If you can’t beat them, mock them
This, at least, seems to be the Discovery Institute’s new tactic. Leading “Intelligent Design” proponent William Dembski has now taken up satirical impersonation. Dembski provides the voice for Judge John Jones (of Kitzmiller fame) in a Flash animation that mocks Judge Jones, portraying him as a pull-string puppet controlled by various persons who were on the anti-ID side of the Kitzmiller case. You can read more about the cartoon here. Earlier today, on his own blog, Dembski explained his motive as follows:
Just to be clear, my aim in this flash animation was not to shake up the convictions of convinced Darwinists. Rather, my aim was to render Judge Jones and his decision ridiculous in the eyes of many young people, who from here on will never take Darwinian evolution or him seriously. If the cost of accomplishing this is yet another lowering of my estimation in the eyes of PT or Richard Dawkins, that’s a price I’m only too glad to pay — heck, I regard that as a benefit of the deal.
In other words, the DI specifically and the ID movement in general have lost every legal challenge and have failed to produce any substantive science. Therefore, the new strategy is simply to try to scorn evolution by mocking a judge who correctly ruled that teaching Intelligent Design in science classes would be tantamount to teaching a religious doctrine there. I’m flabbergasted, but not surprised.
14 comments Christopher Heard | religion and science
Speaking of Dawkins, have you read The God Delusion like you intended to? If so, what did you think of it?
I saw William Dembski the other day in the seminary bookstore at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. I did a double-take and realized who he was. He was talking with another professor about projects he was working on.
I am not a “scientist” and so I am always a bit cautious to comment on “evolution.” I grew up being taught it was the devil. My biology teacher in high school was also my basketball coach. He was a lousy coach and I expected that he did not know his science either.
I am not convinced of the ‘evolutionary’ model. I have a few of Dembski’s books and have seen all the degrees he has (very impressive).
I marvel at the thought that Darwin’s ideas (over 100 years ago) are still strongly discussed and in some cases advocated as the paradigm of branches of sciences (e.g. in biology).
Obviously I am a student of scripture and the New Testament and no expert in evolutionary debate.
Years ago I bought a book by Benjamin Warfield (one of the Fathers of modern Fundamentalism) and the learned Warfield attempted in his day not to reject evolution but to harmonize it with scripture.
Out of curiosity what is your basis for criticizing the ID movement?
Xavier, I haven’t had time yet. The fall semester was way overloaded with busy-ness. I also haven’t yet seen it available as an audiobook, the format in which I “read” Francis Collins’s recent book. If Audible.com gets it in audio format, I’ll probably download it and make it my morning commute “reading” when the new semester begins. It’s still on my list! It’s just a matter of time …
David, my objections to the Intelligent Design movement are multiple. Just at the moment I’m in the throes of grading semester-end papers, and can’t take a lot of time to comment just now. One of my objections is quasi-methodological, quasi-ethical. The Intelligent Design movement likes to cast up a false dichotomy: “If we can cast doubts on evolutionary theory, then the only sane alternative is Intelligent Design.” But the dichotomy is bogus. If evolutionary theory were somehow severely weakned by scientific evidence (which hasn’t happened; the scientific evidence for evolution keeps getting stronger with every new experiment and discovery), that would not mean that ID should be accepted by default. And yet the ID argument, thus far, is entirely a negative one. Moreover, when ID proponents stoop to fart jokes to try to make evolution proponents look silly, it is the ID proponents themselves, not evolutionary biologists and paleontologists, who lose credibility.
By the way, don’t be overly impressed by degrees. Attend to the arguments. If those impress you, so be it. But just because Dembski has advanced degrees in mathematics doesn’t mean that he’s using those skills in ways that produce valid or convincing arguments.
Chris,
I would also add to your qualms about ID. ID would be science if it did these things:
1. Offered a fruitful research program, taking biology into new and data-rich areas of research.
2. Explained all the data evolutionary theory does PLUS more (i.e., displayed greater explantory range).
3. Submitted its research to peer review.
Right now, ID does none of the above.
