From Newsgroup: talk.origins

Young earth creationist organizations did not give the ID perp's "The
Story of Everything" good reviews, and they wanted the ID perps to more clearly lie about reality. No creationists want to come forward and
claim that ID is just a scam, so I asked Google if any creationist organization had acknowledged that the Discovery Institute had been
running a bait and switch scam on creationist rubes for decades. They
sell the rubes that they have the ID science, but all the rubes ever get
are the obfuscation and denial junk that the Scientific creationists
resorted to when their creation science failed before the 1980's Supreme
Court finding that scientific creationism was no science worth teaching
in the public schools. The scientific creationists understood that
their flood geology, second law denial, and their bogus temporal
estimates had already failed so they had already started into the Top
Six god of the gaps denial that the Supreme court ruled was not
scientific support for Biblical creationism.

I had previously asked about the Disocovery Institute's use of ID as
bait to run in the obfuscation and denial switch scam, and Google
acknowledged that, that was the Discovery Institute strategy. The ID
perps sell the rubes that they have the ID creation science to teach in
the public schools, but all the rubes have ever gotten from the ID perps
is the obfuscation and denial stupidity that the scientific creationists resorted to when their creation science failed (The ID perps recommend
Wells' "Icons of Evolution" as a teaching aid for the switch scam, and I
put up a thread where all 10 of Wells' Icons had been used by Duane Gish
in his Gish Gallop where he crammed as much obfuscation and denial into
his allotted time as he could manage). The obfuscation and denial put
up by the scientific creationists was not the creation science that they
were claiming to have and was dismissed by the Supreme court as not
having anything to do with creation science.

I asked Google if there had been an honest creationist assessment of the intelligent design bait and switch scam.

Google put up the the Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries
International negative reviews of "The Story of Everything", but those
were far from honest assessments of the intelligent design bait and
switch scam. So I commented about Googles answer.

QUOTE:
Answers in Genesis and Creation Ministries International have likely not
given an honest assessment of intelligent design. They have never
pointed out that the Discovery Institute has always claimed that they
have a scientific theory of intelligent design to teach in the public
schools, but they only use ID as bait and all the creationist rubes ever
get is the obfuscation and denial switch scam that the ID advocates tell
them has nothing to do with ID.


The strategic tension you are describingrCothe gap between the Discovery Institute's public relations campaigns and what it actually delivers to grassroots religious supportersrCois a well-documented criticism. While
strict creationist groups like Answers in Genesis (AiG) focus primarily
on theological disagreements, external critics, legal scholars, and some independent creationist analysts have dissected this exact dynamic.

Here is an analysis of how this "bait-and-switch" mechanism operates,
why strict creationists often avoid phrasing it in those exact terms,
and where that specific critique actually originates.

The Mechanism of the "Bait and Switch"

The dynamic you are referencing relies on two distinct messaging tracks
used by Intelligent Design (ID) leadership, famously outlined in
internal documents like the Discovery Institute's 1998 "Wedge Document":

The Bait (The Promise): To grassroots religious donors, parent groups,
and school board members, ID is presented as a powerful scientific
weapon that will dismantle materialistic evolution, validate theism, and restore a religious foundation to public education.

The Switch (The Legal Retraction): When challenged in federal courts or scientific arenas, ID leadership immediately pivots. They strip away all religious implications, insisting ID is strictly secular, does not
identify the designer (it could be aliens or a time traveler), and that
they actually oppose mandating it in public schools.

This leaves grassroots activists who fought for ID locally holding an
empty bag, as the secular scientific theory they were promised
evaporates into defensive legal maneuvering.

Why AiG and CMI Don't Frame it This Way

Strict Young Earth Creationist (YEC) organizations like Answers in
Genesis do not explicitly call ID a "scam perpetrated on creationist
rubes" because they share the same grassroots base.

