John Lynch catches Dembski getting all breathless about a class in Switzerland that includes a lecture on ID. Big whoop, John says, he teaches it, too.
So do I. Why wasn’t Dembski announcing this glorious victory last semester, when I mentioned it on Pharyngula?
Maybe it’s because when ID is discussed in a science class, it’s to rip it apart.
Great powerpoint presentation. I’d love to hear your commentary/explanation along with it though.
Best.
Hey!
Last I heard, Dembski was giving up posting at Uncommon Descent and turning the reins over to Dave “two ns in innoculate” Scot.
Apparently, it was not to be. What gives?
Ah, but ripping ID apart only proves the IDiots’ point! [sarcasm alert] Because apparently, Dembski now also believes that the Intelligent Designer often “acts stupidly.” Boy, I’ll say. Their Designer/God is so wonderful, they’ll go so far as to say that It/He doesn’t even have to exist.
(I finally figured out that his name is spelled Dembski, not Dembske. But I haven’t been spelling his name wrong this whole time–it’s just that his “i” was intelligently, but stupidly, designed! Hee.)
Hmmm, substituting a vowel in in Dembski’s name is not ‘clever beyond measure’, and that’s not even the vowel that usually gets substituted.
It really was a mistake though.
Besides, Dembski talks a lot about the opponents of ID having no humor.
Besides, Dembski talks a lot about the opponents of ID having no humor.
So, then, just what are these involuntary diaphragm spasms I’ve been getting when I read their stuff?
Look, Dembski and his fellow travelers do not in any case wish to call attention to good teaching that demonstrates exactly how vacuous is their stuff, and how to take their stuff apart and leave the squeaky parts writhing on the dissection table. Myers and Lynch teach science, which takes ID apart. Those other guys wish to cover up the facts that Myers and Lynch teach.
So don’t go hopin’ to make Dembski’s list, P.Z. Dembski is trying to cut a deal with Pat Robertson to get Morris to fall off the edge of Minnesota into the chasm next to Wisconsin, and then to close the chasm. Dembski is praying for a new ice age to make your classes difficult to get to (mark my words — he will change his public tune on global warming very soon, and you wouldn’t have known to wonder why if I hadn’t mentioned it).
Tell other people that you take apart ID in front of students, for fun and education, and let them seek you out for a model to follow? Not on your life!
That would be an awful big chasm, since we’re on the side of the state nearest the Dakotas. They’d take out Minneapolis to get me? Wow.
I read that presentation, but the thing that stuck out most was the bit with the stork; the look on that (now pregnant) woman’s face was priceless.
I’ve been googling trying to find out how the stork thing started in the first place :p
I teach Intelligent Design too. The lessons are to the medical students working with me in the Nephrology service.
I teach them how intelligently the immune system turns against the glomeruli by attacking its basement membrane using the complement after some immune complex has intelligently decided to deposit close to it. This patient ends up in the not so intelligenly designed dialysis machine (designed by us, lesser designers) which provides a crappy quality of life.
I teach how brilliantly the kidney slows down its production of 1,25 OH vitamin D after some renal mass is lost so that the levels of parathyroid hormone can rise to levels that will slowly eat up the bones of the affected patient. The brilliance of the creator could not choose a nicer form of rendering skeletal weakness. We, lesser beings give vitamin D and calcium to the patient, the latter of which which ends up depositing in the coronary arteries.
And so on…
PZ —
I certainly enjoyed the Power Point. I liked the list of books, too. (I haven’t gotten the book by Miller as of yet, but after having read excerpts, I may have to even if I read it only for the science.) I greatly enjoyed “Endless Forms Most Beautiful” by Carroll. I like the fact that Carroll emphasized that for a long time, we have been placing too much emphasis on the coding DNA itself rather than the regulatory DNA, whereas it now appears that much of the process of evolution has been in terms of the regulatory DNA. At the same time, judging from the technical articles which I have been finding on the net, this would appear to be giving short-shrift to introns — as it appears that due to the existence of introns, on the average, a “gene” encodes approximately three different proteins, and much of the change which occurs actually occurs in the introns themselves, rather than upstream in the (other) regulatory DNA. At the same time, I realize that the distinction between introns and exons has been blurred for a while.
