But it's all about the science ...

Gee, I wonder if Dembski requires much theological study to determine
whether or not he's a geocentrist? And did the Sun stay still for Joshua?

Poor Dembski.. rejected by the scientific community and now being
"re-educated" by his own.

Stupidity should be painful.

Dembski really means he has to read "Genesis Flood."

Um, Bill? You might consider that you have much geological work to do.

— Richard B. Hoppe

Sheesh! That story in the Florida Baptist Witness is just plain creepy.

Knowing Dr. D through our class discussions, his views are extremely conservative. Indeed, he repeatedly stated that he wanted to see theology as the "queen of the sciences" again, guiding all of our disciplines.

Um, Bill? You might consider that you have much geological work to do.

— Richard B. Hoppe

RBH said: I've been wandering around in some of the aftermath of this brouhaha and ran onto this from a current student of Dembski:

Knowing Dr. D through our class discussions, his views are extremely conservative. Indeed, he repeatedly stated that he wanted to see theology as the "queen of the sciences" again, guiding all of our disciplines.

I for one see Dembski well on his way to being the Queen of Science, although he may have to forfeit his crown as the Alfred E. Newman of (What, me worry?) Information.

As for it being all about the science, uh, negativo, it's all about the paycheck. They could make him say anything. Oh, they already have!

Stoop?
Dr. Dr. rarely manages to rise to the level of delusions of adequacy. He is far to low to be able to stoop.
Nor, to the best of my knowledge, has he ever, ever, even once. demonstrated the faintest trace of contamination by any sense of responsibility of any sort.

no hugs for thugs,
Shirley Knott

These developments are very significant.

The original point of ID was to state creationist dogma in a "plausibly denial" way, so that it could taught taxpayer funded public schools without being successfully challenged in court.

Well, actually, that wasn't necessarily the true original goal. The original goal may have been for the DI to pretend that they were doing that, in order to keep the money flowing.

But the Thomas More Law Center and the Dover, PA school board believed the DI, much to the detriment of the Dover PA school board.

Since that time, the constitutional threat of the ID strategy has been largely eliminated.

Still, the once-common false claim that ID was something other than religious creationism cannot be too strongly or too completely repudiated.

Dembski's current activities are extremely helpful for those who work to keep any form of unconstitutional, religion-based science denial out of public schools.

Well, I guess they didn't quite show him the instruments of torture, but for any contemporary U.S. academic, it was pretty damn close:

"Patterson said that when Dembski’s questionable statements came to light, he convened a meeting with Dembski and several high-ranking administrators at the seminary. At that meeting, Dembski was quick to admit that he was wrong about the flood, Patterson said.

“Had I had any inkling that Dr. Dembski was actually denying the absolute trustworthiness of the Bible, then that would have, of course, ended his relationship with the school,” he said"

This seems to me to pretty much end any claim Dembski might have had to any kind of committment to reason and experience (not that I think he ever actually had one).

Karen S. said: Dembski really means he has to read "Genesis Flood."

“Had I had any inkling that Dr. Dembski was actually denying the absolute trustworthiness of the Bible, then that would have, of course, ended his relationship with the school,” he said”

Doc Bill said: I for one see Dembski well on his way to being the Queen of Science, although he may have to forfeit his crown as the Alfred E. Newman of (What, me worry?) Information. As for it being all about the science, uh, negativo, it's all about the paycheck. They could make him say anything. Oh, they already have!

Snelling has published an update, so read that

Stuart Weinstein said:

Doc Bill said: I for one see Dembski well on his way to being the Queen of Science, although he may have to forfeit his crown as the Alfred E. Newman of (What, me worry?) Information. As for it being all about the science, uh, negativo, it's all about the paycheck. They could make him say anything. Oh, they already have!

Given his ego, he will now claim he is the Gallileo of Information theory.

Mike Elzinga said:

Stuart Weinstein said:

Doc Bill said: I for one see Dembski well on his way to being the Queen of Science, although he may have to forfeit his crown as the Alfred E. Newman of (What, me worry?) Information. As for it being all about the science, uh, negativo, it's all about the paycheck. They could make him say anything. Oh, they already have!

Given his ego, he will now claim he is the Gallileo of Information theory.

Do all heretics falling from grace fall at the same rate; or do the heavyweights fall faster?

"[Southern Seminary President R. Albert] Mohler worries that most Christians who hold to an old earth are not thinking through all the logical implications of their position."

But it's all about the logical implications! (Or was that "the[o]logical implications"??)

Why is it that "Christian Logic" seems to have certain boundary conditions? There seem to be boundaries around the Bible and around certain college campuses where "Logic" isn't allowed.

Does anyone else notice a similarity between Dembski’s “confession” and that of Behe ~5 years ago where he tried to placate common-descent-deniers?

William Dembski: The implications of intelligent design are radical in the true sense of this much overused word. The question posed by intelligent design is not how we should do science and theology in light of the triumph of Enlightenment rationalism and scientific naturalism. The question is rather how we should do science and theology in light of the impending collapse of Enlightenment rationalism and scientific naturalism. These ideologies are on the way out…because they are bankrupt.

And Dembski whined to Hitchens in the "debate" that he'd been shut out from academia for his views (if so, good).

IOW, it's much safer to attack those who aren't dictating his public positions at the present time, than those who are.

Glen Davidson

The fact is that the Bible texts (including some of the words of Jesus) clearly support a global Noahic Flood, not a local flood.

Now, for those who reject the Bible, and who reject Jesus, that's no big deal. Go ahead and reject the Flood as well, no problemo.

But for those who accept the Bible, and for those who accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior, some choices gotta be made here. Even an Old-Earth Creationist like the late Old Testament Prof. Gleason Archer acknowledged in his classic book Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties that the the Biblical texts allowed only for a global Noahic Flood, NOT a local flood.

So that's the way it goes. Dembski is clearly a Christian, not a skeptic, so it's good to see him altering his stance away from the "local flood" stuff. That sort of crap is best left to the religion of skepticism.

FL

Patterson said that when Dembski’s questionable statements came to light, he convened a meeting with Dembski and several high-ranking administrators at the seminary. At that meeting, Dembski was quick to admit that he was wrong about the flood, Patterson said. “Had I had any inkling that Dr. Dembski was actually denying the absolute trustworthiness of the Bible, then that would have, of course, ended his relationship with the school,” he said”

wikipedia Baptist beliefs: Most Baptist traditions believe in the "Four Freedoms" articulated by Baptist historian Walter B. Shurden:[39] Soul freedom: the soul is competent before God, and capable of making decisions in matters of faith without coercion or compulsion by any larger religious or civil body Church freedom: freedom of the local church from outside interference, whether government or civilian (subject only to the law where it does not interfere with the religious teachings and practices of the church) Bible freedom: the individual is free to interpret the Bible for himself or herself, using the best tools of scholarship and biblical study available to the individual Religious freedom: the individual is free to choose whether to practice their religion, another religion, or no religion; Separation of church and state is often called the "civil corollary" of religious freedom

FL said: The fact is that the Bible texts (including some of the words of Jesus) clearly support a global Noahic Flood, not a local flood. Now, for those who reject the Bible, and who reject Jesus, that's no big deal. Go ahead and reject the Flood as well, no problemo. But for those who accept the Bible, and for those who accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior, some choices gotta be made here. Even an Old-Earth Creationist like the late Old Testament Prof. Gleason Archer acknowledged in his classic book Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties that the the Biblical texts allowed only for a global Noahic Flood, NOT a local flood. So that's the way it goes. Dembski is clearly a Christian, not a skeptic, so it's good to see him altering his stance away from the "local flood" stuff. That sort of crap is best left to the religion of skepticism. FL

“[Southern Seminary President R. Albert] Mohler worries that most Christians who hold to an old earth are not thinking through all the logical implications of their position.”

Where exactly in the Bible does it specifically state that rejecting the Flood is tantamount to rejecting Jesus Christ?

Oh cmon, Stanton. You reject John 3:16, let alone the Flood. (And if you want to deny that statement, I'm listening. Double dog dare ya.)

For Jesus, the global Noahic Flood was historically factual, literal, and global in scope, a planetwide act of divine judgment, taking place in actual Earth history (Matt. 24:37-39).

And you can see from that text, that Jesus even employed that past historical event to predict a future historical event on Earth--his own Second Coming, (which again will involve judgment across the planet.)

So, do you agree with Jesus there? Or do you not? You a follower of Him, or are you not? Speak up, please!

FL

Flint said:

Where exactly in the Bible does it specifically state that rejecting the Flood is tantamount to rejecting Jesus Christ?

As I understand it, this is a package deal. The bible is the only source for the existence of a global flood, and it's also the only source for the existence of a Jesus. So you either buy the whole package or you don't. Like the US President, you don't get a line-item veto in fundieland.

raven said:

William Dembski: The implications of intelligent design are radical in the true sense of this much overused word. The question posed by intelligent design is not how we should do science and theology in light of the triumph of Enlightenment rationalism and scientific naturalism. The question is rather how we should do science and theology in light of the impending collapse of Enlightenment rationalism and scientific naturalism. These ideologies are on the way out…because they are bankrupt.

Dembski’s goal was to destroy Western civilization. The Enlightenment and science are the basis of the 21st century West, including the leader, the USA. To set up another unworkable hell on earth theocracy. No point in feeling sorry for a nihilistic christofascist.

As I understand it, this is a package deal. The bible is the only source for the existence of a global flood, and it’s also the only source for the existence of a Jesus. So you either buy the whole package or you don’t. Like the US President, you don’t get a line-item veto in fundieland.

So, exactly the same as ever, as usual?

Daniel J. Andrews said: But a culture 5000 years from now will not recognize those clues, and may read a fairy tale in a completely wrong manner (e.g. there were actually ogres, fairy godmothers, or those 19-21st century people believed in ogres and fairy godmothers).

FL said: Oh cmon, Stanton. You reject John 3:16, let alone the Flood. (And if you want to deny that statement, I'm listening. Double dog dare ya.) For Jesus, the global Noahic Flood was historically factual, literal, and global in scope, a planetwide act of divine judgment, taking place in actual Earth history (Matt. 24:37-39). And you can see from that text, that Jesus even employed that past historical event to predict a future historical event on Earth--his own Second Coming, (which again will involve judgment across the planet.) So, do you agree with Jesus there? Or do you not? You a follower of Him, or are you not? Speak up, please! FL

Frank J said:

Um, Bill? You might consider that you have much geological work to do.

— Richard B. Hoppe

Of course. He not only knows that, but knows better than to even try. Does anyone else notice a similarity between Dembski's "confession" and that of Behe ~5 years ago where he tried to placate common-descent-deniers? Behe reiterated his long-standing acceptance of common descent, but qualified it by saying that some IDers who deny CD are "more familiar with the relevant science." Once again I'm having trouble locating the actual Behe quote, but I'm pretty sure that he did not name those IDers.

There's no problem with Dembski's reconciling of Genesis and science. An all-powerful magician can do anything. The problem is reconciling Genesis, science and "Last Thursday-ism".

Karen S. said:

So, exactly the same as ever, as usual?

Actually, at the debate at the American Museum of Natural History in 2002 Dembski claimed that he took Genesis figuratively. Who knows if his conversion is sincere?

John_S said: There's no problem with Dembski's reconciling of Genesis and science. An all-powerful magician can do anything. The problem is reconciling Genesis, science and "Last Thursday-ism".

Given this account of creationism, am I a creationist? No. I do not regard Genesis as a scientific text. I have no vested theological interest in the age of the earth or the universe. I find the arguments of geologists persuasive when they argue for an earth that is 4.5 billion years old. What’s more, I find the arguments of astrophysicists persuasive when they argue for a universe that is approximately 14 billion years old. I believe they got it right. Even so, I refuse to be dogmatic here. I’m willing to listen to arguments to the contrary. Yet to date I’ve found none of the arguments for a young earth or a young universe convincing. Nature, as far as I’m concerned, has an integrity that enables it to be understood without recourse to revelatory texts.

Daniel J. Andrews said:

As I understand it, this is a package deal. The bible is the only source for the existence of a global flood, and it’s also the only source for the existence of a Jesus. So you either buy the whole package or you don’t. Like the US President, you don’t get a line-item veto in fundieland.

No, not a package deal. Genesis creation story was not written as a historical account, but as a collection of themes that relate to a narrative, which can be interpreted and reinterpreted many levels down to find new meanings, new ideas, new connections. E.g. see Midrash Rabbah yashanet.com/studies/judaism101/sidebars/midrash.htm Accounts of Jesus, various kings and rulers, are written more along the lines of historical accounts (although miracles do come into play as perhaps part of a narrative of deeper meanings). Coupled with general ignorance about how cultures of the time wrote/read these things, translating the Hebrew and later the Koine Greek into English robbed the text of a lot of these nuances. A (probably bad) analogy would be in N. American culture, we start off a fairy tale with "Once upon a time..." Anyone reading that will know that what follows is not true. Or read other fairy tales...there are elements, symbols in those tales that tell modern readers that this is not true, but is for entertainment or for finding morals of the story. But a culture 5000 years from now will not recognize those clues, and may read a fairy tale in a completely wrong manner (e.g. there were actually ogres, fairy godmothers, or those 19-21st century people believed in ogres and fairy godmothers). So, insisting on a literal reading of Genesis and many other parts of the scripture is akin to reading a "Once upon a time..." fairy tale and taking it literally because literalist readers are simply ignorant of the cues, even if they are reading the actual Hebrew, that herald a fairy tale rather than a historical accounting. Short version: Rejecting a reading rendered in 'fairy tale' does not mean rejecting a reading rendered in historical voice.

But still it (doesn't) move.

Stanton said:

FL said: Oh cmon, Stanton. You reject John 3:16, let alone the Flood. (And if you want to deny that statement, I'm listening. Double dog dare ya.) For Jesus, the global Noahic Flood was historically factual, literal, and global in scope, a planetwide act of divine judgment, taking place in actual Earth history (Matt. 24:37-39). And you can see from that text, that Jesus even employed that past historical event to predict a future historical event on Earth--his own Second Coming, (which again will involve judgment across the planet.) So, do you agree with Jesus there? Or do you not? You a follower of Him, or are you not? Speak up, please! FL

So where did Jesus specifically state that to reject that the Flood literally happened is to reject Jesus? Where did Jesus say that it was more important to believe that a worldwide flood happened, even though there is no evidence of it, is more important for salvation than accepting Jesus Christ as my Savior? How come you can't say exactly where Jesus specifically said that? Is it because you're dishonestly putting words into Jesus' mouth? Or are you saying that you think it's much more important to believe in your own bigoted interpretation of the Bible than it is to actually accept Jesus as one's Savior, and that you're more than willing to send other people to Hell for your own ego's sake? And how come you refuse to say exactly what Bill Dembski said to explain exactly what is and how to calculate "specified complexity"? Too cowardly and too dishonest to admit that he never said anything of the sort?

FL -

Which seminary did you attend? Do you have a full PhD in divinity, or a mere Master's? How's your Hebrew? How's your Koine Greek?

If you folks have not read Tom Nettles' review of Dembski's book, I suggest that you do. It is a glimpse into disordered minds.

A quick google search on Behe common descent brought up many hits including: http://www.arn.org/docs/behe/mb_dm11496.htm

— DavidK

Kris said: Can you prove that "Jesus" ever existed and/or that he ever "said" anything at all?

harold said: FL - Which seminary did you attend? Do you have a full PhD in divinity, or a mere Master's? How's your Hebrew? How's your Koine Greek?

Thanks for that link, Gary. It's one fool condemning another fool for not being as idiotic as he is. It shows how flimsy the Big Tent is.

FL said: The fact is that the Bible texts (including some of the words of Jesus) clearly support a global Noahic Flood, not a local flood.

Now, for those who reject the Bible, and who reject Jesus, that's no big deal. Go ahead and reject the Flood as well, no problemo.

But for those who accept the Bible, and for those who accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior, some choices gotta be made here. Even an Old-Earth Creationist like the late Old Testament Prof. Gleason Archer acknowledged in his classic book Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties that the the Biblical texts allowed only for a global Noahic Flood, NOT a local flood.

So that's the way it goes. Dembski is clearly a Christian, not a skeptic, so it's good to see him altering his stance away from the "local flood" stuff. That sort of crap is best left to the religion of skepticism. FL

RBH said: I've been wandering around in some of the aftermath of this brouhaha and ran onto this from a current student of Dembski:

Knowing Dr. D through our class discussions, his views are extremely conservative. Indeed, he repeatedly stated that he wanted to see theology as the "queen of the sciences" again, guiding all of our disciplines.

FL said: Oh cmon, Stanton. You reject John 3:16, let alone the Flood. (And if you want to deny that statement, I'm listening. Double dog dare ya.) For Jesus, the global Noahic Flood was historically factual, literal, and global in scope, a planetwide act of divine judgment, taking place in actual Earth history (Matt. 24:37-39).

And you can see from that text, that Jesus even employed that past historical event to predict a future historical event on Earth--his own Second Coming, (which again will involve judgment across the planet.)

So, do you agree with Jesus there? Or do you not? You a follower of Him, or are you not? Speak up, please! FL

Karen S. said:

So, exactly the same as ever, as usual?

Actually, at the debate at the American Museum of Natural History in 2002 Dembski claimed that he took Genesis figuratively. Who knows if his conversion is sincere?

Stanton said:

Karen S. said:

So, exactly the same as ever, as usual?

Actually, at the debate at the American Museum of Natural History in 2002 Dembski claimed that he took Genesis figuratively. Who knows if his conversion is sincere?

The only people he makes sincere statements to are those who control his financial destiny. Otherwise, the only two ways to tell if Dembski is being insincere are if a) his lips are moving, or b) if he's typing a statement.

Doc Bill said:

“Had I had any inkling that Dr. Dembski was actually denying the absolute trustworthiness of the Bible, then that would have, of course, ended his relationship with the school,” he said”

Hey, I wonder why the DI hasn't been all over Southwest for suppressing academic freedom! Shouldn't Dr. Dembski be accorded basic Academic Freedom to pursue his research interests? After all, he is a research professor of something or another. Where's the DI on this? Why so coy, Casey? Blatant case of viewpoint discrimination I've ever seen and poor old Dembski, a fellow Fellow of the DI get's no love. Show some indignant fervor, Anika! Dembski was nearly EXPELLED, don't you guys care? We want academic freedom, not dogma. Ain't that right, Crowther? Dembski's First Amendment rights are being trampled and you guys in Seattle just sit there! I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked by your complacent behavior.

Stanton said:

Kris said: Can you prove that "Jesus" ever existed and/or that he ever "said" anything at all?

From what I was told, and from what I read of the Bible, a person's relationship with God is to be a private matter only between God and that person. Having said that, I avoid answering questions about whether or not I believe in the existence of Jesus because it's been my experience that virtually all of the people who ask me that always try to twist my words to unfairly frame me as being either a gibbering, imbecilic religious fanatic, or a soulless, monstrous, God-hating anti-theist who'd seek to murder anyone who so much as says "Merry Christmas" I mean, I was never taught that it was so deadly necessary to reject the existence of God in order to better understand and appreciate reality, and I was never taught that it was necessary to reject reality (and science) as being evil and of the Devil to pursue a relationship with God. Having said that, Kris, may I ask if you agree or disagree with FL's claims that those Christians who don't assume that Christianity and Science/Evolution are incompatible, or do not read the (English translation of) the Bible as being 100% word for word literally true, with the sole exception of the Pope in Rome, are not Christians at all?

It's interesting that Dembski did not list Southwestern Baptist Theological Institute as his affiliation in his most recent publication with Marks. He went with the Discovery Institute instead.

I suspect that Dembski wants terribly to get out of SWBT, and that Marks is trying to help him build the publication list he needs.

Tom English said: It's interesting that Dembski did not list Southwestern Baptist Theological Institute as his affiliation in his most recent publication with Marks. He went with the Discovery Institute instead. I suspect that Dembski wants terribly to get out of SWBT, and that Marks is trying to help him build the publication list he needs.

@J. Kwok
Your comments would be more readable if you were placing the quotes you refer to above rather than below your statements.

John Kwok said: I take a less charitable view Tom. He wants to stay in Texas, at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Especially since he told me three years ago that he knew scores of Texas high school principals who want ID to be taught in lieu of evolution in science classrooms (He couldn't answer when I observed that the principal of my high school alma mater teaches introductory physics to entering freshmen and has pledged never to teach ID at this school, which offers a rigorous college prep education emphasizing mathematics and the sciences.). He also wants some scientific "cred", which is why he lists the DI, not SWBTS, on that publication co-authored with Marks:

Tom English said: It's interesting that Dembski did not list Southwestern Baptist Theological Institute as his affiliation in his most recent publication with Marks. He went with the Discovery Institute instead. I suspect that Dembski wants terribly to get out of SWBT, and that Marks is trying to help him build the publication list he needs.

FL said: The fact is that the Bible texts (including some of the words of Jesus) clearly support a global Noahic Flood, not a local flood.

FL said: For Jesus, the global Noahic Flood was historically factual, literal, and global in scope, a planetwide act of divine judgment, taking place in actual Earth history (Matt. 24:37-39).

Oclarki said:

FL said: The fact is that the Bible texts (including some of the words of Jesus) clearly support a global Noahic Flood, not a local flood.

Alas, all of the data collected from the natural world that surrounds us quite fails to support the claim of the "noachian flood" as identified in the Bible. So...what are we to do? Ignore the actual observations of the natural world around us in favor of your "flood"? Why? Why should we ignore data from the real world?

Kris said:

Oclarki said:

FL said: The fact is that the Bible texts (including some of the words of Jesus) clearly support a global Noahic Flood, not a local flood.

Alas, all of the data collected from the natural world that surrounds us quite fails to support the claim of the "noachian flood" as identified in the Bible. So...what are we to do? Ignore the actual observations of the natural world around us in favor of your "flood"? Why? Why should we ignore data from the real world?

That's a good question, and it makes me think of this question: Why do many people ignore reality, in favor of a belief in unprovable, unreasonable fairy tales? What is it that makes many people so determined to believe in and promote farcical religious crap?

RBH,

When are you all gonna do a 'job' on Robert Marks?

I mean, you've (pl) stabbed the Dembski and Behe voodoo dolls so badly they've turned into porcupine dolls!

Surely, you understand that Marks is the brains behind ID and the Conservation of Information Law.

I say, go for the jugular! Drive a stake in the heart of ID. Nail Marks.

So when can PT readers expect an expose of that idiot, pompous, scoundrel of a cdesignproponentsist Marks?

Steve P. said: RBH, When are you all gonna do a 'job' on Robert Marks? I mean, you've (pl) stabbed the Dembski and Behe voodoo dolls so badly they've turned into porcupine dolls! Surely, you understand that Marks is the brains behind ID and the Conservation of Information Law. I say, go for the jugular! Drive a stake in the heart of ID. Nail Marks. So when can PT readers expect an expose of that idiot, pompous, scoundrel of a cdesignproponentsist Marks?

I'm ammazed by the fact that the "review" this Nettles guy did was at least 82 pages long, does it take that many pages to say "not Baptist enough for me".

How do you know whether “Genesis creation story was not written as a historical account…” or not? Have you had a chat with the original authors? Just wondering. It always amazes me when someone claims to KNOW something that they can’t possibly KNOW. You can guess, speculate, assume, or just make things up but you can’t KNOW things that you can’t possibly KNOW.

