Smarmy Sal Cordova, the Eddie Haskell of the Intelligent Design movement, is at it again, with a post in which he pretends to be competent at information theory. It is with great delight that I watch Tyler DiPietro and Mark Chu-Carroll hand his ass back to him. I know full well the creationist clowns are utterly ignorant of biology; it’s interestingly consistent to see that they also know nothing about astronomy and mathematics, and as the Dover trial showed, they’re complete boobs about the law. What exactly are they supposed to be good at again?
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
What exactly are they supposed to be good at again?
Lying and slandering in God’s name, duh.
Stanton,
I was about to say: making shit up.
I like your post better though.
Umm… appealing to ignorance?
I think they are good at propaganda; they have people believing that evolutionists are “censoring” intelligent design.
What exactly are they supposed to be good at again?
Why, they can just look at a bird or a flagellum, and recognize instantaneously that it was designed. Biologists spend years studying the same things and can never find the design. That’s prima facie evidence that IDists are much better at biology than those who have had their minds warped by Darwinistic theology.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm
I was talking to a friend tonight who told me that a Japanese friend of hers (we’re in Japan) said to her the other day, dramatically,
“Did you know that there are people in America who don’t accept the facts about evolution?”
My friend stared at her. Yes, she knew, but she didn’t quite know how to respond. Her friend went on,
“Not in Africa, or some place where people can’t get educated because they don’t have money, but in America. AMERICA! I saw it on TV!”
She was totally confounded by the idea that any developed and supposedly civilized country could produce the absurdity of such a primitive and uneducated belief as creationism.
I wonder if the creationists realize quite how much damage they are doing to their country’s image in the rest of the world. I don’t know which program this woman saw this on, but I don’t imagine it was particularly flattering.
Wait a minute,
Didn’t they used to be good at killing witches?
What exactly are they supposed to be good at again?
Lying?
Or… no, wait… They globally improve science education in forcing people to think about it, concede frauds and fake, and learn more about the scientific process!
Every so often, a visit to uncommondescent.com rewards you with the finest in ironical humor:
“A question on the comments associated Dilbert’s blog. Most of his articles get somewhere between 300 and 500 comments. Does anyone actually read that many comments? If you think the answer might be that very few people will bother reading that many comments then you’ll understand why I’m so ruthless in managing the comments here. I want the comments here to be an important part of the blog instead a quagmire so large no one wants to wade through it. That means someone has to separate the wheat from the chaff. It’s largely a thankless job but someone has to do it.”
[Written in response to an entry with 8 comments, two of which are from the moderator.]
Raking in millions of dollars by lying to gullible old farts who see their end approaching and are frightened into a panicked stupor?
Stogoe: don’t forget the gullible old farts who have wasted their lives based on the bullshit of some jerks and now keep the lie to prevent themselves looking like complete fools. T
What exactly are they supposed to be good at again?
Well, they’re very good at making me laugh. I just think it’s a damn shame that Casey and Salvador don’t have their own blog. I have to search a number of blogs like EvolutionNews, IDtheFuture, ARN, UncomonlyDense. They should wrap those up into one megablog. Like Panda’s Thumb, except for morons.
“What exactly are they supposed to be good at again?”
Rhetorical sophistry.
The kind that the Pharisees and Saduccees used on their folk hero.
The irony is delicious.
Jason Rosenhouse also responded to the Sal Cordova information theory thread a few days back:
http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2007/01/irreducible_complexity_in_math.php
Actually, there are many areas where being incompetent (or to put it more mildly, unskilled) prevents a person from being able to recognize that they don’t understand what they are doing. The skills necessary to do well are the same necessary to evaluate how you are doing at all.
http://atheism.about.com/od/logicalflawsinreasoning/a/unskilled.htm
I’m not at all surprised at that Japanese reaction. It’s a typical First World reaction, if you know what I mean.
I’m not at all surprised at that Japanese reaction. It’s a typical First World reaction, if you know what I mean.
It is said that a fox cannot smell its own lair.
It may also be noted, that the dodo couldn’t understand the rending tooth & bloody claw.
I wonder if these folks test the Peter Principle: was there ever a level of competency from which they were promoted to a level of incompetency?
No, no, David, Dembski will be happy to explain to you that they’re just envious on account of how advanced we are. After all, they don’t have high-powered research institutes like DI!
This calls for one of my favorite papers:
Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. (pdf)
What exactly are they supposed to be good at again?
When you have TV preachers approaching billionaire status and running for President, it sure as hell isn’t about the beatitudes. No, I’m afraid (well not really) it’s the same as it’s always been — it’s about power and money and exploiting the gullible.
Well, all you smarty pants…..you just wait until Dembski, Sal, Dave Scot, and any other get thier chance to get the Darwinists on a stand, where they have to testify under oath, and they can cross examine them with the harsh light of an unbiased court shining it’s beacon of truth in their beady little eyes!
Then you’ll see!!
Oh, wait…. =P
Cheers.
You’d think they might be good at theology, but they are, quite honestly, even worse theologians than they are scientists! I’ve never met a bunch of folks so wrapped up in a belief they know absolutely nothing about. I think this is why the liberal Christians have so much trouble, they know theology like we know science but the fundtards are as immune to philisophical rigour as they are to scientific validity.
