From: Stephen E. Jones <sejones@iinet.net.au>
[...]
>A little reality check might help Richard (and Ivar too BTW). Dembski has
>Ph.D's in psychology, philosophy, mathematics, physics and theology (not
>an easy subject BTW). Before Richard assumes that such a person has
>made an obvious and glaring error (which was missed by his Ph.D
>supervisors and peer-reviewers too) Richard might just consider that
>maybe he (Richard) has got it wrong?
As I've said before, it's inconsistent of Stephen to make appeals to the
authority of a handful of academics, while rejecting the authority of the
overwhelming majority of academics.
Following your line of argument, would you agree that a reality check is in
order for Phillip Johnson, a lawyer, who accuses Darwinian evolution of
being pseudoscience, although it has the support of people with far more
scientific credentials than he has?
I think that you (or maybe it was Johnson) pointed out once before that even
a non-scientist like Johnson can detect logical errors made by scientists.
And I'm better qualified in statistics than Johnson is in science. Not that
one needs any knowledge of statistics to see that Dembski has not provided
the data to support his claims. By the way, most of my rebuttal of the
Design Inference (at
http://website.lineone.net/~rwein/skeptic/whatswrong.htm) is written in
terms that a layperson can understand. Perhaps you should read it and do
your own reality check
Note also that Dembski has two PhDs (in mathematics and philosophy), not
five as you imply. His degrees in psychology, statistics and theology are at
the bachelor or masters level. As far as I can determine, he has no degree
in physics.
The Design Inference was the subject of Dembski's dissertation for his PhD
in *philosophy*, the doctorate was awarded by a philosophy department, and
his two dissertation supervisors (mentioned in TDI) are philosophers, not
mathematicians or statisticians.
I've yet to see a statement by anyone with any authority to make one that
TDI underwent a peer review. There have been rumours to the contrary.
Richard Wein (Tich)
--------------------------------
"Do the calculation. Take the numbers seriously. See if the underlying
probabilities really are small enough to yield design."
-- W. A. Dembski, who has never presented any calculation to back up his
claim to have detected Intelligent Design in life.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 30 2000 - 11:21:58 EST