The motif in the story about Joseph and the wife of Potifar for instance is copied from the Egyptian fairytale “The two Brothers”. Of old an enmity existed between the semi-nomadic sheepherders and the Bedouins. In the production of myths, the sheepherders therefore made a story about how the Bedouins were descendants of a farmer that had fled because of murdering his brother. We recognize the story about Cain and Abel. They then equipped Adam and Eve with a third son, Set, who was made god-fearing and straight enough to be the one they themselves descended from. In Canaan, drought was the enemy; high summer was the death of nature. But with autumn the rains came, and nature awakened to life again. The creation myth of the Canaanites therefore speaks of the dry, arid land that id being blessed by their God with rain and wells breaking forth. Thus life was created on Earth. Contrary to that; in Babylon floods were the dangerous problem. Their creation myth, that also became known by the Israelites and incorporated into their folklore, therefore tells that it began with waters all over, then with land rising out of the water. The two creation myths are placed side by side in the bible and they are both equally true and believable. Most likely, people in those times believed those stories as more than just stories. For them, it was real history that earth and heavens, man and animals suddenly were created. They were aware of the existence of other peoples with other gods, but they were not part of their own history and how they might have been created was of no concern to them. So therefore, there was no problem for Cain to find a wife. Most of the myths in Genesis are older than the immigration of the Israelites. They had been part of the tribal traditions for a long time. Their concept of God also was quite different. The patriarchs knew gods like El-sjaddai and Elohim, and neither Abram, Isaac or Jacob knew anything about Moses’ new creation, Yahweh. According to 2. Mos. 3, Moses asked the new god what he should be called, and the god replied: “I am who I am.” The story leaves no doubt that it is a new, hitherto unknown god that is being introduced, but history has made him identical with the god of the patriarch’s.

I have been told that one can distinguish a metaphor in the Bible from something which is meant to be taken literally thus:

If the intended audience could easily see that it cannot be taken literally, then it is a metaphor.

Applying this rule, we see that for some 2000 years (from 500 BC to AD 1500),nobody thought that language about the sun going around the earth and the earth being motionless could not be taken literally. Essentially everybody thought that the Bible said that the earth was fixed.

But perhaps others have a different way of distinguishing Biblical metaphors from literal statements. Any suggestions?

They also make a mockery another major strategy - the “Expelled” strategy of false claims in the media that ID/creationists are being uniquely persecuted.

— harold

And I do mean "no matter how far-fetched." I can't vouch for other reviewers of those proposals, but as you can tell, I'm very tolerant of bad proofreading. ;-)

Rolf Aalberg said: If this is too far off topic or otherwise not kosher, let it go to the BW. Otherwise, for FL and others, here is something that I do not know, but the source(s) are serious scholars:

The motif in the story about Joseph and the wife of Potifar for instance is copied from the Egyptian fairytale “The two Brothers”. Of old an enmity existed between the semi-nomadic sheepherders and the Bedouins. In the production of myths, the sheepherders therefore made a story about how the Bedouins were descendants of a farmer that had fled because of murdering his brother. We recognize the story about Cain and Abel. They then equipped Adam and Eve with a third son, Set, who was made god-fearing and straight enough to be the one they themselves descended from. In Canaan, drought was the enemy; high summer was the death of nature. But with autumn the rains came, and nature awakened to life again. The creation myth of the Canaanites therefore speaks of the dry, arid land that id being blessed by their God with rain and wells breaking forth. Thus life was created on Earth. Contrary to that; in Babylon floods were the dangerous problem. Their creation myth, that also became known by the Israelites and incorporated into their folklore, therefore tells that it began with waters all over, then with land rising out of the water. The two creation myths are placed side by side in the bible and they are both equally true and believable. Most likely, people in those times believed those stories as more than just stories. For them, it was real history that earth and heavens, man and animals suddenly were created. They were aware of the existence of other peoples with other gods, but they were not part of their own history and how they might have been created was of no concern to them. So therefore, there was no problem for Cain to find a wife. Most of the myths in Genesis are older than the immigration of the Israelites. They had been part of the tribal traditions for a long time. Their concept of God also was quite different. The patriarchs knew gods like El-sjaddai and Elohim, and neither Abram, Isaac or Jacob knew anything about Moses’ new creation, Yahweh. According to 2. Mos. 3, Moses asked the new god what he should be called, and the god replied: “I am who I am.” The story leaves no doubt that it is a new, hitherto unknown god that is being introduced, but history has made him identical with the god of the patriarch’s.

It is important to remember that Gilgamesh was involved in a great flood well before the date the accounts of Noah were written.
One theory is that in Neolithic times the water level in the Black Sea was about 300 feet lower than at present, and as world wide sea levels rose after the Ice Age the rising water flooded the area in a few years. While the theory has not yet been firmly established it was at a time when a great flood could have become part of human folk tales - which would explain why the flood story was widespread (not just the bible) in early writings.

Stanton said:

FL said: Oh cmon, Stanton. You reject John 3:16, let alone the Flood. (And if you want to deny that statement, I'm listening. Double dog dare ya.) For Jesus, the global Noahic Flood was historically factual, literal, and global in scope, a planetwide act of divine judgment, taking place in actual Earth history (Matt. 24:37-39). And you can see from that text, that Jesus even employed that past historical event to predict a future historical event on Earth--his own Second Coming, (which again will involve judgment across the planet.) So, do you agree with Jesus there? Or do you not? You a follower of Him, or are you not? Speak up, please! FL

So where did Jesus specifically state that to reject that the Flood literally happened is to reject Jesus? Where did Jesus say that it was more important to believe that a worldwide flood happened, even though there is no evidence of it, is more important for salvation than accepting Jesus Christ as my Savior? How come you can't say exactly where Jesus specifically said that? Is it because you're dishonestly putting words into Jesus' mouth? Or are you saying that you think it's much more important to believe in your own bigoted interpretation of the Bible than it is to actually accept Jesus as one's Savior, and that you're more than willing to send other people to Hell for your own ego's sake? And how come you refuse to say exactly what Bill Dembski said to explain exactly what is and how to calculate "specified complexity"? Too cowardly and too dishonest to admit that he never said anything of the sort?

Steve P. said: RBH, When are you all gonna do a 'job' on Robert Marks? I mean, you've (pl) stabbed the Dembski and Behe voodoo dolls so badly they've turned into porcupine dolls! Surely, you understand that Marks is the brains behind ID and the Conservation of Information Law. I say, go for the jugular! Drive a stake in the heart of ID. Nail Marks. So when can PT readers expect an expose of that idiot, pompous, scoundrel of a cdesignproponentsist Marks?

In this case, I believe an internet meme come Star Trek reference is highly appropriate.

"There! Are! Four! Lights!"

Alas, Mr. Dembski has chosen to see 5.

Steve P. said: RBH, When are you all gonna do a 'job' on Robert Marks? I mean, you've (pl) stabbed the Dembski and Behe voodoo dolls so badly they've turned into porcupine dolls! Surely, you understand that Marks is the brains behind ID and the Conservation of Information Law. I say, go for the jugular! Drive a stake in the heart of ID. Nail Marks. So when can PT readers expect an expose of that idiot, pompous, scoundrel of a cdesignproponentsist Marks?

What is it that makes many people so determined to believe in and promote farcical religious crap?

The existence of two, contradictory, creation stories in the first chapters of Genesis is a pretty strong hint, that whatever was the intended meaning of the stories, they weren’t intended to be a literal historical account.

raven said:

The existence of two, contradictory, creation stories in the first chapters of Genesis is a pretty strong hint, that whatever was the intended meaning of the stories, they weren’t intended to be a literal historical account.

That was my thought long ago too. Of course the authors of Genesis knew there were two different versions of the creation myth. They compiled them in themselves. It's obvious they knew it and didn't care. The writers of the bible were noticeably saner and brighter in the Iron age than some of their US readers 2500 years later.

Can you prove that “Jesus” ever existed and/or that he ever “said” anything at all?

Which seminary did you attend? Do you have a full PhD in divinity, or a mere Master’s? How’s your Hebrew? How’s your Koine Greek?

FL said: (But who am I to complain? Heh!!))

Moi? I’m just a simple layman. I am on Spanish class and one BA thesis away from a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies, but even after that, I’ll still be a simple layman. Hebrew? Greek? I am just a layman on that too. However, I have my own copies of the BDB (Heb) and BAGD (Grk) lexicons, and can look up stuff on any given day. FL

harold said:

Moi? I’m just a simple layman. I am on Spanish class and one BA thesis away from a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies, but even after that, I’ll still be a simple layman. Hebrew? Greek? I am just a layman on that too. However, I have my own copies of the BDB (Heb) and BAGD (Grk) lexicons, and can look up stuff on any given day. FL

So any authority you have to tell other Christians what they can or can't believe is 100% self-proclaimed. I'm not religious, but anyway, you have no more expertise in theology than you do in science. You spend a lot of time contradicting people who know more than you. But that's an issue for you and a licensed therapist to work on, if you ever get tired of doing it. Just wanted to make that crystal clear.

So any authority you have to tell other Christians what they can or can’t believe is 100% self-proclaimed. I’m not religious, but anyway, you have no more expertise in theology than you do in science.

Can you prove that “Jesus” ever existed and/or that he ever “said” anything at all?

Ohhh, I think so.

FL said:

So any authority you have to tell other Christians what they can or can’t believe is 100% self-proclaimed. I’m not religious, but anyway, you have no more expertise in theology than you do in science.

Like I said openly, I'm a layman. Sounds like you are too. I have access to a Bible, and you have access to a Bible as well. (At least it's available online. Plus there's online reference tools if you wish.) Mike's right: it's not about me--instead it's about what the Bible says. And the Bible's position, is what I present in this forum when y'all wanna talk religion (like you do today.) Again, if you disagree with my statements, you have a Bible too. We can thus compare notes, and reference sources if need be, and see what the Bible says together, and see which position is better supported by the text/context. Would you agree with that rational process? FL

FL said:

So any authority you have to tell other Christians what they can or can’t believe is 100% self-proclaimed. I’m not religious, but anyway, you have no more expertise in theology than you do in science.

Like I said openly, I'm a layman. Sounds like you are too. I have access to a Bible, and you have access to a Bible as well. (At least it's available online. Plus there's online reference tools if you wish.) Mike's right: it's not about me--instead it's about what the Bible says. And the Bible's position, is what I present in this forum when y'all wanna talk religion (like you do today.) Again, if you disagree with my statements, you have a Bible too. We can thus compare notes, and reference sources if need be, and see what the Bible says together, and see which position is better supported by the text/context. Would you agree with that rational process? FL

So Joshua of Nazareth really existed? How come Flavius Josephus doesn't mention him, but instead, the First Jewish Revolt? Surely someone who claimed to be the "Messiah" and rattle both Roman authorities and the Pharisees should have been remembered, along with his execution.

HertfordshireChris said: It is important to remember that Gilgamesh was involved in a great flood well before the date the accounts of Noah were written. One theory is that in Neolithic times the water level in the Black Sea was about 300 feet lower than at present, and as world wide sea levels rose after the Ice Age the rising water flooded the area in a few years. While the theory has not yet been firmly established it was at a time when a great flood could have become part of human folk tales - which would explain why the flood story was widespread (not just the bible) in early writings.

The existence of two, contradictory, creation stories in the first chapters of Genesis is a pretty strong hint, that whatever was the intended meaning of the stories, they weren’t intended to be a literal historical account.

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is obviously lax since it allows Dembski to associate with the heretical Discovery Institute.

sparc said: @J. Kwok Your comments would be more readable if you were placing the quotes you refer to above rather than below your statements.

Stephen P said: @FL:

Can you prove that “Jesus” ever existed and/or that he ever “said” anything at all?

Ohhh, I think so.

So - are you going to? I've been sitting on the fence with this one for quite a while. But I've noticed that every time this comes up, the best that the "historical Jesus" people can manage is arguments from authority, the Josephus interpolations, a bit of handwaving and some condescending remarks. And Jesus ends up looking more mythical every time. (I'm nothing to do with "Steve P", BTW)

FL said: Let's eliminate that claim now. Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 form a single, complementary creation account. They are NOT two separate contradictory creation stories. FL

Just as every biblical apologist knows that there's a single creation story, every biblical apologist knows that insects have four legs,

Stephen P said: So - are you going to? I've been sitting on the fence with this one for quite a while. But I've noticed that every time this comes up, the best that the "historical Jesus" people can manage is arguments from authority, the Josephus interpolations, a bit of handwaving and some condescending remarks. And Jesus ends up looking more mythical every time.

FL said:

So any authority you have to tell other Christians what they can or can’t believe is 100% self-proclaimed. I’m not religious, but anyway, you have no more expertise in theology than you do in science.

Like I said openly, I'm a layman. Sounds like you are too. I have access to a Bible, and you have access to a Bible as well. (At least it's available online. Plus there's online reference tools if you wish.) Mike's right: it's not about me--instead it's about what the Bible says. And the Bible's position, is what I present in this forum when y'all wanna talk religion (like you do today.)

John Kwok said: So Joshua of Nazareth really existed? How come Flavius Josephus doesn't mention him, but instead, the First Jewish Revolt? Surely someone who claimed to be the "Messiah" and rattle both Roman authorities and the Pharisees should have been remembered, along with his execution.

I’ve been sitting on the fence with this one for quite a while. But I’ve noticed that every time this comes up, the best that the “historical Jesus” people can manage is arguments from authority, the Josephus interpolations, a bit of handwaving and some condescending remarks. And Jesus ends up looking more mythical every time.

Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

He banished from Rome all the Jews, who were continually making disturbances at the instigation of one Chrestus.

harold said: Kris said -

What is it that makes many people so determined to believe in and promote farcical religious crap?

Good question. I think it depends on context. What follows is my conjecture, focused mainly on creationist science denial. For most of human history, religious teachings provided some level of explanation for what was then unexplainable, some sense of control/anxiety relief over things like weather, and a theoretical rationale for enforcement of social norms and hierarchies. Some religions - especially dharmic and many sects of western/middle eastern monotheism - also provided a mechanism for dealing with grief due to personal tragedy. However, times have changed. Since the enlightenment, in many parts of the world, secular institutions also provide these functions to various degrees. Rather than merely adopting their ancestors' traditional religions, Americans today frequently choose their own religion, or, even if they ostensibly adopt a traditional religion, pick and choose within sects and seek out ministers or denominations they prefer. They start with emotional biases or discontents and then choose a set of religious claims that justify or exalt their personal biases. This was originally noted to be an en masse phenomenon when young people began turning to eastern dharmic traditions, and when liberal reformers began molding certain denominations during the civil rights era. However, a large group of Americans is not happy about post-civil rights society. They perceive less discrimination against independent women, gays, and ethnic minorities to represent taking something away from them. There is also an obvious human tendency to blame problems whose source is unclear on the weak, rather than on the more intimidating strong. Hence, America has experienced a thirty plus year cycle in which the steadily declining standard of living of most people, relative to level of available technology, is persistently blamed on certain types of people on "welfare" or the like. This cycle is indefinitely self-perpetuating, since no action that can logically address true root causes can be considered. Creationism and fundamentalism were the defiant stances of very poor people who had already experienced social rejection when I was younger. They had a very strong base among poor white Southerners who felt resentment toward "yankees", and had similar holds in other areas where a white underclass was present, including where I grew up (I was raised poor by North American standards, but culturally "educated class" - then as now, people from multi-generational deprivation tended to swing between periods of proclaimed religious extremism and periods of uninhibited, "inappropriate" behavior). However, I have seen creationist fundamentalism change and mature into "the official religion of the right wing". Indeed, even figures like Ann Coulter, an Ivy League educated member of the multi-generational northeast wealthy elite, "become creationist" to demonstrate loyalty to the political right wing. In different contexts, Bobby Jindal, Tom Tancredo, Christine O'Donnell, and innumerable other examples, show the same trend. I got into a somewhat fruitless argument about whether creationists are "sincere" on another thread. Both parties in that dispute were right. They are mainly sincere in the most literal sense of the word, perhaps - not consciously self-identifying as con men or tricksters. This may be especially true where creationism is more traditional; all other things being equal, I would suspect that a rural Alabamian creationist might be less conflicted than, say, Ann Coulter or Christine O'Donnell. At another level, they almost all exhibit defensiveness and some degree of "compartmentalization" and use tactics that, in most cases, they themselves would condemn as dishonest if used in any other context, such as misrepresentation of the views of others, false and irrelevant accusations and associations, repetition of rebutted points while refusing to acknowledge rebuttals, implied or overt misrepresentation of their credentials, use of "big words" that they themselves don't understand in the hopes that others will equally not understand and be bamboozled into silence, borderline plagiarism (even where they do use in-context quotes, they typically hide the source and try to pass the quote off as their own), etc. Whether those who must resort to such tactics to defend their own claimed beliefs are "sincere" is a matter of, perhaps, one's personal and subjective evaluation of the threshold for sincerity. What is undeniable is that creationists virtually always engage in one or more of these tactics while defending ID/creationism, whereas science-supporters almost never do while defending science. It is also undeniable that creationism correlates incredibly strongly with seeming unrelated claims, such as climate change denial, economic views that if anything are more or less at odds with the Bible, and even ethnic bigotry. Creationism is mainly the "official religion" of a social and political ideology, one with strong authoritarian tendencies. It is adopted to eliminate ethical arguments, by ostensibly adopting a hyper-concrete rule system that denies any human responsibility beyond obedience to arbitrary commands. And then they break their own rule system on a regular basis, too, I might add.

You HAVE read them, right?

Paul Burnett said: And if you want to participate in a science forum, at least have the common sense not to admit you believe in something as patently bogus as a global flood. Everybody will think you're an idiot. Oh, wait...

FL said:

You HAVE read them, right?

Yes. In fact, I keep a list of 'em. Never said anything about all those sources being in lockstep with each other. There's a Catholic online version, in fact, that I KNOW is flavored a little different than the rest, even though it also negates the "separate contradictory accounts" accusation. So pick whichever one you like the best, or pick Archer's version in EBD, but be aware that the "contradiction" accusation has been KILLED SEVEN OR EIGHT TIMES OVER (and that's NOT counting the book sources.) FL

To bring this discussion back on topic:

FL, how come you claim that Dembski explained what is, and how to calculate and recognize "specified complexity," yet, repeatedly quote or even paraphrase what Dembski said, even when repeatedly asked to do so?

Are you trying to hide the fact that Dembski failed to explain what is, and how to calculate and recognize what "specified complexity"?

Also, you have also repeatedly claimed that Intelligent Design is supposed to be scientific, yet, you have refused to explain how, or why. Why?

You used to boast of having a "three plank explanation" years ago that would explain how Intelligent Design is supposed to be scientific, yet, you refused to unveil it, ever, to the point where you lied about revealing it. Why?

I find the whole FL digression amusing given the title of the original post. FL is a poster child for how its not about the science. Someone like Kitzmiller's Eric Rothschild could probably win a case against teaching ID in school based on FL's posts alone.

The actions of folk like him - honest fundamentalists submitting their sincere letters to newspapers and blogs, outlining in crystal clear detail exactly why they object to evolution - are probably one of the main reasons ID has not been able to make any legal headway. Keep it up FL, I couldn't ask for a better opposition.

FL said: Okay, there's a lot going on there. Very interesting comments; you guys sho'nuff love talkin' about yo' religion, dontcha? (But who am I to complain? Heh!!)) ***

Can you prove that “Jesus” ever existed and/or that he ever “said” anything at all?

Ohhh, I think so. In fact, the historical existence of the human Jesus is the ONE ITEM that both the skeptic scholars (like Dominic Crossan and Richard Carrier) and the Christian scholars (like Ben Witherington and Mike Licona) actually agree on. Long story short, it's the fact that both friendly and hostile sources, both Christian and non-Christian sources, all say that the historical Jesus at least existed. (Historian Josephus for example, Babylonian Talmud, etc....just too many "neutral" or "hostile" sources for anybody to ignore. At this point, saying Jesus never existed is like saying Greece, Rome, and Jerusalem never existed. That's just how it goes. ******

Which seminary did you attend? Do you have a full PhD in divinity, or a mere Master’s? How’s your Hebrew? How’s your Koine Greek?

Moi? I'm just a simple layman. I am on Spanish class and one BA thesis away from a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies, but even after that, I'll still be a simple layman. Hebrew? Greek? I am just a layman on that too. However, I have my own copies of the BDB (Heb) and BAGD (Grk) lexicons, and can look up stuff on any given day. FL

So Joshua of Nazareth really existed? How come Flavius Josephus doesn’t mention him, but instead, the First Jewish Revolt?

About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared. - Jewish Antiquities, 18.3.3 §63

Festus was now dead, and Albinus was but upon the road; so he assembled the sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others, [or, some of his companions]; and when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned: but as for those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and such as were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws, they disliked what was done; they also sent to the king [Agrippa], desiring him to send to Ananus that he should act so no more, for that what he had already done was not to be justified; nay, some of them went also to meet Albinus, as he was upon his journey from Alexandria, and informed him that it was not lawful for Ananus to assemble a sanhedrin without his consent. Antiq. 20:9

eric said: I find the whole FL digression amusing given the title of the original post. FL is a poster child for how its not about the science. Someone like Kitzmiller's Eric Rothschild could probably win a case against teaching ID in school based on FL's posts alone. The actions of folk like him - honest fundamentalists submitting their sincere letters to newspapers and blogs, outlining in crystal clear detail exactly why they object to evolution - are probably one of the main reasons ID has not been able to make any legal headway. Keep it up FL, I couldn't ask for a better opposition.

Notice the word “prove”

FL said: snip

Can you prove that “Jesus” ever existed and/or that he ever “said” anything at all?

Ohhh, I think so. In fact, the historical existence of the human Jesus is the ONE ITEM that both the skeptic scholars (like Dominic Crossan and Richard Carrier) and the Christian scholars (like Ben Witherington and Mike Licona) actually agree on. Long story short, it's the fact that both friendly and hostile sources, both Christian and non-Christian sources, all say that the historical Jesus at least existed. (Historian Josephus for example, Babylonian Talmud, etc....just too many "neutral" or "hostile" sources for anybody to ignore. At this point, saying Jesus never existed is like saying Greece, Rome, and Jerusalem never existed. That's just how it goes. snip FL

Hey guys, I'm having fun, but here's a reminder: I'm simply responding to issues that YOU have brought up and are currently asking ME about.

If you are worried about topicality, then please stay on the topic. If you wanna talk about William Dembski and his change of position on the Flood (and why he needed to do so), then YOU need to stick to the topic.

FL said:

Notice the word “prove”

. I'm not sure I can "prove" anything to you, but you sure are bucking a whole lotta experts on ALL sides of the fence there, if you say Jesus never existed. You would at least want to provide some kryptonite, some rational supportable counterarguments against all the long-standing evidences that all the scholars are currently accepting as supportive of Jesus's existence. Can you do that much? FL

FL said:

You HAVE read them, right?

Yes. In fact, I keep a list of 'em. Never said anything about all those sources being in lockstep with each other.

FL said:There's a Catholic online version, in fact, that I KNOW is flavored a little different than the rest, even though it also negates the "separate contradictory accounts" accusation.

FL said: So pick whichever one you like the best, or pick Archer's version in EBD, but be aware that the "contradiction" accusation has been KILLED SEVEN OR EIGHT TIMES OVER (and that's NOT counting the book sources.) FL

FL said: Some people like to do some debate that first one (but they're unable to knock our all of the passage), and that second one is just THERE, period. Either way, Flavor Joe talked about Jesus. FL

"John Frum, he come." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Frum We've seen a religion form about a fictitious messiah-figure within recent decades! Bang goes the uniqueness of gospel.

