ID 3.0? The new Bradley Center at the DI – is Dembski returning from retirement?

Back in 2016, William Dembski officially ‘retired’ from ‘Intelligent Design’ theory & the IDM. He wrote that “the camaraderie I once experienced with colleagues and friends in the movement has largely dwindled.” https://billdembski.com/personal/official-retirement-from-intelligent-design/ This might have come rather late after Dembski’s star had already started to fade. Indeed, it was more than 10 years after the Dover trial debacle and already long after I personally heard another of the leaders of the IDM at the DI in 2003 say he no longer reads Dembski’s books. Yet no doubt Dr. Dembski was one of, if not the leading voice of the IDM for almost 2 decades. Here’s one UK IDist lamenting Dembski’s statement: https://designdisquisitions.wordpress.com/2017/02/19/william-dembski-moves-on-from-id-some-reflections/ Yet when a new paycheck from the Discovery Institute was offered in the Bradley Center, Dembski seems to have gotten right back on the ideological bandwagon in Seattle & reversed his dwindling of IDist camaraderie.

Contributor Eddie (“Religious Studies and Natural Theology”) over at PS just referred to Dembski in the present tense as “one of the leading ID proponents.” Supposedly that means he’s back on board, now returned from retirement & promoting IDT/IDism again, as Eddie seems to have a direct line to ID headquarters in Seattle. https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/why-does-id-criticize-te/143/132

What do folks here see in this new Bradley Center? I suspect it will almost entirely negative feedback & that the few pro-IDists will provide only general & probably largely incoherent or merely superficial support of it. EricMH, who has visited & posted here a bit, contributes at the site: https://mindmatters.ai/
Johnny B (Bartlett), a known IDist who was proposed & accepted as the first religious moderator here, but who never actually did anything as moderator, is officially involved in the DI project too. And of course, so is Denyse O’Leary, the DI’s journalist for hire.

Here’s what Dembski wrote about the recent launch of the Bradley Center: https://billdembski.com/science-and-technology/launch-of-the-walter-bradley-center-for-natural-and-artificial-intelligence/

Don’t forget, Director Stephen C. Meyer isn’t backing down in the slightest to ‘challenges’ to the DI’s IDist ideology & neo-creationist propaganda. In fact, he believes the Discovery Institute is actually ramping up to what he calls “Intelligent Design 3.0”. What on earth does that name suggest? They won’t recognise the double-talk or they’re even more openly now embracing it? https://www.fieldstead.com/2018/03/10/intelligent-design-3-0/

91 thoughts on “ID 3.0? The new Bradley Center at the DI – is Dembski returning from retirement?

  1. What do folks here see in this new Bradley Center?

    A waste. It is probably already a failure.

    People who are ideologically opposed to the idea of AI open a center which pretends to be about AI? It is absurd.

  2. I don’t know all the skuttlebut but I welcome Demski back. He was a ‘actual” true contributor to scientific progress and deserves his fame and prestige.
    Yes we need more trials to bring the peoples rights to free speech and thought in thier education system with thier students. it should be a judicial adventure to overthrow state censorship especially a wicked one like this. ID/YEC thinkers and doers take note please.
    Anyways.
    ID was fantastically, even uniquely, successful in being a game changer. It wasn’t my gang(YEC) but ID who rocked the casbah.
    In these small circles they clobbered the small circles of evolutionists, or God no see’ers in nature, and these blogs exist from this disturbance.
    Its like the great computer revolution. We saw/live in a origin revolution.
    Each year brings a embarrassment of riches.
    ID is famous in North America, somewhat in britain etc and surely probability curves show its unlikely ID will not prevail in its main points.
    Wrong ideas can’t take the a stout competition. Rights ideas can take stout opposition. TSZ documents the inability of evolutionists/God deniers in nature to prevail or make killer good points.
    ID/YEC have the wind at our back. We sense victory in main points and soon.
    Its always satisfying to me to see EVERYWHERE nEVER does a youtube video or article mention origins but they MUST ATTACK creationism(s)/ID in the core of their production or in notes.
    Its an embarrassment to think how porly the Anglo American world fell for these crazy ideas of denying God in nature or evolutionism.
    When the best are misled heaven help us.

