…and this is a 
William Dembski says something useful
Category: Creationism
Posted on: January 11, 2007 4:41 PM, by PZ Myers
This is a concrete image of biology's future under the Intelligent Design creationists: it would be dissolved by fiat.
If I ever became the president of a university (per impossibile), I would dissolve the biology department and divide the faculty with tenure that I couldn’t get rid of into two new departments: those who know engineering and how it applies to biological systems would be assigned to the new “Department of Biological Engineering”; the rest, and that includes the evolutionists, would be consigned to the new “Department of Nature Appreciation” (didn’t Darwin think of himself as a naturalist?).
Dembski's ignorance of biology departments apparently rivals his ignorance of biology. I don't know what he means by "engineering", but I know a fair number of physiologists who will go on and on about Reynold's numbers and force-structure relationships and other such esoterica…and every single one of them is an evolutionist.
I think they already understand the problem, but such a vivid example of creationist lunacy will be very useful in discussions with my colleagues.
Comments
Ever since the Dover decision, ID proponents have become less and less careful about hiding their true agenda, because they realize they have nothing left to lose.
Posted by: notthedroids | January 11, 2007 4:46 PM
Somebody should shove this in front of Steve Fuller and ask him if this is the exciting new research paradigm he keeps talking about.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | January 11, 2007 4:47 PM
I'd like to point out that Dembski doesn't have any idea what university presidents do, either. He seems to believe that such presidents rule by unilateral edict -- a belief that would reduce most university presidents to helpless laughter if they heard it stated by one of their professors. Dembski lives in a la-la world.
But we knew that.
Posted by: Zeno | January 11, 2007 5:06 PM
What, no phrenology department?!!
Posted by: Alex | January 11, 2007 5:07 PM
He is also apparently ignorant of the history of science.
Posted by: Mark P | January 11, 2007 5:10 PM
And in the front of the former biology building, he'd install a giant tree with a sign saying "Knowledge: Eat of this tree and DIE!," complete with a naked couple standing around with apples in their hands.
Might as well make it clear how he really believes we came to be on this planet. Whatta dweeb.
Posted by: Shigella | January 11, 2007 5:17 PM
So apparently there is something inferior about being a naturalist. Being a mathematician, Dembski is probably thinking of himself as a more ideal kind of scientist. I guess he is just ignorant enough not to know the actual extent to which mathematics is applied in current research in natural history.
This is the result of him having an a-priori argument to justify and perpetuate his own proud ignorance of the history of life on planet earth (Behe too seems quite unashamed by his own ignorance of paleontology and natural history).
It is a hallmark of ID creationism. Notice they include engineers, biochemists, lawyers; but not one true paleontologist I know is against common descent.
Posted by: Alexander Vargas | January 11, 2007 5:19 PM
What, no phrenology department?!!
Shouldn't that be "What, no astrology department?!!"
Posted by: Chris Nedin | January 11, 2007 5:53 PM
The problem is that you're part of the "reality-based community" to quote that whitehouse aide. Dembski's there creating his own "narrative", his own reality as he wants to see it and it has nothing to do with actual reality.
Posted by: Tom | January 11, 2007 5:55 PM
Alexander said:
"Being a mathematician, Dembski is probably thinking of himself as a more ideal kind of scientist."
I wouldn't blame Dembski's superiority complex on his mathematical training. Lately he's reluctant to do any math, probably because it either doesn't support his conclusions or else it's just so darned _hard_.
Blame it on the fact that he's a philosopher.
Posted by: Billy Carson | January 11, 2007 5:59 PM
I think it seriously pains MarkCC for Dembski to consider himself a mathematician.
I suspect it also pains my brother for you to refer to Dembski as a philosopher.
Posted by: Bronze Dog | January 11, 2007 6:11 PM
It's all just street theater anyway... Nothing he ever says is serious, he's just yanking us.
Posted by: Rich | January 11, 2007 6:15 PM
Well, according to Dennett, biology IS engineering... so he has a point there ;-)
Posted by: Abigail | January 11, 2007 6:15 PM
If it ain't engineering, it's stamp collection, eh? What a complete dingbat.
