Every cloud has a silver lining

Although, as the Beatles said it so well with their song "[Money] can't buy me love", the same may very well apply to scientific relevance.

— Pim van Meurs

But the funds are for Christian advocacy, not for research. The ID creationists haven't done any research yet, so there's no reason to think they'll suddenly start doing research now.

Just look at Dembski: he teaches at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, a "Bible school" that teaches that the earth is only 6000 years old. If they can't get geology right, then why assume they'll get biology right?

Christian apologetics is doomed anyway (the ID argument dates back to at least Aquinas), since it's meaningless to adduce (natural) evidence for a supernatural phenomenon. What would evidence of the existence of a supernatural entity even look like? If you have evidence, then it would be just another kind natural phenomenon, no different from atoms or whatever.

Dembski and other Christian apologists all make the same mistake, by committing a category error. Saying that you can prove that the god of Christianity has deliberatly manipulated the human genome is like saying you can prove the sound of one hand clapping: it doesn't make any sense.

More generally, theism is "cognitively meaningless," to use Kai Neilson's term. But this issue is of course orthogonal to the issue of the veracity of evolutionary theory.

"The strength of intelligent design is as an apologetic - that God is the creator, but not a scientific explanation."

Apparently, it takes being internationally humiliated by a judge to learn that simple lesson.

It looks like they're going to try to up the firepower now.

This is the full title of the link:

How to Overcome Student Objections to Evolution - an indoctrination guide

http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/3/2005/12/21/how_to_overcome_student_objections_to_ev

I noticed that Dembski was quoted in yesterday's New York Times as saying that ID researchers still have the task of delivering the scientific goods. That was the "humble Bumble" version of Bill that appears to surface for a few moments every couple of years and admits that other scientists might actually have good reason to dismiss ID as it currently exists. It don't know where that personality disappears the rest of the time.

I think the last poster is referring to "public, cover-my-ass" Dembski.

For the real deal check out:

http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/596

Dembski writes:

"But there was no jury with Dover --- only a single biased judge. This trial therefore wasn't about ID. It was about what one judge thinks about ID. The success of ID has never depended on its success in the courtroom but always on the success of its scientific research. And it remains so.

I predict this decision will amount to very little in the long run. Why? Because ID is true. And in God's world truth always wins out in the end."

-So apparently science works now just by saying something is true. I knew all those hours studying were a waste of time! Oh wait, I don't live in "God's world"...back to square one...

Isn't God's World just down the street from Disney World? And in Disney World Mickey always wins out in the end.

"This galvanizes the Christian community," said William Dembski, a leading proponent of the theory and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, a Seattle think-tank that promotes intelligent design research. "People I'm talking to say we're going to be raising a whole lot more funds now."

That's an interesting comment. So, I guess if you have the money you can buy a theory??? Does more funds make an idea an theory??? Does more funds make ID any more scientifically correct???

Or does it just mean he can go on bilking people out of their money?

That was the "humble Bumble" version of Bill that appears to surface for a few moments every couple of years

Although, as the Beatles said it so well with their song "[Money] can't buy me love", the same may very well apply to scientific relevance.

Hmmmmm Nice going on "signs" PvM

ELECTRA: Goddess of Clouds with a Silver Lining.
A Myth of Mother love, hate, killing (the gods told him to do it) and redemption.
Well his mother did beat him.

Although he did have a quixotic moment his first response to THE SECULAR COURT .....muted and contrite.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/594
"..... I have little to add to what I wrote in September, so I'll just leave it there."

I was hoping for the modernist conclusion to the Quixotic tale- Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"

"The brown current ran swiftly out of the heart of darkness, bearing us down towards the sea with twice the speed of our upward progress; and Kurtz's life was running swiftly, too, ebbing, ebbing out of his heart into the sea of inexorable time. . . . I saw the time approaching when I would be left alone of the party of 'unsound method.'"

Complete with Sal "Sancho Panza" Cordova the
Russian trader - A Russian sailor who has gone into the African interior as the trading representative of a Dutch company. He is boyish in appearance and temperament, and seems to exist wholly on the glamor of youth and the audacity of adventurousness. His brightly patched clothes remind Marlow of a harlequin. He is a devoted disciple of Kurtz's.

Russell Yes the "evil genius" or perhaps more .....the "mad meme" just when you think he has finally "Got it" his sychopants (giggle) get to him.

I blame this all on Justian for removing Gnosis and the Greek Tradition of Hermeticism .....oh and the demise of Acid Rock.

Heck while I'm at it lets get it all out
STOLEN FROM
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/heart/canalysis.html

Kurtz resembles the archetypal "evil genius": the highly gifted but ultimately degenerate individual whose fall is the stuff of legend. Kurtz is related to figures like Faustus, Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost, Moby-Dick's Ahab, and Wuthering Heights's Heathcliff. Like these characters, he is significant both for his style and eloquence and for his grandiose, almost megalomaniacal scheming. In a world of mundanely malicious men and "flabby devils," attracting enough attention to be worthy of damnation is indeed something. Kurtz can be criticized in the same terms that Heart of Darkness is sometimes criticized: style entirely overrules substance, providing a justification for amorality and evil.

Steverino is totally right. ID, it seems to me, is a money raising scheme. I first typed scam, but...no, it's a scam. Mostly what people like Behe and Demski are out to do is sell lots of books. After that they would like to be paid for appearances and lectures. But really, those things in and of themselves aren't scammish. The DI is the real scam, in that they are most likely bilking millions from Christians and churches. I'd say ID is closer to Scientology than to real Christianity in that it is a method to separate a stupid person from his money.

Because ID is true. And in God's world truth always wins out in the end.

ICR raises lots of money too.

And it is a political and social nonentity.

Dembski et al will fall to the same comfortable but irrelevant obscurity. (shrug)

William Dembski, an ID proponent who teaches science and theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, says evolution supporters lost the Scopes trial of 1925 and turned it into a rallying cry. He suggested backers of intelligent design may do the same with the Jones opinion: "There are cultural voices in play that can render that verdict obsolete."

[Stephen Myer] also says there's more to ID than attacking evolution. "We're building a very strong scientific research program," he says. "There are lots of scientists friendly to this position."

Richard Katskee, a lawyer for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, says lawsuits are possible in Kansas and Ohio if voters or board members don't bring about change. "They've taken the plan from ID without using the label," he says of the two states. "That plan is really about attacking evolution. That's all there is to ID."

Huh? Is he hoping for outright theocracy?