Talk:William A. Dembski/Archive 1

message: In a 2001 Gallup poll on the origin and development of human beings  found that 5% of American scientists (not necessarily working in fields connected with evolution) believed in biblically literal creation, 40% believed in "theistic evolution", and 55% believed in "naturalistic evolution" . --FeloniousMonk 19:51, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Immaterial. The entry requirement for science is not holding a travelling road show, nor publishing an unpeer reviewed book, nor getting someone to write a big check to sit you in a university. It is presenting hypothesis for scrutiny, and having it survive that scrutiny. That many scientists might like to believe in theistic evolution is in the same category as many scientists would like to believe that quantum chromo dynamics is not physically true - until there is a physically plausible model that can survive scrutiny, it is, at best "belief", "opinion" or, if given some level of falsifiability, "conjecture". Stirling Newberry 21:26, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. We're arguing from the same side here. I'm just putting out some credible numbers as a baseline to check anyone who, like 138.130.194.229, make unsubstantiated generalizations about science and scientists.--FeloniousMonk 03:14, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Some numbers

message: While researching the "...claims of ID, which mainstream science regards as a pseudoscience..." issue, I came across this article  on the topic at the American Association of University Professors site  where I noticed it appears much of this article's passage in question seems to be cut and pasted from. I suggest everyone take a look. I'm uncertain if this is a copyright violation or not, I'll you decide for yourselves.--FeloniousMonk 20:26, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Could you be more specific?  They're both long enough that I don't want to go back and forth through them trying to find the supposed copyright violation. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:47, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Possible CR violation?

message: The phrase "Scientists at Baylor were dismayed that the claims of ID, which mainstream science regards as a pseudoscience, would damage Baylor's and their reputation for scientific integrity." is factually incorrect. It was actually the the Baylor faculty senate, consisting of faculty of all disciplines, that raised the row, and the Baylor administration agreed to convene an outside committee to review the center. The committee recommended that a faculty advisory panel oversee the science and religion components of the program and that the center drop the name of Michael Polanyi.  I'll correct  this error in the article.--FeloniousMonk 20:53, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Factual error as to who was dismayed

message: This section originally started out as a justification for the corrected content which, based on Stirling's edit summary notes, I assumed had been reverted in its entirety. I see that I was incorrect in that assumption, so I've re-added Stirling's phrase to the current version, removed in my revert of his previous edit. --A cautionary tale to always see the diff before making up your mind or taking action. That still leaves us with the issue that the original passage might have been a cut and pasted from  AAUP site . I feel it is a non sequitur at this point since the passage has been reworded and we can drop it.--FeloniousMonk 04:08, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Regarding the recent revert of the corrected content

message: OK, I've added citations for the statements in the article that Sam has been insisting on.--FeloniousMonk 17:43, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Sources cited

message: Good recent edits. (Sam Spade | talk | contributions) 13:35, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, I felt it needed some more referencing (doesn't everything on Wikipedia?) and it needed to say a bit more about the man's own views. -- ChrisO 14:06, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I very much agree. There are still some statements which I contest, but progress is being made, and really, who can ask for more than progress? (Sam Spade | talk | contributions) 14:29, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent changes 

message: OK, now that the notion of it's being ironic is gone, it's not so bad (though hardly worth mentioning).  The other edits are almost all personal stylistic preference, making little difference to the clarity, but so long as we're happy with the result, fine. Mel Etitis  (Μελ Ετητης) 09:11, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stop press: Biologist accepts evolution! 

message: I don't like this sentence:
"Dembski's knowledge of statistics, coupled with his general scepticism concerning evolutionary theory, prompted him to regard it as statistically improbable that natural selection could produce the extraordinary diversity of life."
I think that closer to the truth would be
"Dembski's knowledge of statistics, coupled with his general scepticism concerning and lack of understanding of evolutionary theory, prompted him to regard it as statistically improbable that natural selection could produce the extraordinary diversity of life."
But of course that would be POV. Anyway, the sentence as it is makes readers think that knowledge of statistics is all you need to judge the question, when in reality you need knowledge of statistics and evolutionary biology. There are loads of biologists (and other scientists) who understand both and who accept evolution. After all, the modern synthesis contains a lot of math, mainly coming from population genetics. But how to formulate that? --Hob Gadling 11:26, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)
:You're assuming that Dembski is ignorant of evolutionary theory. There is of course also the possibility that he is very well aware of it but chooses to misrepresent it for ideological reasons.
:As for the sentence you dislike, how about this as a simpler alternative?
 