  3. Neil Rickert: A waste. It is probably already a failure.

    It might be a waste if it is not true, but you don’t know what is true.

    Neil Rickert: People who are ideologically opposed to the idea of AI open a center which pretends to be about AI? It is absurd.

    Why is it absurd? It’s not like it isn’t true. You don’t like it. Why should anyone care?

  4. It might be a waste if it is not true, but you don’t know what is true.

    If Bertrand Russell had had multiple personalities, did they all die when ‘Bertrand’ died? I am sure I am a legatee of his Will, if not his soul.

    I care not a whit for what may not be true.

    Follow the money.

  5. The general consensus is Dembski couldn’t find anyone else willing to hire him so went begging back to the DI for a job, any job.

  6. Gregory,

    From your link:

    We are frequently told that we must sympathize with Israel because of the suffering of the Jews in Europe at the hands of the Nazis. I see in this suggestion no reason to perpetuate any suffering. What Israel is doing today cannot be condoned, and to invoke the horrors of the past to justify those of the present is gross hypocrisy. Not only does Israel condemn a vast number of refugees to misery; not only are many Arabs under occupation condemned to military rule; but also Israel condemns the Arab nations only recently emerging from colonial status, to continued impoverishment as military demands take precedence over national development.

    Interesting. I wonder if Russel would be welcome here?

  7. phoodoo,

    1) Russell has 2 L’s. (It’s Alfred Russel Wallace in this conversation that has 1 ‘L’.)
    2) What does it have to do with the topic of this thread? Bring it back on topic please.

  8. Gregory,

    You included a link, and are asking me what it has to do with this topic?

    I assume you had some hidden meaning, who knows. Maybe your hand slipped? Or your tongue?

  9. “ID was fantastically, even uniquely, successful in being a game changer. It wasn’t my gang(YEC)”

    To a particular small subset of mainly non-mainstream evangelical protestants in the USA & much less so in Canada, that sounds like a fair assessment. The term ‘ID’ entered common parlance via media & soon the wrath of a growing # of ‘nones’ & anti-theists rose to resist it. It was different from biblical literalist YECism, which many of the IDM’s leaders didn’t themselves avow, with the rare exception of Paul Nelson.

    The game in the DI’s favour stopped changing & went in another direction out of their control, just as it had previously with ‘young earth creationist’ lay-teachers who had tried to go up against not just ‘secular’, but also religious scientists. The problem is that many devout religious scientists knew much more than they did about the topics these ‘rebellious’ creationists were mainly using as an ideological wedge for their non-mainstream brand of protestant evangelicalism.

    How close or far off is that characterisation compared to your chosen brand of ID/YECism, Robert?

    The IDM rather has a reputation for being infamous, with Dembski’s polemics earning him derision from colleagues & peers who weren’t going to put up with his IDist antics & theatrics, even at Baylor.

  10. Neil Rickert,

    “People who are ideologically opposed to the idea of AI…”

    Who at the DI is “ideologically opposed to the idea of AI”? Can you provide link to what you have found? Or do you just mean a general principle by IDists that ‘AI’ can’t count as the ‘I’ in ‘ID’?

    The book about Kurzweil’s ‘spiritual machines’ by the DI addressed AI briefly, if I recall. It surely depends on what you mean by AI; weak/strong/symbolic/etc. mean significantly different things.

    The DI is strongly opposed to ‘transhumanism.’ But I haven’t heard they’re anti-AI before. Care to elaborate, Neil?

  11. Gregory,

    You don’t like Dembski, so what? That has little bearing on ID. Intelligent Design is a concept, which clearly makes more sense than any mishmash of quasi Darwinian theory that is out there right now. So its not going away anytime soon.

    BTW, you seem to be insulting Dembski. In fact the whole point of this post seems to be insulting Dembski. Wait, the entirety of your posts here at TSZ seem to be only that. Hmmm.

    I think that’s against the rules. But don’t worry, they like when you slander people they don’t like here. Its only when you insult someone they like, that they get all nervous about UK libel laws.

