ID Website Targeted to Disrupt Conference in Colorado
| October 28, 2009 | Posted by Clive Hayden under Darwinism, Education, Intelligent Design |
Anika Smith has reported at Evolution News and Views an attack which appears to be original to Darwinists. Although the attackers are, as yet, anonymous, the apparent motivation was to obfuscate a conference featuring leading Intelligent Design proponents scheduled this weekend at Douglas County Event Center in Castle Rock, Colorado.
Earlier this month the Shepherd Project Ministries’ website was breached using a “brute force attack” to break the password. The hackers then deleted webpages containing information about an upcoming conference featuring Discovery Institute speakers Stephen Meyer, Michael Behe, David Berlinski, and John West.
“No question whatsoever about [what] they were targeting,” said Shepherd Project Executive Director Craig Smith. “That was brazen. We were a little stunned, to be perfectly honest. We had seen some hostile language about the conference, but honestly we just assumed it was cyber-flaming. We didn’t really expect or anticipate any kind of actual attack.”
Mr. Smith, welcome to the world of ID and it’s sometimes vicious counterparts known as Darwinists, won’t you sit down and make yourself at home.
The web pages were re-instated, and additional security was implemented to avoid this nonsense. However, that apparently wasn’t enough,
[B]ut since then a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack crippled and even crashed the Shepherd Project website, preventing many from registering for the intelligent design conference. These attacks involve multiple people coordinated in an attempt to make a website unavailable, shutting down access to information in a form of modern-day book-burning.
Modern-Day book burning is right. Anika Smith also has a podcast at Intelligent Design The Future in which she and the Shepherd Project’s Craig Smith discuss the incident. This is the third blog I’ve written in just a few weeks about censorship originating with Darwinists (if, indeed, these attackers are found to be such, which, given the escalation of online attacks that Craig Smith mentions, seems likely). There was the John McWhorter and Michael Behe bloggingheads fiasco, the California Science Center’s reneging on showing Darwin’s Dilemma, and now this. Victor Hugo is attributed with saying that “Nothing else in the world… not all the armies… is so powerful as an idea whose time has come.” Agreed.
77 Responses to ID Website Targeted to Disrupt Conference in Colorado
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Seversky,
Perhaps in keeping a bit with the teaching of our Lord about going the extra mile, I’d like to give you a bit of friendly advice. If you are going to pretend anything toward honest dialogue concerning the Bible, Christianity, Jesus, etc., it would make you a bit more believable if you’d leave the rabid and baseless twisting of said topics into contortions of something altogether different out of your posts.
But then, if you cannot bring yourself to do that, perhaps you can find a way to market yourself as a professional strawman builder. There! Never say that no one on this board tried to help you.
Well, let’s start, hopefully, simply. I assume that we could both agree that it is right for children to obey their parents, yes? If we can, then we would agree that, objectively, children are morally obligated to do, or not do, what their parents tell them.
This is just an attempt to show, in as common a ground as may be possible between us, what objective morality might look like.
And, before I go any further in this discussion, let me make it clear that I’m prepending the words “moral” and “morality” with the word “objective” only for the sake of this argument. My whole point is that, in reality, morality actually incorporates that concept, and without doing so is no longer what the word “moral” has always been meant to convey.
Brent,
Remember that my only point, and how this discussion got started, was, simply, that without there being an objective morality then we are not, by definition, really talking morality at all. Again, the word “right” that pops up in every definition tells us that.
So, since it has been believed that right and wrong actually exist for as far back as we can see, it is then your burden to show that they are really just “invisible attributes.”
Nonetheless, I’ll say that every discussion on this board that revolves around the logical argument and conclusion that God does, in fact, exist, is the same one that answers your question. Yes, I believe that the moral “code” present in our lives makes no sense outside of the existence of God.
You know what they say about people and glass houses, don’t you?
Your “side” keep harping on about how their “opponents” lack something (objective morals, in this instance). What seems to be totally lost on you is that you haven’t got any either.
Surely, you’re not expecting us to take “a lot of people belive so” or “morality makes no sense otherwise” as serious justifications, are you?
Come on “objectivists”. Show us why you have morals that others don’t!
