Dembski at OU – the video

Matt Dowling has posted the video of the Dembski talk: parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

PZ’s comment on it was “The man can drone on“; Abbie said he was a really bad speaker.  My thought at the time was “he’s so much more entertaining a speaker in this context than he was at church”.  In retrospect, he was a bad speaker.  But it was still a major improvement.

It appears that the famous Q&A is on there too.  Sweet.

The party continues

The Dembski Affair is still going strong, still attracting a lot of buzz. You can take a look at my previous post if you want to see the first set of commentary.

• ‘Irreducible Complexity’ Reflects Human Ignorance – Abbie expands on what she calls Dr. Philip Klebba’s “very public depantsing on the evolution of the bacterial flagellum”.
• Opinion: ‘Irreducible Complexity’ Reflects Human Ignorance – Klebba’s Op-Ed in the Oklahoma Daily, the OU student newspaper.
• The scientific vacuity of ID: Dembski and the flagellum – by PvM at Panda’sThumb delves into the Dembski affair and Klebba’s refutation
• I Want to Penetrate You – by Dwight at Two-Headed Blog talks about his disappointment at missing the Dembski talk. He also links to an earlier post about a “church hopping” visit to Trinity Baptist by Sarah, who appears to be the other head of the Two-Headed Blog. (Seems like a good Norman-related blog).
• Intelligent Design: Science or Pseudo-science? – from Design, Dogma and Darwinism (which, unsurprisingly, is a pro-ID blog). It appears to be a piece that ran in the Oklahoma Daily, and credits William Dembski as a contributor. There’s also a second posting from the same blog entitled The Oklahoma Daily contributes to OU’s academic suppression. I think the title is pretty self-explanatory.
• Dembksi: God’s asshole – a discussion thread at talk.origins
• It’s All About the Science, Right? – Jeffrey Shallit’s take on the event.
• ERV Smacks Dembski – Jason Rosenhouse of EvolutionBlog weighs in (Abbie’s fan base has grown by leaps and bounds)
• A Spanking! A Spanking! – the author of The Funny Farm is amused.

And finally, since we always need someone who runs their mouth without bothering to look into the facts of the matter, there’s:

• Not a Fair Fight – “Professor Smith”, a “researcher at a middle-size public university on the Eastern seaboard” and ID supporter, attacks Abbie and the rest of “the materialists” for “attacking en masse with underhanded comments and ambushes“. It appears that “Professor Smith” didn’t bother to delve too deeply into the facts of the matter (“He was invited to speak, although the accounts that I’ve read make it sound more like an ambush“) before attacking Abbie for, among other things “underhanded tactic of poisoning the well by attacking the commenters on Dembski’s blog“. She’s invited to discuss the matter at UD, gets banned after three comments, attacked there, attacked at her blog…and dear old “Professor Smith” calls it “underhand” and “well poisoning” to mention that fact. He continues “So, either he censures comments and is criticized for hiding, or he doesn’t and is criticized for what others say?” I sure hope that Smith is simply speaking out of an ignorance he couldn’t be bothered to correct. Anyone who knows anything about UD knows that (a) they delete comments and ban participants who disagree with them; and (b) the people who attacked Abbie are the people Dembski picked to manage the blog. His final sentence is especially amusing: “It should be about science, but when you don’t have science on your side, you have to resort to something, right?” Umm, yeah, that’s pretty much how the IDists operate: since they have yet to come up with a single scientific contribution, they engage in obfuscation, misdirection and smear campaigns. Projection on the part of “Professor Smith”?

Update: One more (in German)

• Dembski doch noch in EXPELLED? – by Martin Hafner at the blog “molecular B(io)LOG(y)”

Update II:

• The Common Thread in Modern Creationism -  by Henry Neufeld of “Threads from Henry’s Web”.  As usual, Henry’s comments are thoughtful and insightful.

And here is my major point. The common thread through the three varieties of creationism [old-earth creationism, young-earth creationism and intelligent design creationism] is that they are all looking for the break in the natural processes of variation and natural selection such that God must intervene in the natural processes in some way. Whether that intervention is at the biochemical level or whether it deals specifically with speciation events, there needs to be a gap showing where God is “necessary” to the universe.

