In a recent post I made a comment about what would things be like if
IDiocy had ever been any type of legitimate science.

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/B-EnX8uBZ7M/m/I6ZGAZF4EQAJ

The creationist intelligent design scam seems to be pretty much dead
everywhere including the Discovery Institute. It has been over 5 years
since any creationist rubes have wanted to teach the junk in the public schools. No ID perps seem to want to deal with what ID was supposed to
be, and none of them are doing much of anything to support the type of
science that they claimed that they wanted ID to produce.

Pretty much since the ID scam unit at the Discovery Institute was
created they have claimed to have some ID science to teach in the public schools, and the ID perps continue to update their teach ID scam
propaganda, but there haven't been any IDiotic creationists stupid and dishonest enough to try to teach the junk for the last 5 years. https://www.discovery.org/f/1453/

Philip Johnson is supposed to have been instrumental in getting the
first ID perps together and coming up with the Wedge strategy that
included selling something that they were calling intelligent design,
instead of the plain old creationism that it was, taught in the public
schools. Intelligent design was supposed to be a part of the "Wedge"
that was supposed to split open the existing secular understanding of
nature and create an initial opening for their religious theocracy to
take the place of what they perceived as an inferior secular political
system.

Original mission statement of the ID scam unit of the Discovery Institute: http://web.archive.org/web/19980114111554/http://discovery.org/crsc/aboutcrsc.html

Getting the ID scam taught in the public schools was just the first
thing that they could think of doing that would further their political
goals.

Phillip Johnson had been fooled by the other ID perps into believing
that they already had the ID science to teach, but after around 7 years
of the existence of the ID scam unit, when they finally had their first opportunity to teach ID in the public schools in 2002, the ID perps
started running the bait and switch instead of trying to teach ID.

How the teach ID scam was presented before Ohio in 2002: http://arn.org/docs/dewolf/guidebook.htm

QUOTE:
9. Conclusion
Local school boards and state education officials are frequently
pressured to avoid teaching the controversy regarding biological
origins. Indeed, many groups, such as the National Academy of Sciences,
go so far as to deny the existence of any genuine scientific controversy
about the issue. 160 Nevertheless, teachers should be reassured that
they have the right to expose their students to the problems as well as
the appeal of Darwinian theory. Moreover, as the previous discussion demonstrates, school boards have the authority to permit, and even
encourage, teaching about design theory as an alternative to Darwinian evolution-and this includes the use of textbooks such as Of Pandas and
People that present evidence for the theory of intelligent design.

The controlling legal authority, the Supreme Court's decision in Edwards
v. Aguillard, explicitly permits the inclusion of alternatives to
Darwinian evolution so long as those alternatives are based on
scientific evidence and not motivated by strictly religious concerns.
Since design theory is based on scientific evidence rather than
religious assumptions, it clearly meets this test. Including discussions
of design in the science curriculum thus serves an important goal of
making education inclusive, rather than exclusionary. In addition, it
provides students with an important demonstration of the best way for
them as future scientists and citizens to resolve scientific
controversies-by a careful and fair-minded examination of the evidence.
END QUOTE:

Wells reported that they had decided not to give the Ohio creationist
rubes any ID science to teach before they put up their pro ID dog and
pony show for the Ohio creationist rubes, and that they would instead
run a bait and switch scam on the hapless rubes: https://web.archive.org/web/20110814145400/http:/www.creationists.org/archived-obsolete-pages/2002-03-11-OSBE-wells.html

QUOTE:
Steve Meyer and I (in consultation with others) had decided ahead of
time that we would not push for including intelligent design (ID) in the
state science standards, but would propose instead that the standards
include language protecting teachers who choose to teach the controversy.
END QUOTE:

Phillip Johnson was likely not among the ID perps that made that
decision because he put up Santorum's editorial supporting teaching
intelligent design in Ohio on his ARN blog just before the bait and
switch went down. Johnson retired from that blog one month after the
bait and switch started going down. He hadn't given up on teaching ID,
and even though the bait and switch scam went down on every single group
of creationist rubes that wanted to teach the junk, after Ohio, he still supported the Wedge strategy of teaching ID in the public schools until Kitzmiller in 2005. Phillip Johnson was interviewed and kept supporting
the effort to teach the ID scam junk, but after he sat in court every
day and watched the ID scam exposed for what it was, he quit supporting teaching the junk and admitted that the ID science had never existed.
He finally realized why the bait and switch needed to go down. There
never was any ID science worth teaching.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070609131601/http:/sciencereview.berkeley.edu/articles.php?issue=10&article=evolution

QUOTE:
I also don’t think that there is really a theory of intelligent design
at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the
Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it might contain, a fully
worked out scheme. There is no intelligent design theory that’s
comparable. Working out a positive theory is the job of the scientific
people that we have affiliated with the movement. Some of them are
quite convinced that it’s doable, but that’s for them to prove…No
product is ready for competition in the educational world.
END QUOTE:

