Fresh from his recent reappearance on KKMS, where he debated me with a new strategy which gave him a slight chance of winning (i.e., one in which I was not present), Geoffrey Simmons is now crowing victory. It’s very strange. Why would anyone with any sense think that demanding a ‘debate’ in which one is unopposed and has a sympathetic moderator and which suppresses audience input is in any way anything but an act of cowardice and intellectual bankruptcy?

This is posted on Evolution News and Views, the Discovery Institute’s version of Pravda, but since they don’t bother to link to any of my articles to which they specifically refer, and since they don’t take comments themselves, I see no point in linking to them. Here is the complete text of Simmons’ vainglorious howl of triumph.

Against Stupidity, God Himself Is Helpless – Old Jewish Proverb

Before the recent KKMS (MN radio) debate, Dr. P.Z. Myers blogged on Pharyngula that he would decimate me. Within minutes of the show’s conclusion, he blogged that he accomplished his goal, never conceding a single point from an hour long show. It is worth one’s while to read his blogs and those that follow as they readily speak to the character of these folks, much moreso than I could ever do. Richard Dawkins was also quick to compliment the professor and add to the feeding frenzy. Again, no concessions. They had their hearing aids turned off before the show even started.

Other than winning points for outright rudeness and making up fiction, what part of the debate did this tax-paid professor win? Could it be the five or so fossil pieces from dog-size animals that represent intermediate species between land animals and the quadrillion-cell whale with unexplained tons of blubber, communication skills that span thousands of miles, a windpipe separate from the esophagus (unheard of in land animals), segmental decompression, a heart the size of a Volkswagon, ability to dive thousands of meters deep or eat a krill diet? Or, was it the fact that a sperm and egg cell can unite to form a 10-75 trillion cell human being without going through 10-75 trillion trial and errors? Perhaps it was my misunderstanding of their ways of critiquing the theory of evolution? To me, it’s like having your brother correct your homework. Lastly, where is the rule that says one has to have an alternative and provable explanation for the origin of life before one can criticise Darwinian thought? Cannot a child point to the leaks in a dam and warn people of an impending flood without any knowledge about dam construction? Their rule, this requirement, doesn’t exist.

– Geoffrey Simmons, M.D.
Author of What Darwin Didn’t Know and Billions of Missing Links

So much, so wrong.

We all had our hearing aids turned up, I assure you. How else could we laugh at Dr Simmons’ remarks?

For a perfect example, look at his claims here: he claims the whale fossil series consists of “five or so fossil pieces from dog-size animals”. Go ahead, look at any summary of the fossil evidence for whales; there are far more than 5 pieces, and the size of the animals ranged from a 100 pound deer-like beast to, well, whale-sized. You can also find nice diagrams of nasal drift — remember, Simmons claimed there was no evidence of blowholes in the fossils. There were no concessions to Simmons because Simmons was wrong on every point.

I’ve read his books, and as usual, he resorts to the litany of complexity to make his case. He doesn’t stop to consider how all that complexity arose, just its existence is all he uses to claim justification for his claim of Intelligent Design creationism. That doesn’t fly, Dr Simmons. We have mechanisms that generate such complexity and refine noise into functionality that do not require intelligent intervention. Sure, single-celled zygotes develop into organisms with many trillions of cells. We can study that and find lovely developmental mechanisms behind it; we can watch mitoses occur; we can find the molecular interactions that lead to differentiation. Telling me that there are lots of cells there does not support your apparent contention that they all poofed into existence with the assistance of a meddling cosmic superbeing, either phylogenetically or ontogenetically.

Oh, and little children who call up the National Guard and demand that we evacuate the town because the dam is leaking when they’ve never seen the dam, know nothing about how the dam is constructed, and have no evidence that it is leaking other than that the crotch of their pants are suddenly wet, are not brave heroes. They’re petty liars seeking attention.

Guillermo Gonzalez’s appeal of his tenure denial went before the Iowa State University board of regents this morning.

To no one’s surprise, his appeal was denied. Seriously, this was a no-brainer; it would have been grounds for suspicion if the board of regents had overruled the opinion of his peers to force Gonzalez on the physics and astronomy department.

Now Dr Gonzalez needs to quit trusting the blandishments of the Discovery Institute and get to work on reconstructing his career. Peter Irons wrote me this morning and asked what odds I’d give on Gonzalez getting tenure; I’d have said they were incredibly long. Now the next question for the betting people out there: what are the odds that he’ll revise his tenure strategy to land a job with academic credibility vs. taking the easy way out and going to some joke of a Bible college and trying to get rich off his ‘martyrdom’?

Go read this first rate summary of an ID meeting by one of its unsympathetic attendees. It’s genuinely bizarre. The talks by the ID proponents are frankly, complete garbage (not that the account is that blunt), which explains the message everyone got afterwards.

A few days after the meeting ended, we all received an email stating that the ID people considered the conference a private meeting, and did not want any of us to discuss it, blog it, or publish anything about it. They said they had no intention of posting anything from the conference on the Discovery Institute’s web site (the entire proceedings were recorded). They claimed they would have some announcement at the time of the publication of the edited volume of presentations, in about a year, and wanted all of us to wait until then to say anything. These actions made me aware of the extent to which the ID movement was willing to bear false witness in order to achieve its goals, and that kept me from falling prey to my empathy for the underdog.

A stealth science meeting? I’ve heard of requests to embargo discussion outside of a meeting until publication — which is reasonable, since many journals are jealous entities who demand that their submissions be virginal and unpublished anywhere else — but that’s not the case here. After reading the account, it’s clear that they’ve got no science and bad science, and really just want to control the release of information, so they can massage their PR and generate false impressions of scholarly work.