In contrast, as a “creationist” who accepts the theory of evolution, I believe that the entire universe is designed. That universal design is the biggest problem there is for IDC, because IDC requires places that are less and more designed so they can detect the differences. IDC doesn’t try to demonstrate that the universe is designed, as many people, especially Christians, believe it does. Rather, it is attempting to prove a variation in God’s involvement.

Intelligent design as a “ground clearing operation”

Last Sunday, when he introduced William Dembski at Trinity Baptist Church pastor Ronnie W. Rogers described intelligent design as a “ground clearing operation”. The following day, during the Q & A that followed his talk, Dembski also described ID using the same words. In essence, he said that ID seeks to clear away the established evolutionary paradigm (he way making the point that, although he is a Christian and has opinions about what should follow, ID is agnostic about what will flower in the world of post-naturalistic science). In characterising ID in this manner Dembski was staying true to the spirit of the Wedge Strategy “whose ultimate goal is to “defeat [scientific] materialism” represented by evolution, “reverse the stifling materialist world view and replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions” and to “affirm the reality of God.”

Dembski’s got the title of his talk at OU from Dawkins who said that Darwin allowed a person to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. While to me that presupposes an overly philosophical mind-set (it’s easy to disbelieve in God, belief is what’s challenging), what’s more important to ask is “is it really a price worth paying?”

Let’s suppose that the IDists where able to succeed in their goal of overthrowing naturalism as the defining force in science. What would follow? There’s the obvious part – if you allow supernaturalism into science, you need a tool to distinguish the effects of the supernatural from the natural. Dembski touts his “explanatory filter” as a tool for identifying “design” when small probability events occur. Leaving aside the fact that his explanatory filter fails, it is insufficient. In a world of non-supernatural science, you would have no a priori reason for ruling out “design”. So if you were sick and went to a doctor, the doctor would need a tool to distinguish natural causes from supernatural ones. The simple truth is that the stated goal of “overthrowing naturalism” would mean the end of science (and medicine, engineering…and political consultants) until such time as you developed a way to measure the supernatural.

This is one of the reasons why the ID position that it is not interested in the nature of the designer is intellectually vacuous. Until you know the nature of the designer (and whatever other supernatural entities are present) and can reliably distinguish the actions of these supernatural beings from the activities of natural ones, quite frankly it wouldn’t matter if “Darwinism” was shown to be false. Newton’s theories were known to be flawed long before Einstein came up with relativity. Despite that, they are still useful today. Evolutionary biology not only deals adequately with data, it also makes extremely useful predictions. In addition, it supplies underlying assumptions that let much of the life sciences make predictions (without the assumption of common descent, drug testing on animals is nothing but wanton cruelty).

Attacking evolutionary theory does nothing to advance the conversation. While the “flaws” described by ID proponents are generally the products of imagination and spin, even if they were real, they make almost no difference. ID proposes no alternatives about how to do science. It proposes no solutions. It does nothing to advance science or knowledge. So what’s the point?

I suppose it pays well.

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.

Dembski and the flagellum

In Darwin’s Black Box, Behe takes evolutionary biology to task for failing to explain the evolution of biochemical pathways within the cell. From this he developed the idea of “irreducible complexity” – that there are systems that are too complex to have arisen by (known) evolutionary processes. From there, he makes the jump to an “intelligent designer“…in other words, failure to come up with an evolutionary explanation is proof of God. Of the the central “icons” of intelligent design is the bacterial flagellum. Despite the fact that far more is known about the evolution of the flagellum than was known a decade ago (when Behe wrote his book), ID proponents still cling to it as a pillar of their anti-evolutionary arguments. In his talk at OU on Monday, one of Dembski‘s main criticisms of “Darwinian evolution” was the fact that it failed to provide a “complete, fully articulated path” of evolution for “molecular nano-machines”.

