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David Klinghoffer is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and the author of the new book, “How Would God Vote?: Why the Bible Commands You to Be a Conservative.” He recently explained to the National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez that the purpose of the book is not to boost any candidate’s electoral chances, but simply to inform readers that, well, “the Bible commands you to be a Conservative” … and, as such, a vote for Obama is essentially a vote against God:

Lopez: Are you actually arguing that the Bible argues for the election of John McCain over Barack Obama? That voting for Obama is to vote against God?

Klinghoffer: It would probably violate federal tax laws if I told you the Bible endorses a particular candidate. I work at a think tank, after all, a 501(c)(3) organization. But even if I didn’t, I wrote this book not to inflate anyone’s election chances but to give readers and voters the tools to read the Bible as a guide to thinking about a range of issues. If on that basis, you concluded that a Biblical worldview was at odds with Obama on most issues, or on certain key litmus test issues, yet you went ahead and voted for him anyway, that would be a vote against giving God a voice in our public affairs. It would be a vote to silence God’s influence in that area, as far as it’s in your power to do so. In a real sense it would be a vote against God.

After a month, “Expelled”—the anti-evolution film starring Ben Stein—is fading from the scene with disappointing sales (although associate producer Mark Mathis says he’s pleased). The movie’s efforts to portray Intelligent Design creationism as a valid scientific field being persecuted by the authorities probably never had a chance with academics familiar with these dubious creationist arguments, but then again, it probably wasn’t the movie’s intention to convince scientists that ID was a legitimate scientific theory. Instead, “Expelled” took its battle against evolution to the political arena.

This was apparent in the film’s marketing strategy of reaching out to right-wing media outlets and activists, who embraced the half-baked Darwin-Hitler connection at the center of “Expelled.”

And—regarding the strange subplot of Yoko Ono suing over the film’s use of John Lennon’s song “Imagine” without getting the rights—a lawyer for the movie recently argued that the film’s message is pegged toward influencing this year’s presidential election, according to the AP:

A lawyer for the movie's distributors has warned that the litigation could wreck the movie's political message by preventing it from impacting viewers in the lead-up to the U.S. presidential campaign.

While it’s too early to say how creationism will figure into the presidential race, the political impact of “Expelled” can be seen more directly in state legislatures, with a rash of new legislation challenging science education in public high schools. “I think Expelled definitely has played a role,” said ID-advocate Casey Luskin of Discovery Institute.

According to the National Center for Science Education, anti-evolution bills were recently introduced in Florida, Missouri, and Alabama, but the legislative sessions in those states ended before the bills could pass. Versions in South Carolina and Michigan also appear to be stalled for now. But a bill in Louisiana to undermine classroom teaching on the topics of “evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning” was passed unanimously in the state Senate and has already passed through a committee in the House.

The major claim of “Expelled” is that scientists working to provide some—any—legitimacy to Intelligent Design are facing persecution. The stories told in the movie don’t seem to pan out, but as Stein and company are surely aware, the debate over creationism is not taking place at research universities but at school boards, state legislatures, and public high school science classes. A newly published survey of high school teachers found that 25 percent address creationism or Intelligent Design in the classroom, and 12 percent call creationism a “valid scientific alternative” to evolution. Ben Stein’s rants about Nazis seem unlikely to chance the basic course of scientific inquiry into the natural world, but the legacy of “Expelled” may be bills, like Louisiana’s, to put the supernatural world into the science classroom.

Ben Stein’s anti-evolution attack film, “Expelled,” has finally arrived, grossing $3 million over the weekend, thanks to a church-based roll-out by the marketers that brought you “The Passion of the Christ.” Critics have savaged the documentary—which claims widespread persecution of creationists in academia and warns of a direct link between the theory of evolution and the Holocaust—as a dishonest work of propaganda, but, not surprisingly, the movie has a lot of fans among the Religious Right.

“Expelled” has been promoted heavily in right-wing media this month. Stein appeared on Focus on the Family radio, where the movie received the “enthusiastic” endorsement of James Dobson. Producer Mark Mathis appeared on WallBuilders Live, the radio show of premier church-state integrationist David Barton, to discuss “the persecution of the many by an elite few.” Rush Limbaugh exuberantly promoted it on his show; apparently, the movie taught him that “Darwinism, of course, does not permit for the existence of a supreme being, a higher power, or a God.”

