Louis
Posts: 6436
Joined: Jan. 2006
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| Quote (Albatrossity2 @ July 13 2008,00:59) | | Quote (Reciprocating Bill @ July 12 2008,17:52) | | What struck me about Dembski's essay is his apparent surprise. He went to faith healer who has claimed to have raised 30 people from the dead - one an unembalmed gentleman who had purportedly been sealed in a coffin for 48 hours, then tapped on the lid to be let out. He got there, found that it was all a sham - all exploitation and cheesy showmanship - and was surprised. |
I would second RB's surprise at the gullibility of Dr. Dr. D. This pair of sentences in his account was particularly striking (my emphasis). | Quote | | My son's situation was not unique -- a man with bone cancer and his wife traveled a long distance, were likewise refused prayer, and left in tears. People with needs were shortchanged. |
Just. Wow.
People who were expecting a personal miracle were disappointed. Shortchanged (interesting choice of words, that). How surprising. That really says a lot about the disconnect with reality that is apparently needed to be an ID guru...
As a father, I certainly have sympathy for Dembski and his wife. I've never had to deal with a chronically sick child, but I've known folks who deal with it every day, and it is obviously a serious burden. Nonetheless it is difficult, for me at least, to imagine how a highly educated man can apparently disconnect his brain to the extent needed to buy into this level of woo. He has my sympathy for that as well. |
I'm not at all surprised about Dembski's "gullibility"(if it is such). Everything I have read by the man screams that he struggles to believe what he wants to be true, regardless of whether it is or not. He wants what he believes to be true to actually be true very very much indeed.
Unpicking that kind of personal/emotional involvement is nigh on impossible in any rational sense, esp by a third party. Dodgy armchair psychology moment (please feel free to correct/disagree with all this): I've often thought that belief, faith, this kind of wishing for harsh reality to be suspended are not merely coping mechanisms but actual "cures" for things like clinical depression. What I mean is that people have "cured themselves" sort of like a mental immune system for psychopathology. Dembski strikes me as a very wishful thinker when it comes to this sort of thing, partly as some sort of coping mechanism, partly because this is how his mind/brain has learned to stave off illness.
Ahhhh that's probably a load of crap, and it's certainly hard to rationalise with my conviction that he is deliberately gulling the ID rubes for cash with his commercial efforts.
Sorry for the "stream of consciousness" and vagueness of the half formed ideas within. Sympathy for Dembski's plight is warring with an attempt to understand something based on too little info and a profound lack of sympathy for some of his actions. Conflict produces unusual results, and perhaps that is also as much of an explanation for Dembski's behaviour as anything.
Louis
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Bye.
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