some people: or, while we're on the subject of eternal life

Some people read the comics... religiously.

Some people just aren't twisted enough. I mean, is being eternally deprived of five senses really the worst kind of hell imaginable?

Hmm... maybe we should ask William Dembski. When it comes to twisted, he never disappoints.

the dark and twisted imagination of William A. Dembski

(I was going to post something about trends in Intelligent Design, but all it's got going recently is some lame, pathetic tripe. Oh, and warning: some quoted material to follow is graphic.)



William A. Dembski, poster boy for Intelligent Design, has some deep Freudian trauma in his past that bubbles up in his academic writing. The most recent, attempting to justify why Christ's suffering is sufficient [pdf]:

Off the top of my head, there are many forms of death, degradation, and torment that are far worse than the few hours that Christ suffered at the hands of the Romans. Here are three:

(1) Locked in syndrome, in which the body is completely without ability to move or respond but the mind remains fully conscious. Imagine your body being in this state, as a living coffin, for decades.

(2) Being a long-term subject of Josef Mengele’s medical experiments at the Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz.

(3) Being raped and tortured over a period of months by one of Saddam Hussein’s sons for refusing his advances, and then finally being torn apart by his Doberman Pinschers.

Ask yourself, if you were faced with the horror of such circumstances, what comfort you would find in the Cross if all there were to it was the few hours required for Jesus’ scourging and crucifixion. What comfort would you find in Christ’s words, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world,” if for all you can tell, Christ’s suffering was markedly less than yours?

This, part of a speech given at a seminary in October of last year, is obviously another cry for help. Someone with a degree in psychotherapy, please contact this man.

coming clean: I am one source of the Discovery Institute's secret research

Steve Reuland doesn't think much of Bruce Chapman's claims that the Discovery Institute's research into Intelligent Design (ID) is going on in secret, for fear of censorship by the Darwinian Establishment.

Reuland, though, is wrong to dismiss Chapman as a paranoid "fool." You see, I am one of those secret scientists, testing the predictions of ID and writing papers, waiting for the right time to expose the fraud that is Darwinism.

I can no longer sit in silence while my colleagues are assailed for their assiduous efforts. Though I place my integrity and my career on the line, I'm no longer afraid. Today I stand up to be counted. Today I'm coming out of the ID closet.

My Setup
Thanks to a $500,000 grant from the Discovery Institute, I have set up a laboratory in my garage, complete with beakers, Bunsen burners, nifty multicolored chemical mixtures that explode when combined, plenty of sublimating dry ice for that bubbling mad scientist effect, a gently used supercomputer waiting for the right programmer, a gigantic periodic table, an authentic replica slide rule, and last, but not least, a comfy leather chair with matching ottoman.

The grant also pays for two assistants, one to perform the experiments, and the other to make coffee and massage my feet after a hard day of calculating Complex Specified Information (CSI).

My Research
Quite frankly, there isn't much to prove. Darwinism has been so thoroughly dismantled by my colleagues--Dembski, Behe, Davison--that it sometimes seems like a fool's errand to prove ID. But I have the grant, so I suppose I'm obliged to do something.

Without going into specifics, since I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise, here are some of the studies that will be published in coming months.

"Complex Specified Information, or Specified Informed Complexity? The Difference is Substantial."

"Still Waiting: Evolving Wings on Frogs Through Genetic Mutation and Recombination."

"Life Cycle of Escherichia Coli Points to Playful Designer."

"No 'There' There: Analysis of over 50,000 Evolutionary Experiments Reveals A Dearth of Evidence."

"Retroviral Insertions in Related Species Too Similar to be the Result of Chance, Surpassing the Universal Probability Bound and Thus Proving Design."

"Laughing All the Way: Irreducible Core Components of the World's Funniest Joke."

My Prediction
Darwinism is in a permanent vegetative state. Science will pull the plug within a decade.

fact check? why would we do that?

The setup is priceless.

I received this today from a dear friend that I’ve known and loved since kindergarten. We’re only a month apart in birthdays, were in every grade together through high school, and served together in the Marine Corps in the 1970’s. Just last year summer while I was on vacation in upstate New York and staying at his home for a couple days after our 30th high school reunion, we were struck by lightning at the same time as he was changing the front disc brakes on his wife’s SUV. The lightning hit a power line near the house, travelled into the garage and to the vehicle through the cord on a trouble light, and knocked the crap out of both of us as we were in contact with the vehicle. It might have made him a bit more religious all of a sudden as he had both hands on bare metal whereas I was just touching a painted surface with one hand.