Posted by: Rey Fox | January 11, 2007 6:18 PM
What, no numerology department?
I wonder how many chicks would go to this university. Does he need a librarian? Because I'd know right where to file all of his "research." And how to properly archive, or fartchive, his Judge Jones fartimation. Plus I could give new meaning to the phrase "compressed stacks." And I'd send him lots of "overdue" slips (but not for the reasons he would expect).
Hmm. This little fantasy could become trés amusant.
Posted by: Kristine | January 11, 2007 6:25 PM
Perhaps Dembski is confusing Earth with his home planet.
Posted by: Roy | January 11, 2007 6:49 PM
As Zeno has unknowingly pointed out, Dembski lives in the same fearridden Hobbesean world as the Bush gang.
Posted by: Greg | January 11, 2007 6:54 PM
Year of the Rat, Kristine? Me too.
This is off-topic, but I want to toss a question at the community, which is simply: What's your take on this book?
Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life (Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology)
It's by Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb, who are apparently "neo-Lamarkians".
Posted by: Kseniya | January 11, 2007 6:55 PM
Dembski has also previously gone on record with what he would do to "Darwinists" if he were a judge too:
http://home.earthlink.net/~tjneal/Darwin_in_a_Vise.jpg
he called it his "Vise Strategy", and boy it sure did sound like a scene from Python's version of the Spanish Inquisition (er, without the humor).
No, I'm not kidding; that is the exact picture he headed the thread with, and Wesley Elseberry used to have the whole thread preserved for all posterity; I think DaveScott at UD made him take it down, along with all the other preserved threads, fairly recently, claiming they were interefereing with their google listing.
of course, it turns out their delisting had nothing to do with Wes, but they sicked their lawyer on Wes anyway to make sure the content didn't go back up.
they sure know how to censor.
Severe cognitive dissonance can cause some seriously scary behavior.
Posted by: Ichthyic | January 11, 2007 6:58 PM
Good. Once he's abolished biology, he can fire all those nutjobs in the geology department who believe that "round earth" lie, followed by the earth-goes-round-the-sun fruitcakes over in physics. Bring back epicycles!
Posted by: Simon Greenhill | January 11, 2007 7:00 PM
which reminds me, PZ, you or someone should immediately make a copy of that thread on UD before WD40 "disappears" it, and then claims it was all "streer theatre".
seriously.
Posted by: Ichthyic | January 11, 2007 7:01 PM
Ah, I see. Darwin and Wallace came up with the theory of evolution by actually going out into the natural world and looking at it, but we won't make that mistake again!
Wouldn't the entire faculty of pretty much any science department fall under "Nature Appreciation?" I mean, I know Dembski has approximately the same level of interest in empirical reality as Superman has in Kryptonite grillz, but he must be aware that real scientists spend their time looking at, appreciating, and finding out about nature....
Posted by: Anton Mates | January 11, 2007 7:07 PM
Ichthyic wrote
seriously.
Too late. It appears to be gone already.
Posted by: RBH | January 11, 2007 7:12 PM
Dembsky would probably have to hold a job for more than a year before advancing to president of a university. Oh, I get it, he's having a "Vice (sic) Strategy" delusion.
Posted by: Doc Bill | January 11, 2007 7:15 PM
Casey Luskin and John West have also been doing useful things. They've been scolding us for "mocking" religion.
They are making it more and more difficult for themselves to claim that ID is about science, not religion.
The IDiots just don't understand the concept that sacred cows make the best hamburger . . . . .
Posted by: waldteufel | January 11, 2007 7:24 PM
Ichthyic: That thread on UD still exists.
Posted by: Jon Voisey (aka. The angry astronomer) | January 11, 2007 7:27 PM
I had to laugh at loud at DaveScot's comment (the very first comment on Dembski's thread):
OMG, that's funny. An exponential curve going vertical? First, exponential curves don't "go vertical". Second, a vertical "rate of progress" curve means that we will arrive at a moment in time where progress is infinite - everything that could be known is known, everything is that could be created is created. WTF? If you think Ray Kuzweil's singularity is crazy, DaveScot just topped him.
