UPDATE: Sometimes, it is needful to drive home a point, even when it is on an unpleasant matter and deals with uncivil conduct.
For, unchecked incivility, willful disregard for the truth and fairness, and associated enabling behaviour are patently destructive. [For those who need help here, methinks the ghost of Pilate has somewhat to say to you, here.]
In this case, slander by unjustified invidious comparison and enabling thereof on the pretence that nothing wrong has been done.
A cross check at TSZ this evening has revealed a doubling down by the owner there, in response to my further corrective that the owner of that blog is denying patent reality, when she earlier posted a bland denial of unpleasant reality that is an enabling of the sort of incivility that characterises too much of objection to design theory. Namely:
Kairosfocus, this is outrageous. Nobody here, to my knowledge, has suggested that you are a Nazi, and I certainly have not.
I will show the first claim blatantly false in a moment, but we should note that the second is a loaded strawman distortion of what I have pointed out, several times: ENABLING BEHAVIOUR by harbouring the sort of behaviour indulged by AF and particularly OM.
Let’s get facts on the table again.
I think we can take it as a given that when one is characterised in the formula “both the Nazis and X think that . . . “ one is being compared to Nazis.
In a way obviously intended to taint one with the justly deserved odium that attaches to Nazism.
In short, the utterly offensive — and demonstrably unwarranted — suggestion is being made that one is a Nazi.
That, sirs, is slander.
Here are the specific words of OM that I object to and will proceed to expose for what they are:
And at what point is it KF that you expect to march Alan around the camps? When your religious war is won and the immoral atheists defeated?
I’d go on but I’m afraid I may say some things that would not be compatible with the general purpose of the thread or indeed civility.
I would like to note however that both the Nazis and KF think that homosexuals are immoral and/or deviants. So draw your own conclusion as to who’ll be marching who round what camp if they get their way.
This of course first utterly warps a grim example from history — one previously discussed here: after WW II, ordinary Germans (not major Nazis) were marched through death camps to rivet the facts on what their enabling behaviour had by passivity helped sustain, even as the White Rose Martyrs have said long since, at cost of their lives.
Here is a well-known picture of a woman from Wiemar on such a tour at neighbouring Buchenwald, averting her eyes in shame for what men acting in the name of her nation did:
I drew this horrible parallel out to underscore that enabling behaviour in the face of abuse, censoring, career busting and an “open hunting season, no rules” mentality of targetting design supporters in institutions, across the Internet and in the wider culture is intolerable and should be corrected. A limited but strong parallel meant to gain attention in the face of stubborn denial of wrongdoing and enabling.
In that context I pointed out that one day, there will be a similar tour of shame, when this present witch hunt of design thinkers is all over.
Oh, yes, there will.
Here is a preview of that tour, the movie Expelled:
[youtube V5EPymcWp-g]
One day, just as Schaeffer and Koop’s Whatever Happened to the Human Race has now proved sadly prophetic, Expelled will rise above the mocking and angry dismissals and will prove all too aptly prophetic.
As a matter of fact, it would be useful to watch this movie too:
[youtube 8uoFkVroRyY]
Overnight, I think it is important to add this, on the Darwin –> Haeckel –> Hitler issue, by means of a video a lecture by Weikart, as willful denial of that historical chain and its points of serious concern is a big part of the underlying problem:
[youtube w_5EwYpLD6A]
(Those who, having been mislead by conventional wisdom, imagine that Fascism is a specifically “right wing” problem, need to check here and here for a corrective. And if you think that homosexualisation of marriage is a question of equality of rights, I suggest here, here, here and here as initial points for second thoughts.)
AF and OM — instead of pausing to look themselves hard in the mirror — latched on the issue of a tour of shame by the enablers whose passivity across 13 years allowed evil to triumph and wreak havoc, then twisted it into a strawman laced with ad hominems and outright slanders to be gleefully set alight.
For instance OM’s use of “religious” just above is meant to falsely smear ID as a tyrannical, irrational theocratic crusade. The obvious target of this is that I have pointed out on evidence:
(i) that evolutionary materialism is inherently self referentially incoherent and irrational, citing Haldane’s famous remark on the point:
“It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” [[“When I am dead,” in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209. (Highlight and emphases added.)]
(ii) that the same worldview’s foundations — matter, energy and space-time interacting by blind chance and mechanical necessity — have in them no IS that can objectively bear the weight of OUGHT, even as say Provine and many others imply when they say that such views imply that there is no objective foundation for ethics;
(iii) that Plato long since warned about this, in The Laws Bk X, drawing out that from historical exemplars, the resulting radical subjectivism, relativism and want of moral grounds, too often open the door to ruthless, destructive nhilist factions who provoke continual contentions in order to dominate. (Looks like OM et al decided to provide a case in point . . . )
Now, these are seriously argued points that don’t simply come from some no-account fellow off in a corner of the Caribbean, but have been raised repeatedly as serious concerns that need to be soberly addressed. If they were ill founded, they could be fairly easily shown false by objective refutation. The resort to polarisation — the war of religion on science toxic stereotyping myth [OM would be well advised to read Pearcey here on the roots of science, and this note on some roots of modern liberty as well as here on on the sins and blessings of Christendom] — and to personal abuse tells us that, far from being overthrown, these hit a raw nerve and hit home a little too close for comfort.
What does he do next, in his over-brimming hostility?
He plays the invidious comparison card, as cited. Where, today’s conventional wisdom usually lists homosexuals as the second or third group in Hitler’s list of targets to be exterminated. (A fairer, more balanced view — not neglecting any significant group that suffered at Hitler’s hands — would put nigh on 30 Million Russians a little higher and would also list the millions of Christian Poles, who were the very first targets of Nazi international aggression. )
But the point is there.
My having a principled objection to the agenda to homosexualise marriage in our day, and my wider concern that on significant evidence homosexual behaviour is disordered, damaging to the participant and potentially hazardous to society at large — which BTW is not even a part of the debates over design theory — is compared to Nazis.
The insinuation is blatant, save to the willfully blind: implicit accusation of hatred rather than principled concern along with those of a great many people including some of the most distinguished across the ages and down to today (BTW, cf. here for some thoughts and concerns that are too often ignored or suppressed today). That is, principled concern is reduced to a loathsome caricature by invidious comparison with Nazis, in order to taint without good reason. And, to create a toxic, polarised atmosphere filled with the smoke of burning, slander-soaked strawmen, so that no reasonable and serious discussion of a serious concern can happen.
As though, only Nazis and this hateful bigot now under scrutiny by being pushed into the same boat as Nazis could possibly have such a view.
Sorry, TSZ management, this enabling of Alinskyite toxic rhetoric is not good enough, not by a long shot.
And to pretend that grievous wrong has not been done here is exactly an example of the sort of enabling behaviour I have been highlighting and calling for correction of all along.
At this stage, sadly, I hardly expect TSZ to be willing to heed correction, but the record needs to be set straight for reference.
One last plea: Dr EL, please do better than this. END