During the question section, several people took Dembski to task over the idea that ID isn’t science, since it’s impossible to falsify. Dembksi danced around the question a little, holding up the bacterial flagellum as a place where ID could be proven wrong. Eventually the questioner managed to pin him down with something along the lines of “would you be convinced that ID was wrong if the flagellum example was disproven?”, to which Dembski seems to have agreed (I believe it was there that Dembski said something to the effect that, if that were the case he’d be looking for another line of work).

It was against this backdrop that Dr. Philip Klebba offered to explain the evolution of the bacterial flagellum to Dembski in four, reducibly complex steps. At that point I was ready for Dembski to hold good to his earlier promise and give up on intelligent design, but no such luck. He now upped the ante, demanding that he be supplied with “every step” and “every mutation” along the way.

While I had heard that sort of ridiculous request from creationists before, it was the first time I heard it from a major ID proponent. While ID spends a lot of time claiming that the scientific community are unreasonable in their acceptance of evolutionary theory, Dembksi made it very clear at that point that he was setting the bar unreasonably high. Every mutation? We are in an Age of Discovery in the world of genomics and proteonomics. Dembski’s demand requires a level of knowledge which is well beyond current levels of understanding. Dembski talked a lot about the lack of progress since the publication of DBB, but the truth is that there will always be a limited pool of resources for things like this. Despite the fact that our knowledge of cellular subsystems have progressed by leaps and bounds over the last decade, there are still far too many interesting questions out there.

In real scientific endeavours, when you propose a hypothesis, there’s an onus on you to take a shot at either finding supporting evidence, or taking a shot at falsifying the idea. Since falsification of ID as a whole is impossible, and since finding evidence for the tinkering of a “designer” is probably impossible, why hasn’t the ID movement spent the last decade trying testing their flagellar hypothesis?

Most probably: because ID is a “ground clearing operation”.

Update: Wow. Febble at IIDB

Anyone else notice that the flagellum’s gone from the masthead of UD?

When did that happen?

Wow. Maybe Dr. Klebba’s point really did hit home.

Dembski at OU: Why Atheism is no Longer Intellectually Fulfilling

I saw William Dembski talk last night at the Meacham Auditorium in the University of Oklahoma Student Union. The title of his talk was: Why Atheism is no Longer Intellectually Fulfilling: The Challenge of Intelligent Design to Unintelligent Evolution. He spoke for over an hour, dancing around a number of topics, but the theme that seemed to jump out at me was: I wrote a book. Not only did the cover of The Design Inference flash across the screen at least three times, he also showed a screen shot of the OU library webpage card catalogue entry for the book. (I suppose he was trying to refute the assertion that intelligent design proponents don’t publish their ideas in peer-reviewed math and science journals. The truth is, there is no research into intelligent design. There is no research programme, although Dembski did lay out a ten-point plan; skipped it in the talk, flashed through it in the Q & A. Not holding my breath for that to come to fruition).

The gist of the talk was: “Darwinism” has flaws, and until the “evolutionists” can explain ever step in the evolution of a complex biochemical system (e.g., the flagellum), then it isn’t succeeding as science. He then went on to talk briefly about specified complexity, suggested that it is useful (at least for the study of patents in Russia) and flashed a few pictures of Mount Rushmore and motorcycles.

First, the positives. In his element, Dembski is a lively, interesting speaker. I was so disappointed when I saw him speak on Sunday at Trinity Baptist – speaking on theology, he read the entire sermon from his notes, and delivered a talk that really belonged in an academic lecture. Terribly boring. Last night, I suppose he was in his element. Dembski spoke for over an hour, and kept things going pretty well. He also managed to survive the Q & A. That in itself was something of an achievement.

But what really impressed me was the Q & A. Most of the people asking questions were students – many of them undergrads, I suspect. Almost without exception the questions were intelligent and well-informed. And over the course of more than an hour of questions, there were only two that were supportive – one from the senior pastor at Trinity (who spoke of his being unconvinced of evolution based on the second law of thermodynamics, an idea with which Dembski sensibly disagreed; OK, so I suck at faces; thanks Russell) and another guy who basically called the students there closed-minded.

