But then Klinghoffer isn't the only one.

So let's see, Klinghoffer busted in a lie of omission, so as I am trying to catch up on things I read a little post by Casey Luskin who makes a sort-of interesting claim. A Pro-Intelligent Design Peer-Reviewed publication by someone named Andy McIntosh in the International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics from WIT Press. Now, of course, I trust nothing that comes out of any of those less-than-honest-fellows over at the Discovery Institute, especially mouthpiece lawyer Luskin. So in my opinion this leads to some questions.

First Question is -- is the International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics from WIT Press actually a peer-reviewed scientific journal? To check I went to Pub Med. I figure WIT Press and the International Journal of Design & Nature and Ecodynamics should appear referenced there and other scientists should be referencing them in their own work.

Why am I not surprised the number was '0'. Yup, in the hundreds of thousands of research documents, decades of work, and thousands of scientists, no one references a publication or a press that little casey calls peer-reviewed. WIT Press does market itself as being referenced by 'CrossRef', ProQuest' and other information sources. Yes, these services can connect you with information -- but that doesn't make them a valid reference for the scientific validity of your work. They are information brokers, that's all. So far casey is meeting my expectations.

So second question, Andy McIntosh? A quick Google and Wikipedia says that he is a professor of thermodynamics and combustion theory at the University of Leeds. It also says that

"He is a scientist who disagrees with the mainstream scientific consensus on biological evolution."

Oh gee, should this be a surprise to anyone? He does have one book referenced: "Genesis for Today: Showing the Relevance of the Creation/Evolution Debate to Today's Society (foreword by Ken Ham)" With a forward by Ken Ham? McIntosh is also published in 'Evangelicals Now'.

Things aren't looking good for casey, as usual. Oh wow, just spotting something else. Guess who is on the editorial Board for WIT Press Journals? Check out their webpage and look down the list, there is an 'A. McIntosh, University of Leeds, UK'.

There's more. Do you remember 'Truth in Science'? I mentioned it in another post "Intelligent Design, Sh** or get off the Pot!" Stephen C. Meyer, another disagreeable DI fellow, identified a Norman Nevin as one of the scientists who is not a known ID advocate who enthusiastically endoresed his long argument from ignorance "Signature in the Cell". This is just another lie because Nevin is a member of Truth in Science, a group affiliated with the Discovery Institute and a pro-ID group in Great Britain. Guess who else is a member? You got it -- one each Professor Andrew McIntosh! He's even more than just a member, he's on the Board of Directors. Why wouldn't casey mention any of this?

So what do we have so far, we have a paper written by a Young-Earth Creationist, published by an apparently non-scientific press of which he is on the editorial board. Toss in his already existing anti-evolution bias and his only book publication and my conclusions are significantly different than luskin's. I certainly don't think this measures up in any way to a valid peer-reviewed scientific paper. Do you?

Klinghoffer lies by Omission

Last month I posted a bit about the Discovery Institute's (DI) efforts to re-baptize Alfred Russel Wallace as an Intelligent Design proponent. It was a post by Michael Flannery, at the DI's own Evolution News and Views sorta-blog, and . . . as usual . . . other DI mouthpieces have taken up the lie.

I guess it was David Klinghoffer's turn on the wheel. Oh, you haven't heard about 'The Wheel'? It's a technique to evenly distribute tasks. It's used by some restaurants use it to make sure the servers get an equal share of the customers coming it. It's called a 'wheel' because each name keeps coming up in rotation. W.E.B. Griffin uses one as a device for his fictional homicide detectives to show who gets the next homicide as they get called in. It's a technique that has been around for years, you might call it something else, but 'The Wheel' worked for me.

So it must be davey klinghoffer turn and he has his own post over on Evolution News and Views, a supposed news/blog site where they pretty much post anything they want and certainly don't ever allow comments. But there is something I would like you to think about. While I hate running up their stats even by a tiny bit, I will post the link to the article "New Biography Reveals Evolution's Co-Discoverer as Early Intelligent Design Advocate", but you really don't need to read it, it has nothing of any real substance and you will see why i believe that in one second.

