Semi-shameless plug - Latest issue of Skeptic
The new issue of Skeptic (Vol 11 No. 4 2005) has a couple of excellent full-length articles that deal with "intelligent design" creationism. In addition, there is a News piece that I contributed which discusses the closing night lectures of Michael Behe and William Dembski at last year's Darwin, Design, and Democracy conference in Albuquerque (yes, I know that was almost 11 months ago, but if you're familiar with "design theory," you know the substance of the arguments seldom changes, while the packaging is continually redesigned).
But although I'd like everyone to read my piece, I really want you to pick up the magazine for Mark Perakh's article entitled "The Dream World of William Dembski's Creationism." Perakh is an important ID critic, not because he turns a great phrase but because he addresses the specifics of many of the mathematical, probabilistic, and information theoretical claims of ID "theorists" that can be interminably obscurant.
Perakh demystifies much of the nonsense, in fact showing often that it serves little more purpose than to mystify, and corrects errors of application and execution of methodology in a way that is accessible to the reader who is not strong in the aforementioned disciplines. In fact if you have the opportunity, I would reccommend reading his "Unintelligent Design," one of the best ID debunking books I've read.
Back to Skeptic, make sure to read Robert Weitzel's dissection of the issues surrounding the publication of Meyer's paper in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. It is called "Creationism's Holy Grail" and directly follows Perakh's article.
There is plenty of other good stuff in the magazine as well, including a tribute to Ernst Mayr. Check it out if you get the chance.
posted by RLC @ 9:35 AM
3 Comments:
Congratulations Robert L. Camp. You have just become Cobert L. Ramp and joined company with Dilliam Wembski, Esley Welsberry. M.P. Zeyers. Lenyse O'Deary, Jephen E. Stones, Lohn M. Jynch or anyone else who, unable to tolerate dissent, manages to gain my contempt. Now hurry up and delete this too before one of your many admirers sees it.
There's dissent, true. Then there are stupidity and lies; are you defending the latter because you are possessed of the former, or for some other reason?
Davison,
You've left many comments on this site, all of them filled with your usual brand of bluster and self-promotion. But for the most part they were topical. They're all still here. I deleted your last post because it was a content-free tantrum. If you want a place to air your delusions you'll have to create your own site.
I've trashed three comments here: one that was a redirect to porn sites, one that was a sales pitch, and your childish rant. The only thing they had in common was a complete lack of relevance to anything discussed here.
I'll leave this last post of yours up so that, along with my reply, people will get a sense of how uninterested I am in policing anything. Maintain at least a tangential connection to issues of interest and you're home free.
But I won't tolerate advertisements, even if they're just for silly, personal vendettas.
Post a Comment
<< Home