I first noticed the phrase “Intelligent Design” about ten years ago. Not long after,William Dembski produced his website, Uncommon Descent, and declared his intentions:
This blog is for me mainly to get out news items about the ID movement and my work in particular. For more sustained writing and development of my ideas, I refer you to my website: www.designinference.com. I am not a journalist nor do I intend to become one. Thus this is not “The ID Answer Man” or “Ask Your Questions about ID Forum.” If I don’t respond to your comments and questions, even if they are good comments and questions, understand that I have way more commitments than I can fulfill, and that I will only occasionally contribute to a comment thread here.
Finally, there is one cardinal rule at this blog, namely, I make up the rules as I go along. In other words, these policies can change at any time. Moreover, if they change, it will most likely be in the direction of curtailing the time I need to spend with comments.
I made an early assessment of ID here. And I made the confident and wrong prediction that ID would fade completely from public view within five years. Dembski has since relinquished the site to one Barry Arrington, a lawyer by profession, and there continues to be the same consistency in moderation. “I make up the rules as I go along” could equally be Arrington’s mantra. Since Dembski’s withdrawal from public discussion, though (well indeed, since I first heard of “Intelligent Design”), I’ve seen no genuine effort to convert the claim that ID has some scientific merit into reality.
What I think I see now at Uncommon Descent, the only remaining discussion venue I am aware of where ID is still claimed to be real, is a gentle decline that may take a generation. What I don’t see at UD are many young or female advocates and no young, female advocates. What I no longer see is the pretense that ID is a useful scientific paradigm rather than a banner for the religious right (white male) to gather around.
Who’s left there with anything interesting to say? Who is left at UD who merits attention and consideration rather than being ignored? Anyone at all?
Joe has a post up at his blog.
More Lies and Delusion from our Opponents
The thing is Joe, we’re not opponents. You know that saying “not even wrong”? That’s you that is. For you to be an opponent of mine you’d have to have a coherent position. You don’t. You know what did not do it, but you can’t say what did.
and yet you also say
So you can’t talk about specifics until design is determined, yet it’s my job to falsify ID by showing that undirected processes can produce what ID claims requires and intelligent agency. But if you’ve not determined design, how can I do that? Yet you seem to imply that you have determined design as it’s my job to falsify that claim!
When you make your mind up as to if design has been detected and can make a case for a specific instance perhaps then we’ll be opponents. Until then I’m simply laughing at you.
[ID think]But what evidence do you have that it’s a translation into Gurma of Luke 1:1-2?
Just similarity? Really?
Could have been a Common Designer merrily sticking that string of words into Gurma translations of Moby Dick, Cinderella, Frankenstein, and Luke. Because it can.[/ID think]
Glen Davidson
I’d like to come back to Petrushka’s mention of the Voynich manuscript in relation to the example quote. Would the “explanatory filter” be able in principle to determine whether that’s an example of an actual meaningful language, or just gibberish?
And Piotr, what’s your take on Voynich? I’ve been fascinated by it for a long time.