The NY Times Uses False Pretext to Drop Ben Stein & the GOP Plays Bad Sport Re Obama
Two items this past week emphasized American partisan polarity even as the Sotomayor confirmation offered a lonely counter-example: the GOP has used US Chamber of Commerce tactics and fuzzy facts to smear President Barack Obama, and the NY Times did a partisan sniper job on Ben Stein for doing a commercial that is tangential to the content of his former column there.
GOP donors don't want health care reform imposed by government unless the government imposes the draft penned by top GOP donors. That's not big news. What seems like news to everyone is what those donors spread through the communication mill without their signature on it. They issue talking points (propaganda) that requires enough detailed factual checking and correction to create an irresolute fog around the subject and kill reform efforts. They've a right to do it, however, they'd be more effective in getting their points across if they spent their huge war chests on finding and stating the middle ground facts (where facts usually fall).
Just as the US Chamber and like lobbyists routinely deceive small business to get their donations without telling them the Chamber stands for their massive competitors on nearly every issue in which small businesses conflict with large, they also tell the public how disastrous and socialist the Obama Administration is despite that the Chamber screamed for socialist bailout of the financial sector to begin with. In this, the Chamber camp (GOP) engages in hypocrisy without shame.
It is good to check and balance the Obama Administration to be sure they do not give into their own solicitous, euphemistic snake oil talking-point donors (Planned Parenthood, NARAL and others) to slowly cook their eugenic notions into this country's legal system as they have been striving to do in the young social and cultural life of the country. Even so, my perception of President Barack Obama has not been of someone taking a knee jerk Leftward approach to a host of issues even as I continue to deeply dissent from his abortion advocacy and all of its false ideological, pseudo-scientific premises.
On Ben Stein, it is so clear what happened to him as to be transparent. He has angered those who would impose a scientific theory as speech (including intellectual freedom) law. For those so disposed, the floor cannot remain open in publicly funded educational institutions for professors, teachers, researchers, students and others to investigate or attempt to find a modified method to investigate any and every alternative view, theory, or possible theory to evolution-as-is that borders or relates to multiple disciplines, say physics, biology and religious studies. The point is, there are limits to scientific method, but not all knowledge is scientific. While hybrid attempts or inquiries should not unseat or threaten purely-tailored scientific experimentation, neither should purely tailored scientific experimentation foreclose hybrid epistemological efforts even if it may from time to time comment on aspects of them.
Stein is disfavored because he's a traditional monotheist versus someone like Deepak Chopra whose speculations on the confluence of religion, spirituality and science do not offend because he doesn't belong to the monotheist groups which remain demographically Republican and anger Leftward politicians and grassroots simply by violating their speech restrictions.
Stein has never been for the abolition of the strictly tailored scientific method so long as it was not intellectually limiting of other approaches. Stein is for free inquiry. It is not surprising that Stein's activity or access should be cut by the NY Times on the pretext of conflict of interest when the NY Times itself is built on conflicts of interest. There is no doubt that the NY Times is a left-leaning ideological periodical. To pretend that there is no ideological conflict of interest in its reporting while claiming Stein has one is hypocrisy without shame. The NY Times definitely tailors its content to sell newspapers and boost advertisement: is that not a bias for money and business?
President Barack Obama and Ben Stein are casualties in this country's increasingly irresponsible partisan polarization rooted in special interest bank accounts. You can see the AP's bias here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090808/ap_en_ot/us_people_ben_stein
by its emaciated (almost anti-bio) they give Stein versus his actual resume, here:
http://www.benstein.com/bio.html
where we learn that he has been an economist, lawyer, poverty lawyer, civil rights advocate, journalist on business ethics, speech writer and more. As he is under siege by the left, it seems he is fighting to keep his work alive because of politically oriented dirty tricks. The NY Times should show which article he's written which puts his column into the conflict of interest category any more than the Times itself is in conflict.
The national grassroots, party affiliation aside, needs to take time to check the facts on health care options in general, Obama's specific proposals (read them), and those among his opposition on the Hill. They also need to measure the NY Times by the same scale it uses to squelch diverse voices in its pages.
If you were trying to make a point, youhaven't done well.
August 8, 2009 2:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, at least he's consistent.
August 8, 2009 4:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
"SchrodingersCat" for your name. Shazaam you're smart. The Encyclopedia Britannica set came in tres-handy!
August 9, 2009 1:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ouch! The guy who believes in intelligent design and then proceeds to sneer about "false ideological, pseudo-scientific premises" is insulting my intelligence. How shall I ever recover?
August 9, 2009 1:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
What intelligent design do I believe in?
August 10, 2009 2:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
I got a kick out of your statement, as I don't recall which senator it was that supported John Kerry the first time on his run for president, but would not support Kerry on his second bid.
When Kerry question him about he not supporting him this time the senator told Kerry: I'd rather be right, than consistent.
August 9, 2009 10:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Be specific.
August 9, 2009 1:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
the whole thing was poorly conceived.
August 9, 2009 7:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Amazing.
