The agit prop, spreading lie/slander well-poisoning game
Just now, I responded to a point JM made in the current James Tour thread. I think the comment chain is worth headlining:
KF, 14: >> why debate someone when instead:
[a] you can ignore, marginalise and rob of publicity?
[b] you can caricature, smear, slander and poison the well?
[c] you dominate institutions and are utterly ruthless in imposing a crooked yardstick as the standard for straightness and accuracy?
(If you doubt me, see the Wiki article on ID. Resemblance to current trends in discussing political issues, policy alternatives and personalities is NOT coincidence.)>>
D, 15: >>you have described very accurately the pathetic situation in this world.
Facing the strong arguments of a scientist like Dr Tour, the still dominant voices in academia just circle the wagons, but that won’t keep them from defeat anyway at the end of the day. It’s just a matter of time.>>
JM, 16: >>“It’s not a lie, if you believe it…”- George Costanza>>
KF, 17: >>it’s not so simple. There is an epistemic duty of responsible warrant before believing or propagating a claim. For, to lie is to speak with disregard to truth in hope of profiting from what was said or suggested being taken as truth. You can first lie to yourself, then spread deception to others, based on a self-serving belief. That’s how agit prop operators get the politics of personal destruction by slanderous accusation to work: people BELIEVE smears (without carrying out reasonable and responsible tests for truth and fairness on such destructive claims) and spread them — which BTW I am betting we are going to see a lot more of in coming months. Major media houses, I am looking straight at you. This dirty game goes beyond merely being in honestly acquired error, having done duty to truth, fairness and right.>>
I fear, we are going to see things getting uglier and uglier as truth and fairness are increasingly trashed in pursuit of advantage in cases where shifting public opinion counts. Wiki’s hatchet job on ID is just one case in point. END
46 Responses to The agit prop, spreading lie/slander well-poisoning game
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KF,
I’m guessing that J-Mac’s comment was in jest (or meant ironically). Do you know who George Costanza is?
Let’s think about the increasing trend of agit-prop, media manipulation, slander and well-poisoning connected to ID and to other important concerns.
PS: Current Wiki lead for ID article:
Let’s see how many ways this speaks with utter disregard for readily accessible truth to promote its obvious ideological agenda, lies and smears, making utter mockery of Wiki’s boasted of neutral point of view . . .
By contrast, here is the New World Encyclopedia lead:
PPS: This same pattern obtains for ever so many other issues, online or traditional media houses, PR campaigns and personalities. and yes, other cases in connexion with the trend of our civilisation over the cliff are on-topic, but please restrain from flame wars and the like, or the problem of ever increasing tangents.
PPPS: I see I was firsted.
DS, ‘ent got a clue, and it actually works just as well. I assume he is a humourist or the like? There is honestly arrived at sincerity and there is irresponsible malicious belief that feeds gossip, slander and agit prop. KF
KF,
True, and I can’t disagree with this:
It appears that people are very gullible and easy to manipulate these days.
F/N: This definition and discussion of lying is long gone from Wiki’s lead page on the subject:
KF
DS, sadly, yes. KF
PS, Did a search lookup: “George Louis Costanza is a character in the American television sitcom Seinfeld, played by Jason Alexander. He has variously been described as a “brain-damaged, short, stocky, slow-witted, ugly, old, bald man” and “Lord of the Idiots”. George and Jerry were junior high school friends and remained friends afterwards.”
They are desperate. The more the truth gets out the more outrageous their tactics become, which causes more people to doubt them, which makes them more desperate …
They are in a death spiral. The truth has power of its own and the Truth is the ultimate source of all power. They are spiraling down the toilet, but yes, they will resort to uglier and more vicious tactics on the way down.
harry,
the days ahead don’t look encouraging for them at all.
Every new discovery is pushing their pseudoscientific ideas deeper down the trash bin.
