Intelligent Design
jlynch | August 2, 2006The ID reaction to Kansas is beginning to trickle in. Paul Nelson gives us a little fable claiming that the science standards don't matter anyway, and John West said the outcome would not stop people from learning about the "growing controversy" over evolution."
Let's face it guys -- up until last night, you saw the standards as being important Hell, you funded a media campaign with lecture tours and websites just to make that point.
And here's the rub, in conservative Kansas, in Republican primaries (surely members of your "natural constituency") you lost. That must hurt.
stcynic | August 2, 2006Prediction #1 has come true. Here's Paul Nelson on why yesterday's loss in Kansas doesn't matter:
Once upon a time, there were a whole bunch of people who thought that what really mattered in thinking hard about design and evolution were state science standards. And school board elections.
Along came a 15 year old kid who loved science, read a lot, thought for herself, and generally saw the adults around her as missing the point. "As if," she said to the cat sleeping at her feet.
Then she smiled and went back to her web browsing.
The End.
Unfortunately, the whole bunch of people who think…
stcynic | August 2, 2006Now that the primaries are over in Kansas and ID has been rejected even in its most sanitized "critical analysis" form, we can really only look forward to two inevitabilities:
1. The DI will put out a statement declaring it no big deal, even though they thought it was a big enough deal to pump an enormous amount of money into the campaign to put commercials on the air and take a dog and pony show in favor of the pro-ID standards and candidates all over the state.
2. Pat Robertson will declare that Kansas will be destroyed by a hurricane for throwing God out of the state - and never mind that…
jlynch | August 1, 2006As I type this, votes are being counted in Kansas in primaries for the State Board of Education. You can keep track of the results here. For the record, Bacon, Morris, Willard and Patzer are ID supporters.
It seems as good a time as any to repost this from June of last year, in the spirit of hoping that the good people of Kansas reject an ignoramus like Connie Morris:
When an elected state school board member such as Connie Morris (KS) can write a newsletter [pdf] that reads as if it was written by an illiterate thirteen year old, then you know there is something wrong with the system in…
stcynic | August 1, 2006The primary elections for the Kansas State Board of Education took place today and the results are slowly trickling in. It's far too early to predict the finish this early, but at this point all but one of the pro-science candidates are either winning or in a dead heat in the early returns. Here are the pro-science candidates:
District 1 - Janet Waugh
District 3 - Harry McDonald, former KCFS president.
District 5 - Sally Cauble
District 7 - Donna Viola
District 9 - Jana Shaver
Let's keep our fingers crossed that this trend continues as more results come in. This could be a huge loss for the…
stcynic | July 31, 2006As a perfect follow up to my earlier post about the IDers dishonest claim that the Kansas science standards have nothing to do with getting ID into public schools, take a look at this post at Dembski's place. Dembski's research assistant, Joel Borofsky, spills the beans completely in two comments on that post. Here's the first:
My hope is that ID will be taught properly in Kansas. Having been born and raised there I would love to claim to be from the first state to teach ID. There is a lot of movement among science high school teachers to never teach ID, even if it becomes a law because "we…
stcynic | July 31, 2006One of the standard talking points from ID advocates these days is that us evolution advocates are just plum crazy to even suggest that policies requiring schools to teach "critical analysis of evolution" are a way to get intelligent design into the classrooms. DI shill Casey Luskin even coined a phrase in February when he claimed that those who think this way are suffering from "false fear syndrome" and exhibiting paranoia. Luskin writes:
This is simply another instance of Darwinists attempting to oppose critical analysis of evolution by pretending that it is equivalent to teaching…
stcynic | July 27, 2006In what looks like a fit of bravado, Dembski has once again reiterated his responsibility for any mistakes in the evolution chapters of Ann Coulter's new book. He's essentially saying "bring it on":
In April I announced on this blog Ann Coulter's then forthcoming book GODLESS (go here). There I remarked, "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." Jim Downard, rather than simply taking me at my word, instead wants me to elaborate on my correspondence with Ann (go…
stcynic | July 26, 2006Jack Krebs has posted the entire speech he gave the other day analyzing the proposed Kansas science standards, including the full powerpoint presentation and mp3s of the speech itself. He explains why "critical analysis of evolution" or "scientific criticism of evolution" is nothing more than a strategic choice of words to get ID into public school science classrooms without calling it ID. The bottom line is that ID is nothing but arguments against evolution. The fact that these policies are being pushed only by enthusiastic supporters of ID is powerful evidence of what is really going on…
jlynch | July 21, 2006Jason does a nice take-down of Dembski's latest attempt to present ID-friendly research. Interestingly, a commenter ("stevie steve") got banned from Dembski's blog for asking a very simple and pertinent question: "Did any ID theorists predict this discovery?" A case of the Emperor's New Clothes, it seems to me.