    Now, about that Russell quote? Do you think Russel was an antisemite?

  12. Gregory: Or do you just mean a general principle by IDists that ‘AI’ can’t count as the ‘I’ in ‘ID’?

    I suppose that’s roughly what I mean.

    The ID proponents frequently rail against mechanism. And AI is very mechanistic.

  13. phoodoo,

    It’s not a matter of ‘not liking’ Dembski. Dembski’s works & record are open for public scrutiny. Aside from anonymous bloggers, his contribution hasn’t done well outside of non-mainstream evangelical protestants, something he acknowledged himself about the IDM before retiring from it. Not just the idea itself, but the camaraderie had “largely dwindled”. He retired & now he’s back under Walter Bradley’s name.

    The new Bradley Center should be an open topic here at TSZ, especially given the participation of JohnnyB & EricMH there. This is the next step of Dembski’s IDist career, much more important looking forward than UD, which was the irritant force behind the absent landlord’s founding of largely atheist or anti-theist TSZ.

    I’m not interested in your anti-semitism, phoodoo. Give your head a shake. Go to the Sandbox & play instead.

  14. phoodoo:
    Gregory,
    Now, about that Russell quote?Do you think Russel was an antisemite?

    Russell supported the aspirations of the Palestinians in the face of the exile imposed by the Israeli state. A great many Israelis supported the same position at the time. That is to say, a great many Israelis opposed the expulsion of Palestinians from the occupied territories.

    Being opposed to the Zionist project does not make a person an anti-Semite. Unless you think that an Israeli Jewish citizen can be simultaneously a Jew and and anti-semite at the same time.

    By the way, the Palestinians are “semites”, so it seems that the whole idea is incoherent. And another thing – a significant proportion of Palestinian Arabs are Christian (strange as it may seem, I have relations living in Gaza who are Arab Christians).

  15. timothya: Being opposed to the Zionist project does not make a person an anti-Semite. Unless you think that an Israeli Jewish citizen can be simultaneously a Jew and and anti-semite at the same time.

    When did I say Russell was an anti-semite? I said no such thing!

    timothya: By the way, the Palestinians are “semites”, so it seems that the whole idea is incoherent. And another thing – a significant proportion of Palestinian Arabs are Christian (strange as it may seem, I have relations living in Gaza who are Arab Christians).

    Right, and there are also Christians who live in Israel. So being Jewish is not a race, is it? Its a religious choice.

  16. “So being Jewish is not a race, is it? Its a religious choice.”

    What on earth does this have to do with the thread about the Bradley Center, Dembski & ID 3.0? Answer, or please piss off & go start another thread where I won’t be joining you whacky phoodoo.

  17. Yes, I deny that I am insulting Dembski. Surely you are not suggesting a challenge to Dembski is unwelcome or unjust as he joins the DI again after not long ago retiring? Do you lack familiarity with what scholarly & social critique is? Trying to defend Dembski is welcome if you’ll stick to facts & evidence, not general insinuations & stop sending curses upon yourself.

  18. In the perhaps-hopeless effort to discuss the OP here, a few comments on the objectives of the Bradley Center, from the point of view of an evolutionary biologists. Mostly they simply aren’t making any argument about evolution, except to the extent that their advocacy of human exceptionalism denies connection of humans to other animals. So all their dramatic posts at Mind Matters, and the awed reports by “News” at UD, don’t say much of anything about evolution.

    But there is a sense in which they are ignoring relevant evolution. To some extent their arguments are not about “human intelligence” but about the basic properties of nerves and nervous systems. To deny that those could evolve by ordinary evolutionary processes is to deny
    1. That single-celled protists could have developed excitable membranes and the proteins that go along with them,
    2. That Cnidarians like jellyfish could have devevloped nerve rings connected to muscles,
    3. That simple wormlike bilaterians could have nerve cords and ganglia,
    4. That other “worms” could have developed early brains,
    5. That there could have become connected to sensory inputs such as vision, smell, and touch.
    … and so on.

    To simply jump to “human intelligence” is to fail to acknowledge a lot of that neurobiology. And as far as AI goes, the methods developed in that field can be very useful, or very scary, long before there is any attempt to have “human intelligence”.

