{"id":105,"date":"2005-04-06T22:49:28","date_gmt":"2005-04-07T04:49:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/04\/06\/paul-nelson-my-new-un-poster-child\/"},"modified":"2005-04-13T16:43:50","modified_gmt":"2005-04-13T21:43:50","slug":"paul-nelson-my-new-un-poster-child","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/04\/06\/paul-nelson-my-new-un-poster-child\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Nelson:  My new un-poster child"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As <a href=\"http:\/\/pharyngula.org\/index\/weblog\/comments\/paul_nelson_is_visiting_umm\/\">Pharyngula reported earlier<\/a>, UMM&#8217;s InterVarsity Christian Fellowship played host to Paul Nelson of the pro-intelligent design\/creationist Discovery Institute (I&#8217;m not dignifying Nelson and the DI with links &#8211; you can Google for them if you care).<\/p>\n<p>I have lots I could say (I have several pages of notes), and I&#8217;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 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.extendedabstract.com\/\">Brent<\/a> over until I can provide a fuller report.<\/p>\n<p>For now I&#8217;ll simply say that Paul Nelson is my new poster child for why degrees really don&#8217;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&#8217;s not very wise.  He&#8217;s extremely <em>clever<\/em>, but not very wise.  <a href=\"http:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/WeatherGirl\">WeatherGirl<\/a>&#8216;s grandfather had to leave school at 14 to help his family, but was one of the wisest people I&#8217;ve had the pleasure of meeting, and was certainly heads and shoulders beyond tonight&#8217;s speaker.<\/p>\n<p>Some observations:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>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.<\/li>\n<li>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&#8217;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 &#8220;unexplainable mysteries&#8221; that people like this so desparately need.<\/li>\n<li>Our <a href=\"http:\/\/www.morris.umn.edu\">UMM<\/a> students did a great job of representing the forces of good sense and scientific reason.  The bulk of the Q&#038;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&#8217;t need us much :-).  Well done!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nNo tag for this post.\n\t<h4>Related posts<\/h4>\n\t<ul class=\"st-related-posts\">\n\t<li>No related posts.<\/li>\n\t<\/ul>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Pharyngula reported earlier, UMM&#8217;s InterVarsity Christian Fellowship played host to Paul Nelson of the pro-intelligent design\/creationist Discovery Institute (I&#8217;m not dignifying Nelson and the DI with links &#8211; you can Google for them if you care). I have lots I could say (I have several pages of notes), and I&#8217;ll try to get to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/04\/06\/paul-nelson-my-new-un-poster-child\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Paul Nelson:  My new un-poster child&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0},"categories":[11,13,15],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p90sy-1H","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":122,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/04\/14\/paul-nelson-had-a-nice-time-at-umm-but-needs-a-lesson-in-the-power-of-time\/","url_meta":{"origin":105,"position":0},"title":"Paul Nelson had a nice time at UMM, but needs a lesson in the power of time","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"14 Apr 05","format":false,"excerpt":"Turns out that Paul Nelson has written on his blog about his visit to UMM. I continue to be amazed at how damned pleasant he is about all this. The guy looked pretty exhausted to me at the end, and while I love a good intellectual tussle as much as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Events&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Events","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/events\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":141,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/04\/30\/a-draft-of-a-strib-letter-on-the-id-silliness\/","url_meta":{"origin":105,"position":1},"title":"A draft of a Strib letter on the neo-creationism silliness","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"30 Apr 05","format":false,"excerpt":"I've just spent way too long flailing away in the horribly cramped confines of 150 words trying to write a letter to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune on the whole ID-in-schools silliness. I wrote about a zillion drafts, and WeatherGirl expertly poked holes in one after another, sending me back to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Education&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":64,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/02\/17\/this-emperor-rocks\/","url_meta":{"origin":105,"position":2},"title":"This emperor rocks!","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"17 Feb 05","format":false,"excerpt":"Yeah, so that's totally silly, but I still liked it. It turns out that these folks run loads of weird photo\/image manipulation competitions. The challenge in several of these has been to \"rock-ify\" decidedly non-rock'n'roll images. Emperor Sigismund here is one of the entries in the Rock On 4 competition.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Mildly amusing&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Mildly amusing","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/mildly-amusing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1332,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2010\/07\/12\/massive-road-trip-days-7-11\/","url_meta":{"origin":105,"position":3},"title":"Massive road trip, days 7-11","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"12 Jul 10","format":false,"excerpt":"Day 7 started with a vist to Lewis and Clark College, which was interesting if not overwhelming for Tom. It's a gorgeous campus and the study abroad stuff there is very cool, but it didn't particular ring Tom's bells. We then spent most of the day hanging around Portland together,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Family&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Family","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/family\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":518,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2007\/03\/17\/mutant-variety-show-poster\/","url_meta":{"origin":105,"position":4},"title":"Mutant Variety Show poster","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"17 Mar 07","format":false,"excerpt":"Mutant Variety Show poster, originally uploaded by Unhindered by Talent. As mentioned earlier, In a little less than three weeks, Sub-Evil Boy and I will be hosting a strange evening of music and fun, with donations going to cancer-related charities. And so here we have our advertising poster :-). The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Events&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Events","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/events\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":818,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2008\/03\/22\/almost-ready-for-eurogp\/","url_meta":{"origin":105,"position":5},"title":"Almost ready for EuroGP!","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"22 Mar 08","format":false,"excerpt":"We've ordered a couple of boxes of advance copies our book (a privilege of being the authors). They look really nice, and we're quite excited about the grand unveiling on Wednesday at EuroGP! For those of you coming to Naples, definitely stop by our table at the poster session that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Art&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/art\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"EuroGP poster","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3288\/2352238776_8514dc67a9.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}