Dembski's Empty Apology

Some of you who watch Dembski's blog may have read his false accusations aimed at Kevin Padian over the last couple weeks. As it turns out, the whole thing was nonsense. Someone sent him an email about a paleontologist from Berkeley who allegedly singled out a church in the area that is predominately Asian as having a big influence on the ID debate around the campus. For that horrible crime, Dembski accused Padian of bigotry and posted cartoons portraying Padian as Archie Bunker and as a member of the KKK (that one was posted by DaveScot, to no one's surprise).

Well after receiving a letter from Padian, Dembski has apologized - kind of - and retracted his accusations - kind of. it's one of those weasel apologies you hear from politicians, but even worse he continues to claim that some of it is legitimate when it's not. For instance, he says:

In addition to getting certain facts wrong (not all of them: Padian in his letter above does not dispute that he singled out "young" "Asian" "fundamentalists" as supporters of ID)...

Actually, he does. The original claim was that Padian had called the Berkland church young, asian and fundamentalist (all three adjectives are accurate, by the way). But Padian absolutely denies this:

I did not "single out an Asian-American church" in my talk for Defend Science at Berkeley. In fact, I had never heard of it before the vicious allegation that you placed on your blog was brought to my attention. If you have access to a recording of my talk, you will not find the words "Berkland Baptist Church," "Asian-American church," or anything of the sort. That is because I never referred to them in any form.

That's pretty unambiguous. So Dembski is just continuing the slander while pretending to withdraw it. Given that he had his facts completely and totally wrong - the speech referred to was not from Padian at all, and he hasn't been in the state of Kansas in years - it is no doubt the threat of a potential defamation suit that got Dembski's attention. If it actually had anything to do with intellectual honesty, he would also be apologizing to Jeff Shallit for his slanders toward him during the Dover trial, slanders that were completely disproven in every possible way by the court documents that I posted in response to them. Don't hold your breath waiting for that apology and retraction, though.

Oh, and you gotta love this comment from the endlessly hilarious DaveScot:

Calling Kevin Padian a bigot isn't an ad hominem. It's a simple observation of fact. Padian is bigotted against Christian fundamentalists. Perhaps he isn't bigotted against Asians in particular but I wouldn't bet on it. Bigots are as bigots do.

Here's a classic example of Padian's bigotry:

From the LA Times:

The nation's top paleontologists find the creation theory preposterous and say children are being misled by dinosaur exhibits that take the Jurassic out of "Jurassic Park."

"Dinosaurs lived in the Garden of Eden, and Noah's Ark? Give me a break," said Kevin Padian, curator at the University of California Museum of Paleontology in Berkeley and president of National Center for Science Education, an Oakland group that supports teaching evolution. "For them, 'The Flintstones' is a documentary."

Here Padian clearly and flippantly states that somewhere near half of the U.S. population who believe in the biblical account of creation think a popular cartoon show, The Flintstones, is based upon fact. This is bigotry. There's no getting around it. Padian is a bigot who mocks anyone that takes the bible literally.

There's more of that victim chic from the left. They've redefined the word bigotry to mean "telling me I'm wrong". Well sorry, but young earth creationists are wrong. Dinosaurs did not live at the same time as humans, period. It doesn't matter what percentage of Americans think they did, they are wrong. And saying that they're wrong is telling the truth, not bigotry. Just like I'm telling DaveScot that he's wrong now - that's not bigotry against the stupid, it's just telling the truth.

More like this

And the best part is that, undoubtedly, DaveScot believes that "Flintstones Creationists" are idiots too.

People that go on denying the truth when it is clearly in front of them (like creationists denying the age of the earth, transitional fossils etc) are not just stupid, they are damaging the society as a whole and therefore should not be tolerated but told firmly and repeatedly they are wrong and to stop their nonsense. It is about time that the many Christians that are not biblical literalists stood up and denounced the fundamentalists fro what they are, a danger to society and to Christianity. The obvious bigotry of DaveScot is a symptom of the fundamentalist world view, namely that any human that acts like a human, that gets their morality for empalhy and compassion and not from a stupid book. Feel sorry for the children of fundamentalists but do not let up on combatting superstition (or paganism if you prefer).

By CanuckRob (not verified) on 15 May 2006 #permalink

I find the praise that Dembski is receiving particularly unattractive - "man of honour", "keeping our slate clean", "honest mistake". So that's OK then - in fact he is a hero.

His accusation was third-hand gossip from people he had never met and effectively accused Padian of being a racist. He may or may not have been lying - but he should have known better. The most trivial of gossip columnists would have taken more care. I am sure I was not the only one to point this out almost as soon as he put the post up (although of course the comment was not published). He is not a child to be praised for owning up. The ID community should be mortified.

Yeah, the creepy thing about all of this is the way that some of the commentators praise Dembski for his fauxpology while criticizing the "other side" for doing exactly what Dembski did.

After DaveScot posted the KKK cartoon, after DaveScot said that Islam needed to be wiped off the planet, after DaveScot contradicts the position of the conservatives backing the DI by giving a nod to common descent and excoriating those who disagree...

...how much more will the Disco big boys take before their PR firm strongly advises them to expunge some of the drooling boot-licking pukes from Dembski's blog? I mean, at some point, the public interests of the DI will be at stake by Dembski's apparent complete lack of sense as to who is allowed to manage his weblog.

So when is Dembski going to apologise for all of the other incorrect remarks and allegations he has made on his blog since it originally started.