A couple wins against ID

A friend, who has a background in the ACLU, frequently said that the proper response to free speech one doesn't like is more free speech. Here is an example of that in action. William Dembski, author of many books on ID, came to University of Oklahoma to do a presentation on Intelligent Design. Daniel Disckson-LaPrade, a technical writing instructor learned about the visit and had only a short time to alert the zoology and Botany/Microbiology departments and request funding and signatures for an ad in the school newspaper (he exceeded his goals) and got some editorials written for the paper. Those professors and their students were also well prepared when they attended the actual presentation. Dembski seemed to stumble through his presentation and was quite effectively demolished during two hours of Q&A. They also got editorials into the school paper afterwards that discussed Dembski's misrepresentation of data. If all ID presentations met with that amount of preparation, the effort would evaporate.

Alas, a commeter from a much more conservative school shows why ID still gets exposure. The professors don't seem interested in challenging the ID speakers, the students aren't majors in microbiology or are otherwise ill-equipped to take on people like Dembski, and the school newspaper is sympathetic to ID so doesn't run the editorials.

I was so busy checking up on what the United Methodist Church General Conference did to gays I didn't hear about other good things they did. They passed a resolution opposing adding creationism and ID to science curriculums of public schools. Another resolution supported describing scientific truth as being of a different kind than religious truth. Dan Dick, of the General Board of Discipleship for the church said, "The church has the responsibility to teach theology and raise these questions. Secular culture has the responsibility to teach science, and we don’t believe creationism and intelligent design qualify as science.”