Thursday, June 08, 2006
RSR's "Design Filter Failure" Contest
How many times can a person be wrong before simple decency requires that they just shut up and think a little before lecturing the rest of us?
If William Dembski, the Isaac Newton of information theory, that number appears to be approaching infinity.
If William Dembski, the Isaac Newton of information theory, that number appears to be approaching infinity.
- Yesterday, Dembski was forced to withdraw the charge of "egregious quote mining" he'd leveled against Pim van Meurs who, as it turned out when the dust had settled, quoted him accurately in a Pandas Thumb post. "As it turns out," wrote Dembski in withdrawing the accusation, "the quote in question appeared in an earlier paper of mine... exactly as it appeared at PT."
- Not long ago, Dembski charged Kevin Padian, a professor of Paleontology at UC Berkeley and expert witness in the Dover intelligent design trial, with being a racist, only to withdraw the charge and offer a half-hearted apology just days later.
They don't call it apologetics for nothing.
Beyond the baseless name calling, Dembski has also demonstrated that his vaunted design filter is coarse enough to let through just about anything. Here's one example:
- In 1998, Dembski fell for the Bible Code Hoax. So far as we know, he's never owned up to that one.
So, what other examples of Dembskite filter failure can readers come up with? There must be a million of them. If you've got a good example of Dembski's tendency to go off half cocked, send us an e-mail (don't put it in the comments, please.) We'll pull together a list and we'll choose our favorite failure. The readers who sends in the most astonishing example will receive a photo quality 16x20 full color print of RSR's "Historic Discoveries" poster.
