Here's an interesting comment from Dembski explaining why ID advocates don't just "get to work" producing research that might confirm their views:
What have you experienced at the hands of scientific materialists? Are you aware of the Sternberg case? The pressures directed against frontline ID proponents are real. From your armchair, it is easy enough to say that we need simply to get to work. But families and livelihoods really are under threat by these Darwinian fascists, and when our days are spent trying to shore up the latter, the former does not get done.
Note to Casey Luskin: here is yet another instance of your side comparing us to fascists. I'm sure you'll jump right on that and take Dembski to task for that comparison, as you did our side for comparing creationists to holocaust deniers. Oh, wait, I forgot - Luskin has changed his position completely and started making such comparisons himself. Anyway, on to Dembski's comment...
The problem with Dembski's claim is that it just doesn't match up to reality. There are plenty of ID supporters safely ensconced either in religious universities where there is no threat at all (he and Paul Nelson, for example), or in tenured positions with their own labs (Minnich, Seelke, Behe). Behe is easily the most prominent pro-ID scientist and no one has ever even hinted at trying to threaten his job. He has a biochemistry lab at Lehigh. Why has he not produced any research to support ID? Because he thinks, oddly, that it's up to other people to disprove his claims rather than up to him to prove them. From his testimony in Kitzmiller:
Q. And you also propose tests such as the one we saw in "Reply to My Critics" about how those Darwinians can test your proposition?
A. Yes.
Q. But you don't do those tests?
A. Well, I think someone who thought an idea was incorrect such as intelligent design would be motivated to try to falsify that, and certainly there have been several people who have tried to do exactly that, and I myself would prefer to spend time in what I would consider to be more fruitful endeavors.
So here we have one very prominent pro-ID scientist who even claims to have devised ways to test his claims, yet he refuses to actually put those tests into action because it's up to others to disprove them and he'd rather do other things. No "fascist" threats to his family or his well-being to prevent him from doing so, just a simple choice not to do so. The same is true of Seelke or Minnich. All three are qualified to do the research, all have access to their own labs, all have tenure.
Surely the DI could give them a grant to do such research, if it could actually be done? If they can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on PR campaigns in Kansas to win elections that they will now declare to be unimportant, so surely they can spare a few bucks to do the actual research that their own Wedge document declared was the necessary first phase in order to avoid being an exercise in propaganda. If they can spend the money to hire a major PR firm to handle their work, surely they can give a grant to one of these well-placed scientists to do some actual research.
For that matter, the DI announced a few months ago that they were setting up their own lab in Seattle to do such research, putting it well out of the reach of us Darwinian brownshirts. Has anyone heard a peep about it since then? Has Dembski himself, safe in a seminary job far from the Nazi stormtroopers of his imagination, ever tried to apply his explanatory filter or his CSI claims to objects in the natural world? Not that I'm aware of. This is sounding a lot like the "dog ate my homework" excuse.
- Log in to post comments
I can see it now, BEHE ON ID: "I myself would prefer to spend time in what I would consider to be more fruitful endeavors." Too bad our side believes in evidence instead of quote mining for fun and profit.
In fact, dogs are designed to eat homeworks.
Apparently Dembski's comment underwent a bit of unmentioned historical revisionism. It now reads (emphasis added):
Note that "fascists" was replaced by "enforcers", probably in deference to his post of a week or so ago where he expressed a desire to take the higher road. And "does not get done" is replaced by "gets short shrift"...doesn't look good to admit that no work gets done in actually supporting the theory. And the rest after that simply tacked on, all without comment.
The commentor apollo230 is very upset that John Lynch used the word "fascists", which wasn't Dembski's word, no sir. Wonder how that turns out?
So, Dembski was 'highly productive' in that 5 year period?
Where are his publications? Where is his original research?
Whats that? He meant that he was highly productive writing vanity press gibbersih and blog posts?
Oh, right....
P.S.: What happened to the "Recent Comments" links?
Methinks we will start hearing stuff out of that lab. You can't go on ragging them for not doing research without them wising up and at least concluding that they need to at least pretend to do some.
And when they actually do start trying to push research out of that lab, I think it will be a huge PR victory for them, because newspapers will just eat up splashy headlines about "study shows that X must have been designed." Of course, it will still be the same old, same old bullshit, but it will have enough of the veener of legitimate work that they can both catch the ear of at least some dumb shumcks in some press offices, and certainly can bitch about journals rejecting it because of their "metaphysical biases." Mark my words. This ID movement may be a keystone cops operation, but they are far more flexible and crafty in some cases than the original scientific creationists ever were. They'll keep at this thing, and we have to be ready for it.
