Wesley R. Elsberry
Posts: 4991
Joined: May 2002
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| Quote (Learned Hand @ Mar. 17 2014,18:35) | Something I omitted from my writeup was another particularly bitter comment he made about his critics. He claimed that the incentives in academia and the broader culture are to attack Intelligent Design, and that accordingly some "mediocre philosophers" were awarded university chairs for it. Does anyone know to whom that might refer?
He also worked in a dig at "Judge Johnny Jones," telling the audience that the judge's "claim to fame" prior to the trial was as commissioner of a liquor commission. He did not address the merits of Kitzmiller that I recall, just made some derisive comments about the judge. |
I don't know of anyone I'd consider "mediocre philosophers" among philosophers critiquing Dembski. He's gotten attention from Elliot Sober, Michael Ruse, and Rob Pennock, among others, all of them IMO far more capable in philosophy than Dembski has proven himself to be. It would be worth a question to Dembski for clarification sometime, if only to allow somebody a shot at a defamation case. Dembski wants to have it both ways, that he is besieged by unworthy mental pygmies (i.e., anyone whose name isn't William A. Dembski), and that his ideas have been legitimated by the serious scholarship that has gone into opposing them.
Dembski chickened out of testifying at Kitzmiller. He didn't even stay in for the deposition, though he made sure that he was a glowering presence at Barbara Forrest's deposition. (The final communication to Dembski from the plaintiffs on the Thursday (IIRC) prior to his withdrawal was that Jeff Shallit and I would be assisting Steve Harvey at the deposition the following Monday. He withdrew on Friday. We had previously instructed him to bring along his documentation of the review process for "The Design Inference".) And Dembski's claim to fame after Kitzmiller is producing and being the voiceover talent for a farting animation of Judge Jones.
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"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker
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