ID Website Targeted to Disrupt Conference in Colorado

_{Clive Hayden

October 28, 2009

Darwinism, Education, Intelligent Design}

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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.

Comments

Morals are the natural law. The natural law is a standard of behaviour that applies to everyone at all times.
Says who? I would suggest that "Thou shalt not kill" is a moral statement, and yet in many countries - even democratic countries - the death penalty is legal and is used. More generally, I think you would find it difficult to find many moral statements that fulfil the "natural law" requirement: there will be cultures where they are not considered moral, or holy books that present the behaviour as normal/good. How could you claim universiality then?Heinrich_{October 30, 2009
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sorry that should read "since Euthyphro"Mark Frank_{October 30, 2009
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I agree with Lewis. In every culture courage is admired and cowardice is disrespected, and I believe serious thinkers in every religion share much. Still I think it needs to be pointed out that reason is not enough. It was revelation that inspired the culture from which so much good has sprung. There are cultures where getting away with lying and thievery are virtues, where violence and suicide bombing are promoted, where child sacrifice appeases the gods, where abortion is a sacrament, where envy is encouraged. And on another level there are societies where the deceased must be eaten by the next of kin, societies where witchcraft rules. Yes, I know, these things are perversions of Lewis’s “tao”—but when the West abandoned its book of divine revelation everything became possible and evil proliferated as never before. The fullness of natural law is as difficult to achieve by pure reason as are the discoveries of mathematics. “For wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leads to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat.” I’m a Platonist of Peircean bent—there are immutable principles of logic, of esthetics, and of ethics (natural law)—and I even would go so far as to suggest that at some level these have an existence independent of God—else God could have had his cake and eaten it too—there would be no need for a theodicy to get a God who transcends reality off the hook. There are some, such as Einstein, who are Platonists but not theists (though I’ve never met a Darwinist who would take such a stance). But in the end Platonism alone cannot defend its ethics, for why does it matter if there is no God and no ultimate purpose and no world to come?Rude_{October 30, 2009
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#37 Cable I seem to have this discussion about every three months. It pretty much always ends up the same way. My opponent raises an example such as the one you raise about a friend lying. I point out, as philosophers have done since Euthrmyo, that whatever "objective" standard you invoke the friend can still say "why should I care about the standard". Eventually my opponent ends up using some form words which I find incomprehensible such as "God is goodness". I guess there is little point in pursuing it. The interesting thing is that despite this we would almost certainly make the same broad moral decisions (although clearly with important differences) and recognise the same factors as being relevant.Mark Frank_{October 30, 2009
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Hoki,
For those who claim that you or anyone else is following an objective moral code, please justify your reasoning. It is all fine and dandy claiming that the “other” guys don’t have objective moral, but if you can’t justify having them yourselves, then the whole discussion is just a red herring.
"I know that some people say the idea of a Law of Nature or decent behaviour known to all men is unsound, because different civilisations and different ages have had quite different moralities. But this is not true. There have been differences between their moralities, but these have never amounted to anything like a total difference. If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own. Some of the evidence for this I have put together in the appendix of another book called The Abolition of Man; but for our present purpose I need only ask the reader to think what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five. Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to-whether it was only your own family, or your fellow countrymen, or everyone. But they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked. But the most remarkable thing is this. Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining "It's not fair" before you can say Jack Robinson. A nation may say treaties do not matter, but then, next minute, they spoil their case by saying that the particular treaty they want to break was an unfair one. But if treaties do not matter, and if there is no such thing as Right and Wrong- in other words, if there is no Law of Nature-what is the difference between a fair treaty and an unfair one? Have they not let the cat out of the bag and shown that, whatever they say, they really know the Law of Nature just like anyone else? It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong." C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity http://lib.ru/LEWISCL/mere_engl.txtClive Hayden_{October 30, 2009
