Jonathan Witt of the Discovery Institute has lost it. The string of defeats for the cause of Intelligent Design creationism has had its toll, first Dover and now the Ohio ID lesson plan, and the poor man is clearly suffering from the strain, as you can tell from his latest hysterical screed.
First we get evolution compared to Castro's newspapers, with no criticism allowed; then the defense for including ID in Ohio is that there is a 3:1 margin of popular support. Two fallacies in one paragraph! Sorry, Jonathan, hyperbolic comparisons to communism and an appeal to popular opinion on matters of fact do not a defense of ID make.
Then he gets confused.
Continue reading "No more coffee for Mr Witt" (on Pharyngula)
Witt Witt Witt Wtit tWit tWit
Don’t they see how obvious it is that they’re pulling a bait and switch with the term “critically analyze”? Their form of critical analysis means to criticize something to the point of causing absolute doubt. They’re also trying to cause the doubt of an entire robust theory (without offereing a better solution). That’s very different from the true critical analysis that happens every day in science.
Another reason the Ohio lesson plan was linked to Intelligent Design was because the points being criticized were based on J. Well’s book and a list provided by D.I. Their hands were all over the Dover and Ohio cases.
If Ohio truly had nothing to do with I.D. why is Mr. Witt’s panties in such a knot?
Well, at least he acknowledges the difference between evolution and abiogenesis…
Hawkey: “You’ve got a point there, Frank.” Trapper: “Comb your hair and no one will see it.”
“They all laughed at Albert Einstein. They all laughed at Columbus. Unfortunately, they also all laughed at Bozo the Clown.” WILLIAM H. JEFFERYS
In light of the logic displayed by Witt here, it’s interesting to note, from his bio, available at “IDtheFuture”:
Not only that, but he is a hypocrite, as he does not allow comments to be left on his blog. Who doesn’t like criticism again?
I don’t have the source on hand, but that bio was found to be a crock when Witt said that he went to college with the intent of “destroying Darwinism.” Remember? Jonathan Witt, the Moonie?
No, you’re thinking of Wells.
It would seem that this has been the whole thrust of the DI since its inception. Unfortunately the multi pronged approach of the DI has met with several set backs most notably in Dover. The DIs attempt to counter this spectacular setback with its own analysis of the Dover case is pointless, why pay for a one sided analysis when you can read the decision yourself for free and make up your own mind.
In the next sentence Witt goes on to say “Not even friends are to be trusted.” Is this a veiled reference to the future, is the DI on the verge of a purge? Is the little tent of the DI beginning to rip in private?
While some may rightly accuse me of taking Witt’s statements out of context, I believe that by carefully reading and correctly interpreting these essays the true the underlying workings of the DI may be revealed. “After that the real work begins.” Jonathan Witt
Delta Pi Gamma (Scientia et Fermentum)
… Are you sure? Damn, I always get those two mixed up. Every time. Wells. Witt. Cripes.
It appears that Witt’s view is that ID deserves a full review and that the right people to perform such a review are high school students. Is it possible that’s because the ID movement is afraid of review by qualified scientists?
Never mind …
Re “Is it possible that’s because the ID movement is afraid of review by qualified scientists?”
Well, that or they’ve already been reviewed by qualified scientists - and they flunked.
Henry
Why is it that the ID activists have to constantly misrepresent science (such as in this case the peppered moth or the Cambrian Explosion?) As a Christian this truly worries me
Re “Why is it that the ID activists have to constantly misrepresent science […]”
Maybe because representing science correctly would send their arguments down the drain?
Henry
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Oh man is that ever bad. Witt is so clueless he can’t even get his own side’s distortions right.
Let me help you out, Mr. Witt. There were never any experiments based on photographs. Jonathan Wells’ attack on the photographs was based on the fact that ones appearing in text books were staged. That in itself is a silly and irrelevant complaint given that lots of photograhps in text books are staged, and these particular photos are only meant to show what the contrasting moths look like. The issue has nothing at all to do with whether or not the peppered moth experiments were sound, which they were.
But please, could you at least try to get your lies straight?
Bruce Thompson you beat me to it, rats!
Witt a Ph.D. in English? or Ingsoc or the Humbert Humbert school of fantasy and self justification?
I mean really, how Orwellian are these statements?
