carlsonjok
Posts: 3326 Joined: May 2006
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My Night with the Discovery Institute
John West - Q & A Session
I am going to dispense with my previous formatting and convention of putting my own comments in red to differentiate them. I didn’t take very good notes during the Q&A, since I was up in line to ask my own question. Thus what follows is almost completely from my recollection of the Q&A and anything attributed to West should be considered as heavily paraphrased.
The Q&A session was interesting. Not because of the questions asked so much as how John West conducted himself. On the face of it, he conducted himself with collegiality. However, his treatment of questioners was, below the surface, poor. For one thing, the volume on his microphone was considerably louder than that provided for questioners. He used this to his advantage by drowning out/cutting off questioners mid-sentence. This allowed him to control the landscape. Second, he tended to equivocate a bit on hard questions. His answers were nominally related to the question they never really definitively answered them (at least not to my satisfaction YMMV). When pressed on a point in a follow-up, West consistently used the same tactic. He would go on the offensive and ask the questioner a “do you still beat your wife” question. For our foreign friends who may not recognize that phrase, this is a question for which there is not a correct answer. At least not one that the person answering can influence the audience with.
The first question was from a college student named Tyler, who asked why this is being presented by a political scientist rather than a biologist. My first inclination was that it was a weak question. However, West seemed to stumble on the question and struggled to search for an answer. The only memorable part of West’s answer was a statement that you don’t need to be a biologist to recognize that Lynn Margulis questions Darwinism. Once again, they trot out Margulis as their ally. I have to wonder if she really would find common cause with the Discovery Institute? And, in retrospect, it was an interesting question making the point that ID is more a political movement than a scientific endeavor. Good job, Tyler.
The second question was none other than the infamous Abbie challenging West on his use of the New Scientist article “Was Darwin Wrong?” It seemed like Abbie was trying to explain the real premise of the article, but by virtue of the louder volume of his microphone West managed to drown her out (at least it seemed this way from where I was). Abbie did manage, without West’s interference, to make the point that the article is available for anyone to read online and suggested people should read it for themselves. West agreed. I wonder how many people in that room will actually go out and read the article? I am guessing few and guessing further that West is counting on it.
There was another question, but I remember nothing of it because I was on-deck and was checking my notes.
My question was intended to point out West’s use of equivalences while he was decrying their use against him. The question was this: In your talk about Myth 2 you said that ID, like evolution, was not built on religious premises. Yet you spent Myth 4 linking evolution to “evangelical atheism”, Myth 5 claiming that biology teachers are indoctrinating students in atheism, and Myth 6 calling the Kansas SBOE “extremists”. Which is it? Do you believe that evolution is science or religion? He said science and that he wasn’t referring to all teachers. He also said that their personal beliefs shouldn't matter, only their science. I followed up with the question that, if their personal beliefs shouldn’t matter then why does he make so much effort to link evolution to atheism? It was at this point he asked the “are you still beating your wife” question. The question he asked me was “do you think it is fair that Barbara Forrest can question Bill Dembski motives but no one can question her motives.” It is here that I ducked into the punch. The question is set up so that there is no “acceptable” answer. I can either say the it is okay to apply different standards thus “proving” the need for Academic Freedom. Or I can answer it is fair to question her motives, thus enabling their evolution=atheism equivalence. I wanted to answer that I thought Forrest’s objections are informed by her view of science rather than her atheism. But, I started out with the preface “You need to understand where she is coming from.” At this point, West cut me off with “You just proved my point!”
In retrospect, that would have been his answer no matter how I answered. As I walked back to my seat, Abbie whispered something in my ear that I wish I had thought of. There is no way to honestly answer an “are you still beating your wife” question and come out looking good to the audience. That is why West uses those questions. He isn’t interested in a academic exchange of ideas, he is only interested in scoring rhetorical points. These types of questions are only win-win for him if the other person tries to answer honestly. The only way to respond is to turn the question back on him. The answer I should have given to his question is “Are you referring to the same Bill Dembski that said that intelligent design is the Logos Theory of St. John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory” and then walk away. But, as I have said elsewhere, my thing is LOLCats, not culture war. If I had Google and 5 minutes, I could have icanhascheezburgered West within an inch of his life. But I didn't.
So, in summary:
ME
JOHN WEST
ABBIE
ME AGAIN
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
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