The Monthly Dembski Watch – July 2007 Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Posted by Henry in anti-creationism, anti-evolution, anti-fundamentalism, Behe, creationism, Dembski, evolution, fundamentalism, intelligent design, materialism, MIT, rationality, religion, Richard Dawkins, science, Uncommon Descent.3 comments
This is a summary of Bill Dembski’s July posts at Uncommon Descent. I started this last month when I was utterly appalled by Dembski’s classless act of making fun of Coyne’s physical appearance. Since then I have been interested in what Dembski writes, and this post is a result of it. I am particularly curious in what kind of positive contribution Dembski (and ID in general) can provide. Note that it is not the purpose of this post to provide anything substantial; it is merely a summary with some element of sarcasm (with people like him – why not?).
So these are what Bill has written in July 2007 (in reversing chronological order):
27th of July – SCIENCE’S BLIND SPOT by Cornelius Hunter
This is a short post from Bill recommending an anti-science book to his audience.
26th of July – A Scoville Scale for Dangerous Questions
This is a good one from Dembski – he is using the scale that measures the hotness of chilli as a way of rating questions proposed to “materialists”. Bill can be very creative too.
24th of July – Intelligent Design in Business Practice
Dembski cries and feels sorry for ID and wants to make it go into business practices. Be aware, the emptiness of ID has turned from school classrooms to business offices! Let’s see what ID has to offer for the success of the economies around the world.
Bill says:
Get used to it: ID is going every place that Darwinism has gotten its fetid little fingers.
I am seriously worried about Dembski’s state of mental health, no kidding. His bitterness has turned to this me-against-the-world ill feeling which has shown time and time again.
20th of July – Casey Luskin interviews Robert Marks, director of Baylor’s Evolutionary Informatics Lab
A short post by Bill advertising for his colleague Robert Marks. If you have read Bill’s post earlier, they are actually writing a very important and critical academic papers on, er, disproving Jesus Tomb.
20th of July – Kevin Padian: The Archie Bunker Professor of Paleobiology at Cal Berkeley
For those who aren’t familiar with Padian, he is a paleontologist who testified in the now famous Kitzmiller v. Dover trial in 2005 which led to the defeat of the Intelligent Design side. Here is the entire testimony by Padian. Given this background, no wonder our oh-so-lovely Bill takes issue with Padian.
Bill creatively calls Padian the Archie Bunker this month, and as reported here last month Bill called the evolutionary biologist Coyne Hermant Munster. I am eagerly waiting what Dembski the creative soul will come up next month.
Incredibly Bill is actually on the defensive for once.
For a rebuttal of Dembski’s whining and vileness, see the wonderful Jason Rosenburg’s post here (and its comments). Jason said well to sum up William Dembski’s mentality:
Mentally healthy human beings do not write paragraphs like that.
Dembski – A Classless Bitter Soul Friday, June 29, 2007
Posted by Henry in anti-creationism, anti-fundamentalism, anti-ID, atheism, biology, Chu-Carroll, creationism, Dembski, Europe, evolution, faith, intelligent design, Jason Rosenhouse, Jerry Coyne, rationality, religion, science, Uncommon Descent, William Dembski.2 comments
A recent blog entry posted by William Dembski – one of the most prolific Intelligent Design proponent – has really infuriated me.
For those who do not know, Dembski posted a photo of the eminent evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne right next to a picture of Herman Munster – a Frankenstein monster from an old television show. That is right; Dembski is making fun of how Coyne looks. This sort of personal attack is low, despicable and inexcusable, and has provoked me to attack Dembski. Fellow blogger Jason Rosenhouse called Dembski “a classless, no-talent buffoon” in which I unapologetically agree.
That post was posted a couple of weeks ago. Since then I have tracked some of Dembski’s recent posts, and there is hardly any substance in any of them. They are simply short rants filled with bitterness, anger and negativity. You’d expect someone with Dembski’s qualification to do better than that. Don’t get me wrong – it is perfectly OK to post a rant or sarcastic mockery every now and then – but not continuously, not when you make fun of your opponent based on how he/she looks! This is truly sad.
Dembski in a grandpa’s sweater
So here is the list of Dembski’s posts for June 2007 in reversing chronological order.