  19. Why do the participants here always assume the worst about IDists’ motives? Let me tell you, no one is in ID for the money 😀 It makes more sense to assume all the ID proponents are doing it because they think ID is true, or at least the best hypothesis we’ve currently got. As such, they’ve given up quite a lot, materially speaking, purely for the sake of the truth. What have the critics done to merit their moral high horse?

    This is another thing that gets me about the critics: they’re always demeaning the IDist mind and motives, yet the IDists are on the whole highly credentialed from top level institutions and have endured much more hardship for the sake of their ideas than the critics. Yet the critics just sit there on the internet laughing and throwing lowballs. From the ethos and pathos perspective of the rhetorical trivium, the critics are really missing their target.

  20. Joe Felsenstein: So all their dramatic posts at Mind Matters, and the awed reports by “News” at UD, don’t say much of anything about evolution.

    Sure it does. If the mind is immaterial, then it certainly cannot have evolved. Therefore, the human “rational animal” cannot be purely the product of evolution.

    AI itself is founded upon the reverse implication: if the human mind evolved through purely material processes, then we can create the equivalent on a computer, since physics is entirely Turing reducible, as far as we know. And this is the *only* argument AI has going for it. In terms of practical results and philosophical coherence, AI is doing really badly.

  21. EricMH: AI is doing really badly.

    I tend to agree that AI is not on the near horizon, but I doubt if my skepticism is anything like yours.

    And I suspect that computers will continue to invade areas of productive command and control that everything thinks require a human mind.

  22. EricMH:
    Why do the participants here always assume the worst about IDists’ motives? … It makes more sense to assume all the ID proponents are doing it because they think ID is true, or at least the best hypothesis we’ve currently got.”

    I can only tell you from my experience at the DI, that the people there, staff, including Meyer, West, Chapman, have just fine ‘motives’. They are ‘nice people,’ as far as people go. I don’t impute evil or immorality to them simply for following their largely Abrahamic monotheistic beliefs. It’s instead another issue you need to be aware of, EricMH.

    Instead the problem is that they’ve constructed & now covet an ideological dud. And the DI won’t take legitimate, even friendly criticism at face value (instead suspecting everyone is out to get them, a.k.a. ‘expelled syndrome’) or make the necessary adjustments as a ‘movement’ based on clearly identified shortcomings & errors.

    “Giving up a lot” for a fake or unrealistic or simply ideologically distorted goal isn’t usually seen as ‘admirable’ or even as ‘courageous’ in most cases. At some point, EricMH, it might go well on you to realise that serious & not insignificant Christian philosophers, scientists & theologians who gave IDT an honest and fair try (can you name any?), simply didn’t find the ‘revolutionary notion’ that you seem to believe you have found. Indeed, outside of non-mainstream evangelical protestantism (cf. private institutions like Mackenzie Presbyterian University are the kinda place where IDism takes roots), it appears that IDism hasn’t done well at all.

    It’s not an issue of a ‘high horse’, but rather one in which you as an IDist might not be willing to face reality the way other people do because of the ‘revolutionary’ (ID: THE BRIDGE) ideology you’ve unnecessarily come to accept as a religious man. Indeed, among the most closed-minded people I’ve met in the creation, evolution & origins discussion are IDists; John West near the top.

    “This is another thing that gets me about the critics: they’re always demeaning the IDist mind and motives, yet the IDists are on the whole highly credentialed from top level institutions and have endured much more hardship for the sake of their ideas than the critics.Yet the critics just sit there on the internet laughing and throwing lowballs. From the ethos and pathos perspective of the rhetorical trivium, the critics are really missing their target.”

    First, I’ve found there are various ‘types of critics’ not a monolithic thing called ‘the critics’ of IDT/IDism. Wouldn’t you agree, EricMH? Or do you really wish to lump all critics of IDT/IDism together?

