johac wrote:
> Dembski makes an ass out of himself again.
>
> ---
> A Victory over "Intelligent Design" in Oklahoma
>
>
> By dicksonlaprade Fri Jul 18, 2008 at 12:22:10 AM EST printable
> version
>
> We are pleased to welcome Daniel Dickson-LaPrade as a guest front
> pager. He is an adjunct technical writing instructor with the
> University of Oklahoma, from which he earned a Bachelor of Arts in
> Psychology and a Masters in English. His story of the rout of
> religious right Intelligent Design proponent William Dembski is an
> enouraging model for action. It is slightly adapted from the web site
> of the National Center for Science Education. -- FC
>
> I first heard that William Dembski was going to visit the University
> of Oklahoma quite by accident from one of my technical writing
> students. I was astonished. People still pay the honoraria of
> "intelligent design" (ID) advocates even after Kitzmiller v Dover?
> Apparently they do, and after two phone calls I found out who was
> doing the paying: Trinity Baptist Church. On a "Note from the Elders"
> on its website, I read that they viewed the expense as a "gospel
> investment" -- part of their attempt "to penetrate the university
> campus with the gospel," especially the science departments. "In case
> you are wondering, these departments and their teachings are not
> friends of Christianity."
>
> I quickly contacted every faculty member in our zoology and
> botany/microbiology departments with news of Dembski's upcoming visit
> on September 17, 2007. Several of these faculty members -- many of
> them affiliated with the group Oklahomans for Excellence in Science
> Education -- worked with me to put together a game plan.
> topic: Attack on Science
> We wrote an advertisement which was to appear in the OU student paper
> on the day of Dembski's arrival. In this ad, we listed several points
> showing, first, that evolution is not inherently atheistic, and
> second, that ID is not a scientific enterprise. Since we put the ad
> through several drafts to maximize its effectiveness, and since we
> had to turn in the ad two business days before it was to run, we only
> had about 48 hours to collect donations to cover the expense of the
> ad and signatures to appear beneath it. We had expected to get enough
> money for a half-page ad, along with perhaps a hundred signatures.
> Instead, we collected 180 signatures and ample money for the ad to
> cover a full page.
>
> On the morning of Dembski's appearance, our ad was augmented by a
> guest column on the opinion page by OU biologist Douglas Mock, author
> of The Evolution of Sibling Rivalry and More than Kin and Less than
> Kind. Mock's column argued against ID, while a pro-ID counterpoint
> column was written by a journalism major.
>
> Dembski's presentation Dembski's talk was held in an auditorium in our
> student union. Students posted at the building's entrances were
> passing out copies of mathematician Jeffrey Shallit's expert re****t
> in the Kitzmiller v Dover trial. In this brief do***ent, Shallit
> takes Dembski to task for using flawed and nonsensical methodology
> which has not been utilized by real scientists and mathematicians.
> Outside the door of the auditorium, the local Christian bookstore had
> a table of books for sale by various ID advocates, including several
> titles by Dembski himself. A pamphlet recycling old ID arguments was
> also provided.
>
> As the last of the auditorium's 407 seats were filled, an announcer
> told us that Dembski's talk would last for about an hour, after which
> there would be an open question-and-answer session. Two microphones
> had been set up for this purpose. On the screen was Dembski's first
> slide -- a quotation from our full-page advertisement about how ID
> proponents "refrain from publi****ng their results in peer-reviewed
> math and science journals."
>
> Dembski began by saying that no one had ever taken out a full-page ad
> against him before, and spent the first five or ten minutes of his
> presentation trying to refute our point about ID's lack of
> peer-reviewed publications. As though this helped his refutation, he
> posted a list of eight such peer-reviewed publications -- most of
> which had nothing to do with ID methodology. The remainder of
> Dembski's presentation had all the usual examples and analogies (the
> bacterial flagellum, Mount Rushmore, the motorcycle engine), as well
> as stills and clips from films like This is Spinal Tap and Dumb and
> Dumber.
>
> Having taught college-level writing cl***** for several years, and
> having been a trainer in the cor****ate world before that, I can tell
> when a speaker has carefully honed a presentation to razor sharpness
> and when a speaker is coasting along based on past acquaintance with
> the material. As far as I could tell, Dembski was phoning in his
> presentation. This became particularly apparent when Dembski reached
> the one-hour mark that should have ended his presentation. He began
> to skip some slides and to skim others. Finally, having gone over on
> time by fifteen minutes, he skipped virtually all of his last dozen
> slides to get to his conclusion.
>
> After this, the question-and-answer period started. As lackluster,
> rushed, and incomplete as the presentation itself was, the
> question-and-answer period went even more poorly for Dembski. I was
> first in line to question, and I began by pointing out that there were
> several tenured science faculty in the room who had, by themselves,
> exceeded the peer-reviewed publication output for the entire ID
> movement. A zoology professor pointed out that Dembski had provided no
> positive evidence for ID and that his analogies for the complexity of
> living systems were very shabby ones. Then, in the highlight of the
> evening, a microbiologist on our faculty pointed out numerous errors
> and distortions in Dembski's treatment of the bacterial flagellum. In
> all, some 25 or 30 questioners grilled Dembski over the course of
> more than two hours, most of them undergraduates and grad students.
> Only two of the questioners were sup****tive of ID.
>
> I had expected Dembski's talk to get a warm reception, and for many
> people to be fooled into thinking that ID was a worthwhile scientific
> enterprise. Instead, the the room had almost a carnival atmosphere.
> Dembski was heckled repeatedly for evading questions and responded to
> this heckling with further evasion. The audience laughed and applauded
> often and at length when a questioner put Dembksi on the spot. As one
> of our professors with the Oklahoma Biological Survey later told me,
> "No one could have come away thinking that it was anything but a
> complete disaster for Dembski."
>
> The lasting impression This disaster continued even after Dembski
> finally went home. In the week after his presentation, the OU student
> paper published one opinion letter by me, another by a zoology
> professor, and a guest column by the same microbiology professor who
> took Dembksi to task for his misrepresentation of the bacterial
> flagellum. During this same period, not a single column or letter to
> the editor in sup****t of ID appeared in the school paper.
>
> All in all, our preparations were successful, and Dembski's visit to
> the University of Oklahoma did the intelligent design movement more
> harm than good. There is no doubt in my mind that if all
> presentations by ID proponents went as poorly as Dembski's did, and
> if all such presentations met the same level of preparation by ID
> opponents as Dembski found in Oklahoma, then sup****t for the
> intelligent design movement would simply eva****ate.
>
> For more on Dembski's visit to the University of Oklahoma, including
> the text of our full-page ad, see the September 25, 2007 entry
> "Evolution News Roundup" on Matt Dowling's blog Ontogeny
>
> ---
> http://tinyurl.com/5q5yjq
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