“Jerry, just remember. It’s not a lie… if you believe it…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn_PSJsl0LQ
I will let the readers judge what my comment was all about…
BTW: My favourite “truth” promoted on this blog is the “truth” of the immortality of the soul, which obviously automatically leads to other “truths”, such as eternal hell fire, limbo, purgatory etc;
“The concept of the soul’s supposed immortality was first taught in ancient Egypt and Babylon. “The belief that the soul continues in existence after the dissolution of the body is…speculation…nowhere expressly taught in Holy Scripture…The belief in the immortality of the soul came to the Jews from contact with Greek thought and chiefly through the philosophy of Plato, its principal exponent, who was led to it through Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries in which Babylonian and Egyptian views were strangely blended” ( Jewish Encyclopedia, 1941, Vol. 6, “Immortality of the Soul,” pp. 564, 566).
Secular history reveals that the concept of the immortality of the soul is an ancient belief embraced by many pagan religions. But it’s not a biblical teaching and is not found in either the Old or New Testaments.
Plato (428-348 B.C.), the Greek philosopher and student of Socrates, taught that the body and the “immortal soul” separate at death. The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia comments on ancient Israel’s view of the soul: “We are influenced always more or less by the Greek, Platonic idea that the body dies, yet the soul is immortal. Such an idea is utterly contrary to the Israelite consciousness and is nowhere found in the Old Testament” (1960, Vol. 2, “Death,” p. 812).
Early Christianity was influenced and corrupted by Greek philosophies as it spread through the Greek and Roman world. By A.D. 200 the doctrine of the immortality of the soul became a controversy among Christian believers.
The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology notes that Origen, an early and influential Catholic theologian, was influenced by Greek thinkers: “Speculation about the soul in the subapostolic church was heavily influenced by Greek philosophy. This is seen in Origen’s acceptance of Plato’s doctrine of the preexistence of the soul as pure mind ( nous ) originally, which, by reason of its fall from God, cooled down to soul ( psyche ) when it lost its participation in the divine fire by looking earthward” (1992, “Soul,” p. 1037).
Secular history reveals that the concept of the immortality of the soul is an ancient belief embraced by many pagan religions. But it’s not a biblical teaching and is not found in either the Old or New Testaments.”
https://www.ucg.org/bible-study-tools/booklets/what-happens-after-death/the-history-of-the-immortal-soul-teaching
JM, no critique of you was intended, the issue was the statement which needed to be set in a more sound context. KF
JM,
you raise an old debate. Though this is not a thread about theology much less exegesis, and this blog is not about theology, it is worth a pause to give some balance. In C1, the Sadducees and Pharisees had disputes on the matter:
This should help to give some balance to those willing to accept it.
KF
“you raise an old debate.”
True… which you and many others have never been able to to provide sound and logical evidence for your calims to be true…
You claims insult the God of justice but that is not my judgment… thank God…
Have a nice life!
harry, the contrasting clips on ID above give an illustration of just how desperate ever so many are in our day. For just one instance, I suggest to the Wikipedians that the very wiki page in question is yet another addition to the literally trillions of cases of functionally specific complex organisation and associated information, which demonstrate that reliably, such comes from intelligently directed configuration, aka design. So, the claim that the design inference lacks empirical evidence is patently false, but if people are misled about it by a dominant reference site then a false impression can be spread. The issue is, the agenda that drives men to do that. KF
PS: And, Lewontin lets the cat out of the bag on that agenda:
PPS: Here is the US National Science Teachers’ Association in a July 2000 Board declaration:
KF@13
I’ve always kind of liked this one.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 New King James Version
He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.
KF,
I like you…I mean it…
You remind me of me when I couldn’t see through my blindness…
BTW: Would you burn your kids alive, if they disobeyed you?