Dembski's argument is like those I heard in the playground many many years ago. From little kids. Little kids who wouln't tell the truth.
I can just see the headline announcing the results of ID research: "NEW SPECIES CREATED IN LAB BY INTELLIGENT DESIGNER (WHO MIGHT NOT BE GOD)"
Wow, that's funny. Dembski calls us "Darwinian fascists", then changes his wording. One of his followers takes us to task for quoting the original wording, but Dembski doesn't bother to tell him that in fact we did quote him accurately, but he went back and changed it after our posts were up. We'll just add that to the pile of deceit.
I doubt it, plunge. The fact that they don't even attempt to do research is the best evidence, I think, that even they don't believe their b.s. There are true believers out there, but people won't waste money on something unless they believe it can be successful.
Adding to this - some schools are liberal, some are not. For example, how many fundamentalist/evangelical colleges exist? IF there was a genuine conspiracy, and IF these people wanted to establish ID as a science, then one obvious thing to do would be to establish a network of ID-friendly biology departments.
even is his claim IS true, that doesn't say much for him as a person; imagine how less advanced society would be right now if scientists always gave up so easily
With all the money that the DI has, can't it afford a little electronic journal to publish this "research"? Technical articles by ID-iots exposed to scrutiny aren't forthcoming, now are they? The only "work" they expose is in their books, which, of course, are not highly technical as they are aimed at their Evangelical supporters, AND have already been debunked.
My bet is that the DI will be around for quite a while, with all the rich fundies out there who drool after the idea of injecting ANYTHING resembling God/religion back into the public school systems. But, my bet is that the longer this sham goes on, some of the more moderate (read: honest) ID-iots will lose faith in the promise of data. And, stories like Sternberg's can only tide you over for so long, in the face of obvious resources at their disposal to publish the work themselves.
I'm currently working at ISI, the company that produces the annual Journal Citation Reports. I have access to their entire archives. Dating back to 1900. There are a total of 2 [count them, 2] articles or reviews [aka "citable material"] that are positively about "intelligent design" in biology [lots of computer science and engineering articles], both by Behe. There are also some meaningless letters, book reviews, etc etc, but those do not fall under the category, according to ISI, of a contribution to the scientific literature. I'll see if I can find the exact articles.
Too bad Dembski didn't ratchet up the rhetoric just a little bit from "fascists" to "Nazis" or "Hitler." I could have produced a most amusing Hitler Zombie piece on the issue.
However, I can wait. Now that Dembski has used the term "fascist" to describe us, it won't be long before the Fuhrer Zombie takes a chunk out of his brain, causing him to break Godwin's rule.
Orac-
This isn't the first time Dembski has made such comparisons. In the past, he's compared "Darwinists" to Stalinists and to the Taliban.
I can't say I wouldn't mind having the authority to beat Dembski with a stick for making too much noise while walking, but alas, cruel cruel world, I can not.
I suppose the only thing we can do is make tyrannical demands for evidence. Poor Dembski. Poor Iders, caught in the unyeilding snares of this terrible Dawinist regime, suppressed into silence, and surely forced into hiding because of all the threats against their families.
I'd almost feel sorry for them... if I didn't think it was the lamest and most ridiculous load of crap I've ever heard.
Call the waaaahmbulance.
During World War II, Jaques Monod fought in the French Resistance by day, and snuck into the Institut Pasteur by night to continue the experimentation that ultimately earned him a Nobel Prize.
Ed, the DI announced it had a "lab" back in April 2004. Two+ years of silence.
DanM, the IDers have launched several journals: the shortlived Origins & Design, edited by Paul Nelson with articles by YEC's, and Dembski's ISCID journal which was not completely but partially ID oriented. The logico-mathematic-philosophical article explaining Everything by the official Smartest Man In The World, bar bouncer Chris Langdon, was pretty much it's death knell.
...and when our days are spent trying to shore up the latter, the former does not get done.
What does he mean by the former and the latter? Is this referencing something not in the quote, or does he mean that they are "shoring up" their livelihoods, which means that work does not get done?