OK, klinghoffer's post concerns a new 'Biography' of Alfred Russel Wallace written by the self-same Michael Flannery who I mentioned in my earlier post. Now regardless of what he says about it -- which really is nothing new in a DI fluff piece -- I want you to consider that klinghoffer is a Senior Fellow over at the Discovery Institute. OK, I know you knew that, but how about this little tidbit, klinghoffer described Flannery as "historian Michael Flannery" and further described him as:

"Michael A. Flannery is Professor and Associate Director for Historical Collections at the Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and editor of Alfred Russel Wallace's Theory of Intelligent Evolution (2008)."

For some reason little davey forgot to mention that Michael Flannery is also Fellow at the Discovery Institute. Now why in the world for davey not bother mentioning that little item? Doesn't that make you wonder what is going on? Why would he fail to mention that not only is Flannery more than the editor of one book about Wallace that tries to reincarnate him as an ID proponent, that not only has Flannery written blog posts making the same sort of claim, but now he has written a book of his own re-writing Wallace's life and what Wallace actually believed in (which is Darwinian Evolution BTW) -- but not once does he mention that he and Flannery are buddies who share the same political master, the DI. Why would that be?

Let's toss one more DI item into the mix, guess who published Flannery's missive? Yup, the DI's own Discovery Institute Press! So we have a DI fellow writing a book published by the DI and lauded by another DI fellow on a DI website. Anyone else see this as more than a little bit hinky? So, as usual, the Di is still pushing their ID idea without having to bother doing anything that remotely resembles science. Now they are trying to re-write the past and using their own pet historian to do it.

One last question for davey and the other DI mouthpieces, why did you suddenly all quit writing in support of David Coppedge? It's been months and his trial comes up this year. I would have assumed you would have been trying to fan the flames of public opinion, especially in light of the deafening silence by Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL)? It's just a question, or have you got something else you would rather not share with the class?

Censorship is such an ugly word, but it applies!

But sometimes it is the only one that applies.

On January 10th of this new year I was wandering the web and came across an article that, in my opinion, stretched the truth just a wee bit. So in my normal fashion I commented on the article and tried to set the record straight. I checked just about every day and my comment was sitting there label 'awaiting moderation'. Well guess what? My post, critical of their poorly supported piece disappeared. I was disappointed, but not terribly surprised.

Now back on the 10th, I also wandered around this specific website and I found another piece and commented on it. Yes, I was critical because the piece didn't seem to actually address any issues. It was all assumption and innuendo. I guess folks are not allowed to point such things out to anyone, because after 9 days awaiting moderation, it also disappeared.

Now before anyone gets all huffy. I have removed one and only one poster from my blog. When the posts that person made became extremely prejudicial and loaded with discriminatory comments I deleted them. I am not overly proud of doing that, but I felt that keeping their comments was in fact enabling them and giving them a platform.

It certainly wasn't because they disagreed with me. If you have been following this blog at all you know I tend to engage folks who disagree. Anyone remember Rory? I responded to his comments several times (Intelligent Design, Sh** or get off the Pot!) and even wound up generating two other posts because my comments to him wouldn't fit in the comments section (In response to a comment and Another response to poor Rory). So my issue wasn't disagreement, but his lack of support for his contentions. You can read back if you want.

However, what happened to me over on Creation Revolution was censorship. My first post was concerning their article "Professor denied tenure because of Intelligent Design beliefs". Yes, Guillermo Gonzalez is old news. It's been four years since he was denied tenure and lost his various appeals. What bothered me about their article was how loose they played with the facts of the case. They never addressed the core question of whether or not Professor Gonzalez did what was required to receive tenure. That should be the bottom line, but they never address those issues. The nearest they came was mentioning his 68 published papers. They didn't mention if those papers were ones published during the seven years he was a tenure seeking candidate. They also failed to examine whether or not all of those papers actually fell into the subject area he was hired to teach. They furthermore compounded their error by not addressing other tenure requirements -- the other ones he failed to meet.

