Party at Meacham

For people who are interested in other perspectives of the Dembski-party on Monday night, here are some other people’s take on the issue

Apart from ERV and Golfvixen at IIDB and me, some other accounts that deserve notice include:

• Today I was a pirate wench, by Jessie: while she didn’t actually get in, she represented the Pastafarians to the crowd outside. She has pictures of the event (or at least the Union outside the event).
• Taylor_31 at the EvCForum
• The First Coming of William Dembski, by Rhobology: Rhobology is pro-Dembski, but didn’t manage to get in either. He does appear to have seen Jessie though, preaching to word of FSM.

Apart from these (and probably others I haven’t stumbled across), there’s a lot of buzz about the fun times that were had.

• The Dembski Affair, by Rob Dowling: Rob is a grad student in Zoology at OU. Despite the fact that he studies animals instead of plants, he gets top billing because he’s a tropical ecologist.
• I like Dembski a little less now, by the Cephalopod King himself, PZ Myers.
• Carnival of the Dembski, from Ooblog.
• ERV is my hero, by Rev. BigDumbChimp
• Hilariousness all around, by thauron
• Dembski Admits Religious Motivation of ID, Deservedly Laughed At By Audience, by Mike at Hyphoid Logic
• Dembski piti esitelmän, which, while I can’t read it (or even have any idea what language it’s in), refers to both IIDB and ERV.

Update: This post by PZ, and the comment by Vic Hutchinson that it quotes, deserves note. Abbie noted how well ordinary students did not questioning Dembski and pressing him to answer their questions. They did really well. But, as Vic pointed out, this was facilitated by a lot of on-the-ground organisation done beforehand.

Monday night may not have changed the world, but it was a good indication of how irrelevant intelligent design has become. A decade ago ID was effective because it produced a new set of arguments that were far more sophisticated than the usual creationist fare. But new arguments become old, and people become familiar with their flaws. Between Wikipedia, talk.origins and the science bogs, there’s an awful lot of information out there – and it’s readily at people’s fingertips. People were online in Meacham (Golfvixen was liveblogging). It’s hard to pull the wool over people’s eyes when everyone has the information at their fingertips.