90% True

Or
“Intelligent Design Is Whatever We Say It Is, And We Don’t Agree”^*

.: So PZ Myers is in a bit of trouble over at Pharyngula for saying he would deny tenure to anyone who sought to teach intelligent design as science. DaveScot, over at William Dembski’s blog Uncommon Descent offers this curious bit of logic for why Myer’s university should censure him:

. . . [D]iscriminating against religious belief in employment is the same as discriminating against color. PZ Myers in his capacity as a University of Minnesota employee has declared the he will not promote people who believe ID is science. Since ID is a religion according to Kitzmiller^[link] and ID teaches that it is a belief based upon science, Myers is announcing that the University of Minnesota will not promote certain people due to their religious beliefs. In the eyes of the Equal Employment Opportunity law this is the same as discriminating against sex, color, race, or national origin as they are all equally protected by the act. So when considering Myers’ representation of the University of Minnesota, if for some reason discriminating against ID religion doesn’t offend you, pretend he said the University of Minnesota won’t promote black poeple or women because, being black or female, they might have an agenda that will interfere with their performance on the job.

.: In this classic case of someone having their cake and eating it too, the most ridiculous aspect of it to me is DaveScot’s claim that part of ID’s religious beliefs is that it is based on science, and is therefore scientific. Yeah, okay. What other religions can I think of that claim to be based on science? I can list about two. Surely anyone who truly believes that such ideas are scientifically based should be allowed to teach them in the relevant science classrooms in tenured positions?

EDIT: I missed this line from an earlier post by “scordova”:

“Based on news reports I’ve read and studies such as those by Steve Verhey, presently, I estimate 1/4 to 1/3 of biology freshman accept ID.”

Maybe the studies should have asked biology seniors?

Or
“How the Director of the Intelligent Design Undergraduate Research Center Transgressed the Etiquette of Blogging”

.: How it all began:

.: Last Wednesday, the Baylor Lariat published an article called In The Beginning: Baylor not immune to scholarly feud over origin of life. In the past, Baylor had established an Intelligent Design research center, the first of its kind at a university. It was called the Michael Polanyi Center, and it didn’t last very long. A compromise was formed that had the MPC integrated into Baylor’s Institute for Faith and Learning. It’s director, William A. Dembski, was dismissed from his position after he refused to retract a press release in which he stated after the compromise:

“Dogmatic opponents of design who demanded the Center be shut down have met their Waterloo. Baylor University is to be commended for remaining strong in the face of intolerant assaults on freedom of thought and expression.”

.: Later, the Center was renamed Program in Science, Philosophy and Religion, and Dembski left Baylor with little fanfare to preach to the choir teach at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky as Carl F. H. Henry Professor of Theology and Science.

.: But that’s all in the past, by which I mean last year. The most recent incident to cause outcry from supporters of intelligent design was the denial of tenure to Francis Beckwith, an associate professor of church-state studies who has argued that teaching intelligent design in public classrooms is constitutionally permissible. At least, there’s speculation that Beckwith was denied tenure because of his ties with intelligent design, most notably the fact that he’s a fellow of the Discovery Institute in Seattle. Baylor’s Provost, however, has stated that Beckwith’s writings on ID had nothing to do with his denial of tenure.

.: None of that is the reason for this post’s existence, however; all of it is mere backstory. The real story is that in the Lariat article the Discovery Institute was described as a conservative Christian think-tank, and the DI objected, claiming they were a “secular, non-partisan, non-profit public policy center [that deals] with national and international affairs.”* The Lariat retracted their original article, replacing their description with the one provided by the Discovery Institute, word for word, and offered the following correction:

Wednesday’s article “in the Beginning” contained several errors.

The Seattle-based Discovery Institute is a secular, nonpartisan, nonprofit public policy center dealing with national and international affairs, not a conservative Christian think-tank.

Dr. Francis Beckwith is not a member of the institute but a fellow, which means he received funding for research.

Beckwith, who was described as a proponent of teaching intelligent design alongside traditional scientific theory, said he believes there are good reasons why a public school should not require the teaching of ID, but there are no good constitutional reasons to prohibit a teacher from teaching it or a school board from requiring it.

Beckwith’s statement that “intelligent design arguments–in principle–cannot be excluded from the realm of science,” was not in the context of theology, but a question of philosophy of science having to do with the preconditions of science itself.

A corrected version of the story may be viewed online at www.baylor.edu/Lariat.

