Mea Culpa

Posted 2 July 2005 by Reed A. Cartwright

↗ The current version of this post is on the live site: https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/07/mea-culpa.html

The comments are now back online. Our spam blocker no longer sees every post as inappropriate.

Last night we got some specifically crafted spam that when despamed could create a rule that would match any comment submitted. I didn’t pay enough attention when I despamed it and thus the omnibus rule was added to our filter causing all comments to be rejected.

I apologize for any frustration that this has caused our readers.

30 Comments

Paul Flocken · 2 July 2005

From RAC: "Last night we got some specifically crafted spam..."
You make it sound like intelligently designed just for Panda's Thumb. Was PT targeted?
Paul

Hiero5ant · 2 July 2005

Oh, rats. I guess that's why I posted the Scientific Theory of Intelligent Design and it never showed up. Oh well, better luck next time.

Kay · 2 July 2005

Cool, I thought it was Dembski taking over the administration of this blog!

SEF · 2 July 2005

Hmm... It looks like you still have a moronic spammer around though: "free people search" (who can't even handle the local link style).

Steviepinhead · 2 July 2005

Yeah, aka "people search" and "people finder."

Please avoid clicking those links--it's all a spammercial.

Reed A. Cartwright · 2 July 2005

I suspect that malicious spammeres like advertizing spammers don't pick sites directly, but instead use a robot that crawls the blogsphere randomly attacking sites.

Spammers take over PT comments · 3 July 2005

Spam monsters especially active this long weekend.

Bayesian Bouffant, FCD · 3 July 2005

Hmm . . . It looks like you still have a moronic spammer around though: "free people search" (who can't even handle the local link style).
— SEF

Are you saying that bad design is evidence that this spammer had no designer?

Tom Morris · 3 July 2005

You go to PT and you can't post a comment, and you go to IDtheFuture and can't post a comment. The difference is that the inability to post on the latter was Intelligently Designed.

Keep up the good work, folks.

Dave Cerutti · 3 July 2005

Not Germane to the post, but go have a look at Dumbski's website--on his latest post he suggests that he really wants a photoshoped picture of him as a professional wrestler doing a pile-drive on Darwin. It's takes a very secure man, a very deluded man, or perhaps a combination of both to express that fantasy.

Mike Walker · 3 July 2005

I guess Dembski sees himself as the Tonya Harding of Intelligent Design??

William Dembski, legend in his own lunchtime.

Albion · 4 July 2005

Is he saying that sticking a soft toy of Darwin in a vise isn't enough for him, but now he needs to beat up on a photo?

Talk about icons of evolution...

Dave Cerutti · 4 July 2005

No, more like the Triple-H. High Headstrong Hallow of the ID-E-A cage matchup, ready to body-slam evolution and its Darwinian monks with his gut-pounding ego. Come to think of it, pile-drive seems to be an anarchronism in wrestling, no?

AlanDownunder · 4 July 2005

Remedial Christianity for IDers & Creationists

Q: Who first enunciated the principle of separation of church and state?

AlanDownunder · 4 July 2005

Remedial Christianity for IDers & Creationists

Q: Who first enunciated the principle of separation of church and state?

Bayesian Bouffant, FCD · 4 July 2005

Remedial Christianity for IDers & Creationists Q: Who first enunciated the principle of separation of church and state?

Clarification: you are asking about the principle, not the phrase, correct?

'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank · 4 July 2005

Not Germane to the post, but go have a look at Dumbski's website---on his latest post he suggests that he really wants a photoshoped picture of him as a professional wrestler doing a pile-drive on Darwin.

I'd rather that he just tell us all what his goddamn scientific theory is, and how to test it using the scientific method. And if he CAN'T do that (and it certainly appears that he can't), then I'd rather that he just shut the hell up and go away. His antics bore me.

ts · 5 July 2005

Q: who first enunciated the principle of separation of church and state?

click ... "The wrong way to think about it is to think of the separation of church and state like the separation of black socks from white socks when you are doing the laundry." Well, there's obviously more than one wrong way to think about it, as Mr. Harris amply demonstrates. "So we are left with a paradox. Those who advocate the separation of church and state are trying to impose Jesus's teachings on their community -- and if this doesn't violate the separation of church and state clause of the Constitution, what would?" What we are left with is yet another Christian moron, or liar -- more likely the latter, because I doubt that Mr. Harris believes the idiocy he writes. Even if he doesn't realize that he's committing a fallacy of affirmation of the consequent, he surely knows that he's spouting bullpucky. Somehow, advocating a principle contained in the Constitution violates that principle. Why? Because Jesus purportedly taught the same principle. I guess, from Mr. Harris' point of view, laws against murder and theft, as well as the government helping the poor, are also violations of the separation of church and state, because those are positions that Jesus purportedly took. Mr. Harris might gain some clarity by noticing that there is no "separation of church and state clause of the Constitution"; there is instead an establishment clause, which Thomas Jefferson described as creating a wall of separation between church and state. He certainly never claimed that the state cannot share any principle or goal with the church; only a fool or a liar would take that position.

