mealy-mouthed creationists [View all]

Many people mistake pseudoscience for science, and always have done so. For example, "Intelligent Design" (ID) and other forms of creationism are now recognized as pseudoscience, and evolutionary biology as science, in the courts as well as in the academy. For another example, astrology is now recognized as pseudoscience, and astronomy as science, but until the 17th century astronomy and astrology were generally viewed as equally respectable parts of a single science. In both examples, the proponents of pseudoscience used to say what what was really on their minds. Proponents of astrology still do so, but nowadays creationists say one thing to each other and something else to the public. A paradigmatic example of this is the infamous Wedge Document perpetrated by the Discovery Institute (DI) in 1998, which outlined their public-relations strategy. The DI tried to keep the Wedge Document secret, but it was leaked in 1999.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy
A new law in West Virginia provides another example of mealy-mouthed creationism:
https://apnews.com/article/west-virginia-intelligent-design-religion-teaching-e01560041051a061c65a83f4129e0993
Further examples will be found on social media (e.g., Facebook), where a great many posts are promulgated by DI avatars like the “Center for Science and Culture” and “Evolutionnews”. The sheer volume of this disinformation guarantees that many people will mistake ID pseudoscience for science.