Intelligent Design
jlynch | June 12, 2007Jason’s recent encounter with ID-apologist Tom Woodward spurred me to revisit his book Darwin Strikes Back: Defending the Science of Intelligent Design (2006) which I had tossed aside months back due to its breathless, inane cheerleading for ID. Not surprisingly, the talk Jason witnessed follows the book quite closely, so you can save yourself the pain by just reading Jason’s posts [1, 2, 3, 4].
On page 77, Woodward tries to deal with the accusation that ID does not make any predictions. He replies that ID does indeed have a "clear and daring prediction." And what is it?
"Darwinists will not…
jlynch | June 5, 2007Behe's latest piece of dreck (The Edge of Evolution) has appeared and it has already recieved quite the beatdown from Michael Ruse, Mark Chu-Carroll, PZ Myers, and Nick Matzke, with Nick's post being fairly damning regarding Behe's "ability" to do basic research (see here as well). I've a copy sitting on my desk here but am not terrible keen to crack it open, particular as there appears to be nothing new in the book beyond what was said eleven years ago in Darwin's Black Box - ID, a "new science for a new century" that is still trapped in the old century, it appears.
Whether I bother to read…
goodmath | June 3, 2007Apparently William Dembski, over at Uncommon Descent is *not* happy with my review of
Behe's new book. He pulls out a rather pathetic bit of faux outrage: "Are there any anti-ID writings that the Panda's Thumb won't endorse?"
The outrage really comes off badly. But what's Debski and his trained attack dog DaveScott try to smear me for my alleged lack of adequate credentials to judge the math of Behe's argument.
This is rich. Michael Behe, a *biochemist*, writes a book that makes sloppy mathematical arguments - which is, in fact, built around a primarily mathematical argument. But there's…
goodmath | May 31, 2007I've gotten my hands on a review copy of Michael Behe's new book, "The Edge of Evolution". The shortest version of a review is: Bad science, bad math, and bad theology, all wrapped up in a pretty little package.
As people who've followed his writings, lectures, and court appearances know, Behe is pretty much a perfect example of the ignoramus who makes a bad argument, and then puts his fingers in his ears and shouts "La la la, I can't hear you" whenever anyone refutes it. He *still* harps on his "irreducible complexity" nonsense, despite the fact that pretty much *every aspect* of it has been…
jlynch | May 25, 2007
Blame Mark Hoofnagle for the idea and Glenn Branch for the inspiration. Clickie for biggie.
Update: Also see LOLDembski
jlynch | May 22, 2007Headline at Uncommon Descent:
The Chronicle says of Gonzalez "a clear case of discrimination"
Actual sentence in Chronicle article:
At first glance, it seems like a clear-cut case of discrimination. (emphasis mine)
Wow. Just, wow.
goodmath | May 14, 2007 I debated about whether or not I should write this post. But as you can see, in the
end, I overcame my better judgement, and so he we are.
Over the weekend, PZ wrote a Pharyngula post about the reaction people have had to Mitt
Romney's statement about evolution. He was pissed. And I agree with his initial reaction.
What we have is a politician basically saying "Yes, I agree with the facts". And somehow,
that's been taken by a seemingly huge number of people as something brave and bold,
something that should impress us. Nope, sorry folks: acknowledging that facts are facts is
not brave. I'm…
goodmath | May 11, 2007 This isn't math, but I felt like commenting anyway. That shining example of
an Intelligent Design advocate, Dr. Michael Egnor, is back once again. And this time,
his point, such as it is, is to basically fling insults at PZ Myers. What did PZ do to bring on his ire?
Well, PZ was annoyed with Time magazine, because for their "Time 100" list, they
had Michael Behe write the entry about Richard Dawkins. The passage which Engor took such offense at was the following:
The incompetence is stunning. Richard Dawkins makes the Time 100 list, and who do they commission to write up his profile?…
jlynch | May 5, 2007I'm sure PZ will comment on this, but I couldn't help but highlight this statement by George Gilder:
The notion that "the whole universe contains no intelligence," Mr. Gilder said at Thursday's conference, is perpetuated by "Darwinian storm troopers."
"Both Nazism and communism were inspired by Darwinism," he continued. "Why conservatives should toady to these storm troopers is beyond me."
