YDR: Dover trial, horns (or lack thereof) and all

From the York Daily Record we receive the following article how desperate the defense was to discredit Forrest.

Various ID organizations have been active trying ‘muddle the water’, underlining how afraid they must be of the scholarly evaluation of the Wedge Strategy and of Pandas and People.

HARRISBURG — Along about the 658th hour of Dr. Barbara Forrest’s stay on the witness stand, during Day Six of the Dover Panda Trial, I started looking for her horns.

Never did see them.

It was right about the time that defense lawyer Richard Thompson was repeatedly asking about her various memberships in such seditious, treasonous and just plain evil organizations as the New Orleans Secular Humanist Association and the ACLU that it occurred to me to look for her horns.

They weren’t there.

Now, it could be that she was hiding her tail under her trim black pantsuit, but frankly, I didn’t really look.

and why was Forrest treated this way?

So in addition to providing lessons in critical thinking and philosophy, the participants — Thompson, mostly — provided a literary lesson, giving the audience an ample dose of irony.

See, while he was accusing of Forrest of employing an ad hominem argument — an argument in which you don’t address the merits of the issue under debate and attack the messenger instead — he was employing an ad hominem argument.

What great fallacy did Forrest commit?

Near as I can tell, she used the words of the people who came up with the idea of intelligent design to show that it’s a religious idea — one based on a narrow view of Christianity — and not a scientific one.

She used their own words against them.

Evil, evil woman.

The media does get it after all. The Wedge, of Pandas and People, and Forrest are becoming liabilities to the ID movement. Expect more attempts to discredit Forrest or distantiate themselves from the Wedge… What other choice is there?