I have discussed Gonzalez before (Arguments XXVI -- Universal Fine Tuning, Iowa Professor denied tenure and claims free speech and conspiracy theories, More on Professor Gonzalez, Regents deny tenure appeal of intelligent design professor) many times. My bottom line is simply this:

"When you apply and are accepted for a tenure-seeking position there is usually a laundry-list of things you must do. You are also given a time-frame, something in the neighborhood of 5 years. On that list is usually things like publish, advise graduate students, teach lots of classes, perform research, bring in external money for research, among other things. The decision to grant tenure is based on all of them, plus how well you work with your peers, support department policies, and present yourself as a member of the faculty and staff.

If Prof. Gonzales had done these things, he might have had a chance at his tenure review, but according to his track record he failed. In over 7 years he had ONE grad student complete their thesis, raised less that 1/50th the amount of research money, and had no significant scientific publications. Yes, he published at least one book outside his field of Astronomy, which supported Intelligent Design, but nothing within his field"

Please note that it was the Regents who determined that Gonzalez failed to meet the requirements for tenure. Please also note that they said he had no significant publications, which certainly disagrees with Creation Revolution's claim of 68 papers. So where did Creation Revolution get their information? From the Creation Research Society. Anyone else see a problem here?

My other post was on an article "Did ‘Nature’ Invent Oxygen-Carrying Systems…Twice?" This done by the less-than-scholarly Institute for Creation Research (ICR). ICR has been the topic of a number of posts of mine, chiefly on their failed attempt to get permission to award actual master's of Science degrees. (Texas, on a different but related subject, Hasn't Texas had enough?,Yea for Texas!, Texas scores a big win!, and ICR admits defeat, sort of . . .). So the very idea of ICR doing some scholarship would be shocking.

Luckily for me, there was no shock. This was a poorly supported opinion piece. They questioned the possibility of hemoglobin evolving twice. First of all that isn't a conclusion as of yet. However it is a possibility. My response was so what! Didn't nature evolve three very distinct flight mechanisms (bird, bat, and insect)? Didn't sight take some very different evolutionary paths (human, avian, and insect). I mean nature is replete with examples of similar function on different evolutionary paths. This is no big deal. But ICR, and by extension Creation Revolution, tries to make it some sort of evolutionary critique. Not very scholarly of them!

What I have to say about this is simple. 'Creation Revolution' kept comments that agreed with them and dumped my comments that tried to re-introduce the actual facts and issues of Gonzalez and question the basics of the ICR article. Simply put, censorship.

New Year, newly discovered blogger

Came across a great post from Alison Campbell at SciBlogs in New Zealand: "‘intelligent design is not creationism in any shape or form’ – yeah, right!"
It's a great summary of just about everything ID. She pegs the DI, the wedge strategy and Dover beautifully!

". . . so-called ‘intelligent design’ is creationism, pure and simple, and not a valid scientific explanation for life’s diversity."

Can't get much more succinct than that! Thanks Alison. I'll be reading more.

The best start of 2011

Non Sequitur is one of the best comics and one I try to stay fairly current on. This one from 1 Jan 2011 is priceless.

This have been pretty hectic, so while I have been wanting to comment on a few things, like the new State-assisted Creationism theme park in Kentucky, I have been barely keeping my head above water. But if this is a start, the next year should be fun. Wasn't this one of the years someone or other predicted the demise of Evolution as a scientific theory? Or was that 2012? Let's see, demise of evolution or the end of the Mayan calendar? Yea, 2011 for evolution and 2012 for the end of the world. Since the odds are the same for either one, you can see why I get them confused.

Did religious beliefs impact a hiring selection?

