Intelligent Design
jlynch | October 22, 2006The C.S. Lewis Society is sponsoring the Evidence of Design conference upcoming in Florida (Nov 3rd + 4th) and featuring Walter Bradley, Paul Nelson and Tom Woodward. The goal?
[To] thoroughly equip church members and leaders with generally non-technical, cutting-edge information. It will demonstrate practical steps to use design-evidence as a thoughtful bridge to skeptics who have been taught through Darwinian evolution that God is a myth. This conference will enable Christians and others to use simple evidence to demonstrate there is in fact a designer of life and that he is Jesus Christ…
jlynch | October 11, 2006So said Eeyore. But equally, it could describe this - Dembski has noticed the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Society, and so wants to be like Dawkins:
Anybody who is willing and able to upgrade the look, feel, and functionality of this site (Uncommon Descent) to match that of the Dawkins site will receive three of my books autographed. What a deal. Think it over.
Wow.
stcynic | October 9, 2006Fellow PT contributor Steve Reuland has a follow up on my two posts about the recent DI excuses for the utter lack of research on intelligent design. He makes the very important point that not only has there been no such research, there has been no suggestion of how it might even hypothetically be conducted. I'll post a long excerpt after the fold:
It's not even all that important for the DI or for any group of ID supporters to actually get their hands wet performing bench research. What really matters in this game is that you've got ideas for research, that your so-called theory serves as a…
stcynic | October 6, 2006In the wake of Bruce Chapman's public statement about the double secret probation research allegedly going on at a secret lair on a south pacific island comes this DI press release claiming to have funded millions of dollars worth of research. But notice how vague the wording is:
"So we started the Center, and now, just ten years later, we've put over $4 million directly into scientific and scholarly research on intelligent design and evolution."
"Scientific and scholarly research." Interesting combination of words. The latter category undoubtedly includes the salaries of all the DI fellows,…
stcynic | October 4, 2006Bruce Chapman of the Discovery Institute provides us with the latest excuse for why ID has produced no supporting research: it's being done under double secret probation at an undisclosed location. He begins with this lurid metaphor:
The most important is that the Darwinist establishment would like nothing better than to "out" research programs before they are finished. The idea is to shut down damaging evidence as early as possible. Strangle the infant in the crib. Demand answers now to questions still being explored.
Ah, the ubiquitous "Darwinist establishment", that evil cabal of…
jlynch | September 30, 2006Dembski breathlessly announces the latest front in the ID war on science - they've been unable to convince any relevent scientists, so they go straight to the children:
The Darwinists have had your young people long enough to shape, subvert, and corrupt. Send them to www.overwhelmingevidence.com and mobilize this sleeping giant! The old guard is not going to change. The hope of the future lies with our youth. The new ... site is modeled on Xanga and Myspace and aimed at concentrating the power of youth to throw off the indoctrination that is being shoved down their throats by groups like the…
stcynic | September 27, 2006The Oakland Press published an editorial on its website on Saturday about Dick DeVos' statements advocating the teaching of intelligent design in public school science classes. Their editorial stance is essentially to dismiss it as a non-issue brought up by a "frenzied media" or by "anonymous political groups." Speaking as a founding board member of the only organization that has spoken out publicly on the issue, I can only assume that they are referring to Michigan Citizens for Science. Unfortunately, the editorial in the Press fails to address the crux of the issue.
They make two primary…
stcynic | September 25, 2006With the ongoing campaigns in Ohio and Michigan, more and more newspapers are weighing in on the issue of ID in public schools. In Ohio, the Cincinatti Enquirer has an op-ed piece urging readers to vote for "fair-minded, pragmatic members" so that the school board can leave creationism behind and deal with more substantive issues. The Toledo Blade, meanwhile, is jumping in to the Michigan elections (being a border city, they've got many readers in Michigan) with an editorial slamming Republican gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos for his support of ID creationism in public schools. In Michigan…
stcynic | September 16, 2006Nick Matzke highlights a quote from a new book by Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt of the Discovery Institute that is simply stunning in its absurdity. According to them, not only did Darwin undermine morality and cause every evil thing imaginable, he also undermined our ability to count:
Strange though it may seem to neo-Darwinists, Darwin's assumption that the terms species and variety are merely given for convenience's sake is part of a larger materialist and reductionist program that undercuts the natural foundation of counting and distorts the natural origin of mathematics. To put it…
jlynch | September 15, 2006Over at the Panda's Thumb, Nick highlights the following quote from Wiker and Witt's, A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature:
Strange though it may seem to neo-Darwinists, Darwin's assumption that the terms species and variety are merely given for convenience's sake is part of a larger materialist and reductionist program that undercuts the natural foundation of counting and distorts the natural origin of mathematics. To put it more bluntly, in assuming that "species" are not real, Darwinism and the larger reductionist program burn away the original ties…
stcynic | September 15, 2006According to my friends from Ohio Citizens for Science, Steve Rissing and Patricia Princehouse, in this article in the Akron newspaper.
