A Study in ID Duplicity

At the 2003 hearings before the Texas State Board of Education, one long-time biology teacher from Austin put the monkey on the back of ID advocates. Steve Bratteng, who was teaching then at Austin's Westwood High School, posed 13 questions he said ID cannot answer, but which can be answered nicely by evolution.

So we'll see Dembski's five and raise him eight.

No IDer has ever proposed a non-evolution answer for any of the questions.

The questions are:

1. Why does giving vitamin and mineral supplements to undernourished, anemic individuals cause so many to die of bacterial infections?
2. Why did Dr. Heimlich have to develop a maneuver to dislodge food from peoples' windpipes?
3. Why does each of your eyes have a blind spot and a strong tendency toward retinal detachment, but a squid, whose eyesight is just as sharp, does not have these flaws?
4. Why are depression and obesity at epidemic levels in the U.S.?
5. When Europeans came to the Americas why did 90% of the native Americans die of European diseases, but not many Europeans died of American disease?
6. Why do pregnant women get morning sickness?
7. Why do people in a country that becomes industrialized develop a greater tendency to get Crohn's disease and asthma?
8. Why does malaria still kill over a million people each year?
9. Why are so many of the product, "Depends," sold each year?
10. Why do people given anti-diarrheal medication take twice as long to recovery from dysentery as untreated ones?
11. Why do people of European descent have a fairly high frequency of an allele that can make them resistant to HIV infection?
12. Why do older men often have urinary problems?
13. Why do so many people in Austin get "cedar fever?"

These are real questions of science. They have real consequences to the health and welfare of millions of people. And ID can't shed light on any of them.

FYI.

I've documented my dealings with Dembski on my own blog. He consistently deletes comments without notification, odd behavior for someone who complains so vociferously about "censorship."

I had spoken with Peter Ward for about an hour or so when he came to give a couple of talks at the University of Hawaii, back in '99 or was it 2000?

Anyway, I'm pretty sure Peter mentioned he was atheist.

Dumbski doesn't do his homework.

Dumbski doesn't do his homework.

Dembski's dishonesty isn't supposed to stand up to scrutiny. It is supposed to impress and recruit the dogmatic to his cause! His prose is seductive and comprehensible to even the dullest of laymen. Scientists and skeptics worth their salt are far too suspicious of Dembski to take him at face value, just a little legitimate digging uncovers his putrid nest of intellectual dishonesty, but if you're a certain kind of person, his bull rings a particularly attractive chord.

Ed, it's because an unspecified supernatural deity decided to make things that way using an unspecified mechanism for unspecified reasons. That's the beauty of Intelligent Design Theory--it's so vaugue, it can accomodate anything.

But, I'm curious, what are the actual answers to 1 and 4?

Here's a fun experiment you can try when Dembski "responds" to one of his critics, assuming you haven't yet read what he's responding to. Go and read Dembski's response first. Then form a mental picture of what the criticism must look like based on this response. Try to guess not only on what basis Dembski is being criticized, but also the general tone and demeanor of the criticism. Then go back and read the original criticism for the first time. Try to see whether or not it has much relationship to the mental picture you formed based on Dembski's response. You'll find it almost never does.

I've come to the conclusion that when Dembski writes his responses, the intended audience is not the critics to whom he is responding. Rather, it's his fans who can be safely counted on not to have read to read the orginal criticisms.

When religion presumes to make statements about the natural world, it necessarily steps into the territory of science. Within this territory, religion is at a terrible disadvantage, resolvable in only two ways I've seen so far. The first is to interpret the religious statements to be either neutral or in support of science, which renders such statements superfluous. The second is to make false statements about scientific findings, requiring that such statements be dishonest. Choosing between having your faith be irrelevant of dishonest is a form of Hobson's Choice.

I suspect Dembski resolves this little difficulty by simply refusing to recognize that he's being dishonest. He gives consistent indication of being sufficient deluded to pull this off. As HPLC_Sean points out, his target audience really doesn't care whether he's insane or just mendacious. Nothing is so reasonable as a shared prejudice.

Kind of interesting that Dembski would lie, get called on it directly and in detail, and respond simply by repeating the same lie. Apparently for the Devout, lies become true if they WANT them to be true hard enough. Imagine if Dembski's God actually existed and required honesty. Dembski would be struck dumb, probably permanently.

