ERV has put up her account of Dembski’s nightmare evening, in which he got grilled and mocked by the students in the Q&A. It sounds like it was great fun — for everyone else, at least — but this part really irks me.
Finally, the Creationists had had enough. Somebody had to stand up for Jesus.
“Im just so disappointed in OU students and how closed minded they are!!!”
Dembski made it perfectly clear at that point that the attacks against me were no accidental oversight. Dembski used this Creationist as an opportunity to attack the students that were exposing him as a fool: “Well dont be so hard on them. Theyre just sucking up to their professors.“
Way to make excuses for your own failure by belittling the students, jerk. You flopped, Billy, and it was your own fault — you can only succeed when you ship in a church-going claque, and you had a room full of independent-minded, skeptical students, instead.
I read the title and thought “Is that possible?”
Ever notice how whenever someone points out that these morons have nothing but bad ideas, these morons whip out the overused retort of “well, you’re just closedminded!”?
Well, all in a day’s work for a lying, dishonest, conniving, hypocritical hack, I suppose.
So Dembski didn’t read ERV’s thread on UD but somehow still knew that she was ERV? That sounds rather irreducibly complex* don’t you think?
*BS
If closed-minded means prejudiced in favour of truth, honesty, evidence, and fairness, then I’m VERY closed-minded.
Taylor_31 said
Dembski’s intellectual failure is more manifest than the image of Behe I saw in a tortilla the other day.
Clearly, Dembski can’t even hold his own with undergraduates (whom I greatly admire, by the way), thus it’s no wonder he avoids contact with those who would be his peers when his only response to argument is childish taunts.
What’s next, Dembski, armpit minuets?
I submit this.
Of course, in Dembski’s case, he’s so openminded, he emptied out his brain, and has now filled his skull up with so much garbage, he is wholly incapable of accepting good ideas.
Way to make excuses for your own failure by belittling the students, jerk.
Yeah ditto on that one. Anyway, don’t be so hard on him. He’s just listening to the voices in his head. Cuckoo!
Now,for the umphtiest time,what we are dealing with here are deluded,manipulated,brainwashed people,some of them admittedly with brilliant minds,but there is no point whatsoever to engage in any rational discussion with creationists or the like at all,their minds are just not capable of processing any new or divergent information.
And i mean that in a clinical/medical sense.
A fact that i think Dawkins et al are sometimes underestimating,the psychological effects of childhood indoctrination/manipulation that have been practised for centuries now.
Just another case of the oft-used creationist tactic of constantly moving the goal posts. It doesn’t matter how much evidence for evolution we dredge up, they’re always going to need more to be convinced.
I would give ANYTHING to have been there for that debate – and I’m currently enjoying the idea that there might be other events that go just like this one, all over the country. I’m glad we got such a great view of this one via ERV.
See, the thing about having the same kind of ‘open mind’ as his is that everything worth keeping falls straight back out and only the dust and rubbish accumulated. Good on the students who stood up to him. I bet they had a great time.
From the same blog John Morales linked to:
That about says it all. For IDists, evidence doesn’t matter.
Glad to see no one got tasered.
I like the bit:
“even the art students had a go at him”
ERV should be here at Science Blogs.
You also have to love FtK playing her role as the defender of those poor persecuted creationists in the comments.
big fat yawn
Jebus, this just gets better and better. I am looking foward to the time when the school boards here attempt to push ID/Creation. We inFlorida have an ID supporter as Sec. Education.
So, thanks to ERV, PZ, you that post on here and especially ExtantDodo and their videos, I feel full prepared to throw a proverbial knockout punch when the day comes.
#2 and others re: the “appeal to be opened-minded,” check out Bronze Dog’s Doggerel (#4 on the list, though the whole thing is worth reading).
I could develop a serious ERV-crush (which is kind of disturbing when you think about the acronym).
Still… I applaud all the students for turning Dembski into a piñata. But, you didn’t seem to smack him hard enough to get the really good Jebus candy to come out.
If Dembksi weren’t so obsessive about getting Bashed By Baylor, he would be happy to lie about his pantsing at his blog, Uncommon Descent Into Madness. I’m looking forward to his cover-up attempt.
Come on Bill! Hurry up, find your pants, get your underwear out of your crack, and keep your eye on the Prize!
I second the invitation. ERV is awesome.
I was there and feel the audience was reasonably polite durring his presentation except for the groans after preposterous statements. But it was the complete mobbing durring the Q@A period that was most entertaining. ERV did a great job but it was the explanation of the evolution of the flagellum the left Demski stoped like a deer in the headlights. He admitted to the group he was not a biologist, as if that was supposed to get him off the hook. When you are missrepresnting science to a room packed full of scientists and their students what in the world can you expect? His treatment was richly earned. The truely sad thing here is that he will make exactly the same presentation to the next audience. David
“He admitted to the group he was not a biologist”
I think I would have just started booing loudly when he said that.
