See:
Cordova Tries Again.

I posted this at his website:
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comment #11

He offered more illogical and simplistic thinking which I chose not to deal with at this time.

I thank him however for doing his part at keeping the controversy over Design alive and well.

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Ed wrote:
It should be clear to any honest person that Matzke was referring to the same thing Dembski was, to the present use of that phrase as a label for a (still non-existent) theory, research program, or movement. That Sal continues to make absurd arguments to prove otherwise only shows his lack of intellectual honesty.

A rose is a rose by any other name, and it appears the movement merely adopted a name suitable to it’s rightful heritage. It was ID all along, and any mis-naming it along the lines of “creation science” was a mistake, and Edward’s vs. Aguillard only hastened the fixing of this mistake.

With respect to what ID is, and where it descended from:

ID is a lineal descendent of William Paley’s Argument from Design (Paley 1803,)
Eugenie Scott

Ed’s analysis is clumsy and simplistic as I pointed out in Eugenie Scott defeats Ed Brayton and in subsequent comments.

To say ID was created to influence the public schools is about as lame as saying Darwinism was created to influence the public schools.

The ID movement is about defeating Darwinism and sending it to the ash heap of failed ideas where it belongs. The public school system is only one minor battle ground in a larger cultural war. To define the culture war in terms of one battlefield is pretty shallow.

The ID movement is winning in the court of public opinion and it will eventually win in the scientific arena as the Darwinist Dogmatists simply retire from the battle front having been wearied from defending Darwinist falsehoods in the face of undeniable empirical evidence.

And unfortunately for Darwinism, even it Darwinism were right, 30 Dennett gives scientific reasons ID will prevail.

So it appears like the last Samurai, the Darwinists will be brandishing their swords against howtizers and gatling guns. A Valiant defense, but doomed.

The fact the Ed characterizes the ID movement as a public school issue is at variance with the highly accurate assessment by Eugenie Scott that ID was a university-based movement with the aim of influencing the culture in the free market place of ideas, and only secondarily the public schools if at all.

Ed may accuse me of being intellectually dishonest, well, I will not return the gesture. I’ll merely suggest Ed is being intellectually shallow. But he’s an honest guy, and thus his clumsy thinking is forgivable.

Ed’s assessesment of things is shallow, unscholarly, simplistic, unintellectual, illogical, clumsy. It’s the product of his own stereotypes and cloudly thinking.

That is typical of Ed Brayton — and he has no qualms about censoring comments and commenters for the sole reason that they disagree with him. He kicked me off his blog permanently because he disagreed with my literal interpretation of a federal court rule. I made the perfectly reasonable claim that when a plaintiff refuses to accept an out-of-court settlement offer that would provide relief equal to or greater than the maximum relief that could possibly be provided by the court, the judge may dismiss the lawsuit on the grounds of “failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted,” FRCP Rule 12(b)(6). It is obvious that the court cannot grant any relief if all the relief that the court could grant has already been offered! Duh. Also, under FRCP Rule 12(h)(2), Rule 12(b)(6) may be invoked at any time during a trial even if there was originally a claim upon which relief could be granted. See — http://im-from-missouri.blogsp.....9400074362

In another case, Ed condemned StoptheACLU’s Glib Fortuna for making a particular criticism of the ACLU and later praised a Wall Street Journal article for making the same criticism. Ed’s explanation of the difference: Glib’s criticism was “batshit wingnuttery.”

My blog has nearly forty articles that criticize Ed. It is high time for Fatheaded Ed to be exposed as the big phony that he is.

Though the FLEs were not explicitly mentioned as FLEs, the pioneer of FLE (Michael Behe) was.

Is Behe known for “front-loaded evolution”? I thought that Behe was mainly known just for popularizing the term “irreducible complexity.”

StephenB said (comment #4) –

That is why they keep hearkening back to that kangaroo court at Dover. They found a stupid judge to initutionalize their lie, so they resort to it each time they begin to lose the debate.

