Skip to main content

William Dembski links to a crank (so what else is new)?

From time to time, I surf over to Uncommon Descent to keep tracks on the intelligent design folks. They're an odd bunch over there: constantly proclaiming that this or that study is the stake in the heart of Darwinist OrthodoxyTM -- but then, nothing changes, and so a new stake must be discovered next week.

I commented there for a while but then I got banned, I guess -- anyway, my comments stopped showing up. I guess they were considered too snarky: this at a site where Dembski actually began a post by comparing the face of Jerry Coyne with Herman Munster.

What. An. Asshole.

Today Dembski posts the following:
It will be interesting to see how the National Center for Science Education Selling Evolution deals with the growing number of non-religious ID proponents. Check out the following link: icon-rids.blogspot.com.
Yes, very interesting. No doubt the NCSE will be shaking with fear at this guy:
I don't hold any degrees from any university of any kind. My job as a citizen scientist is to represent science in general and the general public. I learned about the theory of "ontogeny recipitulating phylogeny" in my elementary school playground in 1968 -- from a friend (Calvin Jackson). Throughout the 60's and 70's I was a Darwinist. In 1979 I began to suspect something was wrong with Darwinism.
Meet William Brookfield, founder of "ICON-RIDS -- A Proposed Coalition of Non-Religious ID Scientists & Supporters." Or maybe it's "An International Coalition of Non-Religious ID Scientists & Scholars." Right now it's a coalition of one.

But what a one! Mr. Brookfield is also the founder of "The Brookfield Institute." He's not just an Intelligent Design proponent, but an "ID Pleasurian." What could that be, you ask? Mr. Brookfield provides the answer:
ID Pleasurian philosophy is a non-religious amalgam of ID science and Hefnerian Playboy philosophy. It serves as a strategically unified and archetypal counter proposal to orthodox ascetic religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam. It is also somewhat resonant with Wiccan and “mother nature”- based pagan cults (in the west) and Tantric Buddhism (in the east). Pleasurian-ism is an earthy, sensuous and physically celebratory form of “monistic idealism” or infocognitive monism.” Pleasurian science is naturally driven by the "pleasure of finding things out."
Why in the world would the NCSE care to "deal with" this?
Labels:

Comments

John Pieret said…
William Dembski links to a crank (so what else is new)?

More importantly, how could you tell which is which?
6/17/07, 6:59 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Who else can't speak for himself? Hermagoras, that's who. Because UD won't let him.

Welcome, Uncommon Descent members ! For the record, I don't ban users or arguments (I will delete threats and suchlike.) As long as you're here, you might check out the reality behind ICON-RIDS (if you haven't heard about this before). A letter to GilDodgen, responding to this : I, Hermagoras, am banned at Uncommon Descent but apparently still discussion-worthy. Indeed, a whole post devoted to refuting someone (me) who is not allowed to respond. You guys are certainly committed to fair debate! I was trying to make a fairly simple point, which I would have thought IDers agree with: that all observations and all "facts" are theory-laden. It's simple enough. I elaborated it in a post which Dembski apparently thought was off-topic and led him [to] ban me in precisely the terms I previously discussed on my blog . Hilarious. Then continued discussion (again I can't respond) about how I'm trying to be the clever one . Nothing in my banned posts
84 comments
Read more

Radical misreading: Kairosfocus on Saul Alinsky

Just a brief note to respond to kairosfocus, who claims regarding Saul Alinsky: For those who came in late, Alinsky was a neo-marxist radical who saw cultural and community subversion as the means of communist revolution. I cut my critical thinking eye-teeth on Communists, messianistic charismatic pols and cultists, and have wariness about all three. (All quotes in bold are emphasis added.) Truth be told, kairosfocus couldn't tell a Communist from a hole in the ground. He links to a passage in his bloviating web page on "selective hyperskepticism" as follows: His premise for resorting to ruthless radicalism -- as stated in his key work, the 1971 Rules for Radicals [RFR] was that: " A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of
19 comments
Read more

Scott Simon and NPR hate poetry

On NPR's Weekend Edition this morning, Scott Simon delivers a commentary about the recent exposure of gang-banger "memoir" Love and Consequences by Margaret Jones (actually Margaret Seltzer). Simon observes that "the book is a fraud, but Ms. Seltzer came within hours of of being on NPR." Wrong . In fact, Jones/Seltzer did make it onto NPR's syndicated show "On Point," and the show followed with an hour-long, hand-wringing examination of how they got punked in the first place. But that minor error is nothing compared to what happens next. Simon quotes Seltzer making up some bullshit about her life and observes (my transcript of the online audio): Now if some Brooklyn or London novelist had written a story set among drug gangs and uttered those words, people might have dismissed them as pretentious nonsense. Put those sentences into a so-called memoir, people call it "gritty and real," or "raw, tender, and tough-minded,&q
12 comments
Read more