Exciting New Think Tank Comes 6 Years Too Late

The first hint of trouble should have been the President's directive to create an Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives back at the beginning of his first term. That should have been a sign to the few champions of science and rationality left in the government and elsewhere in the country that it was time to band together and exert some political influence, lest those unversed in logic completely take over. But apparently members of the "better late than never" club have decided that now, just after the sound ass-kicking that George W. Bush and the Republican party received in the midterm elections, is the best time to do so, by starting a think-tank to lobby in favor of scientific and secular interests.

The brainchild of Paul Kurtz, founder of the Center for Inquiry-Transnational, the small public policy office will lobby and sometimes litigate on behalf of science-based decision making and against religion in government affairs.

The announcement was accompanied by release of a "Declaration in Defense of Science and Secularism," which bemoans what signers say is a growing lack of understanding of the nature of scientific inquiry and the value of a rational approach to life.

"This disdain for science is aggravated by the excessive influence of religious doctrine on our public policies," the declaration says. "We cannot hope to convince those in other countries of the dangers of religious fundamentalism when religious fundamentalists influence our policies at home."
This influence would have been invaluable back when it was a lot more politically unfavorable to espouse these sorts of views. Around the same time that the US was completely pulling out of the Kyoto Treaty, when Dick Cheney was allowing oil executives rather than scientists to determine US energy policy, when Bush was pooh-poohing climate change and making his idiotic "compromise" on embryonic stem cell research, these would have been really useful times to have an active think-tank that would have stepped up and disgreed with Bush's faith based denials of science. Of course, having this group around will be helpful, but it would have been a lot nicer if they had gotten their act together earlier.

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