.: I don’t really care about this Beckwith guy. I read his debate with Douglas Laycock, and I remained unimpressed with position. However, the statement I take issue with is the Discovery Institute’s insistence that they are a “secular, nonpartisan, nonprofit public policy center dealing with national and international affairs, not a conservative Christian think thank.” Granted, they do deal with national and international affairs, like transportation and economic policies, but nowadays when someone mentions “the Discovery Institute,” it’s pretty much given to be largely synomous with their own Center for Science & Culture. The CSC (formerly the Center for the Renewal of Science & Culture), can be demonstrably shown as a conservative Christian think tank, and all one needs to do to show this is quote their own words from that ever-present Wedge Document:

“Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies. Bringing together leading scholars from the natural sciences and those from the humanities and social sciences, the Center explores how new developments in biology, physics and cognitive science raise serious doubts about scientific materialism and have re-opened the case for a broadly theistic understanding of nature.”

“Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.”

“To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.”

.: Any rational person would have to wonder how an organization whose stated goals are to overthrow secularist philosophy in the natural sciences could possibly claim that they themselves are a secular organization!

.: For an answer, we to turn to one Samuel Chen, director of the Intelligent Design Undergraduate Research Center. Chen, I found out, is a freshman in the Honor College at Baylor who’s double majoring in philosophy and political science. On his blog, Doubting Darwin, he reported the Lariat story and its alleged inaccuracies. I posted those quotations above and he responded to them. Well, not at first. He actually deleted my comment. My guess as to why is that, in addition to those troubling quotes, it also contained a snarky remark by me along the lines of “How stupid of them to think they are anything but a secular organization!”

.: Not impressed with his breach of blogging etiquette, I reposted the quotations, sans snarky remark. He responded thusly:

Cody, you are quoting from various parts of the “wedge document” and so forth. These are documents [sic - it's just one document] that we, including DI, do not necessarily agree with. Meaning, we have seen certain errors with intelligent design in the past and with promoting it and have worked to change those errors so we can stay honest.

.: That’s seriously what he posted. Seriously. I want you to read that again. Got it? Good. Now read this:

In what follows we cite and discuss the document’s major points and offending passages, none of which support the claims that our opponents have made about us, and all of which we continue to affirm. - The “Wedge Document”: So What?

.: So Chen asserts that he does not agree with certain statements from the Wedge Document (the way he words it, he disagrees with the entire wedge document itself, but I don’t think that’s the case). That’s fine. He’s welcome to accept whatever positions he likes and discard whatever positions he doesn’t. But he also states that the DI does not agree with the wedge document, even though they have released a public statement to the contrary. Clearly, in light of the evidence presented above, Chen is wrong. It cannot be stated any simpler than that. The question, then, is will Chen admit that he was wrong?

.: The answer turns out to be no. In fact, in order to avoid answering this embarrassing question, Chen has decided to simply delete his own comment as if it never existed, which is highly odd of him, considering he left mine, which quoted nearly every word from his original, now-deleted comment. I submit that this is behavior unbecoming of a director of an organization like the Intelligent Design Undergraduate Research Center.

.: Additionally, there were other comments by Chen that were shown to be erroneous and evasive. One commentator quoted Barbara Forrest’s analysis of the Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science & Culture as a think tank with conservative and religious goals. Chen provided this response:

Dr. Barbara Forest [sic] is the former president of the Louisiana ACLU and a leader in the evolution movement. “Plunge” hinted in another post that we shouldn’t accept what Dr. Forrest Mims says because he is a proponent of intelligent design and his view are tainted. However, it appears that evolutionists are quick to accept what Dr. Barbara Forest [sic] says, because it’s somehow untainted. Bascially, evolutionists have this policy: if it’s from an intelligent design proponent, it must be wrong. If it’s from an evolutionist: it must be 100% correct. To say what Barbara Forest says about intelligent design is 100% correct without further observation is to say that everything the Republicans say about the Democrats is 100% correct, or vice versa. Think people or haven’t your brains evolved that much yet?

.: In case you didn’t notice, Chen dismisses Plunge for suggesting in an earlier post that Dr. Mims isn’t trustworthy because he’s a proponent of intelligent design, in effect claiming that such an argument is an ad hominen. After he does that, he then seriously suggests we shouldn’t trust what Dr. Forrest says about the intelligent design movement … because she’s an evolutionist and a member of the ACLU! He then gratuitously insults all of us. Once again, this is the director of the Intelligent Design Undergraduate Research Center.

.: How then does Chen react when Ed Brayton points out that he has made an ad hominen attack against Dr. Forrest without addressing any of the points raised by her? He deletes his own comment. Instead of honestly admitting error on his end, he simply tries to erase history as if he never made any of his statements. It is too late for him to convince this to anyone, however, since his remarks have already been well documented here, here, here, in several of the remaing comments on his post that have either responded to or quoted his own now-deleted words, and now in this very blog post.

