Dispatches from the Culture Wars

Okay, 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 - please frame your arguments around science. If the ID movement doesn't get the issue framed around science it's going down and I do not like losing. The plain conclusion of scientific evidence supports descent with modification from a common ancestor. You are certainly welcome to have other opinions based on faith in something other than science but I'd ask that you go to a religious website with them if you must talk about it.

You certainly don't have to agree here with descent with modification from a common ancestor but I'm going to start clamping down on anyone positively arguing against it. It's simply counter-productive to our goals and reinforces the idea that ID is religion because nothing but religion argues against descent with modification from a common ancestor. What we are fighting is the idea that the modification was unguided. ID can fight that without ever leaving the battleground of plain scientific conclusions. If we try to argue against anything else we're are (sic) going to lose. Plain and simple. No buts about it. There's only one gaping vulnerability in the commonly accepted evolutionary narrative we can exploit successfully and that's the bit about it being unplanned.

Needless to say, this prompted a flurry of responses from Dembski's creationist fans, many of whom pointed out that this policy might well ban Dembski himself (he's been quite non-committal about the subject of common descent), some of his other Junior Deputy Blog Czars like Bombadill, and certainly bans many of his fellow prominent ID advocates. Paul Nelson and Nancy Pearsey, both young earthers, would both be banned under this policy. Stephen Meyer most likely as well (his claims about the Cambrian explosion, if they aren't aimed at the idea of common descent, are rendered fairly meaningless). it probably bans the DI's boy wonder, Casey Luskin, as well.

The creationist blog Creation Bits quickly said that DaveScot is "destroying Dembski's blog". Josh Bozeman, aka jboze, a Dembski sycophant, put up a post at his blog saying that DaveScot had "actually lost his mind." After less than 24 hours of the commenters venting their spleens at the Blog Czar, he did what what any good little Orwellian would do - he deleted the post. Gone, disappeared into thin air as though it never existed. Bozeman's blog post disappeared too. Thankfully, Jack Krebs had saved the whole thread and you can see it here.

I'm guessing Papa Dembski had a few stern words for the Czar and pulled in the reins a bit. But for crying out loud, how long can he allow this to go on? This guy is absolutely embarrassing him. It's become so ridiculous that you just can't not watch. To use Bill Hicks' analogy, it's like a loose tooth, you can't not touch it.

Oh, and Josh Rosenau has already posted about this and compared this demand to the list of pro-ID witnesses, which included most of the prominent ID advocates including Thaxton, Meyer, Wells and Behe, at the Kansas board of education hearings, nearly all of whom denied common descent.