We've even had the identification of an elderly Greek racist as a divine being: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Philip_Movement

I used to think that there was a "historical Jesus" but there's just nothing there- I see FL is still pushing the Josephus interpolations! Jesus turns out to be about as historically well documented as Hercules and Orpheus.

Hint for FL: the first passage is an obvious interpolation inasmuch as if Josephus had really believed that Jesus was the Messiah, he would have been a Christian, no? The second does nothing but identify somebody as being related to somebody called Jesus, which is about as unique an identifier as John Smith.

FL said: Hey guys, I'm having fun, but here's a reminder: I'm simply responding to issues that YOU have brought up and are currently asking ME about. If you are worried about topicality, then please stay on the topic. If you wanna talk about William Dembski and his change of position on the Flood (and why he needed to do so), then YOU need to stick to the topic.

I therefore suggest that of the three possibilities, Jesus would have to have been unique in two of them, but that the third – that he was a human being around whom stories grew up, possibly even during his lifetime – is so common that it is by far the most parsimonious choice.

David Fickett-Wilbar said: "...I therefore suggest that of the three possibilities, Jesus would have to have been unique in two of them, but that the third – that he was a human being around whom stories grew up, possibly even during his lifetime – is so common that it is by far the most parsimonious choice."

FL said: Hey guys, I'm having fun, but here's a reminder: I'm simply responding to issues that YOU have brought up and are currently asking ME about. If you are worried about topicality, then please stay on the topic. If you wanna talk about William Dembski and his change of position on the Flood (and why he needed to do so), then YOU need to stick to the topic.

The MadPanda, FCD said:

FL said: Hey guys, I'm having fun, but here's a reminder: I'm simply responding to issues that YOU have brought up and are currently asking ME about. If you are worried about topicality, then please stay on the topic. If you wanna talk about William Dembski and his change of position on the Flood (and why he needed to do so), then YOU need to stick to the topic.

Put your money where your mouth is and answer Stanton's questions IRT Dembski, then. The MadPanda, FCD

Stanton said: But the problem, MadPanda, is that FL is too afraid to answer my questions in an honest manner: in fact, he's so afraid that he'd sooner kill and eat his own children.

This thread is turning into the Bathroom Wall already.

The NT was written originally in Greek (as I understand it, maybe I’m wrong)

And here I thought it was against his religion. :)

Mike Elzinga said: This thread is turning into the Bathroom Wall already.

My understanding is that this hypothesis was tested and passed quite well, due to some drilling in the Black Sea. Are you saying that flooding of the Black Sea is not well established (in which case I think you are wrong), or the idea that the flooding is responsible for the flood myths is not well established (which is a job for anthropologists, which I don’t know anything about)?

One obvious question, often asked by global flood proponents, is: If the flood was only local, why should Noah and family have to build an ark to survive? It would have been much easier to just relocate. Given the long warning, they could have relocated practically anywhere on the planet. Also, why all the work to save the animals? Animal species would easily survive elsewhere. Also, why birds? If the water started to rise, the birds would be better off flying away than staying inside a ship. This is certainly a strong argument against a local flood scenario. The internal logic of the Genesis story strongly implies a global flood.

...(There) is one topic where the local flood scenario breaks down completely and proves to be almost equally absurd as the global flood: the geographic location of the flood. In debating flood proponents, I have had serious problems making them understand this very simple fact: a local flood requires a totally enclosed area, where all of the mountains or hills making up the enclosing rim around the flooded area must be higher than the flood itself. A simple kitchen experiment will confirm this. You can try from here to eternity to fill up only half of the area of your kitchen sink with water, while allowing the other half to remain dry. Without making some sort of wall, it is simply not possible. Given a chance to escape, water will run out of the enclosure. That is why we have rivers, and that's why the few land areas in the world lower than the sea level are not connected to the ocean by a channel or river. Where was the local flood? Most casual Bible readers will assume this to be a silly question. Everybody knows that the Ark landed on Mt. Ararat. This is the reason fundamentalist Christians from time to time are engaged in the silly exercise of trying to find the Ark somewhere on this mountain. Obviously, if the Ark landed on Mt Ararat, the local flood scenario is physically impossible. This mountain is actually by far the highest in the whole region, with the highest peak 5,137 meters (16,854 ft) above sea level. If the water stood higher than the top of Mt Ararat, then only a small handful of peaks, like a few mountains in the Himalayas, were visible above the water. The flood would have to be global. End of story. However, the Bible does not actually say that the Ark landed on Mt Ararat. It says: Genesis 8:3,4 "The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat." Ararat, in this text, does not describe a mountain, but a region: "The name Ararat, as it appears in the Bible, is the Hebrew equivalent of Urardhu, or Urartu, the Assyro-Babylonian name of a kingdom that flourished between the Aras and the Upper Tigris rivers from the 9th to the 7th century BC." Encyclopædia Britannica, "Mount Ararat" (article no longer freely available online). We actually find the region, or kingdom, mentioned in four different verses of the Bible (two of which reads the same): Genesis 8:4 "and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat." 2 Kings 19:37 and Isaiah 37:38 "One day, while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisroch, his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer cut him down with the sword, and they escaped to the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son succeeded him as king." (These two scriptures are the same) Jeremiah 51:27 "Lift up a banner in the land! Blow the trumpet among the nations! Prepare the nations for battle against her; summon against her these kingdoms: Ararat, Minni and Ashkenaz. Appoint a commander against her; send up horses like a swarm of locusts." The Ararat area thus was a remote, but known, area to the Hebrew authors of Old Testament books. It corresponds, actually, to the region where we find Mt Ararat, so the tradition of placing the Ark on this mountain is not contrary to the Bible, but it must be noted that the quoted verse, in isolation, allows the Ark to land on any of the mountains in this area. According to Black's Bible Dictionary, the Ararat area is: "A section of E[ast] Armenia E[ast] of the Araxes River, somewhat N[orth] of Lakes Van and Urmia, today belonging to Turkey. Ararat provides part of Euphrates' source." (M. S. Miller and J. L. Miller. 1973. Black's Bible Dictionary. London: A. and C. Black Limited. Page 31.) If the reader is to take the Bible's word as fact, and accept that the Ark landed on some mountain in the Ararat area in East Armenia, then obviously the whole discussion about how to translate the Hebrew word 'har' (discussed later) is totally moot. To adapt the old joke saying there is no such a thing as 'half a mile' in Australia, it is obvious that the Ararat area has no hills, only mountains. When the Bible says that the water rouse above the 'highest mountains' in this area - which actually is Mt Ararat itself - this makes a local flood scenario absolutely impossible. Look up this area on a map. Lake Van is 1,662 meters (5,452 ft) above sea level. The area is, as far as it's possible to see on a good map, more than 200 kilometers from any area as low as 500 meters above sea level, and twice as long to any area below 200 meters. Naturally, any flood rising to such levels would have been a global disaster. The local flood proponents still face an impossible scenario. The local flood believers thus have to relocate the flood to some other region. Disregarding the exact geographic designation found of the Bible - the whereabouts of the Ararat area is known both from Babylonian and Bible sources - they go searching for some area where they can find room for a local flood and an ark. Somewhere, presumably, with hills but without mountains. One favorite location for many local flood proponents is the Euphrates-Tigris valley, also known as Mesopotamia. This, they say, is an area without many tall mountains (at least in the southern part), and it is also not too far away from the Biblical lands. Presumably, not moving the Ararat area too far away from where it historically was is also a concern with these apologists, even though their thinking here seems a bit hard to understand. Again, local flood proponents demonstrate a total lack of understanding of topology and geography. If you look at a map of an area, and a river runs through it, you can know quite a bit about elevation even without further investigation. If a river runs from the north to the south, as the Euphrates and Tigris rivers generally do, you can be certain about one thing: the land will consistently tilt southwards. Following the river, at no part of the run will the land rise notably. If the land flattens, or especially rises, the river will have to run around it or form a lake that rises to the edge, and then allows the water to run on. This is pretty self-evident. So, since the Mesopotamian valley contains two rivers, it necessarily cannot contain any mountains or other formations that can form an enclosure for a large flooded area. If it should rain so heavily that it makes the water rise temporarily in some area, the water will quickly escape through any opening. The Biblical flood lasted for many months, which is physically impossible without a totally enclosed area. We also have to ask how large the flooded area would have to be. While local flood proponents will have to demonstrate imaginative exegesis generally, it can't be seriously denied that the Genesis text insists that Noah and the other people on the Ark did not see land during many months when they sailed around on the water: Genesis 8:3-5: "The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible." As we can see, only some time after the Ark had landed on a mountain did other tops become visible. From this we can easily conclude that this mountain was the tallest in the region, except, presumably, the enclosing mountains that were too distant from the Ark to be visible. A rule of thumb, well known to sea men, is that the distance to the horizon in nautical miles is 1.17 times the square root of your height of eye in feet. So, since the Ark was 45 feet high (and the window was at the top), we find that an observer would be able to see the horizon 7.85 nautical miles (14.5 km, 9 miles) away. What we are looking for, of course, is how far away an observer could see the enclosing mountains, and since there is no totally smooth crater top of comparative size anywhere in the world, the edge can't be expected to be totally smooth. Also, since the water resided over a number of months, the relative height of these mountains must steadily have raised. (Gen 8:3 says: "The water receded steadily from the earth.") Yet, nobody on the Ark could see them, so it had to be outside the area that could be seen from the Ark. Even if we assume the height of the flood enclosure to be no more than 45 feet (same as height of Ark), we would need a circular area with a radius of around 20 km (12.4 miles). That would mean 40 km either way. And this, of course, assumes that the Ark was totally immovable, standing in the exact middle of the flooded area. Is that possible in a turbulent, violent flood? It goes without saying that such a scenario is impossible. And it gets worse. Anyone who has forgotten to moor a small boat, or done it badly, will know that even in smooth waters, only a few hours later the boat will be a speck on the horizon. If it is windy, the situation will be even worse. And the Bible says: Genesis 8:1 "But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded." This wind blew for 150 days, and a big, rectangular vessel like the Ark would be strongly influenced by this wind (large boats are not allowed to enter narrow channels in strong wind, because they can easily be pushed off course). Even if we assume that the Ark only held a speed of one knot (unrealistically slow), this could take the ark more than 6500 km (4000 miles). That would actually allow the Ark to cross the Atlantic Ocean in 150 days. With a more realistic speed, the strong wind God sent would send the Ark around the Earth many times. Of course, this presumes a global, not a local, flood, which is exactly what the Genesis text describes. -- Jan Haugland, Secular Blasphemy Website

FL said: The fact is that the Bible texts (including some of the words of Jesus) clearly support a global Noahic Flood, not a local flood.

David Fickett-Wilbar said:

Stephen P said: So - are you going to? I've been sitting on the fence with this one for quite a while. But I've noticed that every time this comes up, the best that the "historical Jesus" people can manage is arguments from authority, the Josephus interpolations, a bit of handwaving and some condescending remarks. And Jesus ends up looking more mythical every time.

I therefore suggest that of the three possibilities, Jesus would have to have been unique in two of them, but that the third -- that he was a human being around whom stories grew up, possibly even during his lifetime -- is so common that it is by far the most parsimonious choice.

FL said: Obviously, if the Ark landed on Mt Ararat, the local flood scenario is physically impossible. This mountain is actually by far the highest in the whole region, with the highest peak 5,137 meters (16,854 ft) above sea level.... When the Bible says that the water rouse above the ‘highest mountains’ in this area - which actually is Mt Ararat itself - this makes a local flood scenario absolutely impossible.

harold said: Technically, it's required by his religion if he's told to do so by his god. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_of_Isaac

Even though most scholars believe in a Historical Jesus, most don't take the Bible literally. In fact, to be consistent if FL can announce who isn't a Christian, he must as well announce that most Scholars don't believe in a Historical Jesus

I take the default position that a human called Jesus existed because it is simpler. However, it is extremely interesting that Paul's letters, which are thought to be the earliest writings about Jesus does not mention anything that is in the Gospels except for the death and resurrection.

GvlGeologist, FCD said: My understanding is that this hypothesis was tested and passed quite well, due to some drilling in the Black Sea. Are you saying that flooding of the Black Sea is not well established (in which case I think you are wrong), or the idea that the flooding is responsible for the flood myths is not well established (which is a job for anthropologists, which I don't know anything about)?

HertfordshireChris said: It is important to remember that Gilgamesh was involved in a great flood well before the date the accounts of Noah were written. One theory is that in Neolithic times the water level in the Black Sea was about 300 feet lower than at present, and as world wide sea levels rose after the Ice Age the rising water flooded the area in a few years. While the theory has not yet been firmly established it was at a time when a great flood could have become part of human folk tales - which would explain why the flood story was widespread (not just the bible) in early writings.

jkc said:

FL said: Obviously, if the Ark landed on Mt Ararat, the local flood scenario is physically impossible. This mountain is actually by far the highest in the whole region, with the highest peak 5,137 meters (16,854 ft) above sea level.... When the Bible says that the water rouse above the ‘highest mountains’ in this area - which actually is Mt Ararat itself - this makes a local flood scenario absolutely impossible.

OK, if you want to play that game, how about explaining this: where did all the water come from to cover the entire planet to a depth of over 29,000 ft.? (According to Genesis 7:19-20 all of the mountains in the world were covered with at least 15 cubits of water.) It is impossible for the atmosphere to have held that much water before the Flood. Also, and perhaps more to the point, where did all the water go? Again, keeping in mind that the atmosphere could not hold all of the evaporated water.

jkc said: OK, if you want to play that game, how about explaining this: where did all the water come from to cover the entire planet to a depth of over 29,000 ft.? (According to Genesis 7:19-20 all of the mountains in the world were covered with at least 15 cubits of water.) It is impossible for the atmosphere to have held that much water before the Flood. Also, and perhaps more to the point, where did all the water go? Again, keeping in mind that the atmosphere could not hold all of the evaporated water.

I just got around to looking at the article on the Florida Baptist Witness website that was linked to in the OP of this thread.

WOW. I mean WOW. Did I say WOW? Yeah, WOW.

What is it about people in the south that makes them so gullible and delusional?

Man oh man, those baptists are just plain nuts. It is astounding that anyone over the age of two could be so screwed up in the head as to believe that what is said in the bible is "inerrant" and that the old testament (or any other part of the bible) is a true account of factual history.

I have to admit that people like that scare me a little. I really hate to think that they have any say-so in politics, education, or anything else that has anything to do with the lives of myself or others.

Those people are downright dangerous. They're insane people who believe their insane fairy tales and they want everyone else to join their insane club of insane wackos.

The tactics they resort to to push their insanity on others are, in their minds, the work of their lord but to anyone with a clue those people are simply arrogant control freaks who want to rule the world, and will use any tactics they can get away with to do so.

The problem isn't just Dembski. It's the psychosis called religion. Religion is a mental illness. A dangerous mental illness.

I feel ashamed to be labeled as the same species as religious lunatics. Religious screwballs should be called Homo lunaticensis or Homo insaneus.

David Fickett-Wilbar said:

John Kwok said: So Joshua of Nazareth really existed? How come Flavius Josephus doesn't mention him, but instead, the First Jewish Revolt? Surely someone who claimed to be the "Messiah" and rattle both Roman authorities and the Pharisees should have been remembered, along with his execution.

Such rebels were a dime a dozen. We shouldn't expect anyone at the time to make a big deal out of him. It's only looking back that we see him as signficant. It's sort of like looking back in time at a species one of whose descendant lines became us, and the others of which became extinct. Back then, it wasn't much of a species, and no one would have pointed it out as special.

By the way, what's the deal with the "natural evil" those crazy baptists talk about?

Is that just another way of saying satan, or demons, or some other imaginary monster(s) that they must battle in the name of their imaginary lord?

Ya know, one of the best ways to recruit others is to have a common enemy, or make one up, and to promote the idea of banding together to vanquish the alleged enemy.

Is there such a thing as a religion that doesn't have an "evil" enemy of some sort?

Maybe I should have said an imaginary "evil" enemy of some sort.

John Kwok said: I was thinking of that, but I wanted FL to answer it:

David Fickett-Wilbar said:

John Kwok said: So Joshua of Nazareth really existed? How come Flavius Josephus doesn't mention him, but instead, the First Jewish Revolt? Surely someone who claimed to be the "Messiah" and rattle both Roman authorities and the Pharisees should have been remembered, along with his execution.

Such rebels were a dime a dozen. We shouldn't expect anyone at the time to make a big deal out of him. It's only looking back that we see him as signficant. It's sort of like looking back in time at a species one of whose descendant lines became us, and the others of which became extinct. Back then, it wasn't much of a species, and no one would have pointed it out as special.

jkc said: OK, if you want to play that game, how about explaining this: where did all the water come from to cover the entire planet to a depth of over 29,000 ft.? (According to Genesis 7:19-20 all of the mountains in the world were covered with at least 15 cubits of water.) It is impossible for the atmosphere to have held that much water before the Flood. Also, and perhaps more to the point, where did all the water go? Again, keeping in mind that the atmosphere could not hold all of the evaporated water.

Typo; the highest mountains are 29,000 ft, not 20,000 ft.

The answer is still correct.

Kris said: By the way, what's the deal with the "natural evil" those crazy baptists talk about? Is that just another way of saying satan, or demons, or some other imaginary monster(s) that they must battle in the name of their imaginary lord? Ya know, one of the best ways to recruit others is to have a common enemy, or make one up, and to promote the idea of banding together to vanquish the alleged enemy. Is there such a thing as a religion that doesn't have an "evil" enemy of some sort?

Has FL bothered to show us any evidence for a global flood, let alone any evidence that William Dembski ever bothered to provide (and stuck to) a definition for "specified complexity" yet?

[/rhetorical question]

Mike Elzinga said: Typo; the highest mountains are 29,000 ft, not 20,000 ft. The answer is still correct.

Michael J said: Sure but FL has to also believe that when Jesus died that the sky went dark and people rose from the dead. Also that he appeared to 500 people after he was dead. You think that would be enough to get a few people writing about him.

Stanton said: Has FL bothered to show us any evidence for a global flood, let alone any evidence that William Dembski ever bothered to provide (and stuck to) a definition for "specified complexity" yet? [/rhetorical question]

So it is 29000 / 24 / 40 or 30 feet of rain an hour. From that height it would certainly sting.

FL said: it's about what the Bible says.

In case anyone is interested, Joe G has a new post about specified complexity here:

http://intelligentreasoning.blogspot.com/

I have responded to a few of his posts but he won't publish my comments. What a surprise! Not.

Michael J said:

Kris said: By the way, what's the deal with the "natural evil" those crazy baptists talk about? Is that just another way of saying satan, or demons, or some other imaginary monster(s) that they must battle in the name of their imaginary lord? Ya know, one of the best ways to recruit others is to have a common enemy, or make one up, and to promote the idea of banding together to vanquish the alleged enemy. Is there such a thing as a religion that doesn't have an "evil" enemy of some sort?

You need an explanation for suffering. It is a huge problem for abrahamic religions where God is all powerful and could stop suffering. Eastern Religions on the other hand tend to have Good and Evil as two sides of the same coin and so is more internally consistent.

Mike Elzinga said:

Steve P. said: RBH, When are you all gonna do a 'job' on Robert Marks? I mean, you've (pl) stabbed the Dembski and Behe voodoo dolls so badly they've turned into porcupine dolls! Surely, you understand that Marks is the brains behind ID and the Conservation of Information Law. I say, go for the jugular! Drive a stake in the heart of ID. Nail Marks. So when can PT readers expect an expose of that idiot, pompous, scoundrel of a cdesignproponentsist Marks?

That has been done already, several times; but it went right over your head.

FL said:

So any authority you have to tell other Christians what they can or can’t believe is 100% self-proclaimed. I’m not religious, but anyway, you have no more expertise in theology than you do in science.

Like I said openly, I'm a layman. Sounds like you are too. I have access to a Bible, and you have access to a Bible as well. (At least it's available online. Plus there's online reference tools if you wish.) Mike's right: it's not about me--instead it's about what the Bible says. And the Bible's position, is what I present in this forum when y'all wanna talk religion (like you do today.) Again, if you disagree with my statements, you have a Bible too. We can thus compare notes, and reference sources if need be, and see what the Bible says together, and see which position is better supported by the text/context. Would you agree with that rational process? FL

Steve P. said: U r right, that 1 flu right over. Yeah, I mean, how hard cud it be to nok dwn a peg or 2 a man with 300 peer-reviewed papers to his credit. Surely, Elsberry, Musgrave, Shallit, Carroll, English, Dieb, et al have that many between them.

FL said:

The existence of two, contradictory, creation stories in the first chapters of Genesis is a pretty strong hint, that whatever was the intended meaning of the stories, they weren’t intended to be a literal historical account.

Let's eliminate that claim now. Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 form a single, complementary creation account. They are NOT two separate contradictory creation stories. The previously mentioned Old Testament Prof. Gleason Archer knocked this one out in Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties. However, if you don't have that reference book with you right now, take a look at these (they all work good!). http://carm.org/bible-difficulties/genesis-deuteronomy/dont-genesis-1-and-2-present-contradictory-creation-accounts https://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2194 http://creation.com/genesis-contradictions FL

Steve P. said: On second thought, I can c the wisdom it keeping the focus on 'poor' Bill.

Apologies for continuing the derailment of this thread: I'll shut up after this.

@FL: I'll give you credit for making more of an effort than most of the "historical Jesus" folks I come across. But if these are the best arguments ...

Josephus: yes the credibility of that second passage as evidence for Jesus of Nazareth has also been demolished. You might like to try David Fitzgerald's analysis. Summary: reference to Jesus, son of Damneus - the actual subject of the passage - plus interpolation of marginal note.

Tacitus / Suetonius: are just repeating what Christians told them, half a century after Jesus of Nazareth supposedly lived. Neither gives a hint of any independent knowledge of the existence of Jesus of Nazareth.

etc, etc.

As Chesterton said, the hardest thing in the world is pursuading people that 0+0+0+0+0=0.

Honestly, Stephen, I don't see any derailment going on. Remember, PandasThumb is just as much about religious topics as it is about science topics, Notice for example, that the latest PT thread is a commentary on "America's Four Gods".

Make no mistake, the Pandas LOVE debating about religion; I'm just here to pour a little gas on their fire.

And btw, you'll also remember that nobody said anything about derailment when the "Jesus never existed" claim was originally brought up in this thread. So you got just as much right to talk about it as anybody.

***

Thanks for your kind sentence there. I will say that that "Jesus son of Damneus" thing doesn't seem to have gotten off the ground. Apologist blogster Kris Smith explains why. (And there's some interesting dialog between Smith and the Metro State Atheists as an extra treat):

http://explanationblog.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/jesus-the-brother-of-james-son-of-damneus/

There's more--much more--concerning Josephus, and the fact is that not only has the James-brother-of-Jesus reference NOT been demolished, but even the main Testimonium has been shown to be more than salvagable enough to at least make clear that the human Jesus existed.

But at this point, we'd be doing mile long links like THIS one, http://www.tektonics.org/jesusexist/josephus.html , and then we probably WOULD have to start thinking in terms of thread derailment. So maybe there's a limit as to how far this can be taken in this thread.

Besides, Flint brought up a powerful issue: Parsimony. That Jesus existed is clearly the most parsimonius hypothesis. No way to escape that one, it seems.

