Intelligent Design
jlynch | March 6, 2006In a previous post I noted the governor of South Carolina's inane comments on evolution which he characterized as "[t]he idea of their being a, you know, a little mud hole and two mosquitoes get together and the next thing you know you have a human being". Well, not to be outdone, his counterpart in Kentucky, Ernie Fletcher (BS Engineering, MD) has gone one step further in demonstrating that an education doesn't stop one from spouting nonsense. Writing to the Kentucky Academy of Science - who sent him this statement, after he supported ID in his State of the Commonwelth address - Fletcher…
jlynch | March 6, 2006A while back I mentioned Dan Ely, the University of Akron physiologist who seems to be unsure about the age of the earth. According to Red State Rabble, three of his departmental colleagues have written to the Kansas BoE to fix two of Ely's "misrepresentations". Their first correction ultimately attacks the modus operandi of the Discovery Institute in supporting the likes of Ely, Philip Skell, and other know-nothings.
Dr. Ely implies in his testimony that he has background in evolutionary biology, and that his current research is related to evolutionary biology. Both of these notions are…
stcynic | February 27, 2006No, not the bill on gay straight clubs, though that would make the metaphor in the title of this post much funnier. His anti-evolution bill has been rejected by the Utah state legislature:
The Utah House of Representatives voted 46-28 to kill SB96, which cast doubt on the teaching of evolution.
"There are a number of influential legislators who believe you evolved from an ape. I didn't," said Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, who sponsored the bill.
He said it was "doubtful" that he would try a similar bill in the future.
Well, that's a relief.
stcynic | February 24, 2006I know this will come as an enormous shock, but William Demsbski has - yet again - misrepresented what someone else has said on the subject of evolution. This time it's Leo Tolstoy, for some strange reason. Dembski writes:
Leo Tolstoy's last completed letter, dictated from his sick-bed at the Astapovo train station on November 1, 1910 (six days before his death), and addressed to his son Seryozha and daughter Tanya, included a warning that Seryozha should not allow himself to be seduced by Darwinism. Here is the relevant passage:
"The views you have acquired about Darwinism, evolution and the…
stcynic | February 23, 2006Thanks to flatlander for keeping me up to date on what's going on in Utah. Sen. Chris Buttars' anti-evolution bill is still being debated and some changes are being considered. The Deseret News reports:
SB96's House sponsor, Rep. Jim Ferrin, R-Orem, wants to substitute the bill a third time, taking out all references to the "origins of life" but still aiming to keep teachers from telling students they evolved from apes.
But that can happen only if the House Rules Committee agrees to put the bill up for its final legislative debate.
The changes didn't win over school officials who oppose the…
stcynic | February 21, 2006The DI's famous list of "dissenting scientists" who "doubt Darwin" has gone over 500 names and they are crowing. Their press release is reprinted almost word for word in the Worldnutdaily and they've even launched a website about this list called dissentfromdarwin.org. But as I've said a thousand times, the statement that they claim shows "dissent" from "Darwinism" is a sham. Here's the statement that the 500 scientists agreed to:
"We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for…
stcynic | February 16, 2006All of my favorite subjects rolled into one. Over at Uncommon Descent, Doug Moran reacted to the ACLU threatening to sue the Toledo school district for allowing the teaching of ID by declaring them to be the "most vile intellectual terrorists". I'll take ridiculous hyperbole for $1000, Alex. Why not just call them "intellectual abortionists" while you're at it, Doug? Why limit yourself to just one pointlessly inflammatory attempt to poison the well rather than engage their position?
But here's the punchline to the whole thing. When someone pointed out that Dawkins' view of the philosophical…
stcynic | February 11, 2006There is a quote that I've seen all over the place, and I believe even used myself over the years, from the founder of the ID movement, Phillip Johnson. Here is the quote as it is usually given:
"The objective is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism vs. evolution to the existence of God vs. the non-existence of God. From there people are introduced to 'the truth' of the Bible and then 'the question of sin' and finally 'introduced to Jesus.'"
The quote appears on over 400 webpages according to Google, and the source cited is the…
stcynic | February 9, 2006Sal Cordova has replied, kind of, to my post and to Jack Krebs' response to his questions, in a comment at Uncommon Descent. Let me first note that I was wrong about Cordova teaching at George Mason. I'm not sure why I had that in my head, but it's not true. I don't know what it is he does, but I do know that he hangs around the IDEA clubs at various Virginia colleges and lectures on ID frequently. I don't know him personally, but I can say that the friends I have who have met him say he's a very nice and gracious guy. Still, this stuff about these allegedly difficult questions putting our…
stcynic | February 9, 2006Wesley Elsberry has an interesting post up where he details a question and answer exchange with Dembski at a conference last weekend. I think it's worth highlighting for the same reasons Wesley does. First, because it has Dembski saying that he thinks putting ID into high school science classes is "premature" - while simultaneously cheering on President Bush when he says ID should be taught in high school science classes and offering $1000 to any teacher in Wisconsin who will teach ID to break a prospective new law.
