Paul Nelson: My new un-poster child

As Pharyngula reported earlier, UMM’s InterVarsity Christian Fellowship played host to Paul Nelson of the pro-intelligent design/creationist Discovery Institute (I’m not dignifying Nelson and the DI with links – you can Google for them if you care).

I have lots I could say (I have several pages of notes), and I’ll try to get to at least some of that later, but I figured I needed to say at least a little bit now to tide Brent over until I can provide a fuller report.

For now I’ll simply say that Paul Nelson is my new poster child for why degrees really don’t mean half of what academics try to make of them. He may have a PhD from the University of Chicago (which, on the surface, is about as good as credentials get), but he’s not very wise. He’s extremely clever, but not very wise. WeatherGirl‘s grandfather had to leave school at 14 to help his family, but was one of the wisest people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, and was certainly heads and shoulders beyond tonight’s speaker.

Some observations:

• It was pretty scary to see how clever a speaker he was, because it certainly makes clear how powerful the forces of ignorance can be. We had best not underestimate these people.
• On the other hand, I was amazed at how much Nelson was willing to concede. (He totally believes, for example, in micro-evolution, but will not accept that lots of micro-evolution adds up to macro-evolution.) There’s an almost desparate feel to ceding so much ground, and it seems a clear sign of how much the many successes of scientific research have carved into the many “unexplainable mysteries” that people like this so desparately need.
• Our UMM students did a great job of representing the forces of good sense and scientific reason. The bulk of the Q&A was driven by excellent student questions, and while the faculty did get their oars in now and again, the students did a great job and arguably didn’t need us much :-). Well done!