The Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, William Dembski's current employer, has something rather curious on its website. If you look at their page of
upcoming conferences, here is what they have listed in the left-hand sidebar:
The Practice of Biblical Counseling
Certification in Biblical Counseling
The Family: Reclaiming a Biblical View
Intelligent Design in Business Practice
Can you spot the one that appears out of place? Me neither.
But anyway, yes, they really are having a conference called,
Intelligent Design in Business Practice. The flier for the conference comes complete with an obligatory ape-typing-at-keyboard graphic. Unfortunately, it does not say which of the speakers this is intended to represent.
If you're wondering what the heck ID could have to do with business practice, when it doesn't even have anything to do with science, then you're thinking what I'm thinking. All the pretense about ID being some dispassionate scientific theory -- not exactly believable to begin with -- is rather hard to maintain with them holding conferences that try to apply ID to things that have little or nothing to do with science. (Not to mention that even their supposedly "scientific" conferences tend to resemble
tent revivals.) As the
Wedge Document has promised us, ID is supposed to have "cultural implications" for "sex, gender issues, medicine, law, and religion". Business isn't listed there, but once you've declared that your theory makes sweeping dictates over all facets of human society, it's hardly a stretch to add business practices to the list.
Nevertheless, one has to wonder, given the history of the ID movement, exactly what useful advice the ID movement could possibly have to offer business. As luck would have it, I've gotten my hands on a preliminary schedule -- the only copy in existence as a matter of fact -- which I will post below the fold.
Friday, September 21
4:00--7:00 Registration
7:00--8:00 BANQUET
8:00-8:02 TWO MINUTES' HATE
8:02--9:00 PLENARY SESSION
"Finding Rich, Crazy Religious Nuts to Fund your Business" -- Phillip E. Johnson, winner of the Phillip E. Johnson Award.
9:00 Dismiss for Evening
10:30 Bedtime -- mandatory lights out.
_________________________________________________________________
Saturday, September 22
8:00-9:00 Breakfast, Coco-Puffs
9:00-10:00 PLENARY SESSION:
"Embroiling Your Company in Hopeless Lawsuits" -- Richard Thompson, Thomas More Law Center.
10:00-10:30 BREAKOUT PANEL DISCUSSIONS:
"Why Perjuring Yourself in Front of a Federal Court is Good for Business" -- Moderator: William Buckingham, former member of Dover Area School Board.
"Frivolous Lawsuits and Dishonest Press Releases" -- Moderator: Larry Caldwell, parent.
10:30-10:45 Break
10:45-11:45 PLENARY SESSION:
"Demonizing Your Business Rivals" -- Mark Hartwig, Access Research Network
11:45 - 12:15 BREAKOUT PANEL DISCUSSIONS:
"Associating Them With The Nazis -- It Never Gets Old" -- Moderator: Richard Weikart, Discovery Institute
"Why 'Epicurean' Should No Longer be Used as a Positive Selling Point" -- Moderator: Benjamin Wiker, Discovery Institute
12:15 - 1:30 LUNCH SESSION:
"Mutant Shrimp and the Sea Food Industry" -- Jonathan Wells, Discovery Institute
1:30 - 2:30 PLENARY SESSION:
"Lying about Survey Data to Inflate Your Company's Image" -- Michael Egnor, M.D.
2:30 - 2:45 Break.
2:45 - 3:45 PLENARY SESSION:
"The Immorality of Using Sex to Sell Products, Which by the way would have Never, Ever Happened without Darwinism" -- Nancy Pearcey, Anti-sex League.
3:34 - 4:45 PANEL DISCUSSION:
"Business Ethics, Who Needs It?"
Sounds fun! Hopefully, we can convince
Jason to go.
23 Comments
wolfwalker · 24 July 2007
Judging by the flyer, this is the same thing to ID that "social Darwinism" was to evolutionary theory: an attempt to connect science to business by using science-based buzzwords to redefine a business concept that was already in existence. "Social Darwinism" was just laissez-faire economics by another name; what SBTS describes as "intelligent design in business" is a jargonized variant on concepts that businesses have been successfully applying for the last thirty or forty years.
The primary difference, of course, is that a hundred years ago the economic far right was using a well-supported scientific theory to prop up an insupportable business model. Today, the religious far right is trying to use a well-supported business model to prop up an insupportable "scientific" theory.
sparc · 24 July 2007
Bill Gascoyne · 24 July 2007
OT: Libya Six freed
Glen Davidson · 24 July 2007
Glen Davidson · 24 July 2007
I like the "scheduled talks," btw.
I think that there is some reasoning behind this pretense that the "science" of intelligent design applies to business, namely that it completes the circle. ID is the mere projection of human design onto the non-designed world, mostly by business folk, engineers, mathematicians, and anthropocentric god-botherers (explaining the biologist and biochemist who ought to know better).