Ohio’s model lesson plan DI inspired lawyery double talk that encouraged students to think critically be purposefully confused by exposing them to both the scientific strengths and weaknesses ignorance based creationist disparagement of Darwinism
Thanks to the tireless enforcers of Darwinian purity necessary and time wasting efforts of actual hard working scientists responding to an unconscionable attack on honest scholarship by a sine nobilis, bibliolatrous bunch of cultural miscreants.
Then this gem Darwinism will sound a lot like the news stories on Castro in Cuba’s state run newspapers: all positive, all the time.
hahhaha.…. oh yeah those news stories where all the media is controlled by a single political faction and opposition is suppressed. Maybe Witt should move to Cuba .….at least he would be happy, he could be all positive, all the time on the government side or all negative all the time on the time on the opposition side but at least he would not have to worry about a free press.
Then to top it all off from the man who calls the faithful to “take ownership of the word” or should that be world ?(read “take ownership” as changing the core meanings of words to support his illusion) treats facts as something to be cleaned yup those pesky facts a mere linguistic impediment.
Sanitizing the fact pattern will demand a Herculean effort and constant vigilance. Not even friends are to be trusted.
Whoa there Dr. Strange love. Yup.….. brain washing Stalinist style…ahhhh Witt you will need a “Ministry of Truth and Propaganda” for that .…oops already have one do you? Then;
The facts are a danger to us all. Such stories will have to be stopped. But take heart. The Darwinian Fundamentalists have arrived. They just want to help.
The hilarious and plainly obvious self delusion that Witt expresses could not be better exposed by anyone other than himself, his choice or words and thought patterns project his internally constucted story as plainly as a movie on a wall.
It’s almost as though he has taken the top off his skull and allowed us to look inside his brain.
As Lenny says allow them to talk for long enough and they will hang themselves.
About that poll he refers to, it’s much worse than simply being an appeal to popular opinion. The poll consists of a loaded question, one that is so bad it needs to be adopted as the text book example of how not to conduct a poll. The result is completely meaningless as a guide to public opinion.
Witt and company aren’t so stupid as to not know this, and even if they were, it’s been patiently explained to them a hundred times over. The fact that they keep pulling this poll out – indeed, they keep commissioning new polls with the exact same question – shows them to be base propagandists of the worst kind.
Pure, 100% undiluted creationism. I wish people would realise that “soft” bodied critters just don’t fossilise that well.
WOW!, They actually know about this??? I thought their idea of “peer-reviewed literature” was books published by cranks and liars. Fancy them mentioning peer-review. I thought they placed no faith in it.
Unless, of course, the whole object is spin. In which case, I suspect they knew exactly what they were doing. Incompetence would be a relatively innocent excuse.
(my apologies if this is too Anglocentric)
No, there must be some Creationists in the House of Lords.
Bob
After viewing the trackback at UD and the original post and comments at PZs place, I propose that there exists a phenomenon which I will call the “Bozone Layer”. This is an aura that surrounds certain bozos and prevents intelligent ideas from penetrating. Unlike the ozone layer however, there are no known methods for creating holes in the aura. Further, I believe people exhibiting a Bozone layer rely on the “Dopeler Effect”. That is, if they repeat a dopey idea long enough and rapidly enough it won’t seem quite so stupid. I believe the scientific description of persons so afflicted is “ignoranus”, what laymen generally call a “stupid a**hole”.
Who’s got good material on Cornelius Hunter? He’s appearing at Cornell University on April 5, 2006.
Maybe he´s talking about the beer-reviewed literature. That would make sense.
If by “they” you mean DI personnel, their chief supporters, and other assorted professional and “obsessed amateur” anti-evolutionists, the answer is “of course.” It’s their target audience that rarely catches the bait and switch, so they’ll continue to pull it as long as they can. And whenever we critics dismiss them as simply ignorant, clueless or “Fundies,” instead of “scam artists” we give them that much more slack.
Because the designer-free phony “critical analysis” is tied to the ID scam and he knows it. In fact I’d bet that if Judge Jones didn’t address the designer-free scam, Witt et al would still be playing the victim.
