Comments on Greg Cootsona and ID

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21

Oh and yes Edward, Seth Cooper’s veracity has been questioned:

http://scholarship.law.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2038&context=mlr

Cooper strenuously asserts that he consistently attempted to dissuade Buckingham and his board colleagues from including ID in the biology curriculum. 13' On this point, Buckingham's recol- lection of his conversations with Cooper differs. After the Kitz- miller decision, Buckingham told a reporter that Cooper had ini- tially been "enthusiastic and supportive" of efforts to include ID in the curriculum. " 'He'd call me to see if we were going to go for- ward,' Buckingham said." But then, with a lawsuit seemingly in- evitable if the Dover board adopted its ID policy, Cooper changed his tune.
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22

Buckingham’s own reliability has been shredded though, so what he says about Cooper isn’t worth much.

23

You’ve got to be joking. Buckingham, a man found to have lied in court by the Dover Judge, says something about Cooper, and you believe him? I read every page of the Dover trial. I wouldn’t trust Buckingham as far as I could throw him. Nor would you. Yet when it suits your turn, you believe him, so that you can discount Cooper. Double standards, anyone?

Anyhow, you can find lots of statements from before the trial if you look, using Discovery and Google search engines. But what’s the difference? Even if the sheer mass of documents forced you to admit, “OK, that was their stated policy” then, it wouldn’t alter your attitude a bit; you’d just do what Faizal Ali does, and say they were lying about their real intentions. When you hold a paranoid belief, you can always confirm it no matter what the evidence. I’m interested in talking to rational people who alter their views on evidence, not people seeking to confirm a fixed delusion.

24

I’m suffering from heart palpitations. I actually agree with Roy on a point!

25

Of course they weren’t. The Center FOR THE RENEWAL of Science and Culture renamed later. Are we supposed to believe everyone who signed on somehow mysteriously all changed their minds about what they were trying to achieve after 2006?

Let’s not pretend that.

This all began as and still is a conservative Christian religious movement that wants to convert the whole culture to conservative Christianity. It’s in the Wedge document that this is the whole goal of the ID movement. It’s never stopped being the goal of the movement. Everybody associated with the ID movement behaves as if that is their ultimate goal, they just lie about it in public to try to get around the law. Yes, lie, they lie.

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26

Oh dear, the great and magnificent Edward Robinson has a low opinion of me. Whatever shall I do?
:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

Given Eddie that you seem to (i) despise anybody who isn’t a conservative Christian & (ii) be almost incapable of providing any substantiation (and what little substantiation you do provide, like the latest example, is often worthless), I am strangely unmoved by your attack – it felt a bit like getting gummed by a hyperactive, if toothless, chihuahua.

Therefore, unlike you, I choose not to sully this forum (and violate its rules) with my opinion of you, your intellectual capabilities and your manners.

27

I agree. But (i) by that point there was little point in him lying, (ii) the DI’s reputation for honesty isn’t any better (and they had more to lose).

Addendum: I would also point out that I merely stated that “Seth Cooper’s veracity has been questioned” – not that he’d been proved to be a liar.

28

I would also point out that this is not the only questionable claim that Cooper made that is mentioned in this paper:

One or more of the newspaper accounts of the Dover board meetings reached Seth Cooper via the Internet, and he called Buckingham from the DI's office. 127 Cooper later explained that he made this initial call because "I hoped to steer the Dover Board away from trying to include intelligent design in the classroom or from trying to insert creationism into its cirriculum [sic]."128 The significance of Cooper's statement is that he discussed ID with Buckingham as an alternative to creationism: this was most likely the first time Buckingham had ever heard the term "intelligent design." From this point on, in fact, Buckingham dropped refer- ences to "creationism" at Dover school board and curriculum com- mittee meetings and used the term "intelligent design" in its place. 129 Ironically, there might well have been no Kitzmiller case had Cooper not discussed ID with Buckingham. But, as Cooper later said, "[t]he ball was already rolling. Our greatest hope would have been that the Dover Board would have dropped the issue altogether. But on a more realistic level, we hoped they would at least choose a more modest and defensible approach. Unfortunately, they didn't."' 3
29

The credentialism is Eddie’s tell that he’s run out of arguments. He always starts the qualifications bs then. What does he have of relevance himself? Nothing.

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30

Yes. Start with this NBC News item:

Note the date of the news story, from about 10 months before the trial started. Note that it states the then-DI policy in paraphrase, followed by a quote from John West:

Even the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which supports scientists studying intelligent-design theory, opposes mandating it in schools because it is a relatively new concept, said John West, associate director of the institute’s Center for Science and Culture.