And of course, nobody has yet explained why there exists this system-wide CONSENSUS among the professional PhD scholars (both the skeptics AND the Christians) that Jesus existed.

Normally PT posters pay attention to things like professional consensus--especially when it's among professional evolutionists. So why are they ignoring professional scholarly consensus when it comes to whether Jesus existed or not? Hmmm.

So anyway, that's just some thoughts there.

FL

Arguing for the historical Jesus with a dumb atheist is a bit like trying to persuade Ken Ham that Creationism is nonsense

Can you do those of us who take the Bible seriously a favor and tell us what Bible texts clearly support a global flood?

Dale Husband said:

FL said:

The existence of two, contradictory, creation stories in the first chapters of Genesis is a pretty strong hint, that whatever was the intended meaning of the stories, they weren’t intended to be a literal historical account.

Let's eliminate that claim now. Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 form a single, complementary creation account. They are NOT two separate contradictory creation stories. The previously mentioned Old Testament Prof. Gleason Archer knocked this one out in Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties. However, if you don't have that reference book with you right now, take a look at these (they all work good!). http://carm.org/bible-difficulties/genesis-deuteronomy/dont-genesis-1-and-2-present-contradictory-creation-accounts https://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2194 http://creation.com/genesis-contradictions FL

So you'd rather proclaim as truth the delusions or even outright lies of a few bigoted con artists than the evidence of your own eyes when you read the Bible for yourself, eh? You are truly disgusting, FL.

Make no mistake, the Pandas LOVE debating about religion; I’m just here to pour a little gas on their fire.

— FL

Steve P. said: On second thought, I can c the wisdom it keeping the focus on 'poor' Bill.

FL said: Jkc asked…

Can you do those of us who take the Bible seriously a favor and tell us what Bible texts clearly support a global flood?

That's a great question, and it's also a good way to move the discussion back to William Dembski and his change of position regarding the Flood. I'll try to get this one answered later today (Nov. 30).

FL said: Honestly, Stephen, I don't see any derailment going on.

Make no mistake, the Pandas LOVE debating about religion; I'm just here to pour a little gas on their fire.

I take it that neither FL nor Steve P are interested in defending Bill Dembski from the accusation that he is more than willing to change his own claims to please whomever is the master of his financial destinies, even if it makes him look hypocritical. So, does that mean that even FL and Steve P agree about this?

And I also notice that neither FL nor Steve P are interested in defending the claim that Intelligent Design is supposed to be science, given as how both continue to blatantly refuse to support this claim after making it, even when prompted to. So, does this mean that even FL and Steve agree that Intelligent Design is not, was not, and never will be science?

Then there's the unpleasant problems of how FL a) refuses to state where in the Bible Jesus is recorded stating that it is more important to Salvation to believe in the Flood than to accept Jesus as Savior, b) refuse to provide any evidence of the Flood ever occurring, and c) refuses to explain any of the numerous problems that would face a Global Flood, i.e., how to get all that water onto the Earth through metaphorical "Windows of Heaven" without destroying the Ark, where all the evidence for it is, and why, who and how were the Pyramids at Giza built at the exact same time Noah and family left the Ark.

Steve P and FL -

Can I get each of your individual answers to the following questions, please?

1) Who is the designer?

2) What (specifically) did the designer design?

3) When did the designer design it?

4) How did the designer design it?

5) What is an example of something that the designer might not have designed?

Oops, I hope you'll allow me to edit question 5)

What is an example of something that might not have been intelligently designed?

Paul Burnett said:

Steve P. said: On second thought, I can c the wisdom it keeping the focus on 'poor' Bill.

That's because Bill is the subject of this thread. You dragged in Marks as a red herring in a transparent attempt to divert the conversation away from your OEC YEC hero.

Not only do I strongly endorse Mike's advice to read Dembski and Marks's superb examples of "scholarship", I need you to explain to me why any God-fearing Christian such as yourself would condone the acts of someone like Bill who has done these:

1) Steal $20,000 from the Dover Area (PA) School District board in 2004 after his giving his deposition and promising to be a lead witness for their defense, only to skip town months before the 2005 Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District trial

2) Falsely accuse prominent University of Texas ecologist Eric Pianka of being a potential bioterrorist to the Federal Department of Homeland Security in 2006 (Unfortunately Pianak was "interviewed" by Federal agents.).

3) Steals a Harvard University cell animation video (produced by the CT-based scientific animation firm XVIVO) which he shows during his Falll 2007 lectures which also mysteriously winds up in a rough "print" of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" (His theft would have gone unnoticed were it not for excellent sleuthing by science blogger Abbie Smith; months later XVIVO President David Bolinsky would "thank" Dembski for all but admitting to Dembski's theft in an open letter that was posted online at the Richard Dawkins Foundation website.).

4) Tries a crude form of censorship against yours truly when he asks Amazon.com to delete a harsh, but fair, review of one of his books in December 2007 (It is reinstated less than a day after I send Dembski an e-mail ultimatum to have it restored or else.)

5) Lampoons Genie Scott, Kevin Padian, Jerry Coyne and several others by comparing them sarcastically with iconic film and television characters over at Uncommonly Dense in early 2008; the worst has to be his abysmal comparison of Coyne with Herman Munster of "The Munsters".

So tell me Steve P., how can you, as a Christian, condone this moral reprobate who doesn't hesitate to lie, to steal and to mock in the name of Christ?

Am still waiting for you and Steve P. to explain to us how Intelligent Design cretinism is a more testable, much better, alternative to contemporary evolutionary theory in accounting for the history, complexity and current composition of Planet Earth's biodiversity. This question was posed to both of you weeks ago and you have still not even tried giving an answer.

the worst has to be his abysmal comparison of Coyne with Herman Munster of “The Munsters”.

— John Kwok

FL said: instead it's about what the Bible says.

Again, if you disagree with my statements, you have a Bible too. We can thus compare notes, and reference sources if need be, and see what the Bible says together, and see which position is better supported by the text/context. Would you agree with that rational process? FL

Frank J said:

the worst has to be his abysmal comparison of Coyne with Herman Munster of “The Munsters”.

— John Kwok

C'mon, his lampooning of Judge Jones tops that. You also forgot the Darwin doll in a vise. Yo, Bill, if you're reading, how about a Steve Steve drowning in a global flood?

You’re here to make converts. Any time anyone asks you to explain complex specified information, you dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge.

Gingerbaker said:

David Fickett-Wilbar said: "...I therefore suggest that of the three possibilities, Jesus would have to have been unique in two of them, but that the third – that he was a human being around whom stories grew up, possibly even during his lifetime – is so common that it is by far the most parsimonious choice."

There is nothing parsimonious about asserting that the Jews would have worshiped a man, especially a criminal, as a god. It is an impossibility. That fact is that there is not a shred of credible evidence that Jesus existed, regardless of whatever scenario you wish to propose, and plenty of evidence that he was NOT a man who grew into a legend.

FL said:

You’re here to make converts. Any time anyone asks you to explain complex specified information, you dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge.

I don't have to explain CSI, because you just did. Your two sentences there are a perfect example of CSI. They possess high enough specificity, PLUS high enough complexity, to forever eliminate any proposed origins via chance or natural laws. All that good grammar and syntax you offered, it seems. Therefore only intelligent causation explains the origin of your two sentences. Now substitute the phrase "your genetic code" for "your two sentences" and suddenly it's clear that YOU are intelligently designed as well. Why? Because there's something inside of you (actually, an entire phalanx of somethings, because you're full of Irreducible Complexity and IC is a special case of CSI according to Dembski), but your genetic code will do very nicely for starters) something that's been intelligently caused. Your genetic code--and you--are clearly intelligently designed, not a penny less. You are not a product of naturalistic evolution. God knew you -- not merely formed you, but actually KNEW you -- while you were yet in the womb. (Jeremiah 1:5). More info about your genetic code and what does NOT explain its existence: http://creationism.org.pl/groups/ptkrmember/inne/2004/Trevors,%20Abel,%20Chance%20and%20necessity%20do%20not%20explain%20the%20origin%20of%20life.pdf FL

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FL said: I don't have to explain CSI, because you just did. Your two sentences there are a perfect example of CSI. They possess high enough specificity, PLUS high enough complexity, to forever eliminate any proposed origins via chance or natural laws.

FL said: That's a great question, and it's also a good way to move the discussion back to William Dembski and his change of position regarding the Flood. I'll try to get this one answered later today (Nov. 30).

transreality said: A good example of a fictional character being invested with a historical existance is King Arthur. A whole branch of pseudo archaeology is dedicated to rediscovering a past that never existed outside of the stories of the breton minstrels.

Word games, preaching, and misspelled spam links do not make coherent explanations, FL.

You still have not showed or even explained to us what Dembski defines "specified complexity" as.

I say it's because Dembski never gave a definition of "specified complexity" and you're hypocritically stupid enough to hope that we're too stupid to realize this while you're trying to preach at us.

FL said: Besides, Flint brought up a powerful issue: Parsimony. That Jesus existed is clearly the most parsimonius hypothesis. No way to escape that one, it seems. FL

The MadPanda, FCD said:

FL said: That's a great question, and it's also a good way to move the discussion back to William Dembski and his change of position regarding the Flood. I'll try to get this one answered later today (Nov. 30).

How about answering Stanton's questions about Dembski while you're at it? Those were not off-topic in the least, but you've been acting as though they're not on the record. The MadPanda, FCD

Information in nature is not "specified" (there's no evidence for CSI). Natural selection specifies goals (not information) and "information" can achieve these goals in many different ways. The limitation is that the starting point must be close enough to the goal for random mutations to arrive at the solution.

Since there are no precellular fossils we have no clues about precellular life. It could have arisen through design or through random processes. Since there's no evidence for design based processes in nature (short of rationalizing) our default hypothesis must be random processes.

Stanton said: FL is too preoccupied with trying to preach at us while mocking us for not being as maliciously stupid for Jesus as he is to bother actually discussing anything of worth.

The MadPanda, FCD said:

Stanton said: FL is too preoccupied with trying to preach at us while mocking us for not being as maliciously stupid for Jesus as he is to bother actually discussing anything of worth.

Oh, I concur in full :) It's painfully obvious that this is the case. But so long as he's going to be getting on his high horse about our taking a whack or five at his pet messiahs of pomposity, I intend to gently remind him that we can see what he's not doing. (I am willing to refrain from taking any shots at Dembski, who has in this particular instance demonstrated plainly that he does not have sufficient character to assassinate. Mr. Kwok has adequately documented his other failings as well, and FL's inability to defend the man by means other than poorly constructed assaults on science he does not understand is not only predictable but boring.) The MadPanda, FCD

A (non-)response worthy of Joe G. Well done, FL.

Mike Elzinga said: There are thousands of religious sects in the world. FL represents a cult that bends and breaks science to fit one particular dogma out of thousands. Yet he cannot articulate or defend the pseudo-science that results; and he totally mangles the history of religion.

Oops! How'd that happen? Apologies for the double-post.

The MadPanda, FCD

"But the alternative is that the Jews began to worship a nonman rather than their God, which is equally odd."

Weird.

Apology for accidental double-post mk. I appears to have vanished down the rabbit hole. This is apology for double-posting mk. II.

No idea how it happened. Sorry 'bout that, folks.

The MadPanda, FCD

FL said: Honestly, Stephen, I don't see any derailment going on. Remember, PandasThumb is just as much about religious topics as it is about science topics, Notice for example, that the latest PT thread is a commentary on "America's Four Gods". Make no mistake, the Pandas LOVE debating about religion; I'm just here to pour a little gas on their fire. And btw, you'll also remember that nobody said anything about derailment when the "Jesus never existed" claim was originally brought up in this thread. So you got just as much right to talk about it as anybody. *** Thanks for your kind sentence there. I will say that that "Jesus son of Damneus" thing doesn't seem to have gotten off the ground. Apologist blogster Kris Smith explains why. (And there's some interesting dialog between Smith and the Metro State Atheists as an extra treat): http://explanationblog.wordpress.com/2009/01/25/jesus-the-brother-of-james-son-of-damneus/ There's more--much more--concerning Josephus, and the fact is that not only has the James-brother-of-Jesus reference NOT been demolished, but even the main Testimonium has been shown to be more than salvagable enough to at least make clear that the human Jesus existed. But at this point, we'd be doing mile long links like THIS one, http://www.tektonics.org/jesusexist/josephus.html , and then we probably WOULD have to start thinking in terms of thread derailment. So maybe there's a limit as to how far this can be taken in this thread. Besides, Flint brought up a powerful issue: Parsimony. That Jesus existed is clearly the most parsimonius hypothesis. No way to escape that one, it seems. And of course, nobody has yet explained why there exists this system-wide CONSENSUS among the professional PhD scholars (both the skeptics AND the Christians) that Jesus existed. Normally PT posters pay attention to things like professional consensus--especially when it's among professional evolutionists. So why are they ignoring professional scholarly consensus when it comes to whether Jesus existed or not? Hmmm. So anyway, that's just some thoughts there. FL

The MadPanda, FCD said: How about answering Stanton's questions about Dembski while you're at it? Those were not off-topic in the least, but you've been acting as though they're not on the record.

FL said:

You’re here to make converts. Any time anyone asks you to explain complex specified information, you dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge.

I don't have to explain CSI, because you just did. Your two sentences there are a perfect example of CSI. They possess high enough specificity, PLUS high enough complexity,

John Kwok said: There's a more fundamental issue as to who, what or where the Designer is. How does Intelligent Design do a better job in accounting for the complexity, history and current compostion of Planet Earth's biodiversity? Not a single ID advocate I know of - with the possible exception of Stephen Meyer in his "Signature" book - has opted to explain ID's "superiority" over contemporary evolutionary theory with regards to this. Asking questions about the identity and purpose of the Intelligent Designer(s) are relatively silly when the issue at stake is whether ID is a credible scientific theory that can (or should) replace the Modern Synthesis Theory of Evolution.

(since he admits he can’t read Greek or Hebrew)

FL said: So let me stop there and get with Jkc inquiry. FL

The MadPanda, FCD said:

John Kwok said: There's a more fundamental issue as to who, what or where the Designer is. How does Intelligent Design do a better job in accounting for the complexity, history and current compostion of Planet Earth's biodiversity? Not a single ID advocate I know of - with the possible exception of Stephen Meyer in his "Signature" book - has opted to explain ID's "superiority" over contemporary evolutionary theory with regards to this. Asking questions about the identity and purpose of the Intelligent Designer(s) are relatively silly when the issue at stake is whether ID is a credible scientific theory that can (or should) replace the Modern Synthesis Theory of Evolution.

Baby steps, Mr. Kwok, baby steps. While you are quite correct, let's not overwhelm the poor fellow all at once with the multifaceted failings of his favorite fairy tale. :) If he cannot even answer Stanton's queries on M. Dembski, then surely pressing him to fill in the gaps of a non-hypothesis is certainly demanding far too much. The MadPanda, FCD

How does Intelligent Design do a better job in accounting for the complexity, history and current compostion of Planet Earth’s biodiversity than modern evolutionary theory?

This enquiring mind really wants to know.

Steve P and FL -

Can I get each of your individual answers to the following questions, please?

1) Who is the designer?

2) What (specifically) did the designer design?

3) When did the designer design it?

4) How did the designer design it?

5) What is an example of something that might not have been intelligently designed?

And...

6) Why do I have to keep repeating myself?

John Kwok -

By the way, your question is the next logical step.

But first I just want them to at least tell me in straight language specifically what their explanation is - who did what, when, how?

If they can't even do that, your question is rendered moot. If they have NO explanation it can't possibly be better.

Or if those questions are too much, just start with describing some consistently observed pattern in the data that is supposed to be explained by whatever it is that they are pretending to say without actually saying it. Oh, and then explain why that pattern is implied by the purported explanation, and then explain why that pattern isn't expected without that explanation. Or is that too much, too?

RBH said: I've been wandering around in some of the aftermath of this brouhaha and ran onto this from a current student of Dembski:

Knowing Dr. D through our class discussions, his views are extremely conservative. Indeed, he repeatedly stated that he wanted to see theology as the "queen of the sciences" again, guiding all of our disciplines.

Can you do those of us who take the Bible seriously a favor and tell us what Bible texts clearly support a global flood?

The LORD said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them." -- Gen. 6:7

Behold, I, even I am bringing the flood of water upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life, from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall perish. -- Gen. 6:17

The water prevailed more and more upon the earth, so that all the high mountains everywhere under the heavens were covered. --Gen. 6:19

All flesh that moved on the earth perished, birds and cattle and beasts and every swarming thing that swarms upon the earth, and all mankind; of all that was on the dry land, all in whose nostrils was the breath of the spirit of life, died. Thus He blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky, and they were blotted out from the earth; and only Noah was left, together with those that were with him in the ark. ---Genesis 6:21-23

The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days. (Gen. 7:24)

"For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be.' -- Matt. 24:37-39

And He spared not the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven other persons, when He brought a flood upon the world of ungodly [people]. -- 2 Pet. 2:5

harold said: John Kwok - By the way, your question is the next logical step. But first I just want them to at least tell me in straight language specifically what their explanation is - who did what, when, how? If they can't even do that, your question is rendered moot. If they have NO explanation it can't possibly be better.

Henry J said: Or is that too much, too?

Can you do those of us who take the Bible seriously a favor and tell us what Bible texts clearly support a global flood?

Richard M. Davidson, Andrews University: "A Biblical theology of the Flood" (quick-read outline) http://www.aiias.edu/ict/vol_26A/26Acc_443-466.htm "Biblical evidence for the universality of the Flood" (full article) http://www.andrews.edu/~davidson/Publications/Flood/evidence_for_universality_flood.pdf

FL said: Jkc asked:

Can you do those of us who take the Bible seriously a favor and tell us what Bible texts clearly support a global flood?

I attempted to answer your specific question, in detail, about an hour or two ago, on a point by point, text by text basis. As you can see, my answer to you has not appeared here in this forum after I submitted it. I do not know why, and I don't have time to guess about it. So what I will do here is offer two nice but somewhat technical links. My original post started with a simple brief discussion of my own, of the main Flood texts OT and NT, and THEN the more technical stuff. But, my original post is not here, I'll just offer the two links. Your question implied that you are among those who "take the Bible seriously." That is good to hear; it means you may be more likely to spend time reading and studying the two articles. Looking at these articles may help shed light on why William Dembski changed his position about the Noahic Flood.

Richard M. Davidson, Andrews University: "A Biblical theology of the Flood" (quick-read outline) http://www.aiias.edu/ict/vol_26A/26Acc_443-466.htm "Biblical evidence for the universality of the Flood" (full article) http://www.andrews.edu/~davidson/Publications/Flood/evidence_for_universality_flood.pdf

FL

Ron Okimoto said: Maybe Dembski would have chosen martyrdom if they were still burning heretics instead of just loss of his salary.

Hey, FL, you still haven't shown us the exact passage in the Bible stating how Jesus stated that He would deny Salvation to anyone who didn't believe that the Great Deluge literally happened.

And you still haven't explained what sort of logic is used to equate "discussing the Flood" with "stating that anyone who didn't believe in a literal Global Flood would be damned to burn in Hell forever and ever and ever"

Also, you still refuse to realize that the reason why Bill Dembski changed his mind about the Flood literally happening is not because of so-called "evidence" in the Bible, but because his superiors at Southern Baptist told him that he would be fired ASAP if he did not ape his superiors' religious views 100%.

And then there is the little problem of how you still haven't explained to us how tell us what is or how to calculate "specified complexity"

You have not shown us the logic necessary to understand how claiming that there is "specified complexity in statements (we make)" is supposed to be tantamount to explaining how to find and calculate "specified complexity."

You refuse to explain to us because even you realize that Bill Dembski never did explain what is or how to calculate "specified complexity," and you hope to distract us from this painful fact by trying to preach at us like some moronic snake oil salesman for Jesus.

John Kwok said: Need to answer mine and harold's questions, since this is, after all, The Panda's Thumb, not Christ's Thorns

Stanton said:

John Kwok said: Need to answer mine and harold's questions, since this is, after all, The Panda's Thumb, not Christ's Thorns

FL needs to answer yours and harold's questions after he answers my questions... Which will probably be in the Year of the Porcupine.

Stanton said:

John Kwok said: Need to answer mine and harold's questions, since this is, after all, The Panda's Thumb, not Christ's Thorns

FL needs to answer yours and harold's questions after he answers my questions... Which will probably be in the Year of the Porcupine.

FL said: Looking at these articles may help shed light on why William Dembski changed his position about the Noahic Flood.

Richard M. Davidson, Andrews University: "A Biblical theology of the Flood" (quick-read outline) http://www.aiias.edu/ict/vol_26A/26Acc_443-466.htm "Biblical evidence for the universality of the Flood" (full article) http://www.andrews.edu/~davidson/Publications/Flood/evidence_for_universality_flood.pdf

I have to wonder, does "taking the Bible seriously" necessarily include putting absolute trust in all the people who wrote, edited, transcribed, translated, edited, compiled, pruned, edited, and interpreted it over the last few thousand years?

Paul Burnett said:

FL said: Looking at these articles may help shed light on why William Dembski changed his position about the Noahic Flood.

Richard M. Davidson, Andrews University: "A Biblical theology of the Flood" (quick-read outline) http://www.aiias.edu/ict/vol_26A/26Acc_443-466.htm "Biblical evidence for the universality of the Flood" (full article) http://www.andrews.edu/~davidson/Publications/Flood/evidence_for_universality_flood.pdf

Well, so much for the latter document clearing things up for us pro-science types: "Since the scientific argumentation is outside the scope of this chapter, I can only suggest that such problems are not insurmountable given the supernatural nature of the flood." Translation: "We're not going to talk about science here, because the flood was supernatural."

Any time I see the phrase "Biblical evidence", I nearly die of laughter. No one would take seriously the idea of "Greek mythology evidence" or "Harry Potter book evidence". Statements in the Bible are not, and can never be, evidence for anything, period.

I take the Bible very seriously. I just don't blaspheme by calling it absolute truth. Nothing made by man can be called such. And the idea that it was made by God is absurd. At no point is it recorded that God sent a complete Bible down from heaven for man to read and obey. So the idea of the Bible as the Word of God is bogus, period.

Henry J said: I have to wonder, does "taking the Bible seriously" necessarily include putting absolute trust in all the people who wrote, edited, transcribed, translated, edited, compiled, pruned, edited, and interpreted it over the last few thousand years?

Kris said: I strongly believe that scientific study is a way better method than any sort of religion when it comes to finding facts and the truth about things, but I also believe that scientists need to do some house cleaning (organizing) in some ways if they want to argue from a clear position of truth and reality. Just some food for thought.

Kris said: Good question. The same could be asked about scientists, their helpers, editors, etc., and taking what they say/write or have said/written seriously or not. I have noticed something in the comments and posts on this website and in scientific papers, articles, books, TV shows, writings on blogs, etc. That something is that many people/scientists seem to have 'faith' (or not) in other people/scientists. The field of science has its own labels for the so-called experts, such as Professor, Professor Emiritus, Fellow, Professional, and a lot of other hoity toity titles, just like religions have labels (titles) like Bishop, Priest, Cardinal, Minister, Pope, and so on.

Henry J said: I have to wonder, does "taking the Bible seriously" necessarily include putting absolute trust in all the people who wrote, edited, transcribed, translated, edited, compiled, pruned, edited, and interpreted it over the last few thousand years?

Dragging this thread back a long way....

Is Dr Dembski's refusal to provide a "pathetic level of detail" because when he does go into detail he gets hauled up in front of the Texan Inquistion?