However, one point which he emphasized and which hasn’t really made it into the community so much is the role of combinatorial switches. I remember reading one review where the author seemed to be under the impression that Carroll had pulled this out of his arse. But I was able to find a textbook which described these in greater detail. Originally discovered in relation to bacteria, they are far more common in eukaryotes, and typically far more complex — with the switches themselves being located typically 10,000 base-pairs away from the genes that they control.
The emphasis Carroll placed upon the role of permissive information transfer (or regulation by means of simple signals) as opposed instructive information transfer (where much of the complexity would be in the information which is transfered rather than in that which receives the signal) receives more emphasis (and treatment from a somewhat different angle) in “The Plausibility of Life,” which I would also recommend, partly for the emphasis which it places on so-called discovery processes and the environmental plasticity of the phenotype, and partly of course for the broader theory — which, however, seems to be more of an outline than the theory itself. (Better yet, it might best be described as a kind of conceptual framework around which to build theories.)
“The Trojan Horse of Intelligent Design” is definitely worthwhile. I have also enjoyed, “The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of Creationism” by Niles Eldredge, but then again, I tend to prefer the writing of Niles Eldredge over that of Stephen Jay Gould. I started reading “The Structure of Evolutionary Theory,” which was going incredibly slow when Bruce Wallace’s “Fifty Years of Genetic Load” arrived, and that was basically it. The latter may be of some relevance in interpretting the meaning of the apparent success of Ohta’s near-neutralism in explaining genomic complexity by reference to smaller populations. I will try to get back to Gould’s magnum opus a little later, but at this point, more out of a sense of duty than any expectation of enjoyment.
Taking out Minneapolis to get you, PZ, would be just gravy to the ID bunch. They still blame the city for Hubert Humphrey, not realizing he came from the Dakotas originally.
Gould’s book is a hell of a brick. By the grace of some deity or other, it has an index. Is there anyone who has read it through?
BronzeDog:
So, then, just what are these involuntary diaphragm spasms I’ve been getting when I read their stuff?
I’m guessing that would be you choking on the bulls*** ;)
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IMO, the rise of militant atheism is more a result than a cause. The fundies controlled the government up until 2006 and made a mess. The theocratic president, Bush is widely unpopular and the theocratic politicians have proven to be astoundingly corrupt, hypocritical, and inept. Xian terrorism and human child sacrifice aren’t too popular either as well as the constant attempts of the cultists to impose their religion on everyone else.
There is definitely a backlash going on in the USA. As to how much and how far it will go, got me. Theocracies got a bad reputation centuries ago for not working well. They fail on arbitrary authoritarianism, corruption, and sectarian conflicts over who gets to pillage the government treasury and keep the goodies.
As to the Abrahamic religions being worried. Probably not. Again IMO, religion seems to be hard wired into the human brain. The Soviet commies spent 50 years ruthlessly oppressing religion without much to show for it. The best one can hope for is strict separation of church and state and
oyunlar
Boy, I’ll say. Their Designer/God is so wonderful, they’ll go so far as to say that It/He doesn’t even have to exist.
So don’t go hopin’ to make Dembski’s list, P.Z. Dembski is trying to cut a deal with forum Pat Robertson to get Morris to fall off the edge of Minnesota into the chasm next to Wisconsin, and then to close the chasm.
damn, I must have missed a few months, is it Easter already?
so many old threads getting resurrected.
Its really!.. was a mistake though.
Its really!.. was a mistake though.
PZ,
Just a question, would it be possible to video you whilst giving the class, and put it on your blog, or would there be issues with the UMM ?
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