After his recent rampage against the Baylor administration, Bill Dembski now claims to be offering an apology to Baylor…only not really. I don’t think he knows what ‘apology’ means — a statement loaded with reservations like “I mean in no way to mitigate the gravity of Baylor’s wrong in censoring the research of Robert Marks and his Evolutionary Informatics Lab” and “I hurt my family and lost about three weeks of productive work by being consumed with anger about the injustice against Robert Marks” is not an apology — it’s an opportunity to reiterate your grievances. And closing with the injunction to “leave justice in the hands of a God” is just a standard Christian passive-aggressive threat.
This wasn’t an apology. It was an opportunity for Dembski to flush several embarrassing posts down the UD Memory Hole™.
Awwwww PZ,doesn’t Dembski’s heartfelt apology just make you want to forgive him?
Tell you what, let’s pretend it’s sincere and be nice to him.
Second thoughts, let’s not and say we did.
Third thoughts, let’s not and refuse to be fooled by his obvious attempt at face saving/self protection from a legal batterage.
Louis
ERV has a great partial transcript of Dembski’s Oklahoma appearance. In the Q&A session, Dembski compares ID to the belief that there are gremlins bowling in your attic.
Hmmm. Non-apology, film at 11.
How big is his head, really? As if the pretend apologies weren’t bad enough, the last part reeks of “nice school, it’d be a shame if my metaphysical bully would, you know, do something to it”.
“Let’s get on with our work and leave justice in the hands of a God who has reason to find fault with all of us and yet is merciful.”
I guess Dembski shares this view with all crooks, murderers and jailable miscreants.
yawn.
Man that was pitiful. I’d be more impressed if he’d apologize for that damn sweater.
“Let’s get on with our work and leave justice in the hands of a God…”
… theists occasionally ask me what sort of thing would convince me their god exists.
In response: if, following Dembski’s posting the above, an enormous Monty Pythonesque foot had descended from the heavens and squashed him flat, I think I’d count that as evidence.
(Yes, yes, quibble if you like it doesn’t seem properly ‘merciful’. But sure it is. Merciful to the rest of us, anyway.)
I think those wacky, zany guys over at AtBC call that a “Dembski notpology.” It’s not his first, I gather.
I’m really sorry my ex-girlfriend is such a bitch.
There, I feel better already.
Gotta thank him for his link to the Gross article, though.
Also gotta wonder what in that article qualifies as “low polemic” comparable to, say, the stuff Dembski is apologizing for. Gross merely called Dembski a crank and quoted him contradicting himself. And called his arguments “far fancier” than mere “nonsense”. It seems to me Dembski could get a book blurb out of that if he worked hard enough.
I agree with PZ and Louis – It’s a Notpology
Here’s why:
1. The Notpology could just be “Street Theater” – he’s played that card a couple of times.
2. Dembski is a weasel after all, and probably always will be. (See ERV’s post about Dembksi making a young student cry at his Omaha debacle). Typical weasel -bully behavior
3. The Notpology is only because someone forced him to do it IMO.
4. He is not apologizing for being an idiot, only saying that he is sorry that he got caught. This time.
5. He will continue to push his worldview on our kids and a credulous public, and until he apologizes for all his past bs, then too effing bad, I am not buying it.
6. He is still reponsible for DaveScot, and I haven’t seen any plugs pulled, or reins pulled in on him.
7. I want him to post about how totally crazy Denyse O’Leary, Wells, Luskin, Moon, jehu, bornagain77 and other assorted loons on UD are.
I love this:
(1) posting a parody letter attributed to Baylor President Lilley;
or
(1) getting caught attributing a fabricated letter to Lilley and then throwing up some lame attempt at a disclaimer when it becomes obvious that the troops are buying it as real.
