Intelligent Design

Denyse O’Leary (an appallingly bad journalist who blogs in favor of Intelligent Design) wrote that she won’t become an internal critic of ID because she opposes the “academic fascism” of ID critics. I find that an appallingly weak justification for being a propagandist. Internal criticism tends to strengthen the quality of arguments and evidence, not weaken them–unless, of course, what you’re advocating is false. Einzige (2006-12-09): Are there any pro-IDers who are critical of other pro-IDers? ...

A couple of items from Pharyngula: 1. P.Z. wonders, citing John Allen Poulos, why there’s not more affinity between economists and evolutionists. What, no mention of Rothschild’s Bionomics? There are some interesting comments on this Pharyngula entry, worth the read. 2. The Daily Show is going to settle the evolution vs. creation battle once and for all with a special called “Evolution Schmevolution: A Daily Show Special Report,” filling the “Daily Show” timeslot during the week of September 12. This should be a good one…

An excellent article at The Panda’s Thumb about the evolution of the blood clotting system and the flagellum (Michael Behe’s examples of “irreducibly complex” systems) that ID theorists don’t seem to want to discuss, as evidence that ID advocates aren’t practicing science.

Blogger Tacitus makes a weak argument that Intelligent Design may be good for science. What caught my attention is a comment under the heading “Andromeda Strain” by user Irving, who writes: Certainly normal statistical models “do not work for such things.” That’s the point of the research…to find new models and frameworks. …and we may not need to rely on merely statistical models either. Let me put this another way in a story perhaps more attuned to the Tacitus readership… ...

The Intelligent Design movement recently hired a PR firm to promote its views. A critic using the name “vax” commented on this at William Dembski’s (the “Isaac Newton” of ID) blog: Why would ID need to be ‘promoted’? If it is science (as claimed) then the arguments and facts and should speak for themselves. If it’s just a public relations exercise combining religion, politics and deceptive scientific-sounding jargon, however… This led to a response from “Dan”: ...