Kf can’t answer this challenge @18 because it violates the the very principles of his real faith…
JM, have you stopped beating your wife? (See how your game of loaded questions on tangents runs?) KF
PS: While again this is not a theology forum or thread, it seems a balancing pointer or two will be helpful for those inclined to follow up seriously in appropriate fora. If you are making a twisted and somewhat erroneous Internet gnu atheist style allusion to OT law against incorrigible juvenile delinquents [in an era without police forces etc], you should know that OT case law and civil codes or ceremonial rules and traditions have been understood for 2,000 years as not relevant. Kindly read the report of the AD 49 Jerusalem Council in Ac 15, and note how it affects Alfred’s Book of Dooms — a significant root of the common law tradition. Note too how the decalogue is understood i/l/o the neighbour love principle in say Rom 13:8 – 10.
PPS: Kindly, read the OP to see what is focal for this thread. False accusations running amok can easily destroy reputations, careers, families, lives. The current one on sexual harassment claims for example seems to have had at least two suicides so far, both apparently of men who despaired of being able to defend their innocence in a climate of multiple unsupported accusation is tantamount to proof. The Wiki case that has been headlined above, shows how incorrigible malice can come to dominate a major reference institution that millions naively turn to for what they imagine is a credible account. I hope we don’t end up with someone feeling he has nothing left to lose and applying rule 303 to journalists, but that is a predictable consequence of weaponised accusations run amok. Of course, should that happen, it will lead to doubling down. Yet another sign of how our civilisation is heading over the cliff in a march of utterly ruinous folly.
PPPS: Running off on irrelevant tangents and attempted thread-jacking through such, is a sign of trollishness. UD’s management has a short way with trolls. There is enough of substance to discuss within UD’s ambit without resort to atmosphere poisoning tactics. I also add that in my present condition and with the things on my table locally, I do not have a lot of time or energy to spend on moderating threads.
KF,
“JM, have you stopped beating your wife?
I didn’t even know one would do such a thing…
Where did you get such an idea from?
It must be from the “scriptures” your have been so familiar with… Please tell us KF it is not so…
Congratulations KF!
You have reached the prime!
JM, you know the context — a classic Logic textbook example of loaded questions aka the fallacy of the complex question — and have played one rhetorical game too many. I now request of you as thread owner, that you stick strictly to the subject of the thread as outlined in the OP or leave this thread. KF
KF,
Get some help! You have already made a fool of yourself by starting this OP…Should you continue? Only if you wish…
JM, You have moved to a further level. I think it is advisable that you leave this thread. KF
F/N: Let us remind ourselves of a key context for this thread, from 2 above; which will show the concerns in action:
This is a real, on-topic, highly relevant and even topical issue.
Let us focus on it.
For instance, is it even anywhere near the truth or an honest error for Wiki to begin: Intelligent design (ID) is a religious argument for the existence of God?
Does it even come close to a responsible, reasonable, objective opening, by contrast with say the NWE?
As in: Intelligent design (ID) is the view that it is possible to infer from empirical evidence that “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection”
Why is Wiki so insistent on false accusation loaded assertions right in the opening lines, when readily accessible corrective information can be easily had?
What has consistently happened when well-informed people have tried to correct this and similar hit jobs?
What does this say about attitude to truth, respect, fairness or even seeking peace?
What does such tell us about where our civilisation is headed?
KF
Funny that scientists even bothered to try to determine whether this object was intelligently designed. By definition, it could not have been–even if it was.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/892580/space-news-ufo-alien-life-nasa-interstellar-asteroid-meteor-Breakthrough-Listen-project
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C. Clarke
“Any sufficiently advanced technology beyond magic is indistinguishable from evolution.” – Querius
-Q
This article is one of a long line of ID articles which smacks of nothing more, than sour grapes.
Latemarch @17 quoting the Protestant Christian Bible understands more clearly what ID is, than does kairos.
ID is a Christian outreach, and an evangelising organization, with zero scientific input, or indeed output.
Let us listen to Phillip E. Johnson:
“Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of Intelligent Design, which really means the reality of God,before the academic world and into the schools.”