It's kind of like, well, they "know" that organisms are designed because they "look designed" (I posted the bit about Jason first for a reason) to anyone without a biology education (or those dedicated to denying the rampant non-design characteristics of biology). Then they utilize this "science" and show how it fits in with business processes as well. It's more or less a sorites, of course, but since our "pathetic level of detail" is ignored in favor of pathetic analogies and a dedicated plan to ignore whatever details they are asked to explain, weaving a circle of analogies which bypass the onerous task of explanation is their imperative. "Applying" ID to business is just their way of affirming their false analogies in a kind of circular reasoning, and perhaps also operates as a pretense that something has been learned from "intelligent design biology" in the same way that genetic algorithms were authentically abstracted from evolutionary theory and redesigned for our own purposes.
The fact that they have no evidence to back up their claims has never bothered them before, so there will be no sense now that that they need actual evidence for their claims that ID is an application of authentic science.
Glen D
http://www.geocities.com/interelectromagnetic
Moses · 24 July 2007
That was really funny. Good work.
Daniel Phelps · 24 July 2007
This "conference" will probably go over big. The fundamentalist/religious conservative mindset has always been gaga over "motivational speakers" and ways to improve "bid-ness." I think Dembski would be better off working in this field than his present track.
Bunjo · 24 July 2007
A late addition to the sessions:
"The Non-materialist Paradigm and what it means for selling concrete blocks" - Dr. Dr. William Dembski (he has two PhDs you know)
shinka · 24 July 2007
Two more events
-Entertainment 5.00 - 7.00 PM - DaveScott Springer
-How to get ahead by hectoring - on all days during the breaks - Denyse "Buy my book" O'Leary
Henry J · 24 July 2007
Re "Dr. Dr. William Dembski (he has two PhDs you know)"
Does that make him a paradocs?
Henry
Christophe Thill · 25 July 2007
Well, if you're doing business as a designer, then you'd better do it intelligently, I guess ?
Ian · 25 July 2007
I'd be curious as to what's being presented at "The Family: Reclaiming a Biblical View".
Does this involve reinstituting sacrifice of the first-born, putting father against son and mother against daughter, "ripping up" those who are pregnant, passing off your wife as your sister, kidnapping virgin daughters, fraudulently claiming birthrights, and having sex with your father to continue the race?
Torbjörn Larsson, OM · 25 July 2007
Mr_Christopher · 25 July 2007
You forgot
"How to make money lying for Jesus" - Casy Luskin, DI
Hamlet · 25 July 2007
Two of the actual events at this conference caught my eye.
9:00---10:00
PLENARY SESSION
"What Is Intelligent Design and Why Is It Important?"
Dr. William A. Dembski, Southwestern Seminary
12:30---2:00
Lunch
LUNCH SESSION
"History and Prospects of the Intelligent Design Movement"
Dr. Ide Trotter, Trotter Capital Management
I'm rather curious what they think the "prospects" intelligent design are.
J-Dog · 25 July 2007
Hamlet - Judging by past performance, if you sell this sh*t short, you would make a whole lot of money.
What actual businessman would want a smarmy academic trying to tell them how to run their business anyway?
jimf · 25 July 2007
Erasmus, FCD · 26 July 2007
Steve, the Dembskian echo-chamber is claiming that you are a paid shill. Please address this. I suspect that is just street theater. If true let me know how I can collect money from those rubes myself.
Steve Reuland · 26 July 2007
Those bastards haven't sent me a paycheck in weeks. "Paid" shill is no longer operative until I straighten these guys out.
Dene Bebbington · 27 July 2007
I thought we weren't allowed to say anything about the designer, but seems we can after all:
"Intelligent designers are not micromanagers, who short-circuit the freedom and creativity that organizations need to thrive. At the same time, intelligent designers do not encourage unbridled autonomy, which sets organizations adrift, causing them to lose focus and discipline."
So God's a manager.
"By striking a proper balance between guidance and autonomy, intelligent designers promote a synergy between organization and leadership that can actualize undreamt possibilities."
Oh no, not only is God a manager, he's learnt the art of bullshit terminology.
Dene Bebbington · 28 July 2007
Some late additions to the schedule:
William Dembski: The Waterloo factor and the importance of good relationships within an organisation
David Springer: An R&D strategy - my experience with growing mushrooms
Paul Nelson: Why time to market matters - what we can learn from my much touted but never published monograph
johnnyb: Why training is the key to success - my story of failed attempts at programming using peek and poke
Discovery Institute: Keeping information secret and from competitors - The Wedge document as a case study in failure
dhogaza · 30 July 2007
Henry J · 30 July 2007