Cluck cluck cluuuuck!

The Discovery Institute has challenged SMU profs
to debate at the "Darwin vs Design" event in Dallas
. No takers so far; I'm not surprised, any scientist who participated would be increasing the DI's reputation immensely simply by sharing a meeting room with one of those clowns.

But the DI is in the mood for a debate, eh … so how about with Peter Irons, noted constitutional lawyer, Harvard Law School grad, Supreme Court bar member, and author of a forthcoming book, God on Trial(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), which includes a chapter on the Dover case? He's going to be in the Seattle area at the end of May, is willing to arrange a neutral venue, and has specifically offered to meet Casey Luskin, pipsqueak, University of San Diego School of Law, passed the California bar exam, incompetent poltroon, in public debate.

I have been personally informed by Mr Irons that the DI has refused his offer.

Many scientists have a policy of refusing to grant creationists any credibility by sharing a podium with them (we will happily discuss science in the public arena, though … it's just a waste of time to try to inform and educate with a kook lying and obfuscating next to you), so I can understand why the SMU professors aren't going to bother with them. The DI is the party asking for a debate, though; Irons has even offered to come to them and make it all as easy as possible for Luskin to get up and argue with him. So why do they chicken out now?

Is it because a debate on subjects of substance, directly addressing their socio-political goals rather than providing cover for their pretense of being a scientific organization, would not actually help their fading image? Or perhaps it is because no one at the DI actually has any confidence in Casey Luskin?


Peter Irons has sent along his own account of the DI's evasions, which I've put below the fold.

The Discovery Institute is putting on another of their dog-and-pony shows
on April 13 and 14, at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, trotting
out their usual lineup—Mike Behe, Steve Meyer, and Jay Richards—to give
their potted speeches. This event, however, has provoked several SMU
faculty members to quesion the university's decision to provide a forum
for the DI's propaganda.

Adopting the old adage that "there's no such thing as bad publicity" he
DI's president, Bruce Chapman, has challenged the critical SMU profs to
debate one of the DI speakers (he didn't say which one) at the opening
session. There hasn't been any response yet, so the debate is still up in
the air.

However, Chapman's debate challenge prompted Peter Irons to issue one of
his own. Irons, an emeritus constitutional law professor at the
University of California, San Diego, has challenged the DI's in-house
lawyer, Casey Luskin, to debate the Kitzmiller decision in which Judge
John E. Jones III ruled that ID cannot be taght in high-school biology
classes in Dover, Pennsylvania, a decision that Bruce Chapman confessed
was a "disaster" for the DI. Irons, a Harvard Law School graduate and
U.S. Supreme Court bar member, is the author of a forthcoming book, God on
Trial: Dispatches From America's Religious Battlefields (which Viking
Press will publish in May), which includesw a lengthy chapter on the
Kitzmiller case.

Irons was also invited by the editors of the Montana Law Review to write
an article on the Kitzmiller case for their next issue, responding to one
by Luskin and John West of the DI staff, along with David DeWolf, a DI
fellow and Gonzaga Law School prof. Irons says, "things got quite heated
in the editing process, especially around the intemperate language in the
DI's rebuttal to my article."

Back to the DI's debate challenge to the SMU profs. Irons issued his own
challenge to Casey Luskin, offering to debate him at the University of
Washington. Guess what? The day after Casey posted a piece on the DI's
blog, headed "Will SMU Faculty Debate Intelligent Design?", he refused to
debate Irons. Irons says, "it looks like the DI propagandists are only
willing to debate on their own turf." Or maybe Casey, knowing he would
face a skilled and experienced debater, simply chickened out.

More like this

Someone from the theology faculty should accept the invitation. Chapman, the author of the invitation, curiously does not mention evolution but opens the letter "I ... invite you or a representative from your faculty to participate in a dialogue about the theory of intelligent design on Friday night, April 13th..." And the follows a couple of paragraphs later "...one of our speakers would make a fifteen-minute presentation explaining the merits...of intelligent design. Then we would invite...you to make a presentation explaining your main criticisms of the theory. We would then allow your panel [no clue as to how this would work] to ask us a series of challenging questions of your own choosing. After that we would open the discussion to a few questions from the audience."

Chapman, of course, would decline, but it's the theology faculty who should respond, there being all dogma and no science in ID.