I suppose the article is about the unfair margenalisation of ID. This is simply not true, it is bordering on a lie, and I don’t want to accuse kairos of that.
ID produces nothing, it theorises nothing, it challenges nothing, but it is ignored by the scientific community, and largely by the Church.
Prophesising the immenent demise of Evoutionary Biology may well be comforting, but in the real world of scientific discovery, where we now know every star in the galaxy has at least one planet,these prophecies ring hollow.
I hate this phrase, but in the current context it is most appropriate;
“Put up, or shut up!”
F/N: I should note on how dangerous false but inherently tainting accusations can be. Yes, victims of assault or workplace harrassment and genuine whistle-blower need to be honestly and fairly heard, followed up and protected, or at least respected, e.g. the Moira Greyland case shows the importance of that. However, we must also reckon with what vengeful, spiteful people can do — a point acknowledged in law through protection against defamation and perjury. A classic point of reference is of course, Jacob’s son Joseph who was betrayed and sold into slavery in Egypt who then found himself falsely accused of attempted rape and gaoled (apparently without a serious trial). This video discussion is sobering. KF
RVB8,
kindly actually address the evidence on the table.
You have before you the cited opening words of the Wiki article on ID, you have before you the opening words of another online encyclopedia on the same topic. If you cared, you could easily compare the UD Resources tab above.
It is not difficult to learn the fact that the scientific design inference is based on an empirical investigation of objects, processes and phenomena in the natural world, which seeks to identify whether — for cases where we did not or cannot observe the actual causal process — there are reliable signs that indicate that a or the relevant causal factor is intelligently directed configuration.
Whatever worldviews or cultural interests particular ID supporters, scholars or scientists may or may not have, that is objective. And, one may readily demonstrate that bias can go in a very different direction as regards origins sciences. Witness, the NSTA Board declaration of July 2000 as is cited above; which hopelessly entangles science and science education with evolutionary materialistic scientism and indoctrination of children in schools. Something which was demonstrated as not just theoretical just five years later when the same NSTA and the US NAS sought to hold children of Kansas hostage to a false declaration of invalid education for the thought-crime of their being taught an historically well founded, fairly traditional definition of science and its methods.
As in, here is the “heresy” on which students were to be stripped of accreditation for their whole education:
Way back, I pulled some classic dictionaries from my shelves:
(For shame! Yes, a decade later, when the media hype, witch hunt and hysterical denunciations have faded, things look very different in the cold light of day. But reputations have been unfairly harmed, and indoctrination in materialism dressed up in the lab coat has been institutionalised as science and science education.)
Let us turn back to the scientific design inference.
A major observable sign warranting such an inference is complex functionally specific organisation and/or associated information.
Of this, there are literally trillions of observed cases that uniformly show that FSCO/I is a reliable sign of design as a relevant causal process. Indeed, to object as you just did, you added another case. Further to this, analysis of search challenge in large config spaces at or beyond 3.27*10^150 to 1,07*10^301 possibilities shows that such FSCO/I naturally comes in deeply isolated clusters that we can term islands of function, due to the need for well-matched components interacting to yield function, e.g. parts of an Abu 6500 C3 fishing reel, or the protein synthesis system of the living cell — or, I add, its wider metabolic reaction network as we may compare with say the process flow network diagram of an oil refinery. Then, atomic and search time resources at solar system or cosmos level scope immediately show that no plausible blind search of such a space is likely to be successful. Needle in haystack search on steroids.
Thus, one is well warranted scientifically, to infer on seeing such FSCO/I, that its most credible causal explanation is intelligently, purposefully directed configuration. That is, design as causal process.
It will be readily seen that what is warranted is inference to causal process, not inference to any particular designer or designers or class thereof. Indeed, in the very first technical ID work, by Thaxton et al 30+ years ago, it was explicitly identified that inference to design as causal process for OOL does NOT warrant inference to a class of designer within or beyond the cosmos. In short, the evidence is silent on whodunit. It speaks loudly that tweredun. Here at UD I have repeatedly highlighted that a sufficiently capable cause of cell based life on earth would be a molecular nanotech lab some generations beyond Venter et al.