QUOTE:
For his part, Johnson agrees: “I think the fat lady has sung for any
efforts to change the approach in the public schools…the courts are
just not going to allow it. They never have. The efforts to change
things in the public schools generate more powerful opposition than
accomplish anything…I don’t think that means the end of the issue at all.” “In some respects,” he later goes on, “I’m almost relieved, and glad. I think the issue is properly settled. It’s clear to me now that
the public schools are not going to change their line in my lifetime.
That isn’t to me where the action really is and ought to be.”
END QUOTE:

So the ID perp who is supposed to have come up with the Wedge strategy
and facilitated the creation of the ID scam unit of the Discovery
Institute quit supporting the teach ID scam and admitted that the ID
science had never existed back in 2006.

It is apparent that he was correct by observing what ID has become, and
that nothing ever came out of any of the claims to have any ID science.
The thread linked to at the start of this post has links where Luskin
describes what ID was supposed to be and how it should be supported, but
that notion of ID isn't what the Discovery Institute seems to be supporting.

What if specified complexity (SC), complex specified information (CSI),
or irreducible complexity (IC) had been shown to actually exist in
nature? SC and CSI claimed that structures and objects found in nature
could be attributed to being specified in some way by a designer.
Nothing more than the claims ever existed, and Dembski retired from the
ID scam as an abject failure, and though he has returned to participate
in the ID creationist scam you do not see him doing much with his old
notions like CSI. It should be apparent, that if the ID perps had been successful with SC and CSI that we would likely be using them for real
CSI (crime scene investigation) or on archeological issues like the
recent finds of early pebble and flake tools found from over 2 million
years ago. SC and CSI never amounted to anything.

Behe's concept of IC has evolved over time. It is essentially the claim
that some subset of irreducibly complex structures or proteins have
something about them so that they could not have evolved by known
natural mechanisms. At the turn of the century Behe had to admit to his critics that some irreducibly complex systems could evolve, but his IC
systems had something that made them unable to have been evolved by
natural mechanisms. He at first tried to emphasize "well matched" but
couldn't come up with any working definition that could be quantified in
order to determine if anything was well matched enough to qualify, and
he settled on claiming that the order and number of mutations needed to
evolve the structure would tell him if something was his type of IC, but
he hasn't ever observed any such order and number of mutations. He has
noted that such work is possible, and even claimed that others have
skimmed the "edge of evolution" by identifying things like 2 neutral
mutations needing to occur to create a new function. Behe understands
that 2 are possible, but he claims that 3 neutral mutations leading to a
new function would be so highly unlikely to have occurred that they
would be on the other side of some imaginary existing edge of evolution.
His issue is that we haven't found any systems that needed 3 neutral mutations, and Behe hasn't looked for them in the systems that he claims
are his type of IC.

There is no evidence that Behe's type of IC exists in nature, but what
if Behe had been able to demonstrate that his IC systems exist. His 3
neutral mutations would have had to occur in some ancestral gene
sequence lacking those mutations. Organisms without the 3 neutral
mutations would have been happily evolving in all sorts of directions,
but they would have had to exist in order for those 3 neutral mutations
to be able to occur. All three of Behe's IC systems evolved over half a billion years ago. The flagellum is thought to have evolved over a
billion years ago and the blood clotting and adaptive immune system are
thought to have evolved with the vertebrate lineage. Some early
vertebrates might have existed during the Cambrian explosion. If Behe
had verified that any of his IC systems were his type of IC, most IDiot
type creationists would not believe him because most IDiots are still
YEC, and they don't want to believe anything could have happened over
half a billion years ago.

The ID perps came up with their Top Six evidences for IDiocy over 5
years ago, and they are further examples of why no ID science was ever accomplished. The vast majority of IDiotic creationists that support
the ID scam do not want to believe in the designer that fills those god-of-the-gaps bits of denial. The ID perps never wanted to fill those
gaps, so no ID science was ever attempted. None of them wanted to
improve our understanding of nature by filling those gaps even if they
could have been filled by some intelligent designer, that designer
wasn't biblical enough for most of them.

https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/a2K79skPGXI/m/uDwx0i-_BAAJ

When is it going to be time to present some viable ID science that
creationists want to be successful? Will the time ever come when IDiot
type creationists want to accomplish any science? Is there any science
that IDiots want to do to learn more about nature? Why not search for
Behe's 3 neutral mutations? Even if they are not found we would still
have a better idea of how those systems evolved. Science is more than
lying to creationist rubes and making claims that the perpetrators do
not want to be substantiated. If IDiotic type creationists want to do
more than what has been done, they have to start doing it. More
importantly they have to identify something about nature that they want
to understand. Denial has no scientific future, and isn't much of any
way to defend your religious beliefs.

Ron Okimoto

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