Genie Scott as "Darth Vader" and Other Silly Luskin Claims

I wrote the other day that when Genie Scott was speaking here at MSU, she mentioned that she had once been referred to as "Darth Vader". While talking with Wes Elsberry earlier, he told me the source of the Darth Vader comment - none other than our old friend Casey Luskin. Casey is the founder of the IDEA Club (like the one now at Cornell that I recently wrote about) and is now an employee of the Discovery Institute. Here is the link to Casey's statement in this regard, from 5 years ago today, posted to a Usenet newsgroup. Casey said:
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Scott definitely speaks "scientese". She presents herself as a scientist, which she once was, who is trying to do the right thing for science. She is very charismatic, funny, and very good at getting people behind what she's saying. It's no wonder she's the director of the NCSE. In the past I've compared Eugenie C. Scott to Darth Vader because she is full of internal contradictions, knows in her heart she's lying, powerful, persuasive, and most importantly, she travels around representing the dominating power (the Empire) and fighting the good guys. All in the name of ...well, I'm not exactly sure what her motivation is yet. It's certainly not truth.

Wow. Those are pretty scathing remarks and some serious accusations. He is accusing her of intentionally lying for some ulterior motive, but without a single example of a lie she's told or any possible ulterior motive mentioned. That doesn't strike me as terribly reasonable. If you're going to make such accusations, you really had better be able to back them up. I think that any man has an obligation to make sure he is not bearing false witness against another when he speaks against them, but surely a Christian, believing that the Ten Commandments come directly from God himself, has such an obligation.

I made similar accusations against William Dembski, but I have supported those accusations with direct quotes from him showing the contradictions. I've accused him also of unethical behavior in making false accusations against a fellow scholar, having the accusations proven to be false beyond a shadow of a doubt, and then engaging in Orwellian behavior by trying to erase his false accusations rather than owning up to it and apologizing. And again, I have supported those charges in great detail.

Some of Luskin's other statements in his report are downright baffling. For instance, this one:

According to Scott ID is still "a religious movement" whose "goal is to replace scientifric materialism with theism". Apparently ID people are "using evolution as a talking horse" to achieve that goal. The false notion that ID is religion, and the claim that "methodological naturalism and theism aren't mutually exclusive" form the basis of her attacks upon the arguments made by the pro-ID.

He says that as though those two arguments were false, but he doesn't attempt to demonstrate why. ID is a religious movement whose goal is to replace scientific materialism with theism. It says so quite explicitly in the Wedge document. Likewise, the claim that methodological naturalism and theism are not mutually exclusive is undeniably true. It is proven true by the simple fact that thousands and thousands of theists work as scientists all over the world and operate under the restriction of methodological naturalism in their scientific work while maintaining their theistic beliefs. The fact that a geologist, for example, is a Christian does not mean that he must invoke his Christian faith in order to explain the depositional environment of a given strata of sediment, nor conversely does his use of natural causes to explain such a formation conflict with his Christian faith.

He also makes this entirely false statement:

I was able to talk with Scott one on one for about 3 minutes while she walked from our class seminar to her public lecture. I asked her why she thinks ID isn't science. She said it isn't science because it does not refer to natural law (a reference to Ruse's testimony which he later recanted).

It is absolutely false to claim that Ruse recanted his claim that science must refer to natural law and not to supernatural causation. In fact, I asked Michael Ruse about this only a few short weeks ago when I saw him at a lecture in Grand Rapids. I've seen the criticisms of Ruse's testimony in the McLean case from Larry Laudan in others, and I knew that he had modified his position a bit since that testimony. I asked him directly if, in light of those criticisms and the difficulty of drawing a precise line of demarcation between science and non-science, he still thought it was correct to say that ID is non-science. He replied that it is non-science because it does not refer to natural law. If Ruse has recanted, he appears to be unaware of it.

The anti-creationist professor said to the class that an evolutionary worldview doesn't imply a personal God. Oh no. I'm confused! Eugenie C. Scott says it's OK to believe in evolution and God, but you, Dr. professor, say I cannot! Actually the AC-prof committed the very blunder that Scott told him not to.

This is quite absurd. It simply isn't reasonable to equate "an evolutionary worldview doesn't imply a personal God" with "evolution means there is no God". There is no such thing as an "evolutionary worldview" any more than there is a "gravitational worldview" or a "heliocentric worldview". Scientific theories are discrete explanations for specific phenomena, they are not religions or worldviews.

We didn't get too far into debating the technical aspects of it, although I did bring up Specified Complexity at one point (not sure if it would have come up otherwise). Elsberry claimed that these ideas are not good science because they haven't spawned any further papers or research. But aren't you responding to them in print Wesley? If they're so useless or bad science, why the needed refutations?

This is absolutely bizarre reasoning. If someone makes a claim and another person points out that the claim is false, the mere fact that he took the time to point out that the claim was false proves the importance and truth of the claim? I'll take wishful thinking for $1000, Alex.