The Discovery Institute thinks Following Kitzmiller v. Dover, an Excellent Decade for Intelligent Design
. What planet are they living on? Intelligent Design is basically dead: Kitzmiller v. Dover killed it as a legal strategy, and none of the expectations of the Wedge document have been met. But Casey Luskin provides a list of their great accomplishments post-Kitzmiller. It’s very sad.
The very first item on the list is Lots of pro-ID peer-reviewed scientific papers published.
No, not really. They’ve been publishing in tamed pro-ID journals like Rivista di Biologia and their own in-house journal, Bio-Complexity, with occasional forays into marginal pay-to-publish hack journals. Their most prolific contributor is a retired veterinarian who has labeled his house the Department of ProtoBioCybernetics and ProtoBioSemiotics, Origin of Life Science Foundation.
One of their “triumphs” is that Stephen Meyer’s book, Darwin’s Doubt, was reviewed in Science. Have you read the review?
As Meyer points out, he is not a biologist; so perhaps he could be excused for basing his scientific arguments on an outdated understanding of morphogenesis. But my disappointment runs deeper than that. It stems from Meyer’s systematic failure of scholarship. For instance, while I was flattered to find him quote one of my own review papers—although the quote is actually a chimera drawn from two very different parts of my review—he fails to even mention the review’s (and many other papers’) central point: that new genes did not drive the Cambrian explosion. His scholarship, where it matters most, is highly selective.
Yay. Winning.
Also, via Nick Matzke, while they’re busy claiming that Kitzmiller was irrelevant and that they’re gaining on science, here’s what Google Trends has to say about Intelligent Design.
So that’s what victory looks like, huh?
It sounds like Luskin has taken on the persona of much-missed Baghdad Bob, who knew that victory was at hand.
A good summary of the decline of ID. The graph clinches the point. But the delusional will go on being delusional.
When I did a survey of students on our campus for a presentation I was working on, I didn’t find a single person who adopted an ID position. Creationism, however, was running rampant, with 85% of our student body (college) rejecting evolution outright, and advocating a “God did it” stance.
Intelligent design was, it appeared to me, a mainstay of a certain group of highly educated creationists that didn’t really work down into the general populace nearly as much.
This is only delusional since we aren’t the intended audience of this message.
I expect some form of fundraising referring to this is either already happening or will be happening soon.
They’ve been using the same strategy for thousands of years; can’t expect them to suddenly change, upgrade, or improve it. It’s all they’ve got.
I teach in college. I’d be embarrassed and dismayed if it were only the D and F students who got what I was trying to teach. If the A and B students all reacted as if I were talking incomprehensible gibberish. I guess, too, if I were running for the presidential nomination, and the only voters I attracted were nincompoops.
.
I certainly wouldn’t claim victory.
No No No No – you’ve ruined it now. They will just spend their days searching google…
ID is pure science and only the mad materialists deny it, it’s obvious that the universe was designed because it has life in it and life can only come from design and a design needs a Designer and the most probable Designer is the Christian One who loves us and guides us and killed all but eight of us. The Bible says that “the invisible can be know byn the visible so there is no excuse for the atheist” Enjoy your stay in Hell, I know I will
I assume these nutters are auditioning for the post of Official Poll Un-Skewer for the thugs still in the Kandidate Klown Kar, and/or the various thug paymasters. “See! With a few soooper scienotific squintyfacts we can prove, prove, you / your puppet will win, win big, so big we needn’t bother with the election! All this is, of course, expensive…”
Madtom @7:
It appears they already do. The Google trends system will list interest by city. The toggles are in the upper corners of the map. Guess what otherwise fairly godless PNW city tops the list?
I can see that someone who is science oriented but feels obstructed by all the “I don’t know” answers to questions remaining in science. Combined with “certainty” that everything was intentionally designed, the advocacy of ID is a reasonable conclusion.
I could see that as the initial conception, but actual science orientation will lead one away from the ID paradigm. The only religion part of ID is latching onto it obsessively, regardless of the counter evidence. Which sounds like a reasonable moniker to call ID a “delusion”.
slithey — “The only religion part of ID is latching onto it obsessively…”
That’s what they would like everyone to believe, at least anyone who might challenge them. However, I think it’s well documented that ID started as a way to get around restrictions on teaching religion in American public schools. Their “intelligent designer” has always been understood to be god, specifically the Judeo-Christian-Muslim god. That’s one reason they lost the case in Pennsylvania.
It was nothing but pure creationism, with the god hidden as an “intelligent designer”. The PBS Nova video about the trial is still active. (note, almost 2 hours).
The religious roots were exposed during the trial. What is interesting, is the Discovery Institute was going to help out at the trial, but pulled out before the start. I think they knew how weak their case was. Michael Behe was the defendent’s expert witness, and was caught lying or showing extreme deliberate ignorance several times. The judge was not amused. He was rewarded with a fellow position at DI, and was repudiated by his department a Lehigh.
Speaking of ‘Google searches’, I’ll leave this Ngram search on several words and phrases:
intelligent design,genetic,evolution,natural selection,darwin,lord created,in the lord’s image,in god’s image
It isn’t particularly significant except that it just gives an indication of the frequency of words used in books. That may be an index of what people are thinking about.
It sounds like Luskin has taken on the persona of much-missed Baghdad Bob, who knew that victory was at hand.
Or the Donald, who hears cheers instead of booing.
Oops. Blockquote fail.
The defence in Dover was so pathetically weak. I’ve read somewhere that it was deliberately weak, expecting to lose, and then successfully appealing to a higher court (perhaps even the Supreme Court?), which would have wider effect.
But then the school board was voted out, and the new one decided it was a waste of money to appeal.
The trouble with that is the evidence from the original case is used in the appeals.
Even Behe admitted under oath, that if evolution was to allow for a supernatural cause, astrology would again become a science after being debunked for centuries, as their might be something supernatural to it. That would mean a total redefinition of how science operates. He essentially admitted that ID wasn’t scientific, and was only trying to pretend to be scientific.
ID isn’t dead, it’s just pining for the fjords.