Peter Irons, noted constitutional lawyer, Harvard Law School grad, Supreme Court bar member, and author of a forthcoming book, God on Trial, which includes a chapter on the Dover case? He's going to be in the Seattle area at the end of May, is willing to arrange a neutral venue, and has specifically offered to meet Casey Luskin, pipsqueak, University of San Diego School of Law, passed the California bar exam, incompetent poltroon, in public debate.

This is how it should be done, folks. The DI is in the gutter. Kick it in the head.

Luskin has previously refused offers to publicly discuss the Discovery Institute's sleazy agenda and lies and his complicity in that sleazy agenda and his lies and horseshit.

I wonder what Luskin is afraid of? He shouldn't be afraid of making his fellow fundies look like stupid asses because that's been done a million times over. Maybe he's just a coward or maybe his boss (Johnny tWitt?) has no confidence in Luskin's ability to stand up to the heat.

By Great White Wonder (not verified) on 04 Apr 2007 #permalink

simply chickened out

Chickened out? I don't think I have seen them enter the Pharyngula stage yet.

(Except DaveScot and Cordova who couldn't follow where the development headed. Egnor has suspiciously not commented AFAIK after joining DI.)

Of course they want to separate out the problems. But since they and their strategy is so involved in miseducation and Dover, they can't get out of the consequences for their pseudoscience.

Kick it in the head.

If you mean figurehead, sure. Because there is really hard to find something intelligent to contend with.

By Torbjörn Larsson (not verified) on 04 Apr 2007 #permalink

How about a list of debates that would be worth paying to see?

1) Hovind vs Dembski on the age of the universe

....

By Chris Noble (not verified) on 04 Apr 2007 #permalink

Well, Casey's objection to Mr. Irons can't be the same one he tried to whip out against Chris Mooney:

Why do so many people eagerly listen to a journalist with neither scientific nor legal training discuss a complex scientific and legal issue like intelligent design?

'Chicken' seems like the parsimonious hypothesis to me.

Someone from the theology faculty should accept the invitation.

Someone from the drama department would be even better.

By CalGeorge (not verified) on 04 Apr 2007 #permalink

i'd recommend something like an intervention...maybe they can lure them into a situation where, thinking it was a "debate" about their made-up shit, they'd be hog-tied and put into intensive therapy to help their pathological lying?

There is only one appropriate response to the DI's "debate challenges":

"Life's too short."

By caerbannog (not verified) on 04 Apr 2007 #permalink

I couldn't afford tickets to the event (I've heard they're asking for $55 to attend), but I guess if they'll split their speakers fees with me I'll cancel my friday night plans and put in an appearance (The only other reason someone wouldn't cancel their weekend plans to put together a speech last minute to present to a hostile audience (for free) a talk on some issue you have absolutely no interest in while having to live with the guilt of having conferred an ounce of respectability on these no talent clowns is that you're a lily livered coward). I've been hoping to get some feedback on my evil intelligence design theory. The virtue of my theory is that it explains at least as much as Dembski's, while explaining the digger wasp and people with no legs, too.

Oh, DI. We have come to expect that you will do the most ridiculous, retarded thing possible in any situation, and you never disappoint. If you were an animal, you would have died out long ago. Sharks change faster.

By Chinchillazilla (not verified) on 04 Apr 2007 #permalink

Clayton, have you really come up with an evil intelligent design theory? Is it posted somewhere? I'd love to see it.

One response I've given Christians in the past is "Omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent -- pick two."

I think it's been proven, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the Discovery Institute has no balls.

I would love to volunteer on behalf of real scientists. I don't even have a degree..yet. And even then it will be merely in engineering. This way the creationists wouldn't get 'street cred' for taking on a 'notable' evolutionists, but since even I can tell what is utterly wrong with ID, I think I'd do well in such a debate.

simply chickened out

Chickened out? I don't think I have seen them enter the Pharyngula stage yet.

(Except DaveScot and Cordova who couldn't follow where the development headed. Egnor has suspiciously not commented AFAIK after joining DI.)

Of course they want to separate out the problems. But since they and their strategy is so involved in miseducation and Dover, they can't get out of the consequences for their pseudoscience.

Kick it in the head.

If you mean figurehead, sure. Because there is really hard to find something intelligent to contend with.

By Torbjörn Larsson (not verified) on 04 Apr 2007 #permalink