He just supplied poor jkc with a link to 14 pages of word-gaming from his holy book; and he calls that evidence.

Mike Elzinga said: I’ve spent most of my life doing science. Science is done by humans operating under the same less-than-ideal conditions that all humans operate under. There is a big difference however. We get really pissed off at fraud. It wastes time, money, and any follow-up checking always derails somebody’s efforts on something more productive. We don’t tolerate charlatans on our ranks; they get drummed out in a hurry. Sectarians embrace them. We put in extremely long hours, we write proposals, we struggle for money to support staff and graduate students, we deal with designing, building, testing, and shaking down equipment. When equipment fails, time and money are still going up in smoke. We don’t like that. The journals are filled with a lot of crap that looked promising at the time but doesn’t pass muster in the long haul. On the other hand, there are tremendous numbers of spin-offs from research that find their way into technology that we now take for granted. And this happens despite failed or dead-end experimental attempts; that’s the nature of research. Most people don’t have the stomach for that much effort and chance for failure. And we have a lot more to show for our efforts. There is essentially one set of scientific attitudes and ethics; in religion there are thousands of sects that have been warring among themselves for centuries. And these sects produce people like FL. As far as truthfulness and dependable ethical behavior, I’ll take scientists over the kind of crap we see being molded by those meddling sectarians that bring us ID/creationism and its army of scripture-quoting zombies.

FL said:

He just supplied poor jkc with a link to 14 pages of word-gaming from his holy book; and he calls that evidence.

Well, you know, Jkc said it best: he takes the Bible seriously. He asked a very specific question about what the Bible itself says, and the two links from scholar Richard Davidson provides very specific answers for that one question. Plus there's a ton of helpful references. Jkc sounds like he'll be able to understand the material that was offered to him, whether he agrees with it or not. That's all a person can reasonably ask for. ****** Jkc takes the Bible seriously. You don't. C'est la vie! FL

I have noticed something in the comments and posts on this website and in scientific papers, articles, books, TV shows, writings on blogs, etc. That something is that many people/scientists seem to have ‘faith’ (or not) in other people/scientists. The field of science has its own labels for the so-called experts, such as Professor, Professor Emiritus, Fellow, Professional, and a lot of other hoity toity titles, just like religions have labels (titles) like Bishop, Priest, Cardinal, Minister, Pope, and so on. The higher up the pecking order the different, and more ‘respected’ (or worshiped), the title they get. Does a loftier title deserve more automatic faith in what they say?

In other words, should anyone or everyone automatically believe something just because a certain person said it, whether it’s related to religion, or science?

I don’t know about you guys and gals but I’ve seen (or heard) a lot of really bad stuff said and written by so-called scientists.

Pretty much everything I’ve seen (or heard) said and written by religious people is really bad stuff.

Kevin B said: Dragging this thread back a long way.... Is Dr Dembski's refusal to provide a "pathetic level of detail" because when he does go into detail he gets hauled up in front of the Texan Inquisition?

FL said: Jkc sounds like he'll be able to understand the material that was offered to him, whether he agrees with it or not. That's all a person can reasonably ask for.

Jkc takes the Bible seriously. You don't.

C'est la vie! FL

I don’t know about you guys and gals but I’ve seen (or heard) a lot of really bad stuff said and written by so-called scientists.

I’m thinking his refusal is more of a defense mechanism to prevent himself from becoming a (bigger) laughing stock in both the public eye and in the scientific community.

Dembski = pathetic. Creationism = lunacy. End of story.

harold said: (Dembski had an earlier problem, too. He had a spate of public and TV appearances in the heyday of the early 2000's, including his famous appearance at MONH in New York. His non-telegenic, uncharismatic, hostile persona was something of a bust even during the ID bubble.)

Stanton said: Of course, by out and out stating that he [Dembski] has absolutely no obligations whatsoever at all to support his claims that "specified complexity," and by default, "Intelligent Design," is supposed to be scientific, he has absolutely no credibility in the scientific community.

Actually, there are three different types of CSI: Las Vegas, Miami and New York. You can easily compare the amount of CSI in each by multiplying the number of letters in the name times the TV channel on which it appears, times the ratings expressed as market share. See, that wasn't so hard now was it?

Seriously, as soon as Dembski can tell us how much "CSI" there is a photosynthetic bacteria as compared to an amoeba which lacks mitochondria, then maybe someone will take take him seriously. Until then, he's nothing but a false prophet crying in the wilderness. He certainly hasn't produced any result that is remotely scientific.

One of the key characteristics of science is that we show our work.

Stanton said: The only reason why Dembski still has some credibility in the public eye is because there are religious fanatics and gullible saps who have been programmed to listen to and defend the inane messages Dembski's financiers pay him to parrot.

If religious people show their work, FL, how come you steadfast refuse to explain to us exactly how to recognize and calculate specified complexity?

Too cowardly and lazy?

How come you don't want to refute the fact that Dembski is a religious hypocrite who says whatever his employers tell him to say?

Too cowardly and lazy?

How come you refuse to explain to us where in the Bible Jesus said He would deliberately deny Salvation to those of His followers who didn't think that the Flood literally happened?

Too cowardly and lazy?

Come on, FL, stop proving me right with your dishonesty, cowardice and laziness.

FL said: Jkc asked:

Can you do those of us who take the Bible seriously a favor and tell us what Bible texts clearly support a global flood?

I attempted to answer your specific question, in detail, about an hour or two ago, on a point by point, text by text basis. As you can see, my answer to you has not appeared here in this forum after I submitted it. I do not know why, and I don't have time to guess about it. So what I will do here is offer two nice but somewhat technical links. My original post started with a simple brief discussion of my own, of the main Flood texts OT and NT, and THEN the more technical stuff. But, my original post is not here, I'll just offer the two links. Your question implied that you are among those who "take the Bible seriously." That is good to hear; it means you may be more likely to spend time reading and studying the two articles. Looking at these articles may help shed light on why William Dembski changed his position about the Noahic Flood.

Richard M. Davidson, Andrews University: "A Biblical theology of the Flood" (quick-read outline) http://www.aiias.edu/ict/vol_26A/26Acc_443-466.htm "Biblical evidence for the universality of the Flood" (full article) http://www.andrews.edu/~davidson/Publications/Flood/evidence_for_universality_flood.pdf

FL

DS said: Actually, there are three different types of CSI: Las Vegas, Miami and New York. You can easily compare the amount of CSI in each by multiplying the number of letters in the name times the TV channel on which it appears, times the ratings expressed as market share. See, that wasn't so hard now was it? Seriously, as soon as Dembski can tell us how much "CSI" there is a photosynthetic bacteria as compared to an amoeba which lacks mitochondria, then maybe someone will take take him seriously. Until then, he's nothing but a false prophet crying in the wilderness. He certainly hasn't produced any result that is remotely scientific.

FL said: So Jkc's question is fully answered, and there's nothing that the resident skeptics can even attempt to offer by way of refutation. FL

nmgirl said: I don't want someone elses opinion. I want FL to tell me the book, chapter and verse in the King James Version of the Bible that says 1: the flood was global and 2: Jesus required belief in that flood in order to be saved. Should be pretty simple for the great expert FL.

Mike Elzinga said:

FL said: So Jkc's question is fully answered, and there's nothing that the resident skeptics can even attempt to offer by way of refutation. FL

Consider and impenetrable, hermetically sealed sphere covered with grease and with no handles.

Interesting, I looked over Davidson's outline. He says that flood stories are universal but he only gives 2 examples from the gilgamesh and sumerian stories. Uh, did Noah's descendants live along the Black Sea or the Tigris/Euphrates? Where are the global flood stories from the egyptian, native american, inuit, australian aborigine, chinese/mongolian cultures? wouldn't those stories be important to show UNIVERSAL flood stories? Since these people are all Noah's descendants, shouldn't they have the same stories?

nmgirl don't you know that for YECreationists the very existence of a word (or pictogram or ideogram) for "water" in any other language is 'proof' that their ancestors had knowledge of the global flood? YECs don't need no stinking stories!

Where are the global flood stories from the egyptian, native american, inuit, australian aborigine, chinese/mongolian cultures? wouldn’t those stories be important to show UNIVERSAL flood stories? Since these people are all Noah’s descendants, shouldn’t they have the same stories?

Stanton said: You forgot to mention subpar reading comprehension skills.

Whether one is a flood geologist, a no-flood geologist, or otherwise, the flood cannot be readily discarded as an incidental historical event. Furthermore, questions concerning this event are the bases of much of the controversy between creation and evolution. Creationists use this event to explain much of the data for which mainstream geologists propose geologic time and evolutionary trends in fossils. It turns out that this event has rather impressive non-biblical authentication. Any system of explanation for origins can ill afford to deny the deluge. --Ariel Roth

Well that's what you get when you value myths over solid physical evidence. How about Santa Clause and the Easter bunny? Are those myths real?

FL said: " That IS what you would expect if a Global Noahic Flood actually occurred somewhere in the ancient past."

FL said:

Whether one is a flood geologist, a no-flood geologist, or otherwise, the flood cannot be readily discarded as an incidental historical event. Furthermore, questions concerning this event are the bases of much of the controversy between creation and evolution. Creationists use this event to explain much of the data for which mainstream geologists propose geologic time and evolutionary trends in fossils. It turns out that this event has rather impressive non-biblical authentication. Any system of explanation for origins can ill afford to deny the deluge. --Ariel Roth

FL -

Since you won't answer directly, I'll put my guesses about your answers in italics.

1) Who is the designer? The designer is the Protestant Christian God Therefore ID can never be taught in public schools as science.

2) What did the designer design? Everything that has ever existed

3) When did the designer design it? 6000 years ago

4) How did the designer design it? Unexplainable and untestable magic super powers

5) What is an example of something that might not have been intelligently designed? There is no example of such a thing -to say that there is would force an admission that god might not have created the entire universe Note - therefore CSI and all that ID jazz doesn't really seem to matter much.

6) What is an objective, reproducible method of identifying and measuring unequivocal "complex specified information" The method of identifying CSI is as follows - take an example of something that a human being unequivocally "designed", like a written sentence, and then falsely claim that DNA is designed by weak analogy. This method cannot be made objective. There is no method for measuring CSI. To admit one would be to allow opponents to show that it is invalid. Note - this style of analogy would seem to blasphemously conflate the intelligence of god with the intelligence of humans.

7) Why is any of this a better explanation for the diversity and common features of life on earth than the theory of evolution? Because creationists declare that it is

Mike Elzinga said:

Stanton said: You forgot to mention subpar reading comprehension skills.

You may be onto something there, Stanton. What would we expect to see of someone who has read only a restricted set of pre-approved sectarian writings for his entire life; someone who has learned to read by being allowed to read only one particular holy book, for example, or someone who has very little formal education, but who self-educates from one source? We have never seen him articulate a single concept of any sort. He only quotes what he believes is some kind of authority. He doesn’t understand the meaning of evidence.

I feel that some scientists also don't understand the meaning of evidence.

He doesn’t appear to know that there are words attached to concepts that say something objective about an external universe. Apparently the concept of objective knowledge has no meaning whatsoever to him. Words apparently mean whatever some authority says they mean; and these can be bent at any time to conflate with some other word.

The same could be said of many words that scientists use.

I’m not sure what reading experts have studied about such a reading deficiency; but I do know that they have some fairly good tests for reading levels and ability to comprehend. It is also well-known that some people can learn to sound out words and appear to be reading competently. But when asked to articulate what they have just read, they can’t do it; not even when asked to do it one concept at a time. Then add a full-blown case of self-righteous, religious superiority assumed by such a person who has never had any contact with an external world, with any other literature, with science, with any other culture or sub-culture; and no interest whatsoever in anything else. Such an individual could look hermetically sealed. It’s quite unnatural; and could well be a form of obsessive/compulsive mental illness. But since it becomes an aggressive interference in the lives of others, any tendency for people to understand or pity the person simply goes right out the window.

There are also times when some scientists seem to be hermetically sealed. Many scientists are or have been 'religious' in their fervor to stand up for something even when that something has been shown to be wishy washy at best or completely false at worst. The points I'm making here go (to some extent) to what I said before about scientists getting their house in order if they want to have a strong foundation to fight against the religious types. I will respond to other comments in a little while, which may help clarify my position. I am not necessarily disagreeing with what you said about FL. I'm simply saying that some of the things you said could be applied to at least some scientists as well.

Kris said: I am not necessarily disagreeing with what you said about FL. I'm simply saying that some of the things you said could be applied to at least some scientists as well.

FL said: It's also a key characteristic of religion. And that's what I originally did in posting to Jkc. (Again, the original post with my own analysis was apparently blocked, so I could only present the two Davidson links.)

Mike Elzinga said:

Kris said: I strongly believe that scientific study is a way better method than any sort of religion when it comes to finding facts and the truth about things, but I also believe that scientists need to do some house cleaning (organizing) in some ways if they want to argue from a clear position of truth and reality. Just some food for thought.

I’ve spent most of my life doing science. Science is done by humans operating under the same less-than-ideal conditions that all humans operate under. There is a big difference however. We get really pissed off at fraud. It wastes time, money, and any follow-up checking always derails somebody’s efforts on something more productive. We don’t tolerate charlatans on our ranks; they get drummed out in a hurry. Sectarians embrace them. We put in extremely long hours, we write proposals, we struggle for money to support staff and graduate students, we deal with designing, building, testing, and shaking down equipment. When equipment fails, time and money are still going up in smoke. We don’t like that. The journals are filled with a lot of crap that looked promising at the time but doesn’t pass muster in the long haul. On the other hand, there are tremendous numbers of spin-offs from research that find their way into technology that we now take for granted. And this happens despite failed or dead-end experimental attempts; that’s the nature of research. Most people don’t have the stomach for that much effort and chance for failure. And we have a lot more to show for our efforts. There is essentially one set of scientific attitudes and ethics; in religion there are thousands of sects that have been warring among themselves for centuries. And these sects produce people like FL. As far as truthfulness and dependable ethical behavior, I’ll take scientists over the kind of crap we see being molded by those meddling sectarians that bring us ID/creationism and its army of scripture-quoting zombies.

Mike Elzinga said:

Kris said: I am not necessarily disagreeing with what you said about FL. I'm simply saying that some of the things you said could be applied to at least some scientists as well.

Then you can, of course offer some examples and how they turned out and who exposed them.

Kris said: I must say that I'm a bit disappointed in you Mike. You're not being very scientific. You're assuming things that I neither said nor thought. For one thing, I didn't say anything about fraud. I also didn't say anything that should lead anyone to think that I don't appreciate the hard work that many scientists do. You said: "The journals are filled with a lot of crap that looked promising at the time but doesn’t pass muster in the long haul." I agree with that but I also feel that a lot of things written or said by some (many?) scientists don't pass scientific muster at all, whether in the short or long haul, and some of those things are or have been accepted as 'gospel'. I also was not necessarily referring to any dead-end experimental attempts, although if those attempts are poorly done, redundant, to simply add quantity instead of quality information, to promote a personal agenda, or for self promotion, then they would fit into what I'm trying to say. I disagree that "There is essentially one set of scientific attitudes and ethics". I feel that there SHOULD be one set but I don't think it's the reality in science/scientific study, and I doubt that it will ever be the case. Humans are involved. Like you, I'll "take scientists" over religious zombies. However, scientists aren't perfect by any means, they often have their own biases and agendas, they're often just as controlled as Dembski is by his employer, they sometimes want fame and/or fortune, and the disagreement and infighting amongst them is often similar to that which occurs between religious people, or between religious people and non-religious scientists. Yes, I know that science, in general, is WAY better than religion when it comes to figuring out reality but I also feel that there are some important things that need to be dealt with in the practice of science/scientific study that would greatly help in having a strong foundation from which to fight against the religious wackos. Any sloppiness (for lack of a better term) in science/scientific study opens the door for religious nutcases to attack and it helps THEIR cause, not science.

FL said:

Whether one is a flood geologist, a no-flood geologist, or otherwise, the flood cannot be readily discarded as an incidental historical event. Furthermore, questions concerning this event are the bases of much of the controversy between creation and evolution. Creationists use this event to explain much of the data for which mainstream geologists propose geologic time and evolutionary trends in fossils. It turns out that this event has rather impressive non-biblical authentication. Any system of explanation for origins can ill afford to deny the deluge. --Ariel Roth

David Fickett-Wilbar said:

transreality said: A good example of a fictional character being invested with a historical existance is King Arthur. A whole branch of pseudo archaeology is dedicated to rediscovering a past that never existed outside of the stories of the breton minstrels.

There's a fair amount of evidence that there was an historical character around which the Arthur stories arose. What is interesting in this context is that the further away from his possible existence we get, the more elaborate and miraculous the stories become. Kind of like the gospels.

FL said: Prediction: There will be no refutation -- NONE, either in part or in whole -- of the information contained in the two Davidson articles I gave to Jkc. So Jkc's question is fully answered, and there's nothing that the resident skeptics can even attempt to offer by way of refutation. FL

FL said: The fact is that there exists a TON of multicultural, mulitnational testimonies that point either partially or fully, towards a GLOBAL (not local) flood occurring in ancient Earth history. FL

I mean, if the Flood really did happen approximately 4,000 years ago, then who built the Pyramids at Giza, which were also built approximately 4,000 years ago, for instance?

I mean, is FL really that colossally stupid to think that we would be that colossally stupid to believe that a family of 8 humans from a magic wooden boat could build those Pyramids, and along with all of the other archaeological structures dating from 4,000 years ago?

If FL has absolutely no interest in defending Bill Dembski from the fact that Bill Dembski is a hypocrite who says and believes whatever his paymasters tell him to say and believe, AND if FL has absolutely no interest in explaining to us what is, and how to calculate "specified complexity", perhaps it would be best to kill this thread?

Kris said:

Mike Elzinga said:

Kris said: I am not necessarily disagreeing with what you said about FL. I'm simply saying that some of the things you said could be applied to at least some scientists as well.

Then you can, of course offer some examples and how they turned out and who exposed them.

What exactly do you mean by "they" and "them"?

Mike Elzinga said:

Kris said:

Mike Elzinga said:

Kris said: I am not necessarily disagreeing with what you said about FL. I'm simply saying that some of the things you said could be applied to at least some scientists as well.

Then you can, of course offer some examples and how they turned out and who exposed them.

What exactly do you mean by "they" and "them"?

When a scientist or would-be scientist forges data or engages in some other fabrications in order to advance his/her career, it is almost always other scientists who have to clean up the mess and eject the jerk from the scientific community. I was simply probing to find out how many of these kinds of incidences you were aware of; most scientists are aware of more of these than is the general public.

You seem to be on a different wavelength than I am Mike. I haven't specifically mentioned fraud or fabrications, although I wouldn't exclude them from the point I'm trying to get across. I'm still wondering what you mean by "they" and "them". May I respectfully suggest that if you want to probe, that you simply ask me a question and be clear in what you want to know?

But ID/creationists, for example, using the tactics of dirty politics, will hold up instances of fraud and misbehavior in science as though it was they, the ID/creationists, who discovered these “cover-ups.” When I said there was essentially one set of attitudes and ethics in science, I was pointing out that in order to be a productive scientist there is a narrow set of attitudes and behaviors that get results and convince other scientists what you did holds up under scrutiny. There is a very good reason for this; nature cannot be fooled, and your scientific colleagues will interrogate nature to see if you are right. So if you want to be right and be a successful scientist, you follow the only rules that work in scientific research by not attempting to fake out nature. Every successful scientist knows this. The template this attitude and ethic provides for behaviors in courts of law makes things work better there also; despite the fact that unscrupulous lawyers and judges may try to bend the rules. Politics and religions are built on the concept of controlling people by regulating their behaviors, perceptions, and attitudes. Organized religion uses social pressures and physical threats, and when that doesn’t work, it threatens with the eternal wrath of some deity. Politics uses whatever means powerful politicians can get away with. There is no checking with nature about what is true; it’s what they can make people believe or be afraid of. Truth in such societies has little to do with anything except when it crosses science. And if the powers in charge don’t like what nature has to say, they keep this information from people if they can. But no matter how ruthless or unscrupulous sectarian or political leaders are, there is always an underlying material reality that can be discovered using the template of science if people are given the chance. So the leaders of even the worst forms of government or religion know there are objective realities and a set of ethics and attitudes for discovering these. If they didn’t know this, they wouldn’t know to suppress knowledge of it. If people are fortunate enough to have leaders and forms of government and organizations that understand and acknowledge the realities of nature, they have a better chance of survival. And such governments will automatically incorporate the attitudes and ethics of science into their structure. If control freaks don’t like it, you can bet there is some element of the attitude and ethic of scientific investigation in it somewhere.

Mike Elzinga said:

Kris said:

Mike Elzinga said:

Kris said: I am not necessarily disagreeing with what you said about FL. I'm simply saying that some of the things you said could be applied to at least some scientists as well.

Then you can, of course offer some examples and how they turned out and who exposed them.

What exactly do you mean by "they" and "them"?

When a scientist or would-be scientist forges data or engages in some other fabrications in order to advance his/her career, it is almost always other scientists who have to clean up the mess and eject the jerk from the scientific community. I was simply probing to find out how many of these kinds of incidences you were aware of; most scientists are aware of more of these than is the general public. But ID/creationists, for example, using the tactics of dirty politics, will hold up instances of fraud and misbehavior in science as though it was they, the ID/creationists, who discovered these “cover-ups.” When I said there was essentially one set of attitudes and ethics in science, I was pointing out that in order to be a productive scientist there is a narrow set of attitudes and behaviors that get results and convince other scientists what you did holds up under scrutiny. There is a very good reason for this; nature cannot be fooled, and your scientific colleagues will interrogate nature to see if you are right. So if you want to be right and be a successful scientist, you follow the only rules that work in scientific research by not attempting to fake out nature. Every successful scientist knows this. The template this attitude and ethic provides for behaviors in courts of law makes things work better there also; despite the fact that unscrupulous lawyers and judges may try to bend the rules. Politics and religions are built on the concept of controlling people by regulating their behaviors, perceptions, and attitudes. Organized religion uses social pressures and physical threats, and when that doesn’t work, it threatens with the eternal wrath of some deity. Politics uses whatever means powerful politicians can get away with. There is no checking with nature about what is true; it’s what they can make people believe or be afraid of. Truth in such societies has little to do with anything except when it crosses science. And if the powers in charge don’t like what nature has to say, they keep this information from people if they can. But no matter how ruthless or unscrupulous sectarian or political leaders are, there is always an underlying material reality that can be discovered using the template of science if people are given the chance. So the leaders of even the worst forms of government or religion know there are objective realities and a set of ethics and attitudes for discovering these. If they didn’t know this, they wouldn’t know to suppress knowledge of it. If people are fortunate enough to have leaders and forms of government and organizations that understand and acknowledge the realities of nature, they have a better chance of survival. And such governments will automatically incorporate the attitudes and ethics of science into their structure. If control freaks don’t like it, you can bet there is some element of the attitude and ethic of scientific investigation in it somewhere.

FL said:

One of the key characteristics of science is that we show our work.

It's also a key characteristic of religion. FL

FL said:

One of the key characteristics of science is that we show our work.

(Again, the original post with my own analysis was apparently blocked, so I could only present the two Davidson links.)

Prediction: There will be no refutation -- NONE, either in part or in whole -- of the information contained in the two Davidson articles I gave to Jkc.

So Jkc's question is fully answered, and there's nothing that the resident skeptics can even attempt to offer by way of refutation.