Here is an interesting case and I haven't made up my mind yet -- probably because of a lack of information. The early stories have me concerned. OK, let me know what you think about this: The Kentucky Courier-Journal is reporting "Job candidate sues UK [University of Kentucky], claiming religion cost him the post". I know the DI will have to stick their know-little-noses in soon, but I wanted to get an idea before they start polluting the Internet.

I actually caught this off the NCSE website at "Creationism at issue in employment dispute?"Please note the question mark. I am not sure of the issues in this yet, but it bears thinking.

Well if you haven't read up on it, here is a summary: In 2007 Martin Gaskell was a candidate to be the founding director of a new observatory at the University of Kentucky. The Courier-Journal is reporting that he was the leading candidate -- but that is something I am not sure can be substantiated. Again according to the suit Prof Gaskell claims that because he gave presentations in which he said that

"he believes the theory [of evolution] has major flaws. And he recommended students read ... critics [of evolution] in the intelligent-design movement."

was the reason he was not selected for the position. So he sued for

"because of his religious beliefs and his expression of these beliefs" in violation of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1991."

Since ID has been identified by a Federal Court as Creationism in a lab-coat, so it certainly can be argued that one of the factors in his not being selected might have been his support of ID. But how critical a factor was this?

There may very well have been other factors that lead to him not being selected -- UK hasn't said much yet other than his beliefs were a factor -- heck nearly anything can cause you to be non-selected, it's not like he was fired from a position.

Now one of the questions is should they have been a factor? There is my dilemma. It's easy to see why Guillermo Gonzales, Nathanial Abraham, and John Freshwater have all experiences career setbacks -- and while they all claim religious discrimination, so far the evidence hasn't backed them up. Is this one more case in point where someone's religious beliefs may have impacted, but not have been the cause of being not-selected. It will be a case worth keeping track of, that's for sure. It's easy to claim discrimination, as we have seen.

Oh, in case you hadn't realized it, but Prof Gaskell is not a biologist, but an Astronomer. So you might think that shouldn't make a difference. But you should also remember that he is still a scientist, and in the position he claims to have been a leading candidate he would be in a leadership and supervisory position over others. The work of the observatory would also be looked at for publicity and even as a source of recruitment for the University. Do you want someone who questions a field outside his own and directs students to look at non-scientific material running such a facility? There is the question that faced the selection committee and we know how they answered it, they went elsewhere. So was their decisions the correct one?

I don't know -- yet, but I do agree that his beliefs SHOULD have been a factor of his selection. Not for him having them, but for how those beliefs could impact his ability to do his job. That's the question that really needs to be answered. I am sure Guillermo Gonzalez wasn't even on the consideration list and I am sure no one would question that decision. Well like I said, a case worth watching. I am interesting in ALL of the evaluation criteria and see how other candidate measured up.

Things looking bleak for the Discovery Institute -- We can all hope!

In all honesty 'The Huffington Post' is not something I read regularly. While they frequently do have great articles by folks like Michael Zimmerman, they also tend to offer platforms to folks who support such pseudo-science as the anti-vaccine movement, climate change deniers, and Creationism. Today they had a pretty good article by John Farrell: "Intelligent Design: Losing the Catholics". The article does a good job of discussing the . . . well to borrow a quote from the article:

"the vapidity of intelligent design."

It also has a quote from another article that asked and answers "What has the intelligent design movement achieved?"

"What has the intelligent design movement achieved? As science, nothing. The goal of science is to increase our understanding of the natural world, and there is not a single phenomenon that we understand better today or are likely to understand better in the future through the efforts of ID theorists."

I am not sure i would call any of the fellows at the DI 'Theorists', but I don't agree with some of the authors terminology. The author does mention something I have to disagree with:

"The irony about the intelligent design debate today, is that the intelligent design proponents, like the Darwinists, presuppose an opposition between chance and design. They necessitate an opposition between chance and design."