Having now read both Dr. Witt’s article and Dr. Meyer’s rebuttal, it sounds to me like Dr. Witt’s article is factual and makes sense. The comparrisons he makes to Cuba newspapers seems to be appropriate in light of the supression of dissent in Ohio. But it sounds like Dr. Meyers is splitting hairs and whistling in the dark. Her primary argument is that there is something wrong with Dr. Witt himself, which there isn’t, of course. And she does no better than make unconvincing, beside-the-point comments on Dr. Witt’s assertions.
I was surprised, too, by the vitriol, the attacks on religious faith and the rather infantile word games of the majority of comments on this site. Such comments do not reflect well on the quality of the intellectual accumen here.
But take heart gj (is that you Larry).
The Anti-Evolution Creation Fundamentalists have arrived. They just want to Help.
Are those the ‘facts’ you were referring to gj?
Or perhaps the ‘facts’ Witt wants to ‘sanitize’(smirk).
GJ is RedReader, a particularly clueless commenter even by Uncommon Descent standards. Hence misspelling PZ’s name and thinking PZ’s a woman? But at least he doesn’t confuse PZ with PvM, like his friend did:
http://www.uncommondescent.com/inde[…]975#comments
I have some questions for the marine geologist concerning his hypothesis. Does the Bozone layer have other properties similar to the ozone layer? The ozone layer reflects certain wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, does the Bozone layer similarly reflect certain thoughts? What is the resonance frequency of the reflected thoughts within the Bozone layer? As these thoughts bounce around within the Bozne layer surrounding the individual does the frequency and amplitude increase over time? If so, what is the effect on the individual? If enough individuals are concentrated are their combined individual Bozone layers purely additive or is there and exponential effect? How far does the Bozone layer extend from an individual? How close does someone have to come to another person who is exuding a Bozone layer before they are effected?
Is there a Bozone detector under development?
Delta Pi Gamma (Scientia et Fermentum)
Larry,
There could be a legal case made for every one of your methods of cheating. Your other claim about the number of lawyers has been refuted at least one time (not by me) that I can remember, so I won’t go into it. We are not the ones breaking the law. We are not the ones forcing these issues into the courts. In light of these facts, yes it is completely ethical to make ID advocates (and school-boards that play along) pay for force feeding their religious views into high school biology class.
Note that neither does Larry. He doesn’t even offer BS scientific riticism. His entire “argument” consists of various pseuo-legal-sounding criticisms of the judge and his ruling.
Yet another reason why I don’t think Larry is really an IDer – he’s just a crank with delusions of lawyerhood. (shrug)
Let’s just remind everyone in the audience, one more time, that the sum total legal fees sought by all of the lawyers in the Kitzmiller case was … zero. They all worked for free.
Nothing is “hidden“ – I gave a link and a page number for those who want to see the original text. I only deleted extraneous material. You asked me for a quote that supported my assertion that Jones banned all scientific challenges of evolution theory, and I gave you exactly what you asked for – neither more no less.
The cunning Judge Jones gave the false impression of sticking to the subject of the lawsuit by mentioning only ID in the official “Order“ on page 139 of the Dover opinion while he sneaked a much broader ruling – prohibiting all “disparagement“ and “denigration“ of evolution theory – into the “Conclusion“ section of the opinion. This broader ruling sure comes in handy when attacking such things as the Kansas and Ohio evolution education standards.
Genetic drift is just a slow random mutation. The founder effect and stochastic processes also concern natural genetic variation. I started using the term “natural genetic variation“ because a lot of people complained that the term “random mutation“ is not inclusive enough.
Merely allowing or requiring the teaching of challenges to evolution is not the same as “implementing“ a scientific theory or law by political means.
The opinions of non-experts is often very important in deciding political responses to crucial scientific issues, e.g., global warming, environmental protection, conservation of natural resources, and nuclear-power safety. The political responses to any of these issues may have consequences that are far more serious than any potential consequence of teaching scientific challenges to evolution theory. Teaching challenges to evolution theory might not have any negative consequences at all, because scientists can continue using evolution theory or its concepts even while believing that all or part of it is untrue. And I think that scientific challenges to evolution theory have the beneficial effects of suggesting topics for research and forcing scientists to confront weaknesses in the theory.
I thought that Darwinists wanted students to learn about alleged flaws in scientific challenges to evolution theory.
