Matt Dowling has organized the YouTube recordings of Dembski's lecture at the University of Oklahoma: parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. The man can drone on.
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Peter Irons has again been having way too much fun with creationist shenanigans. Irons, you may recall, is a hot shot west coast lawyer who had a grand time with the Pivar situation, and has lately been nudging Dembski on the case of his misuse of the Harvard/XVIVO animation. Would you believe that…
Got a creationist coming to your town or school? A commenter from Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education left an excellent summary of how to counter these travelin' frauds effectively. The key is simple: recruit. Get the information out. Don't let them come in and babble unopposed or with…
Dangit!
The big OK Separation of Church and State event tomorrow has had to be postponed because we are currently in the middle of a freak snowstorm. By freak snowstorm, I mean it is currently 27 degrees, pouring rain that is going to turn into snow overnight...
... Yet the high on Sunday is going…
ERV has a must-read series of posts up (Part One, Part Two, Part Three) about William Dembski's latest bit of performance art, this time delivered at the University of Oklahoma. Sounds like things went well for the good guys. Lot's of choice nuggets:
See, the major theme of Dembskis talk was '…
Uh, I have an iron stomach, but a low threshold for stupidity, so I'll pass. Recent reading has convinced me that Dembski and his pals are nothing more than disingenuous cdesign proponentsists ninjas. They can't get into Academia through the front door, so they must sneak in through a window in the back.
OK, own up. Who added this to the urban dictionary: cdesign proponentsists: The missing link between "creationists" and "design proponents", as used in the textbook Of Pandas and People. Used to refer to creationist dumbfucks who are all to generally confused by science theology or even common sense.
perfect description of Dembski I'd say.
C'mon ERV,
Own up, were you in this, and if so where?
This is actually a pretty good session -- but only for the fact that the students are openly hostile to his arguments and fully crucify him in the Q&A. Very encouraging.
What, where's the sweater?
I want a refund on my time spent...
I think you can hear me in Part 4 somewhere :)
oooo I think I see me over to the right ^__^
Just in time for the holidays.
danley-- Dembskis Christmas present to us this year?
Interesting. That's the first time I've been able to watch and listen to Dembski at length.
First thought: he's another data-point in support of my hypothesis concerning the arrogance and narrowness of mathematicians. Let me hasten to say that I'm sure they're not all like that. I've just never met one.
Second thought: the man's an idiot - in both senses of the word. (Okay, maybe that was my first thought)
Third thought: I was impressed at the restraint shown by the questioners, particularly ERV given the way she'd been treated by them. I'd have been sorely tempted to be more forthright.
Fourth thought: what's the latest thinking on the role of sweaters in framing the debate?
ERV wrote:
Oh the wonderful ERV comes through again! An Abbie elf giving the DI something Xtra-special for !Jebuseason: Harvard/XVIVO awareness of blatant theft. How thoughtfully cool!
Y'know, I'd never wasted the time listening to their arguments before, but I figured, WTF, it's the night before Thanksgiving when I'm going to be too stuffed to think, everyone else is in bed, so why not?
I was struck by 3 things:
1. As is so often the case with science wannabes, they accuse science of doing what they do: Teleology? Yup, must be part of evolution. Conspiracy? Check, evolootionsists at work. No way to explain unexplained phenomena? You know it! EEs (Evil Evolutionists) at work.
2. Where are the eyes?
Why is it all flagella, all the time? What happened to the "irreducible complexity" of eyes? Oh wait! Maybe something about the fossil record and the increased understanding of the molecular biology of eyes and the similarities and differences in eye structure between species, both at the macro and micro level. This suggests that their real strategy is whack-o-mole: once scientists have whacked flagella (which they clearly have), they'll pop up elsewhere with toes (or toe jam) or mitochondria or the Isle of Langerhans or whatever.
3. They are revisionist historians of the highest order of duplicity. They conveniently forget that it was Darwin and evolution that had to undergo years of criticism to overcome the bias against it. It was, what, 100 years before it made it into standard textbooks at the secondary school level? Quantum physics had to go through an amazingly rigorous test before it was accepted. It has been measured to a degree that has never been approached before - by several orders of magnitude, yet these bozos, because of their lack of imagination, throw up their hands and say "We can't think of any way this could happen so it must be designed! We can't prove anything, but the burden of proof is on you!"
In short, they are intellectually, morally, and spiritually (yes! - the spirit of discovery) bankrupt. While on one hand, I'm not surprised, having followed your blog for some time, I was surprised at the breathtaking duplicity of Dembski, down to trying (and failing!) to beat up students and using the old "talk to me offline" when he can't overcome an argument. What a POS he and his colleagues, no, make that co-conspirators, are!