Seversky,
I’m glad you chose a gun as an example? It is excellent. What were guns designed for? Killing game? Only? When a gun was designed, were all possible uses of this object considered? Were the ramifictions of using a gun in all possible ways followed through? What was the results of this analysis? Did the possible consequences of many people dyeing outweigh the convenience of killing game in an easy manner?
A designer runs through all possibilities before making a decision as to the ‘morality’ of an action? Does the end result contribute to the cohesion of the overall design? Or does the end result in a high cost to benefit ratio that causes the inevitable if not immediate corruption of the design?
So a gun, as object, represents the result of Man’s incomplete moral analysis. We know guns are immoral precisely because we do not have the maturity to deal with them.
If we did have the maturity to deal with them, we would no longer be interested in using them, even for killing game.
That is wisdom at work, the highest plane of the intellect.
Hoki,
I’m sorry if it irritates you that I’d rather stick closely to my main point rather than try to cover every other point, even if related. It’s the main reason that internet forums are more often than not unproductive, at least concerning anything slightly controversial or that people have strong feelings about.
But, let me boil your argument down for you: Objective morality doesn’t exist because I refuse to believe in God (even though it’s waaaay more rational than darwinist/materialist atheism).
Powerful argument there.
Let me ask you this: If God, The Single Creator of everything, did indeed exist, would you accept that whatever God decreed was the objective morality?
Brent,
But, let me boil your argument down for you: Objective morality doesn’t exist because I refuse to believe in God (even though it’s waaaay more rational than darwinist/materialist atheism).
Bzzzt. That is not my argument. I’ll try again. For the sake of argument, I’ll give you that there is a god. For the sake of argument, I’ll give you that that god has decreed an objective morality. The problem now is that we don’t know which god exists and what it’s morals are. There are an infinite number of potential gods, having an infinite number of moral decrees. The probability of you following the correct moral code is, in other words, infinitely small. In other words, you don’t know what the moral code is. Stop throwing stones.
Shall I try to boil down your argument for you?:
Objective morality exists because I believe I know that there is a god and, moreover, I know what moral decrees that god has.
Powerful argument there.
Perhaps you should try to counter my real argument instead of your own strawman thereof?
Let me ask you this: If God, The Single Creator of everything, did indeed exist, would you accept that whatever God decreed was the objective morality?
Why not. I’ll run with that hypothetical. Let me ask you this: If God, The Single Creator of everything, did indeed exist, and decreed that exterminating the jews was a moral act, would you support, or even take part, in the extermination of jews?
Hoki,
Your argument fails for the simple reason that it is not possible for there to be infinite Gods. There is and can only be infinite descriptions of God.
God, by definition is indivisible. Nothing can arise from within Him that can separate itself from Him entirely and then overtake or compete with Him for control.
This is the reality Lucifer understands but unfortunatel does not accept. He demands a piece-a-de-pie, but God can’t provide it without diminishing Himself, which would set off His own destruction.
You can’t give what you don’t have. God does not have the luxury of entertaining His creation’s demand for consensus government.
He can delegate, but can’t share. Different animals.
Hoki,
Here you are being consistent, at least in a way. You, and others, continue to assert that morality can exist while divorced of its inherent objective quality. That’s just willing away a definition of a word for the purpose of claiming one can be moral without submitting to anything they may not want to.
In your last post, you do the same thing with God. You say you will “for the sake of argument” grant that God exists, but then say that He doesn’t by claiming we couldn’t know who He was if He did. Sorry, that’s just a sloppy attempt at an argument. I can do nothing other than point out its sloppiness to you. You “concede” a point with the right hand while taking it all back with the left and then act as if you’ve actually said something.
I thought we already played this game.
Yes, I would.
Does this question have any significance whatsoever?
Oramus,
Your argument fails for the simple reason that it is not possible for there to be infinite Gods. There is and can only be infinite descriptions of God.
God, by definition is indivisible. Nothing can arise from within Him that can separate itself from Him entirely and then overtake or compete with Him for control.
Wonderful. There can only be one god. Therefore, there can only be the kind of god I’m thinking about. Good argument, there.
Hoki (#69)
You wrote:
Not so, if we accept two reasonable postulates:
(1) God is a necessary being (true by definition).