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Don't have time to read all what's said above, but will risk weighing in anyway even though y'all may already have said it. There are only two approaches to morality: Traditional morality and utilitarian morality. Traditional morality begins with a moral code made known before the fact and people are judged for infractions of that code. Neither the judge (be he God or man) nor the sinner is to finagle the code after the fact. Utilitarian "the end justifies the means" morality is just the opposite. Socialist elites who know what is best for us make up the rules as they go along. They know what kind of world they want and, because there are no absolutes, are generally willing to do whatever it takes to get us there---witness the tens of millions dead at the hands of socialists during the 20th century. My sense is that justice today means the judge asking, "How does that make me feel?" Never---no never!---what actually was the intent of the Constitution. For a wonderful read I suggest Thomas Sowell's The Quest for Cosmic Justice (Free Press, 1999).Rude_{October 30, 2009
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Morality may be perplexing question for evolution, but objective morality is strictly a religious question. After all, if someone claims to have a fixed source for their morality, they are almost certainly talking about God. It's a religious issue because, at its core, the belief is that it is right to do what God says is right, and that understanding varies by religion. When we tout the superiority of objective morality, are we talking about yours or mine? Or do we go into that squishy gray area where everyone is right, even if we all disagree? I don't see that convincing anyone. Don't get me wrong - I believe in objective morality. But the underlying message is, my religion is right, accept it. (If it's not, then what is it?) It's a purely religious endeavor.ScottAndrews_{October 30, 2009
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#33 Mark Frank I think if you read what I wrote you will find examples of evidence for natural law. But really I think if you examine your conscience - however flawed they may be - you will know there is such a think. But lets assume you don't. I don't actually think it is really the point, I was relating my intuition on where morality flows from. To the point though suppose you form a view that you should not lie for some interesting reason. Lets call that a moral. Lets say a friend lies to you. You could say to him: 1. You violated my trust. 2. You caused me a great deal of trouble. 3. You shouldn't lie because of x an y. To which he responds, "So what why should I care? None of that matters to me." At this point you have no recourse. You can appeal to no authority. There is simply no fixed standard that simply is intrinsically right. You have no reasonable basis to judge him as doing something wrong. He simply did it based on applying logic to the premises he chose. But if there is fixed standard you can actually say he is wrong to lie, that lying is never acceptable, etc. Now if you are right and there is no natural law there can be no right or wrong, good or bad actions that are objectively so. You can only use the coercive power of the government to enforce your preferences regarding morals. One last example. In Star Treck Mr. Spock says, "Logic dictates the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." Unfortunately logic does no such thing. Logic only operates on premises and he has merely stated his moral which could be:- a) objective meaning premise true and an absolute or b) subjective and really just a preference perhaps based on other preferences So yes, atheists can have personal morals but they can never be objective or expect other people to go along with them.Cable_{October 30, 2009
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Brent, if someone broke in to your house and performed a violent crime against you and your family, would you NOT try to stop it if you KNEW (with 100% certainty) that the perpetrator was acting objectively morally.Hoki_{October 30, 2009
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#34 Moral = right = good Yes you can define each of these in terms of each other. But get me out of that circle of definitions. Philosophers have been tangling with this for millenia. You appear to be clear about the answer and can put Aristotle/Aquinas/Hume/Kant straight? #35 Brent - I will try to stop you because you are performing a violent crime. I will not work out or use my conscience to detect whether it has the attribute "wrong" before I act. After all, I might work it out wrong, or my conscience might be faulty and I really don't want you inflicting pain on anyone especially my family.Mark Frank_{October 30, 2009
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Oh! Precious! I see you call "right" an "invisible attribute". So, when I go into your home and perform a violent crime against your family and you try to stop me because it isn't "right", I'll just simply inform you that "right" is an invisible attribute and you'll then chill and be cool with it . . . right?Brent_{October 30, 2009
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Mark #28, No problem. Every definition for "moral" or "morality" will not go far without this very significant word. That word is "right". "Right" has not to do with preferences, but absolutes. You should have looked it up yourself if you weren't sure :)Brent_{October 30, 2009
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Cable #31 You give two examples where someone might instinctively act morally rather than selfishly. But the examples demonstrate nothing about where that instinct comes from. Hume, and many others including me would argue that those instincts are part of human nature which has evolved. It doesn't matter how many examples you produce. You haven't begun to address the question of where the instinct to act morally comes from. Furthermore the presence of an objective morality doesn't help. Whatever this objective morality should be - you still have to answer the question why the child should instinctively conform to it. Why not go straight from the facts of the case "this man is drowning" to the action "I want to save him". What does it add to put an invisible attribute "right" between facts and action? #32 You make these assertions about natural law but you produce no arguments to demonstrate that such a thing exists. There are,, of course, many other theories of ethics which are not based on natural law. So surely you need to produce some argument?Mark Frank_{October 30, 2009
