A question for Luskin

Evolution news and views on me

That’s fascinating logic: apparently the widespread feeling that it is “sensible” to remove individuals of a particular viewpoint does not necessarily mean there’s a “conspiracy” to remove individuals with a particular viewpoint.

Mr. Luskin, is it the considered opinion of the DI, UD etc., that it is never acceptable to discriminate against a professor in a tenure decision based on their ideas?

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Flies disprove evolution!

Or at least “Darwinism” whatever the hell that means these days. I guess they couldn’t keep quiet all day. UD’s new argument is an easily dismissed straw man. It goes like this.

Scientists discover fruit flies put in a sensory-deprivation chamber,instead of flying around randomly, or in a rigid pattern, fly in a pattern with both random and non-random properties. (PLoS one article)
Uncommon Descent which should have its RSS feeds revoked, says it’s proof of design! Darwinism requires there is no free will! This is apparently based on a stunning misunderstanding of Dawkin’s ideas by dacook.

Of course standard Darwinian orthodoxy denies the reality of free will. Though many Darwinists shy away from the implications of their beliefs as they apply to ascribing responsibility for human behavior, their position demands that all behavior is determined by the genetic heritage of selfish genes.

Then we hang our heads and sigh.

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IDFilter

A fun thing about reading things on the ID sites and then actually checking primary sources is how bizarre Uncommon Descent is as an information filter. I guess this would be an example of the dreaded “framing” of science which I don’t want to fight with my sciblings over. Take for example their discussion of Guillermo Gonzalez’s qualifications in light of his failure to get tenure.

UC says:
“he has had his research featured in Science, Nature, and on the cover of Scientific American.”

Then you see what they’re talking about and you see they’re talking about this negative review of “Privileged Planet” in Nature, a mention of his idea of a galactic habitable zone in an article about someone else’s research in Science (or were they referring to the articles in science about how the DI duped the Smithsonian into showing a documentary about his book?), and a Scientific American article that wasn’t mentioned on the cover as far as I can tell. Gonzalez’s article was in group of articles in SciAm entitled Mysteries of the Milky Way. It looks like, according to DaveScot (so I don’t know if I should believe this), SciAm is embarrassed to have published an IDer and has removed mention of the article being on the cover from their archives. Ha! It must suck to be an IDer. They may call their abuse at the hands of scientific publications (and science in general) McCarthyism, but I think it’s more accurately described as spotting BS and not letting it contaminate your journal.

C’mon internet hive-mind. Give me some more examples of the filtering process where “criticized negatively” or “mentioned” turns into “featured”. Or how articles which are just contained in a special issue become “on the cover”.

(Thanks sparc)

Get off the damn cross already

All the evolution denialists are up in arms because one of their own, Guillermo Gonzalez, was denied tenure. It’s persecution they cry! Let’s write a letter to ISU they cry! And now Denyse O’Leary says, “It’s a conspiracy!”

How tiresome. Could a kind reader make me an animated gif of a man climbing up on a cross for me? This persecution complex of the IDers needs a graphic.

There are a number of good reasons why Gonzalez might have been denied tenure (and so far I haven’t seen Gonzalez himself cry persecution – just his fans at UC)
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Reading Comprehension – it’s important

Not to harp on Uncommon Descent today, but their seeming inability to see words that they don’t like gives the appearance of no reading comprehension skills whatsoever. Take for example their read of this New Scientist article on cute little marsupials.

Let’s first quote from the article:
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Who’s the bigger liability for ID?

I thought Michael Egnor was the DI’s biggest liability for stupid arguments. Now I’m thinking based on Aferensis’ posts that it’s probably Dave Scot based on his suggestion that “All the hominid fossils we have wouldn’t fill a single coffin.”

But my favorite part of how embarrassing he is for humanity is how people, sometimes inadvertently, make predictions about his stupidity.
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This reminds me of a joke I once heard…

Dembski misses the point as always with his recent post describing why the vertebrate eye is again evidence of design. You see, the big bad Darwinists used the structure of the eye, which has its photoreceptors in the back behind all the layers of the retina, as evidence that our eye isn’t designed, because what kind of designer would have the light pass all the way through the layers of the retina to reach the receptor cells?

I’m interested in talking about these cranks today because I think this argument is one that exposes the fundamentally deceptive nature of the DI and proponents of the ID movement.
Continue reading “This reminds me of a joke I once heard…”