Be respectful, don’t call folks dimwits. You can make a point without it.

William Dembski – I don’t understand the significance of the “concluding paragraphs”.

One website that might be of interest is the blog of a British lawyer who posts under the alias of Jack of Kent

He has been following the Simon Singh case and offers an expert perspective on the case and British libel law.

–summary in English:
Edgar Dacqué, one of the most respected German palaeontologists of the early 2Oth century, developed his own controversial ideas about the human phylum, which he saw dating back to earliest geological times. His intention was a reconciliation of science, mythos and religion.
The publication of his speculative masterpiece “Urwelt, Sage und Menschheit”, however, brought his ridicule and he lost his university post.
With his idea of a humanity that was always present in the history of life, he can be seen as a pionier of the theory of initial bipedalism.
——–

More detailed summary of this another interesting evolutionary non-darwinian German thinking is available in German on internet here:

http://cerbi.ldi5.com/IMG/_art.....cle_32.pdf

Probably ILLIES Joachim ( 1973 ) in his “Anthropologie des Tieres” took him seriously. Illies wrote also a book about another great Swiss non-darwinian zoologist Adolf Portmann.

More about Adolf Portmann on my blog

http://cadra.wordpress.com/

But I’m not saying anything about Darwin’s intentions—it’s the universal acid with which he is credited that has erased meaning and morals from the academy and the world.

All the time now we see traditionalists bewildered when they make some logical argument and are met with anything but. I don’t think it’s that our postmodernist critics simply sizzle with evil, rather they have been taught that there is no logic, no truth, no purpose, and that language is a only political tool and that feelings and power and prestige are all that matter.

Yes, O’Leary, let’s face it and fight back before it is too late.

We cannot change it; we can only endure it, face it, and decide how to fight back.

Note: Most of what is said about “right-wing Christians” today is either not true or not important.

Not true: That right wing Christians have contributed appreciably to bad stuff in the world. They are generous donors to causes that help women world wide, for example.

Not important: Yes, there might be snake handling cults in southern US swamps somewhere, but – from a public policy perspective – aren’t they the concern of local paramedics, when things go wrong?

As I see it, the pressure to repeal freedom of speech comes from two directions, from a multicultural, post-modernist apathy that cares not a whit about facts and truth because it doesn’t believe they exist, and from the rise of terror in the world. The first involves a meshing of often violent radical movements that took over campuses in the 1960s and what I would call a Darwin inspired nihilism that deconstructed all the humanities. The result is today’s speech codes and general belief that feelings trump logic.

And then along comes the threat of terror and the enticement of terror tainted mammon. Which was it, the threat of terror or the promise of treasure, that motivated YUP to make Jytte Klausen remove the object of her study from her study: “The Cartoons That Shook the World”? It doesn’t matter because either way freedom is chipped away.

As for the rise of nuclear Iran, I’ve just begun reading Dore Gold’s serious but frightening The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West.

Prof. Dembski is right to bring this up. In the Thirties most nice, modest people did nothing. Is this déjà vu? Could it be the Thirties all over again?

Today a thick anti-right-wing-Christian (and anti-right-wing-Israeli-”settler”) fog saturates the air, much like the virulent anti-Semitism of the Thirties. Then it was biology—a Darwinian inspired racism. Now it’s nihilism—which again you can trace directly back to that same source—you dare make any truth claims today and you will be hated passionately.

Who would even publish such nonsense? Last I heard, that guy works for a traditional bible school. So why would anybody say that?

Like, logically, the story is not true.

I agree that a powerful US lobby could help move things along,

Still, I dunno.

All I can say is, don’t come here to Canada and try raising cain for some revolution.

Our slams are run on humane lines, but that does NOT mean they are hotels.

This has nothing to do with free trade agreements: it has everything to do with the excessive libel laws in England and Wales.

That a citizen of one nation can be sued in another nation for actions that did not occur on its soil involves some sort of agreement about which I was unaware of until now.

No it doesn’t. It might mean that a writ has to be served – IANAL, so I don’t know. But there is no legal principle which would stop this. As long as the person claiming defamation has standing in the UK (which is easy to establish: you only need the libel to be readable in England or Wales), they can sue. Where agreements might be needed are in exacting any fines, or other punishments.

The best way to tackle this is to support the actions in England to change the law, e.g. the work by Sense About Science. This affects everybody – if you call Dr. Dembski “a closet atheist” on this blog, he could sue you in England (or Wales!). Indeed, if you called him that in Lithuanian, he could still sue you. A powerful US lobby for change could help move things along.