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I will again restate my question: For those who claim that you or anyone else is following an objective moral code, please justify your reasoning. It is all fine and dandy claiming that the "other" guys don't have objective moral, but if you can't justify having them yourselves, then the whole discussion is just a red herring. Cable tried, but failed, to bring forth some sort of justification (and no Cable, claiming that we can tell morality from non-morality doesn't say anything about morals being objective).Hoki_{October 30, 2009
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#MarkFrank It is often argued that if you do not believe in an objective morality then to talk of good and evil is meaningless – you might as well do anything. Morals are the natural law. The natural law is a standard of behaviour that applies to everyone at all times. It is only different to gravity in the sense we can break the natural law. We have this freedom. Short of the natural law all behaviour is justifiable and reasonable because it relies solely on one's own personal reference. Now that may be fine to you, but if that is the case you cannot tell someone 'murder' is wrong or "You should be fair" even if you personally have wonderful reasons for your assessment the other person may legitimately not care what you think.Cable_{October 30, 2009
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Mark Frank Without morality the only one can to get someone to change a behaviour that they may actually prefer, find more interesting or any other criteria is to appeal the rightness of changing their behaviour or if you like is to use coercive power. To use CS Lewis examples. 1. One child is sitting in a chair and gets up to go to the bathroom. He comes back and the other has taken his chair. He instinctively appeals to an absolute. "I was sitting in that chair." The sitting in the chair does not say, "Who cares" but rather appeals to another absolute, "If you have to get up to go to the bathroom you lose rights to the chair". The rules of the game so to speak. Now no one need have even told either the rules about chair sharing. It is instinctive that there is a universal truth or authority to appeal to. A man is crossing a bridge in a story night. He sees someone who has fallen into the river and is stuck calling for help and seems likely to drown. The man can put his life at risk i.e. follow self preservation or jump in and try and help for the herd community instinct. The former seemingly must be stronger, yet his sense of morality tells him that trying to help is the right (moral) thing to do. This appears to be evidence for a universal morality acting on his conscience.Cable_{October 30, 2009
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#21 Hoki Good question. Thought about it for a little while. Basically true morality is of course independent of the individual or the group. It forms part of reality in the same way the colour red forms parts of reality in that it can be described as a frequency range of light. Now we have the ability to recognise and describe at least some parts reality e.g. if we have working vision and are not colour blind we can recognise the colour red, we can observe and recognise this part of reality. We can therefore distinguish between the colour red and green easily. In the same way we can determine what is moral and what is not moral. But now sometimes it is hard to tell if something is red or not e.g. there may be disagrement amongst ourselves over whether a colour is closer to red or pink - assuming we have defined pink and red clearly - because our sense or perception of this aspect of reality is not perfect. We may also have difficulty determining whether something is moral or not or what is the actual moral way to behave. So everyone will know murder is wrong, but in many cases it is subtle and we may not be able to or we may get it wrong. But that does not mean we are not able to recognise morals objectively it just means we can't do it perfectly.Cable_{October 30, 2009
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#24 Hoki No I think things that pass or morals change but the core real morals never change. Cowardice is never seen as a good thing. It may be accepted but bravery - putting oneself in harms way for the benefit of others - is always moral.Cable_{October 30, 2009
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To believe in God or not is a subjective decision. Therefore, a believer can never rightfully claim to have access to an objective source of morality. It's really as simple as that. Even if an objective morality exists, there is no objective way to verify its existence, let alone its specific properties. QED I hope we can now let this discussion rest for a while.Monastyrski_{October 30, 2009
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#27 Brent stop dragging a well defined and perfectly good word through atheistic mud. If it is well-defined then you should have no problem providing that definition.Mark Frank_{October 30, 2009
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Mark Frank, You've used a fairly good amount of words in your previous post to say absolutely nothing at all. Again, equivocation! Morality divorced from objectivity cannot be morality at all. If you want to make an argument that there is something better than morality to guide our choices, please do so. But stop dragging a well defined and perfectly good word through atheistic mud. Thank You!Brent_{October 30, 2009