You’ll enjoy this. Caveman takes on Sherri Shepherd http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx9vW6lHDqY
WmD writes: “Nonetheless, on this blog I went too far in trying to hold up the Baylor administration’s actions to the light of day. I let it get personal and went over the edge in three things: (1) posting a parody letter attributed to Baylor President Lilley; (2) posting contact information for the Baylor Board of Regents in an effort to apply pressure to the Baylor administration; (3) posting an exchange between Peter Irons and John Lilley largely for the purpose of embarassing both.”
I’m just wondering how many contributors to his blog were banned for stating that he “went over the edge” on the three threads – which so conveniently are pulled now?
Oy.
William,
I’m truly, deeply sorry that you’re such an insufferable jerk.
I didn’t see the closing line “Let’s get on with our work and leave justice in the hands of a God who has reason to find fault with all of us and yet is merciful.” as a threat so much as an escape, more or less interpreted as “Don’t be all down on me, let God do it.” Postponing all punishments until the afterlife makes life so much better today.
Dembski:
Oh, look! Maybe he’s going to do some research! Or at least maybe he’s going to come up with a testable hypothesis!
Or maybe not.
Efogoto – I interpret the Demsbki last paragraph to read:
“Jesus Christ am I lucky to still have a job, but Oh God please kick their buttocks for me and go all Old Testament on them! Let there be mercy for me, and wrath of God for them!”
It’s another notpology from Dembski.
You know, I never used to understand all the hatred for Comics Sans MS. It seemed irrational.
But seeing it again, and again, and again, and again at Pharyngula lately – please, for the love of Jebus, stop! I cannot read it. Not that I want to read whatever it is up there. I just can’t. I am typing with one hand, with the other clamped to my right eyeball to stop the involuntary twitching.
Dr. Dr. Dembski is currently employed. Southwest Theological Seminary or something like that. They have a reputation, too.
How well does Dr. Dr.’s actions reflect on his current employers? Don’t you think that Southwest Theological would be a little concerned about having such a public, vendictive jackass on their staff?
This is pure speculation on my part but I could easily imagine Southwest Theological telling Dembski to STFU or find another job.
I’m just wondering how many contributors to his blog were banned for stating that he “went over the edge” on the three threads – which so conveniently are pulled now?
Ask and ye shall receive.
Courtesy of the amazing Reciprocating Bill.
Sorry about the eye-twitching. It’s part of the aversion therapy. My goal is to trigger involuntary emesis in everyone hearing the words of a creationist.
No fair – I still haven’t seen that article of clothing which people have been mocking for days in various threads.
What a letdown. When I saw the title to this, I thought he’d finally come to his senses and apologized for all the lying, dissembling, and disingenuity over the years as a de facto apologetic for religion. Or even for his mere existence.
Bummer.
No fair – I still haven’t seen that article of clothing which people have been mocking for days in various threads.
That would be this one.
…and lost about three weeks of productive work…
Show!
Whew, close call. I thought Demski was having an attack of the Normals or something.
This guy is so lame, that if he didn’t exist, evolutionary biologists would have to evolve him just to have a representive foil to skewer once in a while.
Calling on god to rain down lightening bolts on Baylor and turn the admin. into pillars of salt was a nice touch. But I do think he could have been a little more Old Testament wild eyed prophety about it.
My goal is to trigger involuntary emesis in everyone hearing the words of a creationist Oy! What a picture.
Talking to God on the Big White Telephone: A Play in One Act
Two young men in suits dismount from their bicycles and approach a door…Knock knock.
Door opens.
Young man #1:
“Hello, have you heard the Good News about …”
Home owner peering round door:“Wha….BLEUCGCHCHHCCCHHHHHH…cough…spit…BLUEUUCHHGH….”
Young man #1 (now dripping vomit): “JESUS CHRIST!”
Homeowner: “Sorry, I just couldn’t help that.” Turning to Young man #2 “Now what were you saying?”
“…and lost about three weeks of productive work…”
Got to admit, it’s a little bit cleverer than the usual “the dog ate it” excuse. But not that much, after all.
I notice that comments ‘are closed’ too. I wonder what they would have said… and who they would have disappointed?
