Nobody will mind.
Posted on 06/16/2006 10:49:26 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
Just out of curiosity, I did a little research about Google trends to see which countries other than the USA are interested in the issue of Intelligent Design vs. Evolution.
SEE THE RESULT HERE :
http://www.google.com/trends?q=Intelligent+Design&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
Now, Click on the “regions” tab.
What is interesting is... it shows that our good ally in the War on Terror, Australia has about half the searches for Intelligent Design that we do.
But please note that Australia’s population is about 20 million. The USA on the other hand has about 280 million people.
This shows that Australia's INTEREST for ID is about 6 times more per person than the USA.
And note Denmark has only 5 million people. This means that the Danes are 20 times more interested in ID than Americans.
Interest on ID is more and more growing in Europe even in presence of a growing secularist tide.
The top 10 countries where ID is being searched for are :
USA AUSTRALIA DENMARK CANADA NETHERLANDS SWEDEN UK INDIA BELGIUM GERMANY
In the USA, the top 10 cities that are interested in ID are :
1. PHILADELPHIA
2. Washington, DC USA
3. St Louis, MO USA
4. Seattle, WA USA
5. Portland, OR USA
6. Denver, CO USA
7. Austin, TX USA
8. Minneapolis, MN USA
9. San Francisco, CA USA
10. Chicago, IL USA
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"We haven't" bump
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Nobody will mind.
Weekend posting is a high-risk activity. So I thought I'd just do one "Weekend Bump."
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An "IDer" plagiarizing, misrepresenting, or screwing up basic reasoning? Gosh, that's really hard to believe, they have far highter standards than that. Oh, wait -- no they don't:
The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth? Why Phillip Johnson's Darwin on Trial and the "Intelligent Design" movement are neither science--nor Christian - A review of the sources used in Phillip Johnson's Darwin on Trial which finds that almost every scientific source cited by Johnson has been misused or distorted in ways ranging from simple misinterpretations and innuendos to the construction of what appears to be outright fiction.
Clotted rot for rotten clots Dr. Musgrave's essay shows the falsity of the incessant claims by ID advocates (Behe, Dembski, Colson, Alonso, etc.) who repeatedly asserted that (1) Russel Doolittle's interpretation of Bugge et al's experimental data was in error, and (2) that after Behe pointed to Doolittle's error, the latter conceded being wrong. Both claims were, in fact, unsubstantiated, but the ID advocates, led by Behe, have for too long been exploiting these false assertions as arguments allegedly supporting Behe's Irreducible Complexity concept. Ian Musgrave's essay ends any possible uncertainty in the matter. Referring to the original sources, Musgrave shows that Doolittle's position was basically correct while Behe's repudiation was to a considerable extent fallacious. Bugge et al's data in no way support Behe's irreducible complexity. Behe and his cohorts' attempts to cast shadow on Doolittle's position amounted to a deliberate misrepresentation of facts. Also, Musgrave's essay in fact shows that Mark Perakh's references (in his book Unintelligent Design and in a number of posts and articles) to Behe's unsubstantiated remarks in regard to Doolittle's position were correct while their rebuttal by such ID supporters as Nelson Alonso (on the ARN website) were egregiously false. This essay was first posted to Panda's Thumb weblog. author(s):
Musgrave, Ian;published: Mar 27, 2005 .
Bill Dembski and the case of the unsupported assertion While ID 'scientists' vociferously object to being labeled creationists, they share one notable feature with the creation scientists of the 80s: their frequent use of discredited sources. author(s):
Inlay, Matt;published: Feb .
Something rotten in Denmark? One more case in the endless chain of William Dembski's hilarious gaffes. The Isaac Newton of information theory, a world expert in math statistics, a great philosopher and design theorist, seems to be ignorant of the concept of normalization with which high school students are normally expected to be familiar. The comments to this essay found on the Panda's Thumb blog are as telling as the essay itself. author(s):
Bottaro, Andrea;published: Jun 20, 2006 .
Design detectives fooled by urban legend Andrea Bottaro addresses the most recent hilarious display of ID's main "philosopher and mathematician" Dembski's egregious lack of judgment, which makes him the butt end of jokes and derision. The comments to this essay found on the Panda'sThumb blog vividly demonstrate the precipitous fall of the remnants of Dembski's already low credibility, as well as the abject madness of some of his half-witted acolytes, to whom he delegated the management of his blog. author(s):
Bottaro, Andrea;published: May 23, 2006 .
Creative Ideas of IDists as reviewers This is a brief commentary on William Dembski's underhaded tricks, wherein he anonymously advertized his own book while hurling mud on a book critical of his views. This post is accompanied by comments posted to the Panda's Thumb weblog. author(s):
Perakh, Mark;published: Mar 25, 2004 .
The Galvanic Response Wesley R. Elsberry responds to a quote from William Dembski.
