Kevin Wirth
When I was growing up, I spent some of my summers on my grandfather’s farm in South Dakota. It was a fantastic place to run around, although my mother was convinced I’d get maimed.
She was always telling me horror stories about how dangerous a farm is. Allegedly one of her cousins or a friend of a cousin or a cousin of a friend of a cousin of a friend was eaten by pigs. Supposedly this cousin was walking on top of the fence, slipped, and fell into the pig pen. The ravenous pigs descended upon her in a piranha-like frenzy. By the time her father could chase the pigs off, all that was left of her was her hair.
Mothers are full of scary stories.
Another such tale seemed to change a bit with each retelling. She didn’t want me to get too close to the grain elevator while it was running. That’s what she called it, but I guess it was actually a hay elevator. It was a conveyor belt. One end was at ground level. The other end was above a door in the roof of the granary. You shovel the hay onto one end, and the conveyor belt deposits the hay into the loft.
She told me that when she was in school, one of the kids at one of the other farms was loading the hay elevator and he got his arm caught on the belt. Ripped his arm clear off! She saw that one-armed boy every day at school from then on.
But then there was the time she told me not to get too close to the combine. Way back when she was in school, there was this kid at one of the other farms. He had been helping harvest the crop when he got too close to the combine. It ripped his arm clear off!
Then there was the time she told me not to get too close to the windrower, and, well, you can guess the rest. I assumed that her school was populated entirely by one-armed boys.
One day I discovered an old wagon out in one of the fields. This required further investigation, so I started climbing all over it. My grandfather came by and said “What are you doing in the manure spreader?”
I ran out of that thing faster than a creationist running from an evolution book.
Speaking of manure spreaders, I came across our old friend Kevin Wirth on the internet today.
I was searching to see what sort of damage Access Research Network has been doing lately and came across this thread in a forum at the Atheist Foundation of Australia.
One of the members there, who goes by the handle “Eccles”, discovered that ARN was giving away a screensaver of Hubble images. He didn’t really scope out the ARN website too closely. He just downloaded the program and installed it on his computer. He tells us what happened next:
When I downloaded it and ran it, to my horror the images were peppered with BS about “Intelligent Design”. I immediately uninstalled that screen saver, unsubscribed from the site and sent the director, Dennis Warner a nasty e-mail.
Before long, Eccles discovered a very large turd in his email box. It was plopped there, of course, by ARN’s “Director of Turd Disbursement and Misinformation”, Kevin Wirth.
Let’s see what manure Kevin has been spreading in Australia.
I was dismayed to read your email to Dennis (which he has requested that I respond to).
…
First and foremost, we do not exist to proseltyze [sic] religion or religious views. This is a huge, but unfortunately common mistake about our mission.
The only mistake is that they weren’t able to come up with a scheme less obviously religious than Intelligent Design creationism.
Meanwhile, you should read our mission statement at ARN.ORG. Nowhere in it will you find anything about our intent to promote religion.
Duh! If they told people they had a religious agenda, they wouldn’t be able to sneak it into the schools!
Secondly, we do not knowingly promote “lies” about Intelligent Design as you claim.
Sure you do, Kevin. You flat-out claim that Intelligent Design creationism is not religious. It is by definition. The designer has all of the characteristics of God. Ergo, he is God.
While it is true that ID is consistent with many religious views, we don’t exist to promote religion of any kind.
This statement is patently absurd. My best guess is that Kevin thinks that because ID creationism is consistent with many religions, it is therefore not a promotion of religion. This is the sort of logic that leads high schools to think it is OK to have a prayer at graduation ceremonies. (“It’s a generic prayer, so it’s OK!”)
Our focus is on providing resources related to Intelligent Design, and we are frankly not terribly concerned about the religious background of those who advocate for or against this position. We’re more interested in the scientific and philosophical arguments related to this topic, and are willing to allow others to think and talk about where they think the evidence leads.
There are no significant scientific arguments for ID creationism. And of course he’s willing to let others follow wherever it leads. The purpose of Intelligent Design creationism is to give the faithful a plausible-sounding excuse for rejecting science.
Our main concern here at ARN is that you are being given an opportunity to explore information options about ID not found at very many other web sites.
You know, web sites that are about reality and facts.
But it also seems to me that that the fact of the matter is, a reliance upon the Almighty was very much a part of the founding our nation. That’s just a fact, pure and simple.
It’s true. Many of the founding fathers were religious. In fact, there was quite a diversity of Christian sects throughout the colonies in those days. That’s why the First Amendment, protecting religious freedom, was so important to them. So then why is Kevin trying to circumvent that protection by getting creationism taught in the schools?
We also make a distinction between Creation and ID. Creationists openly advocate connections to religious texts while ID prefers to focus on scientific and philosophical considerations
We’re religious. We just don’t focus on it!
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that simply because Intelligent Design is consistent with the idea of a “God of the Universe” that we are attempting to shove that thought or any other religious notion down your throat.
That’s misdirection. He doesn’t have a specific religious goal. ID creationism’s purpose is to provide cover for others to get God into the schools and other government institutions. That’s just those folks’ “academic freedom”. Guess what, Kevin. Facts and data are academic. Religious beliefs are not. Nobody has the “freedom” to inject religion into the classroom.