Of course it wasn’t an apology!
Just as there is no crying in baseball, there are no apologies in religion. Religion, by definition, is never wrong in the eyes of the believer. Apologies are for the other guys… you know, the (in hushed tones) sinners.
OEJ
You people…I’m really uncomfortable with all the mocking of Bill’s sweater. What did it ever do to you? Also, I’m a little self-conscious about my lack of fashion sense — I have to ask my wife to tell me what to wear before I go out, or I’m sure I’d be committing some ghastly fashion faux pas.
You mean that it’s better than an apology, it’s a stark revelation that Dembski’s a camel’s ass. Not a new revelation, of course, but the sort that slowly makes a few still-sentient IDists like Heddle (cosmo-ID) come to realize what an appalling wreck ID really is.
Keep up the notpologies, Dembski. If you had any decency you might be able to provoke some sympathy now and then. As it is, you reveal yourself to be the alternately anal retentive to anal expulsive jackass that is just the sort who would be inclined to shit on everything good, simply because you’re incapable of a single meaningful accomplishment.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Good God, so that’s why he went into mathematics, he really can’t think in verbal terms at all coherently. I guess that explains why he can’t recognize the need to ground his numbers in any evidence.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
You people…I’m really uncomfortable with all the mocking of Bill’s sweater. What did it ever do to you? Also, I’m a little self-conscious about my lack of fashion sense — I have to ask my wife to tell me what to wear before I go out, or I’m sure I’d be committing some ghastly fashion faux pas.
I’m not mocking the sweater as a fashion faux pas, I’m concerned that it is the actual “Big Tent” that they keep talking about.
bah. There I go screwing up a blockquote tag again.
Nothing wrong with that sweater. I got one just like it.
I don’t mind the sweater nearly as much as what’s in it.
Well, yah, but doesn’t Bill have a wife? What are you saying, that she’s passively sabotaging Dembski because he is no doubt an impossibly repressed jerkwad to her? Not that I blame her, but it has to be deliberate, since very few straight guys have any kind of fashion sense, and straight women know this (gay women too, no doubt, but what do they care?).
If he’s going to channel David Byrne, he ought to at least get some better music. I guess the lyrics come out all right by being Byrnes medium, you know, big words twisted into a pseudo-intellectual poetry (witty in the early Talking Heads), but that godawful deadpan pseudo-religious (hey, I’m not apologizing for religion, but real theologians tend not to sound so stupid) drone of Dembski’s almost makes it sound like he believes it.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Dembski wrote: “I hurt my family and lost about three weeks of productive work by being consumed with anger about the injustice against Robert Marks.”
Maybe he needs to ask Jebus for a little help with his anger? After all Dembski does live in Waco, does he not?
BTW, has anybody ever seen any productive work come out of Dembski?
His “losing” three weeks of his “work” alone makes that apology fake. Let’s hope that Van Daniken’s work doesn’t suffer from any similar impositions, or what will become of science, philosophy, and mathematics?
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
J-dog: The Dembski smack-down by students that ERV is reporting was at the University of OKLAHOMA, not Omaha – just to keep the record straight.
But she’s not a Trophy Wife™ like PZ’s. We all know that Trophy Wives™ have wicked fashion sense — how else would PZ and his spouse look so good in their convertible Ferrari?
Three weeks of his work? Have some sympathy, people: that’s an awful lot of balloon animals!
I’m really uncomfortable with all the mocking of Bill’s sweater. What did it ever do to you?
Well… there are the nightmares.
SHRINK: Tell me again.
ME: It was the same again. I wake up, I’m wearing this strange grey thing with buttons and faux armbands.
SHRINK: Interesting.
ME: … I find can’t get it off. And it’s really scratchy. When I try to pull it over my head, it’s as though it just goes on forever, and I get really claustrophobic… Inside, it smells of failure, poorly reviewed work, cigarettes, bad restaurants that are open all night, cheap gin, rejected overtures to a southern baptist university…
SHRINK: But what would you want from a southern baptist university?