Aureola writes:"Disclaimer:

Dumbski doesn't do his homework.

. . . isn't "clever beyond measure".

;-)
"

Gee, like I was trying to be "real deep" with that.

And no, the man does do his homework. He's a lazy ass, as could damn well have contacted Peter Ward and asked Ward what precisely he was talking about.

A careful researcher would've done that.

Dumbski is a slob with data and research.

Aureola writes:"Disclaimer:

Dumbski doesn't do his homework.

. . . isn't "clever beyond measure".

;-)
"

Gee, like I was trying to be "real deep" with that.

And no, the man does not do his homework. He's a lazy ass, as could damn well have contacted Peter Ward and asked Ward what precisely he was talking about.

A careful researcher would've done that.

Dumbski is a slob with data and research.

Dembski's dishonesty isn't supposed to stand up to scrutiny. It is supposed to impress and recruit the dogmatic to his cause!

In the ongoing struggle between evolution and creationism, says philosopher of science Michael Ruse, Darwinians may be their own worst enemy

Ruse, a philosopher of science at Florida State University, occupies a distinct position in the heated debates about evolution and creationism. He is both a staunch supporter of evolution and an ardent critic of scientists who he thinks have hurt the cause by habitually stepping outside the bounds of science into social theory. In his latest book, "The Evolution-Creation Struggle," published by Harvard University Press later this month, Ruse elaborates on a theme he has been developing in a career dating back to the 1960s: Evolution is controversial in large part, he theorizes, because its supporters have often presented it as the basis for self-sufficient philosophies of progress and materialism, which invariably wind up in competition with religion.

And, indeed, in almost all cases, the Cambrian animals have no clear morphological antecedents in earlier Vendian or Precambrian fauna (Miklos 1993, Erwin et al. 1997:132, Steiner & Reitner 2001, Conway Morris 2003b:510, Valentine et al. 2003:519-520).

"But, I'm curious, what are the actual answers to 1 and 4?"

actually, it would be a good idea to include a link in the original post where folks could check out what evolutionary theory's answers are to the questions listed. otherwise, a rather large point is lost.

cheers

" Science-Flavored Creationism"

mmmm. does that come with sprinkles?

Malkuth: The answer on #1 is that people with bacterial infections go anemic because their livers concentrate iron and other nutrients to starve the bacteria -- it's an evolved response to infection. When a supplement is given, in that case, the supplement goes directly to nourish the pathogenic bacteria. This is one of those cases where physicians can kill patients if they don't pay attention to the evolutionary origins of the syndrome or disease symptoms.

#4 involves changes in lifestyles for which we have not yet evolved appropriate responses, particularly to those changes in diet after agriculture became established. Anxiety and depression are correlate diwth increased crowding and the pace of living today, comopared with ancient times. Obesity tends to result from our greatly increased use of sugar and refined grains, which our hunter-gatherer ancestors didn't have access to. They developed genes that store fat from such meals for future use when sugars aren't available, for example -- but in the U.S., sugars are always available, and the fat doesn't get burned off.

You can find Mr. Bratteng's list online, by the way, with his written testimony and a handout on "Darwinian Medicine," in the transcripts of the TEA hearing: http://www.tea.state.tx.us/textbooks/adoptprocess/july03handouts.pdf
Go to pages 61 through 65.

One of the reasons I liked this list when I heard it at the hearings was because I couldn't answer all of them easily. Bratteng, the guy who created the list, was happy to share it and talk about each of the issues in detail.

I had spoken and corresponded earlier with Randolph Nesse at the University of Michigan, who has had published a couple of articles about how vital is knowledge of evolution to the successful practice of modern medicine. I recommend Nesse's stuff to anyone interested in making a case.

In real-life application of practical Darwinian evolution, my experience is that ID people have no answers at all. We got some traction -- not as much as I had hoped, mind you -- from the reminder that Texas loses $1.2 billion a year in fire-ant damage, and the solution to eradication of fire ants is an evolutionary problem. Same with the cotton boll weevil. And our red grapefruit industry is based on a species that did not exist about 200 years ago, for which a sport mutation in the 1940s has given a redder, sweeter variety. We're talking big jobs here. I suspect every state has similar stories, and we should hawk them.

t is fair to say that Ward defends evoluionary theory, but the supposedly out of context quote by Dembski is a more accurate description of the physical evidence as it stands today.