This is true. The Darwinists’ reliance on the opinion of a single judge is beyond all reason. Also, Judge Jones’ Dickinson College commencement speech gave strong evidence that he was biased against the defendants — he said that his Dover decision was influenced by his belief that the Founders believed that organized religions are not “true” religions.

Also, I think that our strategy should be aimed more at recruiting new ID scientists (serious mission territory) and less at gaining Darwinist converts (very little bang for the buck). Hence, the importance of public acceptance. We have to remember who our audience is and who among them is most likely to come our way. At this point in the game, moving hearts and minds is almost as important as the science itself.

joe:

ID is NOT anti-evolution. And until people realize that there will be a need to refute the stupidity that spreads such drivel.

Thanks Joe for your comments. There were indeed a few things I did not agree with in Scott’s article. But of anything written by a critic about the ID movement, this was the most accurate I’ve read so far.

Surprisingly, this was in 1997, and it was probably researched for a couple of years before publication when ID was obscure and almost unknown [even in creationist cricles, the name "ID" wasn't hardly recognized until about 3 years ago].

Thus Genie wrote the article to warn her peers as to what was happening. The audience for her article wasn’t the mainstream media. It wasn’t a public relations screed. It was an investigative report, and the accuracy was astonishing!

How many people today actually realize ID was oriented toward the market place of ideas and especially the university audience (both faculty and students)?

It’s unfortunate the movement got defined in the eyes of the public by those bone-heads in Dover and the Thomas Moore law center who couldn’t even articulate what ID thoery was.

Ed’s assessesment of things is shallow, unscholarly, simplistic, unintellectual, illogical, clumsy. It’s the product of his own stereotypes and cloudly thinking.

Genie’s analysis was astonishingly accurate and caught so many nuances. Not many would see the link between the PCs and OECs and FLEs (Front-Loading Evolutionists) in relation to the formulation of ID. Though the FLEs were not explicitly mentioned as FLEs, the pioneer of FLE (Michael Behe) was.

The DI is obviously lying.

To StephenB,

ID needs a tent big enough to hold all the people who are interested in the reality behind our existence.

You do realize there is only one reality…

1. Does Discovery Institute favor including the Bible or creationism in science classes or textbooks?

No. Discovery Institute is not a creationist organization, and it does not favor including either creationism or the Bible in biology textbooks or science classes.

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3. Should public schools require the teaching of intelligent design?

No. Instead of mandating intelligent design, Discovery Institute recommends that states and school districts focus on teaching students more about evolutionary theory, including telling them about some of the theory’s problems that have been discussed in peer-reviewed science journals. In other words, evolution should be taught as a scientific theory that is open to critical scrutiny, not as a sacred dogma that can’t be questioned. We believe this is a common-sense approach that will benefit students, teachers, and parents.

Also, what about non-ID criticisms of evolution, e.g., criticisms concerning co-evolution, the propagation of beneficial mutations in sexual reproduction, and chromosome counts?

How big of a tent does the ID movement want,

Big enough to host the debate. If you look at the book Debating Design which had an all star cast of both Darwinists, IDists, Self-Organizationalists, …..That symbolizes the real Big Tent. The ID movement merely wishes the issues are debated and the evidence put on the table. The problem is the debate has been institutionally shut down.

Let the Big Tent be for everyone with an open mind. We’ll even let closed minded skeptics in, if they are willing to engage in debate.

[of course, spammers are unwelcome, let them elect their best to debate ID's best. These swarm attacks like what's happening at Ben Stein's blog are not my idea of a big tent, that's a bee hive.]

Both movements (ID and Darwinism) were aimed at explaining origins, the rest is a sideshow, even the public schools.

The arguments about what’s taught in public schools or what former liquor control board director John Jones decide to cut and paste into his rulings pale in significance to the possibility that life and the universe were intelligently designed.

Brayton simply doesn’t get it. He fails to realize that some of us are genuinely curious to know if life was intelligently designed, and whether that is where the evidence is leading us.

Ed would prefer to spend time finding reasons to paint ID as a bunch of scoundrels. Well, in that case, I thank him for helping Ben Stein’s “Bad to the Bone” marketing campaign on behalf of ID.

I hope that rebel image really takes hold.