Reciprocating Bill
Posts: 4265
Joined: Oct. 2006
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| Quote (bystander @ Dec. 18 2007,16:47) | I agree with ERV that Dembski is definitely unhealthy. He reminds me of stalkers. Everybody has a stalker story, but my friend broke up with his girlfriend who then:
1. Took out an AVO on him. He didn't care.
2. The next day called him up to go out for a drink
3. Was caught breaking into his house and stealing his cat and started beating at him when caught.
4. Rang up again as though nothing had happened and went into abuse when told to go away.
I think you swap the boyfriend for science/Baylor and Dembski as the girl in this case. I think deep down that Dembski loved the short time he had in real Academia and is acted as a jilted lover. |
[rant]
Dembski's behaviors and obsessions may be "like" that of a stalker in some loose sense, but the assertion that his behavior is actually comparable to breaking and entering, theft, etc. originating out of obsessions resembling those of a romantically or sexually motivated stalker, and reflects similar psychopathology, is out to lunch. A two hour lunch with cocktails and a lap dance. As I remarked above, a considerable gulf separates Dembki's "unhealthy" public foibles and failings from the kind of pathology that motivates such disordered behavior - particularly psychopathy and psychoticism.
Look. What ID is NOT is a science. What renders it something other than science is its inability to generate hypotheses that are amenable to empirical confirmation, owing to its inherently supernatural mechanism. Nevertheless, ID has been dishonestly presented as science. That dishonesty has a history. IMHO, underlying that dishonesty, at least in Dembski's case, have been more honest and deeply felt motives, particularly his Christianity, and I infer that he began his quest with the notion that he was genuinely crusading for souls through his advancement of ID. I think he's lost his way in a "ends justify the means" sense and is now pursuing a cause that he knows to be refuted and unsustainable for quite ordinary reasons: ID defines him within a large and adoring community with which he identifies, he has put his entire reputation and career on the line for that lost cause within that community, he makes his living doing so, and there is no going back. Like many apparently smart people who do stupid things, he has ventured far out onto a limb from which there is no return. He has displayed some unattractive and oftentimes baffling personality characteristics as he does so, very likely reflecting desperation. I don't very much like him - although he has had his moments. But none of this amounts to mental illness, or a genuine personality disorder reflecting the levels of pathology suggested above.
What science DOES value is fidelity to data and conceptual integrity. Assertions regarding putative serious mental illnesses and personality disorders are very unbecoming of this community, because NO ONE here has the data needed to make these judgments. Nor do I detect much grasp of the conceptual and empirical fundamentals of psychopathology as these notions are tossed around. This is ad hominem ridicule at its worst: uninformed and inaccurate - and this is coming from a guy who has heaped his share of ridicule upon the ideas and behaviors advanced at UD and similar sites.
Ultimately, it better serves us within the larger community to model fidelity to data and conceptual honesty as we critique ID and its principals, and as we advance the scientific alternatives.
[/rant]
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Myth: Something that never was true, and always will be.
"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."
- David Foster Wallace
"Here’s a clue. Snarky banalities are not a substitute for saying something intelligent. Write that down."
- Barry Arrington
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