Creationism by Any Other Name

film review by Charles G. Lambdin

Intelligent design (ID) is a dressing up of the old “argument from design,” with technical jargon added to lend a thin veneer of scientific credibility. ID advocates’ opportunistic tactics, which have more in common with politicians than scientists, have been described as the “wedge” strategy — an attempt to gain academic acceptance by maintaining a presence in academic and scientific venues.

A prime example of this is the film The Privileged Planet, a contemporary classic of pseudoscience. The film was produced by the Discovery Institute, a conservative think-tank whose expressed goal is the promotion of Intelligent Design. The film gained a degree of notoriety when the Discovery Institute boasted that The Privileged Planet was screening at none other than the Smithsonian Institute itself, with the implied endorsement of that august body.

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