— Salvador

Yes, please provide a link for all 13 questions! These look very interesting.

Malkuth: The answer on #1 is that people with bacterial infections go anemic because their livers concentrate iron and other nutrients to starve the bacteria -- it's an evolved response to infection. When a supplement is given, in that case, the supplement goes directly to nourish the pathogenic bacteria. This is one of those cases where physicians can kill patients if they don't pay attention to the evolutionary origins of the syndrome or disease symptoms.

#4 involves changes in lifestyles for which we have not yet evolved appropriate responses, particularly to those changes in diet after agriculture became established. Anxiety and depression are correlate diwth increased crowding and the pace of living today, comopared with ancient times. Obesity tends to result from our greatly increased use of sugar and refined grains, which our hunter-gatherer ancestors didn't have access to. They developed genes that store fat from such meals for future use when sugars aren't available, for example -- but in the U.S., sugars are always available, and the fat doesn't get burned off.

You can find Mr. Bratteng's list online, by the way, with his written testimony and a handout on "Darwinian Medicine," in the transcripts of the TEA hearing: http://www.tea.state.tx.us/textbooks/adoptprocess/july03handouts.pdf

Go to pages 61 through 65.

One of the reasons I liked this list when I heard it at the hearings was because I couldn't answer all of them easily. Bratteng, the guy who created the list, was happy to share it and talk about each of the issues in detail.

I had spoken and corresponded earlier with Randolph Nesse at the University of Michigan, who has had published a couple of articles about how vital is knowledge of evolution to the successful practice of modern medicine. I recommend Nesse's stuff to anyone interested in making a case.

In real-life application of practical Darwinian evolution, my experience is that ID people have no answers at all. We got some traction -- not as much as I had hoped, mind you -- from the reminder that Texas loses $1.2 billion a year in fire-ant damage, and the solution to eradication of fire ants is an evolutionary problem. Same with the cotton boll weevil. And our red grapefruit industry is based on a species that did not exist about 200 years ago, for which a sport mutation in the 1940s has given a redder, sweeter variety. We're talking big jobs here. I suspect every state has similar stories, and we should hawk them.

(Don't know why this didn't post when I sent it the first time, a couple of hours ago)

[ot]I have to apparently post a "bump" to get the thread to update for me.

plz ignore.

Salvador-

My understanding of the situation is that there are some clear transitional forms linking Precambrian organisms to those in the Cambrian, but that is beside the point for the purposes of my post. If Dembski wants to argue that Ward is all mixed up about the interpretation of the fossil data then he is free to do so.

What Dembski actually did, however, was to use a quotation from Ward to support the idea that the Cambrain explosion is a fundamental problem for evolutionists. Ward was completely unambiguous in his book that actually he believes the fossil evidence of Cambiran to be a vindication of Darwin. It is possible that Dembski did not realize that fact in his initial essay (perhaps someone else simply fed him the quote and he didn't bother to check it out). But for him to persist with it after his error was pointed out to him is manifest dishonesty.

You might also recall that in your recent ID presentation here at James Madison Univ, I was the one who took issue with your use of Woese's statement. Woese believes (with good reason) that lateral gene transfer was such a major driving force during the earliest stages of evolution that it becomes impossible to talk about a single, universal common ancestor. If he's right, that is indeed an important revision of classical theory. But it has absolutely nothing to do with evolution/ID disputes. Woese has no problem with the idea that all vertebrates, say, share a common ancestor. You may believe in your heart that you represented Woese accurately, but in fact you did not represent him accurately.

Just as a technical point of clarification, my understanding is that the soft bodied fossils found in "Vendian biota" or "Ediacara fauna." (see Vendian Animals) are not transitional to any of the skeletal fossils. The claim skeletal fossils appear suddenly is still true in that sense.

Hey Dr Cordova:

Last time you were here, you ran away without answering some simple questions for me. Would you like to answer them now?

They were:

1. What is the scientific theory of intelligent design, and how do we test it using the scientific method?

2. According to this scientific theory of intelligent design (whatever it is), how old is the earth, and are humans descended from apelike primates?

3. Why, specifically, is "evolution" any more "materialist" than is weather forecasting or accident investigation or medicine?

