It’s a strategy

Burt at Humble Monkey makes the point that Creationists aren’t ignorant; they have a strategy:

Few people who didn’t grow up in a creationist tradition understand them. Every time I hear someone saying or read someone writing that creationists are stupid, it just irks me. I don’t object on the basis of them being too mean; I object because they’re missing the point. Creationists that appeal to ignorance and fear aren’t being stupid when they argue; there’s an intent there, a strategy, that is simply missed by calling such people stupid…Until [Andrew] Gumbel’s article, though, media coverage has failed to identify the desire by ID creationists to confuse the public. In other words, Gumbel is one of the first journalists to point out that, to an intelligent design creationist, the whole point of criticizing evolutionary theory is to criticize evolutionary theory.

It is important for advocates of science to recognize this strategy because there is a clear link between the beliefs creationists hold, the threats to those beliefs that they perceive from verified science, the fear they have from those threats, and the reactions to those threats that they have. Several points and implications about this understanding of creationist strategy merit mention…

Burt concludes:

So, fear, vanity, and politics seem to be the main motivators of creationism. I appeal to science supporters to recognize that stupidity just doesn’t make that list.