Dembski's motive

Bill Dembski asked: What have you done lately, dopderbeck, to jar Dawkins out of his dogmatic rampage? I'm not sure I understand what Richard Dawkins has to do with showing respect to judges as required by Romans 13. In any event, search my blog, Through a Glass Darkly and you will see that I've written many times in criticism of Dawkins and his brand of materialism. You can also find similar writing from me in the ASA email list archives and in other places. I don't claim to be any great voice in this regard, but I've unashamedly and publicly explained my Christian faith many times. Your references to OT prophets are misplaced because they specifically were appointed by God as prophets within the context of the theocratic state of Israel and its role among surrounding nations. For us in the Church today, Romans 13 is normative, as I'm sure you'll agree. The reference to Paul and the Judaizers is even further misplaced, as Paul was speaking there as an Apostle in the context of snuffing out a heresy within the Church. Again, Paul's instruction to us with respect to secular governmental authorities is clear in Romans 13. I'm a bit disheartened that you think this video could serve as a "means of grace" to Richard Dawkins. Do you really believe that? Is this really "speaking the truth in love" (Eph. 4:15)? Does it satisfy the standards of Col. 4:6: "Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone"? How about Romans 12:14: "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse." Or the entire teaching of Matthew 5? I hope you take this rebuke in the spirit in which it's offered, and not as a personal attack. Heaven knows, I have often failed to live up to the standards of Romans 12 and 13, Ephesians 4, Colossians 4, etc. As a brother in Christ, and a fellow academic who takes seriously the cultural mandate, I beseech you to think again about this method of discourse, and about the strategy of making personal attacks on a judge who wrote an opinion contrary to your views. I think you will agree with me that there is much, much more at stake here than one judge's opinion in one case concerning one version of how to integrate science and faith. Take the long view, the Kingdom perspective; play the part God gave you with humility and grace and let Him handle the ultimate results, for He secured the victory long ago on the cross. I can say at least that this is the ideal towards which I strive, though I often fail. But imagine what could happen if all us Christians who are concered about the culture humbled ourselves and began to pray for and love our enemies, to tell the truth truly in love, to live the Sermon on the Mount ethic taught by Jesus in Matthew 5 and echoed throughout the New Testament. Imagine if all the anger and ink and pixels we spill in culture "wars" were instead spent in sacrificial love and in patient, humble, careful and thorough explanation of the truth. Imagine if the Church were to be truly the Church. That's the passionate cry of my heart.

Good thing ID divorced themselves from anything religious. This way they don't have to follow any of the ethics of Jesus.

Am I wrong, or did Dembski by the above logic of having Elijah with Baal be his empirical example, actually advocate killing a sitting United States judge?

It's a pity they couldn't just do what is right, instead of searching through a book that is full of contradictions and then debating which parts don't apply in certain cases.

Of course there isn't much hope of moral behaviour from those who Lie for Jesus.

What's the point of removing the fart noises? Dembski has already demonstrated that he's acting like a child. I think that's the real point here. He doesn't like Judge Jones' ruling, so he's out to denigrate the man in every low-brow way possible. Is this any way for "the Isaac Newton of information theory" to act? It doesn't matter whether the fart noises are there *now*. It's the fact that he thought it was a good idea to do it in the first place that makes him look like an idiot. And his appeals to Old Testament killings only makes him look mean-spirited and validates the fact (along with his low-brow humor) that he's not even going to fight a good fight. No, he's going to scratch, pull hair, and punch below the belt "for the glory of God". The fact that he created this OE site in the first place and admits to using low-brow methods to convert the kids just shows how much he's given up on even fighting a scientific fight - he's out to convince the world of the superiority of ID through farting noises.

Oddly enough, I predicted that ID advocates would do exactly this - try to convince people before they are capable of thinking through the facts, and in the long run, he hopes that lawyers, judges, and school board members will fill the ranks of society and support ID/creationism not on the basis of facts, not by refering to the most recent evidence, but because they've grown up believing in ID and creationism, learned when they were children (using fart noises and low-brow "humor" as their "evidence").

Is this any way for "the Isaac Newton of information theory" to act?

— BC

BC wrote: I predicted that ID advocates would do exactly this - try to convince people before they are capable of thinking through the facts,

It just seems like, more and more, Dembski insists on acting like a childish asshole. It's as if, not being able to refute evolution with actual science, his approach is reduced to playground taunts to get attention. And he wonders why the scientific community doesn't take him seriously. I mean, is the guy just mentally imbalanced or what?

