In Their Own Words
jlynch | December 19, 2006What a year it has been for the Discovery Institute and the Intelligent Design movement! Below the fold, I detail the advances that ID has made in the short time since Judge Jones delivered his ruling in Kitzmiller v. Dover.
January
Dembski:
Just as a tree that has been "rimmed" (i.e., had its bark completely cut through on all sides) is effectively dead even if it retains its leaves and appears alive, so Darwinism has met its match with the movement initiated by Phillip Johnson. Expect Darwinism's death throes, like Judge Jones's decision, to continue for some time. But don't mistake death…
jlynch | December 14, 2006 Edward T. Oakes may be a good teacher of theology at St. Mary of the Lake, but he is a lousy historian of Darwinism. Witness the following statement from his review of Richard Weikart's work, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany:
Spencer might well have been the first to coin the phrase "survival of the fittest." But Darwin enthusiastically adopted it in the 6th edition of his Origin of Species as a substitute term for "natural selection." Nor did he ever demur when other advocates of evolution's social application came pleading their case. Karl Marx…
jlynch | December 12, 2006The Discovery Institute's trademarked brand of science-by-press-release continues. In this press release, John West (a political scientist) claims that "[t]he key section of the widely-noted court decision on intelligent design issued a year ago on December 20 was copied nearly verbatim from a document written by ACLU lawyers" (the document being the findings of fact proposed by the ACLU). Tim Sandefur (a lawyer) notes that such documents "are proposed findings which a judge, if he or she agrees, then incorporates as his or her own findings. Both the school district and the plaintiffs filed…
jlynch | December 2, 2006For some years now, we have been hearing about Paul Nelson's forthcoming monograph On Common Descent, which one assumes will stem from his now [eight] year old PhD in philosophy Common Descent, Generative Entrenchment, and the Epistemology in Evolutionary Inference. As the DI/CSC website notes, "[h]is forthcoming monograph, On Common Descent, critically evaulates the theory of common descent, and is being edited for the series Evolutionary Monographs." The Wedge document notes:
William Dembski and Paul Nelson, two CRSC Fellows, will very soon have books published by major secular university…
jlynch | November 8, 2006 With little Ricky Santorum (BA, MBA, JD) heading off into the sunset, it is difficult to forget what a great philosopher of science and education he was. Here, therefore, are some of his greatest hits:
"Therefore, intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in science classes." 2002 Washington Times op-ed article (source)
"[M]ainstream science does not simply "discover the truth"; instead it relies in part on a set of unscientific, false philosophical presuppositions as the basis for many of its conclusions. Thus, crucial aspects of what modern science teaches…
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.
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…
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…
jlynch | August 2, 2006Dembski predicts:
This war will not be decided by courts, legislators, or school boards, but by young people as they wake up to the fact that dogmatic Darwinists have been systematically indoctrinating and disenfranchising them. Just as the counterculture of the 60s overturned the status quo, so a new counterculture, with high school, college, and university students taking the lead, will overturn the Darwinian status quo. [Uncoomon Descent, "Why student activism is the key to winning this war", August 2, 2006]
Whatever happened to the "war" being decided in peer-reviewed science journals? Oh…
jlynch | July 31, 2006As Ed reports here, the mask has fallen away from ID. Joel Borofsky - Dembski's "research" assistant - has admitted that the push for "balance" in Kansas is nothing more than an attempt to inject ID into schools:
It really is ID in disguise. The entire purpose behind all of this is to shift it into schools...at least that is the hope/fear among some science teachers in the area. The problem is, if you are not going to be dogmatic in Darwinism that means you inevitably have to point out a fault or at least an alternative to Darwinism. So far, the only plausible theory is ID.
BOOM! Thank you…
jlynch | December 21, 2005Things must really be unraveling for the ID supporters. First, as Dave Thomas notes, Jonathan Witt admits that the identity of the designer is a matter of religion (look mom! no space aliens!):
[I]n fact ID appeals to positive evidence for design and merely detects design, leaving the question of the designer's identity to religion.
Yikes!
Then, Richard Thompson - lead defense lawyer in KvD and founder of the Thomas More Law Center - had this to say on PBS Newshour:
Secondly, this idea that creationism is an old concept that the courts have already decided on flies in the face of the…
jlynch | December 21, 2005Over at Dembski's blog, the poor saps are trying desperately to get some joy out of the Dover decision. Witness "DaveScott":
The next trial needs be carefully crafted by OUR side so that ...
2) The expert witnesses on our side should be industrial design engineers not biologists. What are biologists doing testifying about design? I never understood that. Biology is a cross between pipetteing and stamp collecting. Biologists wouldn't recognize digitally programmed factory automation if it bit them on the ankle. But the trial isn't about science. ID doesn't need to be science. It needs to…
jlynch | December 21, 2005Dembski chimes in with:
[T]he actual ruling is not a Waterloo for the intelligent design side. Certainly it will put a damper on school boards interested in promoting intelligent design. But this is not a Supreme Court decision. Nor is it likely this decision will be appealed since the Dover school board that caused all the trouble was voted out and replaced this November. Thus we can expect agitation for ID and against evolution to continue. School boards and state legislators may tread more cautiously, but tread on evolution they will -- the culture war demands it! ...
Judge Jones's…
jlynch | December 6, 2005Via Red State Rabble:
"These evolutionists are saying that Jesus was half-chimpanzee, so was Mohammed and Buddha," said Alan Detrich, a 58-year-old Lawrence Republican who takes classes at Kansas University. "I dont think thats right."
In this story, Detrich gives us the minimalist version of Paley’s watchmaker argument:
The question is the story of the rock and the clock. If you find a rock in a field, no big deal. If you find a clock in a field, you look around for who created it. Did we just appear like the rock? Or did it take intelligent design to make us? I think it took intelligent…