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#22 Cable I have not made my point clear. I will try again. I am pointing out some similarities between "good" and "interesting" but of course there are important differences. It is often argued that if you do not believe in an objective morality then to talk of good and evil is meaningless - you might as well do anything. However, the attribute of being interesting is clearly not an objective property of an object. But in certain contexts (he museum acquiring an expensive item) it becomes a very significant decision as to whether something is interesting which has to be settled in much the same way as a debate over some objective attribute such as when it was made. Evidence is produced ("look how much more varied this item is") and logic is used ("if you found A interesting then you have to find B interesting which is similar in all respects"). Participants need to justify why they think one exhibit is more interesting than another and the decision will affect the community as a whole. Something similar happens when we talk of good and evil - only it is more pervasive - decisions about moral goodness and badness always have implications for the wider community. When I argue that something is good I produce evidence ("look how much happier it makes the children") and logic ("if you think that A is good then you must accept that B is good"). If as a result you agree that something is good we have both committed to promoting that thing.Mark Frank_{October 30, 2009
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Similarities in morals over time are circumstantial evidence for the existence of God, not scientific. And yet such moral standards are incomprehensible from an evolutionary standpoint. My next door neighbor evolved a desire to lie, steal, and murder. My other neighbor evolved a conscience which strongly compels him never to lie, steal, or murder, and to punish those who do. For the sake of argument, my father lied, stole, and murdered, but I choose not to. Which of these contradictory behaviors does evolution predict? Let me guess - it predicts everything it sees.ScottAndrews_{October 29, 2009
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Sorry Cable, I see that you tried to answer my question in your second paragraph. Your answer is far from satisfying, however. Morals do change in time and place. And even if they didn't, you're still out of luck. The mere fact that people have similar moral codes on it's own doesn't support any notion of the existence of any deity. To create such a link, surely, you have to invent the assumption that a god has a desire for some sort of moral code (and that's even assuming that there is a god in the first instance). How would you justify that assumption?Hoki_{October 29, 2009
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#20 Cable: "This is why the fact that all peoples at all times have had remarkably similar morals is strong evidence for a creator who provides the reference for what is right and what is wrong or what is good and what is bad and has infused this knowledge into us." Sounds like an unfalsifiable hypothesis right there, if you're talking about a generic deity, but if you bring the God of Bible into it... Why were the morals in the Old Testament so different so that of today? Surely the same God would "infuse" the same morals into each person? Or do God's moral values change over time? Or do they just change over time in society without need for a deity to command them?naontiotami_{October 29, 2009
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#15 Mark Frank Just because there is no objective property underlying a word does not mean that attributing it is trivial or without foundation. Morality and which exhibit to choose are different things completely. When one makes a moral assessment one considers it binding on others or it is not morality. There is no such thing as personal morality. The argument is not about what is interesting or not, which preference is better, it is about can one claim another's actions are wrong or can only only say their conduct wasn't to their liking.Cable_{October 29, 2009
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Cable #20 You failed to answer my question. To paraphrase: How can anyone justify the claim that they themselves or anyone else has objective morals?Hoki_{October 29, 2009
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#19 Hoki Its not that they can't have morals or even believe that their morals are objective i.e. its that the they have not basis for it according to their belief. What objective basis could a materialist come up to show lying is wrong. It always just ends up being an opinion. This is why the fact that all peoples at all times have had remarkably similar morals is strong evidence for a creator who provides the reference for what is right and what is wrong or what is good and what is bad and has infused this knowledge into us. Put another way just as relativity requires a reference frame or all measurements are equally valid so morality requires a reference or all morality is equally valid which really just means there is no such thing as morality.Cable_{October 29, 2009
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Could the people who claim that atheists can't have any objective morals explain why they think that they themselves (or anyone else, for that matter) have them?Hoki_{October 29, 2009
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Wow! I’ve achieved a happy medium that could allow criticism or applause from both friend and foe. Awesome!
Congratulations! Don't stand in the middle too long, both sides are re-arming with further brickbats, and you're an easy target now.Heinrich_{October 29, 2009
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