From the discovery institute. Without explaining much now, seems pretty confused.
At the same time, @CaseyLuskin, thanks for getting the word out! 
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I think what might be most notable about this is Caseyās misunderstanding of Ann Gaugerās scientific position in this, which is in fact indistinguishable from Bill Craig.
There is a lot of catching up to doā¦
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I do note that he doesnāt seem to distinguish between fiat creation and a population bottleneck.
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Yup but itās not only that.
I donāt think he got any oneās position correctly. Itās a theological article at the DI by a lawyer-scientistā¦why would anyone care? I thought DI wasnāt theology, but just scienceā¦
The response from a OEC theologian:
The article is incoherent. Plus itās easy to be critical when one never presents a possible modelā-something Discovery has been promising for years but never follows through.
This is the sort of article prone to cause some damage in eyes of their own base. Iām pretty surprised they published it.
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He may be a lawyer, techinically, but heās no scientist, nor to my knowledge has he ever been, even when getting his geology degree.
Does it differ significantly from the usual article? I donāt think so.
Iām pretty sure he has his degree.
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Of course he has his degree, but a degree doesnāt make a scientist.
I looked him up once and discovered he is licensed as a lawyer in California. But I donāt think he lives in California and I can find no evidence that heās actually ever practiced law. So whether heās even a ālawyerā depends upon oneās definition. If itās just a matter of licensing, sure. But if itās a matter of knowing how to do anything, probably heās just as much a ālawyerā as he is a āscientist.ā
LOL, just like me.
Are there a lot of people who have law degrees but never practice law? It seems to me there a number in business and politics who seem to have treated the degree as something to help further those careers. Mitt Romney, as a prominent example. In Luskinās case, I see an easy parallel between his science and law degrees, which seem to have mainly been undertaken for the purpose of lending a veneer of credibility to his yammering on both subjects.
I can think of only one person from my law school graduating class of about 200 who didnāt practice law at all, except in the very limited sense of providing legal advice to his family to manage their legal representation in connection with investments. From a good law school Iād guess itās pretty rare; the usual cause is unemployability. I would count someone as āpracticing lawā who engages in a business activity which involves considerable legal dealings; Romney might fall in that category. Some of my classmates went straight into āin-house counselā work and that sort of thing, but thatās straight-up provision of legal advice to people who need it on an ongoing basis, and I would certainly regard that as āpracticing law.ā
I was a litigator, and thereās very little mistake about whether youāre practicing law when youāre standing up in front of judges making arguments and presenting evidence. But I do recall talking to one very successful mergers and acquisitions lawyer who was a classmate of mine, and discovering that he hadnāt been in a courtroom since admission to the bar. Some practice is transactional, some practice is advisory, and some is beating people up for money.
I find that making some distinction between fields here is helpful just in dealing with questions about expertise. So, for example, in an early thread (well, early in relation to my involvement) here it was suggested, when I pointed out the DIās dishonest statements about the use in the Kitzmiller decision of the proposed findings of fact, that perhaps there ought to be a kind of public debate here between me and Luskin about that. But as I thought about that, I realized: why the hell would anyone ask ANYTHING about how litigation is ordinarily done of Casey Luskin? There is no reason to believe he knows anything about it at all apart from what one learns in law school, and that, frankly, isnāt much.
But, you know, meanwhile itās possible for a person to have a distinguished practice and to know his limits. A friend asked for business merger and acquisition advice the other day and the first words out of my mouth ā though I did have some helpful points to offer ā were that Iām not particularly sophisticated on those topics. And my mergers-and-acquisitions classmate, whom I would trust above anyone else in his field if I had to trust someone in such matters, would not presume to know what a judge does with proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law, despite his nearly 40 years of experience. People with expertise know their limits. People without it donāt, which is why youāve got Casey Luskin suddenly doing part-time work as the DIās resident paleoanthropologist.
What law school can teach you is how to argue a bad case well, and thatās an important skillset for a DI spokesperson. But not all law schools teach this equally well, as one can easily see.
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A little sympathy for Casey: his case allows only for the third legal option, pounding the table.
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