Larry Arnhart, a conservative philosopher, has written a response to Ann Coulter's ignorant ravings about evolution in her new book. About 1/3 of her book is devoted to criticizing "Darwinism", and she got all of her information about it from the major ID advocates. I suspect this is about to become a problem for them. On April 26th, Dembski wrote on his blog:
I'm happy to report that I was in constant correspondence with Ann regarding her chapters on Darwinism - indeed, I take all responsibility for any errors in those chapters.
Coulter, meanwhile, absolutely gushes about the contributions of the ID advocates to her book:
"I couldn't have written about evolution without the generous tutoring of Michael Behe, David Berlinski, and William Dembski, all of whom are fabulous at translating complex ideas, unlike liberal arts types, who constantly force me to the dictionary to relearn the meaning of quotidian."
The problem for them now is that Coulter's claims about evolution are even worse than one might imagine. I mean they're really, really bad. There are many statements she makes about evolution that are so abysmally ignorant that even your average young earther would cringe at them. Every argument, practically, is straight out of the creationist jokebook. And you can bet your behind that we're going to publicize a whole bunch of them. After all, she got it from the very people who claim not to be creationists. Stay tuned for much, much more.
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Translation: "Creationists are wonderful 'cause they tell me simple things that don't make me think, and liberals are evil 'cause they talk about complicated facts that don't fit my prejudices."
What you just quoted may be the most honest thing Coulter has ever said: she's pretty much admitted that she's a stupid spoiled princess who hates work and everyone who expects her to do any work.
I just went and read the link. Not to bad until I got to the part where he wanted both ID and evolution taught side by side. A clear indicator to me the author doesn't really get science despite seemingly understanding the fact that the evidence for evolution is overwhelming.
The comments are pretty good except for someone asking about Behe and Miller. Again, this highlights the fact the USA's population is really weak in terms of understnading the scientific method.
Actually, I didn't get the impression that his ideas about the scientific method were all that bad, just that he doesn't know enough about ID yet. Well, I guess IDers don't know that much about ID yet either, and that would be the larger problem...
Wow, I totally quoted the wrong part of Chance's comment. So, scratch that blockquote and swap it with his previous paragraph.
Then I personally would not advocate teaching them side by side with good science until I learned more about what I'm saying.
But thats just my humble opinion.
Coulter's clearly got to the stage where she's just trying to see what she can get away with and still have half the conservative movement stay with her. She's made enough money now that she doesn't have to maintain even borderline credibility with the mainstream and is no longer bound by any standard of decorum or decency (merely wishing violence on liberals don't count as indecorous any more, for some reason). She's clearly decided she's free to be as outrageous as she wants, including plagiarising, making stuff up and using painfully irrational arguments. It's her idea of fun, since she'll be fine financially even if people wise up to her schtick.
I don't know if there should be a natural law for it, but when a given text has so many errors that the correction of all of them takes two or more times the space than the original text, that the original text should officially be called crap.
I still say Coulter planned this from the beginning and has pulled off a long term subversive rug-pull on the conservatives.
Even THEY are bailing on her:
http://www.redstate.com/story/2006/6/12/6185/62198
http://www.redstate.com/story/2006/6/14/21048/0283
http://www.redstate.com/story/2006/6/14/174413/944
yes some may be bailing on her (they sort of do every few months when she says something especially fouL0, but she still gets high profile network gigs like Leno, gets to spew to bigger audience than you or I ever get. I guess we need tall leggy anorectic blond dressed to show legs and cleavage. sexual selection works to sell books and right wing nuttery.
So Dembski admits he doesn't know crap about evolution. What a surprise. Is there any truth to the rumor that Coulter is really Dembski in drag? (shudder)
God- I'd love to see her write a book just on evolution. Just imagine- a whole 95 pages devoted solely to the evils of evolution.... I mean of crea- I mean of intelligent design!
I agree with TWood. Coulter is just milking the wingnut audience. When she's rich enough, or the game stops paying off, or she just gets tired of it, she'll have a grand old time mocking the gullibility of both her fans and her detractors.
Joe Carter did months ago. Someone ought to staple of copy of his post to the front of every one of her books.
I thought Darwinian Fairytales was bad. I was wrong.
Is it really fair to refer to her as female? I think on this blog, any reference to Ann Coulter should have some sort of a nickname, like HeDevil or Andy Cowterd.
On this blog, it's unlikely that you'll ever see people referred to that way, even if I despise them. You'll notice that I never use terms like "Dumbski". I just think that making epithets out of people's names isn't terribly clever and I avoid it unless I hear one that is really brilliant and subtle. And those are rare.
Translation: "Creationists are wonderful 'cause they tell me simple things that don't make me think, and liberals are evil 'cause they talk about complicated facts that don't fit my prejudices."
What you just quoted may be the most honest thing Coulter has ever said: she's pretty much admitted that she's a stupid spoiled princess who hates work and everyone who expects her to do any work.
Oh my God - now I know what Coulter reminds me of: She must be the model for the Malibu Stacey doll on the Simpsons - you know, the one that said "Math is Hard."
I almost wonder if more non-conservatives pay attention to Coulter than conservatives. Considering that NationalReview fired her several years ago, she's definately on the whacky side of the conservative spectrum.
Actually, thinking on it, it may be more an issue of the difference between the intellectualist conservatism you see primarily in magazines like National Review, First Things and Weekly Standard versus populist conservatism epitomized by yahoos like Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, etc. Coulter may write rather than having a radio show, but she definately fits in more with the latter group than the former.
The Discovery Institute crew are going to end up looking really stupid over putting their names on her work. But then, their followers never seem to notice when they end up with egg on their faces as it is. The Dover verdict hardly seemed to slow them down.