[Read more…]

Poor Geoffrey Simmons, so painfully pathetic. He’s back on KKMS right now, given an hour where there isn’t one of those wretched evolutionists to point out the absurdity of his comments. So far, all he’s doing is giving a litany of complexity — the eye is so complex, and the eyes are at the top of your head to give you the best visibility, and they’re exactly the right distance apart to give you binocular vision. It’s painfully panglossian and naive.

Oh, and he snipes at the ‘experts’ and claims that the ‘Darwinists’ don’t understand the complexity of childbirth, unlike him, the MD. Good grief, I’m a developmental biologist!

You can tell that without me there he’s feeling free to make up even more lies, not that he was significantly inhibited the last time he was on.

Hmmm…should I suggest that maybe they should give me a solo hour on air too, to discuss what evolution and biology are actually about? I doubt that they’d take me up on it; they’re clearly desperate to make up for their embarrassment last week by giving Simmons a little uncritical bootlicking, and they would feel no such obligation to me.

Go ahead, call in at 651-289-4499 and let them know how tiny and frightened this makes Simmons look.

Suddenly, lots of people want to debate me. I’m really not that much into the debate business, and I think most of the people who want to battle me don’t need a high-level argument about biology — they need a remedial course in elementary science. Especially since most of the challenges are rather like this one:

http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?s=47a2cb894dc2340b;act=ST;f=14;t=1274;st=24870

Note that the drooling animals are clamoring for P.Z. Myers and Dembski to have a “debate.” What is to debate? Myers is a rabid mad man, completely out of control. His condition is progressive, irreversible, incurable and hopefully terminal.

Besides, Myers is an intellectual coward and won’t “debate” anyone of substance. Neither will Dawkins nor Hitchens. The word “debate” doesn’t even exist in the lexicon of science. It is reserved for lawyers, politicians and evangelists.

Myers immediately retired from the contest at “One Blog A Day” after arrogantly introducing his “Pharyngula” thread with much fanfare, leaving Martin and I with the wonderful opportunity (which we thoroughly exploited) to reduce the Darwinian hoax to a shambles. I sure hope someone preserved it because it is gone now.

I would love to confront him anywhere, with or without his equally deranged cronies – Dawkins and Hitchens. It would be a rout! I can’t even goad them into recognizing my existence. Myers is a cowardly victim, a “prescribed” vendor of hate, the epitome of cultural, moral and ethical evil. There is nothing that can be done for him or for his colleagues and followers. They are “born that way” losers in the lottery of life. Until they are gone they will remain a menace to Western Civilization. Hopefully that won’t take too much longer.

It is hard to believe isn’t it?

“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
John A, Davison

Sorry, John, I do have standards, and I don’t debate the mentally ill and logically incoherent (really, read what you write. You sneer that “debate” isn’t in the lexicon of science while you challenge me to a debate. Think about it.) (Oh, wait, never mind. The irony of your challenge is so bold that it is clear that you don’t read your own words, and you definitely don’t think.)

And I’m currently scheduled to debate Angus Menuge of the DI this spring. I’ve already agreed to talk with one droning bore of a theologian, why should I also meet with Dembski?

P.S. Any of you drooling animals who wants to comment on this faces a challenge: Davison is banned here, as are his numerous pseudonyms, so you’re going to have to be circumspect lest you invoke his name and your comment ends up awaiting moderation.

I’m swamped with teaching labs, writing deadlines, and the DFL caucus — you’re all going to caucus, right? — so I’m just going to have to ask you to pretend that Henry Rollins is me for a little while.

Sure you do. So you might enjoy this webcast series from Scientific American.

One of the things they mention is the recent “peer-reviewed” “scientific” “journal” from Answers in Genesis (sharply slammed by Larry Moran), and they criticize Nature‘s coverage, which urges scientists to avoid taking “too strong a stance against the journal” because it would “fuel creationist’s claim of scientific bias against religion.”

This is what always happens when you go to appeasers for quotes: you get urged to be a coward in dealing with the opposition.

I appreciate sincere criticism, I really do, and despite all the praise for my recent radio debate, I listened to it and mainly heard a lot of things I could have done better. So I like it when I find someone who also offers suggestions for improvement, but at the same time, I have to disagree with one (just one, the others are good) central point he makes.

However, in the future I would warn PZ against calling his opponent ignorant or berating them in a debate like this. Save that kind of stuff when you’re venting to your fellow smart people. Name calling doesn’t convince any of the audience and it gives your opponent a chance to get off the ropes through subversive rhetoric. Using the term “ignorant” allowed Simmons to take the upper hand and make PZ look like a dick even though he was right in pointing out Simmons’ lack of knowledge. Or at least, it would have allowed Simmons to take the upper hand if he didn’t suck so much. In essence, don’t attack the opponent, attack the opponent’s ideas.

[Read more…]

This is awesome. A band set a Chick tract to music, and not just any Chick tract, but one of the sickest, creepiest Chick tracts ever.

Any google experts out there? ERV has been having some difficulties — she keeps getting delisted by google, and then coming back up. Strangely, if you search for ERV, this currently comes up:

Wha…? Go to the link, and that text isn’t there. It’s as if someone has been whining to google, and their complaint is what’s appearing in the search. Maybe someone can explain this to us.

By the way, that text sure sounds like poor pathetic Casey Luskin, the sad little mouse. He’s always getting picked on by all those people who are bigger and meaner and smarter than he is; he probably wears a football helmet when he goes on the internets to protect his delicate little brain.