Way to go George! And his sock puppet, John West, once more tells us what the real agenda is:
"Nor is it simply an irrelevant rehashing of certain esoteric points of biology and philosophy. Darwinian…
goodmath | May 2, 2007 An astute reader pointed me towards a monstrosity of pompous bogus math. It's an oldie, but I hadn't seen it before, and it was just referenced by my old buddy Sal Cordova in a thread on one of the DI blogs. It's a "debate" posted online by Lee Spetner, in which he rehashes the typical bogus arguments against evolution. I'm going to ignore most of it; this kind of stuff has been refuted more than enough times. But in the course
of this train wreck, he pretends to be making a mathematical argument about search spaces and optimization processes. It's a completely invalid argument - but it's…
goodmath | April 24, 2007 When I'm bored, I'll periodically take a look at the blogs published by
the bozos at the Discovery Institute. I can generally find something good for a laugh. So I was doing that tonight, and came across yet another example of how they try to distort
reality and use slimily dishonest math to try to criticize the evidence for evolution. This time, it's an article by "Logan Gage" called What exactly does genetic similarity demonstrate?.
Francix X. Clines, an excellent writer for The City Life and Editorial Observer sections of The New York Times, today (April 23, 2007) repeats what may be…
jlynch | April 9, 2007There is something bitterly ironic about a muppet like Dembski complaining about the Nisbet & Mooney piece on "framing science." His complaint is, after all, coming from a man who accepts money from a group who coin glib phrases like "teach the controversy" and talk about "a new science for a new century". Sheech!
jlynch | April 1, 2007I guess we all fell for it. It turns out that the whole Michael Egnor cafuffle was an elaborate ruse to have us Darwinists make fools of ourselves. Boy, do we feel dumb! Still, Egnor has managed to outdo his parodic self with this:
"materialism is nonsense, because if matter and energy are all that exist, then truth doesn't exist (it's neither matter nor energy). If truth doesn't exist, then materialism can't be true."
Wow.
jlynch | March 31, 2007
I spent this afternoon giving a public talk to the Greater Phoenix Mensa Regional Gathering. The topic was the history of anti-evolutionism (largely Intelligent Design) in this country over the past twenty years. Slides (without my soft Irish accent) are available here for those that care.
The slide player is a little funky and seems to skip certain parts of the slideshow, but it's probably enough to give you the gist of what I said. Props go to Nick Matzke at NCSE for providing some of the material.
goodmath | March 29, 2007 So over at the DI whiners blog, Egnor is, once again, trying to pretend that he's actually making a case for why evolution is irrelevant to antibiotic resistance. It's really getting silly; he repeats the same nonsense over and over again, desparately doing the rhetorical version of sticking his fingers in his ears and shouting "La La La! I can't hear you!":
The Darwinist assertion that random variation and natural selection (chance and necessity) account for all biological complexity has nothing to do with the mundane observation that it's unwise to unnecessarily expose populations of…
jlynch | March 27, 2007Somewhat predictably, Dembski has posted this comment by Freeman Dyson:
My opinion is that most people believe in intelligent design as a reasonable explanation of the universe, and this belief is entirely compatible with science. So it is unwise for scientists to make a big fight against the idea of intelligent design. The fight should be only for the freedom of teachers to teach science as they see fit, independent of political or religious control. It should be a fight for intellectual freedom, not a fight for science against religion.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Teachers - at…
jlynch | March 24, 2007Dembski seems to think Darwin was a racist when it came to the "careless, squalid, unaspiring" Irish. Pat Hayes points out Dembski's selective quotation of Darwin and John Wilkins applies the coup de grace. I hope these aren't the "research" methods that Dembski is teaching to his students at his little bible school.
goodmath | March 22, 2007 As usual, Casey Luskin over at DI's media complaints division is playing games, misrepresenting people's words in order to claim that that they're misrepresenting IDists words. Nothing like the pot calling the kettle black, eh? This time, he's accusing Ken Miller of misrepresenting Dembski
in a BBC documentary.
Let's first take a look at what Casey claims happened in the documentary:
A reporter recently sent me an anti-intelligent design BBC documentary with the outlandish title "A War on Science." In it, Darwinian biologist Ken Miller is shown purporting to refute irreducible complexity…
jlynch | March 20, 2007Mike hits one out of the park:
It took me a while to realize that the 'professional creationists' were not intellectually honest either. I am not referring to those who follow them, or those who are simply not very [knowledgeable] about evolution. .... Everyone can be misinformed, ignorant, or simply have not thought things through correctly. What I will not tolerate is willful ignorance. Creationist leaders and spokesmen are willfully ignorant. How many times do they have to be told what scientists mean by a theory? How many
times will they misstate the basics of evolutionary theory, such as…