For anyone who’s interested – here’s my interview with Phillip Johnson. Speaking of not recognizing one’s own inability to address the subject.
http://www.inoculatedmind.com/?p=147
Like I’ve been saying, as bad as they are at science, they’re worse at religion.
Sarcastro got it right.
I live in Japan too and it’s nice not to have to run into people who are antagonistic to science. However, being science-friendly does not necessarily mean being scientifically literate. I used to have a girlfriend here who was a (relatively recent) university graduate with a degree in biology, and she didn’t understand evolution. (She had it confused with the Great Chain of Being: organisms on an inexorable linear ascent from simple to us.) So acceptance of evolution in Japan is more the result of the almost complete absence of evangelical Christianity than the product of good education.
I wonder if the creationists realize quite how much damage they are doing to their country’s image in the rest of the world.
what makes you think they care, even in the rare circumstance one or two might actually realize anything?
Oh yes, I would never (everever) claim that the Japanese education system is a GOOD one. After all, I see the results of it all the time in my job. But as you have no doubt noticed, laughing at foreigners is a sort of national pastime here, and when the creationists provide them with such an easy target you start to get a bit resentful.
I also find the lack of religious dogma refreshing here, and it has always been a point on the plus side whenever I’ve thought of leaving.
Um, no analogies are always perfect. The humorous thing about Eddie Haskell was that the Cleaver parents and the always gorgeous Wally knew full well what Haskell was doing, even if the younger, and hence naive, Beav did not. The Cleavers (Ward, June and Wally) wouldn’t deign to hand Eddie’s ass back to him, they would have just rolled their eyes, and laughed.
Nice post, though.
They don’t even know how to make beer.
Even though they get their hands a bit dirty brown in the process, since it seems Gödel’s theorems and their implications is a tricky business (which I sure don’t get either). Sal has of course latched on to that, because he thinks that will make him look clean and fresh. No go, his Haskell nose is still brown from poking into the upside down conclusions he and his reference gets from the math. Business as usual, in other words.
Even though they get their hands a bit dirty brown in the process, since it seems Gödel’s theorems and their implications is a tricky business (which I sure don’t get either). Sal has of course latched on to that, because he thinks that will make him look clean and fresh. No go, his Haskell nose is still brown from poking into the upside down conclusions he and his reference gets from the math. Business as usual, in other words.
The japanese? Oh, for example Kirin is high quality.
But each persons taste is different. They seem to be a little bit inspired by the awful US low temp, low taste beers. Or as the rumor has it, their tax system punish the product. I like their beers with foods like sashimi or sushi. For leisure drinking, not so much.
The japanese? Oh, for example Kirin is high quality.
But each persons taste is different. They seem to be a little bit inspired by the awful US low temp, low taste beers. Or as the rumor has it, their tax system punish the product. I like their beers with foods like sashimi or sushi. For leisure drinking, not so much.
Sal has of course latched on to that, because he thinks that will make him look clean and fresh.
I’m not phased by that, since even the article he cited doesn’t make clear what exactly Goedel’s results have to do with “design” or even biology in general. Goedel’s work is a tricky business and the only formal introduction I’ve had is second hand mentions in other computer science coursework. In retrospect I should have delegated the business to someone more familiar with the formalities of Goedel’s Incompleteness Theorems, like that Chad Groft fellow who makes frequent appearances in Mark’s comment threads.
And aside from that, if Sal didn’t have that particular gaffe to repeat ad nauseum he’d just pick something else. And furthermore, I’ll wager that no more than a month will go by before he’s repeating the same old bullshit about information theory and computation, even though it’s been shredded over and over.
Wait a minute,
Didn’t they used to be good at killing witches?
Leave it to a theologist to call a 100% false positive rate ‘success’!
So if Cordova is Eddie Haskell, who’s Mrs. Cleaver? (‘MMMM…you look positively YUMMY in that dress, Mrs. Cleaver!’)
Oh, crap, just dated myself.
(mumble, grumble, rassafrass)
I rely on him too, since I know even less of Gödel than you; I wasn’t even formally introduced. But you, Mark, Chad and the rest has started to shed some light.
In other words, those who can do do, whose who can do and write writes posts, and those who can only write, write comments. :-)
I rely on him too, since I know even less of Gödel than you; I wasn’t even formally introduced. But you, Mark, Chad and the rest has started to shed some light.
In other words, those who can do do, whose who can do and write writes posts, and those who can only write, write comments. :-)
Don’t be so sure of you hero Chu-Carroll, PZ, he made a horrific gaffe over completness theorem that even people on his side had to call him one, and even after 330 post in another thread he still can’t debate me without resorting to misrepresentation. Notice how many times he had to resort to attributing statements to me which I never made.
Have a nice weekend. :-)
Don’t be so sure of you hero Chu-Carroll, PZ, he made a horrific gaffe over completness theorem that even people on his side had to call him one
Yes, because if someone makes one gaffe in an entire post it invalidates everything else and makes him entirely ignorant of math, but on the other hand it vindicates everything you have said and makes you a mathematical genius.
That’s easy: nothing at all.