Posted by: BC | January 11, 2007 7:49 PM
As Zeno has unknowingly pointed out, Dembski lives in the same fearridden Hobbesean world as the Bush gang.
I pointed out something unknowingly? Damn! I have hidden depths!
(And Dembski has thoroughly revealed superficialities.)
Posted by: Zeno | January 11, 2007 8:46 PM
Waldteufel,
I catch the jist of the phrase regarding holy cows and hamburgers, but Mark Twain was just plain wrong on that account. Holy cows wander around and eat municipal garbage all day long, and their meat is horrible (yes, I was in India, and they were real holy cows). What do you do with a couple of hundred pounds of disgusting meat? Oh yeah, give it a position at the Discovery Institute.
Posted by: Colby | January 11, 2007 8:57 PM
Year of the Rat, Kristine? Me too.
I'm actually year of the snake, Kseniya. Isn't that appropriate? Ssssss. Watch out for those snakes in the grass, Bill "I'd turn biologists out to pasture" Dembski!
Posted by: Kristine | January 11, 2007 9:25 PM
Have people this stupid always been around and I miised them, or do they just feel empowered due a really stupid president?
Posted by: afterthought | January 11, 2007 9:26 PM
Dr. Myers-
I've been asked to give a lecture on stem cells to a local Baptist church, and I wanted to include some material on development. As this is one of your areas of expertise, I was hoping that you might be willing to share some of your Powerpoint slides with me.
If so, please contact me by email ASAP. Thanks in advance!
-Z
Posted by: Zachary Moore | January 11, 2007 9:59 PM
Another creationist revenge fantasy, where those smartalec scientists git wut's comin'.
I can invent no appropriate punishment for Dembski that he has not already wrought for himself.
Posted by: Zombie | January 11, 2007 10:08 PM
Exactly- what could be a worse punishment than having to BE the pathetic asshole Bill Dembski?
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | January 11, 2007 10:13 PM
Long-time lurker, but had to comment on the Dembski foolishness.
My request should he become the "president of a university" is that I become the Chair of the Department of Alchemic Literary Criticism, i.e., a department in which all of the knowledge and advances made thus far in the burgeoning field of alchemic sciences are brought to bear on the interpretation of proto-postmodern American fiction. It's all in the metaphor, you see.
I love your blog, PZ, and check it every day, even though I'm not a scientist. I am but a lowly high school English teacher with a twist of geology (BS-old) and a squeeze of atheism schooled by Dawkins, Harris, Weinberg, and Dennett regularly.
Thanks for this wonderful site.
Posted by: lightiris | January 11, 2007 10:18 PM
Zeno, you laughed at his apparent concept of (university) presidential powers. But, seriously, they truly believe that presidents do and must rule by unilateral edict, and that the very fact of being called president is sufficient proof of their fitness so to rule.
Posted by: Greg | January 11, 2007 10:42 PM
You're quite right, Greg. I was not thinking about Bush and his gang while writing my comment on Dembski's idiocy. Your explanation makes a scary kind of sense. (Quite scary!)
Posted by: Zeno | January 11, 2007 11:49 PM
What I find most distressing about this new "Department of Biological Engineering" of his is that Dembski seems to think this is something new and original. Biomedical Engineering (or Bioengineering or Biological Engineering) has been around for over 50 years now, and there are dozens of universities in the U.S. alone with undergraduate and/or graduate degrees in it. A google search for "biology engineering" would have shown him that, every link on the first page of results is related to the field.
And we do not support intelligent design. On the contrary, I have heard nothing but criticism regarding it from people in the field (and it is a topic that comes up often).
Ultimately the utility of applying engineering to biology is the exact opposite of what Dembski seems to think. We are trained in design and trained in biology. Pretty much any biomedical engineer will tell you that biological systems are nothing like any sort of design we know. The reason engineering is useful is because biological systems follow the same rules as designed systems. The principles of fluid dynamics used in a designed system of pipes can be applied to blood flow not because they are both designed but because in the end they are both fluids flowing in a tube. The knee can be looked at as a mechanical joint not because it is designed but because it follows the same rules of physics. We use circuit theory when looking at neuronal physiology not because it is designed like an electrical circuit (far from it) but because the physics of electricity does not care whether it is operating in a living or non-living system. The design is irrelevant. The principles used by engineering were developed to apply to the rules that govern our universe. They are useful for analyzing biological systems simply because biological systems exist in the same universe and thus follow the same fundamental rules.