4. Do you repudiate the extremist views of the Center for (the Renewal of) Science and Culture's primary funder, Howard Ahmanson? And if so, why do you keep taking his money anyway?

However, some have objected to my use of that quotation, and to which I acknowledged that I could be wrong in my assessment, and simply referred everyone to the original source text to decide for themselves and am happy to direct them to complaints about how I characterize Woese.

It is fair to say that Ward defends evoluionary theory

but the supposedly out of context quote by Dembski is a more accurate description of the physical evidence as it stands today.

No, Lenny, it's a designed version of creationism -- designed to succeed in the American courts.

Fortunately, it seems not to have been an *intelligently* designed version...

Sal writes "Just as a technical point of clarification, my understanding......," Good work Salvador. You are primed up to get started on an introductory course on pre-Cambrian organisms. And when you are done you could spend some time explaining to Bill that he must read thru the entire article before quoting snippets. Because scientists unlike town criers do real research and publish. I went thru that other puff piece from Bill better named as "Dodging the toughest questions about ID" (written about a year ago) where I still can't believe that Bill refers to an 'article' by Rich Halvorson in the "Harvard Crimson". I wonder what happened to all those PhDs and Masters' degrees.

And, indeed, in almost all cases, the Cambrian animals have no clear morphological antecedents in earlier Vendian or Precambrian fauna (Miklos 1993, Erwin et al. 1997:132, Steiner & Reitner 2001, Conway Morris 2003b:510, Valentine et al. 2003:519-520). (Emphasis added)

Estimations of the divergence times show that the major bilaterian phyla did not originate in an explosive radiation during the Cambrian but rather that the Bilateria have a several hundred million years long Precambrian history.

Ah, Salvador. Wannabe hierophant, real-life sycophant.

by the way, "Hiero5ant", what are you trying to convey with that name? 5 is a replacement for S, it does not replace the "f" sound, in 1337-speak. So why are you trying to say "hierosant"?

Dr. Rosenhouse wrote: You may believe in your heart that you represented Woese accurately, but in fact you did not represent him accurately.

@salvador:

from the link you posted about caroline crocker:

"Darwinists are divided over whether intelligent design deserves a classroom airing. Forrest says that she believes professors shouldn't be allowed to teach unsubstantiated scientific concepts to their students. "This is not a question of academic freedom, this is a question of professional competence," she says. But Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California, which vehemently opposes teaching intelligent design in high schools, takes a different view. She thinks such discussions are more acceptable in a college environment, but believes it must be made clear to students that intelligent design is theology, not science."

Oh yes, this really shows a great deal of division, allrighty.

er, they both believe EXACTLY THE SAME FUCKING THING! to whit:

both believe that "professors shouldn't be allowed to teach unsubstantiated SCIENTIFIC concepts to their students"

there is NO disagreement here.

and you wonder why we accuse folks like yourself of duplicity???

unbelievable!

salvador:

I challenge you to show what practical value ID "theory" has for anything. really, anything.

I suppose we should still be using supernatural explanations for diseases as well, eh? Those had such great value over the centuries they were used to treat diseases, didn't they?

ID is religion. religion is useless as a practical methodology.

end of story.

"To be fair, the negative argumentation against undirected evolution does not automatically imply ID, "

that's just it. it's all argumentation instead of evidentiary. get a clue and stop lying to your students.

no reasonable scientist ever rejects evidence.

creationism simply has none to offer, only argumentation.

Crocker hopes that she will be allowed to continue talking to students about intelligent design. Her lectures drew criticism from some and praise from others --- notably, she says, her Muslim students seemed to like it.

I respect that, even though I feel the ID inference is still correct, I respect that others do no share that view.

But the students, especially the science students, are free to decide if their professors, their textbooks, and the peer-reviewed literature have made an adequate case for naturalistic mechanisms.

Salvadore writes "To be fair, the negative argumentation against undirected evolution does not automatically imply ID,"

No kidding. Now, Sal, what constitutes postive evidence for ID? The IDer's would be better off trying to find some, instead of trying to argue that *ignorance is evidence* .

"and for some the inference is too big a leap scientifically. "

You mean for *some* the inference is not too big. The rest of us, you know scientists, require evidence for our inductions.