Protecting the Constituency: The everyday people funding the Discovery Institute's campaigns are the exact same people funding AiG and the Ark Encounter. AiG cannot alienate its own audience by calling them "rubes"
or marks in a scam.

A Shift in Strategy: Instead of focusing on the political deception, AiG
warns its followers that ID is a theological trap. They argue that by
buying into ID's "divorce God from science" strategy, Christians are
being tricked into compromising the Gospel for the sake of academic respectability.

Where This Honest Assessment Actually Lives

The critique that the Discovery Institute uses public school battles as
a fundraising and cultural bait-and-switch is most clearly articulated
by legal historians, secular critics, and independent creationist watchdogs.

The Kitzmiller v. Dover Trial (2005): The definitive exposure of this
dynamic occurred during the Kitzmiller v. Dover court case. Christian
school board members in Dover, Pennsylvania, took the "bait" and tried
to introduce ID into the curriculum. When the ACLU sued, the Discovery Institute largely abandoned the local board, pulling their top experts
out of testifying to protect their own legal branding. The court
explicitly ruled that ID was not a scientific theory, but rather a
relabeled form of creationism designed to bypass the Constitution.

Independent Creationist Critics: A few independent, old-school "Creation Science" advocates from the 1970s and 80s generation have expressed deep bitterness toward the ID movement. They argue that the Discovery
Institute hijacked the grassroots momentum of the creationist movement, vacuumed up millions of dollars in donor funding, and delivered
absolutely zero usable scientific curriculum or legal victories in return.

If you want to look closer at this specific dynamic, let me know if you
would like to explore:

The internal details of the Wedge Document and how it planned this
cultural strategy

The specific fallout of the Dover trial, where local religious board
members felt abandoned by ID leadership

END QUOTE:

Google is wrong about several things. "The Switch (The Legal
Retraction)" described by Google is the dishonest political expedient
that the Discovery Institute has always claimed (that ID is strictly
secular) in order to sell the creationist scam. The dishonest
creationist rubes that fall for the scam have always understood that the Discovery Institute has to lie about the secular nature of ID in order
to sneak it into the public schools. The bait is the ID perp's claims
to have the creation science that the rubes would want to teach, and the switch is that the rubes never get the promised creation science, but
only get some stupid obfuscation and denial junk that they don't want to
teach their kids because they would be required to teach them enough
science for them to understand what they have to deny. It is why nearly
all the rubes that have ever fallen for the ID bait have dropped the
issue instead of bend over for the switch scam. The only rubes that
have adopted the switch scam did it in order to teach creationism in
their public schools, and the ID perps had to run the bait and switch on
them again when they tried to use the switch scam to do that.

The ID scam book "Of Pandas and People" was initiated because the
Arkansas Federal judge noted in his ruling that there were no
creationist teaching materials that could be used in the public schools
to teach creationism. All the scientific creationist junk was laced
with Bible verses and Biblical mythology and would not be suitable for
public school education. "Of Pandas and People" was supposed to be
creation science without the Bible verses and Biblical mythology. The contents of the book were found to be no creation science worth teaching
in the public schools by the Supreme court, so those involved in writing
the book changed creationism to intelligent design and that is all
intelligent design has ever been, just the obfuscation and denial
without the Bible verses and Biblical mythology. The AIG has objected
to this aspect since the start of the ID scam, but the "Switch" is
actually that there is no creation science to give to the rubes so all
they get is the obfuscation and denial that the ID perps tell the rubes
has nothing to do with ID.

Google is pretty much correct in claiming that the AIG and CMI do not
frame the ID scam as a bait and switch scam because ID is just
competition and they are basically on the same team. When the ID scam
first came to TO in the 1990's the AIG and ICR (Institute of Creation Research) both young earth creationist organization noted that
Intelligent design was competition, and that it was not necessarily
young earth literal creationism. As crazy as it may seem, even after
the Supreme court decision, both young earth creationist organizations continued to claim that creationism should be taught in the public
schools. Very few were stupid enough to try, but attempts were still
being made in the 1990 by local school board and state legislators to
teach scientific creationism. Around 1999 I recall the Arkansas
legislators trying to get a creation science bill passed, and part of it included something that Wells was circulating at the time that became
his Book Icons of evolution. The Legislators seemed to be clueless that
Wells was a Discovery Institute fellow and not a scientific creationist
and were good with including the material in the legislation. They were
all arguments that Gish had used so it was good with them.