ME: I have no idea. You’re the shrink. You tell me.
SHRINK: I see. Go on.
ME: Sure. So I go downstairs, my wife takes one look, and sadly starts packing a suitcase. Doesn’t say anything. Just looks at me, goes to the closet, pulls out the suitcase, grimly opens it, starts putting all her clothes in it… Starts with her lingerie, and the look on her face is like: ‘well, you’re never seeing any of this again…’
SHRINK: Go on.
ME: I open the door, thinking maybe I’m going to go out to the street, find someone who knows something about removing geeky grey sweaters. The woman who delivers the mail is just coming up the walk, she guffaws out loud… But the old man across the street who rakes his leaves in those doublewide khaki shorts things that show off his skeletal, knobby knees is giving me a thumbs up…
SHRINK: Tell me more.
ME: I’m walking along the street and small children are asking their moms those really embarrassing questions kids ask their moms. ‘Mommy… what’s that man wearing?’ ‘Mommy, is he a crazy person?’ ‘Mommy is he Bill Dembski?’
SHRINK: I see.
ME: I stop at a coffee shop because all the kids are scaring me. The pretty young thing behind the cash register takes one look, puts her hand over her mouth, stifling a laugh… Doc… I dunno…
SHRINK: Please. Go on.
ME: I ask her for a coffee. She says my request doesn’t meet the criteria of her filter. ‘What filter?’ I demand. ‘I just want a cup of coffee…’
SHRINK: So you are… hostile? Do you think the sweater represents self-hatred?
ME: Doc, you should see this thing. Maybe. Maybe yeah. Anyway, then the girl behind the counter says I can’t have a cup of coffee until I tell her exactly how they make the coffee. Every step. The names of everyone involved. Where the beans came from…
SHRINK: You’re getting too upset. Are you sure you should go on? Maybe you should stop a few minutes…
ME: I tell her I don’t know. Then she says she has detected designs in my request with her filter. She’s calling the police… On me and my sweater… My horrible, evil sweater… I wake up there, sweating… sweating and smelling faintly of a cotton-polyester blend…
From UD lost about three weeks of productive work by being consumed with anger about the injustice against Robert Marks.
I hurt my family and
Crap, I guess I’ll have to wait another three weeks for a testable ID theory, or Bill’s next peer-reviewed paper, or a paper with positive support for ID, or for a detailed explanation of complex information, or [….] another flash animation with farting noises. I’m depressed now.
“Without moralizing, I want to suggest a lesson in all this.”
And then he goes on to moralize. Dumbski didn’t learn a damn thing.
A Molly for AJ Milne!
#44 – “Three weeks of his work? Have some sympathy, people: that’s an awful lot of balloon animals!”
LMAO!
Good one, Moggie!
Is it me or is Dembski working on a proto-mullet in that picture?
Hmmm, isn’t three weeks of pseudoscientific nonsense equal to about 10 minutes of normal work? Or can it go negative?
3 weeks of pseudoscience = negative 30 minutes real time.
I’d say the world came out ahead on that one.
Three weeks of work?
It takes a week to write each of the words ‘God’ , ‘did’ , ‘it’?
@ #25
Yes, that’s definitely a bad cardigan day. Or perhaps his mother (or equivalent care- and woolly giver) was just leaving him room to grow. It could be that those sorts of cardigans are irreducibly sized rather than irreducibly complex – prone to stretching instead of shrinkage.
I rest assured that in those three weeks while Dembski was pulling his hair (singular) out and waking up his family with incessant tossing and turning, I have conducted more science than the entire ID movement. And one week was spent sick/traveling. :)
PZ, you have an excuse – a real job. If you want to experiment, I suggest stitching together the rotting carcasses of your fallen foes and wearing that to debates.
Hilarious!
I like how someone in the “call the regents at home” post implied that they made crank calls, and it made it through Dembski’s Nixplanatory filter. Now all gone, though.
