In Their Own Words
jlynch | February 4, 2008Why to not engage in scientific peer review:
We have often received feedback in the form of questions on the lines of, 'If creation is scientific, then why don't you publish in peer-reviewed secular journals?' Andrew Kulikovsky answers this common question in detail. He points out the advantage of peer review but then documents its many shortcomings in practice, including rejecting top research while admitting fraud, as well as an all-to-common role in protecting the ruling paradigm. So it is folly for anticreationists to hide behind it instead of dealing with the arguments. This is why, to…
jlynch | February 1, 2008PZ has noted that the boyos over at Uncommon Descent have deep-sixed a comment thread that (rightly) pointed out that he bested DI-fellow Geoffrey Simmons in their debate yesterday (it will be interesting to see how the DI spins this one). Happily, After The Bar Closes has the comments archived. Therein, you can find this gem from Louis Savain (yeah, that Savain):
The ID movement is wasting its time and resources, in my opinion. This ID vs. evolution fight will never be won with either debates, arguments, brochures, web sites or what have you. The opposition has a propaganda machine that is…
jlynch | January 30, 2008Apparently there are some questions you just can’t ask. The cdesign proponentsists maintain that the truth is being stifled by their not being allowed ask "difficult" questions of evolutionary biology. Yet we need to remember that supporters of intelligent design have questions that they avoid, often by censorship of the kind they accuse mainstream science. Witness DaveScot over at Uncommon Descent:
Permutations of the question "Who designed the designer?" are trite, easily addressed, and if you read the moderation rules you’ll find that comments using this and other trite arguments are…
jlynch | January 10, 2008Cornelius Hunter expectorates:
In the life sciences one’s alternatives are to be a Darwinist or to be a Darwinist. Passing grades, letters of recommendation, graduate school admission, doctorate exams, faculty hiring, and tenure promotion all require adherence to the theory of evolution. The lists are long of otherwise qualified candidates who could not take that next career step because they did not conform to the Darwinian paradigm.
Long lists? Evidence please!
Hunter is not a Darwinist. Was he denied his PhD in biophysics?
Meyer, Wells, Behe, Marcus Ross, Kurt Wise? The signatories of the…
jlynch | January 9, 2008Over at the Pandas Thumb, "ThisIsPerfection" accuses me of using an argument from authority when I posted the composition of the 300 signatories of the DI’s "Dissent from Darwinism" list. I beg to differ. It is the DI itself that is engaging in such an argument. Witness:
More than 700 Ph.D. scientists have adopted a statement expressing skepticism of the core mechanism of modern Darwinian theory and urging a careful examination of the evidence (dissentfromdarwin.org). Those scientists include members of the national academy of sciences in several countries, as well as professors at Princeton…
jlynch | July 21, 2007Dembski pimps an interview with his new bestest buddy, the electrical and computer engineer, Robert Marks "director of the Baylor Evolutionary Informatics Lab" (which is comprised of Dembski, Marks and two students). The Isaac Newton of Information Theory says:
I hope you catch from the interview the ambitiousness of the lab and how it promises to put people like Christoph Adami and Rob Pennock out of business (compare www.evolutionaryinformatics.org with devolab.cse.msu.edu).
Let’s do that shall we? Let’s compare the two labs. Number of journal papers by the Baylor Evolutionary Informatics…
jlynch | June 18, 2007I haven’t spoken of Michael Egnor is a long time. If you remember, he’s the DI’s pet neurosurgeon who, as many have documented, has a penchant for silly arguments. Attacking Egnor is a little like harvesting low-hanging fruit, but I couldn’t let this (lack of) logic go unnoticed ... think of it as a teaching moment.
In response to a Nature editorial on Brownback’s defense of his views on evolution, Egnor writes:
Yet if intelligent design is scientifically wrong ...then the design inference can be investigated (and, they claim, refuted) using the scientific method. Then intelligent design is…
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…
jlynch | May 23, 2007From 1788:
"I demand of you, and of the whole world, that you show me a generic character, by which to distinguish between Man and Ape. I myself most assuredly know of none. I wish somebody would indicate one to me. But if I had called man an ape, or vice versa, I should have fallen under the ban of all the ecclesiastics. It may be that as a naturalist I ought to have done so."