stcynic | July 18, 2006Dembski's home for wayward sycophants is now becoming Dembski and O'Leary's home for wayward sycophants. Denyse O'Leary is taking over DaveScot's role, and I expect she'll do it in more ways than one. Anyone who has read O'Leary's ID writings knows that they are delightfully wacky. DaveScot is stepping down as irrational inquisitor in chief. Let's hope that O'Leary can replace the pure entertainment value of his heavy-handed absurdity.
jlynch | July 16, 2006The caterpillar of a Spicebush Swallowtail (Papilio troilus):
(Adult here)
According to here, "The fact that the false eye spots even swell out from the spicebush swallowtail caterpillar's body, as do actual eyes, is proof to us that these little souls were created by intelligent design."
Ignoring the theological problem of "little souls" (is there a heaven for caterpillars?), I think it's fair to say that whatever designed these boyos was doing some serious drugs.
stcynic | July 16, 2006As Carl Zimmer notes, the IDers are pouring huge amounts of money into Kansas in advance of the August primary elections for the state school board. Kansas has been a battleground since 1999. And as Zimmer also notes, the pro-science folks are getting no support at all from our side. I urge you all to support the Kansas Alliance for Education and Kansas Citizens for Science. Another good project to support is Jeremy Mohn's Stand Up for Real Science project, an answer to the DI's campaign. Jeremy is a biology teacher in Kansas fighting a battle against the incredibly well-funded Discovery…
jlynch | July 14, 2006I have in the past hammered home the point that mathematicians, engineers, lawyers etc have little business critiquing evolutionary biology (see here, for example). Over at Evolutionblog, Jason, himself a mathematician (and responding to the DI lawyer Casey Luskin), hits the nail on the head:
There is absolutely nothing in a mathematician's training or professional work that qualifies him to discuss evolution. Unless you are one of the very small percentage of mathematicians who actually work in mathematical biology, evolution is not something that ever arises in your graduate school courses…
stcynic | July 14, 2006John Derbyshire, the National Review's token evolution advocate, has written a response to George Gilder's pro-ID article in that same magazine last week. Gilder is the founder of the Discovery Institute. In his response, Derbyshire uses a perfect metaphor for dealing with creationists:
It's a wearying business, arguing with Creationists. Basically, it is a game of Whack-a-Mole. They make an argument, you whack it down. They make a second, you whack it down. They make a third, you whack it down. So they make the first argument again. This is why most biologists just can't be bothered with…
stcynic | July 12, 2006Nick Matzke has an excellent post at the Panda's Thumb poking a rather sizable hole in the latest ID strategy and the rhetoric used to defend it. The seeds of this strategy were sown in Ohio in 2002, where the Discovery Institute was pushing for inclusion of intelligent design in public school science classrooms in that state. They didn't quite have the votes on the board to get that done, so they settled for a fallback position: teaching "critical analysis" of evolutionary theory - which, of course, just means teaching all the ID arguments without using that label. They are now pursuing that…
stcynic | July 10, 2006Dembski has had a habit in the past of posting things on his blog that are reported to him by anonymous colleagues. It's forced him to have to apologize a time or two when it turns out that the facts aren't quite correct (you may recall the anonymous colleague who told him about seeing Kevin Padian speaking ill of "Asian fundamentalists" in a speech that he did not give in a place he hadn't been in years). The latest was this post, where based upon such a report he implied that Ken Miller was a closet ID supporter. Ken Miller has now posted a reply that includes the actual text of the…
jlynch | July 7, 2006Commenting over at the Panda's Thumb, "steve s" offers a Pythonesque take on ID. Well, it made me laugh.
jlynch | July 5, 2006One of the twenty-year goals of the Discovery Institute's Wedge was to see the influence of "design theory" in the fine arts. I've often wondered what that could possible mean. And now, thanks to Access Research Network's "ID Arts Initiative" I now know.
In today's ARN Announce (it's not online yet), Dennis Wagner presents his vision of "the Right-Brain approach to intelligent design":
Our worldview impacts all areas of life including the arts. The arts also reflect philosophical and cultural trends in human societies. If intelligent design philosophical and scientific concepts are valid, we…
stcynic | June 26, 2006This letter irritates me, not only because it recycles tired old creationist canards but because it appears in the Michigan State newspaper. The fact that it's written by someone studying chemical engineering, implying at least a modicum of understanding of science, is even worse. It's just one silly and unsubstantiated claim after another.
But people need to understand there is a slowly increasing amount of evidence in support of intelligent design, and it won't be going away anytime soon.
I don't think this is even hypothetically possible, because any and all evidence could be made…