Re: Pomposity, thy name is Berlinski

On Sep 25, 8:37 am, Mitchell Coffey <m.cof...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 25, 8:02 am, Ron O <rokim...@xxxxxxx> wrote:





On Sep 24, 11:45 pm, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Robert Camp wrote:
 From an interview with David Berlinski over at the DI's p.r. site:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/09/env_when_did_you_start.html#more

Is there anyone more in love with pretentious prose and the sound of his
own voice than Berlinski?

------------------------------------------------
ENV: When did you start thinking, as a critic, about Darwinian
evolution? Did anything in your biography incline you to freethinking in
that area?

D.B.: It was the fall of 1965. My graduate school roommate Daniel
Messenger and I were ambling along Nassau Street in Princeton. We were
munching the kind of wonderful Winesap apples that seem to have
disappeared as a variety. I wonder why that is? Daniel's girlfriend,
Sandra Petersen, was there too. Daniel was a fine philosopher and Sandra
was doing a degree in classical philosophy. We walked over to Darwin’s
theory of evolution, living at the time in one of Princeton’s back alleys.

A back alley was the right place to look for Darwin. No one in the
philosophy department at Princeton had ever introduced his name into a
seminar, or thought to argue that his theory was relevant to our concerns.

At Columbia College I had been given a ten minute introduction to the
theory of evolution in a class otherwise devoted to comparative anatomy.
The impression conveyed was that Darwin’s theory was far less
interesting than the details embedded in the anatomy of the Dogfish..

— Now if you will turn to your specimens, Gentlemen...

If I had had those ten minutes to count on, Daniel had more. At Brown,
he had once read Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. This made him a
considerable expert in my eyes. He knew what it was all about. I asked
the obvious question: So is that it?

Apparently it was. Daniel shrugged his rounded shoulders. Someone, he
said, had figured it all out.

As she always did, Sandra kept her counsel. She was fond of Daniel; she
thought me an idiot.

A year later, I found myself promoted from east coast snow to west coast
sunshine. And promoted to more, far more. I was an assistant professor
at Stanford: That was more. And I had been given access to the splendor
of northern California: That was far more. What is that wonderful line
by Robert Lowell? All of life’s grandeur is something with a girl in
summer.
-----------------------------------------------------

I think my eyes are bleeding.

I'm with Sandra on this.-

I agree with Sandra too.

http://www.discovery.org/p/51

Looks like his only employment seems to be the Discovery Institute's
scam outfit.  He is still a senior fellow.  I wonder if he still
claims to be an agnostic.  His latest book is "The Devil's Delusion:
Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions" (Crown Forum, 2008).  Sounds
agnostic to me;-)  What kind of person would remain a fellow at a scam
institute?

How many Discovery Institute fellows have disavowed intelligent design
since the ID perps started running the bait and switch on their own
creationist support base?  Nelson came out right after Ohio and
admitted that there never had been a scientific theory of intelligent
design.  Berlinski claimed that he had never supported intelligent
design.  Phillip Johnson admitted that ID science equivalent to real
science did not exist, but only after the ID perps lost in Dover.
There was some guy from Texas that left the Discovery Institute
recently and tried to claim that he had never supported intelligent
design even though he had written several articles in major print
publications supporting teaching intelligent design.  I think that it
was Beckwith.  Denton was probably the first big name to run or get
kicked out, but that was before the public bait and switch had been
run in 2002, but after the ID perps started working up the switch
scam.

http://www.discovery.org/a/58http://www.discovery.org/a/589

These articles used to be free, but now they charge, but you can get
what you need out of the title and date of publication.  My guess is
that the ID perps figured out that ID was too bogus to try to get into
the schools soon after they had their first departmental meetings.  By
1999 they were preparing to run the bait and switch on their own
creationist support base, and that would have been the time to get
out.  Mike Gene (psuedo for a poster over at ARN) apparently saw the
writing on the wall and claims to have given up on teaching ID in the
public schools around 1999.  You'd never know that from his posts at
ARN and it likely surprised a lot of regular ARN posters when he made
that claim after the ID perps ran the bait and switch on Ohio.  Gene
was apparently at some of the ID perp's get togethers during the time
that they were working up the switch scam.

The only guys that support the intelligent design scam at this time
are the ignorant, the incompetent and or dishonest.  A lot of the ID
perps don't support ID any longer.  The only use for ID seems to be as
the bait so that they can run in the switch scam on the clueless that
don't know what the new scam is.

Ron Okimoto

Well, of course there's Behe.  He's never abandoned Intelligent
Design, but his Dover contribution, which was less testimony than a
cry for help, was to establish that ID was only science by Behe's
private definition of science, a definition unshared apparently by
every other practicing scientist, including those supporting ID - a
definition that Behe cheerfully agreed would count astrology as
science.  Had Discovery any self-respect (Ah, well there you are!)
they'd drop Behe or, more kind, drop him off at some well-appointed
sanatorium, a quite refuge with spacious grounds and an understanding
staff, where he could get well.  But since ID is a scam with a target
audience that doesn't like to read technical stuff, IDites can
continue to tout Behe as scientific foundation.

Mitchell Coffey-

Just before he testified in Dover Behe was quoted as claiming that he
had never supported teaching intelligent design in the public
schools. Sort of hard to believe. Behe also claimed that he knew
nothing about the Wedge Document, but it turned out that he was
associated with several conservative political organizations that
supported such notions. You probably can't trust any of these guys
any further than you can throw your computer while it is still plugged
in.

Ron Okimoto

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Pomposity, thy name is Berlinski
    ... scam outfit. ... since the ID perps started running the bait and switch on their own ... but only after the ID perps lost in Dover. ... creationist support base, and that would have been the time to get ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Pomposity, thy name is Berlinski
    ... scam outfit. ... How many Discovery Institute fellows have disavowed intelligent design ... since the ID perps started running the bait and switch on their own ... creationist support base, and that would have been the time to get ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Fans of ID say the darndest things
    ... "honest" excuse for supporting the intelligent design scam. ... The bait ... and switch had been going down for over 2 years by then. ... support the notion and claim to have the ID science to teach, ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Misdirection ploys are dishonest
    ... which I am aware is one by Ron O., who claimed that Behe admitted he ... example of an alleged "switch" by the DI, ... It is Ron O who is lying. ... switch that clearly shows that there was a scam being perpetrated. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Commentary: Darwins Lapdog Thinks Youre an ID-iot!
    ... Anyone that still thinks that the intelligent design scam had anything ... demented in order to justify their running a dishonest bait and switch ... scam on their own creationist support base if they didn't have to. ...
    (talk.origins)