Dembski’s talk will apparently be some version of his own “No Free Lunch Theorem,” (NFL) which supposedly shows that progressive evolution (aka “specified complexity”) requires a designing intelligence, and cannot be produced by naturalistic evolution. In my previous post on this talk, I pointed out several refutations of Dembki’s theorem. But of course since Dembski’s not a scientist but a believer, he simply ignores the criticisms. (In a comment, reader Jon Herron posted a link to yet another refutation of Dembski’s NFL theorem by population geneticist Joe Felsenstein.)

To express my concern, on Friday I emailed both the organizers and faculty hosts of the Computations in Science Seminar. I’ll give my emails in full, but the responses (multiple emails from one person) I’ll redact, giving only the gist of what was said. The upshot was that the person who invited Dembski has the view that every opinion must be expressed to procure the “widest possible dialog.”

orpheus wrote:U of C is a hell of a good place; there's some serious brain power on that campus. Always has been. This might be fun to watch.

(Uncle Orph'sTM popcorn - "welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends…" )

Secondly, I say something like this: “I’m sure you’ve heard the expression ‘everyone is entitled to their opinion.’ Perhaps you’ve even said it yourself, maybe to head off an argument or bring one to a close. Well, as soon as you walk into this room, it’s no longer true. You are not entitled to your opinion. You are only entitled to what you can argue for.”

A bit harsh? Perhaps, but philosophy teachers owe it to our students to teach them how to construct and defend an argument – and to recognize when a belief has become indefensible.

The problem with “I’m entitled to my opinion” is that, all too often, it’s used to shelter beliefs that should have been abandoned. It becomes shorthand for “I can say or think whatever I like” – and by extension, continuing to argue is somehow disrespectful. And this attitude feeds, I suggest, into the false equivalence between experts and non-experts that is an increasingly pernicious feature of our public discourse.

willhud9 wrote:and one of the most prestigious medical schools in the world.

The talk itself and the Q&A afterward, which were at a pretty high level, went very well. There were no disruptions, and Dembski handled the questions from the audience with his accustomed ease. He concluded by saying of the idea of Darwinian evolutionary search:

"If it's not a search, tell me what it is and give me a model of it. If you're willing to go that far, I think then they don't have a science, they don't have a theory."

On this note, Dembski's host, the distinguished physicist and mathematician Leo Kadanoff, ended the event by observing:

"I think the ball is in the court of people who believe in evolution. They have to deal with these questions. ...Bill has made his case and we should all go home and think."

Well said! But Darwinists for the most part prefer not to weigh the merit of serious challenges.