William Dembski, one of the neo-theocrats at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture (a/k/a the Discoveroids), who holds their title of senior fellow (i.e., full-blown creationist), is giving his students credit if they go around trolling on the internet.
Almost everyone else who blogs about The Controversy has mentioned this, for example Little Green Footballs, so we’ll discuss the subject only briefly.
This is the website for Dembski’s students at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. For at least one course Dembski tells the budding creationists, with bold added by us:
You have three things to do: (1) take the final exam (worth 40% of your grade); (2) write a 3,000-word essay on the theological significance of intelligent design (worth 40% of your grade); (3) provide at least 10 posts defending ID that you’ve made on “hostile” websites, the posts totalling 2,000 words, along with the URLs (i.e., web links) to each post (worth 20% of your grade).
Hey, get this:
EXTRA CREDIT: For those who think they need mercy on missed or poorly answered quizzes, please get Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and write a 750 to 1000 word reflection on lessons to be drawn from that book for Christian apologetics.
It’s charming to see how the allegedly conservative Discoveroids so eagerly embrace leftist gurus. Dembski seems to be running some weird kind of left-wing creationist madrasah.
Everyone else is criticizing Dembski, but that’s not your Curmudgeon’s style. Instead, we’ll offer a helpful suggestion. Hey, Dembski:
In the interest of — wink, wink — academic freedom, we suggest that as an alternative to trolling, your creationist students should be given equivalent credit for visiting a museum (a real one) and voiding their colons on the floor in front of the evolution exhibit. There are several reasons why a creationist might prefer this to trolling: 1) it’s just as persuasive; 2) it feels just as good; 3) it’s probably healthier; and 4) it’ll make a longer-lasting statement — unlike websites, museum floors don’t have a “delete” button.
Anyway, we advise Dembski’s students not to waste their precious time at the Curmudgeon’s place. Creationists’ comments are swiftly deleted here.
Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
Curmudgeon wrote: “It’s charming to see how the allegedly conservative Discoveroids so eagerly embrace leftist gurus.”
Statements like that, which hit the Discoveroids where it hurts, are one reason why I spend more time here and less time on Talk.Origins. The other is that the latter has been infested with trolls lately. While I suspect that some of the trolls are “Darwinists” just having fun, I would not put it past Demsbki to be behind some of them.
Frank J, Talk.Origins has a lot of great material, but I’ve never chatted there. I wasn’t aware that their site had any chatting. As for the true nature of the Discoveroids, they’re promoting theocracy, so by definition they’re not limited-government conservatives. It’s fair to call them leftists.
From Little Green Footballs:
“Trace the *connections* between Darwinian evolution, eugenics, abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia. Why are materialists so ready to embrace these as a package deal? What view of humanity and reality is required to resist them?
[…]”
WTF?!!??
(Continues) “You are the Templeton Foundation’s new program director and are charged with overseeing its programs and directing its funds. Sketch out a 20-year plan for *defeating scientific materialism* and the evolutionary worldview it has fostered if you had $50,000,000 per year in current value to do so. What sorts of programs would you institute? How would you spend the money?”
PUKE!
Seriously, what is wrong with these people???
LRA asks: “Seriously, what is wrong with these people???”
I donno. The important thing is to be aware of the disorder, and to keep such people from positions of power.
It is uber-insulting that these people think that a scientist like me is capable of eugenics or infanticide! I was a special education teacher, for crying out loud! I loved the children I taught– who were in a developmental class (a class for people with IQ 40 or less, or with multiple disabilities). I went into science to HELP people!
oh! If I ever get my hands (more like my words) on that Dembski! He is a spreader of hate and lies!
LRA says: “oh! If I ever get my hands (more like my words) on that Dembski! He is a spreader of hate and lies!”
In other words, he’s a creationist.
Curmudgeon wrote: “It’s charming to see how the allegedly conservative Discoveroids so eagerly embrace leftist gurus.”
Creationists will embrace anything that furthers their cause. Since few people are principled, most will latch onto whatever nonsense supports their particular perspective. Birthers are the most entertaining example, after creationists, of credulity and wishful thinking replacing facts with fantasies.
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Your blog, your rules. BUt I dislike censorship anywhere.
That’s how it is. Regards to Dembski.
I really, really cant imagine writing internet trolling, even a Creationist site, into a course syllabus. Like, maybe analyzing/evaluating a pseudoscience website for some reason, but trolling? Srsly?
oh! If I ever get my hands (more like my words) on that Dembski!
I have. He just hemms and haaaws and uuuums and aaaaahs. Its kind of a let-down, until he says something worse than what you were confronting him about and you collapse in lols.
ERV says: “I have.”
You’ve had your hands on Dembski? You get around, Abbie.
Curmy,
If Dembski is encouraging his students to read reasoned sites such as yours, he must either have faith in the completeness of his brainwashing, or have total disrespect for his students’ intelligence, or both.
As you can tell from my comments, I’ve become a big fan since finding your blog about a year ago — it was when you were reporting on whether Sarah Palin was a creationist or not. However, I think a more fitting name would be “The Reasoned Voice”. (But then, “Reasy” just doesn’t sound as good as “Curmy”.)
As I said on Klinghoffer’s blog, when I taught college courses I never told my students they had to post my opinions on other people’s websites to pass the class.
Add that to Dembski’s fart videos of Judge Jones, before whom he was too cowardly to testify, but brave enough to make fart jokes at his expense after it was over, and you can draw all the conclusions you need to about his intellectual stature.
Curmudgeon wrote: “Talk.Origins has a lot of great material, but I’ve never chatted there. I wasn’t aware that their site had any chatting.”
I’m referring to the TO newsgroup, not the TO archive, if that’s what you mean. A few professional anti-evolutionists posted briefly in the ’90s, but as you might expect, they all completely avoid it nowadays, and stick to the safety of their own blogs and websites.
Retired,
Dembski only told his students to comment at science web sites. His curriculum doesn’t say the students have to read any of the science posted there, and its unlikely that any of them will.
Does Dembski identify “hostile” websites? It seems to me there are a few creationist sites that are anti-ID, do those count? Is a “hostile” website any one that supports evolution whether or not it overtly attacks ID? How about ID positive site like Klinghoffer’s where it seems almost all the comments are “hostile”?
Roger wrote: “It seems to me there are a few creationist sites that are anti-ID, do those count?”
Given ID’s “big tent” strategy, no. If anything the DI considers them “useful idiots.”
One of these day’s I’ll find the reference, but I read a ~2004 article by Dembski in which he makes it clear that he’s an old-earther, but expresses more political sympathy to YECs than to those OECs who refute YEC (e.g Hugh Ross).
eric wrote,
“Dembski only told his students to comment at science web sites. His curriculum doesn’t say the students have to read any of the science posted there, and its unlikely that any of them will.”
Yeah, you’re probably right. I was just going on the assumption that they might want to read the article before posting to it, so it would at least seem like they knew what they were talking about.