While the night was filled with excellent questions, there were some gems. Logan managed to get Dembski to admit that he did not believe that humans and apes had common ancestors. I think that was a pretty major admission. Abbie asked about the exchange she had with Sal Cordova and others at Dembski’s blog. (It started with her refutation of Behe’s Edge of Evolution (also here and here); this was followed by an invitation to discuss the matter at Dembski’s blog. After three posts she was banned from the blog, attacked there and harassed on her blog. See details here, here, here, here and here; plus stuff on UD) – in essence, if intelligent design is so solid, why do they feel the need to harass a mere grad student the way they did. Dembski said he doesn’t handle the daily management of UD and wasn’t aware of the exchange (but was obviously aware enough of the exchange that he knew she was ERV). To which she replied “you were busy at the time composing a letter from the President of Baylor”. I was too busy laughing to see, but Abbie said that Dembski’s look was priceless…deer in the headlights, but oh so much more.

Despite all this, perhaps the most withering critique came from someone who took Dembski to task on his use of the bacterial flagellum. Dembski used the flagellum as an example of an irreducibly complex structure, and said that the putative ancestor, the Type III Secretion System, was much more likely to be a simplification of it than an ancestor (which turns out to be something of a red herring). Anyway, the questioner explained a much simpler (and reducible) evolutionary history of the bacterial flagellum from absorptive pili, which, he said, is supported by recent research. Since Dembski had earlier said (in response to a question about what would make him abandon intelligent design) that an explanation of the evolution of the bacterial flagellum would be a good step towards disproving ID, he was rather put on the spot by this explanation. His responses was first to try to play for time (write this up and get it published) and then to resort to the old creationist argument – details, I need details. In essence saying that, until he is supplied with every step in the evolutionary history, including every mutation, he’s holding on to the assertion that this is irreducibly complex. Weak!

Unfortunately, no one seems to know who the questioner was. Everyone assumed that he was in some other department at OU. Logan chatted with him, but never thought to ask his name. And he left after his question. Who was that masked man?

Update: Golfvixen at IIDB liveblogged the talk. H/T Pharyngula.

Dembksi at OU

As Abbie mentioned last week, intelligent design proponent William Dembksi will be in Norman next week. He will be preaching at Trinity Baptist on Sunday (Sept. 16) and speaking at the University of Oklahoma’s Meacham Auditorium (in the Student Union) next Monday (Sept. 17). He is being hosted by the Pursuit College Ministry, a (reportedly very new) student group affiliated with Trinity Baptist Church.

A lot of people have pointed out that the fact that Dembski is the guest of a church undermines the whole assertion that ID isn’t (in any way) religious. I don’t quite see it that way – after all, if your philosophy appeals to a church group, there’s nothing wrong with them inviting you to speak. Anyway, the title of Dembski’s talk is “Why Atheism is no Longer Intellectually Fulfilling: The Challenge of Intelligent Design to Unintelligent Evolution.” So is he going to talk about something new, or rehash the same old arguments he has been using for years?

The first part of the title seemed promising – “Why Atheism is no Longer Intellectually Fulfilling” sounds like he is trying to cash in on the latest cottage industry – attacking Richard Dawkins. The title is derived from Dawkins, who wrote in The Blind Watchmaker:

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: “I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn’t a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.” I can’t help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

(or something like that; since I just found it online I’m not going to be too surprised if there’s an error or three in the wording).

So if Dembski had admitted that ID really wasn’t viable post-Kitzmiller, and had decided to move on, I’d say “good for him”. After all, unlike biology (in which Dembski, despite “more degrees than a thermometer,”* has no formal training; no, having a biologist for a parent doesn’t count), Dembski actually has a Ph.D. in philosophy. But the second part of his title suggests that he’s still sticking to ID. “The Challenge of Intelligent Design to Unintelligent Evolution”. I suppose it’s a hopeful sign that he isn’t saying “random evolution”, at least not in the title.

So how does “intelligent design” challenge the “intellectual fulfillment” of atheism? Good question. How does slickly marketed lies and disinformation affect the intellectual fulfillment of atheism – or theism, for that matter? Good question. Maybe I will find out next Monday.

* I first heard the descriptor “more degrees than a thermometer” used as a criticism of the NAR in the run up to the 1986 elections.