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Amused Muse

Inspiring dissent and debate and the love of dissonance

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Master's Degree holder, telecommuting from the hot tub, proud Darwinian Dawkobot, and pirate librarian belly-dancer bohemian secret agent scribe on a mission to rescue bloggers from the wholesome clutches of the pious backstabbing girl fridays of the world.



Monday, March 05, 2007

Newest Addition to Blogroll and a Summary

UPDATED: Yikes! Sometimes it gets downright weird at Uncommon Descent: "I can't wait to see all those other folks rot in hell."

Doug, honey, I don't believe James Cameron's Lost Tomb of Jesus crap either. Okay? And as for wishing all those other folks to rot in hell, well - don't wish your time away, huh?

And what do you think about the crap "documentary" by this Cameron?

SECOND UPDATE: James Cameron's Lost Tomb of Jesus is fiction. And so is intelligent design. If you criticize one, criticize them both.
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It's high time that I added Ed Brayton to the blogroll. I visit Ed's blog, Dispatches from the Culture Wars, all the time.

Ed has the latest on the spat between William Dembski and the Templeton Foundation. This is getting interesting, because it seems that some of the charges that Dembski leveled at the foundation are true. The foundation's spokesperson claims that Dembski was paid $100,000 to write a book on theology; however, Dembski's claim that it was to write a "pro-ID" book appear to be borne out by the facts. (I know, I know, ID is theology, but let's just set that aside for a wee bit.)

(We're just pretending that the two aren't the same for the moment. That's called...wait for it...playing devil's advocate.)

However, all this points to is more whining and scab-picking by Dembski about past slights, real or imagined. Still smarting more than a year later by the resounding defeat for intelligent design in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, he launched a vitriolic campaign to smear the presiding judge in the case, Judge Jones (a Republican appointed to the bench by none other than President George W. Bush), accusing the judge of having lifted his decision from the plaintiffs' paperwork (which is routine, people, it's done all the time).

Let's just gingerly add that somebody got listed in Time Magazine's TIME 100: The People Who Shape Our World, and it certainly wasn't Bill Dembski.

This culminated in an incredibly puerile flash animation (now scrubbed of the fart noises - see it here) that portrayed Jones as the puppet of...lemme get this straight...reputable scientists and academics, among them Richard Dawkins, Wesley Elsberry, Barbara Forrest (who testified against intelligent design at the Dover trial, and who has the affrontery of being a woman), and Eugenie Scott, among others. Wow. These people can put their words in my mouth any time!

Dare we say that the farting animation, er, backfired in a major way, resulting in some personal humiliation for Dembski (in which I gleefully participated, but RedStateRabble gets the credit), one really good smackdown (nice one, Ken!), and some fancy backtracking. (I liked the farts--the only thing I liked about the animation was the farts. Dembski should have left the farts in and gotten rid of everything else.)

So if there's something to this Templeton "scandal," that's interesting, but not surprising. No, considering the kind of year Dembski has had since the Dover trial (in the shitter, basically) it's not really very surprising that the Templeton Foundation, after showing initial hope and interest, would run away from the intelligent design movement like, well, someone from a small room with a farting roommate. You know, come to think of it, that really makes Dembski look bad once more.

If you really want to keep up with the shenanigans of the intelligent design woo wizards like Dembski, O'Leary et al., go to After the Bar Closes and click on the "Official Uncommonly Dense Discussion Thread" devoted to the inane blog by Dembski, "Uncommon Descent." Please note that this link starts at the beginning of this incredibly long discussion - you may want to click at the end to get your feet wet and then go back to enjoy the past yucks. December 2006 was a good month, really prime for belly laughs. (I wrote them a poem and everything!)

Right now Uncommon Descent is pretty boring, due to Dembski's whining, but I'm hoping that he'll snap out of it soon - he usually does. As with me, the dark clouds gather, but his have internal thunderbolts. Holy crap, you think I'm angry? You think I'm tempestuous? You think I have my moments? You should check out this guy! It's those quiet ones that you always have to look out for, and he looks like some harmless, small-town undertaker - but then he rails against the "materialist conspiracy," and rants that if he were the dean of a major university (he's not, which is another sore point with him, so tred lightly there - yeesh!) he'd dismiss half the professors in the biology department (since it's not really a science, you know - just "stamp collecting") and rename it the "nature appreciation unit." Yeah, he's a lunatic. A loveable lunatic!

Sometimes.

So here's to hoping that he'll quit sulking and contribute more laughs to the world. Just like this guy. Hallelujah! And welcome, Ed, to my blogroll (now a scroll almost as long as evolution itself). *Shimmy!*

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good morning Kristine! Yes, I read Ed every morning before I visit ATBC...Great post on that Dembski nut BTW -

March 06, 2007 7:49 AM  
Blogger Kristine said...

We're forming quite the online community here.

What did you think of the farting preacher? Future for Bill? (Geez, used-car salesmen wouldn't buy a used car from that slime ball.)

March 06, 2007 9:06 AM  

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