Discovery Institute Tells PA Legislature to Stop

Speaking of name changes, that apparently is about the limit of productivity of ID advocates. Rather than develop some science, these folks think that all that matters is finding the right label to slap on the same icky product that has been sitting neglected on the shelves.

Speaking of name changes, that apparently is about the limit of productivity of ID advocates. Rather than develop some science, these folks think that all that matters is finding the right label to slap on the same icky product that has been sitting neglected on the shelves.

Too bad trademarks aren't applicable here.

In the commercial marketplace, if you purposely try to make your labels look really similar to the leading brand, in hopes that confused consumers will buy your brand instead, I believe you can be sued for trademark infringement.

Dembski's latest "re-branding" is clearly an attempt to do exactly that.

Design theory is a scientific inference based on scientific evidence, not religious texts.

Indeed, intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory

LOVE IT

Please please please pass HB1007. And while you're at it, rename it Divine Design.

I love the IDers. It's the Keystone Kops.

William Dembski is the Dogberry of Intelligent Design.

Exactly! "Old and unimproved." They have come full circle. It doesn't even make an attempt to distinguish itself from good ol' fashion creationism with a bogus argument about being a scientific theory. ***IT IS CREATIONISM*** Can we please agree to just call it that and ignore any directives from the DI to call what they want us to call it?

It's as though the whole ID thing was a decade long process meant to launder creationism of it's religion and leave a patina of "science" on it, like laundering money by sending it overseas. Let's not let them get away with it. Whenever they say "teach the controversy" make an effort to remember to say "creationism". When they angrily claim it isn't, tell them that the term has been in use for two decades, adequately describes what they're doing, and is understood by the majority of the public. No need to invent another new term. Every claim to science has already been made by Duane Gish in the 80's. Nothing different.

Yes, I think divine design is the most accurate of the descriptive labels we've seen.

Intelligent Design doesn't work because despite refusing to specify the designer, IDers exclude from consideration the properties of the only kind of intelligence in the universe we KNOW exists: human intelligence...that is, they refuse to say things like, "We know intelligence works like so in humans at least, so we predict properties X and Y but not W and Z if this system is intelligently designed."

Creationism doesn't quite work either because the term contains scriptural baggage many IDers have reportedly rejected: Young earth, Flood Geology.

Divine Design captures the idea (utterly clear from the IDers' writings) of a supernatural cause without biblical details we know are false.

I think we should all start calling it divine design!

Re: Leonard's PhD defense at OSU

We need their proposed legislation to "protect academic freedom" referred to as attached to the letter, but not printed by the DI. Predictably, they are moving to prohibit the kind of examination Leonard's thesis is getting.

MIKE: It doesn't even make an attempt to distinguish itself from good ol' fashion creationism with a bogus argument about being a scientific theory. ***IT IS CREATIONISM***

As a member of the Pennsylvania Council of Professional Geologists, I have spent the last 5 months campaigning to get the organization to issue a position statement I wrote against the teaching of creationism of any flavour. We are about to publish in time for the newspapers right here in our home county of York (host of the infamous town of Dover, PA). The statement is also being sent to the PA House Education Committee and the General Assembly, and we are trying to convert it to an amicus brief for the pending trial in September re: the Dover School District policy. It wasn't an easy row to hoe, as there are, surprisingly, many ultra-religioius geologists here in Pennsylvania - and they bucked at what I was proposing.

I will post a link to the statement as soon as it is uploaded to the web page (should be in a day or two)

"Creationism doesn't quite work either because the term contains scriptural baggage many IDers have reportedly rejected: Young earth, Flood Geology."

Tough. Screw 'em. Using a new term doesn't help communication with the general public.

A portion of a phone interview withe West by local NPR affiliates was played yesterday. Essentially the DI is against 'mandating' ID in the curriculum but in favor of allowing faculty to discuss ID as part of the growing controversy on the theory of evolution. One could get more Clintonesque (depends on what your meaning of is is), but it would be hard

What we're seeing here is the bad fruit resulting from DI's strategy to appeal to the public instead of going the slower and sober peer reviewed route (not that it has much of a chance there either). Behe, Dembski, et al went to great lengths to strip away overt references to religion, despite evidence that a religious purpose was core to Intelligent Design (see Wedge document; also, follow the funding money). But those hypocrisies didn't stop DI fellows from repeatedly claiming that religion had nothing to do with ID. And they might have even gotten away with it if they had an audience that was better trained. Their decision (perhaps inevitable) that public support could somehow lead to scientific credibility was fatal. Science is neither a democracy nor a lynch mob. Because for all their babying and instructing about what ID 'is', once it got in the hands of the plebeians, ID inevitably became about what the public wanted it to be - a religious rebuke of Darwin. Wide-eyed school boards around the country read the articles the DI managed to push and bought the package, but didn't read the disclaimer: don't say the R word! The Thomas More Center never really understood this, which is why there was a falling out in Dover. This seems to indicate more fallout. It's part and parcel of the great conundrum of the intellectual archconservative -- how do you hide the fact that the most fervent supporters of your theories are viciously and proudly anti-intellectual?

