The religious and conservative media are parroting the Discovery Institute in the case of Eric Hedin, the Ball State University professor who taught intelligent design and proselytized for Christianity in a science class. Even the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) simply reproduced a press release from the Discovery Institute about the 7,000 signatures they collected supporting Hedin’s “academic freedom.”

One reader thought the WSJ article was a news piece, but didn’t notice this small disclaimer at the bottom:

What the hell?

Anyway, the Christian News Network, which has now shown itself to be The Anti-Evolution Christian News Network, continues to report on and defend Hedin and intelligent design. In their own post on the Hedin petition, they simply recycle reporting from the Muncie Star-Times, the Discovery Institute, and the Ball State student news paper. (Don’t journalists do their own investigation any more?)

There’s not much new there, but I do love the new way that they characterize me:

Discovery Institute’s David Klinghoffer agrees with West, saying that the committee formation was directly influenced by Jerry Coyne, a radical evolutionary atheist who called Hedin “the nutty professor,” and first alerted the Freedom from Religion Foundation about his questionable teaching.

As far as I know, Klinghoffer never called me a “radical evolutionary atheist,” so I suspect this is the Christian paper’s own characterization. I’m not quite sure what a “radical evolutionary atheist is” (is it an atheist who evolves?), but it definitely an attempt to dismiss me (and Hedin’s other opponents) with a slur.

I will thus characterize Klinghoffer, the Christian News Network, and the Discovery Institute as “radical creationist superstitionists.”

h/t: Diane