Second, because it shows how completely differently Dembski answers questions…
stcynic | February 6, 2006You may recall a few weeks ago when crandaddy, one of Dembski's acolytes at Uncommon Descent, posted a link and a quote from Raj Baldev noting a "grave error" in human evolution. When I pointed out that Raj Baldev was in fact an astrologer, a consultant to Saddam Hussein, and a general occult whacko, the post was quickly edited to take out the reference to Baldev and crandaddy dishonestly claimed that he deleted it not because of the embarrassment of being caught quoting an astrologer but because the quote didn't "contribute adequately to the purpose of this entry". Fast forward to this…
stcynic | February 1, 2006Okay, okay, I admit that it's not sound sport to agitate such an obviously challenged cretin, but Dembski's experiment with DaveScot as his "blog czar" - he's actually signing his email that way, folks - just gets funnier and funnier. Yesterday he apparently lost his mind and put up a post declaring that he would henceforth be banning anyone who doubted common descent because only religious people doubt common descent and ID must adhere strictly to the scientific line to gain acceptance. The post was entitled "Framing the ID Debate Around Science" and said:
I will remind everyone again -…
stcynic | January 25, 2006Bob Murphy, an economist, has an article at the thoroughly loathsome LewRockwell.com (please don't try and tell me the people who write for that site are libertarians; that collection of southern nationalists and whackos is anything but libertarian) about what he terms "typical objections to intelligent design." Much like Orson Scott Card's article, however, this one relies upon the old tactic of beating up straw men. Rather than engaging the strongest objections to ID he only engages the easy ones, the clumsy attacks on the character of ID advocates rather than the serious and substantive…
stcynic | January 24, 2006In that thread on the Orson Scott Card message board I just got a long reply from someone named Bo Grimes. Since it's so long and I'm not adept at the message board coding, I thought I'd just post a line by line reply here and perhaps he'll come over and defend his claims, all of which are highly inaccurate. It began with me posting the following on that board:
I honestly can't think of a third option given the absolutely ridiculous claim he makes in his article about intelligent design that scientists rely solely on authority and "refuse to even try" to point out the flaws in ID arguments. I…
stcynic | January 22, 2006In a new post, Dembski's faithful manservant Cato has built a perfectly inaccurate straw man and proceeded to beat the heck out of it while pretending to actually engage an argument being made by the anti-ID side. To wit:
The Vatican Newspaper published an article distancing itself from ID and (once again) embracing Darwinian Evolution.
So when should we expect some outrage from the folks at Panda's Thumb that Darwinian Evolution is religion? They're all over ID as unconstitutional because evangelical Christians are some of its most vocal supporters. Clearly, if they are consistent in their…
stcynic | January 22, 2006At the bottom of Card's article there was a place to leave comments, so I decided to do so. It's a message board on his website. I posted a message to begin this thread and the reaction of one of his acolytes was quite ridiculous. He tried two claims to explain away the absurd claim Card made. Here's the first:
Card is saying that these "Darwinists" aren't explaining the flaws in a way that is accessible to non-scientists, not that no one has taken the time to explain the flaws at all.
Utter nonsense. Every single link I gave in my previous post was written for a non-scientific audience. They…
stcynic | January 21, 2006Orson Scott Card has a patently absurd essay on ID and evolution, which PZ Myers has already done an admirable job of fisking. But there's one argument that Card makes in particular that is just infuriating in its outright dishonesty and I want to highlight it again. Here's his argument:
3. Expertism is the "trust us, you poor fools" defense. Essentially, the Darwinists tell the general public that we're too dumb to understand the subtleties of biochemistry, so it's not even worth trying to explain to us why the Designists are wrong. "We're the experts, you're not, so we're right by…
stcynic | January 21, 2006The Utah Senate took a preliminary vote on Sen. Buttars' anti-evolution bill on Friday and it passed; a final vote is expected on Monday, then it will move on to the house. The Salt Lake Tribune notes that the debate over the bill may well doom it in court:
Sen. Chris Buttars has tried to eliminate any possibility that his bill questioning the validity of evolution could allow for religious instruction in the classroom - and avoid the legal risks associated with such teaching.
But religion is the reason he proposed the bill and religion drove most of the debate Friday, as the full Senate…
stcynic | January 18, 2006Sen. Buttars' ridiculous bill has passed the Senate Education Committee in Utah by a 4-2 vote and is headed for a floor vote. And along the way, we get another one of those brilliant statements showing Buttars' rank ignorance of evolution:
"There is evolution within species," Buttars said. "There are big dogs and little dogs, big cats and little cats, but you haven't seen a 'dat.' You don't see intermediate species."
There's a nicer way to put this, I suppose, but the guy is simply an ignoramus. Evolution doesn't predict that anyone would see a "dat". And the fact is, we have witnessed…
stcynic | January 18, 2006Fellow ScienceBlogs author Afarensis has posted a series of old posts about ID and human evolution, apparently prompted by my post a couple days about Bombadill's silly claims on that subject. I thought I'd link to all of them so you can see someone with some real expertise in the area take out such arguments.
Part 1Part 2Part 3Part 4
He also just reposted an excellent takedown of Jonathan Wells' claims about centrioles in the cell, which he bizarrely thinks is evidence for intelligent design.