All of this has been “put up” in the scientific literature dozens of times, and it has been pointed out to you in particular in painstaking detail dozens of times. Uniformly, you have brushed more than adequate warrant aside as it does not fit your agit-prop agenda. Frankly, I am in too much personal pain just now and have far too much on my policy analysis plate to have the energy to play at rhetorical crocodile death roll. I will simply append a clip to this comment that will document my point for someone who is genuinely interested in regarding truth and fairness.
Against that factual backdrop, neither Wiki’s claims nor yours can be seen as responsible. Especially, as correction has been repeatedly provided but insistently brushed aside in haste to try to taint.
Let me go on.
While most debates on ID are about cell based life, the older wing is in fact cosmological, with patron saint the lifelong agnostic and Nobel-equivalent prize holder Sir Fred Hoyle. Namely, inference to design of the observed cosmos on evident fine tuning of its physics and circumstances leading to supporting the possibility of life like ours.
And again the matter is inference to intelligently directed configuration of a cosmos on sign not an exercise in natural theology, a completely different discipline in a different domain of studies, philosophical theology.
Let’s hear old “saint” Fred hisself:
I trust you will now be inclined to dial back the rhetorical voltage from 11 to like 0.5, and engage in a more balanced and fair minded discussion as say Stephan Molyneux (who is an atheist) has done on the case of current media hyped accusations.
KF
PS: I document, in a clip that has been brought to your specific attention but studiously and insistently brushed aside:
QED
Stephan Molyneux?? Please, no …
DS, in this specific case that particular atheist has a point that we all need to listen to [and, yes, I have cringed to see some of his atheistical videos]. Two men have been reduced to the despair of suicide already, it is high time to restore responsible balance. Don’t forget, I cut my eyeteeth dealing with Communist agit prop and know the scent of tainting accusations all too well. Do I need to say, show trials? KF
PS: Let me add, that I am actually dealing with live cases of tainting, false accusations in a project cycle management context right now as part of a much wider policy conflict with serious consequences for four UK OT’s that are disaster-ravaged after September just past. (Up to that point, it was just one, lingering in a post-disaster malaise.) This is not a little rhetorical chess game that after it is over, no real harm has been done and the pieces quietly go back in their box and the box goes back up on a shelf. We are dealing with real people who are getting hurt needlessly and in some cases to the point of suicide; and beginning to verge unto 4th generation cultural civil war judging by Antifa and other street paramilitaries deliberately using primitive weapons so far. My conclusion is, whistleblower protection is vital, but so is the need to ground claims of incompetence, fraud, harassment, quackery and worse. I find that far too many are inclined to believe accusations without adequate warrant and then will pivot and dismiss cases that are well warranted but inconvenient. Not to mention, that there is a temptation to be passive in the face of grave injustice backed by real, potentially menacing power. I am actually talking of the need for project/programme marshals to go after hitmen and their backers.
F/N: Let’s go a little deeper in that opening remark at Wiki, to see how framing with disregard for truth or fairness can mislead:
In short, had Wiki done what NWE did, for example:
. . . we would have no complaint, but that is exactly what it did not do. It has clearly spoken with disregard to truth in hope that what it said and suggested would be taken as true, in pursuit of some end.
KF
KF,
And Molyneux also takes a number of other cringe-worthy positions.
I think that actually could be a hindrance for you. It seems you see agitprop everywhere. What are in reality sincere discussions are just more battles in a larger culture war in your view (that’s my impression, anyway).
I’ve experienced this firsthand. I come here because of the interesting questions that arise, and, it must be said, because there are plenty of other posters who disagree with me and are willing to explain why. I’m not a culture warrior, rather just another person who likes to get in their 2 cents now and again. Yet, I’m tagged with the offensive labels “fellow traveler” and “enabler” of this or that horrific act regularly. I believe you call that “playing the invidious association card”.
