junk tanks

"Junk tanks" are closely allied to "hate tanks" in their donation-soliciting attempts to drive a wedge between facts and opinions.

The logo of the classic example of Entrenched American Ignorance, Anti-Discovery junk tank is parodied at right. "The Wedge Document" outlines the ultra-right-wing socio-political agenda of this bastion of misdirection, misrepresentation, and anti-science ignorance. In addition to their ignorance of science, these ultra-right wing anti-science advocates are ignorant of the actual socioeconomic pressures at play in the relaxation of society away from rigid, puritanical values.

Whereas the Anti-Discovery Institute promotes intelligent [sick] design theory, the midleadingly named Answers in Genesis promotes YEC pseudoscience. The material promoted by AiG constitutes some outright falsehoods, particularly in their Creation Museum.

It is a testament to the "junk" that passes for thinking in these "tanks" that founders and contributors actually believe that there is a one-to-one causative relationship between the scientific advances in understanding that began with Darwin and secular liberalism. To read "The Wedge Document" is to see the deluded paranoia that holds that an awareness that we are members of the animal kingdom immediately and irreparably removes any moral sense.

In the rigid, black-or-white "thinking" characteristic of bigotry, only punishment, to wit eternal punishment, could ensure that members of society will behave in moral or ethical ways. Such moralistic "thinking" is at a developmentally younger, lower moral level than more flexible moral thinking that acknowledges gray areas in assessment of what constitutes moral reasoning and socially appropriate behaviour.

Speaking of diminished moral sense, proponents of intelligent [sick] design theory perjured themselves when they declared in court that they, "do not speculate on the nature of the designer".

They must have thought that all listeners are as easily duped and as unconcerned with truth as their devotees when they made these palpably false denials. Even the briefest Internet search would reveal the inextricable, intentional connection between ‘intelligent [sick] design theory’ and fundamentalist Christian belief in creationism.

It is quite obvious that the pretentiously-titled Fellows of the so-called Discovery Institute are deliberately misrepresenting their true intentions, because to admit that intelligent [sick] design theory is merely creationism in disguise would be to admit that this so-called theory has no scientific merit. To admit that ‘intelligent [sick] design theory’ is creationism in disguise would further be to admit that the platform's purpose, which is so patently without scientific merit, is merely an overdressed attempt to insert religion into the classroom. This attempt is in deliberate contravention to the intent of the US Constitution, which set out to maintain a separation between Church and State.

Even in Bible Belt states, parents have proven so outraged at the betrayal of their childrens' education by pre-stacked, design-biased school boards, that parents have tossed the ‘intelligent [sick] design’ moles out on their ears at school-board election time.

The obvious fear of scientific knowledge evinced by the creationist platform bears testimony to the awareness, of even the least science literate, that the discoveries of science provide a superior explanation for the natural world than does the God of the Gaps. Not, of course, that those who applaud mendacity would ever be so honourable as to admit this truth.

Quo Vadis?
...section index...