Thursday, October 4, 2007

Expelled or Exposed? ID’s Latest Martyr Might not Be

WorldNut Daily is running a story about how a Baylor University Professor has been forced to remove his website that contains creationist and anti-evolutionist rhetoric. To quote the article:

A professor whose research could be the foundation for a major challenge to Darwin's theory of evolution and his historically Christian employer are at odds over that work, with Baylor University ordering Professor Bob Marks' work taken off the Internet.

The article then quotes Walt Ruloff, the executive producer of Premise Media, which produced "Expelled" with Ben Stein:

As many of you have heard, Marks, a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering, has been conducting research that ultimately may challenge the foundation of Darwinian theory. In layman's terms, Marks is using highly sophisticated mathematical and computational techniques to determine if there are limits to what natural selection can do," he wrote. "At Baylor, a Christian institution, this should be pretty unremarkable stuff. I'm assuming most of the faculty, students and alumni believe in God, so wouldn't it also be safe to assume you have no problem with a professor trying to scientifically quantify the limits of a blind, undirected cause of the origin and subsequent history of life?

Interesting so far. The article also mentions that WorldNut Daily spoke with a representative of Baylor University who said there are "ongoing legal discussions that we hope will be resolved to both party's mutual satisfaction."

However:

When you go to Bob Marks' webpage, it appears that all of his creationist
nutbar nonsense is intact. It's all still there and doesn't appear as though it was ever changed. Even a review of the page's cache from July shows it to be the same page.

So what's going on?

Martin Hafner at molecular B(io)LOG(y) may have the answer. It seems that there was a poster at Uncommondescent.com that went by the handle "Botnik" (as in roBOT NIKname?) that posted an alleged email from Baylor's president which outlined the removal of his website from the Baylor server. The quoted email's was posted on UD with the word "Parody" preceding it. But apparently UD posters didn't get the joke according to Wm. Dembski himself:

In retrospect, it's clear that this piece of tomfoolery went too far. I'm therefore removing the thread. I hope Baylor and President Lilley take its removal as a gesture of goodwill on the part of UD as they reconsider what to do about Robert Marks and his Evolutionary Informatics Lab.

If Baylor never took down Marks' anti-evolution nonsense; and if it's all an admitted hoax gone too far, who did WorldNut Daily actually speak to at Baylor and why is WorldNut Daily reporting that Marks' anti-evolution pages are down (they're clearly still up) and that his job is in danger?

Could it be that WorldNut Daily was suckered by another bunch of religious nutters? Or could it be that Baylor actually decided to take action after the "parody" was played out on uncommondescent.com?

Should the article at WorldNut Daily (Darwin challenged, research censored) disappear; I think we'll have our answer.

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