Stein was also interviewed by the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow, while executive producer Logan Craft hit WorldNetDaily. Baptist Press, the official outlet of the Southern Baptist Convention, featured an op-ed by Stein and a series of articles pushing the film. The producers gave a private screening to Brent Bozell of the far-right Media Research Center. (He loved it.)

“Expelled” is also featured by the late D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries, which offers its own product line equating Darwin and Hitler. While some “Expelled” cheerleaders express sympathy for the “Intelligent Design” advocates who have been “persecuted” supposedly (the National Center for Science Education has their realistic back-stories here), most on the Right seem to be especially enchanted by the film’s reliance on a half-baked linking of evolution to Nazism and Stalinism.

“Expelled,” wrote World magazine editor and faith-based initiatives architect Marvin Olasky, “rightly equates Darwinian stifling of free speech with the Communist attempt to enslave millions behind the Berlin Wall.”

The real question is: Did Darwinism bulwark Hitlerian hatred by providing a scientific rationale for killing those considered less fit in the struggle for survival?

The answer to that question is an unambiguous yes.

Richard Weikart of the “Intelligent Design” group, the Discovery Institute, defended the Darwin-Hitler connection as critical: “[W]hat is most objectionable about the Nazis' worldview? Isn't it that they had no respect for human life?” Weikart, who wrote a book entitled “From Darwin to Hitler,” added, “the Nazis' devaluing of human life derived from Darwinian ideology....”

Gary DeMar of American Vision was so inspired he branched out on his own, linking evolution to the fundamentalist polygamist cult that’s been in the news recently.

Given the worldview shift that has taken place in America, none of this is of any consequence. Evolutionary and atheistic assumptions are standard worldview thinking in every public school classroom in America. So then, why is it wrong with having forced sex with young girls? It’s evolution in action. …

The secularists should be proud of what these polygamists are doing. They are confirming the evolutionary thesis of Dawkins and his selfish gene hypothesis.

“[T]he cultural battle has gone international," declared Allan Carlson, president of the Illinois-based Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society. "The American religious right, instead of being isolationist, has in fact gone global." Indeed, representatives from leading far-right groups – including American Family Association, Concerned Women For America, the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, the Heritage Foundation and the Discovery Institute (advocate of “Intelligent Design” creationism) – are taking a field trip to Poland this weekend for the Howard Center’s fourth World Congress of Families.

The conference is centered around a “manifesto” co-authored by Carlson outlining his model of “the natural family,” described by Salon.com as a combination of encouraging mothers to stay at home and have many children and fervent opposition to gays and abortion:

"It is not enough to stop public recognition of 'gay marriage,' nor to oppose 'safe sex education' in the public schools, nor to ban partial birth abortion, nor to create optional 'covenant' marriages," it reads. "Victory for the natural family will come only as we change the terms of debate."

Joining the jet-setting religious-right activists is Assistant Secretary of State Ellen Sauerbrey, and as we noted, members of the European parliament are not happy with this apparent “official U.S. government stamp of approval [on the] extremist and intolerant views” likely to come together in the conference as it battles “the secularists” (in the Howard Center’s words) and a conspiracy of world governments (as a papal representative warned at a previous Congress of Families) that are pushing the continent to a “demographic winter.” "If Europe succumbs to the modern, post-family, secular worldview completely, it's like losing a great ally in a global contest," warned Carlson.

The Right has also found a new hero in the conservative Polish government, which recently proposed firing teachers accused of promoting “homosexual culture” in schools. The Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute is circulating a petition in advance of the conference commending Poland’s fight against the “radical homosexual movement.” Poland’s president will be speaking at the World Congress of Families.

The pro-choice website RH Reality Check will be covering the conference from Poland; you can find their posts here.

Last Thursday, the American Enterprise Institute hosted a debate on “Darwinism and Conservatism” in which Discovery Institute fellows John West and George Gilder sought to persuade conservatives that the scientific theory of evolution is incompatible with their political ideology, no doubt by attempting to link evolution to eugenics and abortion. That same night, the idea was tested in a more practical theater: the Republican presidential debate. John McCain was asked whether he believes in evolution – his answer, after a pause, was yes. Then the co-moderater asked for a show of hands:

Creationist “scholar” also points to abortion.