FL said: Prediction: There will be no refutation -- NONE, either in part or in whole -- of the information contained in the two Davidson articles I gave to Jkc. So Jkc's question is fully answered, and there's nothing that the resident skeptics can even attempt to offer by way of refutation. Hence, you will have, and currently have, NO work to show Jkc, concerning the sincere and important question that he asked. That state of affairs will not matter to the resident non-Christians, nor to those posters that do NOT "take the Bible seriously" to use Jkc's phrase. But hopefully it will be something that Jkc himself takes into account, along with the info given. FL

My apologies to FL: I found the lengthy comment in the queue, though I didn't get an email notification. I've approved it and it should appear here. The link is jiggy--scroll to November 30, 2010 6:17 PM.

I'll be convinced when someone can calculate for me the amount of CSI in the magic flood. Until then it's much ado about nothing, for both topics.

FL said:

Where are the global flood stories from the egyptian, native american, inuit, australian aborigine, chinese/mongolian cultures? wouldn’t those stories be important to show UNIVERSAL flood stories? Since these people are all Noah’s descendants, shouldn’t they have the same stories?

Very insightful question Nmgirl; thanks for asking it. That IS what you would expect if a Global Noahic Flood actually occurred somewhere in the ancient past. So you're onto an important point there, a sharp point that may make your atheist and evolutionist pals rather uncomfortable. The fact is that there exists a TON of multicultural, mulitnational testimonies that point either partially or fully, towards a GLOBAL (not local) flood occurring in ancient Earth history. (This point could be yet another possible factor -- on top of all that heavy Bible evidence already mentioned -- that could plausibly contribute to William Dembski's decision to re-evaluate and move past his previous "Local Flood" position.) Take a look at the following. This is a lot of information, not to mention all the extra article-links attached to it. http://www.nwcreation.net/noahlegends.html#anchor43009 At any rate, it DOES address Nmgirl's interesting question, and answers it in a compelling, convincing fashion. FL

Stanton said: I mean, if the Flood really did happen approximately 4,000 years ago, then who built the Pyramids at Giza, which were also built approximately 4,000 years ago, for instance?

I mean, is FL really that colossally stupid to think that we would be that colossally stupid to believe that a family of 8 humans from a magic wooden boat could build those Pyramids, and along with all of the other archaeological structures dating from 4,000 years ago?

If FL has absolutely no interest in defending Bill Dembski from the fact that Bill Dembski is a hypocrite who says and believes whatever his paymasters tell him to say and believe, AND if FL has absolutely no interest in explaining to us what is, and how to calculate "specified complexity", perhaps it would be best to kill this thread?

jkc said: Having said all that, even if the Biblical arguments for a global flood were very convincing, the dogmatism with which these arguments are made, in light of scientific evidence to the contrary, only serves to convince me (and perhaps others) even more that both the Flood and Creation narratives are not to be taken literally. "Taking the Bible seriously" does not mean taking poetic and figurative language literally. It does mean, among other things, taking care not to make the Bible a laughingstock by making it say something that most of the world knows to be false.

Kris said: You seem to be on a different wavelength than I am Mike. I haven't specifically mentioned fraud or fabrications, although I wouldn't exclude them from the point I'm trying to get across.

The MadPanda, FCD said: Unfortunately, we now have Kris trying this 'plague on both your houses' approach to a category error, so a swift quietus might be the best thing lest this spill over into another Biggy On The Wall event. The MadPanda, FCD

Mike Elzinga said: Yeah, I agree. I got the feeling the Kris was attempting to lump scientist’s behaviors into the same box as ID/creationists. In the nearly 50 years in which ID/creationists have been waging their culture war on science, they themselves have produced no science. In that 50 years science has continued to open up new vistas, many of them very dramatic. Whatever similarities scientists may have with other people, they certainly have no similarities to ID/creationists. Scientists have a completely different set of attitudes and ethical standards when it comes to doing science.

The MadPanda, FCD said:

Stanton said: I mean, if the Flood really did happen approximately 4,000 years ago, then who built the Pyramids at Giza, which were also built approximately 4,000 years ago, for instance?

Never mind the Pyramids! What about the settlement at Catal Huyuk? That's only about 1500 years older than the known world, reckoning by Bishop Ussher.

I mean, is FL really that colossally stupid to think that we would be that colossally stupid to believe that a family of 8 humans from a magic wooden boat could build those Pyramids, and along with all of the other archaeological structures dating from 4,000 years ago?

Yes. Yes, he is. Maybe it's Dunning-Kruger, maybe it's the religious indoctrination, maybe he's just got a loose motherboard. Hard to tell.

If FL has absolutely no interest in defending Bill Dembski from the fact that Bill Dembski is a hypocrite who says and believes whatever his paymasters tell him to say and believe, AND if FL has absolutely no interest in explaining to us what is, and how to calculate "specified complexity", perhaps it would be best to kill this thread?

Point taken. Unfortunately, we now have Kris trying this 'plague on both your houses' approach to a category error, so a swift quietus might be the best thing lest this spill over into another Biggy On The Wall event. The MadPanda, FCD

Mike Elzinga said:

The MadPanda, FCD said: Unfortunately, we now have Kris trying this 'plague on both your houses' approach to a category error, so a swift quietus might be the best thing lest this spill over into another Biggy On The Wall event. The MadPanda, FCD

Yeah, I agree. I got the feeling the Kris was attempting to lump scientist’s behaviors into the same box as ID/creationists. In the nearly 50 years in which ID/creationists have been waging their culture war on science, they themselves have produced no science. In that 50 years science has continued to open up new vistas, many of them very dramatic. Whatever similarities scientists may have with other people, they certainly have no similarities to ID/creationists. Scientists have a completely different set of attitudes and ethical standards when it comes to doing science.

Kris said: Anyway, like I said, my original comments were meant as food for thought.

Mike Elzinga said: So just what is your point?

Kris said: Would you please explain what you mean by "'plague on both your houses' approach to a category error"?

My intent is to get you to think about the fact that the field of science isn’t perfect, that there are some messes that should be cleaned up, and that some scientists can be stupid, biased, sloppy, corrupt, inept, hypocritical, stubborn, self-serving, self-righteous, etc. Maybe not to the degree of religious wackos, but badly enough.

The MadPanda, FCD said: Perhaps, instead of assuming that others are being defensive, you ought to ask us a few more questions to see why your perfectly clear commentary isn't coming across as intended. That would be more scientific, wouldn't it? The MadPanda, FCD

Mike Elzinga said:

The MadPanda, FCD said: Perhaps, instead of assuming that others are being defensive, you ought to ask us a few more questions to see why your perfectly clear commentary isn't coming across as intended. That would be more scientific, wouldn't it? The MadPanda, FCD

This has the feel of a line of reasoning leading to a gotcha. But whatever set of vices one wants to attribute to scientists in order to discredit them, one still has to face a more significant question. Suppose one wants to argue that the entire human race is nothing but a bunch of unscrupulous bastards. It nevertheless remains that one is still faced with the question of why some varieties of these bastards – e.g., Bastardus religiositus - want to camouflage themselves as Bastardus scientificus.

The MadPanda, FCD said:

Kris said: Would you please explain what you mean by "'plague on both your houses' approach to a category error"?

Would you please explain why you seem to think that your brilliant observation that some scientists can be egotistical gits who forget to play by the rules is in any way a news flash? This:

My intent is to get you to think about the fact that the field of science isn’t perfect, that there are some messes that should be cleaned up, and that some scientists can be stupid, biased, sloppy, corrupt, inept, hypocritical, stubborn, self-serving, self-righteous, etc. Maybe not to the degree of religious wackos, but badly enough.

...is no mystery. It's a known factor. I suppose next you'll tell us that peer review isn't a perfect process, as if that isn't already known. Your entire series of comments appears to be an attempt to storm a bastion that nobody's defending...to no clear end, save perhaps preening your own self-image as more reasonable than others. Perhaps, instead of assuming that others are being defensive, you ought to ask us a few more questions to see why your perfectly clear commentary isn't coming across as intended. That would be more scientific, wouldn't it? The MadPanda, FCD

Kris said: It appears that only a few people think that my "perfectly clear commentary isn't coming across as intended". Maybe, just maybe some people understand what I've said.

Kris said: It appears that only a few people think that my "perfectly clear commentary isn't coming across as intended". Maybe, just maybe some people understand what I've said.

Kris said:

Mike Elzinga said:

The MadPanda, FCD said: Perhaps, instead of assuming that others are being defensive, you ought to ask us a few more questions to see why your perfectly clear commentary isn't coming across as intended. That would be more scientific, wouldn't it? The MadPanda, FCD

This has the feel of a line of reasoning leading to a gotcha. But whatever set of vices one wants to attribute to scientists in order to discredit them, one still has to face a more significant question. Suppose one wants to argue that the entire human race is nothing but a bunch of unscrupulous bastards. It nevertheless remains that one is still faced with the question of why some varieties of these bastards – e.g., Bastardus religiositus - want to camouflage themselves as Bastardus scientificus.

In order to discredit them???? I hope you don't consider yourself a scientist. Scientists should be observant. And, your hatred of ID/creationists appears to be affecting your entire thought process. I am not the enemy, except in your self-righteous and argumentative mind.

Kris said:

The MadPanda, FCD said:

Kris said: Would you please explain what you mean by "'plague on both your houses' approach to a category error"?

Would you please explain why you seem to think that your brilliant observation that some scientists can be egotistical gits who forget to play by the rules is in any way a news flash? This:

My intent is to get you to think about the fact that the field of science isn’t perfect, that there are some messes that should be cleaned up, and that some scientists can be stupid, biased, sloppy, corrupt, inept, hypocritical, stubborn, self-serving, self-righteous, etc. Maybe not to the degree of religious wackos, but badly enough.

...is no mystery. It's a known factor. I suppose next you'll tell us that peer review isn't a perfect process, as if that isn't already known. Your entire series of comments appears to be an attempt to storm a bastion that nobody's defending...to no clear end, save perhaps preening your own self-image as more reasonable than others. Perhaps, instead of assuming that others are being defensive, you ought to ask us a few more questions to see why your perfectly clear commentary isn't coming across as intended. That would be more scientific, wouldn't it? The MadPanda, FCD

It appears that only a few people think that my "perfectly clear commentary isn't coming across as intended". Maybe, just maybe some people understand what I've said.

Kris said: And, your hatred of ID/creationists appears to be affecting your entire thought process.

Kris said: It appears that only a few people think that my "perfectly clear commentary isn't coming across as intended". Maybe, just maybe some people understand what I've said.

My intent is to get you to think about the fact that the field of science isn’t perfect, that there are some messes that should be cleaned up, and that some scientists can be stupid, biased, sloppy, corrupt, inept, hypocritical, stubborn, self-serving, self-righteous, etc. Maybe not to the degree of religious wackos, but badly enough.

SOME scientists are in the same box as ID/creationists. SOME scientists are partly in the box.

Mike Elzinga said:

Kris said: And, your hatred of ID/creationists appears to be affecting your entire thought process.

How much do you know about the history of the ID/creationist movement? I have been studying their “scientific” arguments and political tactics for over 40 years? Most of us here know their misconceptions better than they do. Here is a good place to learn about how they have been operating over the years. Take a look at the transcripts and decision for Kitzmiller v. Dover, and then look at the other court cases in the links provided there, especially McLean v. Arkansas and Edwards v. Aguillard. Many of the current political attacks on science these days have taken their cues from the tactics used by the ID/creationists. If you don’t believe these kinds of political tactics are a threat, you may be totally out of touch with reality. These people don’t intend to quit.

Kris said: It appears that only a few people think that my "perfectly clear commentary isn't coming across as intended". Maybe, just maybe some people understand what I've said.

Robin said:

Kris said: It appears that only a few people think that my "perfectly clear commentary isn't coming across as intended". Maybe, just maybe some people understand what I've said.

Well, I'll chime in here and confess I am not understanding your commentary. I can't figure out your point at all.

Stuart Weinstein said:

"Thought I’d disabuse you of the notion your commentary somehow revealed something new or poorly understood or even important."

Mike Elzinga said:

"I have been studying their “scientific” arguments and political tactics for over 40 years? Most of us here know their misconceptions better than they do."

"Many of the current political attacks on science these days have taken their cues from the tactics used by the ID/creationists."

"If you don’t believe these kinds of political tactics are a threat, you may be totally out of touch with reality. These people don’t intend to quit."

John Kwok said:

"Nor can I. It’s illogical and nonsensical to say the least"

Some excerpts from what I've said:

"Now, you may be wondering why I’m saying all this. Well, I think that scientists should get their house in real good order if they really want to have a strong foundation to fight against the religious types."

"The points I’m making here go (to some extent) to what I said before about scientists getting their house in order if they want to have a strong foundation to fight against the religious types."

"Yes, I know that science, in general, is WAY better than religion when it comes to figuring out reality but I also feel that there are some important things that need to be dealt with in the practice of science/scientific study that would greatly help in having a strong foundation from which to fight against the religious wackos."

"Any sloppiness (for lack of a better term) in science/scientific study opens the door for religious nutcases to attack and it helps THEIR cause, not science."

"Anyway, like I said, my original comments were meant as food for thought. Just something to think about and hopefully take seriously. The religious zombies are looking for any holes in the field of science. Don’t make it easy for them."

You guys obviously believe that what you're doing is fighting a WAR with ID/creationists. It's also obvious that you believe that the ID/creationists are ATTACKING the theory of evolution, science, reality, sanity, reason, and in some ways the freedom of how others are allowed to think and live.

If you really believe that, you should also believe that it's important and logical that your side (science) has its act together.

When you're fighting a war, it's important and logical to make sure that there are as few as possible chinks in your armor that the enemy can exploit. Religious zombies are looking for and exploiting the chinks in science.

Even though there's a lot of good science, there's plenty of bad science to make it easier for religious zombies to attack, and to easily recruit people to their side.

Do you want a strong foundation? A strong position from which to fight the war? A cohesive army of leaders and troops? The best possible weapons and defense strategies? The best "tactics"? Methods of recruitment, and understandable and consistent information, that makes people want to join your side?

Maybe you guys should at least sometimes ask yourselves why it is that many people don't believe science, instead of asking why do people believe in religious fairy tales.

I think that in some cases, maybe many, those people have taken a look at science but what they saw was enough of a mess that they turned away from it.

For most people it's an extremely daunting task to study and separate the good science from the bad. It's a lot easier for them to just turn to something that doesn't have to be studied, just believed in.

Kris,

You're saying stuff that lots of the people on this blog have been saying for years. The regulars here know it already.

Kris said: You guys obviously believe that what you're doing is fighting a WAR with ID/creationists. It's also obvious that you believe that the ID/creationists are ATTACKING the theory of evolution, science, reality, sanity, reason, and in some ways the freedom of how others are allowed to think and live.

Mike Elzinga said: Don’t sit around and whine about what you think scientists are not doing; educate yourself and start helping out.

Kris said: [A bunch of vague stuff]

Henry J said: Kris, You're saying stuff that lots of the people on this blog have been saying for years. The regulars here know it already.

Kris said: For those of you who want an example of a mess in science, here are three words for you: Ivory Billed Woodpecker.

Mike Elzinga said:

Kris said: You guys obviously believe that what you're doing is fighting a WAR with ID/creationists. It's also obvious that you believe that the ID/creationists are ATTACKING the theory of evolution, science, reality, sanity, reason, and in some ways the freedom of how others are allowed to think and live.

All you are doing is spouting platitudes. Have you ever thought of any specifics? I gave you a link to a number of very good details in some extremely important court cases. You haven’t even looked at them or studied any of them. Not only would you learn about ID/creationist tactics and dishonesty during the last 4 or 5 decades, you would learn some really good science by reading the transcripts and the decision by Judge Jones on the Kitzmiller v. Dover case. As I mentioned before, a number of us have been aware of and involved in these issues for over 40 years since the creationists formalized their attack back in the 1970s with the formation of the Institute for Creation Research. You don’t appear to know any of this; and that is primarily your responsibility. Information is not hard to find, and the website of the National Center for Science Education has a goldmine of information and a good place to start collecting information and references. Scientists are extremely busy people; they don’t have time to fight political wars. ID/creationists have nothing else to do; they spend all their time misinforming the public while being very well paid for it. Nevertheless, ID/creationist “science” and misinformation can be and have been taken down by a number of us working in our spare time. There are a lot of good resources you can find; look for them and read them. Don’t sit around and whine about what you think scientists are not doing; educate yourself and start helping out.

Kris said:

Henry J said: Kris, You're saying stuff that lots of the people on this blog have been saying for years. The regulars here know it already.

The "regulars" aren't the only ones looking at this blog, and I haven't been looking at this blog for years, or even months. It's obvious that people have been bitching about ID/creationists for years on this blog but they keep doing it and doing it and doing it anyway. Is this blog only for people who want to bash ID/creationists and not say anything that might be taken as criticism of science? Look, I bash religious wackos too but I also feel that science has some messes to clean up and doesn't have all the answers. What's wrong with saying so? For those of you who want an example of a mess in science, here are three words for you: Ivory Billed Woodpecker. That's just ONE example.

SWT said:

Kris said: For those of you who want an example of a mess in science, here are three words for you: Ivory Billed Woodpecker.

OK, color me dense. How is this a "chink in the armor" of science that would lead people to reject evolutionary theory?

Kris said: Look, I bash religious wackos too but I also feel that science has some messes to clean up and doesn't have all the answers. What's wrong with saying so?

Kris said:

SWT said:

Kris said: For those of you who want an example of a mess in science, here are three words for you: Ivory Billed Woodpecker.

OK, color me dense. How is this a "chink in the armor" of science that would lead people to reject evolutionary theory?

I said a mess in science, not "evolutionary theory".

Kris said:

SWT said:

Kris said: For those of you who want an example of a mess in science, here are three words for you: Ivory Billed Woodpecker.

OK, color me dense. How is this a "chink in the armor" of science that would lead people to reject evolutionary theory?

I said a mess in science, not "evolutionary theory". This may come as a surprise to you but most people don't know the difference between evolutionary theory and a lugnut. Evolutionary theory is just one part of science. People are much more inclined to trust evolutionary theory if they trust science in general. I was asked for an example, and I gave one. Oh, and millions of people are very interested in birds. How many are as interested in evolutionary theory? How many people do you suppose are aware of the IBW fiasco as compared to how many people are aware of the disputes about evolutionary theory? You guys (scientists/evolutionists) need to understand your audience better. Your audience is the masses of people who don't have a clue about science, and even less of a clue about evolutionary theory.

Stuart Weinstein said:

Kris said:

Henry J said: Kris, You're saying stuff that lots of the people on this blog have been saying for years. The regulars here know it already.

The "regulars" aren't the only ones looking at this blog, and I haven't been looking at this blog for years, or even months. It's obvious that people have been bitching about ID/creationists for years on this blog but they keep doing it and doing it and doing it anyway. Is this blog only for people who want to bash ID/creationists and not say anything that might be taken as criticism of science? Look, I bash religious wackos too but I also feel that science has some messes to clean up and doesn't have all the answers. What's wrong with saying so? For those of you who want an example of a mess in science, here are three words for you: Ivory Billed Woodpecker. That's just ONE example.

Wow Kris. That's a real zinger you got there. Yup that is certainly on par with any mess(es) created by creationists or other psuedo-scientific babblers. I think we can ignore this idiotic concern troll. We're not worthy... we're not worthy...

Kris said: You guys (scientists/evolutionists) need to understand your audience better. Your audience is the masses of people who don't have a clue about science, and even less of a clue about evolutionary theory.

Stanton said:

Kris said:

SWT said:

Kris said: For those of you who want an example of a mess in science, here are three words for you: Ivory Billed Woodpecker.

OK, color me dense. How is this a "chink in the armor" of science that would lead people to reject evolutionary theory?

I said a mess in science, not "evolutionary theory". This may come as a surprise to you but most people don't know the difference between evolutionary theory and a lugnut. Evolutionary theory is just one part of science. People are much more inclined to trust evolutionary theory if they trust science in general. I was asked for an example, and I gave one. Oh, and millions of people are very interested in birds. How many are as interested in evolutionary theory? How many people do you suppose are aware of the IBW fiasco as compared to how many people are aware of the disputes about evolutionary theory? You guys (scientists/evolutionists) need to understand your audience better. Your audience is the masses of people who don't have a clue about science, and even less of a clue about evolutionary theory.

How is the Ivory Billed Woodpecker supposed to be a scientific fiasco? Because some people thought they may have seen what's assumed to be a dead bird, we should dismantle and outlaw Ornithology forever, then? Work on your communication skills, Kris, as they are poor and terrible.

Kris said: There's a LOT more to the IBW fiasco than just some people thinking they saw a "dead bird". Here's just a start for you, and keep in mind that this hasn't been updated for a few years. There's plenty of info on the web if you're willing to put the time and effort into it. http://www.worldtwitch.com/ivorybill.htm If I remember correctly, the IBW fiasco was even the subject of a "Fleecing of America" news segment.

For daily updates and humor, be sure to read Tom Nelson's Ivory-bill Skeptic blog, which has now moved on to other things since the alleged Ivorybill sightings have been completely discredited.

I have to say that I don't see where the heck Kris is going either. On the other hand, Mike, I think you are missing what little point he is making. It's not about what creationists are doing, but what scientist are not doing. In PR it's all about the "message". Creationism: single simple message, easy to understand; Science: multiple contradictory messages, way too complicated to understand.

As others have noted, there's no surprise here. Science is complicated, messy, and often difficult to understand.

The problem (if I understand the point that Kris is dancing around) is that scientists make mistakes, sometimes very public ones. In fact, scientists actually admit to making mistakes. That's not a very good PR strategy if you want to win over the rubes looking for THE TRUTH. If I understand Kris correctly, if you're going to fight a PR battle, you need a better PR message.

However, rather than the IBW (and no, nobody spent millions on the IBW), I'd point to cold fusion as a recent example of scientists being "off message". Or, how about those nutty scientists who can't make up their minds whether Pluto is a planet or not? That one went over with the public like a lead balloon. Again, "off message". Or just how many "elementary" particles are there? The number keeps changing. If they are "elementary", how come scientists can't count them? Again, "off message". Or how about the age of the Earth? First, Lord Kelvin estimates it at ~100 million years or so. Then early radiometric dating came up with 1.6 billion. Then 4 billion. Then 4.5 billion. Way, way "off message". Scientists just can't seem to stay on message. And don't get me started on quantum physics, or complicated things like error bars, statistics, and (shudder) big numbers!

If scientists just stayed on message, if scientists would just stop disagreeing with each other, didn't make those "costly" and glaringly public mistakes, got rid of all those complicated (and big) numbers and just made it all so much easier to understand, they'd win the PR war more easily.

Or some such nonsense as that.

Anyway, if I misunderstood what Kris was saying (and that's very easy to do), I'm sure he will correct me.

Kris said: Even though there's a lot of good science, there's plenty of bad science to make it easier for religious zombies to attack, and to easily recruit people to their side.

Sorry about my delay, Mike. Your later posts got there before I completed mine. You do seem to have gotten the point I think Kris was making, and answered it quite well. Please, carry on. :-)

Kris said: For those of you who want an example of a mess in science, here are three words for you: Ivory Billed Woodpecker. That's just ONE example.

Mike Elzinga said:

Kris said: There's a LOT more to the IBW fiasco than just some people thinking they saw a "dead bird". Here's just a start for you, and keep in mind that this hasn't been updated for a few years. There's plenty of info on the web if you're willing to put the time and effort into it. http://www.worldtwitch.com/ivorybill.htm If I remember correctly, the IBW fiasco was even the subject of a "Fleecing of America" news segment.