::"Dembski came to believe that it was statistically improbable that natural selection could produce the extraordinary diversity of life." 
:-- ChrisO 11:54, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  knowledge of statistics 

message: */Archive 1
*/Archive 2 (the present page is getting long, but archive 1 is 65kb and some of the current page is only 3 weeks old, so I'll let it slide a bit.  --Blainster 21:16, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Archive

message: From the Wikipedia Manual of Style: "Each article should have uniform spelling and not a haphazard mix of different spellings, which can be jarring to the reader. For example, do not use center in one place and centre in another on the same page. Articles that focus on a topic specific to a particular English-speaking country should generally conform to the spelling of that country. For example: article on the American Civil War: U.S. usage and spelling." This being an article on a US citizen active largely in the US, the  US spelling should be used here.--FeloniousMonk 03:43, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Spelling

message: A recent edit by User:138.130.192.82 () was accompanied by the edit summary "Reversed Templeton and Discovery Ins. because the former is not pro-ID".  But the Foundation's website has this to say on its funding of research into Science and Religion:
http://www.templeton.org/science_and_religion/index.asp
: The Foundation especially seeks to stimulate rigorous scholarly/scientific advances that increase understanding of the ultimate aspects of human purpose...
(Emphasis is mine).
On the same page, the Foundation's benefactor, Sir John Marks Templeton, is quoted as follows:
: There is here no knockdown argument for design and purpose, but certainly there are strong hints of ultimate realities beyond the cosmos. One of the strongest hints, in our opinion, relates to the new understanding of the creativity of the cosmos, its capacity for so-called self-organization. ... From a theological perspective it is indeed tempting to see this remarkable self-organizing tendency as an expression of the intimate nature of the Creator's activity and identification with our universe.
To say that the Templeton Foundation is not strongly biased in favor of Intelligent Design would be, I suggest, to ignore the following facts:
# it is an organisation that promotes teleological explanations of human existence;
# it gives pride of place to its benefactor's strong statements in support of ID as a means of linking scientific findings and religious belief.
I'm returning the statement to its former order. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 12:18, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: No way — Templeton is a theistic evolutionist, and has given the prizes to many evolutionists (e.g. Arthur Peacocke, Freeman Dyson.  Of course he is a theist of some sort that believes that some sort of "god" is behind the universe, but behind the scenes, not by direct design as Dembski and the other IDers believe.  Self-organization as you quoted is the antithesis of ID, which states that matter CANNOT organize itself into the complexity of life without intelligent input.  The original edit seems reasonable 220.244.224.8 04:02, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Templeton Foundation

message: :My thoughts:
:1) Saying that "he has been denounced" doesn't answer the key question of who has denounced him. The word "denounced" itself is excessively strong in my view (it carries connotations of criminal behaviour and/or treachery on the part of the person being denounced), hence my preferred alternative: his critics in the mainstream scientific community have accused him...
:2) The phrase "has also been denounced some" is simply nonsense. I fixed it, so please don't break it again. :-)
:3) :Image:Darwin_in_a_vise.jpeg appears to be a copyright violation. It's taken from Dembski's blog but there is absolutely no indication either there or on Wikipedia that he's given permission for it to be redistributed. It's been listed on Wikipedia:Copyright problems. The caption is also pretty slanted, but as the image is going to be deleted anyway I'm not going to argue about that - no image, no caption. Can I ask people not to try restoring the image?
:4) The sentence "As intellectual and legal setbacks for the intelligent design movement mount, Dembski has become increasingly hostile toward his scientific critics" is inherently POV; Dembski would no doubt disagree that ID is encountering setbacks or that he's becoming hostile towards his critics. His comments are a specific reference to the recent Kansas "kangaroo court" where pro-evolution scientists refused to testify, so citing them without explaining the context is also inherently POV. I've rewritten this to make the context clearer.-- ChrisO 21:47, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments on Mel Etitis' edit summary

