#55268: — 12/27  at  08:57 AM
I wonder if he wasn't ordered to hang it up by his new employer. We're only just starting to see the Dover fallout.

#55270: — 12/27  at  09:04 AM

Dembski folds, giving up the weblogging game. I can't imagine why

Maybe someone got the point across to him that the stoopid things he was saying will hurt his chances if he ever has opportunity to make the case for IDC in a trial or public forum.

#55271: decrepitoldfool — 12/27  at  09:06 AM
He isn't hanging it up, he's going to go back to just his 'designinference' website, where he can blather on without all that messy feedback.

He did warn of things to come, though:

watch for www overwhelmingevidence com, which I expect will provide a suitable antidote to the Dover trial (stay tuned)

Yeah, that'll show 'em.

#55275: — 12/27  at  09:44 AM
Where's the verse about spontaneous generation? Or am I just missing it in one of the links?

#55277: ekzept — 12/27  at  09:45 AM
yeah, the Lubavitchers are also eminent defenders of that Bible codes nonsense which made the rounds a couple of years back. this prompting embarrassed responses from many mathematicians and physicists, including the American Mathematical Society, and including Barry Simon and Shlomo Sternberg, both eminent mathematical physicists and shomer shabbat Jews.

#55278: ekzept — 12/27  at  09:49 AM
one clarification, however. i'm less sure the justification for the Lubavitcher's view comes from Torah, in the narrow sense, than it does from the tradition of the Talmud. a lot of the original natural philosophy in Talmud is pretty bad, at least if it is interpreted literally.

#55282: Zeno — 12/27  at  09:53 AM
In waving bye-bye, Dembski says he particularly enjoyed getting to know DaveScot. How nice to know he met a kindred spirit.

#55289: — 12/27  at  10:36 AM
Dembski's lack of sleep from getting up every hour to delete critical posts has probably caught up with him.

#55291: Hank Fox — 12/27  at  10:42 AM
Heh. I too recognized the name of DaveScot in Dembski's parting note. Yuck.

Funny that he simply shut down the comments section, with no chance for pleading or goodbyes from his many fans.

I wonder: Is it ever possible that some of these people simply tire of ... well, being loved by a lot of dimwitted, mostly-illiterate fools, and being despised by the people they'd really like to be liked by -- educated, intelligent people?

#55294: Kagehi — 12/27  at  11:04 AM
Damn.. I really wish I could draw well. I can just picture the cartoon of the God of the Shell Game. lol

#55302: Kristine Harley — 12/27  at  11:25 AM
I predict that Dembske will next go into the creationist dating service business--havemydesignedeyesonyou.com, for lonely IDers. Probably a pretty lucrative business--and they'll claim that the subsequent happy marriages were all "by design" and therefore meant to be! Nothing sells like stupidity.

#55318: coturnix — 12/27  at  01:11 PM
DaveScott! Heh!

This is old, but good: http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i21/21b02001.htm
Just add #8: runs a blog and deletes comments by critics.

#55322: — 12/27  at  01:37 PM
Came here via Jesus General and JurassicPork. Will be back. thanks.

#55353: — 12/27  at  05:23 PM
"Is it ever possible that some of these people simply tire of ... well, being loved by a lot of dimwitted, mostly-illiterate fools, and being despised by the people they'd really like to be liked by -- educated, intelligent people?"

Depends on how crackpot they are. Most visible crackpots are unfortunately stimulated by any response - sometimes by the mere act of having their comments posted, it seems.

#55355: — 12/27  at  05:36 PM
<quote>Although I’ve enjoyed blogging, I find it distracts from more pressing work that I need to get done.</quote>

I sprayed Coke all over my keyboard and screen when I read that.

It[s not like blogging keeps him from all that cutting edge, groundbreaking, ID research.

#55358: ekzept — 12/27  at  06:40 PM
y'know, there's a certain lack of class among the ID crowd. i mean, think of Darwin when Wallace wrote him about his ideas. Darwin got off the pot and pushed his own stuff, encouraged by Wallace, but it's not like Darwin deep-sixed the Wallace correspondence.

it's like, when you usually put a paper in for publication, especially when a novice, it usually comes back with all kinds of comments about improvements. so, sometimes if the referees are off the mark, it gets submitted somewhere else. but most of the time what they say has merit and the paper gets rewritten in part, to its improvement.