.: In light of these shenanigans, one person supplied this deliciously ironic comment:

Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard when one of the High Priest’s servant women came to him and said, “You, too, were with Jesus of Galilee.” But he denied it in front of them all. “I don’t know what you are talking about,” he answered, and went on out to the entrance of the courtyard. Another servant woman saw him and said to the men there, “He was with Jesus of Nazareth.” Again Peter denied it and answered, “I swear that I don’t know that man!” After a little while the men standing there came to Peter. “Of course you are one of them,” they said. “After all, the way you speak gives you away!” Then Peter said, “I swear that I am telling the truth! May God punish me if I am not! I do not know that man!” Just then a rooster crowed, and Peter remembered what Jesus had told him: “Before the rooster crows, you will say three times that you do not know me.” He went out and wept bitterly.

.: Chen deleted it. That did not stop the same person from posting once more:

Samuel Chen, I am surprised that you would excise the Word of God from comments to your blog. I shall repost these Sacred Scriptures in the hope that you will not deny the Lord a second time [. . .]

Or
“This Is Not Part II of Spring Break”

[Note: Due to unbearable workloads, Part II of Spring Break Shenanigans will not be posted until Wednesday evening. Please accept this post of bullet points as a temporary substitute]

• I enjoy stop motion music videos. Particularly ones by Peter Gabriel. But I also enjoy stop motion because even amateurs can do a pretty good job with it. For instance, these guys at the Baylor Underground did a wonderful stop motion video (link goes to quicktime copy, click here for a divx version). Then there’s these guys. It’s so simple, yet so entertaining.
• I’m in the midst of writing my final research paper for English. I chose Intelligent Design as my topic, specifically whether or not it should be taught in science classrooms. I don’t think it should. I also don’t think we should teach students astrology instead of astronomy. You know what else I’m not big on? Malevolent spirits like the ones postulated here.
• A while back I made a video for one of my classes. I’ve been hesitant to post it, because I wish I could go back and redo parts of it. But that’s never going to happen, so I might as well post it here. Click.
• Eric has Cystic Fibrosis. Oscar doesn’t. Their conversations usually proceed like this:

  Eric: Well, that’s kind of like –
  Oscar: You shouldn’t have children unless you hate them.

• I recently watched Being There with my friend Hunter. I thought it was hilarious that he said, “You know, watching this movie, I think this is the only plausible story of how a misunderstood idiot gardener could be considered for the presidential candidacy.” I found this hilarious because right afterwards, the misunderstood idiot gardener in the movie began to walk on water.

Or
“Nobody Ever Reads The First Title Up There, Do They?”

.: I planned to update this site several weeks ago, but various obstacles arose that prevented me from doing exactly that. Plus, it certainly doesn’t help that I take about five hours to write one post. Nevertheless, I will try to cover most of what I was going to post then and now. Why don’t we start with my spring break shenanigans, shall we?

Spring Break

.: Two weeks ago my brother and I were about to drive to Austin to pick up my dear friend Geoff and his cousin Mat. Before we could leave my apartment complex, however, my sister demanded she ride along with us. Her reason for tagging along? Our mother was going to treat us to dinner in Austin and my sister wanted the free meal. Had she read the fine works of Robert Heinlein, she would have been familiar with TANSTAAFL, or the idea that the existence of a scheduled and unrecompensed form of eating is a logical impossibility.

.: Her misadventure began at the start: she actually brought her textbooks so she could study for the three or so hours we’d be in the car. Presumably she thought my brother and I weren’t going to do anything that might be considered distracting like, say, talking to each other or listening to music at a reasonable volume. Her next problem surfaced right as we picked up Geoff and Mat, but I had pointed it out to her well in advance of this mini-road trip: there are only four seats in the car. Also, my sister can be a trifle bit annoying in close proximity, and while this may seem more of a problem for those around her, that is not always the case. For every annoying thing she said or did, my brother and I simply did whatever we could to make the trip less enjoyable for her, which had the inverse effect of making the trip more enjoyable for us (see Fig. 1).

.: However, once Mat and Geoff were in our company, we were all able to pretty much ignore Celia for the rest of the trip back to Waco, with the notable exception of the seat number problem, as mentioned earlier. I forgot what we did for the rest of Saturday night, but I’m pretty sure if it were at all interesting I would remember it, so it’s probably best for this blog entry that I don’t.

.: The next day, Mat, Geoff, Dallas, and I learned what was worse than being in Waco during spring break: being in Waco on a Sunday. Sunday, you see, is the day when all of Waco’s denizens stop being interesting and instead go to their churches. This means every conceivably interesting place is closed, except for Hastings, wherein we bought the first season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

.: For those of you who grew up without Nick at Nite, Alfred Hitchcock Presents is one of the greatest shows to ever grace television. Each episode was a mystery with a plot along the lines of Man fired from job, man kills boss, man shows up for work next Monday, boss is alive. Only, unlike the Twilight Zone or the Outer Limits, each episode had a realistic explanation or conclusion that didn’t invoke any supernatural hooey. Even the crappy episodes were graced by Hitchcock’s droll introductions and epilogues. Also, some of them are ripe for a MST3K treatment:

Setting: old western kitchen. Two feuding cowboys have been threatening to draw their guns on each other for nearly the entire episode. At this point in the show, they’ve sat down and are eating breakfast — guns still ready to draw.

