Baylor has a stalker

(Note addendum to this post: the infamous Uncommon Descent memory hole is in operation.)

A while back, Bill Dembski was bragging about how he was going to be snuffling about Baylor University, affiliating himself with an ID research lab there. It was a strange situation: a serious lab working on ID problems? OK, we’ve been asking them to do this for a long time. But then to associate itself with a weirdo like Dembski? One step forward, ten steps back.

Here’s a fun interview with my friend and colleague Robert Marks. I hope you catch from the interview the ambitiousness of the lab and how it promises to put people like Christoph Adami and Rob Pennock out of business (compare www.evolutionaryinformatics.org with devolab.cse.msu.edu).

Yes, do compare. The MSU link takes you to the Avida group doing research on digital evolution; the other link…well, it’s defunct. It makes Dembski’s arrogant claim rather amusing, don’t you think? I don’t think his reputation as a prophet is holding up well.

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Any conservative can make an ass of themselves on Fox: Ben Stein gets crazy

Ben Stein is making a new movie (Expelled, have you heard of it?) that’s supposed to be out in February, but right now he’s building the excitement by making television appearances and demonstrating that he is a raving lunatic. Yeah, this is exactly the guy I want as the spokesman for Intelligent Design creationism.

He’s defending Larry Craig. It’s promisingly incoherent, and here are his arguments, more or less in the order babbled.

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Religion must be placated. You will be assimilated.

The Kentucky Park Service has a problem. People are going to the Creation “Museum”, getting their heads filled up with idiocy, and then they go to the state parks and pester the rangers with stupid assertions. The parks department had a great idea: let’s send the rangers to the museum to find out what exactly they’re facing. I approve! You should know the enemy well if you’re going to out-argue him, and this is one of the few legitimate reasons for visiting that pile of dreck in Petersburg.

Only…they’re going to hobble themselves, tie one hand behind their back, and wear a blindfold in this fight.

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The hollow man

Yowza. Vox Day tried to pull his usual ahistorical, illiterate, ignorant schtick, blaming Nazis and Communists on ol’ Chuck Darwin, and Ed Darrell completely eviscerated him. I mean, it’s like all that’s left of Day is a few tattered scraps of skin hanging from a stick, drying in the wind.

Vox Day is a rather cheap and easy target, I know, but still … it’s frightening to see. It’s so thorough.

Aww, poor Mike

Everyone needs to go try and cheer up that poor lonely atheist, Tangled Up In Blue Guy. It was his birthday yesterday and everyone in the world forgot.

I can’t console him. He’s an atheist, which means it is entirely true that most of the people in the world hate him and want to strap him to a big stick and set him on fire, and I’m an atheist which, as we all know, means I’m insensitive and uncaring. Sorry. I hope one or two Christians, the only people capable of being nice, stumble across this message and find their way over there to offer him some friendship.

And invite him to their big house on Sunday morning for some “fellowship”.

An insight!

So Jesus and Jeffrey Rowland are having a conversation in a bar…

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Now, see, that’s the root of the problem: religion is crazy when you think about it, and when people do start considering its inconsistencies and ridiculous claims, its proponents either try to spin you around with increasingly nutty rationalizations, or they outright tell you to stop thinking. If science has any heresy at all, that’s it: to stop thinking is the one thing we must not do.

This is why religion is a science stopper. It makes absurd claims about the history and origin and nature of the world, and then tells you that you can’t address the questions it raises with reason and evidence.