More Fallout from Dilbert Blogger's ID Post

If you haven't followed the entertaining brouhaha touched off by the blog written by Dilbert creator Scott Adams, you're missing a treat.

Last week, Adams wrote a post about Darwinism and ID in which he specifically said that he is not a proponent of ID. Shortly thereafter he posted a short note:

Wow. A lot of people read my blog entry on Intelligent Design and interpreted it to mean I believe it. I guess the part where I say I don't believe it wasn't sufficiently clear.

That's why I don't like to leave my office.

Later he responded to "the best and funniest case of this"--none other than the flame-throwing PZ Myers, the man who loudly advocates being really, really mean to people who dissent from Darwinism. Adams writes:

This blogger, who calls himself PZ, is evidently a highly educated scientist, extremely informed on the topic of evolution, and quite passionate. But for reasons that fascinate the trained hypnotist in me, that brilliance doesn’t extend to comprehending The Dilbert Blog. (The curious reader might want to Google cognitive dissonance to understand how something like that can happen.) That makes him the poster child for my point that the average person (me) has no credible source of information on the topic of evolution.

Let me say very clearly here that I’m not denying the EXISTENCE of slam-dunk credible evidence for evolution. What I’m denying is the existence of credible PEOPLE to inform me of this evidence.

The people who purport to have evidence of evolution do a spectacular job of making themselves non-credible. And since I don’t have any relevant scientific knowledge myself, nor direct access to the data, everything I know has to come from non-credible types. To me, it’s like hiring a serial cannibal as a babysitter based on the fact that he PROMISES not to eat your kids despite having eaten all the other kids on the block. It might be a fact that he’s telling the truth. The problem is that he’s not credible. (The other problem is that he eats your kids.)

Over at Telic Thoughts, MikeGene and Steve Petermann cogently discuss the matter. Darwinian Fundamentalism documents one specific way in which PZ Myers damages his own credibility in his attack on Scott Adams. And Dean Esmay--an atheist who, like Adams, has been attacked and misrepresented by PZ Myers--offers Discovery Institute a creative suggestion:

The ID theorists often claim they can't get published in peer reviewed journals because intolerant members of the establishment won't even let them raise certain questions or make certain suggestions. I used to think that was probably just self-serving whining. I thought the case of Richard Sternberg was disturbing but probably an aberration. Now after all the dishonest abuse I've received, and seen others receive, I begin to wonder if his story, as well as the stories told by people like Caroline Crocker and Guillermo Gonzalez, are actually typical. I fully credit people like Richard Bennett and P.Z. Myers for making me think so. Indeed, I have a free suggestion for the Discovery Institute: put P.Z. Myers on your payroll, if he isn't already. [links in original]