    2nd, they’re not that highly credentialed & very few come from or work at “top institutions”. That’s just not the case. Besides, I read Stephen C. Meyer’s dissertation at Cambridge in the Whewell Library; it is frankly awful. The man redefined ‘history’ in the Intro & then wrote a long diatribe against a ‘materialist’ reading of cosmogeny. Not that impressive, as I learned directly from his Supervisor. Isn’t Meyer one of the most highly credentialed IDists? Wells got his Moonie education paid for, right EricMH, so perhaps we won’t count that one either?

    Many critics of IDT continue on their regular research trajectories and in their other work, which is much more important than taking the necessary time to rebut some of the wild & loose ideas that have come from IDists over the years. Taking our time to critique & rebut IDism should also be valued, if EricMH is going to find only gold in the Seattle ideology.

    “From the ethos and pathos perspective of the rhetorical trivium, the critics are really missing their target.”

    When even we hit our targets, IDists say the same thing anyway. There’s a lack of trust now with IDists in the mainstream. That’s simply a sociological fact of life, EricMH. What can you do to earn back peoples’ trust? When we see the DI concentrate some of its recent attacks on ‘theistic evolution’, we know there is something wrong in the heart of IDism.

    Sure, mind matters. The existence of minds, however, doesn’t prove or even privilege IDism. When ID proponents realise this, they will blame themselves for the wasted time & resources. That’s likely what forced Dembski’s retirement 2 years ago, before Bradley called with evangelical apologetic enticement.

  23. EricMH: Why do the participants here always assume the worst about IDists’ motives?

    Because cdesign proponentsists have gone far out of their way, time and again, to show themselves to be sleazeballs. Perhaps you’d like to explain to us why, after Bob Marks approved Winston Ewert’s master’s thesis with over half of the introduction copied verbatim from two papers by Dembski and Marks, you chose to do your doctoral work with Marks. See

    1. “Charles Darwin” of Intelligent Design Condones Plagiarism at Baylor?
    2. Plagiarism at a Glance
    3. Revised ID Thesis Describes Plagiarism in Originally Accepted Version

    It would appear that you do not care particularly much about the integrity of the people with whom you consort. Do the ends justify the means?

    The situation would be somewhat different if Marks had apologized publicly for his own misconduct in the Ewert affair. But he has, to my knowledge, never said a thing about it.

    Let me tell you, no one is in ID for the money 🙂

    Evidently the ID movement is getting you, a true believer, on the cheap. You ought to have a look at the Forms 990 of the Discovery Institute, and see how much some of your predecessors have drawn. Stephen Meyer may have the highest salary of any philosopher of science in the world. Berlinski makes no secret of being in ID and other forms of denialism for the money. It appears to me that the ID movement pays its token atheist top dollar to do the little bit he does for the cause.

    I’ll bet that 0’Leary gets paid more for technically ignorant editing than you and Bartlett, put together, do for generating content. You’re being taken for a fool — which is what commonly happens to true believers.

    It makes more sense to assume all the ID proponents are doing it because they think ID is true, or at least the best hypothesis we’ve currently got.

    There’s this little thing called history, and your obliviousness does not erase the memories of others.

    My greatest regret, reflecting on my own response to the ID movement, is that I went a number of years without reading Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design (Forrest and Gross, 2004). It’s still essential reading. And until you bother yourself with reading it, you ought to keep your mouth shut on the matter of what others ought to believe about the motives of the intelligent-design movement.

  24. EricMH: Why do the participants here always assume the worst about IDists’ motives? Let me tell you, no one is in ID for the money 😀 It makes more sense to assume all the ID proponents are doing it because they think ID is true, or at least the best hypothesis we’ve currently got. As such, they’ve given up quite a lot, materially speaking, purely for the sake of the truth. What have the critics done to merit their moral high horse?

    Eric,
    You have your question and an answer in you own 2 sentences…

    Selfish people can’t see one reason why someone would support something without getting anything out of it…They couldn’t careless if something is true or false if they are not benefiting from it…That’s why ID and decent religions attract very few “followers”…
    As Allan ones said: What’s the appeal of Christianity?

  25. Tom English: Because cdesign proponentsists have gone far out of their way, time and again, to show themselves to be sleazeballs.