Ye gods. It’s the bastard offspring of a cardigan and a ministerial robe.
A Molly for AJ Milne!
Thanks Blake. I felt briefly sorta guilty about it, just after I wrote it… Like for about a half a second. And then I got over that.
Is it just me, or is Dembski complaining about loss of productive weeks not passing the explanatory filter …, um, smell test?
Speaking of smelly stuff, that sweater is wearing Dembski rather than he’s wearing it. Seems nature didn’t give him any more fashion sense than any other sense.
AJ Milne:
Molly stuff!
Perhaps precluding previous perceptions pertaining psychoanalysts perversely promulgating “p-words”.
In short, and it wouldn’t add to the material, but I miss the part there it is really a “pshrink”, making a diagnose with a predilection for long words with prefixes and all. Or at least pretentiously pretending to make it. I love that part…
Is it just me, or is Dembski complaining about loss of productive weeks not passing the explanatory filter …, um, smell test?
Speaking of smelly stuff, that sweater is wearing Dembski rather than he’s wearing it. Seems nature didn’t give him any more fashion sense than any other sense.
AJ Milne:
Molly stuff!
Perhaps precluding previous perceptions pertaining psychoanalysts perversely promulgating “p-words”.
In short, and it wouldn’t add to the material, but I miss the part there it is really a “pshrink”, making a diagnose with a predilection for long words with prefixes and all. Or at least pretentiously pretending to make it. I love that part…
“Is it me or is Dembski working on a proto-mullet in that picture?”
Well, the inside of his head has already reverted back to the Dark Ages, maybe now it’s turn for the outside of his head… Maybe a few months from now we’ll have the pleasure of watching him debate in a knight’s helmet and a coat of mail.
Wouldn’t the opposite of an apology be a pology?
“…and lost about three weeks of productive work…”
This is less problematic than Uri Geller being unable to bend spoons for 3 weeks.
◊ Nice one, AJ. :-D
◊ Is that the slickest quip of the day, or is there an amoeba in my brain?
◊ The opposite of an apology is an aapology.
tsg, a-pologists claim that they simply lack pologies, but good and moral people know that they actively practice anti-pologism. In their hearts, they know that pologies exist, because they’ve never been able to prove that they don’t.
AJ Milne, you’ve got my Molly vote. :)
“Dembski’s Insipid Sweater” would be the perfect name for a Holiday Inn lounge band.
Oyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
————————-
I, too, am deeply impressed with comment 45. We have a Molly candidate.
Oyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
————————-
I, too, am deeply impressed with comment 45. We have a Molly candidate.
СSI = Complex Sartorial Insipidity?
I disagree.
Dembski clearly apologized for what he did. I frankly think that on this thread people are going overboard in our general disrespect for the man (I have plenty of that myself). I have learned from experience that whenever I want to issue an apology, do that, and argue later. But this only for people who are less crisp – it should be possible to do both when dealing with thoughtful people.
Dembski apologized and then ranted in the very next sentence, but about something else. The two things are not connected. He says that he himself went too far, and he says Baylor et al. went too far in their actions. I honestly do not think that the latter negates his apology.
Think about it. If he apologized for his own actions, and said nothing more, many people would think he had conceded that Baylor’s action were just. So, he naturally must say what he says. Additionally, I recall PZ himself saying that he too did not agree with Baylor’s actions against Robert Marks (I’m too lazy to look it up, though).
Yes yes, we all have low regard for the man, but it doesn’t suit us to be unfair. Leave that to the creationists, since they are so bloody good at it.
Bjorn, James Bjorn:
“Clearly”? That is going way too far — he “apologized” grudgingly, with mitigating justifications at every turn. Just look at the italicized phrases:
Yeah, he “clearly” apologized.
More farting videos?
Tulse, your tosser. In case of A and B both doing something wrong, A apologizing for his actions but chastizing B for his, does not negate the apology.
By “clearly”, I mean that it should be obvious to a level-headed person unlike yourself that that’s what it is. Not that it wasn’t grudgingly.