DS,
a glance at this thread will show a pretty serious example in the case of Wikipedia. Better break into paras, ran longer than I intended.
I think founding idealists underestimated trollishness, which took over and is entrenched.
When it comes to the issue of dirty ruthless agendas, that is a longstanding fact of life — I was just refreshing my memory on the origin of the Great War and what was going on in Berlin and Vienna. The sealed train for Lenin is a fact, with what 60 million ghosts moaning out the consequences. When the Sov Bloc collapsed, that was a global conspiracy backed by a super power. Demonstration of actualities, and the opened files were revealing. The apology visit to Jamaica was a revelation; but a lot of people have round-filed that or never heard of it.
The cultural marxists are real though there is a preference to talk in terms of “critical theory” etc, which is acknowledged to be very influential. In the US, simply ask what is a community organizer and what are the roots of that; the gap between conventional wisdom and truth is telling.
The 1 million further victims per week, 800+ million victim ongoing holocaust of posterity in the womb and how medicine, nursing, law, government, policing, media, education and more have been corrupted to sustain and enable it provide sobering facts; our whole culture is tainted on this. What has to have been going on behind the Iran and No Ko nuke programmes speaks.
Coming to design debates, the phalanx is too solid for the opposition to the design inference epitomised by the Wiki article to be coincidence. I have spoken to evo mat scientism and ideological fellow travellers, which is readily seen as a movement or should I say dominant trend and some of the reason for that summary was discussed above . . . Lewontin’s cat out of the bag moment is more blunt but the point is there in the NSTA and NAS and more, from NCSE to ACLU and more.
That’s organised, networked stuff, demonstrable, it is not just ideas in common.
On the phil front, I have separately spoken of evo mat scientism and fellow traveller ideologies that through accommodation share in the self referential incoherence and whether they realise or not, end up enabling its inherent amorality.
I think that to my best recollection I have in the main dealt with you on issues as that is where you have by and large engaged. For instance, you pointed to the surreals, which I have found does unify the domain of numbers.
While we have obviously sharply differed on traversal of a countable infinite in finite stage steps (probably our longest direct exchange on an issue), I do not recall you reverting to habitual trollish misconduct or willful and active enabling of say the abortion holocaust. Though with mass blood guilt on the table, we all should be standing up to say an open, public no.
I do think you have seemed to walk with the evolutionary materialists on worldview matters and maybe have come close to scientism at points, but I do not recall you as a rabid advocate for such. However, I do point out that scheme’s self-falsification and inherent amorality. I dunno if I have inadvertently let fellow traveller as a term become ambiguous between worldviews and socio-cultural agendas. I will try to watch that.
KF
PS: I have not endorsed Molyneux’s corpus as a blanket whole. I have said he raises some good points in one specific video. Points we need to ponder.
PS: Plato’s parable of the mutinous ship of state is a caution, too:
kairosfocus,
Thank you for your well-researched responses. Ironically, rvb8 is completely immune to facts or logic, apparently being convinced that his unsupported assertions constitute irrefutable proof.
Agitprop functions as an intellectual pacifier for useful idiots. As we’ve seen, those that don’t happily suck on it are eventually met by force in one form or another.
However, those who believe that reality is infinitely malleable, created by those with the means to enforce it, eventually meet destruction as nature inevitably prevails, and the Truth is vindicated by her children.
But first come the dark ages . . .
-Q
I certainly agree with KF that the bit about ID in Wikipedia is the result of trolling behaviour. But I am skeptical that it is a coordinated attack. There are far more people who believe in evolution than believe in ID as described here and elsewhere. I think that the text and tone of the Wiki description simply reflects a numbers game.
Oops – no message.
