Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Mr. Natural
Lately we've observed an interesting, if so far unremarked, word substitution in publicity coming out of John Calvert's Intelligent Design Network. Where once Calvert railed against teaching evolution in public schools because of its methodological "naturalism" he now opposes it for its heartless "materialism."Teaching real science in science classes, according to Calvert, will "indoctrinate young children in Materialism, the philosophy that dominates Russian culture."
Suddenly the deadly theat posed by "naturalism" has disappeared from the ID Network's lexicon in the same way that last week's explanation for the invasion of Iraq has gone missing from Tony Snow's White House briefings.
Do you suppose Calvert's ID Network and the Discovery Institute have been doing some focus groups? Perhaps they found that what they saw as the dire threat of "naturalism" didn't resonate well with people outside the fundamentalist bunker.
Or maybe they drove past a "natural" foods store, or bought a bottle of "all natural" vitamins. Perhaps they even took their nose out of the Genesis long enough to go out and wander around in the "natural" world.
We're unsure what this latest conversion entails. We don't really mind if Calvert goes camouflage, but we hope he doesn't go natural -- that would be too much.