And still the Institute for Creation Research sees Linnaeus as a fellow traveller.
(And as an aside, Edmund Hovey's The Bicentenary of the Birth of Carolous Linnaeus [1908] is freely available online in multiple…
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.
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…
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.
jlynch | March 18, 2007Over at the Discovery Institute's Media Complaints Division, Casey Luskin makes much of a piece by Peter Williams decrying the use by paleontologist Richard Fortey of the phrase "IDiots". Williams exclaims:
"While Darwinists provided their own name, this childishly rude title does not allow the proponents of the ID theory to choose their own name for their theory. Descending to name-calling is not going to help the Darwinist cause shift the appearance of 'a threatened Establishment'! Rather, it confirms it."
Well, first of all, I'm not a Darwinist, so don't call me one*. Secondly, I don't…
jlynch | February 8, 2007Cardinal Cristoph Schönborn [fanboy site here] flew across the radar a few years back for a purile pro-ID op-ed in the New York Times that was egged-on by the Discovery Institute's Bruce Chapman,. Now Chapman - a relatively recent convert to Catholicism - is having a mini-orgasm about a lecture Schoenborn gave
in New York yesterday, one that was sponsored by the Homeland Foundation, a group that funds cultural and religious programs, many involving the Catholic Church. (As this page notes, some members of the Homeland Foundation's board are members of Opus Dei and some grants are given to…
jlynch | February 6, 2007
This is Turkana boy (Homo ergaster), soon to go on display in Kenya's national museum. Bishop Boniface Adoyo, of Nairobi Pentecostal Church (NPC) and Christ is the Answer Ministries, claims:
"I did not evolve from Turkana Boy or anything like it. These sorts of silly views are killing our faith."
Someone should explain to Adoyo that the truth sometimes hurts. Speaking of "silly views," apparently, Adoyo believes the world was created 12,000 years ago, humans were created 6,000 years ago, and each biblical day was equivalent to 1,000 Earth years. I guess nothing in Adoyo's BA in design…
jlynch | January 11, 2007Earlier on today, I noticed the following by Dembski:
If I ever became the president of a university (per impossibile), I would dissolve the biology department and divide the faculty with tenure that I couldn't get rid of into two new departments: those who know engineering and how it applies to biological systems would be assigned to the new "Department of Biological Engineering"; the rest, and that includes the evolutionists, would be consigned to the new "Department of Nature Appreciation" (didn't Darwin think of himself as a naturalist?).
PZ comments here. This is worth putting side by…
jlynch | January 9, 2007Dembski himself once defined intelligence as "the power and facility to choose between options - this coincides with the Latin etymology of 'intelligence,' namely, 'to choose between'". What happens if you use this definition to argue, on Dembski's own blog, that the theory of evolution "postulates as the agent of evolutionary change - a process of_selection_
(aka 'choice') between options" - that is, given Dembski's own definition of intelligence, natural selection is an intelligent process. Predictably, you get banned. Richard Hoppe has more.
jlynch | January 1, 2007
In the shadow of The Year in ID, Dembski gives us his predictions for ID in 2007. Three simple things:
A new ID friendly research center at a major university. (This is not merely an idle wish -- stay tuned.) [Prediction by me: This will be at Baylor and no biology will be involved.]
The publication of Michael Behe's book with Free Press: THE EDGE OF EVOLUTION. [Prediction by me: No new science here, shoddy peer review, and Behe will ignore previous criticisms.]
The publication of the sequel to OF PANDAS AND PEOPLE, authored by Jonathan Wells and me and titled THE DESIGN OF LIFE:…
jlynch | December 20, 2006John West of the Discovery Institute has presented his version of the year in ID. In summary:
A year after Dover, Darwinists seem increasingly disillusioned as well as shrill, the central part of Judge Jones' "brilliant" decision has been found to be riddled with errors and copied nearly verbatim from the ACLU, a research lab has been launched for scientists to pursue intelligent design-inspired scientific research, and states and localities are continuing to adopt public policies to encourage students to study the scientific evidence for and against Darwin's theory. At the same time, the…