Q,
we need to understand the psychology and networked sociology of tainting accusations. People like RVB8 exemplifies (not to pick on him, he has unfortunately made himself a poster-child above) are not just cynical spreaders of things they know to be false or false and slanderous, agitated by some mysterious urge to deceive and manipulate others. Leave that to the fairly rare — but in a networked world there are too many in absolute numbers — sociopaths and their dark triad mentality. They BELIEVE what they say, and perceive themselves as being the bright ones, the enlightened, riding the wave of progress out of bondage under Christo-fascist demonic superstition — that’s Sagan’s and Lewontin’s language — and they are disciples of “the only begetter of truth.” Big-S Science.
So, when they see something like the Wiki lead on ID, it seems true, it punches all the right buttons, it frames those Christo-fascists and their agenda to return us to the days of Torquemada and the Inquisition just right to resonate with what they expect to see about those wicked but sly religious hypocrites — and the distorting prejudice, unwarranted suspicion/hostility and even hate in extreme cases are even harder to admit to. But of course, the Wiki hit piece lead is full of that, to those who are a little less worked up and a little more open to the force of evident facts and logic.
RVB8, unfortunately, cannot even accept and acknowledge (after having been confronted with it before) that there are about a hundred pro-grade ID articles out there that show results of scientific work under the ID paradigm.
As for that FSCO/I is as obvious as the text of his own objecting article and that a blind chance and necessity process of complexity beyond the 500 – 1,000 bit threshold reliably would only produce gibberish or a repetitive pattern, not even that breaks through the defences.
C S Lewis used to say that an irony of atheistical, rationalist skepticism was how un-skeptical such folks were about the narrative they so eagerly nodded yes to.
When you are selectively hyperskeptical and hostile, you are also more or less forced to believe what you have no good warrant for. And so, ironically, you become a credulous true believer (using their language) and putty in the hands of the real agit-prop operators. And yes, it is comfortable and soothing to have your expectations so handily reinforced.
The trolls ruling the roost at Wiki know what they are reinforcing. And they have so twisted the framing of ID that the evidence right before their eyes cannot be heard in its own voice. No, it is just window dressing on the conspiracy to capture Science, the only begetter of truth.
The idea that they have actually become captive to scientism, which is patently incoherent is going to be very hard to swallow. But, let’s point it out: that big-S Science is “the only begetter of truth” is actually a claim in epistemology, you crossed the border into a different discipline that works by different methods. And in this case, you have a philosophical claim dressed up in a lab coat and often coming from representatives of or publicists for the new magisterium. So, is it that Science is the only begetter of truth, or is it that this is a self-referential and incoherent philosophical claim?
Yet again.
So, too, it is very hard for such a person to come to accept that something is very wrong and ill-founded with the framing and narrative that fits in so well with what they wish were so. But eventually, enough critical mass will build up to break the log-jam.
One only hopes it does not take a collapse over the cliff to get to that stage.
But, unfortunately, marches of folly tend to be ruinous.