William Dembski is the Dogberry of Intelligent Design.

William Dembski is the dingleberry of Intelligent Design.

The Thomas More people do seem to be spectacularly stupid. You'd think that a bunch of lawyers would know about things like the Lemon test and, you know, the first amendment. But they insist on proudly proclaiming how they want to establish their religion. They're not likely to win many cases that way.

"The Thomas More people do seem to be spectacularly stupid. You'd think that a bunch of lawyers would know about things like the Lemon test and, you know, the first amendment. But they insist on proudly proclaiming how they want to establish their religion. They're not likely to win many cases that way."

Agreed. If I were trying to win a case for teaching ID as science, I would stay a million miles away from anyone associated with the ID movement, because they are all fatally tainted and don't do science anyway. I would use real science done by real scientists, like this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2122619.stm

to show that it is perfectly scientific to hypothesis that imperfect replicators could be designed by natural intelligent agents using technology very much like what we have today. I'd emphasize that ID doesn't dispute common descent, and that research on assembling things like viruses is scientific support for a design origin of life on earth just like research on ways organic molecules can self organize support abiogenesis. I wouldn't say a word about atheism or naturalistic bias in science; I would embrace methodological naturalism as the only firm ground on which science can function. I think this could pass constitutional muster, but who would be happy about teaching schoolkids that they might have evolved from bacteria designed by ET?

Because for all their babying and instructing about what ID 'is', once it got in the hands of the plebeians, ID inevitably became about what the public wanted it to be - a religious rebuke of Darwin. Wide-eyed school boards around the country read the articles the DI managed to push and bought the package, but didn't read the disclaimer: don't say the R word! The Thomas More Center never really understood this, which is why there was a falling out in Dover. This seems to indicate more fallout. It's part and parcel of the great conundrum of the intellectual archconservative --- how do you hide the fact that the most fervent supporters of your theories are viciously and proudly anti-intellectual?

— scott pilutik

The local Philadelphia CLassical Music NPR station (WRTI) has been running a daily newsmagazine analysis of the ID controversy all week http://www.wrti.org/programming/schedule/feature/templeview.htm
- something new each day. Unfortunately, each day's analysis has begun with a quote from Behe (Lehigh Univ. is just up the turnpike from Philly). I wouldn't call the coverage UNbalanced, but first they interview Behe (well-rehearsed in the subject) and then provide a bland couterpoint from a Temple Univ biology professor (it it Temple U. public radio) who is NOT well-versed and rehearsed in the D.I. tactics.

I'm wating for the end of ht eweek to see how it all goes before responding.

They're not likely to win many cases that way.

So, anyone surprised that they didn't post the list of all those references to mainstream journal articles that support ID? They just sent the hard copy to the PA legislature, even though the letter goes on and on about how all this "mainstream" research supports their position.

What does their list contain, other than the retracted article by Myer and Behe's sub-par article in Protein Science? Is it just a rehash of the famous Ohio bibliography that NCSE debunked?

Just for starters, West and Cooper need the test case to be in a district where the school board has completely hidden the religious motivation, from the very beginning.

Ain't gonna happen.

(Does little "ID is Doomed" happydance)

At the same time, intelligent design is a relatively new theory, and it is important to allow scientific discussion of the theory to proceed unhampered by political or legal disputes

—

John West wrote: At the same time, intelligent design is a relatively new theory

I'm convinced ID will succeed, and I believe the monicker ID will stick. The question is what to do in the short-term if the courts beat it down in the public schools. I hate seeing our youth dying on the vine, being indoctrinated into a materialistic worldview in the name of science.

IE (intelligent evolution) may prove to be a useful stop-gap during the time that ID, let us hope not, gets trashed by the courts but, as now is looking ever more promising, succeeds scientifically.

So many words, so little theory.

In the sense Dembski uses, science really *does* require a "materialistic worldview." In the Islamic world, science receives almost no funding nor public respect. It doesn't attract the most intelligent and dedicated people. And this is entirely a cultural phenomenon: for science to work at all, evidence must trump preference. No scientist can succeed unless he places greater credibility in how things DO work, rather than in how he believes they ought to work. And this means science can never be a tool in the service of Faith or Belief. Maybe the appearance of science, the terminology and even limited lip service, but the core of science, what makes it effective, is antithetical to the religious approach.

The few Islamic scientists are well aware that this aversion to real knowledge explains almost entirely why they are backwards and why they stay backwards even as genuine science is embraced throughout the rest of the world. They marvel at the contrast with Asian societies, where matters of what we'd call religious faith, while deeply influential in Asian cultures, perceive no threat from genuine understandings.

