going out with a bang

Well, I can't take the ID folks anymore. For several reasons. But one is that I need to be more positive and less worked up about this shit. So I'm not going to post about it anymore. I promise. But I feel I should go out with a bang.

Billy 'god (or aliens) did it' Dembski has been really quite dishonest today. And it is really easy to nail him on it. So I did in a comment to his blog. Of course he will undoubtedly erase it (he did) like he did my previous ones, but I have reproduced it below.

It is in reply to this post.

Here's what I wrote:

Now I can’t see anything in your list of reasons why you erase people’s comments for erasing this one.

Clearly you did NOT read the piece about quote-mining that you linked to above, or else you would have seen what I have copied from it here. It clearly states that Ward’s ‘evidence suggesting Divine Creation’ was simply rhetorical and part of a historical review of the field and that he goes on to cite evidence that is clearly consistent with evolution.

Hopefully some people will read this before you get a chance to erase it.

What you have done here is truly dishonest.

Dembski “…must be accountable for a least the rest of the section from which he quoted. Following a historical review, Ward resumes,

‘Until almost 1950 the absence of metazoan fossils older than Cambrian age continued to puzzle evolutionists and earth historians alike. Other than the remains of single-celled creatures and the matlike stromatolites, it did indeed look as if larger creatures had arisen with a swiftness that made a mockery of Darwin’s theory of evolution. This notion was finally put to rest, however, by the discovery of the Ediacarian and Vendian fossil faunas of the latest Precambrian age. (Pp 35)’” *6 pages after the quote Dembski gives above*

“In other words, we learn that science has known for well over 50 years that the supposed “sudden” appearance of Cambrian fossils was invalid, and Dembski has quoted this 12 year-old book in a basically dishonest manner.”