It was not my idea to imply that students‘ questions about evolution theory are motivated only by religion. And I never heard this expression “quote mining“ before I started reading Panda‘s Thumb. If it means quoting out of context, then I think that it should be called quoting out of context. I try not to quote out of context (though other commenters on PT often obviously quote me out of context).
Like what? Suing politicians or school board members for not requiring that evolution be taught? Suing teachers for teaching evolution as though it is not true? Suing students for asking questions that challenge evolution?
Baloney – 9-10 plaintiffs‘ attorneys of record in the Dover case was overkill by any reasonable standard.
Aha! His statement suggested that evolution might not be true. That is supposed to be a no-no.
So this is something that PT readers should not be aware of ?
Our definition of legal fees must be different, Lenny, since the ACLU and AU split about $750,000 in attorney fees. Pepper Hamilton did work for free, however, and that is where the lion’s share of the attorneys fees would have gone.
It is still quite amusing that Larry continues to use this particular argument after he so publicly embarrassed himself by invoking Blum v. Stenson, which completely contradicts all of his arguments regarding attorney fees. Those interested in the exchange should do a search on “Larry bullet lodged groin” and scroll up a few posts (it’s in the Dover Trap thread)
By the way, when are you going to remove Larry’s posts, PZ? He is banned, after all.
larry, attempting to address you makes me feel like Two-Face in that Batman/Robin movie, after he blowtorches batman, who then walks out unscathed and Two-face says:
“Why won’t you just die??!!”
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Larry writes:
“Genetic drift is just a slow random mutation. The founder effect and stochastic processes also concern natural genetic variation. I started using the term “natural genetic variation” because a lot of people complained that the term “random mutation” is not inclusive enough.”
No, Larry, genetic drift isn’t ‘just slow random mutation’. Genetic drift is change in gene frequency across generations due to chance factors. Genetic drift is a mechanism of evolution that does not require natural selection.
Random mutation and natural genetic variation are not synonyms. Natural genetic variation is the result of mutation.
Mutation is not truly random. In the simplest form, point mutation, some changes (transitions) are more likely than others (transversions) so substitution is not random. More complex changes, e.g., additions and delitions, can be contrained by the chromosomal environment, thus again being non-random.
Take that course,Larry. Though I pity the poor instructor that has to put up with you.
You may expect a lawsuit to follow.
That will give you a chance to demonstrate your, uh, legal skills in court.
Dickhead.
Bullshit, Larry. Judge Jones specifically and clearly stated:
It is RELIGIOUS criticism of ID that is being banned. Rightfully so. It’s illegal to teach religion in public school science classrooms.
Bullshit again, Larry. Judge Jones cites the Selman ruling on this matter, whcih specifically states:
So despite Larry’s yammering (let me guess, Larry – you never read the Selman decision either, right?), NO scientific criticism of evolution are banned. What is banned, rightly, are religiously motivated attacks on evolution for the purpose of propping uyp a religious belief in a creator (or designer, or whatever else they want to call it).
Larry, you are posting in violation of the forum rules That makes what you’re doing at minimal unethical, rude, and stupid; and at maximum malicious and inane.
You post in violation of the rules, you threaten more violations of both the rules and of intelligent behavior.
Why shouldn’t people threaten to remove you? If you were performing these childish antics in an actual court room, they’d hold you in contempt.
You’d know that if you actually knew anything about law, science, or morality.
But apparently you don’t.
Goodbye, Larry. Further posts by you on this thread will be disemvoweled.
Sht p, Lnny.
[Go away, Larry. PZ.]
Lenny,
Here’s a page describing the result of Larry demonstrating his legal skills in court. Look for “Fafarman” in this.
Yeah, I’ve heard before about his, uh, court filings. And his letters to the editor about Holocaust denial, Confederate apologists, and his “theory of meteors”, whatever THAT might be.
He’s just a crank with delusions of lawyerhood. (shrug) But thankfully, he is now gone. Perhaps offering his, uh, legal expertise to the Discovery Institute.
And if he carries out his threat and posts anything under anyone else’s name, I think the lawyers here should pow-wow and determine what can be done.
(I am of course assuming that any ten year old would instantly be able to tell the difference between a post actually written by me and one written by the many-named one under my name.)
Yours would be the one with the greasy pizza pawprints all over it, naturally.
Whereas Larry’s emails only come with drool.
Update