The regurgitated email that follows is treacly, patriotic, and utterly false. Dembski and DaveScot crash, and crash hard, for a hoax that could be uncovered in five seconds by anyone with a quarter of an IQ point.

It's time for Dembski to dump DaveScot--and maybe even entirely leave blogging himself. He's gone from ID's leading light to its glaring embarrassment.

[via Ed Brayton]

transcending infinite loops: theodical musings

William Dembski, in the latest of a long line of theodicies, appeals to Newcomb's Paradox [pdf] to "justify the ways of God to men."

For beings like us embedded in the causal nexus of nature, the logic of cause and effect is inviolable. In contrast, God, as an omnipotent and omniscient being, transcends the physical world and therefore is not bound by this causal-temporal logic. This is not to say that in acting in the world God violates this logic. To violate it, he would need to be under its jurisdiction. But as the creator of nature’s causal nexus and therefore as the originator of its causal-temporal logic, God perforce acts in ways that this logic cannot circumscribe. Indeed, if this logic did circumscribe divine action, then God would be part of nature and creation would be other than ex nihilo.

Dembski is fond of (mis)using the "NFL theorems" to whack at evolution. But "transcendence," like "emergence," is its own form of ontological free lunch, raising far more questions than answers. How does a being "transcend?" If God so neatly avoids the pitfalls of causal-temporal logic by transcending the physical world, how can we refer to this sort of God as "good?" Why limit God's transcendence to only one domain--the causal? Why does not God "transcend" morality as well, eradicating the need for theodicy?

Dembski's explanation of the "infinite dialectic" (BS-ometer spiking) doesn't fare much better.

Think of the infinite dialectic in this way: Suppose God acts to anticipate certain events. So long as divine action is not a hollow concept, God’s actions make a difference in the world and therefore must induce novel events (all change in the physical world being mediated through events). But this requires that God act preemptively to anticipate the novel events induced by God’s prior actions (priority here being conceived not temporally or causally [chronos] but in terms of the teleological-semantic logic [kairos] by which God orders the creation). And yet, such actions by God now induce still further novel events. And so on. This up and back between divine action and creaturely causation proceeds indefinitely. It constitutes an infinite dialectic. Because of the fragility of the world’s causal nexus, the infinite dialectic is ever in danger of spinning out of control, degenerating into a positive feedback loop in which divine preemption needs to rectify difficulties raised by prior acts of divine preemption.

And the way out of the infinite loop?

Consequently, only an infinitely powerful and infinitely wise God can pull off the infinite dialectic. The infinite dialectic renders divine action at once real-time and eternal. It bridges the immanent with the transcendent. In the infinite dialectic, God acts on the whole of creation at all times and in all places, acting not as a cause among other causes (God does not moonlight as a physical cause) but as a cause of causes (God causes physical causes to fulfill his purposes). As a cause of causes, God’s action in the infinite dialectic is not merely ontological, in the sense of giving being to the world (cf. Paul Tillich’s “ground of being”). Nor is it merely providential in some general sense, as might be subsumed under the regularities of nature (cf. God maintaining seasonal weather patterns).

Again, more questions: how is a cause of a cause efficacious? Can causes cross ontological "levels?" Can a non-physical entity cause physical actions? Is Dembski backing away from his "expanded ontology," and subscribing to a more standard form of dualism?

Dembski closes with two poor analogies.

In the infinite dialectic, God acts providentially to guide the world in its particulars, taking an active interest in the details of this world and making a difference at all levels of the created order. This is not to say that God is a micromanager. Good managers know the precise details of the system they are managing but intervene sparingly, giving the system as much autonomy as it needs to flourish. God is a good manager. In particular, he has not created a world that is his prosthesis or puppet.

Ah, but the very question is a matter of degree: just how much "micromanagement" is enough? Let's analogize right back at Dembski. The floor is littered with wrappers and french fries. The toilet is backed up and the toilet paper nowhere to be found. A fire rages in the kitchen. Meanwhile, the staff are too busy fighting with ketchup packets to notice. The manager hasn't been seen or heard from in hours. Now what?

