Making sense of the DI

Writing about last week’s evens at OU, intelligent design proponent and Discovery Institute fellow Jonathan Wells wrote (with reference to Abbie)

Despite her earlier threats to expose publicly how “stupid” Steve is, Smith left abruptly after the lecture and did not stay for the Q&A

What? Let’s see…Abbie blogged the Q&A.  Wells linked to her blog, but someone missed the fact that everything after 8:01 refers to the Q&A.  After the Q&A ended, we stood at the back at talked to some of the IDEA Club people.  Rich and Vic where there for a good while; Abbie, David and I were there until they kicked everyone out of the auditorium.  I even spoke a few words to Stephen Meyer after his talk, enough that he recognised me (“you’re the botanist”) the following night at the museum.  And Abbie hung around as long as I did.  The only reason I bothered to come to Meyer’s talk was that she passed and picked me up.

I could take Wells seriously.  After all, I might have imagined that she and David were over on the other side of the entrance to the auditorium, speaking to ‘Rhology’ and several others…after all, I was across the aisle talking to 2 or 3 other people.  I might have imagined walking out of the Union with her and David.  I might have been so inspired by Meyer’s talk that I might have mistaken my 1.5 mile walk home for a ride in a car.  I might have.  Or maybe Wells is just making things up.  Invoking the rule of parsimony, I’m inclined to go with the latter hypothesis.  Since this is not the first time I’ve read Wells’ stuff, I’m inclined to go with the latter hypothesis.

It is, in fact, a perfect encapsulation of intelligent design.  A DI fellow tells you something that sounds plausible, but if you bother to check the facts behind their statements it’s readily apparent that what they’re saying is simply untrue.