Why not invite the Flat Earth Society? Or the Earth-centrists?

DI has zero interest in real science, and uses every dirty trick and political advantage it can to discredit serious science that conflicts with their Medieval belief system. They are headhunters on a “mission from God.”

These people don’t seek discourse. They don’t want discussion or compromise. They aren’t looking to understand scientific point of view.

They want to utterly banish centuries of progress in the name of religion. And they will use whatever means it takes to discredit and destroy you.

What scientists fail to understand is that this is war from Christian fanatics.

You don’t seek cooperation with people who are out to destroy you.

One would have to be careful to accurately present the pseudoscientific claim and not enrage the Tone Trolls by pulling a Galileo. The Mythbusters have a good model for this: they present the claim, do some experiments, and present their conclusions. They don’t denigrate the people who believe foolish notions; they just show they’re wrong (and blow stuff up).

For example, “What predictions can be made with the theory of evolution? Let’s say you were a fisherman and you only kept fish that were larger than some arbitrary limit. About once a month you visit your favorite stream and remove all the big fish. Evolution predicts that after a while, fish that for whatever reason don’t grow larger than your limit will begin to breed more than the ones you eat all the time. Eventually, there will be no more big fish in the stream.

“As it turns out, there were two very similar streams in Canada, one that got fished and one that no one ever visited. The first stream has a healthy population. The fish in the second stream are undersized and malformed. So the Theory of Evolution predicts that the six-inch limit is a bad idea and here’s an example that confirms that prediction.*

“What kind of prediction can we make about Intelligent Design? Well, we don’t know how they did their work or exactly what they did, so for wildlife management, ID is useless.”

* Let Me Google That For You. I can’t remember where I read about that, but it was within the past year or two.

Better to remain above all that and just stick to teaching science. If the nonsense pops up from time to time, whack it good & hard right on the spot, but don’t go seeking it out.

The way to deal with creationists (and climate denialists, etc. etc.) isn’t by _explaining_, it’s by hitting them with blunt ridicule that is calculated to make their positions as socially unacceptable as picking one’s nose at the dinner table. Take advantage of social and tribal psychology wherever possible, to isolate them and isolate their followers.

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That said, the lawsuit is a splendid idea, so long as it’s a slam-dunk to win. The goal should be to drain creationist coffers as far as possible. Realistically, those coffers will quickly be topped-up again by the usual extremist funding sources, but those sources have their limits too. Think in terms of attrition: wear them down over time.

When it becomes too expensive for plutocrats to support theocrats, the plutocrats will turn elsewhere and the theocrats will be left high & dry.

Thanks.

FYI – You wrote “in appropriately so” above, but I believe you mean “inappropriately so”. Very different meaning. 😉

I certainly didn’t mean to give that impression. That may be their counter argument to the suit against them, but it is not there “counter suit” … the reasons for that are given in the bullet list farther down in the post.

I expect he AFA and the DI will start spreading a disinformation campaign about how the CSC is censoring them.

As I recall, they totally did that already. Hasn’t had much of an effect.

Of course, by “properly fair and balanced” I mean one that evaluates the hypotheses for scientific rigor, supporting evidence, and contributions to scientific knowledge.

Yes! Let’s propose that the CSC do a series of talks, one on Intelligent Design, one on Bigfoot (that’s a topic of widespread interest in California) and one on the newly proposed idea that we live on a “carbon starved” planet ( http://tinyurl.com/23vw3nf ) for the inaugural.