message: The article states that Dembski was raised Catholic (assume the Vatican).  But there is a category at the bottom indicating Russian Orthodox.  Can someone clear this up? (If the Orthodox affiliation is correct, then the Catholic label in isolation is misleading, even though Orthodox traditions also use the term.) --Blainster 21:12, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not necessarily contradictory - he could have been raised in the Uniate tradition (Orthodox rites but recognising the Pope's authority). -- ChrisO 21:44, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for a good technical response (your suggestion is one possibility), but the point remains that the article is in need of some clarification of this issue. --Blainster 05:02, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This article/interview  may shed some light on Dembski's religious affiliation and influence:  
"Dembski, who is 44 and has three children, grew up in the Chicago area as a Roman Catholic but said he did not take religion seriously until he was in college, when he and his parents had conversion experiences and began attending evangelical Protestant churches."  Mr Christopher 17:57, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Dembski's religious affiliation

message: Do we need this?  At first I thought that it was OK, but then I saw that the examples are all Web-based — and fit the profile of most exchanges on the Web.  If he'd written like this in print, it would have been noteworthy. --Mel Etitis  (Μελ Ετητης) 10:07, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  The response to Mark Perakh is web-based if by that you mean a blog. However, the response to Erik is a pdf file, available on line, which one would expect to be less strident.  I think these are typical of Dembski's strident tone.--CSTAR 14:17, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Re:You thought it was OK? Excuse me, but that is Demsbski's modus operandi. Regarding "fair play" under a hypothetical "web standard", note Dembski has engaged in other more vicious attacks which I didn't include.  For example, the attack on Wein's critique of NFL was painful to read,  He began that attack by pointing out Wein had only a bachelor's degree "that's it" he said. --CSTAR 14:30, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Responses to criticism 

message: As this is an article about Dembski, not about ID, is the huge section of links appropriate?
:You're quite right, it isn't. I've reduced it to only those items which are actually by or about Dembski or his work. -- ChrisO 23:25, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links 

message: Anon IP 12.220.209.203 has made, and continues to make unjustified changes to the article.  There are many changes, which that user didn't discuss nor provide an edit summary for, as well as being innapropriate.  For example, that user seems intent onkeeping Dembski's theologian status under the covers, as it were, as well as deleting the claim that the scientific community (or the vast majority in the scientiic community) consider his work pseudo-science.--CSTAR 14:15, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anon deletion 

message: ...who thinks the "Defending Dembski" and "Criticizing Dembski" sections are superfluous? Dante (Δαντε) 05:03, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Am I the only one... 

