Re: How is the Intelligent Design Movement Doing?

On Sat, 29 Mar 2025 17:21:21 -0500, RonO <rokimoto557@gmail.com>
wrote:

https://seanmcdowell.org/blog/how-is-the-intelligent-design-movement-doing-interview-with-william-dembski
>
I found this Dembski interview while looking for any evidence that the
ID bait and switch scam had any type of future.  The interview was from
2016 a couple of years before Dembski had retired from the ID scam as an
abject failure.  None of Dembski's junk made it into the Top Six, so
that tells you how highly Dembski's "ID science" was regarded by the
other ID perps in 2017.
>
As crazy as it may seem along with the usual lies about ID still being
viable for anything but bait, Dembski is admitting that the ID perps
wanted more religious support from more Christian denominations.  This
indicates what a lie the ID scam science claims have always been.  Real
science does not need support from organized religion.
>
QUOTE:
(2) In my remarks about the role of the church in advancing ID, I was
trying to be a bit provocative to get people thinking. To be sure,
well-wishers of ID abound in Christian circles. But how many are willing
to put their necks on the chopping block and make a real difference in
the scientific and cultural debate? As 19th century activist Annie
Besant put it:
>
Plenty of people wish well to any good cause, but very few care to exert
themselves to help it, and still fewer will risk anything in its
support. “Some one ought to do it, but why should I?” is the ever
re-echoed phrase of weak-kneed amiability. “Some one ought to do it, so
why not I?” is the cry of some earnest servant of man, eagerly forward
springing to face some perilous duty.
>
So, how much good has the Christian community really done in advancing
ID? Sure, there have been pockets of genuine support in the Christian
community. But why is the first and only ID think-tank/research center
at a Christian college or university Baylor's Michael Polanyi Center
(which I founded in 1999, and which was dismantled the following year
--- thanks in this case not to young-earth creationists but to theistic
evolutionists)? And why is the $100M spent on a Noah's Ark theme park
several times more than has been spent on all ID efforts over the last
20 years? Let's get some sense of proportion.
END QUOTE:
>
The ID perps have disenfranchised most of the YEC denominations because
they have run the bait and switch on the creationist rubes too many
times, and nearly all of them have dropped the issue instead of bending
over for the switch scam.  The creationists rubes do not want to teach
the obfuscation and denial if they can't tell the students the religious
reason for lying to them.  West Virginia in 2024 indicates that there
are still YEC creationist rubes that will take the bait, but it is
obviously for dishonest religious reasons.
>
You should read this interview in context.  Dembski got first hand
experience with what type of theocracy the ID perps were trying to
recreate by being forced to recant and apologize to his students at the
religious college he was teaching at, in order to keep his job.  He had
just told them the truth, that the earth and universe were likely much
older than depicted in the Bible and that the Noachian flood was likely
local instead of global.  If he had not recanted and apologized he would
have been fired.  As it was his contract was not renewed and Dembski
ended up working full time for the ID scam unit of the Discovery
Institute putting out ID as bait.  Dembski failed to produce any
convincing ID science scam material that could be used as useful bait,
and Dembski "retired" from the ID scam and the Discovery Institute in
2014 (I think it was 2014).  He claimed that he was moving on from the
ID scam, and wanted to go into education.  He was a failure at trying to
turn a new leaf and got hired back at the ID scam unit a couple of years
after this interview (after the ID perps had killed ID on TO by putting
out the Top Six best evidences for ID at the end of 2017).
>
Ron Okimoto

My impression is the movement has shifted its strategy, from pushing
to teach ID in public schools, to using public taxes to pay for
private schools.  Along with SCOTUS providing religious exemptions for
otherwise illegal activity, eliminating the Department of Education,
as Trump advocates, would practically guarantee this to happen.

People like Stephen Meyer, a longtime ID advocate, has teamed up with
Prager University to spread the word:

<https://intelligentdesign.org/prageru/>
 

--
To know less than we don't know is the nature of most knowledge