..Rather, my aim was to render Judge Jones and his decision ridiculous in the eyes of many young people, who from here on will never take Darwinian evolution or him seriously. If the cost of accomplishing this is yet another lowering of my estimation in the eyes of PT or Richard Dawkins, that's a price I'm only too glad to pay --- heck, I regard that as a benefit of the deal.

— William Dembski

I got blocked too.

(yawn)

Good thing ID divorced themselves from anything religious.

"it inculcates a disrespect for the legal system"

I don't know about US law. Does it simply allow this kind of attack against a judge? Here in Europe (France, more specifically, but other countries are not different) you cannot claim in the media that a judge's decision is politically motivated, or stupid, or plagiarized. Respect of the judiciary is a lgeal obligation.

By the way, did Dembski make the fart noises himself? And why did he remove them? They're far more intelligent than anything he can say.

Dembski's foray into the world of (puppet) string theory may be the start of his downfall. Prior to this, his petty stupidity was only visible to scientists and those who took the time and had the tools to understand evolution and its opponents. His descent into the common has exposed his vacuity, ignorance, and cowardice to a much wider audience. I think it's time to start taking a collection for a medical trust for him. If he's this bad now, his condition in old age hardly bears contemplation.

IW

Its a humiliation tactic. This Dembski guy suffered the same humiliation from his care takers when he was young.

Its a humiliation tactic. This Dembski guy suffered the same humiliation from his care takers when he was young.

So Dembski is supposedly a Professor of Theology and Science at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Is this conduct becoming of a professor there? Does he teach his students to fart at respected scientists in the name of God?

I think we should contact SBTS and ask them for their stance on this behavior of one of their supposed luminaries. WWJD?

WWJD? Jefferson would let it ride. Dembski's animation piece is a bit of res ipsa loquitur, it condemns itself.

Piling on is unbecoming.

My problem with this is that, as a Christian, I'm bound by Romans 13, which says:...

I think it is perfectly in order for Dembski to use flatulence in his argument. That's the great beauty of freedom of speech - there's always enough rope.

R

Ed Brayton has just put up a blog post describing an incident of REAL plagirism by someone on the DI side. Summary paragraph here:

Professor Irons concluded his study with these comments: "It seems to me the height of hypocrisy for the Discovery Institute to accuse Judge Jones of copying 90 percent of one section of his opinion (just 16 percent of its total length) from the proposed findings of fact by the plaintiff's lawyers, when the DI itself tried to palm off as 'original' work a law review article that was copied 95 percent from the authors' own book. Concealing this fact from the law review editors, until I discovered and documented this effort, seriously undercuts the credibility of the DI on this or any other issue." (Emphasis mine.)

I wonder what the IDiots are saying about this. We should all go and ask them...

I know that the ID movement acts childish all the time, but since nothing else seems to work I say we fight fire with fire. I have quite a bit of experience in Flash, Java, and several other web based technologies. What I don't have is artistic talent. If somebody here could make some caricatures of Dembski, and point me in the direction of some audio of him speaking I could have all sorts of fun. Toss out any ideas you'd like, and I bet I could incorporate them. Post here if your interested, or e-mail me at pjenkins2006@@yahoo.com. It's one @, I just do that so I don't get spammed.

Ed Brayton has just put up a blog post describing an incident of REAL plagirism by someone on the DI side.

Dembski is employed as a research professor. Does he have tenure? I wonder whether his employers believe his actions are bringing credit to their institution.

All the overt flatulence has therefore been removed.

— Dembski

Hey, ladies and gentlemen: Why won't you acknoweledge that Dembski's latest appearance as a sound for Judge Jones's animated cartoon has demonstrated that he has at least one real skill - that of a farting artist, which is a new high for him compared with his pseudo-mathematical exercises.

That activity is double publication, not plagiarism

Ed has used the wrong word. That activity is double publication, not plagiarism.

If Dembski was persona non grata in the courts before, imagine him trying to insert himself into any ID case now. Not that he doesn't know this, but the way his seething hatreds and resentments are displayed is not only harmful to himself, they're bound to make ID at large nothing more than a poorly-done Beavis and Butthead episode, in the eyes of the courts. This "David" apparently sees what any sane being would.

