Alas, my daughter and I are big fans of Vonnegut’s writing, but he’s showing signs of losing it. He sounds terribly unhealthy on the radio, and his performance on the Daily Show a while back was depressing. This morning, Vonnegut was on NPR, and said scientists were defending evolution because of “tribalism”, and that “my body and your body are miracles of design”, and that “natural selection couldn’t possibly have produced such machines.” Please, please remind me to stop blogging when my mind deteriorates that far, OK?

To call the body a “miracle of design” is begging the question, while denying the possibility of evolution is the argument from incredulity. Neither is at all persuasive. I would like to know if Vonnegut thinks all those scientists who insist that the Earth is roughly spherical are also arguing for tribal dogma, or whether he suspects that they might actually be relying on this little thing called evidence…and why he thinks biologists fall in the former category and not the latter.

Out of respect for his past writing career, though, I will refrain from cutting him up with a razor here. There were some signs in his interview that he hasn’t drunk deep of the ID kool-ade, but overall it was a sadly muddled exercise in sloppy reasoning, spoken without the sharpness and clarity I’ve expected from Vonnegut.

Orson Scott Card has written a long essay defending Intelligent Design.

Oy, but it is depressing.

It’s a graceless hash, a cluttered and confusing mish-mash of poorly organized complaints about those darned wicked “Darwinists”. He lists 7 arguments. Then he repeats his list, expanding on them. Then he goes on and on, hectoring scientists about how they should behave. For a professional writer, it’s just plain bad writing—I’m struggling with how to address his arguments, but he’s written such a gluey mass of tangled ranty irrationality that it’s hard to get a handle on it. Ugly, ugly, ugly…and why do these guys all seem to think the way to defend the ideas of ID is to whine about the perfidy of all those scientists? Not once does he bring up any evidence for ID.

Card can’t discuss the evidence, because he doesn’t know or understand the evidence. That’s apparent when he begins by praising Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box, and regurgitates the argument from irreducible complexity. Irreducible complexity is not a problem for evolution, and Behe is a tired old fraud who hasn’t had a new idea in 15 years. That Card would be impressed with DBB says only that he doesn’t know much biology and that the depth of his thinking is remarkably shallow.

Oh, well. I’ll try the brute force approach and discuss each of Card’s arguments in turn. This will get long.

[Read more…]

This is fun—it’s a proposal for remaking Inherit the Wind with the Dover case as its centerpiece. It’s also a good overview of the events of the trial.

(via Red State Rabble)

That school in California that tried to teach a creationist “philosophy” course was chewed out by Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute. Luskin’s statement consisted of the usual folderol, but the outright fraud of several statements leapt out at me.

My name is Casey Luskin and I am an attorney representing the Discovery Institute. The Discovery Institute is a think tank based out of Seattle, Washington that represents a large number of scientists who do scientific research into intelligent design.

A “large number of scientists”? How many?

Scientists “who do scientific research into intelligent design”? Name them. Tell us exactly where they are doing their research and what specific questions they are trying to answer.

But if you do not cancel this course, and if you let this lawsuit go forward, you are going to lose and there will be a dangerous legal precedent set which could threaten the teaching of intelligent design on the national level. Such a decision would also threaten the scientific research of many scientists who support intelligent design.

See questions above. What scientists? What research?

I’m really fed up with this phony baloney the DI keeps pushing. There are darned few scientists backing Intelligent Design, and those few don’t do any research, nor can they tell anyone else what research could be done.

Because of the young earth creationist history of this course, this course is not legally defensible and it should be cancelled. Thank you.

Casey Luskin got his wish. The course has been cancelled. Not without a final irony, though:

Sharon Lemburg, a social studies teacher and soccer coach who was teaching “Philosophy of Design,” defended the course in a letter to the weekly Mountain Enterprise.

“I believe this is the class that the Lord wanted me to teach,” she wrote.

A while back, a reader mentioned that my name (or some permutation thereof) was being taken in vain in the letters pages of the Durango Herald. Nothing new there, it’s just the usual half-truths of the Discovery Institute being disseminated.

Challenges to evolution met with scorn

I find that some of the brightest people in the world today (as with some of the brightest people throughout history) disbelieve the theory of evolution.

As Paul Bynum correctly noted in his letter (Herald, Nov. 20), it is true that folks who dare to challenge some of evolution’s claims are, indeed, often ridiculed and maligned. Note the remarks of University of Minnesota biology P.Z. Meyers: that opponents of Darwinism need to be subject to “some form of righteous fury, much butt kicking and the firing and humiliation of some teachers, many school board members and vast numbers of sleazy far right politicians.”

…

Gary Andersen, Durango

There was more in the letter; the usual protestation that “Darwinists” are afraid, that there are “volumes of evidence of design all around us” (backed up by mentioning that birds fly and cats take naps), and that chance is a “dreary thought.” I responded with a short note pointing out that my quote was taken out of context, and that I’m not against challenging evolution, but am against incompetent teaching.

Creationists weaken science teaching

In a letter by Gary Andersen on 1 Jan 2006, I was quoted misleadingly, in a way that the Discovery Institute has consciously propagated. Yes, I have called for the firing of teachers and politicians, but not because they are “opponents of Darwinism”–but for incompetence. If a science teacher cannot grasp basic concepts of biology, he or she has no place teaching our children in the classroom. We are not afraid of Intelligent Design creationists, but we are getting increasingly angry at the disservice they are doing to our kids by weakening the science curricula in our high schools.

Mr Andersen claims there are weaknesses in the theory of evolution. Yes, there are, but the fact of evolution is not in doubt; there is active argument and research on specific details and mechanisms. Intelligent Design creationists are not participants in that work, and are actively promoting discredited ideas that are not supported by any evidence. Science class is not a place for garbled anecdotes and wishful thinking, yet that is all Mr Andersen has to offer—I think we can do better by our children.

Oh, and the name is Myers. One “e”. It’s bad enough to be misrepresented by the likes of the Discovery Institute and their minions, but they could at least spell the name correctly.

I am amused to see that the Durango Herald has published a reply. It shows the same level of incomprehension as the first letter.

Reaction shows evolutionists scared

In his letter (“Creationists weaken science teaching, Herald, Jan. 10) associate professor P.Z. Myers of Morris, Minn., suggested that anyone believing God created the universe “has no place teaching science in our classrooms.”

What an arrogant statement! Statements such as this reinforce the feeling that evolutionists are indeed quivering in fear.

…

Paul Bynum, Durango

Of course there is more ranting. I’m accused of “indoctrination and propaganda, and told that “All tyrants, Hitler, Stalin, etc., approve of and use this type of ‘education.'”

I think his argument is greatly weakened by the blatant quote mining of his very first sentence. You can rummage through the entire archive of my site, you can chase down every word I’ve ever said, and you can give me a Vulcan mind-meld and probe all of my thoughts, and you will not find me expressing or thinking that ridiculous sentiment anywhere. But of course, readers of the Durango Herald are most unlikely to even open up a week-old copy of their paper to assess the accuracy of the creationist’s claims. The creationists know their lies can spread faster than the truth, and they will continue to spout that kind of dishonesty shamelessly.

At least they learned how to spell my name properly.