message: I am going to reply to just one of the comments that Takumi4G63 made above.  This user wrote the following:
::And the clever bit about ID not being published in any peer-reviewed journals.  That's just false.  There are many that have been published today.  You can find ten here:
I decided to check out one of the so called ten examples. I picked one from a journal that looked respectable. All ten can be found starting at page 28 from the "Expert witness report: The scientific status of intelligent design. by William Dembski" in the quoted link. Each reference is cited with a short summary of how that particular citation supports intelligent design:
The peer reviewed ID article I decided to read was:
::W.-E. Loennig & H. Saedler, "Chromosome Rearrangements and Transposable Elements"  Annual Review of Genetics, 36 (2002): 389-410.
:::Dembski's annotation below:
:::This article examines the role of transposons in the abrupt origin of new species and the possibility of a partly predetermined generation of biodiversity and new species.  The authors' approach is non-Darwinian, and they cite favorably the work of Michael Behe and William Dembski. (bold comments are addressed below)
First, this review does not seem to be as described as it is NOT an article about ID at all. It does, however, cite two ID books that have been published (not peer reviewed). The two books cited are:
:*Ref 5.  Behe M. _1996. Darwin's Black Box. New York: Free Press.307 pp.
:*Ref 33.  Dembski WA. _2002. No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.404 pp.
The review concerns the "longstanding differences between molecular biology and paleontology as to the phylogenetic relationships and times of origin of many different plant and animal groups" 
The paleontological view is "the abrupt appearance and stasis (morphological constancy) for the overwhelming majority of life forms in Earth's history" This "phenomenon led in the 1970s to the theory of punctuated equilibrium". 
The molecular view (and neo-Darwinian) "continuous evolution".
One section of the review "focuses on possible TE-mediated chromosome rearrangements" and their likelihood of causing an "abrupt appearance of biodiversity and new life forms".  Note: This this nothing to do with intelligent design.
The review focuses on a quote from German paleontologist Otto H. Schindewolf:
::"According to Darwin's theory, evolution takes place exclusively by way of slow, continuous formation and modification of species: the progressive addition of ever newer differences at the species level results in increasing divergence and leads to the formation of genera, families, and higher taxonomic and phylogenetic units. Our experience, gained from the observation of fossil material, directly contradicts this interpretation. We found that the organizing structure of a family or an order did not arise as the result of continuous modification in a long chain of species, but rather by means of a sudden, discontinuous direct refashioning of the type complex from family to family, from order to order, from class to class. The characters that account for the distinctions among species are completely different from those that distinguish one type from another." Schindewolf OH. _1993. Basic Questions in Paleontology. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press.467 pp.
I think it is this paragraph that gets the special creation advocates excited but this has nothing to do with special creation.  This is a legitimate biological debate that is considering the RATE of evolution. Not whether evolution happened or not.  In the case of this review they are specifically discussing the role that transposable elements may have had in causing massive genomic changes, aka as "genomic shock", that could explain a fast rate of evolution.  One think for sure is that, in Dembski's words "The authors' approach is non-Darwinian," is completely false.  It is Darwinian, just not neo-darwinian.  The theory of evolution is not on trial in this review they are discussing the mechanisms of evolution.
So what is the context is the reference to the Dembski and Behe books?  Here is the context for each cite. 
The following is a direct quote from the review:
::"[[[Barbara McClintock|McClintock]]'s "genomic shock"] hypothesis is intrinsically attractive and a promising possibility that warrants further investigation. However, if all the proof that is still lacking to substantiate her view on the origin of species were available, would that also give us the mode of origin of the higher systematic categories and types of life referred to by Schindewolf? To be more specific: If so, to what extent can any of the TE-incited rearrangements contribute to the origin of novel genes and new gene reaction chains as well as the genesis of irreducibly complex structures? All three of these may be especially relevant for the origin of higher systematic categories (3, 4, 5, 33, 69, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 121, 122, 130)."
This quote seems to challenge the conclusions that might be in the Behe book or the Dembski book.  The specific challenge comes from the following sentence "TE-incited rearrangements contribute to the origin of novel genes and new gene reaction chains as well as the genesis of irreducibly complex structures".  It looks to me as if the authors are implying that there does NOT need to be a designer for irreducibly complex structures to emerge. This is a far cry from how Dembski interprets the citation "they cite favorably the work of Michael Behe and William Dembski."
In short, I have looked at one of the ten peer reviewed ID articles and it is bogus to claim that is supports ID.  Even more amazing is that this is regarded as one of the ten BEST examples of intelligent design in a peer reviewed journal by supporters of intelligent design. I have not looked at the other nine since it took me ages to review this.  I would not be surprised to find if they too are not real examples of intelligent design being endorsed by science.   David D. (Talk) 00:30, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Reply to misinformation

message: I took the word "controversial" out of the first sentence because I think that the first sentence (or paragraph) of any bio page should stick to bare facts.  Any analysis, including whether he or she is "controversial", should be dealt with later in the article.  Also, if we choose to include this word in the first sentence, we might as well add it to about 98% of all bio pages, since surely at one point any persons life they have done something controversial.  Comments?   71.65.54.92 06:34, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There's no denying that Dembski's views are very controversial. 98% of the subjects that have bios here have not stirred things up the way Dembski has. FeloniousMonk 06:38, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  True, but "what's happened on wikipedia" isn't the same thing as "what tone wikipedia itself should take" (this too shall pass, but articles are forever!)  I agree that controversial is something of a sloppy term: while it's certainly factual, applying it to some figures and not others just seems arbitrary.    I'm not convinced that there isn't a better, more specific word, though I can't think of what it might be, Plunge 17:38, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Controversial"