Nice to see Dembski dredging out the dungeons of OT violence and cruelty to justify his puerile antics. But did he forget the bears mauling 40 odd children who were chanting "Go up thou baldhead" at Elisha? I wonder what farting noises would have done, killed off an entire Israelite tribe? Oh yeah, disrespect for authority is usually looked at very dimly in the Bible, with substantial penalties for the childish morons who mock where they owe respect (read Paul, you dimwit "scholar" Dembski).

He may even lose out in the fundie arena due to this outburst. It's hard to claim persecution from the courts when your head IDiot is farting at the judges by proxy. Those Xians who really were persecuted, but kept their dignity, were great witnesses to their God. Dembski isn't persecuted, beyond generally well-earned contempt for his manners, intellectual output, and inability to respond adequately to his critics, and yet he loses all dignity where it matters the most, with respect to the courts which decide ID claims (since they lack any sound arguments for the science community).

This whole episode shows that Dembski knows on some level that ID and especially he himself have really lost big-time (not that creationism itself is going away, and probably not even ID won't altogether), and he feels as if he may as well vent his pent-up anger and hatred against those he feels abused by.

The fact that he lacks all deftness in his attempts at humor destroys even that effect, other than in the most extremely repressed ID followers. He may wish to poison the well against evolution (all he really knew even to attempt to do, ever), but it is rather more likely that he poisoned the ID well.

Sometimes I think they ought to have some mental health checks for their leading ID voices, but somehow I doubt they'd find many ID proponents among really mentally well academics. You'd think maybe they'd be able to weed out someone like Dembski, though?

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm

I like lowbrow humor as much as anybody. The thing is, it needs to be funny.

With or without *farts* the animation is disturbing to me for its obvious ineffectual spite. What's the future of ID? Apparently more re-hashing of the past and the gnashing of teeth. I don't care except that this whipping up of rage in people who are beginning to resemble other zealots I've had to deal with, and this makes me nervous.

Dembski's "answer to Job" reply to dopderbeck chilled me to the marrow and it took me back to the first time I read the Book Job. I hate the story of Job, I loathe the OT, and I agree with Dawkins' assessment of its deity as capricious and cruel. The apparent ingratitude of Dembski and of his admirers toward those who, atheists or not, wish to utilize science for the improvement of human life is astrounding to me. What is Dembski angry about? Who are these "enemies" that beset him? Why does he invoke the passages about violence to unbelievers when these are hardly quoted in any church anymore? (Most believers skip over these to read the nice stuff.)

Why would anybody rebel against educated parents to cling to this crap, when others (like me) had to forge our way out of the quickmire of working-class superstition all alone?

The animation is sick. Not because it farted, but because of the anger that lurks behind the whole enterprise. Right now it's directed at Judge Jones but pretty soon they're going to tire of that victim, and they're going to tire of flash animations, and they're still going to be angry.

I think Dembski's trying to one-up the restless YEC mob that he thought he could control. Sometimes I feared for him for associating with them (because they're absolutely nuts) but now I'm just plain alarmed at the whole Old Testy-ment route he's taking. ID may be dead, but something else seems to be beginning.

If somebody here could make some caricatures of Dembski

— Pjenkins

I don't know about US law. Does it simply allow this kind of attack against a judge? Here in Europe (France, more specifically, but other countries are not different) you cannot claim in the media that a judge's decision is politically motivated, or stupid, or plagiarized.

This sort of attack is pretty common. If a case has anything to do with politics, then somebody's going to say that the decision was "a purely political verdict from an [activist|reactionary] judge who is legislating from the bench."

The idea that a verdict is "politically motivated" or "stupid" is inherently subjective, so it's protected under the right of free speech. Saying that it's "plagiarized" is a grey area...you could potentially get sued for libel, but it's such a silly claim that most judges would just ignore it. Saying that the judge had been bribed could get you into trouble.

Because these claims are so common, they don't have a lot of effect. They're a good way to inflame your supporters, but they're not going to win over the undecideds.

The Dembski picture is great, now I just need to splice in some audio of him. Anybody know where I could either find some good funny quotes, or maybe splice some audio together, to form a funny comment?

Rather, my aim was to render Judge Jones and his decision ridiculous in the eyes of many young people, who from here on will never take Darwinian evolution or him seriously.

— Dembski

The Dembski picture is great, now I just need to splice in some audio of him. Anybody know where I could either find some good funny quotes, or maybe splice some audio together, to form a funny comment?

Anybody know where I could either find some good funny quotes, or maybe splice some audio together, to form a funny comment?

