http://thinkprogress.org/2007/06/23/gonzales-discovery-institute/Gonzales To Give Speech Co-Sponsored By Prominent Creationism Organization
Next week, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will make his first-ever visit to Seattle as attorney general. While there, he will deliver a 45-minute speech “on the Justice Department’s efforts to protect intellectual property and combat cybercrime.”
The speech, which is free and open to the public, was organized by TechNet Northwest. It is also being sponsored and promoted by the most prominent creationism advocacy organization in the country: the Discovery Institute.
One of the Institute’s main goals is to replace evolutionary science in public schools with “intelligent design”:
The Discovery Institute has quietly positioned itself as the most effective and politically savvy group pushing a religious agenda in America’s public school science classes. <…>
The Institute enthusiastically endorses what law professor and ID champion Philip Johnson calls the “wedge” strategy.
The plan is straightforward: use intelligent design as a wedge to undermine evolution with scientific-sounding arguments and thereby advance a conservative religious-political agenda.The institute’s main financial backer, savings and loan heir Howard Ahmanson, spent 20 years on the board of the Chalcedon Foundation, “a theocratic outfit that advocates the replacement of American civil law with biblical law.”
Discovery’s attacks on evolution have been discredited by leading scientists. The National Academy of Sciences, “the nation’s most prestigious scientific organization,” declares evolution “one of the strongest and most useful scientific theories we have.” President Bush’s science adviser John Marburger calls it “the cornerstone of modern biology.”
While it’s unclear what interest the Institue has in promoting a Gonzales speech on intellectual property rights and cybercrime, there’s no doubt that they would like to curry his favor in order to get “the Justice Department to support legal efforts to change” public school curriculum to include “intelligent design.”
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