Bill Farrell wins the internet

Posted by Josh Rosenau on March 25, 2010
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This morning the Templeton Foundation announced the winner of the Templeton Prize: Francisco Ayala, a former priest and current biologist who testified against creation science in the ’80s and now continues to demolish “intelligent design” – the madness that creation science became. In the comments to PZ’s grudging acknowledgment of the wisdom of the choice, Bill Farrell anticipates the creationist response:

Ohhhhhh, Ayala has been “mean” to Stephen Meyer over “Signature.”

Send in the attack gerbil, Disco Tute!

And while Casey himself has yet to reply, David Klinghoffer has sallied forth to inveigh against the horrors of Francisco Ayala’s being mean to Meyer, et al. That is:

when he [Ayala] accepted an invitation to critique Stephen Meyer’s recent book, Signature in the Cell…, he went ahead and wrote his review as if he had the read the book whereas … Dr. Ayala had not done even that.

Klinghoffer knows that Ayala didn’t read the book because he (Klinghoffer) read the Table of Contents and it totally doesn’t match his (Ayala’s) review. Guh. Also, Ayala once told Klinghoffer that IDolators are free to pursue their research, but in Chez Klinghoffer:

What planet does this man live on? After the experiences of Sternberg, Gonzalez, Crocker, Marks, Minnich, Dembski — chronicled here and elsewhere [link added], along with others yet to be named and still others too worried about reprisals to let themselves to be identified — it should be obvious that Ayala’s statement is utterly, completely, and entirely false. When it comes to doubting Darwin, serious scientists would be justified in feeling intimidated. In part, the fear of speaking out is maintained by the realization that if you raise your voice, your view will not merely be criticized. It will be distorted so as to prejudice public and professional opinion against you.

What we have in Dr. Ayala’s review of Steve Meyer’s book is a telling illustration, in miniature, of how that works.

So congratulations, Bill! You predicted it all perfectly, but for the messenger.

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Comments

  1. #1 John Farrell
    March 26, 2010

    Klinghoffer is such an idiot.

  2. #2 yogi-one
    March 26, 2010

    The IDiots are dead. History will prove them as wrong as the flat-earthers and the Catholic Church vs Galileo.

    Most of the public still wants to cling to their various ideas of God. Most people are not ready to accept that either their beliefs do not reflect reality or their definition nof God has to be completely changed.

    I think the general public is comfortable with idea that the most powerful force in the universe is not a human-like guy whose spends all his time thinking about how the Israelites will slaughter the Philistines. But they still want to cling to some idea of a god with many human-like characteristics who spends a lot of time fawning over the fate of individual humans.

    It will take a while for that to change, but it will.

    I made that transition myself. I was raised to believe in the Christian god, but through years of questioning, I have slowly realized that what physics and astrophysics have been uncovering about the universe is far greater than any idea of a Big Daddy in the Sky, and what geology and paleontology have shown us about the evolution of the earth is far greater than the simplistic Sunday-school fairy tales I was indoctrinated with as a child.

    I think that’s a development that the human race as a whole has to go through in order to move civilization forward.

  3. #3 Wes
    March 26, 2010

    This post is pretty incoherent. The first sentence is incomplete, and the rest of the post isn’t much better.

  4. #4 Doc Bill
    March 27, 2010

    I’m going to take my prize of 1.5 million quatloos and become a Professional Accommodationist.

    I hear there’s money to be made on the book lecture circuit.

  5. #5 Mitchbert
    March 27, 2010

    This morning the Templeton Foundation announced that Francisco Ayala, a former priest and current biologist who testified against creation science in the ’80s and now continues to demolish “intelligent design” the madness that creation science became.

    Is this supposed to be a sentence?

  6. #6 Glen Davidson
    March 28, 2010

    So what’s his point, that Biologos isn’t doing ID research, because it’s “intimidated?” I’m sure it’s not doing any real ID research, of course, since ID is crafted to avoid that pesky certainty of falsification if real design predictions, but it has nothing to do with “intimidation.”

    Btw, how did plate tectonics gain scientific legitimacy when it was generally dismissed by the geologic establishment? Obviously, real scientists saw its potential, and continued to work on it regardless of “consensus.” That’s what real science is about, not being intimidated by the ignorant attacks on good ideas.

    ID, well, it clearly lacks courage, and intellect.

    Glen Davidson
    http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p