Skeptical Inquirer on Intelligent Design

face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">This is
one of the first publications that I subscribed to, after
Popular Electronics, and maybe Mad Magazine.  I must confess
that I have not renewed the subscription, but from time to time I check
their website.  



There is a bunch of good skeptical writing in the Blogosphere, but so
far nothing matches the quality and expertise you will find in
Skeptical Inquirer.  Plus, they have a long and distinguished
history, which no blog has.  



This issue, they feature a tribute to href="http://www.csicop.org/si/2007-01/sagan.html" rel="tag">Carl
Sagan.  There is also a good article about the href="http://www.csicop.org/intelligentdesignwatch/kitzmiller.html">Kitzmiller-Dover
case, and a more amusing one about href="http://www.csicop.org/si/2007-01/i-files.html">Mysterious
Entities of the Pacific Northwest.



My favorite is the one about Dover, by Barbara
Forrest.  An
excerpt:

These
tactics by DeWolf and Dembski highlight the bankruptcy of ID and
the blustering cowardice of its leaders, who must capture support with
brazen deceit and sarcastic punditry. The trial was Dembski’s
moment to shine, to explain on the legal record why ID is a
“full scale scientific revolution,” as he wrote in
The Design Revolution (InterVarsity Press, 2004, p. 19). Instead,
plaintiffs’ witness Robert Pennock read to Judge Jones
Dembski’s statement regarding ID’s revolutionary
status— and then dismantled it [67]. Ironically, Dembski had
his arch-critics right where he wanted us —on the witness
stand and under oath. He could have been there, implementing his
strategy, helping to “squeeze the truth” out of us,
“as it were.” In November 2005, after the trial
ended, Dembski posted on his “Design Inference”
website a pdf made from his May 11 and 16, 2005, “vise
strategy” blog pages, labeled as a “Document
prepared to assist the Thomas More Law Center in interrogating the
ACLU’s expert witnesses in the Dover case.” He
appended a list of “Suggested Questions,” which, he
wrote, “will constitute a steel trap that leave the
Darwinists no room to escape.” [68] But when he had an
opportunity to witness firsthand how his trap would operate, he was
nowhere to be found. He “escaped critical scrutiny”
by quitting rather than face cross-examination. He is apparently
$20,000 richer for it, however, marking yet another difference between
us: whereas I served pro bono, Dembski charged $200 per hour and
threatened to sue TMLC for payment for 100 hours of work he claims to
have done prior to quitting. In late June 2005, he told Canadian ID
supporter Denyse O’Leary that TMLC had agreed to pay him.
[69]

If the reading of Skeptical Inquirer made me wax nostalgic, getting to
the Dover article was positively inspiring.
 In fact, it called to mind one of the href="http://corpus-callosum.blogspot.com/2004/03/creationism-and-evolution-topic-that.html">earliest
posts on my original blog.  A post in which I
reference, among others, PZ Myers and Ed Brayton.  Small world.



In one of my other early posts on Intelligent Design™, I
suggested that ID is really just a money-making scheme.  (I
can't seem to locate it now; those old posts are taking forever to come
up.)  Even now, I wonder if that is what it is really all
about.