Timothy Birdnow

Wow. That's truly moronic. Not only is the 'scientific' content a distillation of Creationism's Ten Biggest Boners, but he doesn't even get the names of his allies right. William Jennings Bryant?

If you're going to discuss scientific concepts, at least spell them correctly. Phylla? The 5 Phylla? Mastadons?

For instance, David Heddle's back, and he isn't saying anything he hasn't said for the last year. The same stuff. Except now he's got a new word for an unknown quantity, called 'sensitivity'. Nothing this Birdnow guy is saying is creative. Salvador's been boring lately. And of course they never seem to have any new research results to discuss. The creationists are a little boring these days. Next thing you know, Charlie Wagner will be back selling Nelson's Law, which is the law that evolution can't happen, because things like evolution don't happen.

zzzzzzzz.

Phylla sounds like a nymph in some offbrand Greek myth whose plot you can't quite remember.

Inspired by Dembski's "word games" with Dawkins's quotes, and by Dembski's self indulging censorship, I slipped in a comment
here and here.

It pained me to write it. But just ignore the content and read only the capitalized letters.

If this is the guy heading efforts to find evidence of intelligent design, what does it say if he cannot detect my simple yet somewhat hidden intelligent design?

Ha, ha, ha... That's funny. A friend of mine's father graduated from Harvard. The graduate that wrote the commencement song wrote something really nasty if you read the first letter going down in each sentence. Noone caught it until after the commencement. This, of course, inspired endless high school pranks. Alas, we had not the talent required to be good enough to not be obvious, and failed repeatedly.

"If Natural Selection is the driving mechanism behind Evolution, then we should have seen Mankind begin dividing into different species."

What is it with wing nuts and their almost pathological need to capitalize? Seriously, has anyone referred to Mankind in the upper case since Shelley?

Anytime you read an anti-evo screed peppered with capital letters, it's a sure bet the author hasn't spent enough time reading and digesting scientific articles, or they would have picked up the style.

What an odd article. From his remarks on Genesis, he seems to be having a go at the creationists as well. If Mr Birdnow had given any indication that he knew what he was writing about I'd suspect him of having some nihilist tendencies, on the sly.

About capitalizing nouns: this convention, which still holds in German, was quite general in English in the 18th Century. Since ID is a distinctly 18th Century notion, I think the practice is stylistically appropriate for them.

This guy apparently has his own blog, and it accomplishes no less than making my head asplode.

http://tbirdblog.blogspot.com/

P.S. Here is his relevant post on his personal blog:

http://tbirdblog.blogspot.com/2005/08/birdnow-vs-darwin.html

Knowledgenow - it appears the fiendishly clever sblank blew the whistle on your trick against poor unsuspecting Dembski at 3:04 pm. Could you resurrect your now-deleted message here?

The Judeo-Christian view is that God is transcendent, that is, outside of nature. Even if Darwin is correct, and a monkey turned into man, at some point it was the Creator who put that immortal soul into that ape. So what if we can`t prove the Book of Genesis is technically correct? It was written for a less technically advanced people. And besides, who says that Genesis occurred here? Eden needn`t have been the physical Earth we know.

I only got as far as the 2nd paragraph in the editor's note and that's where I saw the "only a theory - unconfirmed by evidence" comment.

Apparently the esteemed editors at American (non) Thinker know as much about scince as Birdnow does.

It never ceases to amaze me that the ones who are the most of ignorant of science (and of evolution in particular) are usually the ones making the most noise.

Just finished reading the article.

WOW! My head is swimming from the rampant stupidity.

However, it does provide a nice, concise collection of just about every Creationist fallacy ever concocted. I must admit though the Bronwian Motion thing was new to me.

And it is amusing how he seems to apologize for Genesis at the end. Won't that sort of thing get you kicked out of Kreationist Klub?

Re "It never ceases to amaze me that the ones who are the most of ignorant of science (and of evolution in particular) are usually the ones making the most noise."

Well, maybe the one's that do know something about the subject are more likely to realize that making noise won't help.