Dembski's dream that real science can be harnessed to serve his religious fixations is impossible at the deepest levels, levels his believe system clearly prohibit him from understanding. He doesn't know what science IS, and I suspect he can't. The claim that true science must revolve around Jesus Christ illustrates the scope of that incomprehension better than anything I could possibly say.

So, now we have ID and IE. What next? IF? Intelligent Flim-flam?

Agape Press interviewed one of the legislators sponsoring the ID Bill at the following URL :
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/6/292005c.asp

(Sorry, I can't figure out how the kwickcode works.)

Ginger Yellow: But they insist on proudly proclaiming how they want to establish their religion. They're not likely to win many cases that way.

Critics of the legislation claim ID theory is a secular form of Bible-based creationism. Leh admits that he would prefer to see children taught that the universe and everything in it were created and did not evolve out of primordial slime. "Personally, I am a creationist," the Pennsylvania lawmaker says. "I don't hide that, and I certainly don't apologize for it. I think it takes far more faith to believe in evolution -- that things just appeared out of nothing -- than [to believe] they were created by an intelligent Creator, in the Christian sense."

I'm going to send emails to Leh and company, telling them not to listen to those Seattle lib'ruls. Keep up the fight! Take it all the way to the Supreme Court! Set the precedent!

While West and Cooper go on at length in their letter, the import is clear: don't call their tired old antievolution rhetoric "intelligent design"; just put the same content in the classrooms and call it "teaching the controversy", "scientific criticisms", or "evidence against evolution" instead.

But they will win more funding from their fanatical founder (see City of God: Tom Monaghan's coming Catholic utopia, or just google "Monaghan, Thomas More Law Center") - and that's a viable survival strategy.

It wasn't an easy row to hoe, as there are, surprisingly, many ultra-religioius geologists here in Pennsylvania - and they bucked at what I was proposing.

Teach the precedent! ;)

I think we should all encourage them to keep going on this, ignoring the atheistic DI who want to remove
"God" and replace him with aliens in the classroom to indoctrinate children into scientology and the raelians.

Let's show them the members of the ID movement in their tent, namely the crazy "alien creator" religions and let em have at it! No aliens are going to replace MY God as creator!

Teach the precedent! ;)

I think we should all encourage them to keep going on this, ignoring the atheistic DI who want to remove
"God" and replace him with aliens in the classroom to indoctrinate children into scientology and the raelians.

Let's show them the members of the ID movement in their tent, namely the crazy "alien creator" religions and let em have at it! No aliens are going to replace MY God as creator!

What we're seeing here is the bad fruit resulting from DI's strategy to appeal to the public

You can forgive the press for being confused. It just about beggars belief that the major ID organisation would be out there desperately trying to make sure that the school boards DON'T start mandating the teaching of the very thing the organisation has spent the better part of 10 years promoting.

The notion that they want to have the teaching of "evidence against evolution" mandated, without wanting to have their preferred alternative inserted into the gap, is going to be too subtle for most science correspondents, many of whom aren't science specialists anyway. It's more than a little Python-esque that the organisation in charge of propagating intelligent design is trying so hard to not have it taught.

While I agree the anti-evolution arguments of ID movement are patently recycled from standard biblical creationism, I am willing to grant that the ID movement has gone beyond creationism, if only slightly, in that they don't insist on evidence for specific biblical details.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone here encountered an actual ex-creationist whose eyes were opened by the DI's doublethink acrobatics? I admit I have not seen even a passing mention of any of this on any creationist site.

Actually, the creationists don't really seem to like them in fact, some of them even dislike the ID people more than they dislike 'evilutionists'. At least with our evilutionist atheism we just don't believe in God, but for the IDists who profess belief and God and then deny him (space aliens!) just makes them *angrier*.

My point may have been too muddled; let me try again...

The point is not that they aren't technically creationists...they are. The point is that to the PUBLIC, "creationism" means adherence to a biblical narrative about the origin of the universe and life. Some of the kansas folks were indeed shown to fit the standard YEC definition or something similar, but others did not. While many of the IDers at the Kansas hearings admitted to disbelieving common descent and old earth, as a creationist would, the most saleint thing about the responses we heard during Pedro's questioning was that they were largely inconsistent and noncommittal...you know, saying things like, " I believe the earth is anywhere from 10,000 to 4.5 Billion years old".

That ID can accomodate this kind of inconsistency in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus is, of course, part of the problem, but the public doesn't see that...the public sees a bunch of articulate, educated, prestigious-sounding folks who all agree "darwinism" is "problematic", but still apparently maintain diverse positions on how literal genesis should be taken -- Like it or not, the DI has successfully constructed an illusion of flexibility and agnosticism on issues the PUBLIC understands to be INflexible in creationism.

