J. O'Donnell
Posts: 98
Joined: Sep. 2007
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| Quote (slpage @ Feb. 05 2008,17:51) | | Quote (Wesley R. Elsberry @ Feb. 05 2008,15:48) | Casey Luskin at BPR:
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Second, I want to state upfront that I have no ill will towards anyone on this thread. But it saddens me that from the very first post on this thread and others, people were directing users to pages that made unjustified personal attacks against me (there are various examples on this thread, but here are two: “Casey Lying For Christ” and another user even linked a URL where people can talk about “about how terrible Luskin is”). People commonly make unjustified personal attacks against me, and my response is not to get mad or even get upset. Rather, my response is that it is to feel that this kind of behavior is saddening because it does damage to what might otherwise be a fruitful, friendly, and objective scientific debate. Regardless, I absolutely refuse to respond in kind as I do not make personal attacks against other people. That is my personal ethic, and though I am not perfect, I try to live up to it.
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Emphasis in original.
The following is from something Casey Luskin wrote up for consumption on the private "phylogenists" "intelligent design" creationism email list, subsequently posted by a fellow list member to a public Usenet newsgroup. It falls into that category of candid speech that belies public stances.
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Scott definitely speaks "scientese". She presents herself as a scientist, which she once was, who is trying to do the right thing for science. She is very charismatic, funny, and very good at getting people behind what she's saying. It's no wonder she's the director of the NCSE. In the past I've compared Eugenie C. Scott to Darth Vader because she is full of internal contradictions, knows in her heart she's lying, powerful, persuasive, and most importantly, she travels around representing the dominating power (the Empire) and fighting the good guys. All in the name of ...well, I'm not exactly sure what her motivation is yet. It's certainly not truth.
(On the other hand, there is the rebellion against the Empire. Small, understaffed, often outgunned and outmanned, but not outsmarted. However, the rebellion has the people of the galaxy behind them, and most importantly, the Force. Of course not all of us in the rebellion believe in the "force" (the analogy is God), but what unites the rebellion is the common belief in the problems with the current establishment, and the desire to replace it with something better. When we introduced ourselves in the class, I should have said I was Luke Skywalker, but I suppose I was under the control of her powers at the time so I just said I was Casey, an earth sciences major.)
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Source
A "personal ethic" is something that is always active, whether one is speaking publicly or privately. I'm not sure what Casey's stated stance of not making public personal attacks may be, but I doubt it qualifies as a "personal ethic". |
And he now 'regrets' writing it, because, after all, he doesn't do that.
Does he regret writing it because we know about it, or because it was against his 'ethics' to write it in the first place? |
I was tempted to ask that myself, but decided that it was going off on an irrelevant tangent and there were better things to discuss.
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My blog: Animacules
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