Sixty percent of the time, it works every time...

By Matt Inlay on August 15, 2005 2:10 PM | 12 Comments

I just finished watching Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, a Will Ferrell flick about a local news anchor living in my beloved city of San Diego during the 70s. There’s a great exchange between Ron and his co-anchor Veronica Corningstone that perfectly captures what it feels like at times arguing with creationists.

Ron Burgundy: Discovered by the Germans in 1904, they named it San Diago, which of course in German means “a whale’s vagina”.
Veronica Corningstone: No, there’s no way that’s correct. Ron: I’m sorry, I was trying to impress you. I don’t know what it means. I’ll be honest, I don’t think anyone knows what it means anymore. Scholars maintain that the translation was lost hundreds of years ago.
Veronica: Doesn’t it mean Saint Diego?
Ron: No. No.
Veronica: No, that’s - that’s what it means. Really.
Ron: Agree to disagree.

12 Comments

Mike | August 15, 2005 2:37 PM

I love lamp!

mattitude | August 15, 2005 3:08 PM

Holy turtle shell Glasses of William Dembski, that’s an analogy!

(you know … Will Ferrel’s “Knights of Columbus, that hurts!” line)

observer | August 15, 2005 3:53 PM

Sign in front of the Mexican restaurant where the ladies are dining and talking about changing the teleprompter that Ron reads

“Escupimos en su Alimento”

Rich | August 15, 2005 4:24 PM

Check out comment #9, Dembski’s scientifically robust rebuttal:

http://www.uncommondescent.com/inde[…]235#comments

darwinfinch | August 15, 2005 5:03 PM

WD: the definition of “asshole.”

steve | August 15, 2005 5:22 PM

Wow.

#
Why would ID need to be ‘promoted’? If it is science (as claimed) then the arguments and facts and should speak for themselves.
If it’s just a public relations exercise combining religion, politics and deceptive scientific-sounding jargon, however…
Comment by vax — August 14, 2005 @ 4:17 pm #
Vax,
It is obvious why it needs to be promoted…because it is being shut out by radical left wing atheists that control the science ciriculum at the University level who control the peer reviewed journals. Also, ID is young and it has the right to have time to germinate or die-with a fair hearing.
Dan
Comment by Dan — August 14, 2005 @ 4:53 pm

Guess which one Dembski bans?

Michael Hopkins | August 15, 2005 7:07 PM

Rich Wrote:
Check out comment #9, Dembski’s scientifically robust rebuttal:
http://www.uncommondescent.com/inde[…]235#comments

That is just so good that this whole exchange really needs to be preserved in a place in webspace that the creationists can’t edit the evidence away. Here it the exchange from Vox’s first post to Dembski’s shameful banning of him.

6. Why would ID need to be ‘promoted’? If it is science (as claimed) then the arguments and facts and should speak for themselves.
If it’s just a public relations exercise combining religion, politics and deceptive scientific-sounding jargon, however…
Comment by vax — August 14, 2005 @ 4:17 pm
7. Vax,
It is obvious why it needs to be promoted…because it is being shut out by radical left wing atheists that control the science ciriculum at the University level who control the peer reviewed journals. Also, ID is young and it has the right to have time to germinate or die-with a fair hearing.
Dan
Comment by Dan — August 14, 2005 @ 4:53 pm
8. Sounds a bit paranoid to me - not all scientists are “radical left wing atheists”! In fact there are scientists across the globe of every political hue and holding every creed who understand that all living beings on this planet share common ancestry. How do they know? Because the hypothesis has stood up to intense scrutiny over the past 150 years. ID is not science because there is no hypothesis; nothing that could be falsified.
“ID is young and it has the right to have time to germinate or die-with a fair hearing.”
Yes, that’s true, but ID proponents don’t want a fair hearing. They want to bypass the hypothesis, the data collection, the analysis, the peer reviewing etc, and have their ideas placed straight into school science classes! To be taken seriously by the scientific community (radically left wing or otherwise) perhaps the discovery institute would be better off using their money to fund actual research rather than for hiring a top public relations firm (Creative Response Concepts).
Comment by vax — August 14, 2005 @ 7:59 pm
9. Vax, you are repeating the party line. I have no patience for it here. You are out of here. —WmAD
Comment by William Dembski — August 14, 2005 @ 8:58 pm

Another piece of evidence that criticism will not be tolerated in ID circles. I can understand someone not comments on a personal weblog, but if one is going to “allow” comments then one should allow comments unless someone is badly hehaved which “vax” clearly was not. To allow fanboys to comment but not critics is not kosher.

Rich | August 15, 2005 7:35 PM

Heh. No place to hide or revise that comment now. Fancy asking the great mind of WmAD (what is that about, by the way?) to answer Science questions! The bare faced cheek! He is clearly movign in mysterious ways.

ts (not Tim Sandefur) | August 15, 2005 8:37 PM

Vax, you are repeating the party line. I have no patience for it here. You are out of here. —WmAD

See no truth, hear no truth, speak no truth.

Danny | August 15, 2005 8:51 PM

Wow, I just watched that movie last week, it’s an above average flick by the frat pack bunch. Sigh, if only creationists were as entertaining, I’d at least tolerate their delusions.

rdog29 | August 16, 2005 1:13 PM

Hey Dembski -

Is “You are out of here” the official ID “theory” response to criticism?

Now that’s what I call “teaching the controversy”!

Bravo, Big Daddy D!! You are a true beacon of intellectual enlightenment.

rdog29 | August 16, 2005 1:50 PM

Sorry everyone, I just can’t let this go yet. I have one more question for Big Daddy Dembski.

In the future, when ID has become the new paradigm and is entrenched at all levels of academia, and when conroversies and questions arise that are not immediately soluble (as must surely happen since ID is indeed a true “science” actively engaged in research and not just, um, marketing), how will ID address these issues?

Let me guess - with a thunderous “YOU ARE OUT OF HERE!”

Kind of like something that Newton might have said.

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