Demski and Wells seem like only WE see the truth. that in itself ought to be some kind of clue.

#55371: — 12/27  at  07:59 PM
Someone should archive his website. It may be important for future trials.

#55374: ekzept — 12/27  at  08:39 PM
yeah, that would be a good idea. not surprisingly, Dembski's "robots.txt" blocks archiving by the Wayback Machine.

#55387: — 12/28  at  12:23 AM
The further discrediting of ID can be accelerated by attacking it not only frontally as has been so effectively done with the Dover trial but also from the rear by showing its erstwhile religious supporters that Intelligent Design as formulated by the Discovery Institute is really a modern-day incarnation of the age-old heresy of gnosticism. Gnosticism is a relatively obscure set of religious beliefs that pre-date Christianity but had a powerful hold on the early Church. It was uprooted from within the Church in the 2nd and 3rd centuries as one of the earliest and most pernicious challenges to Christian orthodoxy and is still today anathema to all established Christian denominations. What is Gnosticism and how does it relate to Intelligent Design? What follows is an excerpt from Wikipedia concerning some core beliefs of the Gnostic movement that are relevant to an understanding of ID.

“The increasing fragmentation of the nature of God into more and more aeons (various emanations of God ) led, eventually, to instability within the primordial universe (which at this point in the myth remains entirely non-material in nature). This growing problem reaches its climax when the lowest aeon, called Sophia (Gr. "wisdom") attempts to surmount the rigid hierarchy of the divine nature, in an attempt to approach close to God himself (it must be remembered that though the aeons comprise God in his totally, they are nevertheless at one and the same time individual characters abstracted from him, otherwise we would have the paradoxical situation of God divided into many essences); in other cases, she imitates God in performing an emanation of her own. In both cases, this intransigence causes a crisis within the Pleroma (the sum total of the spiritual universe), leading to the creation of the demiurge, Yaldabaoth, a "serpent with a lion's head" (Apocryphon of John). This figure is more commonly known as the Demiurge, after the figure in Plato's Timaeus (Gr. demiurgos - "one who shapes"). This being is at first hidden by Sophia, but later escapes, stealing a portion of divine power from his mother.

Using this stolen power, Yaldabaoth creates a material world in imitation of the divine Pleroma. To complete this task, he spawns a group of entities known collectively as Archons, "petty rulers" and craftsmen of the physical world. Like him they are commonly depicted as theriomorphic, having the heads of animals. Astute readers will have noticed that by this point the events of the Gnostic narrative have joined with the events of Genesis, with the Demiurge and his Archontic cohorts fulfilling the role of the creator. The Demiurge declares himself to be the only god, and that none exist superior to him.

From here the events follow in the familiar fashion. God (i.e. the Demiurge) creates Adam - during the process unwittingly transferring the portion of power stolen from his mother into Adam's body - and then Eve from the former's rib; the two are tempted by the serpent, and fall. However, the addition of the prologue radically alters the nature of the fall; rather than locating the cause of the fall in human weakness, gnostics locate the ultimate cause of the fall as residing in an instability in the divine nature itself. The fall of Adam and Eve thus become something of a redemption; the eating of the fruit of Knowledge the first act of human salvation from cruel, oppressive powers. The Gnostic conception of the Fall as a divinely caused event follows.”

There is much more to this esoteric mythology at Wikipedia and elsewhere on the web. What is significant is that the Discovery Institute in trying to distance itself from standard creationist mythology by positing the possibility of there having been multiple “designers” responsible for creation opens up the act of creation to these sorts of "heretical" interpretations. How do you think the fundies would like these ideas being inculcated in their children's minds?

#55415: — 12/28  at  09:24 AM
Good fuckin' riddance to bad rubbish. Don't let the keyboard hit ya in the ass, Demmie.

#55491: ekzept — 12/28  at  02:09 PM
there now is a capture of a small corner of the Web containing Dembski's site.

WARNING: it is over 200 MB, even if it is compressed. because it is "in my private stock", being intended for my personal, private study and study by my friends, it is encrypted.

if you need the decryption key, email me. the decryption key is also constructible by a rather complicated rule which i could post here, but i don't know about PZ's policy on these things. i'll hold off for now.