    When you question 1+1+omnipotent natural selection = 3 you will be called anything by the believers of the omnipotent natural selection…They have substituted one omnipotent God for another god…The question still remains: Why? Could it be because of selfishness?

  26. “ID and decent religions attract very few “followers”…”

    Except for you’re not a ‘follower’ of a single religion; you’ve apparently made your own eclectic syncretistic mixture up after leaving the Catholic Church, as you recently said. Your anti-Catholic emotions cloud your vision to make it ‘indecent’.

    The insinuation that ‘only IDists search for truth’ is of course tragically, arrogantly wrong. While the Pontifical Academy of Sciences is not a body J-Mac wishes to face right now in his apostasy. Damned if he does (rejection of IDism), damned if he doesn’t (still a syncretistic mixed religion of one), apparently.

  27. Gregory: Except for you’re not a ‘follower’ of a single religion; you’ve apparently made your own eclectic syncretistic mixture up after leaving the Catholic Church, as you recently said. Your anti-Catholic emotions cloud your vision to make it ‘indecent’.

    The insinuation that ‘only IDists search for truth’ is of course tragically, arrogantly wrong. While the Pontifical Academy of Sciences is not a body J-Mac wishes to face right now in his apostasy. Damned if he does (rejection of IDism), damned if he doesn’t (still a syncretistic mixed religion of one), apparently.

    If I ever get a straight answer from you at least once, I will apply the same rule…
    ETA: Have you ever read my comments that I’m neither an ID proponent nor a mainstream creationist?

  28. “I’m neither an ID proponent nor a mainstream creationist”

    Nor a proponent of a clear or identifiable religious worldview. LOL – you expect a straight answer to twisted questions & convoluted communication based around apostate views? Sorry, get yourself figured out first.

    And yet here you are still arguing for something unnamed… = P

  29. Gregory: Nor a proponent of a clear or identifiable religious worldview. LOL – you expect a straight answer to twisted questions & convoluted communication based around apostate views? Sorry, get yourself figured out first.

    And yet here you are still arguing for something unnamed… = P

    Since it is apparently against the rules of TSZ to tell directly how I feel about your input, I’m going to say this:
    It has been a great pleasure talking with you 🙂
    I have learned nothing from you…

  30. I still haven’t learned what your argument is, after all that. Not a [mainstream] creationist, not an IDist. But a _______? Surely you haven’t made a positive contribution to this thread about the Bradley Center, ID 3.0 & Dembski’s return from retirement. That part is clear. That you seem to think everybody is selfish except for you in your own personal religion as a Catholic apostate, that part is far less trustworthy. That you don’t understand why reflects solely on you, not on everyone else.

  31. Joe Felsenstein
    : In the perhaps-hopeless effort to discuss the OP here, a few comments on the objectives of the Bradley Center, from the point of view of an evolutionary biologists

    Would it make sense to discuss it the other way around? It’s not like you haven’t had ALL THE EVIDENCE available to look at and enough time in you life to see the evidence, right? You have chosen what you have chosen to believe … That’s the beauty of faith… How is it going to matter in say 20-30 years?

  32. Tom English,

    Check, yeah. Whoa donkeys! Yikes, it flips & fights. –> Bradley Center, DI, ID 3.0, Dembski’s return…

    “If the mind is immaterial, then it certainly cannot have evolved.” – EricMH

    Yet Theodosius Dobzhansky and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin thought exactly that, just as do many other people today around the world, not just in the USA. It’s not like people believe Denyse O’Leary spouting pop psychology as if it passes muster as ‘ID science’! = P Are you not aware of any of the many sane, thoughtful people who believe in/accept exactly what you just said “certainly cannot have evolved”?

    Tom, re: cdesign proponentsists, yes, that is one of the most remarkable blunders in the short history & sociology of the Intelligent Design movement based at the Discovery Institute; the book blunder in Of Pandas & People, empirically linking creationists & IDists.