It seems like Mr. Dembski is getting more.... well, "nuts" is the word.... in the past six or seven weeks. He used to be able to shrug off the facts and ignore criticism, yet now he responds with anger, abuse, and threats of death against his nay-sayers (as in the URL you provided). He apparently sees himself as a prophet of the Christian gods, and sees his distractors as agents of evil---- a very unhealthy belief. I fear for his mental health.

"Concealing this fact from the law review editors, until I discovered and documented this effort, seriously undercuts the credibility of the DI on this or any other issue."

The DI had credibility to be undercut? Who knew. Cdesign proponentists are nothing but a bunch of Mustela falsidica.

Maybe Dembski is losing it, or maybe Dembski understands the core nature of his target audience a lot better than we do, and is using the sort of rhetorical technique that True Faith is ultimately based on.

"If somebody here could make some caricatures of Dembski"

No need. Dembski auto-caricatures.

So Dembski's response involves . . . various people killing each other and some guy wishing people would castrate themselves. And these are examples that are supposed to validate his descent into sore-loserdom bad parody?

I don't know what Dembski was trying to say in his references, but it sounds to me like he can't exactly tell when mockery ends and murder begins, and he's comparing himself to being a kind of anointed prophet. This doesn't bode well as far as I'm concerned for his future actions.

BTW, the "Roger Ramjet tune" is perhaps better known as "Yankee Doodle."

Hm. While you are of course free to do as you wish, I do hope that whatever it is you're doing will at least manage a higher level of maturity than Dembski could.

— Andrew McClure

He apparently sees himself as a prophet of the Christian gods, and sees his distractors as agents of evil---- a very unhealthy belief.

Exactly. I don't think he's just playing to the crowd anymore. He's started to believe in his own snake oil.

Perhaps there is value in debating these guys--not for what is said in these debates, but in forcing these people to at least minimally associate with scientists, and to keep their rhetorical wits sharp. Bill the Baptist has withdrawn into the wilderness with that long commute from Waco, TX to the dreary Bible college he teaches at.

my aim was to render Judge Jones and his decision ridiculous in the eyes of many young people, who from here on will never take Darwinian evolution or him seriously

Ed has used the wrong word. That activity is double publication, not plagiarism.

David Opderdeck and I have disagreed in the past on Judge Jones's ruling but we seem to see eye to eye when it comes to this issue and I respect his opinion.

I don't think he's just playing to the crowd anymore. He's started to believe in his own snake oil.

I am open to any and all idea's.

Maybe Dembski is losing it, or maybe Dembski understands the core nature of his target audience a lot better than we do, and is using the sort of rhetorical technique that True Faith is ultimately based on.

Oops, Ed Brayton did write "plagiarism" here ... but not in his original article on his own blog. From the discussion there, though, "self-plagiarism" is apparently an accepted term.

It's swell that, unlike Dembski, Opderdeck acts like a decent human being, wherever he draws that from, but let's not pretend that, just because of that, his arguments are intellectually respectable.

It's nice to see that Bill has such a high regard for the principles of honest intellectual inquiry and the marketplace of ideas.

— PG

PvM wrote: What Opderdeck is arguing is that Dembski's behavior is at odds with biblical teachings, and certainly the spirit of Christianity.

So there is no need to 'pretend' that they are intellectually respectable, they are logically respectable based on the premise of the Bible.

Just to be clear, my aim in this flash animation was not to shake up the convictions of convinced Darwinists.

Rather, my aim was to render Judge Jones and his decision ridiculous in the eyes of many young people, who from here on will never take Darwinian evolution or him seriously.

If the cost of accomplishing this is yet another lowering of my estimation in the eyes of PT or Richard Dawkins, that's a price I'm only too glad to pay --- heck, I regard that as a benefit of the deal.

Wow. A whole bunch of stinky threads occasioned by the Devine Wind...

Dembski's motive is the same as it always was:

"Dembski's glory is getting robbed."

Dembski's motive is the same as it always was: "Dembski's glory is getting robbed."

— Julie

Anybody who resorts to tactics of desperation like this has to be a real loser. Dembski is a loser, and it now looks as though he KNOWS it. My guess is that he will try to take it down when he realizes how foolish it makes him look. Josh, can we can keep a copy, after he tries to remove it from his own website?

Remember how he lost his position at Baylor? I personally see this as the formative moment in Dembski's life and career. So close to victory and then robbed by his own comments.