From Robert Sheldon at Uncommon Descent:
Pennock starts out with the worst name-calling he can think of, calling Johnson “illegitimate” and a “bastard” child of his two worst nemeses: fundamentalism and post-modernism. Then on page 4 he whines that Johnson is name-calling when he says Darwinism is a creation-myth. Somehow I get the sense that this isn’t going to be a cool-headed, objective analysis.
In question is Pennock’s article for Science & Education, “The Postmodern Sin of Intelligent Design Creationism.” Sheldon claims that Pennock called Johnson “illegitimate” and a “bastard” child of fundamentalism and post-modernism. To the article!
“Bastard” appears in this context:
Intelligent Design Creationism is the bastard child of Christian fundamentalism and postmodernism. In particular, I want to show, it was born through the influence of Critical Legal Studies upon Phillip Johnson, who was the godfather of the ID movement and its philosophical approach to attacking evolution.
Was Pennock name-calling Johnson? Yes, as a “godfather.” But he did not call Johnson, but instead intelligent design creationism, a “bastard” child. Way to skew Pennock’s words.
What of “illegitimate”? The word does not even appear in Pennock’s article, yet Sheldon puts it in quotes in his remark.
By skewing one word and just plain putting another in Pennock’s mouth, Sheldon is, somehow, not giving us a “cool-headed, objective analysis.”