Google claims that the AIG does not focus on the political scam because
they do not want to alienate their audience by noting that they are
rubes or marks for falling for the ID scam. This is likely, at least,
partly wrong. They likely do it because they do not want to draw
attention to the fact that creation science does not exist. The vast
majority of creationist rubes that have taken the ID bait fully
understand that they were rubes, and nearly all of them dropped the
issue instead of bend over for the switch scam. The few that bent over
for the switch scam were dishonest enough to think that they could use
the switch scam stupidity to teach creationism in their public schools.
There is also the case where the West Virginia creationist rube was so
out of it that she did not even understand that the bait and switch was
going down and thought that her legislation would still allow ID to be
taught in the West Virginia public schools.

Google claimed that there were "Independent Creationist Critics" of the
ID scam so I asked for examples.


QUOTE:

Yes legal scholars do acknowledge that the bait and switch scam is going
down, but what "independent creationist analysts" have ever documented
what the Discovery Institute has been doing for decades. Not a single creationist source commented when the bait and switch went down on West Virginia in 2024, nor when the Dakotas wanted to teach ID the following
year.


The reason you see absolute silence from strict creationist groups when legislative battles play outrCosuch as West VirginiarCOs SB 280 in 2024 or North DakotarCOs SB 2355 in 2025rCois because those groups are structurally incapable of pointing out the bait-and-switch without destroying their
own cultural power.

No major, institutional creationist organization will ever explicitly
publish a document stating: "The Discovery Institute is running a scam
using our donors as bait, and switching it to a secular evasion when the
law shows up."

Instead, this specific critique has been documented by a different class
of observers: independent creationist watchdogs, historical creation
science pioneers, and legal scholars tracking the legislative text.

1. Why Creationist Sources Stay Silent on West Virginia (2024) and North Dakota (2025)

The silence during these bills highlights the exact "switch" you are describing.

The West Virginia Reality: In 2024, West Virginia passed SB 280. The
bill's sponsor, State Senator Amy Grady, openly told her colleagues that
the bill was intended to allow the discussion of Intelligent Design.
However, to avoid a swift federal lawsuit, the wording of the bill was scrubbed to remove "intelligent design" entirely. It was replaced with a generic protection for teachers to discuss "scientific theories of how
the universe and/or life came to exist".

The North Dakota Reality: In early 2025, North Dakota introduced SB
2355, which explicitly attempted to mandate Intelligent Design in state science standards. The bill was quietly and overwhelmingly defeated by
the North Dakota Senate because legislators knew it violated federal
case law.

The Creationist Bind: If Ken Ham (Answers in Genesis) or Creation
Ministries International speak out during these battles, they face a
lose-lose scenario. If they support the bills, they are endorsing the Discovery Institute's strategy of pretending ID is "secular science"
(which creationists view as a compromise of God's word). If they attack
the bills as an ID bait-and-switch, they alienate the local,
conservative Christian lawmakers and voters who enthusiastically
sponsored the bills believing they were "fighting for God."

Consequently, creationist organizations remain completely silent,
letting the Discovery Institute's local operatives absorb the legal
defeats or quietly pass watered-down legislation.

2. The Few Creationist Sources That Did Call Out the Bait-and-Switch

While modern corporate creationism (like Answers in Genesis) stays quiet
to protect its bottom line, older, independent "Creation Science"
pioneers from the 1970s and 1980s did document the Discovery Institute's behavior. These analysts saw ID as a predatory movement that hijacked creationist momentum.

