[I]t does give me an excuse to post my (now annual) list of things we didn't see from the main players of the ID movement: * A peer-reviewed paper by Dembski, Wells, Nelson, Meyer ... * Or for that matter, a single peer-reviewed article offering either a) evidence for design, b) a method to unambiguously detect design, or c) a theory of how the Designer did the designing, by any fellow of the DI. * An exposition of Nelson's theory of "ontogenetic depth" (promised in March 2004) * An article by Nelson & Dembski on problems with common descent (promised in April 2005). * Nelson's monograph on common descent (currently MIA since the late 90's).In addition to how the Designer did the designing, I'd like to see something about the manufacturing process too. How did the Designer manufacture the stuff that's purportedly designed?
John Lynch reviews the year in ID
Here. The highlight:
42 Comments
waldteufel · 1 January 2009
I can sum up all of the Discovery Institute's research and publications in peer-reviewed scientific literature quite easily:
**chirp . . . chirp . . .chirp . . . . . . . . . . . . . "
jose · 1 January 2009
how the Designer did the designing ... How did the Designer manufacture the stuff that’s purportedly designed
The Designer moves in mysterious ways.
Stanton · 1 January 2009
Mike Elzinga · 2 January 2009
Apparently they figured their politics of pseudo-science could trump real science. But unfortunately for them their pseudo-science has no traction in this universe.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell with these guys, but apparently they never did understand the real science and still haven’t figured that out.
The only thing that seems to keep them going is the lucrative market for their wares among the sectarian home-schooling crowd. Most of the local anti-evolution agitation seems to be coming from the rubes at this point.
Yair · 2 January 2009
The real thing missing for the ID "research" is a PREDICTION. Without a prediction, they aren't making science. All the other missing things are just secondary to this main point.
novparl · 2 January 2009
Any peer reviewed articles on how 6 billion items of DNA evolved in 10 billion cells? 60 billion billion bits of info? Magic, de seguro.
Wanna check out the controversy on peer reviewing on Wikipedia?
I suppose the Pope's encyclicals are peer reviewed. OK, you pedants, near-peer. (I.e. archcardinal archbishop cardinals, but not other Popes.)
Ron Okimoto · 2 January 2009
No school board or legislator got any ID science to teach this year or any previous year.
No ID lesson plan or switch scam public school lesson plan was written up and distributed by the Discovery Institute this year or any previous year. You have to wonder how long the rubes are going to accept that it is their part of the dishonest scam to write up any bogus lesson plan and take the fall for it. The Ohio model lesson plan was a public fiasco. The Discovery Institute's ID perps are obviously not willing to take that fall no matter what they claim to be able to teach.
Someone should make an annual list of the guys that claimed that they were going to teach the science of intelligent design, and once the bait and switch went down, whether they took the switch scam or dropped the issue. The bait and switch has been run on every single school board or legislator that has wanted to teach the science of intelligent design since Ohio in 2002-2003. The only ones that have not dropped the issue or taken the switch scam has been Dover and we all know what happened there.
We had Florida yammering about teaching intelligent design, and wasn't it this year that some guy in Utah wanted to teach "devine design?" Most of the action has been trailing off into the switch scam as more of the creationist rubes get clued into the reality that there ain't no ID science worth teaching.
Dave Wisker · 2 January 2009
James F · 2 January 2009
The important thing to remember is that no data in support of ID (or refuting evolution) has been presented in peer-reviwed scientific research papers. You don't want give ID supporters the chance to retort, "But look at these papers in PLoS ONE and Chaos, Solitons & Fractals!"
The Biologic Institute lists the publications of anyone formally associated with it regardless of whether or not the publication contains biological experiments or addresses intelligent design (or, for that matter, evolution). For example, the Sternberg paper is not an experimental paper and the Axe et al. paper describes a computer program (and if you read the comments section at PLoS ONE, the paper's editor explicitly states that the paper does not provide results supporting ID, although this hasn't stopped ID supporters for hailing it as ID reserach).
It's not impossible for scientists associated with the ID movement to do useful scientific research (see, for example, Scott Minnich's work on Yersinia pestis) but the layman can be easily misled into thinking that this is ID research, a misconception actively promoted by the DI.