Cowboy One: I won’t draw until you draw.

Cowboy Two: My hands won’t move until yours do.

Cowboy One: I already told you mine won’t move first.

Me: I hope whoever wrote this piece of shit episode was blacklisted.

Dallas: It was his critique of the Cold War.

.: In the end, the cowboys agree not to shoot each other until the clock strikes twelve. An old lady in the same room seeks protection by removing a heavy cross from the shelf upon which the clock sits. The clock doesn’t chime and the lady convinces the cowboys it’s a sign from God — she did remove a cross, afer all. Later, we learn that the clock won’t work properly unless it’s on a perfectly level surface, and removing the heavy cross caused the necessary shift in weight for the clock to cease functioning. “Boo!” we yelled at the screen. Then Alfred appeared:

“That was disappointing, wasn’t it?”

.: At least he admits it.

Dallas and Dallas

.: Since Dallas had work on Monday, he had to leave Sunday night. So on Monday morning, Geoff and I left for Dallas — the city, that is. There we met my old friend from high school, Ian. Mat didn’t want to come with us, because he had a paper to write or some bullshit like that. I understand why he’d want to make up an excuse: Dallas is just such a cool city, and someone as uncool as Mat would be uncomfortable in such hip surroundings.

.: While in Dallas, Ian, Geoff, and I (Fig. 2) struggled to choose among the many avenues of excitement and adventures that laid before us. Should we get a slurpee from 7-11, or should we go to the Half-Price Books and look at old cassette tapes? Both? Okay, now what?

.: Now, Ian goes to some stupid college in Iowa — the name escapes me, but what matters is that he lives in Iowa. As a treat for returning home for spring break, his parents cooked for him nothing but spicy meals, since the spiciest condiment one can legally buy in Iowa is ketchup. Normally I’m a fan of flavor. I don’t necessarily like eating whole jalapenos, but I do like the flavors and juices they add to a dish. Sure enough, when we all sat down to eat some sloppy joes, Ian’s dad procured a tiny bottle of habanero sauce and offered it to all who dared. I dared.

.: There is a scientific scale one can use to evaluate hotness; it’s called the Scoville Scale. Although these numbers are somewhat meaningless to you without their proper context, I’ll simply say that on the Scoville Scale, jalapenos rate around 2,500 to 8,000, while chipotle is slightly higher at 5,000 to 10,000. Habanero rates 350,000 — and that’s just the lower boundary.

.: From there, the story took the predictable turn towards a half-eaten sloppy joe, humiliation, and a blistered tongue. I tell this story not to entertain, but to educate and warn: if someone hands you some habanero sauce to put on your sloppy joe, politely decline the offer; then, when they’re not looking, grab the bottle from them and squirt its contents into their eyes, ’cause they were most likely only offering the stuff to see you suffer.

.: One last thing about the trip to Dallas: Ian can be a pretty funny guy. His sister, Kayla, was grounded while we were there, and she had to keep a mileage log in her car detailing everywhere she went. Since Ian left his car in Iowa, he borrowed hers a few times but decided to write down a few log entries of his own, lest he break continuity (see Fig. 3).

Back in Waco

.: When Geoff and I returned, we quickly discovered that we had done everything in Waco we could do, meaning we stayed indoors for the rest of the night. I thought of something we could do that wasn’t necessarily Waco-specific: record our conversation. That’s right, reader, if you ever wondered what I sound like, your musings will be answered definitively right here, right now. All you have to do is click the following link.

Cody Cobb, Celia Cobb, Geoff Smith, Mat Woodyard:
A Coversation
Recorded on March 14, 2006.
10.3 megabytes | 26:47
radio edit short.mp3

.: Among the facts you will learn after listening to this short program:

~You can get carded for purchasing Root Beer.

~Christina is a dirty slut.

~You can get away with anything on radio, but it never amounts to much.

~The rules of The Game (if you already know about The Game, you should be cringing right now).

~Celia has no understanding of humor or irony.

Next Time

.: Since this is a good break in my spring break happenings, and since this post is already far too long, I’ll continue my shenanigans in the next post. Until then, you better listen to all 26 minutes of that mp3 up there. I spent quite a bit of work editing out all the crappy bits, so you should at least be thankful that I spared you from 20 minutes of extraneous crap.