Science does not presuppose such opposition. It does say that the evidence supports chance over design. Science also states that no one, including all of the design proponents, have offered one shred of evidence supporting design. Science is not opposed to design, but has said time and time again that proponents of design need to show the evidence. 'Why is it design?' 'How did it become designed?' 'What methodology indicates design?' These questions, among others, have been sidestepped by design proponents. As such, any opposition to their ideas is based on their LACK of evidence, not on the concept of design. I also wish the author would not use the term 'Darwinist', for reasons I have spelled out many times. There is no scientific discipline or ideology called 'Darwinism'.

The final quote from the article is a nice one:

"So, all is not well in Seattle. For Christians who support solid science education, that's something to celebrate. The more the vapid arguments of the Discovery Institute are exposed, the smaller and smaller their audience will become."

The 'Big Tent' approach envisioned by Phillip E. Johnson, ID's daddy rabbit, is showing signs of significant wear and tear. The problem comes not only from the outside, but from within from their own inability to support their own ideas. Many Christians who were initially positive about Intelligent Design are realizing now that is was an emotional appeal rather than an intellectual one that attracted them. As we all know an emotional appeal tends to fade over time, especially when it is the only appeal anyone is making. All the marketing in the world can only prop up a bad idea for a short while.

Klinghoffer, Klinghoffer, Klinghoffer are you ever right?

OK, I am sure that you have heard the news. NASA scientists have discovered a lifeform that can be coaxed into substituting arsenic for phosphorus. The news had blown it all way out of proportion, claiming things like "Alien Microbes" and "Life from another planet?" But the reality is less exciting than the news reports. PZ Myers has a nice piece on it "It's not an arsenic-based life form". So what does this have to do with the DI's resident excuse? Well Klinghoffer just had to comment on it. And how does he comment on it? In the least honest way possible.

He starts, as he usually does, in the title: "About That Arsenic-Gobbling Microbe...Bad News for Darwinists?" What I am still not sure of is how is this a problem for . . . to use his favorite pejorative . . . Darwinists? I assume he means Biologists. Well he sort of explains

"The bacterium evidently uses arsenic for purposes that all other known organisms would use phosphorus, including incorporating it in DNA. A reporter for Nature News cites UC Santa Barbara geomicrobiologist David Valentine as observing that the discovery may mean "you can potentially cross phosphorus off the list of elements required for life."

First of all, it's not that it uses arsenic for purposes that all other known organisms would use phosphorus -- it is more that is can be coaxing into using it. I think that's a huge difference. Look at the caveat he sneaks in "all other known organisms". So what in biology or evolutionary theory says that there can be no other organisms based on other than the elements we are familiar with? Absolutely none! Yes, we know a great deal about the life forms around us. we've only been studying them for a very long time. We've also been studying organisms we call extremophile (an organism that thrives in and may even require physically or geochemically extreme conditions that are detrimental to most life on Earth.) So back to the original question, why is this a problem?

In reality it is not! Look at it from this direction. Creationists, like Klinghoffer, like to look from the top and and claim that man has some special relationship with God and that we are at the pinnacle of some imagined ladder of awesomeness. Now biologists look more from a bottom-up approach and we are the result of our environment. So according to Creationists this discovery makes no difference. the 'designer' could do anything it wanted to do. Yet according to biologists if the environment had been different, we might have evolved very differently.

So in other words . . . it is no surprise in biology about this discovery. So where does Klinghoffer go next? SETI. Yea, I thought the same thing.

"Yet we still have no indication from SETI or anything else that intelligent or complex life exists anywhere but here. Which makes the existence of life on earth look just a bit more special than it did before, right?"

Does it really? So instead of making an actual case -- or at least building a decent strawman -- Klinghoffer falls on the tired old argument that because we haven't found life out there . . . we are so special. So just how many planets have we visited? None. How much exploring have we done? Not very much. Yes, we are listening to small portions of the sky at a time. The annual budget for SETI is pretty minuscule.