    “Stephen Meyer may have the highest salary of any philosopher of science in the world. Berlinski makes no secret of being in ID and other forms of denialism for the money.” – Tom English

    Well, Meyer calls himself a ‘scientist’ too. ; ) He makes a lot more than Steve Fuller, the actual philosopher & sociologist of science they often get to write the Foreword for their tomes. Bruno Latour is perhaps the top paid, or rather at least the most famous philosopher of science today, though he’s a French public intellectual so he’s probably paid less than Meyer with the political right-wing money in the USA. Hmm, there’s a pathway on that … http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9410/latour.html

    The Berlinski story running through the DI has never made much sense to me, other than that they share a loathing of Darwin’s ideas. Denton’s continued production under the DI banner is a mutually agreed economic decision by both corporate persons, one being the Discovery Institute, the other Denton himself. Denton doesn’t have to believe in ‘Intelligent Design’ to promote ‘intelligent design’ & has his own neo-vitalist agency writings to send him into retirement that may overlap with the ‘natural intelligence’ part of the new Bradley Center.

    So we’re really talking about Walter Bradley here, which is a different person, character & figure in the history of the IDM & to whatever degree beyond it that is relevant here, and makes it now possible to launch this endeavour at the DI in Seattle with a small committed team of ____________s. It’s not the “Phillip E. Johnson Center at the Discovery Institute”, after all, but another IDist’s name. Why? Leave it to the gallery to fill in the blank with due courtesy according the open rules of TSZ.

  33. Gregory,

    I would not have been able to name the most famous of contemporary philosophers of science. It was interesting to read a 1994 take on Latour. Latour’s comment about Fuller was hilarious.

    Here’s the 2016 Form 990 for the Discovery Institute. Berlinski was paid US$125 thousand as an independent contractor. Meyer was compensated by the DI at $250 thousand for the year, and got $20 thousand in “other” compensation related to the DI (probably speaking fees). I doubt highly that his book royalties are included. You’re going to have a very hard time finding another philosopher paid as well as Meyer is to operate primarily as a philosopher.

    Dembski disenfranchised the YECs, and I believe that he was a liability for the Center for Science and Culture. It seems to me that the Bradley Center has more to do with the human exceptionalism thrust of the DI than with the neo-creationism thrust.

    As for ID 3.0, I think it’s just blustering denial that the ID movement has failed egregiously in recruitment. (George Montañez is a very bright guy, but I think he’s also too ethical to keep repeating the standard ID line.)

  34. One has to wonder about the motives in someone who would repeatedly ad nauseum attack the DI as if it somehow pertains to them. It would be like someone constantly writing about how much they hate the Pembroke Center for Research on Woman, or the Santa Fe Institute, or a think tank about Urban Land use.

    What possible affect does it have on these critics? Is there jealousy that people who work for them are being paid? Do they wish they were getting paid this instead? Its weird, what is their goal? It seems to be a very consuming hobby for them. In you don’t believe in the concept of ID, great. What detriment does it cause to anyone, other than envious academics who wish they could get published for rambling, often incoherently, on TSZ.

    Odd indeed.

  35. “It seems to me that the Bradley Center has more to do with the human exceptionalism thrust of the DI than with the neo-creationism thrust.”

    That may be correct, though I don’t see how Wesley Smith of the human exceptionalism ‘department’ of the DI can contribute on the technical side. Likewise, I agree that neo-creationism is a proper term for the DI’s IDism, in order to distinguish it from only YECism, which most of the DI’s leaders don’t actually embrace. Yet it’s a kind of ‘neo-creationism’ that the DI denies reflects their ideologies at all, continuing with their ‘strictly scientific IDT’ charade.

    Re: Fuller & Latour, here is a key encounter already from 15 years ago. It’s a link to a pdf, from a credible source (otherwise search Fuller Latour Hong Kong for the Barron paper):
    https://www.collier.sts.vt.edu/philsts/pdfs/latour-fullerdebate2003.pdf

    Stephen Meredith’s take-down of IDism at First Things is another place for phoodoo to consider as he tries to understand the ‘motives’ correctly. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/02/looking-for-god-in-all-the-wrong-places There are many Christians who have critiqued IDT/IDism, only to fall on deaf or misunderstanding ears at the DI, while they plod away with their legal-media machine wasting resources wrapped around bitter Pilate-like ideology.

