How to spot a hidden religious agenda
As a book reviews editor at New Scientist, I often come across so-called science books which after a few pages reveal themselves to be harbouring ulterior motives. I have learned to recognise clues that the author is pushing a religious agenda. As creationists in the US continue to lose court battles over attempts to have intelligent design taught as science in federally funded schools, their strategy has been forced to… well, evolve. That means ensuring that references to pseudoscientific concepts like ID are more heavily veiled. So I thought I’d share a few tips for spotting what may be religion in science’s clothing.
See comments below.
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or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
Greg,
This is the Amanda Gefter article that was pulled from the New Scientist website because of creationists threats to sue.
I’m sorry if my formatting misled you about the authorship of the piece. The author is Amanda Gefter (whose name I put at the top of the piece) and it was originally published in New Scientist. Following a legal complaint New Scientist recently removed an online copy from its website, and I just put a copy on my blog because I think the absence of the piece from the web causes more damage than I could do by publishing it in my little blog–it seems quite harmless to me, though I understand that New Scientist’s lawyers may give more cautious advice.
Oh, interesting. The blogosphere can be that way. I had a bunch of people on facebook congratulating me for getting a column at slate, but it was Rebecca Skloot getting the job………..
Well, I will revise and let the comments speak for themselves…
what is bernard d’espagnat agenda? god??
Good link. It’s a shame that the lawyers got to New Scientist. Juries keep giving huge awards for idiotic lawsuits, making frivolous lawsuits (and therefore the threat of frivolous lawsuits) profitable. I’d sure like to see smarter juries so that these things become unprofitable. I know, but it’s good to have dreams.
If you want smarter juries, you’ve got to keep the dumb ones from reproducing.
Nathan: If the juries are selected at random in the States as they are in Canada, does that mean we have to skew the whole population to the smarter end of the scale in order to kill off the “less-fit” juries?
(I’m intentionally misinterpreting your comment because I don’t want to think of what a jury reproduction would look like — probably a bit too much like a scene from Eyes Wide Shut for my taste, too many arms and legs everywhere!)
“If you want smarter juries, you’ve got to keep the dumb ones from reproducing.”
I let that go, but been eating at me. I was thinking that education would be a better place to start than eugenics. With education you don’t have to engage in forced sterilization to give a kid a good knowledge of science.