Calling IDers creationists may technically be correct, but I worry that, to the public, it perpetuates this myth that IDers are being unfairly maligned...that we are unfairly associating them with groups who hold positions that DI members don't all necessarily endorse. This has not gone unnoticed by laypeople I've chatted with who trying to make sense of the issue, but don't have science backgrounds.

It seems to me the one thing the DI absolutely cannot sweep under the rug is the notion that gods and other supernatural entities need to be allowed in scientific explanations, and this is the point they should be nailed on. "Divine Design" is a nice catchy way of highlighting this. I think it works just as well as "Creationism", but without YEC baggage that, at least as far as the public can see, IDers are not all committed to.

Mike Walker: So, now we have ID and IE. What next? IF? Intelligent Flim-flam?

—

I'd put in a bid for it really having started many thousands of years before that with Intelligent Apathy - the avoidance of thinking about something properly by declaring the subject religious and closed. Closely followed by Intelligent Bullying - gaining power over one's peers with whatever you made up in the IA stage beforehand.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone here encountered an actual ex-creationist whose eyes were opened by the DI's doublethink acrobatics? I admit I have not seen even a passing mention of any of this on any creationist site.

It seems perfectly clear to me that the anti-evolution folks are going to keep diluting the religious content of their cause until the courts give them a favorable decision.
That's the undercurrent of ID's "Wedge Strategy". They'll find an opening, ANY opening at all, and pry it open; even if they have to sacrifice the scripture-based crux of their message. That's not science, it's pure politics. Water down the message until it is politically (or legally) acceptable.
Of course, once ID is in the door, the religious message will resurface unfettered with a vengeance.

"I think it takes far more faith to believe in evolution -- that things just appeared out of nothing", Dennis Leh - from the linked interview
above ( http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/6/292005c.asp )

Thanks Dennis - that's the best definition of evolution I've heard so far. These folks are great - trhey can't even be bothered to find out what the thing they disagree with IS.

"I think it takes far more faith to believe in evolution --- that things just appeared out of nothing"

It seems perfectly clear to me that the anti-evolution folks are going to keep diluting the religious content of their cause until the courts give them a favorable decision.

"William Dembski is the Dogberry of Intelligent Design."

LOL! And he never lets us forget he's an ass!

"William Dembski is the dingleberry of Intelligent Design."

Whoa! That's good too. But in this case Steve was referring to the boneheaded constable in Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing". Which, come to think about it, seems to be an especially appropriate description of ID.

If you haven't read or seen it yet, I for one highly recommend it.

Hahaha glad you appreciated it. The only problem is, Dogberry is (unintentionally) accurate compared to Dembski. I still thought it was funny, though.

"The only problem is, Dogberry is (unintentionally) accurate compared to Dembski."

Right. Clearly in Dembski and ID's case those "shallow fools" have brought nothing to light.

My goodness are all of you so precious or what!?
I have never seen such a hearty back-patting session in a long time.
"Dembski's a jerk!!!"
"ID is for IDiots"
"what a bunch of charlatans"....

What is motivating you guys?
There's hardly a dissenting voice on this page to maintain the rage you express. After awhile (if I agreed with your stance) I'd be like "hmmmm, I patted just about every other back on this forum... think I'll find something else to do".

Well, since it's not the voice of dissension... what could it possibly be?
Fear?

Well, since it's not the voice of dissension . . . what could it possibly be? Fear?

— TimL

What is motivating you guys?

What is motivating you guys?

In the commercial marketplace, if you purposely try to make your labels look really similar to the leading brand, in hopes that confused consumers will buy your brand instead, I believe you can be sued for trademark infringement.

lo and behold...

IntelligentDesign is taken, but NOT Intelligent Design (yes they are different)

Irreducible Complexity is NOT taken (nor is there anything even close to it)

Sudden Emergence is NOT taken (again nothing even close to it)

Theory of Evolution is NOT taken

hmm. most interesting.

I'll give you guys till EOD monday to think about this, and then I might register these myself.

could result in some VERY interesting things...

Yeah ....The marketing thing its funny how .....ID is the same as ID
Think about it for a while.
Sir_Toejam
What was that pain killing stuff the old boy was taking in Dover?
Sounds like -- the so called "trust hormone"

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/051208_trustfrm.htm

The id is an important part of our personality because as newborns, it allows us to get our basic needs met. Freud believed that the id is based on our pleasure principle. In other words, the id wants whatever feels good at the time, with no consideration for the reality of the situation. ... The id doesn't care about reality, about the needs of anyone else, only its own satisfaction. If you think about it, babies are not real considerate of their parents' wishes. They have no care for time, whether their parents are sleeping, relaxing, eating dinner, or bathing. When the id wants something, nothing else is important.