Over at Friendly Atheist, Hemant asks “Should a Critic of Evolution Be Invited to Speak at a Prestigious University?” Jerry Coyne has argued strongly that they ought not be invited. As a consequentialist, I ask what the foreseeable and probable results of such a visit would likely be. Will the reputation of cdesign proponentsists enjoy a boost or suffer a setback?
I was personally on hand the last time that William Dembski visited the most prestigious university in my area, and it was an unmitigated disaster for him:
I had expected Dembski’s talk to get a warm reception, and for many people to be fooled into thinking that ID was a worthwhile scientific enterprise. Instead, the room had almost a carnival atmosphere. Dembski was heckled repeatedly for evading questions and responded to this heckling with further evasion. The audience laughed and applauded often and at length when a questioner put Dembski on the spot. As one of our professors with the Oklahoma Biological Survey later told me, “No one could have come away thinking that it was anything but a complete disaster for Dembski.”
Abbie Smith was also on hand that evening, and her detailed assessment (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) gives us insight into just how badly Dembski was flayed:
God wanted nothing to do with Dembski during the rest of the Q&A… and the students ate him alive. Student after student, grad student, some not looking a day over 18, micro students, and towards the end, an art student, took a bite. I will either get audio up, or write up a transcript while we’re working on the audio, to honor each of those students that stood up and made Dembski answer their questions . Not moving from the mic, repeating themselves, until they got an answer, or a final sign that Demski would not answer their question. Logan (Im going to embarass the hell out of you, sorry!), was adorably nervous, but you know what he got Dembski to say? After several minutes of tapdancing, and Logan not budging, rephrasing his question several times, Dembski finally stated that he did not accept that humans evolved from another species.
. . .
Well the pwn train just keeps rolling. Student after student after student– It turned into a party. The audience heckled Demsbki when he wouldnt answer questions. We were laughing before, during, and after his answers.
This all really happened. I saw it with my own two eyes, heard it with my own two ears. If this event wasn’t a setback for the intellectual reputation of the intelligent design movement (and a boost to the reputation and morale of the local pro-science community) then I really don’t know what it was. One almost got the sense that ID cannot hope to prevail in an open forum where facts and evidence really matter. Maybe, just maybe, the University of Chicago has nothing much to fear from the pseudo-intellectuals touring around in the ID clown car.