From your link:

For daily updates and humor, be sure to read Tom Nelson's Ivory-bill Skeptic blog, which has now moved on to other things since the alleged Ivorybill sightings have been completely discredited.

The world is full of hoaxes and scare stories; and the internet makes it that much easier to spread them. A little better education along with some tracking and debunking skills might be of some help to you.

Mike Elzinga said:

Kris said: You guys (scientists/evolutionists) need to understand your audience better. Your audience is the masses of people who don't have a clue about science, and even less of a clue about evolutionary theory.

It might surprise you that many of us here have been active educators, and we are intimately familiar with the misconceptions students and the public have with science. I, as well as others on this site, have spent a number of years giving talks to the public and in church classes about this very issue. And I and many here have spent a great deal of time analyzing the misinformation, misconceptions, and innuendo used by antievolutionists to confuse the public. We have had long discussions with laypersons attempting to assess the confusions they have picked up from creationists. You appear to be one of their victims. Nobody here can quite figure out why you think science is in such a “mess.” Science has always been and ongoing process with many unanswered questions coming up as fast as others are answered. Why is that a problem for you? Scientists and curious people are stimulated to keep searching by that state of affairs; it’s the way the world is. If you are terrified that science doesn’t have all the answers, you will continue to have a very unhappy life. A far better approach is to join the hunt, even if vicariously, and spend the rest of your life helping to unravel these mysteries. And by all means try to help others. The human population is stressing the planet’s resources for supporting life. Species are going extinct. It’s better to try to educate people rather than running around in circles in a panic blaming scientists. We have been trying to get this message out for many decades now. Learn and become an educator, not a panic-strickened screamer.

Scott F said: I have to say that I don't see where the heck Kris is going either. On the other hand, Mike, I think you are missing what little point he is making. It's not about what creationists are doing, but what scientist are not doing. In PR it's all about the "message". Creationism: single simple message, easy to understand; Science: multiple contradictory messages, way too complicated to understand. As others have noted, there's no surprise here. Science is complicated, messy, and often difficult to understand. The problem (if I understand the point that Kris is dancing around) is that scientists make mistakes, sometimes very public ones. In fact, scientists actually admit to making mistakes. That's not a very good PR strategy if you want to win over the rubes looking for THE TRUTH. If I understand Kris correctly, if you're going to fight a PR battle, you need a better PR message. However, rather than the IBW (and no, nobody spent millions on the IBW), I'd point to cold fusion as a recent example of scientists being "off message". Or, how about those nutty scientists who can't make up their minds whether Pluto is a planet or not? That one went over with the public like a lead balloon. Again, "off message". Or just how many "elementary" particles are there? The number keeps changing. If they are "elementary", how come scientists can't count them? Again, "off message". Or how about the age of the Earth? First, Lord Kelvin estimates it at ~100 million years or so. Then early radiometric dating came up with 1.6 billion. Then 4 billion. Then 4.5 billion. Way, way "off message". Scientists just can't seem to stay on message. And don't get me started on quantum physics, or complicated things like error bars, statistics, and (shudder) big numbers! If scientists just stayed on message, if scientists would just stop disagreeing with each other, didn't make those "costly" and glaringly public mistakes, got rid of all those complicated (and big) numbers and just made it all so much easier to understand, they'd win the PR war more easily. Or some such nonsense as that. Anyway, if I misunderstood what Kris was saying (and that's very easy to do), I'm sure he will correct me.

RBH said:

Kris said: For those of you who want an example of a mess in science, here are three words for you: Ivory Billed Woodpecker. That's just ONE example.

W.T.F.? Kris equates the question of whether a living ivory-billed woodpecker has been sighted with the epistemic lunacy of Ken Ham (how evidence is interpreted depends solely on one's presuppositions), the misrepresentations of science by Bill Dembski ("... science is not a cumulative enterprise"), or the plain falsehoods of Jonathan Wells (peppered moths don't rest on tree trunks)? That's just ludicrous. I think we have nothing more than a well-developed tone concern troll here.

Kris said: I didn't equate "the question of whether a living ivory-billed woodpecker has been sighted with the epistemic lunacy of Ken Ham (how evidence is interpreted depends solely on one's presuppositions), the misrepresentations of science by Bill Dembski ("... science is not a cumulative enterprise"), or the plain falsehoods of Jonathan Wells (peppered moths don't rest on tree trunks)?" I didn't even mention those guys. Where do you get this stuff?

Kris said: There's a LOT more to the IBW fiasco than just some people thinking they saw a "dead bird". Here's just a start for you, and keep in mind that this hasn't been updated for a few years. There's plenty of info on the web if you're willing to put the time and effort into it. http://www.worldtwitch.com/ivorybill.htm If I remember correctly, the IBW fiasco was even the subject of a "Fleecing of America" news segment.

Kris said: *snip* Why bother trying to correct you? You almost had me believing that you were getting at least some of my message but then you blew it. And you're wrong about millions not being spent on the IBW.

You're also wrong if you believe that all scientists admit their mistakes.

Ya know, the Pluto disagreement is a pretty good example of a scientific mess. Thanks for bringing it up.

Kris said: Why bother trying to correct you? You almost had me believing that you were getting at least some of my message but then you blew it. ... Ya know, the Pluto disagreement is a pretty good example of a scientific mess. Thanks for bringing it up.

I think Kris is arguing that any scientific controversy is a "mess" and that scientists should only present results of which they are certain. Heaven forbid the public should see actual scientific debate.

SWT said: I think Kris is arguing that any scientific controversy is a "mess" and that scientists should only present results of which they are certain. Heaven forbid the public should see actual scientific debate.

There is a nugget of truth in what Kris is ranting about. In the PR "war", scientists often make a category error. Despite all the nonsense of ID and IC mangling of statistics, creationism is primarily a gut or emotional argument: you are uniquely created. Scientists often try to counter that with a head argument: more facts. It works well in court cases (where it's all about weighing facts), but not so well in the court of public opinion (where it's often about weighing emotional appeal).

Others here have noted how Carl Sagan did a great job of communicating science. (Personally, in this generation, I really like Neil deGrasse Tyson.) I think Sagan's success was because he avoided detailed facts ("billions and billions"), and went for a more gut emotional appeal: the awe and wonder of the world around us, and how science is discovering it. Not "revealing" it, as in revealed truth, but "discovering", as in turning over the next rock.

Maybe that's it. Appeal to the little kid in all of us. What little 4 year old scientist hasn't wanted to see what was under the next rock, or what happens when you jump in a puddle? Sure, you aren't going to avoid or or even want to paper over the sometimes heated give and take in the doing of science. But, perhaps the PR campaign could include more of the, "Gee whiz", or "Isn't all this disagreement and argument really cool and exciting?" kind of stuff. I'm sure that Mike, and every other "Bill Nye the Science Guy" has done some of this in their talks and presentations. That's good. Is that enough? The polling numbers suggest that, sadly, it isn't.

A case in point is (I think) the recent "rock stars of science" campaign. I'm not sure if I agree with it or not, or what impact it may have. I've heard some pooh-poohing of it. But it is something different to try. It's an actual PR campaign for "science", something that scientists as a group tend to be fairly poor at. And it's a different kind of PR campaign than the product-specific ads we see for things like Intel, or how Shell or Chevron or Toyota are working to improve our lives and save the planet.

Mythbusters might be another example of something different. Yeah, they like to blow things up, and their scientific method is sometimes a bit sketchy. But they really do seem to be trying to popularize the notion of "doing science". I see what they're doing as a more "gut level", turn-over-a-rock approach to a science PR campaign.

Scott F said: There is a nugget of truth in what Kris is ranting about. In the PR "war", scientists often make a category error.

John Kwok said: That there may be, but I don't think the solutions you proposed are noteworthy:

Scott F said: There is a nugget of truth in what Kris is ranting about. In the PR "war", scientists often make a category error.

Instead, a more successful approach might be the one taken by the World Science Festival here in New York City which emphasizes how science is interconnected with the rest of culture (A brief example of just that is the conversation later this afternoon between the writer Rick Moddy and physicist Melissa Franklin at the Rubin Museum of Art here in New York City, discussing how Samuel Beckett's writings "can help us understand the relationship between physics and emptiness": http://www.rmanyc.org/events/load/859 )

Kris said: I AM a scientist and I am NOT a "victim" of antievolutionists.

Kris said: You are completely obsessed with antievolutionists, to the point where it has consumed you. Take a vacation and rethink your perspective. You apparently think that anyone who doesn't agree with every word you say, and doesn't tout science as being perfect, and doesn't spend every waking moment hating and fighting creationists, is the enemy and a creationist.

It’s pretty clear we have a troll here.

SWT said: The media hype was awful, but surely you don't expect scientists to be able to control how their work is reported and discussed by the general public?

Mike Elzinga said:

Kris said: You are completely obsessed with antievolutionists, to the point where it has consumed you. Take a vacation and rethink your perspective. You apparently think that anyone who doesn't agree with every word you say, and doesn't tout science as being perfect, and doesn't spend every waking moment hating and fighting creationists, is the enemy and a creationist.

Why would you come to a discussion website set up to educate people and debunk ID/creationism and make that kind of accusation? Is it projection?

Ahem.

"That he declares (ex cathedra) this a sign of others’ obsession with this major and persistent stumbling block only reinforces the impression that he has nothing substantial to contribute (which may be incorrect, but there you go)."

My HTML-fu is weak before the third cup of joe sinks in.

The MadPanda, FCD

Mike Elzinga said:

Kris said: I AM a scientist and I am NOT a "victim" of antievolutionists.

I would suggest that there is a very high probability that you are mischaracterizing yourself.

Scott F said: A troll wouldn't know how to do that bother, since they aren't interested in actual communication.

SWT said: I think Kris is arguing that any scientific controversy is a "mess" and that scientists should only present results of which they are certain. Heaven forbid the public should see actual scientific debate.

Stuart Weinstein said: What the public needs to be educated about is that science is intrinsically a "messy" process, but that process as messy as it is bears fruit. To attempt to hide that or spin it would be dishonest IMHO.

Scott F said:

SWT said: The media hype was awful, but surely you don't expect scientists to be able to control how their work is reported and discussed by the general public?

Actually, yes. That's what every other special-interest group tries to do. (This probably isn't a new idea, but bear with me if I'm uninformed.) If they don't already, groups like the NSF or the AAAS or the Dept of Education ought to have dedicated PR departments. Generate those 30 second canned "news" spots for local TV stations to air. Run the talk show circuit. Get on Oprah. Put the spin on the latest scientific "controversy". Don't cover it up, but celebrate the messiness of doing science. The media loves controversy. Celebrate the controversy, but spin it as a good thing. More importantly, provide a PR resource for scientists, journalists, and educators. Someone suggested a canned "media-release" agreement for when (potential) creationists come knocking on a scientist's door for an interview. That's what a PR department would provide. Others here have often complained about the poor quality of scientific journalism. That's what a PR department could help fix. Be proactive in directing the flow of the public discussion of the moment. Apple used to have a position of "Macintosh Evangelist". Science needs those folks too. Be the "go-to" guys for questions about science. We've got those folks out there. Make a coherent PR campaign out of it.

Stuart Weinstein said:

SWT said: I think Kris is arguing that any scientific controversy is a "mess" and that scientists should only present results of which they are certain. Heaven forbid the public should see actual scientific debate.

What the public needs to be educated about is that science is intrinsically a "messy" process, but that process as messy as it is bears fruit. To attempt to hide that or spin it would be dishonest IMHO.

SWT said: I suspect that part of the psychology that underlies science denial is a need for certainty ("proof"). The fact that scientists sommetimes take a while to debate and come to a consensus, and that sometimes the consensus is overturned, looks to these people like a weakness rather than a source of strength.

Mike Elzinga said:

Kris said: You are completely obsessed with antievolutionists, to the point where it has consumed you. Take a vacation and rethink your perspective. You apparently think that anyone who doesn't agree with every word you say, and doesn't tout science as being perfect, and doesn't spend every waking moment hating and fighting creationists, is the enemy and a creationist.

Why would you come to a discussion website set up to educate people and debunk ID/creationism and make that kind of accusation? Is it projection? You have absolutely no idea of how people here spend the majority of their time. And, given the snarky attitude you are displaying, it is absolutely none of your damned business.

SWT said:

Kris said: There's a LOT more to the IBW fiasco than just some people thinking they saw a "dead bird". Here's just a start for you, and keep in mind that this hasn't been updated for a few years. There's plenty of info on the web if you're willing to put the time and effort into it. http://www.worldtwitch.com/ivorybill.htm If I remember correctly, the IBW fiasco was even the subject of a "Fleecing of America" news segment.

So, from a cursory search: 1) A research team makes what they believe is a significant observation. 2) They report their result through a peer-reviewed journal. 3) Other scientists evaluate their results. 4) There is a lively discussion of the evidence. 5) The scientific consensus is that the original report was probably in error. This appears to me to be perfectly standard scientific process in which erroneous results are ultimately identified through collection and analysis of evidence. Scientists were the ones who made the case that the initial report was probably incorrect. The media hype was awful, but surely you don't expect scientists to be able to control how their work is reported and discussed by the general public?

Mike Elzinga said: It’s pretty clear we have a troll here.

Kris said: I'm not a religious zombie, in fact I'm not religious at all, but I'm also not a science or atheist zombie.

Kris said: Well, you're right about something. Your search was cursory. If the IBW fiasco was/is a "perfectly standard scientific process", then the standard scientific process needs some serious work.

Kris said:

Mike Elzinga said: It’s pretty clear we have a troll here.

Of course Mike, I'm clearly the most overused word on the internet. Please pardon me for having a mind of my own and daring to criticize or question science in any way, shape, or form.

I feel so bad.

Stuart Weinstein said:

Kris said: *snip* Why bother trying to correct you? You almost had me believing that you were getting at least some of my message but then you blew it. And you're wrong about millions not being spent on the IBW.

Support that with some accounting, or cease making unsubstantiated claims.

You're also wrong if you believe that all scientists admit their mistakes.

Who gives a damn?

Ya know, the Pluto disagreement is a pretty good example of a scientific mess. Thanks for bringing it up.

What mess? Is it your opinion that unless there is 100% agreement on something, its a mess? There are very good reasons for demoting Pluto from a planet status. If these are the best examples of a "mess" you have, perhaps its time to stop wasting your time. I know I will stop wasting mine.

The MadPanda, FCD said:

More to the point, why break into a thread which is about the foibles of a particular Creationist with such a criticism? There are other threads here, on other topics, which would have been more appropriate if Kris was genuinely interested in a discussion on communication within science.

I seriously doubt that it would matter which thread I had said that in. Have you ever said anything during a "discussion" that others thought was unrelated to the topic but you felt needed to be said?

Why Kris did not expect a thread about Dembski to consist of griping and criticism of Dembski (and Creos in general) is puzzling. That he declares (ex cathedra this a sign of others' obsession with this major and persistent stumbling block only reinforces the impression that he has nothing substantial to contribute (which may be incorrect, but there you go).

What I said had nothing to do with what I expected the thread to consist of. It had nothing to do with expectations at all. I was merely voicing something that came to mind at that time, and of course it seemed appropriate to me. Actually, what I would like to see here is the ability for anyone to start a thread.

The MadPanda, FCD

Scott F said:

Mike Elzinga said:

Kris said: I AM a scientist and I am NOT a "victim" of antievolutionists.

I would suggest that there is a very high probability that you are mischaracterizing yourself.

I strongly agree. An effective scientist would not respond in the ways that Kris has responded to questions. Specifically, most technical people I know, when confronted with an audience who doesn't seem to "get it", do not respond by blaming the listener, but by changing how they are communicating and trying again. A troll wouldn't know how to do that.

Kris said: Oh, and just for kicks, what is the scientific definition of a planet?

Mike Elzinga said:

Kris said: I'm not a religious zombie, in fact I'm not religious at all, but I'm also not a science or atheist zombie.

Ok; so we have established that you have absolutely no interest in those court cases. And we can also adjust our estimate of your misrepresenting yourself from being a very high probability to being exactly one.

SWT said:

Kris said: Well, you're right about something. Your search was cursory. If the IBW fiasco was/is a "perfectly standard scientific process", then the standard scientific process needs some serious work.

Then explain yourself. Don't just post links. Actually, you know, present an argument.

Kris said:

SWT said:

Kris said: Well, you're right about something. Your search was cursory. If the IBW fiasco was/is a "perfectly standard scientific process", then the standard scientific process needs some serious work.

Then explain yourself. Don't just post links. Actually, you know, present an argument.

Be sure to say that to everyone else who has ever posted a link on this website. You wouldn't want to single me out, would you?

Mike Elzinga said:

Kris said: Oh, and just for kicks, what is the scientific definition of a planet?

It’s off topic, but part of the reason for reclassification had to do with the self-gravity of a body. An object has to have enough gravitational attraction of it’s constituents in order to pull itself into a sphere. There are other issues having to do with composition, and orbit. What sometimes happens in improper classifications of things is that it messes up the bigger picture that scientists are trying form theories about. Sometimes a theory works really well but for a few anomalies. Then the question comes up about whether the anomalies are really what people thought they were. There is nothing peculiar about that. If you had a bunch of cattle and thought you had a potential prize bull in that herd, you might theorize you could make some good money off that bull. But then you discover you have a steer. That changes your plans and your theories.

Kris said: I'm honestly beginning to see why at least some creationists feel that at least some atheists act like religious zealots.

Stanton said: Because you find it aggravating that we don't mindlessly bow down and worship you because you make inane, vague or completely and totally inaccurate statements about Science, scientists and the Scientific Community?

Kris said: When you say it's off topic, do you mean that your response is off topic regarding my question (i.e., unresponsive to my question) or that your comments are off topic regarding this thread in general?

Stanton said: Or, in fewer words: Kris, you're obtuse to the point of being rude, and your debate and conversation skills are sub par, please go away.

The MadPanda, FCD said:

Scott F said: A troll wouldn't know how to do that bother, since they aren't interested in actual communication.

Kindly permit me to offer a humble editorial suggestion as regards your last sentence. :) The MadPanda, FCD

Scott F said: Well played, sir. Thanks. :-)

The MadPanda, FCD said:

Scott F said: A troll wouldn't know how to do that bother, since they aren't interested in actual communication.

Kindly permit me to offer a humble editorial suggestion as regards your last sentence. :) The MadPanda, FCD

Stanton said:

Kris said: When you say it's off topic, do you mean that your response is off topic regarding my question (i.e., unresponsive to my question) or that your comments are off topic regarding this thread in general?

It's actually your own responsibility to explain how demanding that we provide you a definition of what a planet is ties into the topic of this thread, which is supposed to be about how William Dembski was forced to agree with his employers' Young Earth Creationism views for religious and political reasons. That, and, it's also your own responsibility to clarify your own position really is. As far as we can tell, you're saying that scientists are as corrupt and stupid as are Creationists, and the fact that we're hostile towards you because of your own hostile remarks and that your refusal to clarify your hostile remarks is solely because we're really obsessed and evil and stupid exactly like Creationists, and that Creationist trolls are totally justified in attacking us because science, reality and good social skills mortally offend their religious sensibilities. Or, in fewer words: Kris, you're obtuse to the point of being rude, and your debate and conversation skills are sub par, please go away.

Stanton said:

Kris said: I'm honestly beginning to see why at least some creationists feel that at least some atheists act like religious zealots.

Because you find it aggravating that we don't mindlessly bow down and worship you because you make inane, vague or completely and totally inaccurate statements about Science, scientists and the Scientific Community?

SWT said: I suspect that part of the psychology that underlies science denial is a need for certainty ("proof"). The fact that scientists sommetimes take a while to debate and come to a consensus, and that sometimes the consensus is overturned, looks to these people like a weakness rather than a source of strength.

Mike Elzinga said:

Stanton said: Or, in fewer words: Kris, you're obtuse to the point of being rude, and your debate and conversation skills are sub par, please go away.

I suspect Richard has already noticed. He’s pretty good about closing threads that degenerate into crap. If this character tries to start another barroom brawl on other thread, I hope his profile will get him on the Wall fairly quickly.

Flint said:

The MadPanda, FCD said:

Scott F said: A troll wouldn't know how to do that bother, since they aren't interested in actual communication.

Kindly permit me to offer a humble editorial suggestion as regards your last sentence. :) The MadPanda, FCD

Your (accurate) correction raises an interesting point. In religionland, "communication" seems to have a distinctly different meaning from other lands. It doesn't seem to be two-way, but rather consists of preaching on one side, which is either accepted or rejected on the other. It's the same approach to "communication" as, say, a mass mailing. Most will discard it without reading, a few will read it, and a very few of them will take some desired action. So I suppose you could say that a message was sent and sometimes received, but that's not the same category of communication as a dialogue.

Yeah Mike, have the mods cut me off, shut me up, censor me, maybe even ban me. After all, you wouldn’t want to hear anything that doesn’t fit your religious-like reverence of science, would you?

Hmm, that sounds a lot like how religious people behave.

You could just ignore what I say, ya know, if it bothers you so much.

Flint said: ... You continue to badmouth science generally, but all I've seen specifically is that some birdwatchers thought they caught a glimpse of an Ivory-billed woodpecker, but on careful examination were mistaken. And that is the ONLY specific criticism of "science" I've seen from you yet. (And how it constitutes a criticism, I haven't been able to guess. Those who thought they saw one were sincere, but the sighting was fleeting and ambiguous. So, reasonably enough, a more systematic and thorough search was conducted. What ELSE should have been done?)

Flint said:

"It’s not what you say that’s so bothersome, as that you have been hazily critical without actually saying anything. Imagine if someone kept saying that you were not a good person, but steadfastly refused to give a single example of anything you ever did or said that might support that assessment. Eventually, realizing there was no substance to such claims, you’d tune it out."

First of all, I didn't single anyone out in my original statements. If I had done that, then your comparison ("if someone kept saying that you...") might have merit.

My statements were about science in general, and since I'm a scientist my statements could possibly apply to me too. If someone else had said exactly the same thing as I said it wouldn't bother me one bit. In fact I would openly agree with them.

I know that the things I mentioned occur in science and that they affect the way people perceive science and scientists. I WANT people to be able to trust science and to believe that scientists are doing the best possible work and are not wasting money, time, resources (including living organisms), and are not just trying to promote an agenda, their career, their politics, their book sales or lecture series, or their status in the scientific community.

Frankly, I'm amazed that any of you don't seem to be aware of what I'm talking about.

So, let me give you another example:

You're watching TV and the news comes on. One of the stories mentions a "scientific study" about why prisoners don't like to be locked up in jail. The cost of the study? Hundreds of thousands of dollars, from a government grant (taxpayer money).

Here's another one to ponder:

A news story mentions that yet another "scientific study" has determined that obesity is bad for your health. The cost of the study? Hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even millions, from government grants (taxpayer money).

Both of those so-called scientific studies belong in the Duh file. What do you think most people think when they hear about those expensive 'studies' and especially if it's the 15th or 50th study about the same thing?

Those are just a couple of simple examples. I'm not saying they are the best examples.

Okay, now you're starting to make a specific point that can be addressed. I can even agree with the point, on the face of it. This is bad PR for science. But there are several parts to the problem. Were the "scientific studies" actually performed as described? Who did the studies, who paid for those studies, and who is doing the reporting?

