Creativity, Accuracy and Persuasiveness: The Disco’Tute calls on students to preach
09Jan. 09
“Academic Freedom Day”, February 12th, is to be celebrated by students everywhere, in a bid to get the criticisms of Darwin’s theory of evolution noticed and taught in public schools across the USA…
…or so proclaims the new website “academicfreedomday.com”, a spin-off site from the Discovery Institute, the infamous intelligent design think-tank from Seattle, Washington.
The website, for so long devoid of any real content, has recently updated itself in the form of a contest, offering $500 to the lucky Grand Prize winner. What is the contest? Well, the Discovery Institute wants students from across the US (and the world) to send in essays or videos that highlight the quest for academic freedom: for example, one may write an essay on the right for teachers to “teach the controversy” in their science classrooms. Essays may be no longer than 2000 words, and videos must be no longer than 5 minutes.
Entries will be judged by none other than:
- Michael Behe, the author of “Darwin’s Black Box” and populariser of the Irreducible Complexity argument for intelligent design
- William Dembski, the author of “The Design Inference” and populariser of the Specified Complexity argument for intelligent design
- Guillermo Gonzalez, the author of “The Privileged Planet” and populariser of the Fine-Tuned Planet argument for intelligent design
- Jonathan Wells, the author of “Icons of Evolution” and populariser of the Shotgun Blast argument for intelligent design (not an argument recognised by Wells himself, and for good reason)
- Phillip E. Johnson, the author of “Darwin on Trial” and populariser of the Intelligent Design concept
I have the utmost confidence that these judges will accurately pick the entry that best describes their own viewpoint. After all, it is their viewpoint.
However, I think these guys might get a bit tired of hearing their side of the story all the time. So, in a completely unselfish gesture, I will, myself, write an essay in the Academic Freedom Day contest. It will be creative. It will be accurate. It will be persuasive. It will be no more than 2000 words. In fact, it will follow all of the guidelines laid out on the contest page.
When it is done, I will post it here for all of you to see and it will be submitted to the Discovery Institute via the means laid out on the contest page.
I hope they appreciate my gesture.
Tags: Academic Freedom Day, Discovery Institute, Evolution, Intelligent Design
January 9th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
I think it would be a good idea for other people who are eligible to send in articles too! :D
January 10th, 2009 at 12:24 am
I eagerly await your essay. Something tells me it’ll be a good read.
January 11th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Nice article and good luck with your “assignment”.
I do have one nit pick. By including links to the Academic Freedom Day web site, you are actually helping them by boosting their “relevance” on search engines like Google. One way around this is to modify the HTML and include rel=“nofollow” as an attribute on the link. This tells Google and other engines not to include the link in it’s relevance calculations.
Here’s an article at Skeptical Software tools about the same issue:
http://skeptools.wordpress.com/2008/09/03/not-just-for-spam-anymore-nofollow-for-skepticism/
January 12th, 2009 at 9:48 am
Nice work, I’m sure there will be others who will do the same. Hopefully in the course of viewing the entries, those guys will get a hefty dose of actual science. They’re asking for it.
January 12th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
I totally saw this coming! lol
Can’t wait to read it. 2000 words? Yikes, but there’s just so much that needs to be said.
Good luck!
January 12th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
@Paul, thanks very much for pointing out the lack of the nofollow attribute on those links. I corrected this yesterday. Cheers!