Henry

If ever I needed proof that Darwinism is more faith than science, this rant by a professor of biology in Minnesota provides it. He launches into a furious assault on my article The Case Against Darwin which appeared in the American Thinker a while back. First off, I`d like to point out that this article received little attention when it was published. Obviously, some of Professor Myers` students read it and were disturbed by my arguments, so they called in the Big Gun. Professor Myers goes on to insult me in every way imaginable, showing himself to be not just closed-minded but also quite intolerant and nasty. He devoted an enormous amount of time to what he views as extraordinarily stupid-which proves that I touched a nerve. To paraphrase Shakespeare ``Me thinks he doth protest too much!`` He even used my name as the title of his post! Does anyone devote so much time and effort to something they think has no validity? Dr. Myers clearly fears what I had to say.

Thanks Jason, Birdnow's reply had me in hysterics :D

My favourite line had to be:

This orthodoxy stifles a free exchange of ideas, and any attempt to FIX the problems inherent in Darwinism. I would be very happy for a new theory, perhaps a neo-Darwinist hypothesis, to come along and answer the questions.

A neo-Darwinian synthesis of evolution: now there's an idea! We should get some people working on it right away...

To be honest, I don't think a Big Gun was particularly necessary to shoot down his argument, given that it was already so full of holes that a plummet towards the Earth was totally inevitable.

I understood the point of your piece and all [of Myers'] scientific goobledy gook was just window dressing to me.

Henry -

You are correct of course, and I didn't mean to imply that we should engage the creationists in a shouting match. I realized that my original post was ambiguous in that regard.

I guess what I meant to say was something more like:

It never ceases to amaze me that the vehemence of the opposition to evolution is directly proportional to the depth of ignorance.

Of course I'm sure this comes as no surprise to PT veterans.

A commenter on Birdnow's blog sums up the general level of perspicacity of creationists quite nicely:

I understood the point of your piece and all [of Myers'] scientific goobledy gook was just window dressing to me.

I understood the point of your piece and all the scientific goobledy gook was just window dressing to me.

I just left a comment for Birdnow. About the only thing I can say for him is that he has left a lot of negative comments on his blog. It looks like almost everybody from PT paid him a visit. Too bad it had no effect.

I have gone a bit on the obsessive side responding to Mr. Birdnow. In case he delets it, as would Dembski, I have saved a copy.

I mean it though.

I have been thinking that the creationists passion for ignorance and Right-Wing politics must be mentioned. But, I must also the consider the "new-age moon puppy" passion for ignorance and Left-Wing politics.

Actually, I think we are doomed.

Mr. Birdnow has opened a new page for his creationist nonsense. Unfortuately, the text formating etc. is no longer apparent. This makes it nearly impossible to sort out who wrote what.

The game was about over anyway.

Birdnow wrote a poem which is dedicated to "radical Darwinists like PZ Myers". See 'A Pantoum for PZ'.

For you, the members of Darwin`s Tabernacle Choir, who want to continue the attempt to browbeat your critics into silence, go there. Leave your comments on DI. (Wow! It just occured to me what reversing the initials of DI gets you! But you guys would NEVER call it by that name, would you?) I will no longer allow any off topic comments on any post here at Birdblog; if you want to huff and puff and fail to blow the house down, do it at DI. You are welcome to post comments at Birdblog which are pertinent to the topic I am writing about.

I`m being assaulted by PZ Myers and his Panda`s Middle Finger minions at my website. It`s vicious, and I would appreciate any help anyone could give me. www.tbirdblog.blogspot.com Comment by birddog --- September 18, 2005 @ 10:24 am

Hello all, I have just been the victim of a Panda`s Thumb lynch mob at my website because of an essay I wrote laying out some laymans arguments against Darwin in the American Thinker. (This whole thing was ginned up; I had little response for several weeks to this piece, then PZ Myers lit into me.) If anybody would like to help, I certainly wouldn`t object. www.tbirdblog.blogspot.com Comment by birddog --- September 18, 2005 @ 10:20 am

I'm being assaulted by PZ Myers and his Panda's Middle Finger minions at my website. It's vicious, and I would appreciate any help anyone could give me.

You gotta love that latest comment on BirdBrain's blog..

A crack regarding "Vogon Poetry"

LOL