Intelligent Design
stcynic | June 24, 2006This has been out for a while, but there is an excellent article in the Journal of Clinical Investigation about the ID movement. The authors of the paper include such eminent scholars as Elliot Sober (philosopher of science) and Ronald Numbers (historian of science, author of The Creationists, the seminal history of creationism). It is essentially a shorter version of Creationism's Trojan Horse, covering much of the same territory. It was written in support of a bill by Wisconsin legislator Terese Berceau, also a co-author of the article. That bill, which I think should be replicated…
scientificactivist | June 21, 2006Today, the Interacademy Panel on International Issues (IAP), an organization of 92 scientific academies from around the globe, released a statement endorsing the importance of teaching evolution as a fundamental scientific principle. The IAP emphasizes the following uncontested evolutionary facts:
In a universe that has evolved towards its present configuration for some 11 to 15 billion years, our Earth formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago.
Since its formation, the Earth - its geology and its environments - has changed under the effect of numerous physical and chemical forces and…
stcynic | June 20, 2006Please allow me one more post on the subject of DaveScot's comments about guided vs unguided evolution. This is a familiar refrain from ID advocates, what we might call "ID minimalism" - the position that even if the theory of common descent is absolutely true and all modern life forms are related via descent with modification, that descent was guided by God (no, I'm not going to engage in their ridiculous sophistry of calling it "the intelligent designer" - they're talking about God, they know it and so does everyone else, and there is no reason to play pretend in this regard). Here's how…
stcynic | June 20, 2006Good ol' DaveScot has once again stepped into a big problem, without recognizing it or admitting it. In this post where he takes PZ Myers to task for "projection" - put your irony meters on maximum - he says the following:
So the purveyors of Darwinian dogma continue to hold an exclusive but increasingly tenuous grasp on the indoctrination of young minds into their chance worshipping worldview. They know full well that any honest examination of the evidence will support natural selection changing the size of finch beaks and color of moth wings, that the fossil record and common genetic code…
stcynic | June 19, 2006As I mentioned the other day, about 1/3 of Ann Coulter's new book is devoted to "Darwinism". Since she has no background on the subject at all, she had to get some tutoring on the subject and she got it from none other than the Discovery Institute folks. She says in the book, ""I couldn't have written about evolution without the generous tutoring of Michael Behe, David Berlinski, and William Dembski...", while Dembski himself goes so far as to say, "I'm happy to report that I was in constant correspondence with Ann regarding her chapters on Darwinism - indeed, I take all responsibility for…
stcynic | June 18, 2006Jason Rosenhouse has a thorough and devestating takedown of Sal Cordova's recent post at Dembski's blog about redundancy as proof of ID. I especially like this part:
Hard as it is to believe, Salvador is actually arguing that redundancy in complex systems is what signals design. Which is amusing, since the main weapon in the ID arsenal, irreducible complexity, is based entirely on the idea that it is lack of redundnacy that signals design. A structure is said to be irreducibly complex if it has several well-matched parts, such that the removal of any one part causes the system to cease…
stcynic | June 15, 2006Larry Arnhart, a conservative philosopher, has written a response to Ann Coulter's ignorant ravings about evolution in her new book. About 1/3 of her book is devoted to criticizing "Darwinism", and she got all of her information about it from the major ID advocates. I suspect this is about to become a problem for them. On April 26th, Dembski wrote on his blog:
I'm happy to report that I was in constant correspondence with Ann regarding her chapters on Darwinism - indeed, I take all responsibility for any errors in those chapters.
Coulter, meanwhile, absolutely gushes about the contributions…
jlynch | June 14, 2006Apparently more than Dembski helped Coulter with her attack on evolution:
"I couldn't have written about evolution without the generous tutoring of Michael Behe, Devid Berlinski, and William Dembski"
Dembski, Behe & Berlinski. It's not looking good for the three amigos.
jlynch | June 14, 2006Newton was, as we all know, a Christian. Creationists apologists for "good science" being rooted in Christianity avoid his heretical anti-trinitarianism, but that is an issue for another day. Today, from F.U.B.A.R. and via Daily Kos, I give you ID versions of Newton's Laws of Motion:
Newton's Law of Inertia: Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it by something, or someone, since only an intelligent agent of some kind (not necessarily God, but not necessarily not God) could recognize that this object was in…
stcynic | June 13, 2006Dembski has posted a quote from an open letter written by Edward Sisson of Touchstone magazine about the Cobb County disclaimer case. In it, Sisson makes a very strange argument that, I think, actually cuts against his and Dembski's position. Here's the quote:
A fundamental problem with the Appellate decision is that it appears to accept an implicit assumption that "those who endorse evolution" do so because they have made a rational, independent evaluation of the scientific data offered as evidence for its truth. But if, in fact, they endorse evolution because they have chosen to give…
stcynic | June 13, 2006William Dembski has been bragging for months about the fact that he helped Ann Coulter write the sections of her new book that are about evolution. Now he's promoting her book as "the wedge for the masses" with some thoroughly laughable rhetoric:
Ann is taking Phillip Johnson's message as developed in DARWIN ON TRIAL and REASON IN THE BALANCE and bringing it home to the masses. Critics will dismiss it for its hyperbole, lack of nuance, and in-your-face attitude. But she has the gist just right, which is that materialism (she calls it liberalism) dominates our culture despite being held by…
jlynch | June 12, 2006Darwin had his bulldog. Apparently Dembski now has his daschund. Ann Coulter is apparently now the kinder gentler machine gun hand of the Wedge.