KF
JS, the co-ordination in Wiki on too many topics is notorious. There is a hierarchy of ever more powerful users/members, and when a critical mass seizes control of a given topic, attempted corrections will be Wiki-ruled into oblivion and the offending party will be rapidly expelled. It’s not just numbers, it is dirty power games with rules. There are too many cases, and that is a reason why many informed people have written off Wiki on ideologically tinged topics. Then, at the next level, NCSE, ACLU, SPLC and the like, there is concerted effort to reinforce the evolutionary materialistic scientism agenda, backed by significant funding from donors fearful of a Christofascist takeover. This is the level where you get sued in court and smeared in the mass media, often without effective opportunity to reply. And don’t forget, the slander hits harder and spreads further than the modern equivalent of the back-page correction, especially when people are increasingly confused about duties to truth, fairness etc. Unless, key people have been hit personally and institutionally with a massive, crippling court ordered fine or settlement. But in the US that is especially hard to do because the defamation laws there have been so far broken down in recent decades. People are making a career out of this in the NGO sector. And at a sufficient level, Wiki is part of that sector. At the next level yet, we have major institutions that are heavily invested in evolutionary materialistic scientism, such as NSTA and NAS in the US, Unis and much more. These are the folks who have run the con of a patently tendentious redefinition of what science is that locks in their agendas and ideologies. Of course, in their minds, most are simply making it plain what science is as science is the great hope for the future. And we find ourselves in a culture where a crooked yardstick is the standard for straightness and accuracy. Which creates an agit-prop operator’s dream world: what is truly straight, accurate and upright cannot pass the test of fitting in with crookedness and will be rejected. And, if people are resistant to plumbline tests that are naturally straight and upright, then only collapse will be corrective. Welcome to the world of Plato’s cave of shadow-shows confused for truth. KF
PS: Ever wondered why the Parable of the Cave, from the angle of media/ institutional manipulation and resulting mass false enlightenment, is not a routine part of education, media discussion and popular culture?
KF @
WRT psychology, the common denominator of much of what we see today is anti-Christianity, wouldn’t you agree? And this broad movement has some strange bedfellows.
Origenes, yes. If one were to say, anti-theism, we see the delicate accommodations routinely made to Islam etc. Likewise, Judaism is not targetted other than by lunatic fringes of anti-semitism. It is specifically the Christian tradition and heritage in our civilisation that is targetted and attacked with too often patently demonic ferocity, or a subtext of utter contempt and hostility that points to hate, or a sort of sneering bigotry that would not be tolerated in any other case. The consequences were warned against (for the case of Germany) by Heine, in his prophetic remarks c 1830:
Provine drew out some of why, though I doubt he consciously reflected on the just above:
And, of course, 2350+ years past, Plato warned:
Wikipedia is a case study in the small of what is liable to happen in the large (with rivers of innocent blood) if the spirit of anti-Christ is allowed to prevail.
That’s what 100+ million ghosts from the past hundred years, and the shades of 800+ million victims of the holocaust of posterity in the womb (with a million more per week), are trying to warn us on.
KF
KF, thank you for your response @41. However, I think that you are reading far mor into Wiki than is actually there. I can’t speak to the other examples that you provided.
At best (and sometimes worse) Wiki is nothing more than crowd sourced material with the bare minimum of fact checking. If statements can be shown to be false, and the falsehood supported by evidence, it is often removed. Sadly, the statement that ID is religiously based is strongly bolstered by the Dover decision. Even though I disagree with the rationale used to support his ruling, it has never been overturned on appeal. A court ruling is going to go a long way to being accepted on Wiki.
I don’t know if any teachers who would allow the use of Wiki as a primary source in any student project. It is a great tool in many respects but just like any source of information, it shouldn’t be accepted as gospel.
JS, there is a long track record of people trying to straighten out Wiki articles. The patterns I describe are unfortunately characteristic. In some cases where outright defamation was involved, only the direct force of impending legal action elicited grudging, minimal change. KF
PS: Dover turns out to have been a judge 90% copying ACLU et al in post trial submissions, and was utterly corrupt.
PPS: At this stage, I would warn people who don’t know exactly what they are doing to avoid Wikipedia, except for very cautious use on non-controversial subjects; and that, with significant cross-checking. But then, that is my advice as regards major media houses on any topic of controversy, too. Ours is a very sad day.
I wholeheartedly agree with kairosfocus regarding Wikipedia.
What started out as an open, idealistic, populist initiative, devolved into a tyranny of editors who will revert your corrections, sometimes within minutes.
I’ve also learned that even first-person corrections to a Wikipedia article are rejected unless the person in the article can reference a Recognized Authority on themselves or the event at which they were present.
This effect is related to why experiments in utopia always seem to produce gulags and genocide. Similarly, consider this cynical observation:
– Max Planck
In the case of large human institutions, the funerals may be prearranged.
-Q