So back to Davey. The SETI argument makes absolutely no sense, so where does he turn? To Guillermo Gonzalez. You remember Guillermo? He was the Astronomer who lost his bid for tenure at Iowa State University for FAILING to do his job. Now he is teaching at a little Christian school in Grove City, Pa, and I guess he still finds time to dabble in Intelligent Design. But he doesn't say anything. Yet Davey thinks that his words offered . . . to use yet another pejorative . . . materialists dodging a bullet.

So where is this imaginary bullet? The discovery is nothing terribly special. Klinghoffer offers no reason . . . well no ACTUAL reason . . . why this is supposed to be a bad thing for biology. Here is the part that just kills me. We open our eyes a little bit future and make a discovery of something potentially wondrous, yet Klinghoffer seems to want us to be afraid of it.

I think he's afraid of it because it really is nothing more than one more successful prediction based on evolutionary sciences. The same sciences that threaten the narrow worldview of people like Klinghoffer.

DI's next cruel trick -- re-baptizing Alfred Russel Wallace

The Discovery Institute (DI) is starting to remind me of the Mormon Church, at least in one of their gutter tactics. I recall reading how the Mormons have this nasty little habit of baptizing already dead folks into the church, such as Anne Frank and Adolf Hitler, all on behalf of surviving relatives. If you are interested in knowing more about this disgusting practice, you can check out "Baptism for the Dead" over on Wikipedia.

So what does this have to do with the Discovery Institute. Well they are trying to not steal a soul, but they are trying to steal a man's lifework. Michael Flannery, a compatriot of little casey luskin and the rest of those less-than-honest folks at the DI, wrote a disgusting little post called "The Centennial of Alfred Russel Wallace's The World of Life: The Co-Discoverer of Natural Selection Proposes Intelligent Evolution!". In it he claims:

"Forgotten in the glare of Darwin's preeminence is that Wallace went on to craft his own theory, a theory imbued with intelligent design. First announced in April of 1869, Wallace would go on to develop a theory of directed, detectably designed, and purposeful common descent best described as intelligent evolution."

In my opinion Wallace might have been overlooked at one time, but not currently. There have been numerous books and articles on his contributions to Evolution and Natural Selection. Did you know Wallace was the most cited Naturalist in Darwin's "Descent of Man". While they were often in disagreement over the details, Wallace remained a supporter of Darwin and Natural Selection for the rest of his life. He published "Darwinism" as a response to critics of Natural Selection. Here are a couple of quotes I ran across:

"But whether there be a God and whatever be His nature; whether we have an immortal soul or not, or whatever may be our state after death, I can have no fear of having to suffer for the study of nature and the search for truth, or believe that those will be better off in a future state who have lived in the belief of doctrines inculcated from childhood, and which are to them rather a matter of blind faith than intelligent conviction". 1861 Letter from Wallace to Thomas Sims

"I thus learnt my first great lesson in the inquiry into these obscure fields of knowledge, never to accept the disbelief of great men or their accusations of imposture or of imbecility, as of any weight when opposed to the repeated observation of facts by other men, admittedly sane and honest. The whole history of science shows us that whenever the educated and scientific men of any age have denied the facts of other investigators on a priori grounds of absurdity or impossibility, the deniers have always been wrong." Notes on the Growth of Opinion as to Obscure Psychical Phenomena During the Last Fifty Years

Does this sound like someone who would support the modern Creationism-in-hiding Intelligent Design? Wallace could be categorized as a Creationist, but not a Creationist in the same sense as the bunch over at the DI. He had a side that supported various forms of spirituality, some might have even embarrass a modern scientist and theologian -- but he is more like many current Christians where evolution is not an issue. In my opinion, based on the evidence of his work, Wallace is much more likely to have signed the counter-petition "A Scientific Support for Darwinism" than he would the DI's extremely misleading "Dissent from Darwinism". Wallace supported evolution and Natural Selection right up until he died at age 90.