So how many IDers named "Steve". I'll bet just "some"

"some"

LMAO

A few notes:

First, it's Mullenix, not Mulllenix or Mullinex.

Second, I didn't actually co-write that piece with Gary Hurd. I called Dembski's lies to several people's attention, got the book in question from the library and emailed scans of the appropriate pages to Gary and others. Making me co-author was apparently a courtesy on Dr. Hurd's part and I thank him.

Third, if I _had_ been a co-author of that report, it would have been about half the length and contained ten times the vitriol. Dembski really is a slime ball and I most definitely don't mind saying so and providing evidence for my opinion.

Fourth, Ward is not an obscure writer. He's the co-author, along with Donald Brownlee, of "Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe". This is an excellent book, and also an excellent example of what it takes to change my mind. Until reading it, I believed that complex life (i.e. human quality intelligence) was widely distributed in the galaxy and the universe. Unfortunately, after reading the book, I now tend towards Ward and Brownlee's belief: life is common, but intelligent life is probably very rare. Any ID advocates who wish to change my mind regarding evolution/id/religion or whatever would be well advised to read "Rare Earth", to see how it's done. Ideally, "Rare Earth" should be read as a companion to a hack book designed to reassure those whose minds are already made up, "The Privileged Planet" by Guillermo Gonzalez. The contrast between marshalling evidence to support a point and putting a theological spin on everything in sight is rather dramatic.

Fifth, if anybody would like scans of the original pages from Ward's book, including the paragraph that Dembski ripped out of context and the six pages following that clearly show what Ward really thought, email me at djmullen@tds.net. Have 2 megs free in your email buffer.

Finally, when I first heard that Dembski had repeated his faux pas, I went to his web site to see for myself. I also registered, intending to reply to him, though I gave that up when I saw how many replies he had already removed. But I considered my time and effort to be amply repaid when I got this message from "Administrator ":

"DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT GETTING OUT OF LINE"

Don't worry Bill, I don't intend to. I have a three day weekend coming up and I intend to prepare a code of conduct that I will abide by in all future dealings with you. I will send you a copy and post it where ever I can. I don't know if the Panda's Thumb will touch it, but how does one go about submitting an article to PT?

It never ceases to amaze me how creationists all use the same, if not very similar, kinds of tactics in their attempt to prove their dogma correct. By denying that he ever made any error, all Demski does is amptly demonstrate how intellectually dishonest you have to be to take a position like YEC or ID seriously.

He isn't doing ID any favours with this.

I'm a newcomer to this "debate". I'm a heating engineer, English by birth, living and working in France. I went on a discussion group for non-native speakers of English and picked up a thread about belief in God. I added a comment about belief being a Darwinian feature of the human mind, and posts rolled in from one "rhetor" (mis)informing me about the ideas of "intelligent design" and introducing me to the names Behe, Berlinski and Dembski. The arm of the neocreationists (someone else I hadn't previously heard of) has grown long if they need to patrol such discussion groups. Are there legions of earnest young men pouring over computer screens in the mid-west?

It has now become a mild obsession to see what nonsense on ID lurks on the web. Another site suggested I visited www.uncommondescent.com to see what Dembski was saying about Richard Dawkins. He reprints Dawkins latest interview in Salon and invites comments. There were a couple of sycophantic (to Dembski) remarks, so I added a remark (something about the probability of ID ever producing something useful). This appeared then disappeared within minutes. Dembski and others complain of not getting a fair hearing but are quick to control and censor where they can. I note one of your favourite trolls, Salvador T. Cordova, is a Dembski footsoldier. It was his crawling post to Dembski saying what a great job he was doing on Pand'as Thumb that led me to you.

Welcome Alan.

It's about this time of year that I start wondering if I'll make it to France. I'm due for a visit to Marie Cantin's fromagerie in Paris where I can buy a perfect round of St. Marcellin: the world's finest. If only the Euro wasn't so nasty versus the dollar.

You are correct that there are legions of earnest young men who enjoy pretending to be scientists by reciting laughable scripts to anyone who hasn't heard them before. It's a genuine crusade and a tidy little industry for the charlatans running the script mill.