#55499: — 12/28  at  03:17 PM
Re my earlier post regarding the similarities between Intelligent Design and Gnosticism. I would advise readers that they go to creationist and other religious blogs that support ID and accuse them of the Gnostic heresy. Explain,in all seriousness and with a straight face, that ID in denying the primacy of creation as described in the book of Genesis allows for a modern incarnation of the gnostic belief that the material world was created by demonic offspring of the Demiurge who usurped the spiritual rule of the true Supreme Being and created the material world for his own exultation. See how they respond to that.

#55601: John Farrell — 12/29  at  10:50 AM
Dae, I have to say this is a brilliant analysis, and one well worth writing up in greater detail for a magazine. Seriously, you might get that into a friendly theo mag like Christianity Today where many readers would in fact be grateful for the connection.

I've already noticed increasing distrust on the part of some evangelicals about the ID movement--especially its tactics. So I think your point would find a lot of interested listeners.

#55628: ekzept — 12/29  at  02:46 PM
perhaps Schneerson's minions have company.

#55760: — 12/30  at  02:45 PM
Further thoughts on the ID heresy:

As Dembski’s blog is about to go extinct I thought it interesting to resurrect one of this latter day entries in which he tries to distance himself from “creationism per se”. I will point out two implications of his position that should lead fundamentalist Christians to want to distance themselves from “Intelligent Design.” Just for reference the following is Dembski’s screed:

“A creationist on one of the listserves to which I subscribe wrote:

Ken Miller and Rick Wood (skeptic and host of the radio program audiomartini) claim to have more respect for young earth creationists than ID proponents because “at least they are upfront about what they believe.” According to them, everyone knows what the real purpose of ID is: it is to advance belief in God. What, then, is the problem with acknowledging it? So why not just be up front and put to rest the accusation of dishonesty?

Here is why in fictional monologue:

1. ID scientist, (insert Behe, Minnich, Dembski, anyone) is it true that you are a Christian and believe in God?

2. Is it true that one of the tenets of Christianity is to make disciples of all nations?

3. Although I acknowledge your claim that ID does not say who the designer is, you do in fact have a personal belief that it is God, correct?

4. Although I can agree that you are attempting to make observations and religiously neutral hypotheses, the conclusions ultimately will point to a supernatural intelligent designer correct?

5. Then even though you claim to be using science alone, I don’t believe that your motivation is only to advance science but instead are only hiding your real motivation to convert people.

Points 4 and 5 are problematic. Let’s cut to the chase: Is the designer responsible for biological complexity God? Even as a very traditional Christian and an ardent proponent of ID, I would say NOT NECESSARILY. To ask who or what is the designer of a particular object is to ask for the immediate intelligent agent responsible for its design. The point is that God is able to work through derived or surrogate intelligences, which can be anything from angels to organizing principles embedded in nature.

For instance, just because I hold to both Christian theism and ID doesn’t mean that God directly designed and implemented the bacterial flagellum by specifically toggling its components. It could well have happened by a process of natural genetic engineering of the sort envisioned by James Shapiro. The design would be no less real, but God’s role in the design would be distant, not proximal.
Philosophers have long distinguished between primary and secondary causes. The problem is that under the pall of methodological naturalism, secondary causes have been identified with purely materialistic processes. But it’s perfectly legitimate for secondary causes to include teleological processes. I develop all this at length in THE DESIGN REVOLUTION.”

First off, the design that Dembsky sees in biological organisms such as the bacterial flagellum “could well have happened by a process of natural genetic engineering” … in which “God’s role in the design would be distant, not proximal.” This, as far as I can tell, is fully consistent with the Deist heresy in which “God created the universe and then abandoned it, assuming no control over life, exerting no influence on natural phenomena, and giving no supernatural revelation.” Well, if not a distant god who merely sets things in motion by establishing “organizing principles embedded in nature” then what? Dembski offers an alternative, “that God is able to work through derived or surrogate intelligences, which can be anything from angels” … to who knows what! This as I’ve stated in previous posts is equivalent to the Gnostic heresy in which there are a plethora of divine emanations that go about creating the material world as an imperfect reflection of the spiritual world of the monad. Either way, in trying to distance himself from Biblical Creationism while maintaining adherence to a belief in supernatural causation Dembski is diluting the Christian message and promoting various forms of heresy. So fundamentalists should stay away from ID as an abomination, and stick to their strict creationism as promulgated in Genesis, which is clearly outside the scope of science education!