At the same time, even though God has granted the world a measure of autonomy, the world’s autonomy is not absolute. Just as an orchestra cannot make do without the conductor’s continual guidance, so too does the world require God’s continual guidance. That guidance is neither oppressive nor coercive. It is real and powerful, and it takes the form of an infinite dialectic. Because of the infinite dialectic, Jesus can say that God knows our name, numbers the hairs on our head, and monitors the sparrow that falls to the ground.

Minor quibble: perhaps Dembski has never heard of the "conductorless orchestra," the kind that used to dazzle Soviet audiences back in the heyday of early Communism. But the weakness of argument from analogy becomes apparent here. If the universe isn't an orchestra, but is more like a machine... or an organism... then all the talk of continuous guidance is rigmarole.

Any potential problem can be solved by omnipotence when omnipotence is defined as infinite power. Yet other Christian thinkers are a little uncomfortable purporting the existence of "actual infinities."

But then, they're not mathematicians.

surprised by misery

"In a fallen world, the only currency of love is suffering. Indeed, the only way to gauge the extent to which someone loves us is by what that person is willing to suffer for us. Without the cost incurred by suffering, love among fallen creatures becomes cheap and self-indulgent. Suffering removes the suspicion that the good we do for one another is for ulterior motives, with strings attached, a quid pro quo."

--William A. Dembski [pdf]

Discuss.

Kentucky's Nostradamus

That would be William Dembski, who once again is predicting the demise of evolutionary theory. As Ed Brayton points out, Dembski's just one more in a long line of false prophets.




[sixty-ninth in a series]

Bye Bye Dembski

Or, The Sycophants' Chorus

We love you, Dembski,
But now you're through
And bid your faithful adieu
We've never once been untrue
Oh Dembski, we love you.




[Via PZ]

beef: where is it?

Dembski, while slamming the Templeton Foundation's lack of support for Intelligent Design, makes an interesting claim:

I frankly doubt that there is one research paper published in the natural sciences (I’m not talking about medical journals that discuss the efficacy of prayer in healing) that acknowledges the Templeton Foundation as having provided essential research support (e.g., in the form of salaries for lab techs, lab equipment costs, etc.) for that project to be completed. Templeton supports research in that fuzzy new discipline that it has largely invented, known as science-religion, and not in science per se.

I know for a fact that Discovery Institute tried to interest the Templeton Foundation in funding fundamental research on ID that would be publishable in places like PNAS and Journal of Molecular Biology (research that got funded without Templeton support and now has been published in these journals), and the Templeton Foundation cut off discussion before a proposal was even on the table. [emphasis added]

Now, Mr. Dembski, will you provide the titles of those papers? Strangely, they are nowhere to be found on the Discovery Institute's (recently updated) list of peer-reviewed research.

Update: Spent an hour slogging through citations (thanks, Scopus--and Evergreen library card-toting wife!), and have come to one definitive conclusion: if Dembski is right (and there's no reason to assume he's prevaricating, other than his previous "street theater" hijinks), then the research was performed by someone who isn't a ranking member of the Discovery Institute. We eagerly await the revelation.

Update Update: Wait no further. It's Douglas Axe.

Behold the power of the internets:

"Estimating the prevalence of protein sequences adopting functional enzyme folds," Journal of Molecular Biology 341 (5), pp. 1295-1315

"Extreme functional sensitivity to conservative amino acid changes on enzyme exteriors," Journal of Molecular Biology 301 (3), pp. 585-595

"An irregular β-bulge common to a group of bacterial RNases is an important determinant of stability and function in barnase," Journal of Molecular Biology 286 (5), pp. 1471-1485

"Active barnase variants with completely random hydrophobic cores," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 93 (11), pp. 5590-5594

Update³: Well, so much for the "bombshell." It's our old friend, who Dembski declared was already calculating specified complexity.

Internet mavens have been pestering me for actual calculations of complexity involved in such systems. I address this in my forthcoming book (_No Free Lunch_), but such calculations are out there in the literature (cf. the work of Hubert Yockey, Robert Sauer, Peter Rüst, Paul Erbrich, Siegfried Scherer, and most recently Douglas Axe -- I'm not enlisting these individuals as design advocates but merely pointing out that methods for determining specified complexity are already part of biology).