Science is not conducted in legal courtrooms, pulpits, or the shelves of Barnes and Noble. It is done in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.
I agree with you, Richard. But I’m four hours late turning in my grades, haven’t finished grading term papers yet, and decided to just stick to the immediate matter at hand. :-)
One problem, of several, that I have with the ID movement relates to its theology of creation. It seems to me that it is saying that, as God’s creation developed over time, it would get stuck. In order to get it unstuck, he had to poke his figurative finger in and attach a rotor to a flaggelum or peform some other external mechanical fix, for example. This is a kind of creation that proceeds in starts and stops and needs fiddling around with.
Perhaps, on the other hand, “God got it right the first time” as a rabbi I read somewhere has said. Evolution is compatible with that view of how God brought us about.
Steve, if “Evolution is compatible with … ‘God got it right the first time’”, & if Evolution is incompatible with a literal reading of Genesis 1 (i.e., 6 days, not billions of years), then wouldn’t you agree that we’re left with a dichotomy: Either a literal reading of Genesis 1, & God got it right the first time; or Genesis 1 as a complete fable, & an otherwise-undocumented god got it right the first time using Evolution? Or is that a false dichotomy?
A little off-topic, but I’d like to suggest a book for David Ritsema that introduced me to the beauty and comprehensibility of evolution through natural selection.
Since his blog is in your blogroll, I hope no one will mind. Carl Zimmer’s At the Water’s Edge is simply a wonderful introduction and free of the Dawkins school of condescending quips.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684856239/carlzimmercom/002-7969396-8788028
G.M., I do think it’s a false dichotomy. I’ve previously blogged about that and other false dichotomies before, so I’ll just use the links and not repeat myself here in the comments section. However, I’m happy to elucidate my own views if those previous posts leave unanswered questions. In fact, I plan to offer either one or, more likely, a series of posts answering David’s question (above) more thoroughly.
Xavier: I have begun “reading” (in audiobook form) The God Delusion. Look for my posts about it to start appearing soon.
G. M., I take it to be the same God of the Bible, not an otherwise-undocumented one.
Prof. Heard, you misinterpreted my question to Steve. I did not state that there were only 2 possible interpretations; I’m fully aware of the popular attempts to harmonize scientific evolution with Biblical creationism. I began with an “if” & was referring to Steve’s “perhaps”. A limited, hypothetical scenario.
Steve, why then did “the same God of the Bible” create only herbivores (per Gen 1:29-30)? Every evolutionary science book tells us that the fossil record contains evidence of carnivorism over millions of years. These 2 verses are not just a theological paean as Prof. Heard has stated; they offer a science datum. It would’ve been just as poetic to say “I’ve given you every green herb and every moving thing for meat…” It seems that whoever wrote/redacted Gen 1 also contributed Gen 9:3, & that they were attempting to communicate a very specific biological idea.
To any Biblical minimalists who may be lurking: Why would any Persian/Hellenistic/Roman Jew(s) want to communicate this particular detail the way they did in the midst of a paean?
[...] Dawkins does go on to supply one more quotation from the 1909 CE, itself quoting Gregory Thaumaturgus (one or two paragraphs into the lengthy essay). What Dawkins doesn’t bother to tell his readers is that his first quotation from the CE entry “The Blessed Trinity” is less than two complete sentences out of the first, introductory paragraph, a paragraph that simply describes the dogma. One can hardly expect the introductory paragraph of a 13,800-word essay to unpack all of its reasoning in the space of 59 words within the opening paragraph! Yet when the 1909 CE entry on the Trinity fails to do this impossible and unreasonable task, Dawkins deploys sarcasm rather than employing actual analysis. Again, I really have no dog in the Trinitarian race, but if you’re going to criticize a widely-held and long-held belief, at least try to understand it. Don’t just try to mock it into submission. On this score, Dawkins is almost (but not quite) as bad as Dembski. [...]