I gotta get my shit together

I'm one of the weblogs of the week at Pharyngula. Geez. I better put something good up here. Something science-y. Preferably creationist bashing-y. My friend Daniel Hanks has sent me this link from the great state of South Carolina. The Headline is:

'More scientists question theory of evolution'

Fair enough. Lots of chemists and physicists don't have a clue about evolutionary biology. They can question all they want. But unfortunately, this questioning leads to this sort of sentiment:

"Highlighting this phenomenon is an event planned for this summer at the Palmetto Expo Center — an "Uncommon Dissent Forum: Scientists Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing." Nine speakers, all of them Ph.D's, are scheduled to make their case before an anticipated crowd of up to 1,500 people.

'I think that if there's this much questioning going on by people who hold scientific degrees in these fields, what is the average layperson supposed to do except to try and make some sense out of these two camps?' said Lewis Young, a Greenville businessman who set up the conference."

This is scary. I think it's scary when otherwise pretty smart people use their scientific authority to motivate their religious causes. Because that's what it amounts to. These people are Christians, no doubt, that don't take the time to learn evolutionary biology and/or to learn a little about the philosophy of science. They are motivated by their religious beliefs, not by a concern with gaining knowledge about the world.

I think Billy 'god did it' Dembski is really just an evangelist in mathematician's clothing and his psuedo-scientific ID work is just a way to 'fight the good fight' for Jesus. What? You haven't accepted Jesus Christ into your life? Well that's the only way you can truly live a fulfilled life. God loves you and he gave us his only son so that we may attain happiness in this world and eternal life in heaven. What? You think there isn't a whole lot to recommend belief in god in our world? What? You find it far more reasonable to explain things naturalistically? You don't like unnecessarily inflated metaphysics? Well, says Billy, did you know that you can't explain everything so naturalistically? Did you know that you might have to inflate your metaphysics in order to make sense of your hand, and flagella, and rough endoplasmic reticula, and hexose transporters? They're all little machines you know. Dynein arms for fuck's sake! Clearly god made dynein arm!

Sorry. Got a little carried away there. I suppose the article made me think more about Dembski and how much I absolutely loathe him. Not only is he dishonest, really really dishonest, but he's blinded by his religion. He keeps grasping at straws. The same arguments in more sophisiticated language. Oooooooooooo...an equation. He must know what he's talking about. Anyway, I'm pretty sure ID folks are blinded by their faith. Pushing ahead in spite of being absolutely and utterly wrong, and shown to be wrong over and over and over and over. But they have the ear of the public. Of the mostly RELIGIOUS public. "Yeah, good idea," so says the religious public, "let's teach the controversy."

Well, first off, Dembksi's a mathematician, not a biologist. He seems to intimate (and this is one of his tactics, to intimate, not to be clear and direct) that modern day evolutionary biologists think that mutation and natural selection are the only important and efficacious evolutionary 'forces'. Secondly, he apparently isn't even a very good mathematician. Thirdly, and most importantly for my current rant, he is a pretty serious christian. Oftentimes in his blog he refers to some theologian or some such nonsense that had a big influence on him. And he went through a pretty serious new-pope-approving phase at his blog. Here is a link to his posts as sorted by his 'religion' category.

While I'm certainly no fan of fallacious ad hominem arguments, I'm pretty much done pointing out the shortcomings in ID reasoning. It's been done. Again and again and again. It doesn't seem to matter. People don't want to spend a little time (ok, maybe a lot of time) to learn about evolution. More importantly, they don't seem to want to believe the proper authorities, i.e. the people who spend the time thinking about evolution. They hear Dembski or Behe speak and say, "Oh, yeah. Eventhough I don't know a thing about evolutionary biology, that mathematician and that molecular biologists sure seem to know what they're talking about. Let's teach the controversy."

If I want to know how to reconcile evolution with religion, I might just ask ol' Billy (probably not actually, but I'm trying to make a point here), but if I want to know about the modern day theory of evolution, he is pretty much the last person I'm going to ask. Also, eventhough he has a PhD. in philosophy, from the University of Chicago no less, one of the better philosophy of science departments in the country, I doubt he took many courses in the philosophy of science. I'd like to ask him about demarcation criteria and see what he has to say. Clearly he doesn't subscribe to any of the mainstream criteria...if he did he certainly wouldn't think ID is science! I wonder what he thinks of Lakatos?

Anyway, I think I'm more interested in trying to understand exactly what motivates people like Dembski to do what they do. What motivates them to keeping pushing forward? I think this is the important question now.

I also think it might be a good tactic to discredit the ID proponents. Treat them like an object of study. A lab rat. A particularly complicated experimental organism. Have anthropologists write papers about them. Hire Jane Goodall to follow Dembski around all day. See what makes him tick. Write up papers with catchy titles like: 'Pathological Religious Idiot's Disease in ID Proponents: a case study of Billy Dembski'.