Dembski believes that Christians should take a stand and send their money to "intelligent design" advocates in the wake of the adverse ruling in the Dover, Pennsylvania court case. Elsberry takes the view that Christians should, as a matter of principle, deny funding to groups that use deception as a primary tactic and, in fact, actively disassociate themselves from people with a track record of lying.
author(s):
Elsberry, Wesley R.;published: Dec 24, 2005 .
What else could be expected from Dembski? This is Mark Perakh's reply to William Dembski's arrogantly dismissive response to Perakh's essay "Skeptic on Dembski". Simultaneously posted to The Panda's Thumb, where the discussion is conducted. author(s):
Perakh, Mark;published: Aug 21, 2005 .
Of Frauds and Fingerprints In this essay Wesley Elsberry one more time shows the fallaciousness of William Dembski's arguments in the latter's incessant attempts to find the confirmations of his pseudo-scientific "theory" of intelligent design in various fields of human activities. (The discussion of this essay is found on The Panda's Thumb in the thread of August 2, 2005 initiated by Elsberry's entry). author(s):
Elsberry, Wesley R.;published: Aug 12, 2005 .
Response to Dembski's Accusations In this essay (which is accompanied by extensive discussion on the Panda's Thumb weblog) Professor Jeffrey Shallit demonstrates once again the typical Dembskian evasiveness in dealing with critique and the emptiness of his usually irrelevant and sometimes clownish responses. author(s):
Shallit, Jeffrey ;published: Jul 14, 2005 .
Dembski's continuing contradictions Pim van Meurs reveals, in this essay, (which also contains extensive quotations from Douglas Theobald) the unseemly way William Dembski dodged answering critical comments by Wesley Elsberry and Mark Perakh on Dembski's recent mathematically loaded article. Perakh's critique of Dembski's paper is here and Elsberry's critique is at the Panda's Thumb blog. author(s):
van Meurs, Pim; Theobald, Douglas L. ;published: Mar 27, 2005 .
ID's irreducible inconsistency revisited In this essay an article by William Dembski, titled "Irreducible Complexity Revisited," as well as its discussion on the ARN website are critically discussed. The main thesis of this essay is the revelation of a striking inconsistency of Dembski's discourse which plainly contradicts his earlier thesis. Also a brief discussion is presented of an article by a leading young earth creationist, Henry Morris, where he repudiates Dembski's attempts to hide the religious roots of ID behind a quasi-scientific facade. author(s):
Perakh, Mark;published: Feb 01, 2005 .
Arguments out of context: Analyzing a rhetorical trick used by William Dembski Understanding the rhetorical techniques used by ID proponents in making their case is as important as understanding the modern biological science. In this essay, Jason Rosenhouse shows how design proponent William Dembski removes anti-ID arguments from their proper context. Thus, he presents arguments made against ID's philosophical or cultural aspects as if they were responses to the scientific claims of ID. author(s):
Rosenhouse, Jason ;published: Apr 22, 2004 .
Dembski's Curious Incompetence With Quotations In this brief essay Jeffrey Shallit demonstrates a peculiar feature of William Dembski's discourse. Misquotations are common in Dembski's output, and when erroneous references in his publications are revealed, he routinely ignores the suggestions to correct the errors and continues using the same false references time and time again. Shallit convincingly shows the shoddiness of Dembski's research and his stubborn disregard for even friendly advice if such advice entails a revelation of his obvious errors. A conclusion that naturally follows from Shallit's analysis is that anything Dembski asserts must be thoroughly checked, since his references and quotations are often unreliable. author(s):
Shallit, Jeffrey ;published: Apr 13, 2004 .
Desperately Evading the Toughest Questions about Intelligent Design: A Review of Dembski's The Design Revolution In this essay Jeffrey Shallit elaborates on the theme briefly discussed in one of our previous posts. In agreement with that previous post, Shallit demonstrates that William Dembski, in his book The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughtst Questions About Intelligent Design, in fact very studiously eschews discussing most of the questions raised by many critics of Intelligent Design. Instead, Dembski indulges in either repeating, often verbatim or almost verbatim, his earlier affirmations or ignores the critique leveled by experts in regard to his output. Sometimes he surreptitiously modifies his earlier arguments to slide out of the predicament caused by critics' revealing obvious defects in his discourse (without acknowledging the critique). author(s):
Shallit, Jeffrey ;published: Apr 11, 2004 .