For much of the last year, Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) has been cozying up to the Right Wing, apparently in anticipation of the Republican primary campaign for president next year. In his 2000 run, he lambasted Jerry Falwell and James Dobson as “agents of intolerance” and he attacked opponent George Bush for speaking at South Carolina’s Bob Jones University, which at that time had a ban on interracial dating. This time around, he’s made amends with Falwell, he’s trying hard to win over Dobson, and he’s open to speaking at Bob Jones. And next week, McCain will have an opportunity to solidify his creationist credentials.

As ThinkProgress notes, McCain has an ambiguous record when it comes to science education. In 2005, he said that “Intelligent Design” creationism should be taught alongside evolution, but a year later, he said that creationism should “[p]robably not” be taught in a science class.

So while McCain’s upcoming address at a Discovery Institute lunch in Seattle is ostensibly about globalization, it ought to give him the chance to articulate his position on whether creationism belongs in public schools. The Discovery Institute is the most active promoter of “Intelligent Design” and increasingly the public face of creationism, working with school boards to undermine the teaching of evolution and sending fellows, such as young-earth creationist Paul Nelson, to present ID as a scientific theory.

If McCain were to stake out his decision on education policy based on science, he could do worse than to begin in his home state at the Grand Canyon, which the National Park Service notes is “a world-renowned showplace of geology” going back hundreds of millions of years but which has become a central front in the political debate surrounding evolution. If he makes his decision based on appeasing the Right Wing, he might find his anti-evolution position a difficult sell among the rest of the voting public.

In 2005, after the Kansas School Board took steps to promote creationist objections to science education, an outraged Oregon State University Physics student decided something had to be done. Rather than organize a letter writing campaign or protest in the streets, Bobby Henderson turned to an age-old tool of social commentary, satire. Henderson ‘founded’ a new religion called Pastafarianism whose followers worship a noodly deity called the “Flying Spaghetti Monster.” In a fun and playful way, Henderson’s Pastafarianism highlights both the religious motivation of advocates of so-called “intelligent design,” and the weaknesses in their arguments. Perhaps owing to the effectiviness of Henderson’s parody, the anti-evolution Discovery Institute has recently launched an attack on Pastafarianism.

In a post on Discovery’s blog last month, the loquacious Casey Luskin takes aim at the Flying Spaghetti Monster:

During the holiday season, many Americans take time to seriously and respectfully reflect on Judeo-Christian religious beliefs. Not so for one website, the “Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster" (FSM), a pro-evolution satire against intelligent design. They exhibit no interest in treating Christian holidays with respect.

Aside from the anti-Christian Christmas cards, the FSM website sells "The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster," which is a mockery of the Christian New Testament. Anyone who has ever studied the paraphernalia in a Christian bookstore will recognize that the FSM shirts with dead Christian fish symbols and the word "Truth" are mocking Christianity. They even sell an FSM car icon to mock the “Jesus fish” icon. I've seen a couple FSM car icons on the road here in Seattle. It's funny, but clearly the FSM concept aims to mock those who seriously believe in Judeo-Christian religious views.

Not content to limit the struggle against satire to the Flying Spaghetti Monster, yesterday Luskin focused his attention on a column posted on the aptly named web publication, “The Spoof.” The piece, clearly written in a jocular tone, includes a fictional scientist arguing against “intelligent design” by claiming that penguins are “the work of a total moron". Luskin was unimpressed:

Spoof.com should realize that they weren’t really spoofing anything, and that Darwinists make these fallacious arguments with a straight face all the time.

In response to Luskin’s screed, National Center for Science Education’s Glenn Brock asks “Why would mocking traditional religion be of concern to a purely scientific organization?" An interesting question indeed. For his part Luskin’s colleague, John West, attempts to answer Brock’s question, but perhaps Luskin and West are simply unwilling to accept that the target of these parodies is not religion or science, but the doctrine of intelligent design creationism that they peddle?

Claims group, citing anti-evolution decisions by school boards in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Lancaster, California. See also: American Prospect on the “new stealth creationism” on the horizon.

Discovery Institute calls creationism-in-science-class “free speech.”

In Kansas, Ohio. But Discovery Institute’s John West looks to South Carolina, Alabama, Oklahoma.

“Not a scientific theory,” says Discovery Institute’s Wells. “Pro-Darwin” scientists should be “very afraid.”