Dang. I always thought he was a great writer. I loved his Gentle Giants series and his Code of the Lifemaker is among my all time favorites.
Unfortunately, it now appears he is a crank. In the case of evolution at least, I think the problem isn't with scientists defending orthodoxy, so much as creationists passing around incorrect information about evolution as if THAT were established fact.
I'm not aware of any facts that disprove evolution. But I know of dozens of false statements that are promoted as facts which claim to disprove it.
Einstein was unorthodox, but while there are cranks who believe he was a fraud, his harshest intellectual critics acknowledged he was brilliant. Two luminaries of QM were discussing the subject of Einstein's criticisms and one asked the other (I believe it was Paul Dirac asking Erwin Schroedinger) whether it was possible that Einstein just didn't understand the theory. Schroedinger's response was immediate and was something along the lines of "There aren't two dozen people on the planet who understand this theory and I'm quite sure Einstein is among them."
Unorthodox, but not a crank. Einstein had demonstrated mastery of the subject matter. He didn't stumble across some QM papers and suddenly proclaim everyone elses work to be stupid.
Richard Feynman was unorthodox, but few people who worked with him doubted his genius (despite his unremarkable score of 125 on a HS IQ test). Even people who hated him thought he was brilliant.
Just because someone is smart, doesn't mean he isn't a crank. A key factor, imo, is whether the person makes absolutely pronouncements, usually denouncements in an area in which he has demonstrated no particular competence.
Contrast these with the creationist cranks. William Dembski is among the new crowd of creationists, called IDers. ID = Intelligent design. These guys spread around misinformation continually as if it were fact - and then don't bother to check up on it. It's mind-boggling really. Dembski is particularly sly. He picks an area of scientific inquiry that is especially opaque to the outsider and supports his theses with legitimate, though obscure, mathematical theorems. Now, these mathematical theorems - called the NFL theorems (NFL = No Free Lunch) are the legitimate product of certified geniuses. Dembski starts out as if he's going to give a mathematical analysis and deduction from the NFLs. Unfortunately, he never gets around to actually proving his case. If he had any sense he'd be embarrassed. David Wolpert, one of the developers of NFL has said that Dembski's theories are "written in Jello." ( check out
http:// www.talkreason.org/articles/jello.cfm )
The fact is that Dembski is a moonie who took up science in the first place for the sole purpose not of discovering the truth, but of disproving evolution. Yes, these creatonists are certainly an open-minded lot.
k