    Jealousy of the DI & it’s mission? No, certainly not. These are simply the kinds of things a sociologist of the IDM should notice, keeps an eye out for, pays attention to because that is expected if one wants to understand what’s going on with many or most of the people involved in this ‘science & religion’ social ‘movement’. You’re not a sociologist, so it’s probably best to calm yourself about it & let me do what is largely just reporting on & contextualising what the DI & IDM are actually doing or attempting to do.

    That Steve Fuller writes regularly to introduce key texts for the IDM, while promoting a curious mixture of ‘Intelligent Design’ & ‘intelligent design’ that differs in substantial ways from the DI’s version (in short, his is more cybernetically oriented than theirs) is a telling story already, one that few people know about. Fuller isn’t a postmodernist as much as a largely theoretical proactionist. It would not surprise me entirely if they tried to attract Fuller to work with them in the Bradley Center, or at least to continue to introduce their texts ‘philosophically’, since the natural/artificial divide re: ‘intelligence’ (uncapitalised) would likely appeal to Fuller (e.g. Humanity 2.0) – the problem is that the DI rejects transhumanism, while Fuller embraces it (see here: https://social-epistemology.com/2015/10/01/steve-fullers-false-hope-in-idism-the-discovery-institutes-anti-transhumanism-gregory-sandstrom/). All it would take, however, is someone like that to light the barn on fire, taking away from the biologists & giving to the technologists. Otherwise, there’s a lot of stunted computer scientists & engineers visiting this blog not to see/realise that transition bridge yet.

    Thanks for pointing to Montañez, who is new on my non-IDist/IDist/ex-IDist/anti-IDist sociological radar.

  36. Gregory,

    Easy Spools Seminars is having their quilting workshop next month in Pacific Grove California. Man that pisses me off.

    I think I will start an OP on it.

    Who does Jenny Bowker think she is?

  37. Gregory: Jealousy of the DI & it’s mission? N

    No? Why was Jesus accused of breaking the law and killed even though he was innocent?
    Wasn’t it jealously?

  38. It may turn out that the Bradley Center at the DI is much ado about nothing. Yup, well, at least there’s one sociologist paying attention either way. ; )

  39. Gregory:
    It may turn out that the Bradley Center at the DI is much ado about nothing. Yup, well, at least there’s one sociologist paying attention either way. ; )

    And it may turn out that the Easy Spools quilting seminar is much ado about nothing. But it also may turn out that they are making quilts!

  40. phoodoo: What detriment does it cause to anyone, other than envious academics who wish they could get published for rambling, often incoherently, on TSZ.

    “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

  41. phoodoo: But it also may turn out that they are making quilts!

    Then they will have produced something concrete, an outcome denied to the Intelligent Design Creationists who continue to produce nothing for the Nth year in a row.

  42. phoodoo: It seems to be a very consuming hobby for them. In you don’t believe in the concept of ID, great. What detriment does it cause to anyone, other than envious academics who wish they could get published for rambling, often incoherently, on TSZ.

    Actually if you think about it as scientists on their lunch break at work looking for some amusement it starts to make much more sense. Notice how few posts there are at the weekend, for example, in comparison to the weekdays? Ever wondered why? Actually, don’t bother answering that, I just realized who I’m taking to! Of course you’ve never wondered why about any damm thing at all, why would you when you already have all the answers!

  43. phoodoo: One has to wonder about the motives in someone who would repeatedly ad nauseum attack the DI as if it somehow pertains to them.

    To me this is critical. The OP seems reasonable. Plenty of links. You can make up your own mind. If Dembski is back, that’s interesting. If ID 3.0 is anything other then merely critiques of evolution rather then positive support for ID, that’s interesting.

    But merely attempting to have that conversation is perceived as an attack. Their default mode is to attack. IDC is nothing but a series of attacks on evolution. It does not have any solidity of it’s own to offer. So even an attempted discussion of ID 3.0 is an attack and then the motive mongering for the reasons behind the attack can start.

    And then we’re talking about why people are being attacked for their beliefs etc etc rather then if ID 3.0 is something interesting or not (it’s not).

    Hey, phoodoo, remind me again how decisions are made in your free-will world?

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