Mageth

A co-worker (IDer) sent me the PDF version of this document today. It looks new, and I could find no critiques on the web. Here's a link:

Myths of Darwinism

This is apparently William Dembski's introduction to the forthcoming book "Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals who find Darwinism unconvincing."

Has anyone seen and/or critiqued this yet? I'm planning on reading it (the intro) this weekend, and I'm pretty sure it's more of the same-old-same-old. I'd like some ammo from some of those more well-versed in the debate to fire back at the guy.

emotional

Interesting.



The usual sh*t I'm accustomed to reading at AiG.

God Fearing Atheist

I'm too lazy to look, but I think part of that was Dembski's OP in the "Darwinism's Myth of Victory Past" thread over at the ARN forums, which was soundly trounced by the evo-regulars.

-GFA

Mageth

Good point, emotional. That will be an easy one to tear apart, on a couple of levels.

Thanks, GFA. I'll try to find that thread and forward it to him.

RBH

GFA is right. In addition, the portion of Dembski's paper dealing with the Lenski, et al. Nature paper on evolving irreducibly complex assembly language programs was discussed in a thread that was ultimately locked down here.


For devotees of tortured misquotation by IDists, there's a good sequence of posts on pages 4 & 5 of that thread.

RBH

Nic Tamzek

My critique is here:

http://www.arn.org/boards/ubb-get_to...-t-000815.html

(although the thread later devolved into a hilarious immune system fracas which shows just how desperate they actually get when real literature is introduced into the debate)

Feel free to point to/cc my post to your friend if you want.

Happy Wonderer

Perhaps the most telling feature of this extremely disjointed article is that it nowhere mentions DNA (except in the c.v. of the contributors.) He even has the nerve to say:


Biologists debate the extent of hereditary transmission?

You can tell that a giant strawman is being constructed when he quotes a novelist's idea of what 'Darwinism' is about. The entire screed consists mainly of constructing strawmen and knocking them down, with a good bit allegory thrown in.

You will discover that Darwinism is "monopolistic and imperalistic". (Perhaps because the predator/prey relationship includes browsers, and any theory that includes a browser must be a monopoly?) You will find that, despite the claims of "Darwinists" that it is a "liberal" theory, it really has nothing to do with John Stewart Mill's classic theory of economic liberalism.

You will find that Darwinists proclaim themselves to be the persecuted heirs of Prometheus, suffering in order to bring knowledge to the world. At the same time, you will find themselves proclaiming themselves to be at the head of an unstoppable scientific juggerernaut.

You will find that Darwinism has a "huge following" among the intellectual elites, and later you will find that it has been successfull in squashing dissent from the elites. He flat-out lies when he says that "only about ten percent of the US population accepts darwinian evolution"; in the poll he is referencing %50 believe that evolution occurred, although a large number believe that God "guided it." His whole discussion here gets really confused; on the one hand claiming that biologists have failed to convince many people of evolution, while on the other admitting that Catholics accept it.

You will discover that evil Darwinists "tolerates no dissent" and that the peer review process "increasingly stifles scientific creativity." Note the subtle shift in the document from the beginning to the end: at first Darwinism isn't a real science and it is just a few deluded Darwinists he is railing against; by the end it is all of science.

There are lots of semantic games. Read the following carefully, even if the sweeping statement at the end were true, what on earth does it have to do with whether or not evolution is a hard science?


His explanation of "Darwinism" is extremely bad:


You can basically toss the article right there. It isn't the organism that is changing, it is the offspring of the organism that are different than their parent(s). Dog breeders don't get short-hair dogs from long-hairs by shaving the mothers...

hw

theyeti

The guy who Dembski quoted about his response to the Unlocking video responded here:

http://www.talkreason.org/articles/compass4.cfm

It's good reading.

theyeti

Lizard

"Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing" sounds like "Squirrels Who Find Nut-Gathering Unnecessary."

Dembski wouldn't know an intellectual if s/he bit him on the arse.

Nic Tamzek

Howdy Liz,

Having a little return to the UBB forums? 'Tis a dangerous path, it's tough to get off the bottle...