Dembski has it completely backwards. He want it to be that the design aspect of engineering is the useful part and want it to be that the rules that govern nonliving systems are different than those that govern living systems. That is not what biomedical engineering does, nor could it because that is simply not how things are.
I cannot tell you how difficult it is for us engineers to step back and say "we're wasting our time here, there is probably no good reason why this particular system evolved this way, it is just how it happened". It goes against the fundamental way engineers are taught to think. But it is a lesson we all have to learn, because unless you keep in mind that these systems were not designed with an end goal in mind you will beat your head against a wall trying to come up with some logical reason for some stupid biological feature when there simply isn't one. I have seen it many times before.
Posted by: TheBlackCat | January 12, 2007 1:11 AM
If Dembski works hard at it, I see no reason why he could not eventually enlist in a Department of Optimistic Dreams with the other creationist DoOD's.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson | January 12, 2007 4:40 AM
I just hope he doesn't mean he's going to staff the biology department with Engineers. Granted, we're used to dealing with complex systems, but we're also in large part used to working on things where you can spread the parts across a dozen or so square meters of table, put them back together, and they still work.
Posted by: Azkyroth | January 12, 2007 6:28 AM
Looks rather unspectacular to me. Epigenetic inheritance is not new anymore, and "behavioral and symbolic transmission" sound like culture to me, which is not new either. But of course I've only read the Amazon page.
Posted by: David Marjanović | January 12, 2007 9:14 AM
Now I doubt most of you are into going to a standard religious service, and as you are aptly pointing out, ID seems more than a bit lacking, but all is not lost. How about "Cowboy Church", doesn't that just sound fun!
http://www.newsadvance.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=LNA%2FMGArticle%2FLNA_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1149192615064&path=!news!archive
This is from an article in my local paper about a neighboring county dispute over holding church services in a barn (actually a boring discussion) but some of the quotes are great.
"When you kick God out of your county, you invite Satan in," Bell said.
I will be keeping a watchful eye out for that fella.
Yee-ha!
Posted by: MG | January 12, 2007 9:32 AM
As of now, I could not find this thread on UD and Jon Voisey (aka. The angry astronomer), your link does not seem to work as of now.
Any guesses by anyone as to why Dembski took down this thread? The negative reaction over here days later? In my opinion, it's not that different from a lot of the other things threads there. Notthedroids suggested that they have less to loose after Dover by actually saying their true agenda now. I'd argue that they've already done that, which caused them to loose at Dover in the first place.
Or maybe it's just Dembski's usual arbitrary, petulant, behavior.
Posted by: Brian | January 12, 2007 9:41 AM
That's an insult? I'd love to be part of a "Department of Nature Appreciation" that included evolutionary biology...and I'm a physiologist!
Posted by: CCP | January 12, 2007 9:42 AM
I think WAD's plan is probably the mildest of his revenge fantasies that he thinks he could get away with publishing.
In all likelihood his actual plan should he be proclaimed His Grace the Lord Bishop, President of the University of (fill in blank here) would be to dissolve the Dept. of Biology and have his Secret University Church Police round up all the faculty. That way Cardinal Fang and the rest of the Inquisition could wreak their havoc with the comfy chair!
Posted by: Bing | January 12, 2007 4:31 PM
Zeno: Your first namesake (Zeno of Elea) had hidden depths to his work; perhaps you are following in his footsteps.
TheBlackCat: What I suspect Dembski means is rather that one should study biological systems as if they were like bridges, motors and microprocessors.
Posted by: Keith Douglas | January 16, 2007 11:59 AM
This is off-topic, but I want to toss a question at the community, which is simply: What's your take on this book?
Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life (Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology)
The book is fantastic. This is central to my area of research, and I think it is very well done. I assigned it in a theory class last semester and some of the student actually read it.
Posted by: Greg Laden | January 16, 2007 1:56 PM