Tag Archives: Smithsonian Institution

News

Does government spend money as well as Christian taxpayers?

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Here’s an interesting story from CNS News showing how the money of Christian taxpayers is spend by the Smithsonian Institution, which receives 65% of its annual $761 million budget from taxpayers. (H/T ECM, Neil Simpson’s latest round-up)

Excerpt:

The federally funded National Portrait Gallery, one of the museums of the Smithsonian Institution, is currently showing an exhibition that features images of an ant-covered Jesus, male genitals, naked brothers kissing, men in chains, Ellen DeGeneres grabbing her breasts, and a painting the Smithsonian itself describes in the show’s catalog as “homoerotic.”

The exhibit, “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” opened on Oct. 30 and will run throughout the Christmas Season, closing on Feb. 13.

[…]”These themes, historic and artistic, come together in ‘Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,’ the first major exhibition to examine the influence of gay and lesbian artists in creating modern American portraiture,” says the plaque. “‘Hide/Seek’ chronicles how, as outsiders, gay and lesbian artists occupied a position that turned to their advantage, making essential contributions to both the art of portraiture and to the creation of modern American culture.”

The Smithsonian Institution has an annual budget of $761 million, 65 percent of which comes from the federal government, according to Linda St. Thomas, the Smithsonian’s chief spokesperson. The National Portrait Gallery itself received $5.8 million in federal funding in fiscal year 2010, according to St. Thomas. It also received $5.8 million in federal funding in fiscal 2009, according to the museum’s annual report. The gallery’s overall funding in that year was $8 million.

[…]Co-curator David Ward told CNSNews.com the “Hide/Seek” exhibit is in keeping with the National Portrait Gallery’s mission.

[…]“Hide/Seek evolved from the Portrait Gallery’s ongoing commitment to represent the diversity of our people in recognizing the contribution that gay and lesbian Americans made to American art and culture during the last century,” Ward said.

The museum claims that the taxpayer money is only used to pay for the building, etc., not the exhibits themselves, but:

Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute and a former senior economist on the congressional Joint Economic Committee, told CNSNews.com, “If the Smithsonian didn’t have the taxpayer-funded building, they would have no space to present the exhibit, right? In my own view, if someone takes taxpayer money, then I think the taxpayers have every right to question the institutions where the money’s going.”

“Think about the Washington Post,” he said. “They don’t have to publish every op-ed that they get, right? They own the platform. In this case [the Smithsonian Institution], the taxpayers own the platform and so the taxpayers should decide what is presented on that platform.”

Click through to the articles for all the details of what the secular left considers to be “art”. Warning: it’s pretty sick stuff.

This is why I always recommend to socially conservative Christians – if you want to help the poor, help the poor with your own money. Do not let the government have your money thinking that they will use it to help the poor. They will never use it to honor Christ the way you could use it to honor Christ. In many cases, they could make it harder or even impossible for you to live out your authentic Christian life in the public square. (Think of the movie “Expelled” for instance)

Commentary

Climategate e-mails recall tactics used by Darwinists to stifle dissent

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Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, writing in Human Events.

Excerpt:

There have been parallels cases where e-mail traffic was released showing Darwinian scientists displaying the same contempt for fair play and academic openness as we see now in the climate emails. One instance involved a distinguished astrophysicist at Iowa State University, Guillermo Gonzalez, who broke ranks with colleagues in his department over the issue of intelligent design in cosmology. Released under the Iowa Open Records Act, e-mails from his fellow scientists at ISU showed how his department conspired against him, denying Dr. Gonzales tenure as retribution for his views.

To me, the most poignant correspondence emerging from CRU e-mails involves discussion about punishing a particular editor at a peer-reviewed journal who was defying the orthodox establishment by publishing skeptical research.

In 2004, a peer-reviewed biology journal at the Smithsonian Institution published a technical essay of mine presenting a case for intelligent design. Colleagues of the journal’s editor, an evolutionary biologist, responded by taking away his office, his keys and his access to specimens, placing him under a hostile supervisor and spreading disinformation about him. Ultimately, he was demoted, prompting an investigation of the Smithsonian by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.

Global warming alarmism and Darwinism are two sides of the same coin. The former is embraced to achieve socialism, the later is embraced to achieve secularism, which leads to moral relativism. Neither is true, so neither is interested in authentic scientific inquiry nor open-minded debates with dissenters. Non-theists don’t have a worldview that rationally justifies the moral requirements of scientific inquiry, so for them science is just something to be twisted to support hedonism.

News

Darwinian fundamentalists burn new intelligent design movie at the stake

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Evolution News reports on the latest censorship by the ignorant, close-minded, witch-hunting Darwinians.

Excerpt:

The knee-jerk response of Darwin’s defenders is to suppress any message that challenges Darwinian evolution’s orthodoxy. Case in point, this past week the Los Angeles Daily News reported that the California Science Center, a “department of the State of California,” banned the screening of the new intelligent design film, Darwin’s Dilemma, after the screening became public knowledge and there was intense pressure to cancel.

And get this, from what we’ve heard the intense pressure came from the Smithsonian Institution with which they are affiliated. That’s right, the very same Smithsonian Institution that trampled evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg’s academic freedoms. The very same Smithsonian Institution that apologized for allowing another ID film, The Privileged Planet, to be shown at the Institution’s Museum of Natural History.

In this instance the American Freedom Alliance entered into what was presumably a legally binding contract with the California Science Center when it rented its facilities. That they would be a screening a pro-ID film was never a secret. The Science Center apparently had no problem with the film being screened there and okayed the contract. So, who did have a problem? Why did the screening have to be canceled?

It happens all the time.

This isn’t the first time a major academic or scientific institution has trampled academic freedom of scientists who are proponents of intelligent design. Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez was the victim of very shameful treatment by the faculty and board of regents at Iowa State University. Dr. William Dembski was hounded out of Baylor University for his views on intelligent design. There’s an entire film that millions of people have seen, Expelled starring Ben Stein about what happens to people who are advocates of design theory. Even Stein was later sacked from his position at The New York Times, in part, according to him, for his having made that film.

Galileo in reverse.

UPDATE: I note that the pro-intelligent design team have organized a debate with their critics. Speakers include Stephen Meyer, Rick Sternberg, Michael Shermer and Don Prothero. Say what you want about Michael Shermer, he is not a coward.

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