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	<title>Comments on: Choice Stupidity from Leroy</title>
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	<link>http://canofpowerup.wordpress.com/2008/04/18/choice-stupidity-from-leroy/</link>
	<description>Observations</description>
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		<title>By: The Root of David Klinghoffer&#8217;s Idiocy &#171; PowerUp</title>
		<link>http://canofpowerup.wordpress.com/2008/04/18/choice-stupidity-from-leroy/#comment-411</link>
		<dc:creator>The Root of David Klinghoffer&#8217;s Idiocy &#171; PowerUp</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Apr 2008 23:03:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://canofpowerup.wordpress.com/?p=145#comment-411</guid>
		<description>[...] not because such certainty is compelled by objective reasoning. Like his IDeological compadre Leroy, he simply assumes everyone else must do the [...]</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>[...] not because such certainty is compelled by objective reasoning. Like his IDeological compadre Leroy, he simply assumes everyone else must do the [...]</p>
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		<title>By: Blake Stacey</title>
		<link>http://canofpowerup.wordpress.com/2008/04/18/choice-stupidity-from-leroy/#comment-401</link>
		<dc:creator>Blake Stacey</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sat, 19 Apr 2008 18:17:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://canofpowerup.wordpress.com/?p=145#comment-401</guid>
		<description>In the first sentence you quote, Dembski uses the intriguing verbal device known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003312.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;linguification&lt;/a&gt;, the peculiar kind of exaggeration when a claim about the world is turned into an assertion about language, an assertion which is often transparently false. This is what happens when someone writes, &quot;You can&#039;t say &lt;i&gt;bisexual&lt;/i&gt; without following it with &lt;i&gt;chic,&lt;/i&gt;&quot; or, alternatively, &quot;Those Volvo-driving, latte-sipping liberals can&#039;t even spell &lt;i&gt;family values.&lt;/i&gt;&quot; There may be a real phenomenon at work:  for example, mainstream media attitudes towards different sexual orientations have indeed been changing over the past couple decades.  However, this underlying claim, which may have some truth to it, is transmuted into one which is flamboyantly false.

Scientists have no trouble uttering the names &lt;i&gt;Darwin&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;Hitler&lt;/i&gt; in the same breath.  Ask PZ Myers or Richard Dawkins to read the following sentence aloud:

&lt;i&gt;We cannot legitimately blame Darwin&#039;s science for Hitler&#039;s madness.&lt;/i&gt;

I doubt they&#039;d choke on their own tongues.  Or, consider this passage from page 260 of Carl Sagan&#039;s &lt;i&gt;The Demon-Haunted World.&lt;/i&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;Yes, the Darwinian insight can be turned upside down and grotesquely misused:  Voracious robber barons may explain their cutthroat practices by an appeal to Social Darwinism; Nazis and other racists may call on &quot;survival of the fittest&quot; to justify genocide.  But Darwin did not make John D. Rockefeller or Adolf Hitler.  Greed, the Industrial Revolution, the free enterprise system, and corruption of government by the monied are adequate to explain nineteenth-century capitalism.  Ethnocentrism, xenophobia, social hierarchies, the long history of anti-Semitism in Germany, the Versailles Treaty, German child-rearing practices, inflation, and the Depression seem adequate to explain Hitler&#039;s rise to power.  Very likely these or similar events would have transpired with or without Darwin.&lt;/blockquote&gt;

Gee, I didn&#039;t have very much trouble copying that down or reading it aloud just now.

I mention this because it seems symptomatic of Dembski&#039;s intellectual laziness and rhetorical sleaze factor.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In the first sentence you quote, Dembski uses the intriguing verbal device known as <a href="http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003312.html" rel="nofollow">linguification</a>, the peculiar kind of exaggeration when a claim about the world is turned into an assertion about language, an assertion which is often transparently false. This is what happens when someone writes, &#8220;You can&#8217;t say <i>bisexual</i> without following it with <i>chic,</i>&#8221; or, alternatively, &#8220;Those Volvo-driving, latte-sipping liberals can&#8217;t even spell <i>family values.</i>&#8221; There may be a real phenomenon at work:  for example, mainstream media attitudes towards different sexual orientations have indeed been changing over the past couple decades.  However, this underlying claim, which may have some truth to it, is transmuted into one which is flamboyantly false.</p>
<p>Scientists have no trouble uttering the names <i>Darwin</i> and <i>Hitler</i> in the same breath.  Ask PZ Myers or Richard Dawkins to read the following sentence aloud:</p>
<p><i>We cannot legitimately blame Darwin&#8217;s science for Hitler&#8217;s madness.</i></p>
<p>I doubt they&#8217;d choke on their own tongues.  Or, consider this passage from page 260 of Carl Sagan&#8217;s <i>The Demon-Haunted World.</i></p>
<blockquote><p>Yes, the Darwinian insight can be turned upside down and grotesquely misused:  Voracious robber barons may explain their cutthroat practices by an appeal to Social Darwinism; Nazis and other racists may call on &#8220;survival of the fittest&#8221; to justify genocide.  But Darwin did not make John D. Rockefeller or Adolf Hitler.  Greed, the Industrial Revolution, the free enterprise system, and corruption of government by the monied are adequate to explain nineteenth-century capitalism.  Ethnocentrism, xenophobia, social hierarchies, the long history of anti-Semitism in Germany, the Versailles Treaty, German child-rearing practices, inflation, and the Depression seem adequate to explain Hitler&#8217;s rise to power.  Very likely these or similar events would have transpired with or without Darwin.</p></blockquote>
<p>Gee, I didn&#8217;t have very much trouble copying that down or reading it aloud just now.</p>
<p>I mention this because it seems symptomatic of Dembski&#8217;s intellectual laziness and rhetorical sleaze factor.</p>
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		<title>By: ERV</title>
		<link>http://canofpowerup.wordpress.com/2008/04/18/choice-stupidity-from-leroy/#comment-399</link>
		<dc:creator>ERV</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sat, 19 Apr 2008 01:38:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://canofpowerup.wordpress.com/?p=145#comment-399</guid>
		<description>I wish the ADL would smack these fuckers down.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I wish the ADL would smack these fuckers down.</p>
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