The good news is that the more rubes there are reciting the script, the more obvious it will become that is just that and nothing more than that: a script. Given a choice between listening to a bunch of sex-obsessed fundamentalists reciting scripts and the overwhelming majority of the smartest scientists in the world, the average American won't hesitate to go with the scientists. The scientists, you see, have actual results which prove they know what they're doing. All the fundies have are wads of letters to the FCC ranting about Janet Jackson's nipple and gay cartoon sponges.

It's no contest but it is fascinating to watch the creationists keep up appearances no matter how badly they've been caught out.

"It's only a flesh wound."

Hi GWW
I'm about as far from Paris as its possible to get and still be in France near the Spanish border. Recommend Roquefort, Salers and Étorki. What are Gay cartoon sponges?

I do get the impression that making money is a major concern of the creationist organisations, noting the quantities of literature, DVDs etc for sale to the faithful.

Sorry googled "gay etc". All now clear.

Well, given that at I can see that quotations can open the door to these kinds of disagreements, I'll try to just refer the lisenters to the original source documents or the original empirical data. It invites just too many problems when I offer my interpretation of what someone else wrote.

Since ID IS a religious faith more than a scientific faith, why does Sal expect ID proponents to be de-converted?
The Cambrian explosion is a clear example where a superficial 'creation' event can be easily confused, as has been by Sal, to indicate separate phyla arising all at the same time. I have seen Sal consistently (ab)use graphics portraying the Cambrian. In the end this is all about religion and little about science or ID would not have to distort science. I have seen the same in the YEC movement and it's sad because God is showing us an awesome picture and we need to hid Him in the gaps of our understandings.

Alan, what GWW is refering to is Dr. James C. Dobson's attacking the American cartoon show "Spongebob Squarepants" as being gay because he's not seen often enough with Sandy. It's the same theme as Rev Fallwell attacking Teletubbies because one is sporting an upside-down triangle-shape arial, symbolizing a gay agenda. Refer to New York Times' Conservatives Pick Soft Target: A Cartoon Sponge

Steve --

'5' is not necessarily 's'; for the paradigm example of it standing for a variant of 'f' check one of the leads in _Snow Crash_.

Interestingly enough, I had never read any Stephenson when I settled on a handle just out of high school those many years ago, so it's not a direct reference (although a lot of people think it is). As it happens, at that particular time in my life I was immersed in the Tarot and Hermetic numerology. My birthday being the 23rd, my significator in the Major Arcana works out to 2 + 3 = 5, 5 being the number of the Hierophant. Working in the l337-ness was just a triple entendre.

Of course, somewhere along the line I became a flaming atheist materialist, so now it has the additional property of being ironically inappropriate.

I would only want to add in closing that, as a younger lad, even when I believed in *astrology* I always thought creationism was unsubstantiated pseudoscientific claptrap. What a long, strange lack of nickname changes it's been...

you think YOU get strange questions about your handle...

;)

Sal,

Please define the "design" and "intelligence" that to you seem more believable than does "evolution". And please do so without talking of shooting arrows at the side of a barn or closks and Mt.Rushmore.

Can't help but pile-on Salvador, when he wrote: "we have to exercise extraordinary care, lest we be accused of duplicity as well."

No, Sal. Exercising "extraordinary care" is the minimum requirement of anyone interested in the truth. But to your ilk it becomes a rhetorical strategy in the service of politics.

And people like you accuse others of "postmodern relativism." Your mendacity is stunning.

Boyce writes:"Alan, what GWW is refering to is Dr. James C. Dobson's attacking the American cartoon show "Spongebob Squarepants" as being gay because he's not seen often enough with Sandy. "

Gee, I wonder what Dobson thinks about Bush holding hands with Prince Abdullah?

Dobson isn't allowed to think anything counter current administration.

er let me rephrase...

Dobson isn't allowed to think, period.

There were a couple of sycophantic (to Dembski) remarks, so I added a remark (something about the probability of ID ever producing something useful). This appeared then disappeared within minutes. Dembski and others complain of not getting a fair hearing but are quick to control and censor where they can. I note one of your favourite trolls, Salvador T. Cordova, is a Dembski footsoldier. It was his crawling post to Dembski saying what a great job he was doing on Pand'as Thumb that led me to you.

I cannot change what the leaders in my community, like Bill Dembski, write, but I can adjust what I do and engage my critics and respond to their objections and criticisms appropriately.