“We’re completely against anyone who says you should downgrade or limit the teaching of evolution,” West said.

Now, go to Discovery itself, which cites the NBC News story coverage, thus confirming its policy:

And note the date again.

I am sure I could find other statements from before the trial was finished, because I followed the trial daily, and remember reading such statements on Discovery during that period. But this one by itself answers your question.

31

I haven’t run out of arguments; Puck and the people agreeing with him have run out of evidence. In fact, the DI said, before the Dover trial even started, that it did not want ID mandated in the schools. I’ve demonstrated this with documents, including one from an outside news source. And Puck has blown his credibility as a well-researched lawyer and student of the documents, by failing to note that the “DI” publication he rests his charge on isn’t even a DI publication. The performance here of the atheists on this subject is nothing short of pathetic. But that’s nothing new.

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32

Downgrading / limiting the teaching of evolution and introducing Intelligent Design as an alternative are two different things. The DI pushed the inclusion of “design” as part of their “teach the controversy” strategy for years.

33

Yes, but they also state:

Even the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which supports scientists studying intelligent-design theory, opposes mandating it in schools because it is a relatively new concept, said John West, associate director of the institute’s Center for Science and Culture.

I am prepared to concede to @Eddie on this point. I try my best to follow the evidence.

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34

Thank you. What surprises me is that anyone who closely followed the trial (including the almost year-long lead-up to it), as Puck Mendelssohn says he did, could not know what you have conceded. And we’ll see if he will man up to admitting error regarding the publisher of the pamphlet.

35

Indeed, that’s true. Authored by DI fellows. So I should have said that DI fellows published the book, not that the DI itself as an institution published the book. How does this help you?

The book quite clearly argues that school boards do have the discretion to include, but not to exclude, ID Creationism from curricula. It identifies merely “permitting” teachers to teach ID Creationism as the “safest course.” The entire point of the book is to encourage the teaching of creationism in the schools.

But, seriously, Eddie: the DI got fully on board with the Kitzmiller litigation, the object of which, from the defense standpoint, was to defend the power of a school district to mandate the teaching of ID Creationism. There was no other possible point to the litigation. Had the DI’s position been what the DI now says it was, the DI might have taken a position in the case on the side of the parents, but no. It provided the defense not with one, but with at least four expert witnesses: Behe and Minnich, who ultimately did testify, and Meyer and Dembski, who did not. It’s unclear to me whether Steve Fuller was then associated with the DI. I don’t have Meyer’s affidavit in front of me which details the events causing him and Dembski to withdraw; I seem to recall, but am not sure, that there was another DI expert who also withdrew.

Four (at least) expert witnesses. I have never in my entire career seen such a thing – four experts all put forth by one organization to support a litigation position. And that litigation position, to be clear, is that a school board may mandate the teaching of ID Creationism. So let’s have done with this ridiculous contention that the DI never advocated any such thing. It is a preposterous distortion of history.

By the way, that Seth Cooper statement is hilarious. He says he tried to dissuade the Board from taking the position it took. How did he do that? Among other things, by sending them an ID Creationist video production. He tries to smooth this inconvenient fact over by pointing out that the DI’s video didn’t actually contain any positive evidence for ID Creationism but instead contained negative arguments against evolution; but, of course, as we all know, the DI has never produced any positive evidence for ID Creationism at all. DI publications routinely go to the “evolution-negation” strategy of assuming that any criticism of evolutionary theory implicitly supports ID Creationism.

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36

It doesn’t surprise me in the least. The DI does not have exactly a reputation for forthrightness. Given their considerable murky behavior surrounding their interactions with the Dover board, it is hardly surprising if people are suspicious.

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38

Well, now, that’s something I haven’t previously seen. It’s funny that the DI would say that and then take such strong actions exactly contrary to their stated views. But the best expression of the DI’s actual views is its behavior, not its statements.

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39

HAH! Another brilliant Eddie the Scholar moment. :laughing: Or maybe Eddie just doesn’t know what a publishing imprint is.

40

I think it seems likely that the DI thought Dover was a disaster and was promoting Kansas as the better way. In Kansas, they avoided a lawsuit and they stayed out of court. That seemed to be their actual preferred strategy at the time.

It seems that Dover was being driven by some YECs on a school board and a law firm, not the DI, and the DI was recommending against it. Of course it could be argued that the rhetoric of the DI gave the school board an outsized sense of confidence that ID was on solid ground, precipitating the whole fiasco, but that’s different then DI architecting this, when it does seem they opposed the strategy as premature.

So I think more head way can be made be criticizing what happened in Kansas, and there is quite a bit to criticize there.