One of the fun things about traveling to strange places like Seattle is getting to meet new and interesting people — or, at least, people who are made of meat rather than the more familiar bit patterns of the net. I’ve had a few occasions now to talk to Alan Boyle, who has just summarized my NWSA talk…and done a pretty good job of it, too.

One thing I want to expand on a little bit is something I brought up for the Seattle audience: I think the Discovery Institute is toast, and are going to be increasingly irrelevant. The Wedge document is dead and gone; their strategy of pretending to have a secular goal has failed; and everyone can see through their claim that “Intelligent Design” is something other than creationism. All along, the buzzword has been a front for old school creationism, of the type favored by more traditional, openly Biblical groups like Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research, and what’s driving the base is not the attenuated rationalizations of the DI, but the Jesus-lovin’ evangelical beliefs of its supporters.

I should have said more about a remaining concern. Creationism is not dead, but is still a dangerous force for ignorance. And of course, the Discovery Institute is going to be trying hard to reinvent itself. We’re looking at several new strategies already: there’s the clamoring for “academic freedom” bills, and also the magic words of “strengths and weaknesses”. Note that they still have the common thread of misleading with labels — their version of “academic freedom” isn’t about freedom at all, but about giving preferential treatment to ideological inanity, and when they talk about “strengths and weaknesses”, they intend to overlook the strengths of modern biology and focus on imaginary weaknesses invented by ignorant creationists.

So more accurately, what I should have said is that one line of rhetorical noise is failing fast, but that they’re rapidly generating new clouds of obfuscatory squid ink that they hope will stick and confuse another generation of innocent students. Liars and con men just have to keep moving to keep their misdeeds from catching up with them, and the DI is going to have to scramble to redefine their intellectual swindle.

At the last couple of talks I’ve given out here on the west coast, I’ve begun by introducing the appalling ignorance and illogic of creationist arguments. I think I have a new favorite example.

To summarize: God ordered the soldiers of the Hebrews to march around Jericho 6 times on 6 days, which means they would have traversed 6 * 360°, or 2160 degrees. The moon has a diameter of 2,160 miles. Therefore, God exists.

Bonus points! If you argue that the Hebrews would not have used “miles” as units (although I would have first pointed out that degrees and any linear measurement aren’t directly comparable), that’s just proof that God knew about English units 3,000 years before they were invented. Therefore, God exists and knows everything.

Poe’s Law! I saw that video and thought for sure it had to be a spoof, until I saw it was from VenomFangX, one of the more infamous youtube creationists, and that it has a lot of comments praising his “logic”.

Wow. This guy is like Ben Stein on quaaludes — and just as wrong, wrong, wrong. The opening premise for his slo-mo diatribe is ridiculous:

True science only reports observable facts, rather than interpretations and assumptions.

Then he goes on with a tedious litany of examples: you are allowed to say that Archaeopteryx is a fossil of a winged animal, but you can’t say it’s transitional or intermediate characters, you can say Tiktaalik is a fossil of a skull and some limb bones, but you can’t say it represents an intermediate between fish and amphibians, yadda yadda yadda.

Unbelievable. First, where does this gomer come off trying to dictate what “True science” is? He’s contradicting practically every scientist in the world!

To claim that science is not about interpretations — that it doesn’t include theories as explanatory frameworks — is patently false. What does he want to do, reduce science to stamp collecting because that’s the most exciting thing his lethargic little mind can handle?

Of course science is all about interpretation — it’s how induction works. We collect data, we interpret it, we make hypotheses and predictions about what we expect to see next, and we test those ideas. No interpretation, nothing to test, science would stagnate.

This is one of the more stupid statements I’ve heard from a creationist yet, but I’m afraid he’s not at all competitive with the likes of Ray Comfort yet. On style, though, the mummified, expressionless head of Daniel Keeran is ahead on points.