Put it this way: For legal purposes, he issued an apology. A pathetic one, in my opinion, as his whole demeanor is. He believes his reasons are just, but that he overstepped the line. It is the latter he apologized for, and he made that clear.
In fact, rereading his post on UD, I don’t really see anything wrong with it (except for his reference to God). As for the “moralizing” he mentions, he really is quite humble in his last paragraph. PZ, he really isn’t doing any moralizing here. Suggesting a lesson based on personal experience isn’t that.
There is a serious debate with serious consequences going on, and seeing lots of half-thought posts on the evolution homie-blog really doesn’t help it. If we do not have sensibility on our side, then you can go fcuk yourself as far as I’m concerned. And that goes for PZ too.
P.S. Before you all judge me, I am a hard-core atheist, and an evolutionary biologist, so there.
In case of A and B both doing something wrong, A apologizing for his actions but chastizing B for his, does not negate the apology.
Yes, it is, especially when it’s merely — as in this case — a passive-aggressive attempt to continue the argument.
Er, I meant “Yes, it DOES negate the apology”
B,JB (#70) – Tulse was, if anything, being charitable.
Who was the lawyer who made Dembski apologize? I bet it wasn’t Luskin. I bet Dembski did it on the advice of somebody who could actually defend him in court in the event of prosecution.
And it’s interesting that the really dangerous move– publishing the regents’ home addresses and phone numbers– was the apology he buried in the middle. I-am-not-a-lawyer, but I’m betting a lawyer told Dembski that if any of the wingnuts harmed or endangered the regents or their families, that Dembski himself could end up behind bars as an accessory before the fact.
It HAD to have been something like that. Because Dembski clearly isn’t apologizing because he’s sorry for the embarrassment he caused Baylor. At best, he’s trying to avoid a civil suit. At worst, criminal prosecution. It’s got to be one of the two.
Clearly Dembski is issuing not an apology (expression of contrition and remorse) but an apologetic (defense of his own position).
Eh. I have a friend who, for many years, issued nothing but the passive-aggressive apology. Those of us who truly cared finally broke her of the habit, but after so much time hearing “I’m sorry you have a problem with that,” and “I’m sorry you took offense at what I said,” I think I have a pretty good handle on what’s an apology and what’s not. That thing Dembski said? That falls in the latter category, for certain.
B, JB, in the strictest sense of the word “apology”, I suppose you are correct, in that Demski did indeed write the specific words “extend a public apology to the Baylor administration and Board of Regents for these actions on this blog.” But that is an apology only in the narrowest of senses since he misdescribes and/or mitigates the “actions” that are at the heart of the apology. In this regard, his description of the fraudulent Lilley letter as a “parody”, and using the passive voice for the key issue of how it got “attributed” (in other words, taking no explicit responsibility for its attribution, when he posted it pseudonymously with Lilley’s name) is especially egregious in its twisting of truth. This alone makes it “unclear” that he is apologizing for his inappropriate actions in this instance, rather than others’ misinterpretation of an honest mistake.
In my view it is simply not a genuine apology if one’s description of the actions apologized for are mischaracterizations. You could tell your girlfriend “I’m sorry you were hurt when your face stumbled into my fist”, or “I apologize that I threw out all your clothes in my fully justified rage”, but most “level-headed” people wouldn’t see those statements as very apologetic.
A true apology would have gone something like this: “I apologize to the Baylor administration and Board of Regents for a) posting a letter that I falsely attributed to President Lilley, b) posting contact information for the Board members, and c) posting correspondence between Peter Irons and President Lilley.” No mitigation, no misdescription, no continuation of the argument — just a respectful, gentlemanly mea culpa.
What Dembski provided may meet the strictest “letter of the law” (and it may very well be that he made it for legal reasons), but it surely does violence to the spirit. You may have a different view of issue, of course.