However, and most important, Matt Inlay already debunked the relevance of Axe's work to Dembski's conception of Intelligent Design in a devastating PandasThumb article.

Yes, reference 31 is Axe 2000. Rather than tone the comment down, Dembski apparently decided to bump his claim up a notch or two. Now “preliminary indications” has evolved into “strong evidence”, and “perturbations” into “small perturbations”. Again Dembski implies that 30 amino acid substitutions is “gradual”. So even though Dembski himself admitted over a year ago that this claim was unsupported by Axe 2000, he felt no obligation to leave it out of future writings. Why correct when you can just reassert?

And now Axe is "fundamental" to ID. And the beat goes on, badumdump, badumdump...

Update⁴: I notice that Dembski cites Axe in his (never-used) witness report for the Dover Trial [pdf or html]

Final Update: Now that we know the Discovery Institute funded Axe (at least once, if not more), the omission of his work from their list of ID papers is curious. They've never been shy about trumpeting work that's only tangentially (or, arguably, not at all) related to ID--so why leave Axe out? Is the non-applicability of his research obvious even to DI's propagandists?

divining design: part III

In two previous entries, I gave evidence that ID proponents contradict themselves by conflating cosmological and biological design. I thought my reasoning was solid and my inferences sound, but I could have saved much time if I'd known of this Dembski quote, as cited by Ed Brayton:

"The fine-tuning of the universe, about which cosmologists make such a to-do, is both complex and specified and readily yields design. So too, Michael Behe's irreducibly complex biochemical systems readily yield design. The complexity-specification criterion demonstrates that design pervades cosmology and biology. Moreover, it is a transcendent design, not reducible to the physical world. Indeed, no intelligent agent who is strictly physical could have presided over the origin of the universe or the origin of life."

what we've come to expect from William A. Dembski

Another Update [ed. note: minor spelling error fixed]

I've moved this update to the top because Dembski is too amazing, too stupefying. Now, going beyond deleting others' comments, Dembski has deleted old posts on his blog, claiming they were a bit of "street theater."

In the posts in question--Shallit Yet Again and Shallit Yet Again - P.S.--Dembski engaged in speculation that was shot down by Ed Brayton (see below). Instead of admitting that he was factually in error, Dembski changed tactics, saying that they were some kind of game or joke, and tried to erase the evidence.

That is classic dishonesty. To call it "intellectual dishonesty" would be an insult to intellectuals.



(As an aside, Ed's other prediction is being fulfilled by Dembski's commentators.)


The Original Entry

I had to stop reading Dembski's blog, since it was bad for my blood pressure. Ed Brayton, though, kept slogging through the crap that Dembski flung about the Dover trial, and why Jeffrey Shallit never testified. Dembski had claimed that the ACLU withdrew Shallit because he was an "embarrassment." There was one small problem: this was wrong, obviously wrong, embarrassingly wrong.

Having posted that, I then placed the odds of Dembski actually admitting that he was wrong about this at being well beyond the "universal probability boundary" that he places at 1 x 10^150. A few people wanted to place one penny bets at those odds, but it appears I was right. Here is his latest post on the subject and he continues to get virtually everything wrong in this situation. And much to no one's surprise, he continues to refuse to admit he was wrong and tries to change the subject....

Read the whole thing--but only if you have an automatic external defibrillator handy.

Update: It gets worse.

new respect for William Dembski

I thought I was the king of tacky ties. He wore that on television?

metaphysician, heal thyself

When he stops posting nonsense, I'll stop harping on it. When commenter PaV calls Chris Mooney a "Looney," Dembski calls for an end to juvenility:

[I was about to delete this remark, but then the second remark below would no longer make sense. I don’t have any more affection for Mooney than you do. But staying on topic and forgoing the name-calling is a more effective strategy for defeating people like Mooney. –WmAD]

Isn't this the same Dembski who called Darwinists "maculinity-threatened?"

Or "Darwhiners?" Note the prescient comment by one "eswrite," and the response by none other than PaV.

All of this name calling adds to a great deal of unproductive vitriol. IDiots vs. Darwhiners, Cretinists vs. Darwimpians. How does any of this advance public discourse?

Comment by eswrite — June 6, 2005 @ 1:30 pm


I don’t know about public discourse, but it is a lot of fun.