But with Wallace safely dead, just like those poor souls that the Mormon Church is trying to appropriate, the DI is releasing posts that make it sound as if he would support their misinformation campaign. Luckily his work survives and anyone can do only a few minutes to research Alfred Russel Wallace will realize this. The Alfred Russel Wallace page at Western Kentucky University was an interesting place to spend some quality time. Just a couple of years back Olivia Judson, the Dr. J of Biology, wrote an interesting opinion piece on Wallace's place in history, You might like it as well: "Wallace Should Hang" These two sites are infinitely more interesting than the DI's poorly named 'evolution news' site.

Keep running into Dembski-isms

You know as little respect as most of the ID proponents deserve, I keep running across comments about Dembski's unequivocal surrender.

Over at JREF forums, one commenter, AdMan, put it pretty succinctly:

"Here is one of the key proponents for Intelligent Design, dismissing a point that he earlier had argued was supported by scientific findings simply because he's told that the bible is absolutely trustworthy and he must not question it. And he gives in without an argument. Does ID have any legitimacy left?" [I added the italics for emphasis]

Over on Daylight Atheism it is also said quite plainly:

"But just as fascinating, I think, was Dembski's craven response. When threatened with losing his job, he immediately recanted, despite everything he had said before about how his views were founded on the evidence. He immediately surrendered those views and, in his own words, "bowed to the text" - prostrating himself before the Bible and confessing that he believes it, not because that's what the evidence says, but because that's what's written and he knows he's not permitted to doubt or think independently. Regardless of what the facts say, he knows his beliefs must be subordinated to the cold demands of dogma. Is this not a total abdication of intellectual honesty? " [Again, I added the italics for emphasis]

One of the commenters over on Daylight Atheist had a great comment, one I had to repost:

"With apologies to Monty Python.

Brave Sir Dembski ran away.
("Yes!")
Bravely ran away away.
("I did!")
When danger reared its ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled.
("Yes!")
Yes, brave Sir Dembski turned about
("I did!")
And gallantly he chickened out.

Bravely taking ("I certainly did!") to his feet,
He beat a very brave retreat.
("all truth!")
Bravest of the braaaave, Sir Dembski!
("I did!")"

How in the world can Dembski face any students in the light of such behavior? I do pity any students he has, they deserve better. On the other hand, this isn't all that surprising. Look at the coalition put together by those less-than-stellar folks at the Discovery Institute. There is no interest in actual science, only dogmatic clinging to shreds of various ideologies. Look at a few of the tactics and attacks against evolutionary theory -- completely toothless because of their refusal to step away from philosophy and marketing and engage in science.

• Teach the non-existent controversy
• Academic freedom that has nothing to do with actual academic freedom
• Darwin caused Hitler -- in spite of Hitler's avowed Christianity in his own writings and speeches
• The math -- that no one has the ability to calculate -- doesn't support evolution

All of it pretty much . . . well as the saying goes no matter how much mayo you use, you can't turn chicken sh** into chicken salad. They certainly seem to use a great deal of mayo. They dress up their ideas in ill-fitting lab coats, pay for it with other people's money, publish in the popular and christian press, whine about impossible decades-long and multi-national conspiracies of millions of scientists, and then lie and misrepresent their ideas to school boards at the state and local level. So Dembski sweating over a paying job is not much more than a ripple in a pond loaded with reprehensible tactics and strategies.

It's not that terribly surprising because of the original Wedge Strategy Document:

• "To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural, and political legacies"
• "To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God"

Intelligent Design is a shill, it's a cover, it's a thin veneer over Creationism and it really doesn't matter in the long run as long as Creationism can find its way back into the secular classroom -- not matter how! Dembski, Meyer, Johnson, Sternberg, and the rest of them will say anything, stoop to any tactic, any device, any potential selling point not because their ideas are correct, but because they believe in them in spite of the evidence that does not support them and the ends they seek justifies the means.

As one of Dembski's students said of his professor's desires

" . . . theology as the "queen of the sciences" . . . "

And that is the real crime.