Part of the problem with communicating science is that "scientific studies" are often performed and used for political or commercial purposes. (Think of the warring "scientific studies" that showed no links between smoking and cancer (paid for by tobacco companies), and other "scientific studies" that showed the opposite.) Another part of the problem is that even legit science is being twisted out of recognition and mocked by political opponents of science and reason (Think of the recent mocking of a study of ants).

Closer to the PT home, we have the "science" of Creation Science, followed by the "science" of ID. We also have the charlatans of all stripes touting the "scientific studies" showing that purified "30C" water, or crystals, or pyramids will cure whatever ails you. When every fly-by-night huckster can don the white lab coat and claim a "scientific study", how can that but hurt the PR of science?

Well, that belongs in the "Duh file", as you put it. Even the earlier suggestions I made about trying to improve the PR for science assumed legitimate scientists doing "reasonable" science. When people use "science" for questionable purposes, sometimes transparently so, I'm at a loss to see how "scientists" can do much about it. In the public eye you just end up with warring "scientific studies", and Science loses face.

(Another part of the problem is legitimate sources funding shoddy research, which may be closer to your point, but is for another comment as this is getting long.)

Kris said: Frankly, I'm amazed that any of you don't seem to be aware of what I'm talking about.

Kris said: A news story mentions that yet another "scientific study" has determined that obesity is bad for your health. The cost of the study? Hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even millions, from government grants (taxpayer money).

Scott F said: When people use "science" for questionable purposes, sometimes transparently so, I'm at a loss to see how "scientists" can do much about it.

Mike Elzinga said:

Kris said: Frankly, I'm amazed that any of you don't seem to be aware of what I'm talking about.

How many people read scientific journals?

I would think a low percentage of the population.

If the media didn’t pick up on some of these research results and keep repeating them, how would the public find out?

I'm not referring to or complaining about the media reporting or the repeating of the reports. I'm referring to the redundant, unnecessary, and expensive studies that tell us what we already know and that any halfwit could figure out on their own.

For example, obesity –especially childhood obesity - is a serious problem in this country, despite the fact that the scientific community has been trying to get the word out against a constant blizzard of meaningless distractions.

I know. Everyone knows that obesity is a bad thing. Even obese people know.

Do you know anything about the financial strain on the health care system caused by obesity and its effects, such as diabetes? Surely you wouldn’t claim that it’s not important to try to change people’s behaviors with regard to the causes of obesity, would you?

Do you really believe that anyone would defend obesity and say that it isn't bad for your health? Are more expensive, redundant, scientific studies actually needed for that to be verified?

You complain about “so many” studies. Research continues, and more details fill in and confirm what has been suspected from preliminary and less controlled studies. Other confounding factors get taken into account so that the studies can no longer be misrepresented by people who don’t want such results to come out.

I haven't heard of even one objection to the fact that obesity is bad for your health. Yes, many people are obese but another scientific study is not going to make them lose weight. Better promotion of the information already known might.

Remember the behaviors of the tobacco manufacturers to the research on the effects of smoking? And you don’t think there are powerful interests out there attempting to discredit scientific studies?

There you go again, implying that I think that ALL scientific studies are worthless. Regarding smoking though, do we really need more studies to tell us that smoking is bad for your health and could kill you? That matter seems to be settled with the public. More than enough is known about the detrimental effects of cigarettes, chewing tobacco, etc.

What do you think is going on with the politics of climate change?

Well, it's pretty obvious what's going on with the "politics" of climate change. It's also pretty obvious that scientists can't seem to agree on anything regarding climate change. After a few hundred (or a few thousand) more studies and several decades of time, maybe a general and scientific acceptance of climate change will come about. Of course by then it will be too late to do anything about it. Think about why it's difficult to get most people to take climate change seriously. It's not all just because there are political forces trying to sabotage the acceptance of it.

By the way, you have mention at least twice now that you are a scientist. Scientists can recognize scientists after a few exchanges. How is it that you don’t seem to have any of the historical perspectives and the knowledge of a scientist?

What makes you think that I don't have any historical perspectives and the knowledge of a scientist? Do you think that all scientists have to be intimately aware of all the players in the atheist versus ID/creationist war to have that historical perspective and scientific knowledge you mentioned?

Why is it that you don’t know how research is conducted? Why is it you don’t know about peer review and cross checking, or any of the other processes of scientific research? Just what kind of scientist are you?

Where do you get this crap? Oh wait, I forgot that I don't necessarily keep up on all the court cases involving teaching ID/creationism in schools, so that MUST mean that I don't know anything about peer review, cross checking, how research is conducted, or any of the other processes of scientific research. Because you're such a self-righteous, demanding jerk, I'm going to leave you wondering what kind of scientist I am.

And no one here “gets the mods” after people. They determine who is disrupting threads and refusing to contribute to constructive dialog. But your behavior clearly fits the profile of someone who gets sent to the Bathroom Wall despite the attempts of a number of us to engage your confusing diatribe. You disrupted a thread about one on the key figures in ID/creationism that has had a rather sordid history of contributing to the misrepresentation of science. You were asked a number of times what you know about the culture war being waged by the ID/creationists on science. You were given links to court cases and history. Go back over those questions and then go back over your responses. You obviously have no knowledge of this history nor do you appear to care. Then ask yourself where you think your comments belong.

Blah blah blah, blag blah blah. The court cases again, and culture wars, history of the "war", the Bathroom Wall (is that anything like Hell and eternal damnation?), and more obsession and denial. Ya know Mike, if my original comments were so misplaced, someone could have just said, 'Hi Kris, it might be better if you were to post such comments in a different, more appropriate thread or start a thread of your own.' Oh wait, I can't start a thread of my own. Oh well.

Do you even know what this thread is about? What do any of your comments have to do with Dembski?

See above (the Hi Kris thing). And what do most of your comments have to do with Dembski? Are all the comments by others in this thread about Dembski? Actually, my original comments (at least) do have something to do with Dembski, since much of my focus in those comments was to point out the fact that science would be a lot better off in any fights with any religious zealots if science had a more organized house.

You don't appear to read people's responses. But you managed to get all the attention focused on you. That's troll behavior. We see it often.

I'm not the one with reading comprehension problems. I just don't respond to some comments and I will not allow you or anyone else to treat me like a puppet on your strings.

To say your remarks have been often baffling would merely state something that is all too obvious to virtually everyone posting here. Moreover, none of your comments really indicates your familiarity with the history of creationism, especially its most trendy variant, Intelligent Design. Nor do you seem to understand why Dembski behavior is so sordid that he deserves the sarcastic sobriquet of being the "Josef Goebbels of the Intelligent Design movement". In Dembski you are dealing with someone who has had more than a decade's worth of history of engaging in lies, gross distortions, vituperative attacks on critics(as well as frat-boy cheap shots like his "farting" of a picture of Federal Judge John Jones in response to the former's verdict in the 2005 Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District trial), theft and other forms of Nazi-like thuggery in support of his pathetic mendacious intellectual pornography, Intelligent Design creationism. Not once have I read any comment of yours which clearly demonstrates your recognition of this.

SWT said: I suspect that part of the psychology that underlies science denial is a need for certainty ("proof"). The fact that scientists sommetimes take a while to debate and come to a consensus, and that sometimes the consensus is overturned, looks to these people like a weakness rather than a source of strength.

Kris said: I'm not referring to or complaining about the media reporting or the repeating of the reports. I'm referring to the redundant, unnecessary, and expensive studies that tell us what we already know and that any halfwit could figure out on their own.

Lest someone get nit-picky, I freely concede that some who held the various beliefs I mentioned were not halfwits but rather didn't have access to the observations and explanatory theories that contradicted their views. Nevertheless, the implication of Kris's argument is exactly what I described: leave it to the halfwits to figure out what is reliable knowledge.

Kris said: Do you really believe that anyone would defend obesity and say that it isn't bad for your health? Are more expensive, redundant, scientific studies actually needed for that to be verified? I haven't heard of even one objection to the fact that obesity is bad for your health. Yes, many people are obese but another scientific study is not going to make them lose weight. Better promotion of the information already known might.

Your most recent reply to Mike Elzinga perfectly illustrates RBH's observation about you: "leave it to the halfwits to figure out what is reliable knowledge.". Moreover, I strongly suspect you have confirmed in the minds of many - present company included - that you are not what you claim to be, but instead, rather, someone pretending to be one and doing a most unconvincing imitation here at Panda's Thumb.

He’s not a scientist. He is not interested in science. He doesn’t know anything about science.

He derails a thread and then justifies it by arguing that other people’s responses are off topic also.

This guy is a troll just trying to piss people off.

Hm. I wonder if Dembski is still giving class credit for his students to troll "hostile websites."

RBH said: Hm. I wonder if Dembski is still giving class credit for his students to troll "hostile websites."

Yep, obesity is bad. But does it have the same cause for all obese people? Are there better and worse ways to deal with it? Might these ways differ from one person to the next? Does childhood obesity have the same pattern of causes and effective treatments as adult obesity? Are formerly obese people who lost the weight more likely to regain it than those who never have been obese? Just how much, if any, influence on obesity can be ascribed to (pick any number) fast foods? Television? Suburban sprawl? Sedentary jobs? Food additives? Does climate matter? Are some subgroups genetically more prone to obesity? Might there be unsuspected correlations between obesity and other aspects of the human condition and current lifestyles? What might these be, if any?

But no, any halfwit knows obesity is bad. No need to know any more. Addressing any of these questions is a waste of money. We've been told so by a "scientist", so it must be true.

RBH said: Hm. I wonder if Dembski is still giving class credit for his students to troll "hostile websites."

Mike Elzinga said:

RBH said: Hm. I wonder if Dembski is still giving class credit for his students to troll "hostile websites."

Could it even be the Fartmeister himself?

I suspect that part of the psychology that underlies science denial is a need for certainty (“proof”).

...and where does THAT need come from?

why doesn't anyone here EVER cite the vast literature there is published on this?

it's mind boggling.

START HERE:

http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~deenasw/Assets/bloom&weisberg%20science.pdf

it's a nice, short review paper, with a good summary of what research has been done on how science denialism gets started and is maintained in cultures, and the bibliography is also extremely useful.

RBH said:

Kris said: I'm not referring to or complaining about the media reporting or the repeating of the reports. I'm referring to the redundant, unnecessary, and expensive studies that tell us what we already know and that any halfwit could figure out on their own.

Now there's a remark that reflects an abject ignorance of the history of science. As it happens, a great deal of scientific knowledge consists of corroborated systematic observations that show that the halfwits are wrong. Such knowledge ranges from geocentrism to the fixity of created kinds (halfwit claim: 'no one has ever seen a crocodile morph into a bird!') to the notion that "solid" matter is, well, solid when in fact it's mostly empty space permeated by fields, not particles packed together like billiard balls. True, some research re-studies old questions, albeit from a different angle or with improved instrumentation or techniques, to test limits or find exceptions. But a blanket claim that it's not worth studying what every halfwit knows is to accept halfwits as the arbiters of what we will accept as knowledge. I myself decline to do that.

Flint said: Yep, obesity is bad. But does it have the same cause for all obese people? Are there better and worse ways to deal with it? Might these ways differ from one person to the next? Does childhood obesity have the same pattern of causes and effective treatments as adult obesity? Are formerly obese people who lost the weight more likely to regain it than those who never have been obese? Just how much, if any, influence on obesity can be ascribed to (pick any number) fast foods? Television? Suburban sprawl? Sedentary jobs? Food additives? Does climate matter? Are some subgroups genetically more prone to obesity? Might there be unsuspected correlations between obesity and other aspects of the human condition and current lifestyles? What might these be, if any? But no, any halfwit knows obesity is bad. No need to know any more. Addressing any of these questions is a waste of money. We've been told so by a "scientist", so it must be true.

Kris said: Trying to confuse the issue and make yourself look smart by bringing up "corroborated systematic observations", "geocentrism to the fixity of created kinds", and "empty space permeated by fields, not particles" has nothing to with the points I've made or the examples I provided, and it only makes your position look weak.

I’m referring to the redundant, unnecessary, and expensive studies that tell us what we already know and that any halfwit could figure out on their own.

RBH said:

Kris said: Trying to confuse the issue and make yourself look smart by bringing up "corroborated systematic observations", "geocentrism to the fixity of created kinds", and "empty space permeated by fields, not particles" has nothing to with the points I've made or the examples I provided, and it only makes your position look weak.

The "point" you asserted:

I’m referring to the redundant, unnecessary, and expensive studies that tell us what we already know and that any halfwit could figure out on their own.

My examples: What the halfwits got wrong. Depending on halfwits for one's lead in matters of fact and science leads to half-witted conclusions which you apparently regard as highly as you do those of science.

Ichthyic said: I suspect that part of the psychology that underlies science denial is a need for certainty (“proof”). ...and where does THAT need come from? why doesn't anyone here EVER cite the vast literature there is published on this? it's mind boggling. START HERE: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~deenasw/Assets/bloom&weisberg%20science.pdf it's a nice, short review paper, with a good summary of what research has been done on how science denialism gets started and is maintained in cultures, and the bibliography is also extremely useful.

Kris said: Why do some people believe that Bill Dembski is wrong about ID/creationism? I would really like to see serious answers to the last question, and whether any of you think it would be a good question for a scientific study, and whether you would condone the spending of taxpayer dollars for the study.

Mike Elzinga said:

Kris said: A news story mentions that yet another "scientific study" has determined that obesity is bad for your health. The cost of the study? Hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even millions, from government grants (taxpayer money).

Another reason you need to know about the threat of ID/creationist pseudo-science is its cost. You complain about the cost of obesity studies; but do you know what it cost the Dover Area School District when the creationists attempted to mess with curriculum? Look it up. And this kind of crap has been going on for decades; and many school districts have been affected. Its deep and it’s hidden. And education suffers needlessly.

Kris said: Be glad that the legal system usually works in these cases and that creationists are very likely fighting a losing battle when it comes to infiltrating the public school system.

Kris said: Be glad that the legal system usually works in these cases and that creationists are very likely fighting a losing battle when it comes to infiltrating the public school system.

The main problem I have with ID is that it ends the discussion with evidence of a designer. Okay so what is the designer? If the designer is a god, then which god is it? Is the supreme force’s name god or is it some kind of god? Would the designer be supernatural or could one argue that evolution has worked a scientific masterpiece which gives the illusion of design which is actually found within great science?
Feel free to offer insight or opinions. I am sure there will be a few.

Frank J said:

Um, Bill? You might consider that you have much geological work to do.

— Richard B. Hoppe

I assume that geology provides us with empirical evidence which proves without a shadow of a doubt that a world wide flood could not have possibly occurred? Those who lean on "science" place all their chips on the evidence. Personally I find it quite arrogant that one could claim to have "all the evidence." Are you claiming that we have uncovered every possible fossil and fossil record available to us at the moment? I will go out on a limb and argue that it is highly unlikely that geologists have surveyed ALL of the fossil record on the face of the Earth. This is more unlikely than a world wide flood occurring in my opinion. They have based their entire belief system on what they can examine up to this point. That is just as much a leap of faith as believing Noah's ark actually occurred. However, because modern science must explain everything they must go with the evidence they have in hand up to this point. Is that good science? People thought the Earth was flat based on all the "evidence" they had. They too looked at the evidence in a scientific manner and were wrong. Are you arrogant enough to state that beyond a shadow of a doubt geology can prove Noah's ark is a myth? Of course. He not only knows that, but knows better than to even try. Does anyone else notice a similarity between Dembski's "confession" and that of Behe ~5 years ago where he tried to placate common-descent-deniers? Behe reiterated his long-standing acceptance of common descent, but qualified it by saying that some IDers who deny CD are "more familiar with the relevant science." Once again I'm having trouble locating the actual Behe quote, but I'm pretty sure that he did not name those IDers.

Mike Elzinga said:

Kris said: Be glad that the legal system usually works in these cases and that creationists are very likely fighting a losing battle when it comes to infiltrating the public school system.

It isn’t just luck; there are years of background work, research, and documentation that go into it.

John Kwok said: I strongly doubt that:

Kris said: Be glad that the legal system usually works in these cases and that creationists are very likely fighting a losing battle when it comes to infiltrating the public school system.

'Tis likely you're a troll, heaven sent to us courtesy of Bill Dembski. Why? Haven't seen you conduct a rational dialogue with anyone here.

John Kwok said: I strongly doubt that:

Kris said: Be glad that the legal system usually works in these cases and that creationists are very likely fighting a losing battle when it comes to infiltrating the public school system.

'Tis likely you're a troll, heaven sent to us courtesy of Bill Dembski. Why? Haven't seen you conduct a rational dialogue with anyone here.

bill don said: The main problem I have with ID is that it ends the discussion with evidence of a designer. Okay so what is the designer? If the designer is a god, then which god is it? Is the supreme force’s name god or is it some kind of god? Would the designer be supernatural or could one argue that evolution has worked a scientific masterpiece which gives the illusion of design which is actually found within great science? Feel free to offer insight or opinions. I am sure there will be a few.

RBH said:

Kris said: Why do some people believe that Bill Dembski is wrong about ID/creationism? I would really like to see serious answers to the last question, and whether any of you think it would be a good question for a scientific study, and whether you would condone the spending of taxpayer dollars for the study.

Already done. See here for an overview and the references therein for details. And it didn't cost the taxpayers a penny. Correction: I see that Joe acknowledges NIH support.

Correction:

My comments to RBH directly above were a mistake on my part. I thought I was replying to Mike Elzinga.

So, instead of what I said, I'll say this:

Your reply is non-responsive to my questions. I didn't ask about the validity (or not) of Dembski's position on ID, and I didn't ask for a critique on his position.

One thing though: what Joe Felenstein said about mutations (quoted below) is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen from a 'scientist'. I hope he was joking.

"Mutations
In the real world, mutations do not act like this. Yes, they are much more likely to reduce fitness than to increase it, but many of them are not lethal. I probably carry one — I have a strong aversion to lettuce, which to me has a bitter mineral taste. This is probably a genetic variation in one of my odorant receptor genes. It makes salad bars problematic, and at sandwich counters I spend a lot of time scraping the lettuce off. But it has not killed me — yet."

I would really like to see serious answers to the last question, and whether any of you think it would be a good question for a scientific study, and whether you would condone the spending of taxpayer dollars for the study.

Already done. See here for an overview and the references therein for details.

Your reply is non-responsive to my questions. I didn’t ask about the validity (or not) of Dembski’s position on ID, and I didn’t ask for a critique on his position.

Kris said:

Stanton said:

Kris said: I'm honestly beginning to see why at least some creationists feel that at least some atheists act like religious zealots.

Because you find it aggravating that we don't mindlessly bow down and worship you because you make inane, vague or completely and totally inaccurate statements about Science, scientists and the Scientific Community?

Are you saying that none of the things I've brought up have ever happened in science and don't occur now?

Kris said:

Mike Elzinga said:

Kris said: A news story mentions that yet another "scientific study" has determined that obesity is bad for your health. The cost of the study? Hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even millions, from government grants (taxpayer money).

Another reason you need to know about the threat of ID/creationist pseudo-science is its cost. You complain about the cost of obesity studies; but do you know what it cost the Dover Area School District when the creationists attempted to mess with curriculum? Look it up. And this kind of crap has been going on for decades; and many school districts have been affected. Its deep and it’s hidden. And education suffers needlessly.

I know about the cost. I know about the cost. I know about the cost. I know about the cost. And it doesn't, in any way, change the fact that some scientists waste a lot more money. What are you advocating Mike? Are you saying that lawsuits should be outlawed? Are you saying that when creationism is involved there should be no cost? Are you saying that people who believe in creationism shouldn't be allowed to be involved in law suits in any way, shape, or form? Are you saying that the courts should automatically reject any claim or dispute that has anything at all to do with religion? What would be your solution for dealing with situations like the one in Dover that would prevent a lawsuit and/or the possibility of a lawsuit, and would also be constitutional and cost free? I'm VERY aware that some creationists are doing everything they can to get their message into public schools. I'm also aware that they have lost some well publicized cases. I'm glad they lost in Dover. Even though I would like to see all religions go the way of the Raphus cucullatus, I know that that isn't going to happen. I also know that some creationists will continue to 'test' the legal system on occasion and will also try to get laws enacted that are favorable to their way of thinking. Be glad that the legal system usually works in these cases and that creationists are very likely fighting a losing battle when it comes to infiltrating the public school system.

Kris said: Do you really believe that anyone would defend obesity and say that it isn't bad for your health? Are more expensive, redundant, scientific studies actually needed for that to be verified?

RBH said: Kris's question:

I would really like to see serious answers to the last question, and whether any of you think it would be a good question for a scientific study, and whether you would condone the spending of taxpayer dollars for the study.

My answer, with a reference:

Already done. See here for an overview and the references therein for details.

Kris's response:

Your reply is non-responsive to my questions. I didn’t ask about the validity (or not) of Dembski’s position on ID, and I didn’t ask for a critique on his position.

Was it worth doing? Sure, since Dembski is a representative of a movement that purports to be changing the very nature of science. And the reference shows he's up a creek without a paddle.

Kris,

Perhaps you are unaware of how science is funded. SInce you claimed to be a scientist, this is somewhat strange, but whatever. In order to fund a project you must write a grant proposal to a government agency or other funding institution. They then approve the study and fund it, if they believe it has merit. Sometimes they turn out to be wrong. Sometimes the studies lead to spectacular discoveries. The point is that you cannot fault the process of science for any study or result. If you really want to blame someone one for what you consider waste, blame the funding agencies, they are the ones making the funding decisions.

As for creationism, all of the money they spend is wasted on propaganda and disinformation campaigns. None of it is spent on any real science, no publications are made in real journals and no discoveries have ever been made by creationists using any creationist model for research. If Dr. Dr. Dembski thinks his proposals have merit, then he can write a grant and find someone to fund them. If he doesn't want to do this, then no one is going to do it for him. His refusal to do this, or to publish anything in any real journal, tells you all you need to know about his agenda. Now if you disagree, you can feel free to write a grant proposal and test his ideas yourself. Good luck. We'll be waiting.

Kris asked:

“Why do some people believe that Bill Dembski is wrong about ID/creationism?”

Well first, he can't define his terms and always talks in vague generalities that aren't really testable. Second, he has no real scientific hypothesis to test. Third, he has no equations, no statistics and no predictions. Fourth, he refuses to write grant proposals, even to agencies that are begging him to. Fifth, he refuses to publish any of his supposed results in any real journal and give that excuse that it takes too long ( he has been giving this excuse for ten years now). Sixth, he appears to be completely ignorant of the relevant science and apparently isn't even qualified to understand the biological literature. Seventh, he continually lies and distorts and evades, to the point where he talks out of both sides of his mouth and no one is ever sure exactly what he is trying to say.

If you disagree, by all means, feel free to do all of these things. Unless and until you do, everyone is perfectly justified in their rejection of Dembski and his pesudo scientific mumbo jumbo, for which neither he nor anyone else has ever presented any evidence whatsoever.

It’s obvious from what I see posted here that most of you believe Dembski is totally wrong about ID/creationism because you believe you’re right about evolution, and that the two theories cannot co-exist.

You are absolutely certain that Dembski is an idiot who doesn’t know anything about valid scientific evidence or methods.

In other words, your mind is made up about Dembski because you’ve seen more than enough information already to be certain that Dembski is a delusional moron, and you feel perfectly confident and justified to fully act upon what you already know.

No more research or studies are necessary (even though no peer reviewed scientific studies have been done on Dembski) because you’re sure that they would definitely only reinforce what you already know about him.