“Let’s get on with our work and leave justice in the hands of a God…”
Idea for ya, Bill D. Leave the work of cramming the ultra-square ID “theory” into a rounded education in the hands of your God, too. Why does He need you to save Him?
Saying that Dembski has a swelled head is like saying that a black hole sucks a little.
As this thread may be winding down, let me add my comments about Dembski’s “apology” to the Baylor administration. Dembski “apologized” for three of his actions.
First, for posting a “parody” letter, purportedly written by Baylor president John Lilley, on the UD blog. Supposedly written by someone named “Botnik” (actually by Dembski himself), this was not first posted as a “parody” by was presented as an actual letter by Lilley. It was not headed as a “parody” until I complained to Denyse O’Leary, UD’s co-director, who called Dembski and urged him to add the “parody” heading. Before this was done, several UD commenters swallowed it (as DaveScot said) “hook, line and sinker.” What Dembski should have apologized for was presenting the letter as real.
Second, Dembski “apologized” for posting the home phone numbers of the Baylor regents and urging his followers to call them “in an effort to apply pressure to the Baylor administration.” In fact, Dembski was urging people to demand that the regents fire Lilley. That goes way over the line of simply expressing displeasure about Baylor’s handling of the Marks affair. This was probably the stupidest thing Dembski did in pursuing his personal vendetta against Lilley.
Third, Dembski “apologized” for posting excerpts of my e-mail exchanges with Lilley, “largely for the purpose of embarassing both” me and Lilley. I had written Lilley to warn him of the ulterior motives of the “Expelled” movie producers in seducing him into an on-camera interview on the Marks affair, and he replied that he would not “take the bait.” I don’t see how posting this exchange would “embarass” me or Lilley; it only embarrassed Dembski.
People can judge for themselves whether Dembski’s “apology” was sincere, or simply an effort to avoid further embarrassment to him. I think the latter, but I can’t peer into his non-material “soul.” Perhaps he has learned a lesson, not to be “consumed by anger” over Baylor’s actions in responding to Marks’s back-door effort (through a grant from a Discovery Institute benefactor) to return Dembski to the Baylor campus in the disguise of a “post-doc” fellow. Only time will tell.
Tulse, I don’t actually have a different view (#77). It does indeed seem like he feels forced to make this apology, but wish he didn’t have to. It is the most we could ever expect from him, won’t you agree. He makes a very narrow, specific apology, and the continues the discussion about Baylor’s actions.
However, your example of “I’m sorry you were hurt when your face stumbled into my fist” isn’t really to the point. The analogy would be more like “I apologize for enagaging in melee. I have learned my lesson about that. However, I am still consumed with anger about the injustice against Robert Marks.”
Let me get this straight Dembski lost 3 week of productivity at his current employer’s because he was pissing and moaning at an employer for a moonlight job and his current employer is okay with this?
“Ferrous Patella” – Cute handle. :-)
(Note to self: Never apply tongue to handle when it’s 20 below outside.)
I originated the AtBC term “notpology,” which captures the petulant and angry tone of some of Dembksi’s previous “apologies that aren’t apologies,” which take with one hand what he gives with the other. Nevertheless, this I felt was as good as it is likely to get from in the current environment, which can be pretty brutal. Although there is a bit of self-protective indirection and recapitulation of others’ sins for cover, I found significant humility and some surprising self-disclosure vis the emotional dimension (rage, essentially) of his behavior. In a sense he was apologizing to his family as well. So I was inclined to supply the needed additional slack on this one.
Well, the scientific adaptionist vs drift debate is serious but as usual these things have have little serious consequences. The IDC scam hasn’t generated serious debate but it has serious consequences, all right.
Well, the scientific adaptionist vs drift debate is serious but as usual these things have have little serious consequences. The IDC scam hasn’t generated serious debate but it has serious consequences, all right.
Reginald Selkirk: Wow, that makes two consectutive posts that have something about bowling!
Maybe this apology was closer to the original greek meaning a defense at trial, in which case it could simply be a bad one …