Frank J · 2 January 2009
Frank J · 2 January 2009
Dan · 2 January 2009
Dan · 2 January 2009
RBH · 2 January 2009
mark · 2 January 2009
iml8 · 2 January 2009
Wheels · 2 January 2009
John Kwok · 2 January 2009
John Kwok · 2 January 2009
Frank J · 2 January 2009
Bill Gascoyne · 2 January 2009
This thread appears to have 95% DNFTT compliance thus far. Admirable restraint!!
GumbyTheCat · 2 January 2009
iml8 · 2 January 2009
This article feeds into the one on the fadeout
of IDEA. One of plausible reasons that IDEA faltered was
lack of funding. This suggests that the only thing that
keeps the Discovery Institute and its agenda flying is
funding, and if the funding dried up, so would the ID
movement.
The change would be actually slight, since the traditional
creationist movement would remain unaltered aside from
some additions to their toolkit.
Cheers -- MrG / http://www.vectorsite.net
eric · 2 January 2009
Wheels · 2 January 2009
Frank J · 2 January 2009
The Curmudgeon · 2 January 2009
ID's only accomplishment last year was in the political arena. They got one of those "Academic Freedom" bills passed in Louisiana. Nothing's happened with it yet, but in due course some creationist teacher will trigger the inevitable litigation. It'll be Kitzmiller II, unless the school board settles fast.
Dave Wisker · 2 January 2009
James F · 2 January 2009
John Kwok · 2 January 2009
Paul Burnett · 2 January 2009
Richard · 2 January 2009
Stanton · 2 January 2009
John Lynch · 2 January 2009
John Kwok · 2 January 2009
Dave Wisker · 2 January 2009
RBH · 2 January 2009
James F · 3 January 2009
Terrapin · 6 January 2009
You know, even if the ID advocates put forth any semblance of a peer-reviewed article, it would never make it through revision. The scientists reviewing it would tear their ideas apart! Of course, if you never submit one, you're never proven wrong...
eric · 6 January 2009
Terrapin · 6 January 2009
Edward T. Babinski · 14 January 2009
AN HYPOTHESIS AS TO HOW DESIGNS ARE MANUFACTURED!
[Tongue firmly in cheek]
1) Naturally occuring mutagens are found both outside and inside the cell--from random cosmic rays penetrating the cell and mutating the DNA, to random chemical mutagens inside the cell, and random genetic collusions or tears in a gene or chromosome.
2) The Designer simply nudges these naturally occuring mutagens ever so slightly and miraculously either this way or that inside the cell, taking great care to direct them to the precise points in the gene or genome that He wishes to tinker with.
3) The Designer ALSO has to watch out that no other naturally occuring mutagens alter any of His handywork, especially when He's just effected a change in one area of one animal's genome that he wants to be passed along to the next generation. So the Designer then has to protectively shield the rest of that genome from any naturally occuring mutagens that might hinder his plan of passing along this newly designed change in the genome. This includes making sure that aforementioned animal does not perish prematurely due to a disease or predator, natural disaster, or accidental fall or choking or drowning.
So the Designer is kept quite busy manuevering a host of tiny mutagens, marshalling them, pointing them this way and that, and also kept quite busy protecting the animal in which he has made such changes, shielding its genome from any changes elsewhere that might make it unsuitable for being passed on, and protecting the animal itself from all harm from nature until it has sexually reproduced and passed along the new changes.
Quite busy indeed!
Though of course this doesn't explain why a Designer would take such GREAT CARE moving cosmic rays and chemical mutagens around for a couple billion years, simply fiddling with single-celled species for so very long before venturing to design multi-cellular species. Nor does it explain why such care was taken for so long to design so many species, and then rain down six major extinction events upon the majority of them.
Perhaps the Designer was shaking his Etch-I-Sketch? "Let's start over with these and see how that works out."
~~~~~~~~~~
To test my hypothesis above, can I get a grant from the D.I. to search for miraculously bent cosmic rays and chemical mutagens that swim upstream inside cells?
Ed [Edward T. Babinski]