Patricia Princehouse, evolution advocate and professor at Case Western Reserve University, said the achievement committee didn't run behind schedule by accident.
Princehouse said the committee ate up the two hours by rewriting minutes from July to remove from the public record any direct mention of intelligent design.
Steve Rissing, an Ohio State University professor and evolution backer, said the changes in the minutes are significant.
"The corrected…
stcynic | September 14, 2006As Josh Rosenau reported yesterday, the latest attempt by the ID crowd to get their ideas into science classrooms in Ohio by hook or by crook was tabled at a state Board of Education subcommittee hearing. The meeting ran out of time before a measure sponsored by Deborah Owens Fink, which would essentially require schools to teach both sides of any "controversial issue", could be considered. Ohio Citizens for Science has put out a response to that proposal that shows its flaws.
After the board voted to remove the "critical analysis of evolution" lesson from the curriculum standards, Owens…
jlynch | September 4, 2006Denyse O'Leary is an ID shill and journalist. Today she's touting a "new evo devo spoof site". "New" as in online since at least 2001 and I remember seeing this in the late 90's. (The original "Science Made Stupid" book was from 1986, round about the time scientific creationism was morphing into intelligent design.)
This is "new" in the same way the ID is a "new science for a new century."
jlynch | August 29, 2006Contrary to the claims of certain IDologists, the new director of the Vatican Observatory, Fr. Jose Funes, has stated that the rumors that Fr. Coyne was replaced because of his stance on Intelligent Design were "absolutely false" and that Coyne requested in May to be replaced (source). Kind of makes the following from Denyse O' Leary all the more enjoyable:
Apparently, Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education (called by some here the "National Center for Selling Evolution") has attempted to spin Fr. Coyne's departure as a normal retirement. He told Dick Fischer at the ASA…
stcynic | August 29, 2006Keith Miller, the Christian geologist whose words were so egregiously misrepresented by Paul Nelson recently, has an interesting post to the ASA listserv (the ASA is the American Scientific Affiliation, a group of predominately pro-evolution Christian scientists) about Jonathan Wells. Wells is a DI fellow, ID advocate and a Moonie. Miller writes:
I have just learned of a new book by Jonathan Wells -- "The Politically Incorrect guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design." In that book he has a chapter entitled "Darwinism's War on Traditional Christianity." In this chapter, Well's presents…
stcynic | August 28, 2006Dembski has a post up at Uncommon Descent about the series of critiques at PT of Wells' new book. He quotes an email from one of his anonymous colleagues:
Like fresh meat tossed into a pit of jackels, Jonathan Wells' newest book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design has sent the Panda's Thumb crowd into a feeding frenzy. Right now there are at least 4 opening posts devoted to taking the book, apparently, chapter by chapter, and "demolishing" (or is it "destroying" or perhaps "eviscerating") nearly every sentence Jonathan wrote (or so it seems). I find it very…
stcynic | August 27, 2006I have been neglectful in not linking to this post by PZ Myers, wherein he exposes the highly dishonest tactics of Jonathan Wells in chapter 3 of his new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. It's pretty much just a rehash of the Haeckel material from Icons of Evolution, which just reminds us again of three things: that creationists never seem to learn from previous mistakes, that all they have, now and then, is a set of arguments against evolution, and that those arguments rely on misrepresentation of the evidence and the views of scientists in order to…
jlynch | August 26, 2006Jonathan Wells is at it again. Erstwhile "developmental biologist," he has taken time off "working on a book criticizing the over-emphasis on genes in biology and medicine" to present a Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, one that is approved of by Ann Coulter, who sees Wells as "an expert of Darwinism and intelligent design". To be fair, this is probably true - Wells is an expert in the same way that Coulter is an expert on science and history.
In any case, over at the Thumb, the crew have begun to put together a chapter by chapter response to Wells' dreck. As…
jlynch | August 26, 2006Cardinal Christoph Schönborn has once more taken a stance on evolution and once more illustrated his lack on knowledge:
"What I desire intensely is that, also in school programs, questions be explained, at the scientific level, opened by the theory of evolution, such as the famous question of the missing rings [sic]," Cardinal Schönborn said.
The cardinal said that 150 years after Darwin's theory, "there is no evidence in the geological strata of intermediate species that should exist, according to Darwin's theory."
No "missing rings" eh?
It's hard to know which is sadder, Schönborn's…