Ann is taking Phillip Johnson's message as developed in DARWIN ON TRIAL and REASON IN THE BALANCE and bringing it home to the masses. Critics will dismiss it for its hyperbole, lack of nuance, and in-your-face attitude. But she has the gist just right, which is that materialism (she calls it liberalism) dominates our culture despite being held by only a minority of the populace and has become an agenda among our elites (academy, scientists, media)…
stcynic | June 12, 2006Last night, a commenter named Goeff Casey left a comment trying to defend Paul Nelson against the charge of lying. Since that post has long since slid off the front page, I'm moving it up top so it doesn't get lost. As we'll see, the attempt fails badly.
You say that you have caught creationists lying over the years. Please do post them, for I think it can be shown that they have not lied at all.
Given the inability you show to recognizing the blatant lie of Nelson concerning Keith Miller's position, it would be a clear waste of time to do so.
As to the present accusation, I would say that…
stcynic | June 12, 2006Pim Van Meurs has a pretty good analysis of the demarcation problem as seen by Larry Laudan and Robert Pennock, and standard ID responses to those positions. They attempt to use Laudan's argument that there is no single set of criteria that are both necessary and sufficent to demarcate science from non-science to support their contention that ID is science. But this strikes me as being illogical, and this is an argument I think Pim missed. Even if Laudan is correct that there is no neat and tidy line between science and non-science, no single and simple list of criteria both necessary and…
stcynic | June 8, 2006I'm a week or so late on this one, but let me extend a hearty "welcome to the blogosphere" to Conservatives Against Intelligent Design. The founder, Indian Cowboy, has been an occasional commenter here. He has a petition that has already garnered almost 300 signatures. A valuable voice in the battle against the anti-evolution crowd.
stcynic | June 4, 2006This took place in the comments on a thread below, so I want to move it up to its own post so it doesn't get lost. Steve S, a frequent commenter both here and at the Panda's Thumb, dug something up that is both important and highly amusing given Casey Luskin's recent post at the DI blog proclaiming that a reporter who equated ID with creationism was demonstrating "bias" and that the reporter had become a "mouthpiece for ID's critics". And here's what Luskin had to say about the equation of ID and creationism:
Despite Holden's editorializing, ID is not creationism because creationism always…
stcynic | June 3, 2006Casey Luskin is back with a brand new dance, a tap dance around all those pesky little previous statements by ID advocates that come back to haunt them every time they try and claim that the "intelligent designer" doesn't have to be supernatural. He's complaining that a news article referred to the Discovery Institute as "creationism's main think tank". Proof of media bias, he says:
Despite Holden's editorializing, ID is not creationism because creationism always postulates a supernatural creator, and/or is focused on proving some religious scripture. But intelligent design does neither.
Let'…
stcynic | May 28, 2006There is a long history of creationist misrepresentation of the views of scientists, going back to the time of Darwin himself. As the creationist movement has grown and gone through its various phases over the last century, such misrepresentations have been a powerful weapon in their arsenal. In the 20 years or so I've been involved in this dispute, I've seen it time and time again. Why is this the case? I have always suspected that it's because they know that they can get away with it. The chances that their largely uneducated audience is actually familiar with the work of the scientists…
stcynic | May 22, 2006Some of you may recall the exchange I had with Casey Luskin in early 2005 about ID advocates comparing evolution advocates of being Nazis, and vice versa. It started when he wrote an essay for the IDEA club website (this was before he went to work for the DI) screaming bloody murder about folks on our side comparing ID advocates to holocaust deniers. I pointed out that Luskin was barking up the wrong tree, throwing a fit about us comparing them to holocaust deniers while the ID advocates he admires and, now, works for have long been comparing us to actual Nazis, not to mention Stalinists, the…
jlynch | May 21, 2006Henry Rollins on ID:
The breathtaking stupidity of irreducible complexity is only outweighed by the complete lack of science involved. it is just intellectually lazy and cannot be tested or challenged. You can't get God to come down to the lab and prove a fucking thing. You just have to believe, and science does not operate on faith.
MP3 [2.7M, 2:42] here. Props to PvM.