Rupert Goodwins · 5 July 2005

Meanwhile over in England, we have an established church - the reason the US doesn't, I guess.
Our head of state is the head of the Church of England, and you can't get more established than that.

In Scotland and Wales there is no established church (you really don't want to know what happened in Scotland), although they share the same head of state as part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (and you really REALLY don't want to know what happened there).

In England, overtly religious people are treated with much the same suspicion as atheists are in the US. One might suspect that having an established church is a darn good way to keep it out of trouble, although historically this has not been the case.

Jim Harrison · 5 July 2005

Maybe we need something like the church/state version of Mao's famous essay, "On Handling Contradictions Among the People."

The English case shows that one way to gradually get religion under control is to make it so dull that it is quite incapable of harming any one. England has had its share of free thinkers, but most of them were able to get along very well with the established church because the practical Brits figured out so many frictionless forms of fhypocrisy. For example, few authors were as corrosive of the faith as Edward Gibbon who summed up his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by writing that he had described the triumph of barbarism and religion. But Gibbon had no problems signing on to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican faith so he could sit in parliament. I take it that the parallel move in our situation is to write the occasional op-ed piece about the harmony of science and religion while continuing to figure out how life actually evolved without paying any mind whatsoever to theological vaporing.

Mike Walker · 6 July 2005

If you have an idle moment, you might want to peruse the schedule of the grand-sounding "2005 Creation MEGA Conference" (wowee!) being hosted by none other than our old friend Mr Teletubby himself - Jerry Falwell.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/events/megaconference/schedule.aspx

Be amazed as you listen to "Evolution and Pop Culture", be astounded to hear "The Ice Age: Only the Bible Explains It", and marvel at the one-big-tentedness of "The Intelligent Design Movement; How Intelligent Is It?" (could be fun!)

All that and much much more for only $150 per head (and Free! for the evening sessions).

Funny though, I don't see any of those wonderful ID people on the speaker list. Odd that.

SEF · 6 July 2005

to make it so dull that it is quite incapable of harming any one
— Jim Harrison

That sounds about right! Unfortunately the UK has been reinfected by foreign religious extremists, including from the US (along with their fast food and TV programmes as what passes for culture these days). The UK is supposed to have had rather a lot of clergy who didn't genuinely believe in all the bits they were supposed to believe in and were really just in it for the money, power or political expediency. The song "The Vicar of Bray" celebrates or mocks on aspect of this (depending on your point of view).

Dave Cerutti · 6 July 2005

Actually, Mike, the last talk you mention is probably going to be anti-ID, characterizing the movement as a step in the right direction but nowhere near far enough toward the mandatory fundamentalist Christian indoctrination these hucksters are seeking. AIG isn't an ally of ID except when convenient. I don't know if it's a reciprocity issue, or if the YECs have figured out that ID is their last best chance of going through the courts and are thus visibly keeping their distance. But I wouldn't expect the talk to be overtly pro-ID.

Harq al-Ada · 6 July 2005

"2005 Creation MEGA Conference" I cannot read that without it sounding in my head like a demolition derby ad. You know, with the really deep-voiced guy.

Thrifty Gene · 6 July 2005

Or a more appropriately a wrestling match. Be There . . . Be there . . . . be there . . .

Mike Walker · 6 July 2005

But I wouldn't expect the talk to be overtly pro-ID.

Dave, when I wrote "one-big-tentedness" I was being sarcastic :-). I'm well aware of AiG's antipathy towards the ID movement. The title "The Intelligent Design Movement; How Intelligent Is It?" leaves me in no doubt that this talk will unload on ID as a cop out designed to water down and obfuscate the "true" message of biblical creationism.

steve · 6 July 2005

"2005 Creation MEGA Conference...the ticket pays for the whole seat, but you'll only need the eeeeedddddgggggge."

Zim · 6 July 2005

Or a more appropriately a wrestling match.
— Thrifty Gene

I like how Dembski asks people to consider the image as a metaphor for the ID movement. In a way, I think we should. It's a fake picture, based on an activity which requires a willing suspension of disbelief for onlookers to take remotely seriously.

Thrifty Gene · 6 July 2005

Zim writes: I like how Dembski asks people to consider the image as a metaphor for the ID movement. In a way, I think we should. It's a fake picture, based on an activity which requires a willing suspension of disbelief for onlookers to take remotely seriously.

It would be interesting to cross post this to Dembski's blog and see how long it lasts. I'll bet you 2 Tanager darwinii and a Rhea Darwinii it won't last an hour.

Dave · 6 July 2005

Mike, understood. I looked at the conference website, and was tempted to go myself seeing as Jamestown, Washington DC, and Colonial Williamsburg are a mere 3-4 hours away by car. And Plymouth Rock is less than ten hours away! Wow, everything's right there in the neighborhood!