It comes every year in Davis, and tries to infect people. No, it’s not the flu, but its a little similar.

The creationists are coming!

Yes, brought to you by the same folks who brought you William Dembski, Michael Behe, and Nancy Pearcey, the Grace Valley Christian Center is now bringing the founder of the intelligent design movement itself, Philip Johnson.

He has written many dishonest screeds against evolution, and I had planned to go ask him some difficult questions, like I did for Nancy Pearcey. The lecture is being advertised and “officially” organized by Grace Alive, a student club. Although really, it’s being organized by the Grace Valley Christian Center. More on that below.
He will be lecturing at 7:00, friday December 1, 2006. The room is the Sciences Lecture Hall 123, the biggest room on campus. They used to use Chem 194, but now this room seems to attract them. Ay, a bigger pulpit for pseudoscience.
One problem, though, December 1st is Ariela’s birthday, and that means that I will be unable to attend. However, I would like to get the event recorded, and if someone in the area is willing, I could feed you a good question to ask him on record.

Note on Grace Alive

Grace Alive is the student branch of the Grace Valley Christian Center in west Davis. It has been alleged that the leadership of this student club is selected by the GVCC and not by the students, which violates UC Davis club policies. Indeed, these anti-evolution lectures are organized by the church, and the student club is basically used to register the lecture hall and advertise on campus. They have a two-pronged approach, first they advertise all over campus and draw people in to the more “Sciencey” lecture. Then at this event, they advertise the more religiously-based lecture which happens the following morning at the church. Their anti-evolution lectures are usually advertised with question marks, I remember the Daily Show making fun of this tactic with news commentators: Should Darwinism Die? Is Darwinism Crumbling? Is this creationist lecturer a complete idiot? Have they lost their minds? See - you can get away with declarative statements just by adding a question mark. Have you stopped beating your wife? What, are you against asking questions? That’s all I’m doing! Hah!

The GVCC has also been accused of alienating its members from outsiders, including family and friends who are not members. People have come out on the Davis Wiki to describe their experiences, and the GVCC tried several times to silence these statements by deleting, or sending notes demanding that the information be taken down. They also seem to have threatened lawsuits over criticisms. Lovely
Science Bloggers: If you have any suggestions for questions, please add them in the comments.

Davisites: If you are able to go to this event, please let me know, because I’ve got a recording device that you could use, and I would be ever-grateful. But its not like it would be my only chance to talk to an IDist this winter, more on that in a few weeks.

Spread this Inoculation:

4 Comments to "Achooo!"

• On 11/28/2006 at 15:01 Marshall said:

  This might be helpful. Phillip Johnson gave several talks in Albuquerque in 2001. I attended his lecture at UNM. After his presentation, an agitated crowd responded with many questions. I would guess that there were 800-1000 people in the audience, perhaps evenly split between pro-science and pro-ID.

  Many of the questions quickly devolved into detailed discussions of various aspects of ID theory, evolution, abiogenesis, etc.

  Johnson began by recalling a centennial celebration of Darwin’s origin of Species in 1959, I believe at the University of Chicago. Johnson shared his vision that in 2059, evolution would have been completely overthrown, ID would be completely accepted, methodological naturalism would be passe, evolutionists would have been amazed that they could have been so
  badly duped for so long. Indeed, science would have entered a golden age.

  Since I don’t think that ID could contribute anything of value to
  science, I couldn’t easily imagine this “golden age.”

  So I asked the following question: In the golden age of 2059, what would the “new” science look like? What would university students be studying? Would there be a taxonomy of designed things versus natural things? Would we have created lists of “designed” items like the HIV AIDS virus, cancer, malaria, syphilis? Would research have ceased in these areas
  because naturalistic methods would either fail, or be counter to the designer’s intent?

  Surprisingly, Johnson answered with an ad hominem attack. He said my question was “a cheap shot.” Of course, he didn’t answer the question, and I was surprised that he seemed to be nonplussed. I pushed again, requesting the title of a single thesis project that an ID scientist would pursue. Again no answer - just visible anger.

  Marshall

• On 11/30/2006 at 21:52 BONNIE 'E' KINNS said:

  I object to using the term “dishonest” when referring to a speaker’s point of view. If you want to be read in a non-biased manner, then give others the same consideration. You may dis-agree, but true discourse does not need to call others names to get a point across.

• On 11/30/2006 at 22:50 Karl J. Mogel said:

  From Wikipedia:

  In fact-checking Johnson’s books Darwin on Trial and Defeating Darwinism, one reviewer has argued that almost every scientific source Johnson cited had been misused or distorted, from simple misinterpretations and innuendos to outright fabrications. The reviewer, Brian Spitzer, a professor of Biology, described Darwin on Trial as the most deceptive book he had ever read.

  Johnson does more than have a point a view that I disagree with, he blatantly misrepresents basic scientific facts. I reserve the charge of dishonesty for extreme cases, and this is one of them.

  Wesley Elseberry of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) catalogued an interesting example of Johnson saying exactly the opposite of what he’s been doing, in the case of trying to get intelligent design in science curricula.
  http://austringer.net/wp/?p=291

  I’ll end my explanation with some quotes of Johnson’s, also taken from wikipedia.

  The objective [of the Wedge Strategy] is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic, thus shifting the debate from creationism vs. evolution to the existence of God vs. the non-existence of God. From there people are introduced to ‘the truth’ of the Bible and then ‘the question of sin’ and finally ‘introduced to Jesus.’

  Evolution is not inherently atheistic, yet, he has explicitly said that he plans to convince everyone that it is. He has also stated that Intelligent Design is not religious, but then:

  Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools.”

  He also believes that the earth is only thousands of years old. It is one thing to have an opinion that many people disagree with, its another thing to fabricate evidence that does not exist, to explicitly say that as a political strategy you wish to lead people to believe something that is obviously not true(evolution=atheism), and to say you are not doing something when you are(trying to get ID pseudoscience into schools).

  Maybe I should have explained how he has been dishonest in my post, but this should suffice as a taste of it.

• On 12/13/2006 at 19:52 Karl J. Mogel said:

  Hi Marhsall - your comment was mistakenly tagged as spam. Thanks for the tips - yeah that’s an easy question to ask him - name just one experiment, one project, just one thing that an ID scientist would study or do.

  I can name a million and a half things that an evolutionary biologist could study - because there IS something to study there.

  I might interview Johnson since I didn’t manage to attend his talk. I’ve got an audio copy that I’m reviewing.