Refusing to do your own research and instead demanding that the "establishment" do it for you is the hallmark of the pseudoscientific crank. The "altmed" proponents do it; they have the same list of excuses for why they can't do their own research. So does NARTH (the group that claims homosexuality is a treatable disorder); they can't get published in peer-reviewed journals because of "homosexual bias" (i.e. they refuse to conduct studies to the same standards required of everyone else). And in turn, their excuses are exactly the same as those used by the inventors of perpetual motion machines, er, excuse me, I mean free energy devices.
Maybe for those folks who get their news straight from Agape Press, but I am encouraged by the change in tone WRT ID in the mainstream media since the Kitzmiller decision.
Um, Pablo is right, the former and latter are ambiguous. Taking the nearest pair of antecedents, Dembski might be saying: "when our days are spent trying to shore up our livelihoods, our families do(es) not get done."
Or I suppose it could be: "when our days are spent trying to shore up the Darwinian fascists, the families and livelihoods do(es) not get done."
It's easy to tell when someone is not making sense, but telling which sense they are not making can be a lot tougher.
BTW, which one of you Darwinian fascists threatened Dembski's family? 'Fess up now.
Someone should invent an explanatory filter to explain what Dembski is trying to say. The man does not have a gift for clear communication.
IDists claim to work on biological information. Strange though that I could not find any link to NCBI, ENSEMBL, expasy or even just Pubmed on ResarchID.org.
BTW, Dembksi found a new journal in Germany (http://www.professorenforum.de/volumes/index.html) in which to publish. While his articles are in english the rest, unfortunately, is in german.
I'm a German, so I checked on the Professorenforum. Please excuse any spelling and grammar mistakes, I'm not regularly writing in English.
Professorenforum is an interest group of university professors who want to promote science on a christian basis by showing the relevancy of christian tenets for science. They claim to be interdenominiational, but as far as I can see, their financial and administrative backing comes from a german evangelical fundamentalist organisation called Campus für Christus (campus for christ). Campus für Christus focuses on university students and post-graduates. The aim is to create a christian elite to get more influence in German society and has failed miserably so far.
Most members of the Professorenforum seem to belong to the humanities, theology, social sciences, economy, law, and engineering, only a tiny fraction has a science background. I found no biologist or life science person.
I find it rather strange that American ID people choose to publish there:
1) In Germany, ID and creationism is seen as some sort of creepy US folklore. Nobody takes it seriously.
2) Even evangelical christian groups do not propose ID or creationism very openly in the general public. They have it in their books, of course, but nobody reads them, except their own folks.
3) With several years experience in German universities (student and research assistant in the Humanities) and good contacts to christian groups there, I never stumbled over the Professorenforum. Which means, either my christian contacs weren't that good or...
So what's he doing over here?
TinaDo says:
It's all part of the public relations plan. Rather than doing any actual science (which can't be done anyway since ID does not offer any positive testable theory) they have instead focused on lobbying, supporting ID-friendly school board candidates, publishing pop-books and websites, and releasing press statements. Part of that scheme includes taking ID international, to make it appear as if it has more than just local American right-wing fundamentalist appeal. They probably don't really care at all if it's a non-starter in Germany. They just want to claim that there is "interest" in Germany (and other countries) and therefore that ID is "growing" and Darwinism is "dying".
It's all about appearance, not substance.
TinaDo,
The organization you speak of sounds like it could be related to the American evangelical group called Campus Crusade for Christ. They are active on college campuses in the US, and in secondary schools where they are called Campus Life.
They are all very "fundamental" in nature and they are strict Bible literalists. I am not surprised that they are promoting Creationism.
"1) In Germany, ID and creationism is seen as some sort of creepy US folklore. Nobody takes it seriously." - TinaDo
Creepy US folklore. I love that phrase.
"... then one obvious thing to do would be to establish a network of ID-friendly biology departments."
In Michelle Goldberg's book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, she states that there are 188 courses on Creation Science in evangelical colleges.
Which doesn't make any sense because the "Designer" could have "designed" nature to be "bottom up", whatever that means. Jeez, what is it with those guys. Anyway, that reminded me of this pharyngula post. In particular: this image. Lol.
188 courses on creation science at evangelical colleges -- not one at a major university, not one at a major Christian university, not one that has a lab section that might make researchers.
And the funny part: 20 years on with ID, and they can't even get the evangelicals to go for it; the evangelicals stick with creationism.
Oh that's all part of the master plan. The ID research of the very near future will be done largely in the minds of the researchers. It's faster that way and will give them an edge over all the slow, doddering old Darwinists who must waste time sweating at the dig site or growing slimy things in dishes. Plus, they don't have to spend money on expensive lab equipment.