Comment by PaV — June 9, 2005 @ 4:27 am

Dembski also called Mark Perakh "The Boris Yeltsin of Higher Learning" (which, I admit, may or may not be an insult; someone help me understand what it means).

willful blindness

William Dembski revises history:

But this much is clear. There have already been two immensely important changes that have been more or less coterminous with the recent media frenzy. The first is that criticism of Darwin’s theory has now been internalized by the biological community itself.

"Has now been internalized." "Now." Give us all a collective break. Darwin's theory has been "on trial" from its inception, and its critics within mainstream science have been vocal and, more to the point, feverishly researching and publishing. Where was Dembski when the "punctuated equilibria" controversy first broke? When Lynn Margulis first speculated that mitochondria were once free organisms?

Then Dembski pulls a common creationist card, "my enemy's enemy is my friend:"

To be sure, it is never ever called criticism, but that is what it is nonetheless. Look at Harold Morowitz’ stuff on the origins of life. His papers always contain a purely ritualistic word about Darwin’s great insight. And then Darwin is dismissed. Too random, too unscientific. These are both Morowitz’s terms.

What he wants is a “universal and deterministic” theory of biological origins and development, one based on biochemistry. Not traditional biochemistry, of course, but biochemistry in which “organic laws” are finally revealed. These laws Morowitz argues cannot be reduced to organic chemisty, just as inorganic chemistry cannot be reduced to physics in view of the Pauli exclusion principle. What a remarkable series of claims to find within the very heart of the establishment.

It's only "remarkable" if you are willfully blind to the existing controversies at the "very heart of the establishment." Dembski doesn't mention that Morowitz looks down upon both God-of-the-gaps and randomness-of-the-gaps explanations for the origin of life. His "deterministic" account of biogenesis is completely designer-free; its fundamental claim is that life is an expected and common feature in the universe.

As Morowitz (along with Robert Hazen and James Trefil) writes,

Although both the theories of frozen accident and deterministic origins have their supporters, virtually all scientists who work in the field believe that once living things appeared on our planet, the Darwinian process of natural selection guided their development. There is no disagreement on that point, although there is -- and should be -- vigorous debate on the details of the way natural selection has worked.

Dembski conveniently ignores Morowitz's unequivocal opinion of Intelligent Design: it's "bad science."

When the facts don't fit, you must call bullshit.

of mice and design

Dembski points to this article to ask, "How much intelligence is required to build self-repairing systems?" (An interesting, albeit loaded, question.) The exciting discovery:

Scientists have created "miracle mice" that can regenerate amputated limbs or damaged vital organs, making them able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals.

The experimental animals are unique among mammals in their ability to regrow their heart, toes, joints and tail.

Since Dembski hasn't, I'll consider the metaphysical implications. Let's assume that self-repair is, in fact, designed. Some immediate questions, then. Why can fish and amphibians regrow organs and limbs, while mammals--never mind humans--can't? Is it an inscrutable whim, a design constraint, a purposeful omission?

To press the theodicy question, what might be the motives of an omnibenevolent designer to deny such radical self-healing capabilities to otherwise favored beings?

Some potential answers. First, if the designer's motives are entirely inscrutable, inquiry stops there. Second, self-repair isn't an obvious design constraint; witness the healthy functioning of the amped-up mice. Third, I can imagine a creationist response to the third possibility--self-repair is a postlapsarian loss--but if so, again, why fish and amphibians weren't affected is a mystery.

As to the theodicy question (which I grant is packed with certain assumptions), I leave that to the theodicists.

high on helium

Dembski's blog gets progressively weirder every time I check up on it. Witness this post:

According to the 26Aug2005 issue of THE WEEK (p. 20), "Researchers at Cornell University tested the effect of insecurity on men’s attitudes by giving a survey on gender identity to about 50 men. The men were then told that an analysis of the survey showed that they exhibited ‘weak’ male characteristics — indeed, that their attitudes were effeminate. The researchers then surveyed the men’s attitudes toward politics, religion, science, and car purchases, comparing them with a group of men whose masculinity had not been questioned. The threatened men were more likely to support the war in Iraq, denounce religion, embrace Darwinian evolution, and more likely to express a desire to buy an SUV. In fact, they were so eager to buy an SUV that they said they’d be willing to pay up to $7,000 more for the vehicle than were men in the other group. Masculinity-threatened men also reported feeling more ashamed, guilty, upset, and hostile...."