25th June – Teaching ID = A crime against humanity
More short and bitter post by Dembski. I think he is at war against the Council of Europe. Here is what he is up against.
25th June – Dembski Interview with Mario Lopez
This is a transcript of an interview – perhaps the most positive post for this month.
22nd June – Have I been too hard on the NCSE?
Dembski complains about the National Center for Science and Education because of an advertisement states that an understanding of the separation between state and church, as well as the evolution vs. creationism is a plus.
21st June – Point-Counterpoint: Steven Weinberg vs. Eugenie Scott
I am not too sure what the point is?
An Incredibly Biased Straw-man Blog Post Against Atheism Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Posted by Henry in anti-creationism, anti-fundamentalism, anti-ID, atheism, creationism, DaveScot, evolution, faith, fundamentalism, God, intelligent design, rationality, religion, science, straw-man, Uncommon Descent.12 comments
The incredible ignorance of religious fundamentalists never ceases to amaze and offend. This time, the notorious blogger DaveScot at Uncommon Descent (an anti-evolution blog site) has done it again with a post that has to be one of the most childish and ignorant piece of writing I have come across.
Titled “Why Atheism Fails: The Four Big Bangs“, the essence of the blog can be summarised simply with the following extract:
Atheists respond to all these types of questions with essentially the same style answer. “We know God doesn’t exist. Therefore, since we’re here, though, it had to have happened this way. Thus, like the universe itself, life, mind, and morality all ‘just popped’ into existence out of nothingness.”
I call them the Four Big Bangs:
1’) the Cosmological (the universe “just popped” into existence out of nothingness).
2’) the Biological (life “just popped” into existence out of a dead thing).
3’) the Psychological (mind “just popped” into existence out of a brain).
4’) and the Moral (morality “just popped” into existence out of amorality).
For their many obfuscating words, the authors still don’t improve much beyond the “just popped” thesis, if at all.
It is recommended that you skip the rest of the blog – not only it offers nothing insightful and useful, worse, as the reader OhioJoe2 pointed out in his comment (comment number 5), it is full of utterly false, discriminating straw-man claims against scientists and atheists alike.
Behe Writes Richard Dawkins on “100 Most Influential People of the Year” of Time Magazine Friday, May 4, 2007
Posted by Henry in anti-creationism, anti-ID, creationism, evolution, faith, fundamentalism, intelligent design, Michael Behe, rationality, religion, Richard Dawkins, science, Time Magazine, top 100, Uncommon Descent.2 comments
It is well-known to Richard Dawkins’ fans and observers that he has been listed as one of the “100 Most Influential People of the Year” by Time Magazine. This is all very well, given that his book The God Delusion has been selling extremely well (in the UK and US anyway).
Now, what is interesting – and outrageous – is that the Time Magazine editor has asked Intelligent Design advocate Michael Behe to write an entry on Dawkins. This has understandably caused a mass outrage amongst bloggers. Just take a look at Pharyngula’s post. Needless to say I am equally appalled by Time Magazine’s journalistic choice.
What is even more interestingly though, is that according to a post on the Intelligent Design blog site Uncommon Descent, some portion of the original entry has been edited out by the magazine.
So, here is a copy of the entire original text submitted to Time Magazine by Behe:
Of his nine books, none caused as much controversy — or sold as well — as last year’s The God Delusion. Yet the leading light of the recent atheist publishing surge, Oxford University’s Richard Dawkins, has always been a man driven by the big questions. Born in Kenya in 1941 of British parents, he received a mild Anglican upbringing. But at the age of sixteen Dawkins discovered Charles Darwin’s theory, and thought he’d found a pearl of great price.
His academic career as an evolutionary biologist got off to a fast start in the 1970’s with his first book, The Selfish Gene, which argued a then-unfashionable notion: like many politicians in Congress, individual genes of a genome are looking out just for their own good. So if somehow an unconscious gene mutated to be copied more effectively, it would outcompete its fellow DNA fragments. The fundamental idea of this “gene-centered” view of evolution had been proposed by other researchers. But, using his remarkable gift of scientific exposition, Dawkins painted the abstruse concept so clearly, and drew out the logic of its problematic premises so brightly, that it quickly became evolutionary orthodoxy.
Evolution Space 