I completely agree with your assessment of the seriousness of the 
overall problem.


I was speaking, perhaps too obliquely, to the importance of accepting 
responsibility for one's own actions.

If the Washington Post is correct, the film was reviewed by senior 
science staff:

"Bruce Chapman, president of the Discovery Institute, says staffers at 
the Smithsonian's special events office told him they had screened the 
film for content on two occasions. An e-mail from Debbie Williams from 
the Office of Special Events at the Museum of Natural History, which he 
forwarded to The Post, states that the film was "reviewed by the 
Associate Director for Research and Collections of the Smithsonian 
National Museum of Natural History, and approval was granted for the 
film to be screened." (Williams did not return a message left on her 
office voice mail.)"

-- Nguyen, Tommy. "Smithsonian Distances Itself From Controversial 
Film." Washington Post. 2 June 2005: C1.


A quick search of the journal Science turns up ten news stories or 
editorials commenting on 'intelligent design' in just the last eight 
months, so I think it's safe to assume that the Associate Director for 
Research and Collections has heard of the concept.

That is why I suggested that the sponsorship was more likely 'senior 
administrators trying to push something through'. I am not suggesting 
that the AD-RC was necessarily the prime mover - the story reports two 
reviews - but obviously he approved the result.


-L.D.



On Jun 5, 2005, at 12:03 AM, MUSEUM-L automatic digest system wrote:

> Date:    Sat, 4 Jun 2005 13:14:41 EDT
> From:    Maggie Harrer <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Smithsonian out-maneuvered...
>
> --part1_1d4.3d499a78.2fd33b81_boundary
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>
> In a message dated 6/4/05 9:53:28 AM, [log in to unmask] writes:
>
>
>> The Discovery Institute may be slick but certainly no
>> more slick than any for-profit outfit that would ask to rent the
>> theatre space.
>>
>
> I beg to differ on this paragraph.   The Discovery Institute is 
> EXCEEDINGLY
> SLICK...and DEDICATED TO SLICKNESS..and by that you can read 
> OBFUSCATION.
> This was a VERY CALCULATED political agenda, and don't be naive and 
> compare them
> to "any other for-profit" asking to rent space.   Everything they do is
> carefully calculated.   Their goal is nothing less than creating a 
> theocracy out of
> our democracy.   The very fact that they have so many layers of
> disguise....including using "scientists" with degrees to give 
> "Intelligent Design" (which in
> itself is a word created to obfuscate, so that people won't realize it 
> is
> merely CREATIONISM - which is a religious philosophy and not a 
> science) the phony
> appearance of a science.
>
> The Discovery Institute is nothing more than a political lobbying
> organization determined to force creationism on our school systems in 
> place of real
> science and determined to replace our democracy with a theocracy.   DI 
> is a
> dangerious wolf in sheep's clothing, and anything they do has their 
> goal in mind.
>
> I am an extremely religious person, but history teaches that 
> theocracies are
> always the worst form of dictatorships - where many evils can be done 
> in the
> name of God.   The Taliban were simply doing what they believed their 
> "God"
> wanted them to do.   The Spanish Inquisition came out of the same form 
> of
> thinking.   Whenever a political group decides that they have God on 
> their side, and
> they are fighting for GOD, they are already wrong and the rest of us 
> are in
> great danger.
>
> Do not underestimate this group nor the importance of the museum and
> scientific response to their actions.   They duped the 
> Smithsonian....and now the
> Smithsonian needs to dig their way out of it.
>
> M

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