ADDENDUM: Everything in this quote is right except for the references to religion and Darwinism in bold. It would be interesting to see what this research would have found if these additional categories had been included.

In what possible world'o'stereotypes are SUV-driving supporters of the Iraq conflict also religion-denouncing Darwinists? Only in the loopy imagination of one William A. Dembski.

de dominium tilde

[Cross-posted over at the evangelical outpost]

I'm reminded of a silly, sarcastic post over at IDtheFuture where Paul Nelson tried to ironically show that simply negating a statement shouldn't change its epistemological status. I always had a nagging suspicion he was wrong, and now I see why.

Contrast these statements:

(1) A designer intentionally designed creatures. (Scientific, according to Nelson, Dembski, Behe, et. al.)

~ (1), or, It is not the case that a designer intentionally designed creatures.
(Outside the bounds of science, according to Plantinga)

Hey, presto! Magic is indeed possible, thanks to the tilde.

divining design

Maybe Paul Krugman is right, and Intelligent Design is all about spreading confusion. Judge by the persistently muddled definitions of the term among its proponents, adherents, detractors, and hangers-on.

In the comments to this post, my brother writes: "The two are not compatible. Please explain how ID is compatible with any form of atheism. Where did the design come from?"

After all the time and money the Discovery Institute has spent to convince the world that Intelligent Design isn't inherently religious, we're not yet "on message." Could it be that even the senior fellows of the Discovery Institute have helped propagate the misunderstanding?

John West, for one, says ID is designer-neutral:

Contrary to the association, the scientific theory of intelligent design is not religious (which is one reason why creationist groups have criticized it). Design theory proposes that much of the highly ordered complexity seen throughout the biological world is better explained by an intelligent cause than Darwin's mechanism of chance and necessity, but it doesn't claim that science can identify who or what the designer is.

Michael Behe concurs:

Intelligent design proponents do question whether random mutation and natural selection completely explain the deep structure of life. But they do not doubt that evolution occurred. And intelligent design itself says nothing about the religious concept of a creator.

But Jay Richards implicitly links design to deity:

It’s simply the argument that certain features of the natural world—from miniature machines and digital information found in living cells, to the fine-tuning of physical constants—are best explained as the result of an intelligent cause. ID is thus a tacit rebuke of an idea inherited from the 19th century, called scientific materialism.

William Dembski denies the link:

Intelligent design, by contrast, places no such requirement on any designing intelligence responsible for cosmological fine-tuning or biological complexity. It simply argues that certain finite material objects exhibit patterns that convincingly point to an intelligent cause. But the nature of that cause—whether it is one or many, whether it is a part of or separate from the world, and even whether it is good or evil—simply do not fall within intelligent design’s purview.

And somehow simultaneously supports it:

Even so, there is an immediate payoff to intelligent design: it destroys the atheistic legacy of Darwinian evolution. Intelligent design makes it impossible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

So which is it? Is Intelligent Design truly silent about the designer(s), including the possibility of aliens or some other unknown origin of life? Or can we dispense with that notion and all agree that ID is a more sophisticated form of creationism?

publish or perish

From an article linked to by Mr. Dembski:

West* denied wanting classroom mandates to teach intelligent design.

"That just politicizes what should be a scientific and intellectual debate," he said. "Sure, students should have the freedom to ask about it, and teachers should be able to discuss it without fearing for their jobs. But what we want is for scientists to be able to argue this in the public arena."

Gee, I wonder who's responsible for "politicizing" the debate?

Word to John West: the public arena of science isn't the newspaper or the courts or the high school classroom. It's in the lab. The real Darwinian heretics don't waste time and money on PR. They publish actual research.


*That's John West, a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute

you, too, can be a science expert!

George Bush thinks students should learn about Intelligent Design in the classroom. No word on if he supports teaching astrology in astronomy class, Holocaust denial in history, or Time Cube in physics.

Funny, though. ID's leading proponent, William Dembski, thinks ID shouldn't be taught in the classroom. (Paul Nelson, another leading member of the movement, agrees.) Why? Because it isn't (yet?) science.

Mr. Bush, Ludwig Wittgenstein would like a word with you.



[PZ Myers has more, including a bevy of links.]