Ben Carson was the keynote? Wow. How the mighty have fallen.
The ID movement crashed and burned when their “teach the controversy” push against evolution in science curricula also crashed and burned in 2018-19. (I wrote about it back then for ASA: Teaching the Controversy in Texas.) The Texas State Board of Education (elected) approved it for the 9th grade biology curriculum, which is when high school biology is taught in Texas, but textbook publishers refused to include the BS, and teachers sued because they were on their own to find materials and the DI’s suggested stuff (like population genetics and organic chemistry) was far beyond 9th-graders’ heads. Courts agreed that it was ridiculous.
With its education initiative and academic journal, Bio-Complexity, dead in the water, Discovery has spent the last five years unsuccessfully trying to latch itself onto the MAGA culture war, hence the “America Is at Stake” tag on the conference and Ben Carson as the keynote speaker.
Discovery Institute is playing in the minor leagues now. They’re irrelevant to the larger conversation.