Bingo. And I am glad he was humiliated. Unfortunately, I don’t think he’ll learn anything other than the fact that his snake-oil isn’t welcome at OU.
There were actually a couple words after “professors” that were drowned out by the uproar that provoked from the crowd…”_______ ERV”. It sounded to me like Dembski either said “like ERV” or “unlike ERV”. I couldn’t quite figure out what he said, but there was a jab of some sort at Abbie in there.
Also, I’m not sure if people noticed, but the flagellum is gone from UD’s masthead!
That’s their old site design/template. I wonder what gives.
ERV made Dembski fear the flagellum?
Oh yeah… My ERV-crush is turning into a full-blown obsession now.
Awesome job by ERV – way to make Dembski look like even more of an ass than he already is.
The flagellum thing is just depressing – it’s no surprise whatsoever that Dembski takes the filling of a gap to mean he now has two more gaps to play with. At least the audience understood that he was being humiliated.
Dan psot #20 you said
“Still… I applaud all the students for turning Dembski into a piñata. But, you didn’t seem to smack him hard enough to get the really good Jebus candy to come out.”
Holy shit, “….really good Jebus candy to come out” That was damn funny!
LEAVE BRITNEY, err, DEMBSKI ALONE!!!
I do think someone needs to make a “Leave creationism alone… waa… waaa…” video. I know it would probably lead to bad things, but still… I’d watch it.
That’s their old site design/template. I wonder what gives.
Not only that but somebody made a post that the old Uncommonly Demented look was the “new look”:
http://www.uncommondescent.com/adminstrative/uncommonly-good-new-look-to-uncommon-descent/
I guess their “design inference” circuits are faulty and they can’t even detect that their new design is actually an old design (although I do like the old look with the picture of Dembski doing his Church Lady impersonation…)
That’s their old site design/template. I wonder what gives.
Not only that but somebody made a post that the old Uncommonly Demented look was the “new look”:
http://www.uncommondescent.com/adminstrative/uncommonly-good-new-look-to-uncommon-descent/
I guess their “design inference” circuits are faulty and they can’t even detect that their new design is actually an old design (although I do like the old look with the picture of Dembski doing his Church Lady impersonation…)
oh man, i’ve been hearing stories about this from all over. someone PLEASE tell me they brought a video camera and this massive pwnage will be all over youtube?
@arachnophilia
ERV has audio – once it’s cleaned up she’s promised to share it with the world.
A little more background on how University of Oklahoma students and others opposed the Dembski appearance:
1. A group of students now forming a chapter of Center for Inquiry received permission to place chalkings on campus sidewalks to counter the ads for Dembski’s talk sponsored by ‘Pursuit College Example of the chalking: “A Federal judge ruled in 2005 that ID was Religion and Not Scince.”
2. The same group of students, plus some grad students from Zoology handed out to all entering the lecture the pre-trial statement of Jeffrey Shalitt that fairly demolished Dembski’s arguments for ID.
3. A full page ad in The Daily Oklahoman student paper against Dembski appeared the morning (Monday)of his talk and was signed by about 200 faculty, staff and graduate students. The ad was drafted by an English instructor. Dembski took bewtween 5 and 10 minutes at the beginning of his talk to defend the anti-Dembski comments in the ad. His defense was without merit, but did force him to skip about a dozen of the slides in his talk because he ran out of time. The ad was financed by contributions from many of the signers and by the OU Chapter of Sigma Xi, a national honorary scientific research society.
4. An excellent Op-Ed opposing Dembski and ID also was in the student paper on Monday morning, along with an ineffective counter by the paper’s religion writer. A second excellent Op-Ed opposing ID appeared Tuesday morning after Dembski’s talk.
5. The creationist group wanted a big audience and they got one. The room held 400 and many were turned away. However, I don’t think they expected that more than half the audience was against ID and showed it – especially during the Q and A. Of course, the ID crowd will pull out there old strategem – ‘See how important we are. We attracted all those scientists to our talk.”!
The Baptist group may claim success (there is talk that they plan to produce a DVD [audio], but I doubt that it will include the Q and A, where Dembski was pretty much skewered – mostly by undergraduate students who insisted on answers when Dembski waffled in his answers! We are very proud of our students and how they handled there pertinent questions!
Dr. Hutchison, so glad to see you are still at the University. I graduated from the Zoology department at OU in 1980. It is really great to see that there is an active movement at the University willing to fight for truth and reason; I know how difficult OK can be about this sort of thing sometimes. Keep up the good fight!