Darwin v the Money Changers at the Church

DarkSyde, at dailykos, scored an interview with DR Barbara Forrest, author of Creationism's Trojan Horse. DR Forrest was instrumental as an expert witness in the Kitzmiller v Dover case, which resulted in a triumph of the empirical method over wishful fantasy thinking (evolution v "Intelligent Design" creationism). She's been fighting the good fight for a very very long time. (Note to younger liberal minds - it has always been thus, and likely always will be. Being liberal means there is never any immediate gratification.) "Barbara: More is at stake in the ID issue than science education, though that's important enough by itself. ID creationists must not be viewed in a vacuum. The insidious feature of ID is not only its attack on public education, but the fact that ID creationism is another column in the Religious Right's decades-old attack on secular, constitutional democracy. And ID proponents are plugged into the conservative political and Religious Right power structure. As most people now know, their supporters include the president of the United States. They also include U.S. senators (Rick Santorum, Bill Frist, John McCain, Judd Gregg, and Sam Brownback) and congressmen (e.g., House Majority Leader John Boehner). Three state governors, Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky, Mark Sanford of South Carolina, and Rick Perry of Texas, have announced their support for teaching ID in public school science classes. The Discovery Institute creationists are the most politically well-connected creationists with whom we have had to deal. This is what makes ID a significant and dangerous phase in the history of American creationism. Their attack on evolution symbolizes their contempt for public education, modern science, and ultimately the Enlightenment ideals on which American constitutional democracy is based. The Wedge Document clearly shows that ID creationists want to overthrow secular culture and public policy, to which the only alternative is some type of theocracy." -- As a not so tangential aside: The Bible contains a pretty famous story of Christ chasing away the money changers from the church - con men who exploited religion as a means to cynically profiteer. The so-called "Christian Right" rather obviously practices in diametric opposition to the teachings and philosophy of Christ as described in the Bible - it promotes hate and intolerance and triumphalism; instead, right wing fundamentalist faux "Christians" wear their "religion" like a suit of clothes, so as to enjoy profit from the association, politically and financially. I humbly submit that these people should more properly be identified as "Money Changer Christians." They are simply not genuine Christians; they are precisely the sort of people Christ chased away from his church. It's long past time to expose the charade.