shit about the issue and push it with vigor on Politicians. It's not like global warming where the science threatens their almighty profit.
Myth-The GOP emabraces creationism and the Democratic Party opposes it
Fact-I wish this were true, I really do. But the fact is both the dems and the pugs have used this issue to pander to voter ingorance and bias. In 2000 both Gore and Bush made non commital comments which seemed to indicate they both thought the 'jury was still out' on evolution. And over the past 150 years attacks on evolution have come pretty much from either party in the US at every level; local, state, and federal.
Myth-The Theory of Evolution is critical to the education of k-12 students.
Fact-If this is true we might as well just kill ourselves now. Many high school students and a frighteningly high number of adults in the US cannot read and write beyond the 4th grade level, cannot do basic arithemetic including addition and subtration without a calculator, cannot identify verbs and nouns in simple sentences, cannot distinguish between a triangle, a pyramid, and a rectangle when tested, and cannot locate major contients-- including the United States--on a globe even when it is written on the damn globe right in front of their noses.
Evolution is an important unifying principle in biology and, imo, an absolutely fascinating topic. It is not however anywhere near as critical to the future well being of K-12 students as being able to read, write, and count.
Myth-If the DI CSC 'wins' that's the end of science in the US.
Fact-I spend a considerable fraction of my day helping to insure they will never win, but lets be clear about this. It won't that matter much if they get a sticker put on a book here or get the 'evidence against evolution taught' there. It's embarrasing, it'a personal pet peeve of mine.
But note: Many of the Islamic nations where evolution is not taught at all in K-12 schools and religious dogma is taught instead, produce some of the best, world class, scientists on earth. I enjoy fighting this fight, but keep it in perspective: We're not talking an instant slide into the Dark Ages, we're not talking Iraq where people are being killed and maimed every day, we're not talking about gutting social services to put a few more sheckles into the hands of the mega-rich.
Myth-The Creationists are winning the grassroots battle.
Fact-The numbers have stayed about the same since they've been tabulated. Roughly half and half, with the half that accepts common descent mostly on the side of what is called Theistic Evolution--meaning they believe that God used science to create including evo. The numbers depend greatly on how the question is framed.
Bear in mind that over half of all people think they've had a real psychic experience at least once in their lives, a significant minority think that astrology works, over half have 'talked to a ghost' or a dead person/spirit in one fashion or another.
This next part is going to piss some people off ...
And before you laugh off the creationists consider that something like about 85% of all Americans, including the folks reading this, and all the people of the world, sincerely believe in some form of magic, invisible sky wizard, wizardress, and/or wizards, named everything from Jehovah, Odin, YVWH, Beelzebub, Allah, Vishnu, Zeus, Mars, and about 10,000 other gods, goddesses, and godlets, who usually are thought to have created the entire fucking universe to act as a stadium hosting a cosmic pissing contest between themselves and an assotment of equally childish rival deities. And in almost every case this supernatural menagerie possesses a seemingly obsessive concern about the most trivial human behavior including but not limited to, the food we eat, how we prepare cheese and meat, the length of our beards, and masturbation, or some other obscure, loony shit. You cannot make change for paper currency in most countries without handing out religious slogans trumpeting the magical prowess of the local, dominant, mythological cosmogony.