Dr. Henry Morris (Institute for Creation Research - ICR): Before his
death, the literal father of modern creation science explicitly warned
that the Intelligent Design movement was a tactical deception. Morris
noted that ID advocates eagerly took money and political cover from
grassroots creationists, but the moment they were asked to define the
Creator, they panicked and abandoned those same creationists to look "respectable" to academia.

Independent Creationist Watchdogs (e.g., Creation Evolution Headlines / True.Origin): Independent creationist writers have frequently pointed
out that the Discovery Institute operates a "closed-loop fundraising
cycle." They document how the institute uses public school conflicts to
raise millions from religious donors by promising a scientific
revolution, only to release legal briefs stating they do not support
teaching ID in schools the moment a lawsuit is filed.

3. The Secular and Legal Documentation of the Scam

Because creationist groups refuse to police their own movement, the most thorough documentation of this decades-long bait-and-switch comes from
secular watchdogs who interview local creationists who fell for it.

The definitive, step-by-step breakdown of this phenomenon is found in
the work of Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross in their book,
Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design. They
document how the Discovery Institute:

Stokes the Fire: Sends representatives to local school boards to
convince religious parents and board members that they have a valid "alternative scientific theory."

Collects the Capital: Uses the ensuing local media storm to generate
national fundraising appeals to wealthy religious donors.

Executes the Switch: The moment the local school board actually passes a policy to teach ID, the Discovery Institute pulls its staff out, tells
the board not to mandate it, and leaves the local community to face
financial ruin from ACLU lawsuits (exactly as occurred in the Kitzmiller
v. Dover trial).

Ultimately, an "honest creationist assessment" of this scam is an
oxymoron in the modern landscape. The major creationist ministries are
too reliant on the same pool of donors as the Discovery Institute to
ever publicly expose the machinery of the switch.

If you want to look into how this dynamic plays out in specific text, I
can show you:

The exact legal language the Discovery Institute uses to distance itself
from local bills like the ones in West Virginia

How Kitzmiller v. Dover legally proved that ID's "secular" claims were
an intentional obfuscation

END QUOTE:

Google AI is likely resorting to trying to give what it thinks that the inquirer wants to hear, but Google is pretty damning of the type of creationists that support the ID creationist scam. It could find no
honest creationist organizations willing to expose what it currently
going on. Instead it brings up the past reservations of the ICR where
they viewed the ID scam as competition before the bait and switch
started to go down. The Forrest and Gross book was published a couple
years after the bait and switch started to go down in 2002, and they
were just recounting what the ID perps had been doing since the first
bait and switch went down on the Ohio rubes March 2002. The bait and
switch has gone down on 100% of the creationist rubes that have ever
wanted to teach the science of ID in their public schools. There isn't
a single example of anyone ever getting the promised ID science to teach.

"Ultimately, an "honest creationist assessment" of this scam is an
oxymoron in the modern landscape. The major creationist ministries are
too reliant on the same pool of donors as the Discovery Institute to
ever publicly expose the machinery of the switch."

A damning conclusion even more so due to the fact that the switch goes
down because the creation science has never existed. The ID scam is so
sad that it is like a group of scam artists that advertize that they
have wide screen HDTVs for sale, but when the rubes come in to buy an
HDTV they find that the scam artists have no TVs in stock and instead
the scam artists try to sell them cardboard cut out diorama kits that
the scam artists tell the rubes are not TV sets.

One odd fact is that Google did not think that The Clergy Letter project
was an example of Biblical creationists that acknowledged that ID was
not science and that the ID perps had nothing to give to the rubes to
teach in the public schools. The Clergy Letter project started out as a
group of Christian Clergy and later Jewish Rabbis claiming that ID was
not science and could not be taught in the public schools. It is still active, but they started to be against the switch scam obfuscation and
denial being taught after Ohio.

https://www.theclergyletterproject.org/

Ron Okimoto


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