(2) Anything with defining attributes which are (i) measurable, (ii) variable, (iii) separable (such as a mere concatenation or aggregation of attributes), or (iv) ad hoc, is contingent (and hence not God).
For a defense of (2), you might like to read Dr. Robert Koons’ A New Look at the Cosmological Argument.
If you accept premise (2), then that severely restricts your range of possible deities. For instance, deities with the following defining attributes are excluded from the outset:
being 66 feet tall, being three-footed, or being blue (these are all quantifiable and hence measurable attributes);
being good on Tuesdays and bad on Wednesdays (this is a variable attribute);
being funny AND courageous (this is a concatenation of attributes); and
being fond of teachers (this is an ad hoc attribute).
What we’re left with are general, non-quantifiable, invariable and non-arbitrary defining attributes only, as fitting defining attributes for a proper Deity. And if you wish to propose a Deity with more than one defining attribute, you have to tie them all together in a way that makes them metaphysically inseparable. Anything less than that, and what you’ve got doesn’t deserve to be called a Deity any more than you or I do.
Are you still sure that the range of all possible moral codes that could be decreed by a proper Deity is infinite?
vjtorley,
Good one. Why would I possibly accept your two postulates?
Brent,
Seems like my last answer to this post got lost somewhere along the way. I’ll try again.
Here you are being consistent, at least in a way. You, and others, continue to assert that morality can exist while divorced of its inherent objective quality.
You are consistently claiming that I say that “inobjective” morality can exist whereas I’m really saying that you don’t know what objective moral codes exist. The two are different, you know. Please refrain from putting words into my mouth.
You say you will “for the sake of argument” grant that God exists, but then say that He doesn’t by claiming we couldn’t know who He was if He did. Sorry, that’s just a sloppy attempt at an argument. I can do nothing other than point out its sloppiness to you. You “concede” a point with the right hand while taking it all back with the left and then act as if you’ve actually said something.
In an envelope which we can’t examine is written a number between zero and infinity. I am, here, at the same time claiming a number exists and that we can’t know anything about it. Your response to me is what is sloppy.
Yes, I would.
Does this question have any significance whatsoever?
Yes, a lot of people would consider your answer morally unacceptable even if you were to be objectively morally right. The same people would probably be glad that you were not born into a culture where such behaviour was considered acceptable. You know, like Germany in the 1930′s and 40′s.
“Groan.” Hoki, I am not the one who believes the culture in which I live dictates morals, YOU ARE!
If I knew that my culture accepted and lived according to objective morality, I would support and keep in line with that culture. If that culture did not live according to known objective morality, I would not support or keep in line with it, you know, like, “Give me liberty or give me death” sort of thing.
Many have willingly laid down their lives for this objective morality that you refuse to admit exists.
Now, concerning your arguments about God . . . oh, where to start. Listen, I’m so sick of seeing this from atheists. They use the word God (usually antagonistically using a lower-case “g”), but deny any attributes to this “God” they speak of which must be true of God or else we aren’t talking God at all. That’s what vjtorley was kindly pointing out to you, and the basic reason for me weighing in on this thread at all, namely, materialist and atheists favorite method of argument, unashamed equivocation. They use a word but deny even the foundational meaning of that word outright.
In summary, you and other atheists haven’t ever even argued against the existence of God at all, but only a twisted atheist concept that is supposed to be God, but which never could have been to begin with.
In light of this I can accept your argument. Truly, their is no god . . . at least not the one you “believe” in.
It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. Atheists have to, and do believe in God . . ., they must in order to have something to throw their stones at.
Brent,
Arguing with Hoki may be futile, if someone doesn’t perceive morality, then argument cannot bring them to see it. They are usually more interested in how to do whatever they want and avoid getting caught, or how to get out of jail if they have been caught, because they are of the mindset that everyone who is keeping them suppressed by not letting them do whatever they want is suffering from a delusion. Put yourself in their shoes, imagine if you considered everyone around you who believed in real morality to be delusional.
Morality is always the premise, not the conclusion, and if someone doesn’t see it, then no argument can bring someone to it. It is like trying to argue with someone who doesn’t understand and cannot be got to just “see” first principles in logic. This is ground level zero, and is someone will not begin there, you can’t bring them there.