You have as much power as anyone to correct Dembski when he strays from the truth. You may have more power --- he hasn't yet put your name on the "Allow No Posts" list at his blog.

satisfaction that he is at least being honest?

ST:

Nothing like a good dry sense of humor to cheer me up. Obviously (and if it isn't obvious by now, it never will be), true satisfaction for the creationist only comes from NOT being honest. By correcting Dembski, Salvador would not only be alienating his hero, he'd be violating his principles.

Since high school, Cordova had been a devout Christian, but as he studied science and engineering at George Mason, he found his faith was being eroded. "The critical thinking and precision of science began to really affect my ability to just believe something without any tangible evidence," he says. The breaking point came in 2000 when a woman from his Bible study group put her faith before her personal safety --- travelling to Afghanistan as part of a covert Christian mission in a country that was, at the time, a militant Islamic theocracy. He felt unhappy accepting the promotion of such activities unless he could be sure Christianity was a true faith. So Cordova turned to his scientific training in the hope of finding answers. "If I could prove even one small part of my faith through purely scientific methods that would be highly satisfying intellectually," he says.

I was glad that Jason had posted on Demdski's latest. I started to write a simple comment, but it kept growing. So, following a persona 'rule' that if the comments is as long as the original post then make it into a post, I have made a new entry "Quote Miner, Quote Miner, Pants on Fire."

I have not made any remarks re: Salvador's foolishness, and so I don't see any need to distract from that disection.

Enjoy

My question, Sal, is why you felt you needed empirical support for your faith?

[Salvador Cordova] felt unhappy accepting the promotion of such activities unless he could be sure Christianity was a true faith.

For Dr Cordova (if you are still here and haven't already run away):

Several times, now, I have asked you the simple question; what is the scientific theory of intelligent design and how do we test it using the scientific method.

You have still not answered that simple question.

I can think of only three possible reasons why you have not answered my simple question, Dr. Cordova. They are:

1. There is NO scientific theory of intelligent design, and those who claim there is, are simply lying to us.

2. There IS a scientific theory of intelligent design, but you are too uninformed to know what it is.

or

3. There IS a scientific theory of intelligent design, and you DO know what it is, but for some mysterious unfathomable unknown reason, you don't want anyone ELSE to know what it is.

If you won't answer my simple question, Dr Cordova, would you at least let me know WHY you won't answer it? Give me a hint. Is it reason number one, number two, or number three?

My money, of course, is on number one.

.

Salvador-

I'm afraid there is simply no question that Dembski is being duplicitous in his continued use of the Ward quotation. Ward makes his opinion about the Cambrian explosion perfectly clear in his book: He believes that the most recent fossil discoveries show it to be a non-issue for evolution. Dembski used his out-of-context quotation to imply that Ward thinks the Cambrian explosion is actually a serious problem for evolutionists. Because of Gary Hurd's piece, which we know Dembski read, Dembski is now aware of Ward's views on the subject. Yet he persists in stating that Ward was criticizing evolution. The facts are clear. The truth means nothing to Dembski.

I can understand why you have difficulty coming to that conclusion, given that you said during your talk here at JMU that you felt that Dembski was currently doing the best ID work out there. As I recall, I replied that for me Dembski's went a long way to convincing me that ID was a lot of nonsense - I didn't know much biology at the time I first encountered Dembski's work, but I certainly knew a bad mathematical argument when I saw one.

Likewise, Carl Woese's statement that we must move beyond the doctrine of common descent was completely unambiguous in context. He was talking specifically about the very earliest stages of evolution, and he was saying simply that the reality of horizontal gene transfer makes it impossible to talk about a single organism that is the universal common ancestor to all living forms today. This requires some rethinking of our ideas about early evolution, but has nothing at all to do with invoking supernatural mechanisms. Quite the contrary.

In fact, if Woese is right, then his work is a serious blow for ID for two reasons. First, horizontal gene transfer is yet another naturalistic mechanism by which genomic complexity can increase. Second, the fact that its importance was not realized until recently shows that the possibility of undiscovered naturalistic mechanisms is very real, and not something ID's can dismiss as desperation.

Now, if you think Woese has simply shifted the problems elsewhere, as you said in your comment, then you are free to make that case in your public presentations. What you are not free to do is present Woese's “move beyond common descent” remark as if he is saying anything that is helpful to ID. But that is precisely what you did do in your talk. When you used this quote in your talk you said nothing about early evolution, or cellular architecture, or shifting the problems elsewhere. You simply quoted the remark and asked people to believe that this was a prominent biologist who was dissing evolution.

