A few weeks ago, I blasted Casey Luskin for his article attacking ID opponents for comparing IDers to holocaust deniers, and I offered a list of quotes from IDers comparing us to Nazis and Stalinists. The use by ID advocates of the rhetorical device of comparing those who opposed their beliefs to Nazis and Stalinists has been so common over the last 15 years that it was inconceivable to me that Luskin could be unaware of them and so I accused him of deliberately hiding the far more insidious comparisons made by the folks on his side in order to score rhetorical points. It now looks as though I was mistaken in that regard.
A few days ago, I received an email from Casey. He said that he had indeed been unaware of those instances where ID advocates have used the same, and even worse, comparisons he had condemned in his article and he thanked me for pointing them out to him. More importantly, he has now gone back and edited his article to make it clear that he was condemning those examples as well. He has even linked to my critique of his article. For that, I think he deserves to be commended highly. It shows, at the very least, that when confronted with the truth he is willing to handle it honestly.
On the question of nazi comparisons, I will repeat what I've said previously on the subject. While I think there are reasonable arguments to make comparing the types of arguments used by IDers and the types of arguments used by holocaust deniers, I think we should avoid making that analogy simply because, in prompting an emotional response, it tends to obscure the real point. There are many other analogies that can be made that are equally as accurate and not nearly as likely to result in a vitriolic response. But let me also say this...
Casey's willingness to correct his mistakes and handle the situation with honesty stands in very stark contrast to the way this same argument is being handled by the Discovery Institute and their PR flacks. John West, the associate director of the Center for Science and Culture, handles it with rank dishonesty in this post where he declares such comparisons by his opponents as "tasteless" and "over the top" while completely ignoring the far worse comparisons by his side. And unlike Casey Luskin, West cannot claim ignorance of the literally dozens of instances in which the men under his charge at the CSC have compared their opponents to the various bad guys and butchers. Even if by some ridiculously unlikely possibility he was unaware of them before, we know that he did see my critique of his post, and therefore saw the list of quotes from those on his side, because soon after I wrote it and he saw the trackback ping, he edited his post to fix a glaring mistake that I pointed out concerning Jeffrey Selman's alleged career as an ACLU attorney.
Casey Luskin deserves the benefit of the doubt on this one because he has subsequently done the honorable thing, publicly admitted the mistake and fixed it. But John West, Seth Cooper, Rob Crowther and the others at the DI, who are continuing to push this one-sided meme of "oh how horrible that they compare us to holocaust deniers" while ignoring the far more insidious comparisons made by the men they work with every day, have shown by their consistent displays of dishonesty that they deserve no such benefit. The moment John West and the men under his charge at the DI publicly admit that they have also regularly compared their opponents to Nazis and Stalinists, and condemn it at least as highly when engaged in by their side as they do the other side, is the moment they will show that they have at least a minimal grasp of the requirements of intellectual honesty and ethical behavior. Until that moment, they will justifiably be viewed as PR flacks engaged in deceit to support their cause.
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It strikes me that there are more than a few substantive grounds on which IDers might be challenged, without having to resort to the ID=Holocaust issue. Going to the ID=Holocaust issue allows the IDers an out by giving them another ground (no ID != Holocaust) to divert attention from the main ID/creastionist issue. It is counterproductive to even tread in the ID=Holocaust swamp.
Don't forget about Richard Weikart, who is a fellow of the CSC, who wrote a book claiming that Darwinists were responsible for Hitler. It takes an awful lot of nerve to complain about random comparisions to Holocaust deniers when you fund and publicize an entire book claiming that your opponents caused the Holocaust.
My regards to Mr. Luskin. Perhaps Ed should create a Kurt Wise award.
There are many other analogies that can be made that are equally as accurate and not nearly as likely to result in a vitriolic response.
I disagree. Most of the analogies I've seen are purely hypothetical, and the others, like astrology, make no attempt at having their views accepted in the realm of public opinion. So using these analogies will be ineffective in convincing the general public that allowing ID in the classroom is a bad idea. The general public won't be swayed by analogies that would never happen, in my opinion. That's the reason the holocaust analogy angers IDers, I think. Not because anyone is suggesting that IDers are morally equivilent to holocaust deniers, which is ridiculous. It's effective because there is no logical reason for one to be allowed to be taught and not the other.
Here's the latest from D James Kennedy, reported on Agape:
"Communistic evolution, according to the Senate committee that examined it, is responsible for 135 million deaths in peacetime," he said. "There's no religion that has a tiny fraction of that many deaths on it conscience."
Bartholomew-
I had seen this already, but hadn't had a chance to blog on it. Kennedy is, if anything, even worse than Falwell and Robertson.
I read thru Casey Luskin's post on IDEA. You are being too kind too soon. He equates the actions of the likes of Jonathan Sarfati and some unnamed others with that of scientists such as Lawrence Krauss. Krauss and company have compared the methods used by pseudoscientists of the IDC to those of the Holocaust deniers but have never compared these pseudoscientists to the Nazis and much less have ever alleged that their ideology is going to lead to Nazification of intellectual life. Sarfati observes no such niceties in his recently quoted article and has been belting out the constant refrain that evolution = evilution = nazism/communism. The 'Discovery' group have all but likened "Darwinism" to Stalinism and Nazism. Casey has a lot more refuting to do. There's a tonne of invective that has been heaped on scientists of every stripe from radical rationalists such as Dawkins to devout Christians such as Kenneth Miller and Keith Miller.