Thursday, May 11, 2006
The New, Improved, PC, William Dembski
Yesterday, William Dembski accused biologist Kevin Padian of racial stereotyping.
My how times have changed.
Only last November, Dembski approvingly published a statement titled, The Bells of Ys, by the pseudononymous Wretchard, originally posted on the The Belmont Club blog, attacking multiculturalism as an article of leftist faith. The wretched Wretchard wrote with all the charming unselfconsciousness of the ultra-right:
Knowing as you now do, that Dembski is a a bitter foe of racial and religious stereotyping, a champion of the oppressed the world over, you might have expected he would have called DaveScot to heel for those intemperate comments.
He did not.
Instead, Dembski made DaveScot a full partner on his Uncommon Descent blog not much more than a month after those comments were written.
And, just as you would expect, Dembski has exercised his usual care with facts in making his accusation of racial stereotyping against the blameless Padian.
In an earlier post, "Kevin Padian — The Archie Bunker of ID critics" Dembski wrote, "In two recent 'defend science' talks, one at Cal Berkeley and the other at Kansas University, Padian singled out an Asian-American church that supports ID."
Here in Kansas, Bill, we call it the University of Kansas.
Dembski, as is his way, isn't just wrong about the little things. He utterly botches the big things, as well.
Recent talks? As Nick Matske points out in a post on Pandas Thumb, "Padian hasn’t even been in Kansas for years."
Moreover, Padian's sin, according to Dembski, was describing "the members of the church that attended my lectures as 'young,' 'Asian,' and 'fundamentalist.'"
And, how do the members of the Berkland Baptist Church describe themsleves: "Most of our congregation is in their 20s and 30s. We are mostly Asian American, but growing increasingly multi-ethnic."
Are they fundamentalists? Is the Pope Catholic?
Dembski, almost alone among ID and creationist activists, was once thought to be less inclined to quote out of context or otherwise distort the words of scientists and educators whose defense of evolution he disagreed with.
The publication of Dembski's factually inaccurate and consciously distorted accusations against Padian constitute and unmistakable sign that Dembski's years of intellectual isolation on the religious right are leading to a pathology marked by increasingly bizarre and erratic behavior.
My how times have changed.
Only last November, Dembski approvingly published a statement titled, The Bells of Ys, by the pseudononymous Wretchard, originally posted on the The Belmont Club blog, attacking multiculturalism as an article of leftist faith. The wretched Wretchard wrote with all the charming unselfconsciousness of the ultra-right:
Policies which deprecated European culture, frowned on a national identity, lowered the birthrate, created a welfare state, imported ‘guest workers’, promoted mindless multiculturalism and relied on ‘international’ treaties for protection — all articles of Leftist faith — are now facing the judgment of history; and worse, the verdict of Islam. It would be supremely ironical if the European Left, the ‘vanguard of history’, required for its future survival the very things it had set out to destroy.This post inspired DaveScot, Dembski's demented water boy, to write the following comment:
Islam is a cancer growing on the planet. It needs to be killed not accomodated (sic). It’s an ugly, dysfunctional belief system even in milder forms, that subjugates the female half of the population. However, since we can’t just kill them all (we can kill the worst offenders though)...Thinking, perhaps, that he'd not made himself sufficiently clear in his first comment, DaveScot returned later to say, "Islam is a disease that has no place in the civilized world."
Knowing as you now do, that Dembski is a a bitter foe of racial and religious stereotyping, a champion of the oppressed the world over, you might have expected he would have called DaveScot to heel for those intemperate comments.
He did not.
Instead, Dembski made DaveScot a full partner on his Uncommon Descent blog not much more than a month after those comments were written.
And, just as you would expect, Dembski has exercised his usual care with facts in making his accusation of racial stereotyping against the blameless Padian.
In an earlier post, "Kevin Padian — The Archie Bunker of ID critics" Dembski wrote, "In two recent 'defend science' talks, one at Cal Berkeley and the other at Kansas University, Padian singled out an Asian-American church that supports ID."
Here in Kansas, Bill, we call it the University of Kansas.
Dembski, as is his way, isn't just wrong about the little things. He utterly botches the big things, as well.
Recent talks? As Nick Matske points out in a post on Pandas Thumb, "Padian hasn’t even been in Kansas for years."
Moreover, Padian's sin, according to Dembski, was describing "the members of the church that attended my lectures as 'young,' 'Asian,' and 'fundamentalist.'"
And, how do the members of the Berkland Baptist Church describe themsleves: "Most of our congregation is in their 20s and 30s. We are mostly Asian American, but growing increasingly multi-ethnic."
Are they fundamentalists? Is the Pope Catholic?
Dembski, almost alone among ID and creationist activists, was once thought to be less inclined to quote out of context or otherwise distort the words of scientists and educators whose defense of evolution he disagreed with.
The publication of Dembski's factually inaccurate and consciously distorted accusations against Padian constitute and unmistakable sign that Dembski's years of intellectual isolation on the religious right are leading to a pathology marked by increasingly bizarre and erratic behavior.