You've been very gracious to me in your public talks in allowing me to speak without trying to cut me off or put me down in any way. I appreciate that. And for what it's worth, I think some of the commenters in this thread are being very unfair. Unlike Dembski, I do not believe you are being deliberately dishonest. And I do not believe that you are motivated by anything other than sincere belief.

But the fact remains that you are saying many things at these talks that are simply false. For example, it is not a matter of interpretation to say that Carl Woese is suggesting that evolution is in trouble. It is a simple matter of fact that he is not suggesting that.

And I'm really not interested in how many bio majors you can claim for your side, or whether you can, after tedious searching, come up with Professor X at University Y to support you. I care about arguments. If support for your side is as extensive as you say, that only shows there are a lot of people accepting bad arguments.

Unlike Dembski, I do not believe you are being deliberately dishonest. And I do not believe that you are motivated by anything other than sincere belief.

There seem to be parallels with Lysenko here. Blind faith and ideology against the real world. If Dembski et el get political control, some of you guys could be off to the gulags

whaddya mean IF?

the only if i see is that IF it gets any worse, I'm thinking about becoming an expatriot.

new zealand looks pretty good to me these days.

Despite criticisms like this by Crews and others, mainstream physics is now quite comfortable with design in cosmology. Take the following remark by Arno Penzias, Nobel laureate and codiscoverer of the cosmic background radiation: "Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say 'supernatural') plan."[9] Or consider the following insight by well-known astrophysicist and science writer Paul Davies: "There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all.... It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature's numbers to make the Universe.... The impression of design is overwhelming."[10] Elsewhere Davies adds: "The laws [of physics] ... seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design . . . . The universe must have a purpose."[11] Remarks like this by prominent physicists and cosmologists are now widespread. Why should inferring design from the evidence of cosmology be scientifically respectable, but inferring design from the evidence of biology be scientifically disreputable, issuing in the charge of creationism? Clearly, a double standard is at work here. Design theorists argue that the evidence of biology confirms a design inference. But even if that confirmation were eventually overturned by new evidence, such a failure would constitute a failure of intelligent design as a scientific theory and not a failure of intelligent design to qualify as a scientific theory, much less to deserve the label creationism.

well-known astrophysicist and science writer Paul Davies

"Design theorists argue that the evidence of biology confirms a design inference. But even if that confirmation were eventually overturned by new evidence,"

ROFL.

or a rational reading of all of the current evidence...

I love how they imply that DESIGN is the theory that is already accepted, and is waiting to be disproven.

hilarious!

These people would crack me up, if they weren't trying for such a massive power grab.

They deserve to be made the "village idiot" and put in stocks on the outside of town.

Dawkins has suggested the tendency to believe what we're told stems from the evolutionary advantage to be gained in a social hominid society, the young quickly picking up their necessary skills from adults. Also wherever man pitched up as a society, a religion of some kind seems to have been central. Could this have been an evolutionary development? So that the faithful and the demigod are both products of natural selection. So the fact that Dembski and his ilk want to grab 'em young by inroads into the education system, and their motivation is explained by evolution. No wonder he wants to ban it.

But what about the point that you took Ward's quote out of context thereby misrepresenting his views. Having read the full paragraph, there does seem to be point to answer.

Comment by Alan --- May 5, 2005 @ 1:17 am

I posted this on Dembski's uncommondescent site. Just wondering if he's still censoring.

Disappeared. So that's a yes then.

Dawkins has suggested the tendency to believe what we're told stems from the evolutionary advantage to be gained in a social hominid society

I think Dawkins was trying to say that humans are born damn helpless, and need to learn a huge amount to get current with their social milieu. So what has evolved (according to this conjecture) is the tendency to take anything and everyting a parental figure says at straight face value. Questioning most such advice was (for the couple hundred thousands of years during this evolutionary period)quickly and frequently fatal. So we say "Don't touch the fire! Mastadons are dangerous, run! God loves you!" And the child mind internalizes all of this OR ELSE. By the time the child is old enough to parse out the meaning (or lack of it) behind all of these commands, it is often too late to discard the nonsense.