The Design Revolution? How William Dembski Is Dodging Questions About Intelligent Design In this brief essay, the author points out the peculiar features of William Dembski's behavior. (William Dembski is one of the leading advocates of intelligent design concepts, affiliated with the Discovery Institute in Seattle, WA; there are several articles on this site discussing Dembski's output.) In his latest book, whose subtitle promises "answering the toughest questions about intelligent design," Dembski in fact evades answering most of the questions posed by his critics (whose names do not even appear in the index of his book). The author of this esssay demonstrates that such behavior is typical of how Dembski conducts disputes. This essay also reveals inconsistencies in Dembski's persistent asseverations about the imminent demise of the evolutionary biology, and concludes that Dembski's prediction of the forthcoming "Design Revolution" is nothing more than falsely attributing to his dreams the status of facts. (Also available in PDF.) author(s):
Perakh, Mark;published: Mar 10, 2004
updated: Mar 21, 2004
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Scientists Respond to the Orchestrated Assault of IDists on Professor Gross -- excellent discussion of ID, Behe, Dembski, and others (long).
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William Dembski's treatment of the No Free Lunch theorems is written in jello
Dr. Dembski's Compass In his recent Introduction to the forthcoming book "Uncommon Dissent", Bill Dembski muses once again about "Darwinists" and their sneaky tricks. Among these is the "Myth of Victory Past", that evolutionists allegedly use to first ignore, and then dismiss as refuted, all valid objections to evolutionary theory. As an example, Dembski accuses Andrea Bottaro of employing this "misdirection" ruse to mislead readers of a recent critique of the creationist documentary "Unlocking the Mystery of Life" using inadequate claims and references. Here, Bottaro shows instead that his references and claims are accurate, and that it is Dembski who lost his bearings while looking for "misdirection". author(s):
Bottaro, Andrea;published: Aug 03, 2003
updated: Sep 19, 2003.
A response by David Wolpert, describing Dembski's incompetent handling of Wolpert's "No Free Lunch Theorem", which Dembski based his book upon and used for its title. Excerpt:
I say Dembski "attempts to" turn this trick because despite his invoking the NFL theorems, his arguments are fatally informal and imprecise. Like monographs on any philosophical topic in the first category, Dembski's is written in jello. There simply is not enough that is firm in his text, not sufficient precision of formulation, to allow one to declare unambiguously 'right' or 'wrong' when reading through the argument. All one can do is squint, furrow one's brows, and then shrug.[...] However, Dembski does not do this. The values of the factors arising in the NFL theorems are never properly specified in his analysis. More generally, no consideration is given to whether some of the free lunches in the geometry of induction might be more relevant than the NFL theorems (e.g., those free lunches concerning "head-to-head minimax" distinctions that concern pairs of algorithms considered together rather than single algorithms considered in isolation).
Indeed, throughout there is a marked elision of the formal details of the biological processes under consideration. Perhaps the most glaring example of this is that neo-Darwinian evolution of ecosystems does not involve a set of genomes all searching the same, fixed fitness function, the situation considered by the NFL theorems. Rather it is a co-evolutionary process. Roughly speaking, as each genome changes from one generation to the next, it modifies the surfaces that the other genomes are searching. And recent results indicate that NFL results do not hold in co-evolution.
It may well be that there is a major mystery underlying the performance of some search processes that one might impute to the historical transformations of ecosystems. But Dembski has not established this, not by a long shot.
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Irreducible Complexity and Michael Behe Do Biochemical Machines Show Intelligent Design? - Critiques of Behe's arguments
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Not a Free Lunch But a Box of Chocolates: A critique of William Dembski's book No Free Lunch
Response? What Response? How Dembski has avoided addressing my arguments - A followup by the author of the above critique
Irreducible Complexity Demystified -- A critique of Behe
"We haven't" bump
Of course, you can't have a debate without having debating tactics. It's entirely fair, inside the courtroom or out, to showcase the facts that are most favorable to you. In the same way, it's perfectly fair to write a radio ad pointing out that your brand of widgets is cheaper and more reliable than your competitor's--if those favorable facts are actually true. But we're all aware of sleazy sales pitches where the tactics are used to obscure or distract attention from the relevant facts. I am not claiming that the line between these two is crystal-clear. But I am claiming that those who try to sway public opinion--especially if they are laying claim to the moral mantle of Christianity--are ethically bound to stick to the fair methods and leave the lawyer games in court.ID is rotten at the foundation. The problem is not the existence of a few bad pennies among their arguments. The problem is the lack of a single good penny....
... I found that almost every scientific source cited by Johnson had been misused or distorted, in ways ranging from simple misinterpretations and innuendos to the construction of what appears to be outright fiction. The more closely I examined Darwin on Trial, the more inaccuracies I found, until it became almost impossible to catalogue all of the misleading statements in Johnson's work. This book-upon which the "intelligent design" movement is trying to hang a program of social reform and public education-is perhaps the ugliest and most deceptive book I have ever seen.
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I am not convinced about intelligent design.
But I am convinced about intelligent inevitability.
Combined with Alpha-Omega, it becomes sort of a self fullfilling prophecy.
"We haven't" bump
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"We haven't" bump
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