The three Isaac Newtons of Ypsilanti

Back on August 5, Clive Hayden, the moderator at Uncommon Descent, exclaimed, “Robert Jackson Marks II is THE CHARLES DARWIN OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN!” The occasion was the inclusion of Marks among The 20 Most Influential Christian Scholars at Superscholar.org:

Robert J. Marks II (b. 1950), Baylor University’s leading research professor, has emerged as the public face of intelligent design. As the movement’s premier scientist, he has been dubbed “the Charles Darwin of intelligent design.”

That hyperbole is old news. But the site’s list of 15 Professors Who Were Also Criminals just caught my eye:

Alan Turing was the Isaac Newton of the 20th century, and is seen by many to be the father of the Information Age.

Given that Superscholar.org is the absolute authority on such matters, what are we to make of the claim that Bill Dembski is the Isaac Newton of Information Theory?

The superabundance of Isaac Newtons has me thinking of The Three Christs of Ypsilanti:

To study the basis for delusional belief systems, Rokeach [a psychiatrist] brought together three men who each claimed to be Jesus Christ and confronted them with each other's conflicting claims, while encouraging them to interact personally as a support group. Rokeach also attempted to manipulate other aspects of their delusions by inventing messages from imaginary characters. He did not, as he had hoped, provoke any lessening of the patients' delusions, but did document a number of changes in their beliefs.

I suspect that, although he occasionally retreats from particular errors with “not-pologies,” Dembski will never give up the delusion that he is the Isaac Newton of his day.