Re: ahmanson, etc.

Keith Miller wrote:
"For those interested, Ed Larson gave an extended presentation on the
whole history of the Discovery Institute during the symposium held at
Case Western Reserve last Fall. He began with the founding of the DI
and discussed the involvement of Ahmanson. It was an interesting
history filled with strange turns and seeming internal contradictions."

This history and the role of Ahmanson (Phil Johnson dedicated one of his
books to the Ahmansons) is discussed at some length in the 2004 book
"Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design" by Barbara Forrest and Paul
Gross. The book (which I thought had some worthwhile material but wouldn't
recommend highly) showed up some of the "internal contradictions", such as early
declarations by people like Johnson and Dembski that influencing public school
curricula was a direction they did NOT want to go. The book also painted
with too broad a brush in trying to tie "the Wedge" to proponents of "theocracy".

An entertaining bit in the book was the citation of a Discovery Institute
spokesman referring to Answers in Genesis as "guitar-strumming hillbillies".
Guess he didn't get the "big tent" memo.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Allan H. Harvey, Boulder, Colorado | SteamDoc@aol.com
"Any opinions expressed here are mine, and should not be
 attributed to my employer, my wife, or my cats"
Received on Tue Feb 1 22:29:22 2005