August 10, 2009 2:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not even sure what this means: "GOP donors don't want health care reform imposed by government unless the government imposes their own drafted version."
Huh? "I continue to deeply dissent from his abortion advocacy and all of its false ideological, pseudo-scientific premises." Such as?
August 8, 2009 3:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
See edited, above.
August 9, 2009 1:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Such as: unborn human life isn't "real" human life because PP says so, or we don't want it to be so.
August 9, 2009 2:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am sure the new readers are not aware that you are a total right winger when it comes to women's rights over their own body. There are many snake oil salesman out there. Planned Parenthood and NARAL are not among them.
As far as Ben Stein is concerned he was writing as a financial columnist giving financial advice to the readers of the NYT. For him to go and be the spokesman for a company that has so many complaints against it for fleecing its customers is absurd.
NYT had every right to fire him citing conflict of interest. If he wants to be the face of a credit score company that is actively ripping people off, the NYT does not have to have its business connected to it in any way shape or form.
From Reuters:
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2009/07/16/ben-stein-predatory-bait-and-switch-merchant/
August 8, 2009 3:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for this mageduley. It certainly explains what the original post did not.
August 8, 2009 9:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
A "massive monthly fee" for a credit report service?
Explain what the blogger is talking about.
August 9, 2009 1:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mike,
It really tics me off that you do not do any of this research yourself before you go defending the indefensible.
On Eon Business Wire, Freescore hawks Stein's "consumer advocate" creds.
http://eon.businesswire.com/portal/site/eon/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20090713005358&newsLang=en
Consumer Advocate? Really?? The reality is he is screwing the very consumers that can least afford this fraud. From the Columbia Journalism Review:
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/nyts_ben_stein_hawks_misleadin.php
August 9, 2009 1:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
You mean to tell me that advertising something for sale that someone can get for free somewhere else is fraud?
Doesn't that mean that taking advertising dollars through the efforts of otherwise unsuspecting consumer-commenters on this blog is also fraud?
Or does Westlaw commit fraud because it provides legal resources that a person could access for free if they only knew how?
Have you detailed what the consumer gets for the monthly fee? Is there no value in what they get? I believe it is credit monitoring, isn't it?
So what this is really about is attacking Stein it seems to me, using a weak pretext of conflict-of-interest, because some ideologues who disagree with him want to play dirty.
August 10, 2009 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
What evidence is there that the complaints were valid and not resolved? Every large company has complaints. How were they handled? What were they about? Where is your proof of fraud? Has there been an attorney general's litigation on behalf of aggrieved consumers BEFORE the political hunt or Stein's head began through the Times?
Look, if you have evidence of actual fraud, let me know where the finding of fact was made after a fair process. Was there a judgment or sentence? Do you have that?
If Stein was using his column to advise people to buy credit report services from the company he spoke for outside of his column, well OK. But if he was not, how can you say that the advice in his column had anything to do with credit monitoring business in the first place?
August 9, 2009 1:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh Oh ...
Call the cops. Where's the lawyer? We need a judge.
~OGD~
August 10, 2009 6:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great job showing why the NYTimes was absolutely right to give the boot to Stein, Mageduley, but the fact that Mikey here tries to blow smoke up our asses concerning Stein's lies about evolution scientists supposedly censoring "alternate theories", is what really blew my mind.
How telling that TPM, amongst many other lefty sites, allows right wing BS to be posted onsite. Go ahead; Try and post something that defends single-payer insurance on a rightwing blog, see how long that stays up.
August 8, 2009 4:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
You write, "absolutely right," an extreme, and you haven't even explained why Stein has a conflict. What did he write in his column that involved that company or its services? You can't really stop Stein from benefiting indirectly in any business he does from the notoriety associated with a Times column. The Times obviously thought Stein was expert enough to write the column up to the day before they claimed he was in conflict.
August 9, 2009 2:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
As it happens employers are free to write whatever language they want into an employment contract. There is effectively no limit, short of breaking the law, to the stipulations they can make. They can strip you of every right you ever thought you had as a condition of employment.
This isn't all that different from all the fine print on a credit card agreement or other types of consumer / business contracts where its a take it or leave it proposition.
As for the Chamber of Commerce. I hang up when they call my business. I've long thought that the display of a C of C plaque is a screw you message to the public.
August 9, 2009 2:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Usually I disagree with your posts ideologically, but this post is just......wierd. Did you even proof-read it before posting? Example:
It's all just pretty indecipherable.
August 8, 2009 4:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Glad it's just not me, this was a struggle to read. Now, thanks to mageduley, it turns out it's not even credible.
August 8, 2009 4:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
See edited, above.
Any other grammatical red herrings you want to throw out there, go ahead.
I just think you ought to get into the specifics of where and why my arguments are wrong rather than simply say they are as if you'd already supported your arguments.
It looks lazy in a room with others who share your ideology for you to satisfy your burden of proof without doing any work at all. I guess if I could identify an example of an oxymoron "idle work," some of your comments would be good selections. These ideological websites where most of the patients in the asylum agree with each other don't make anyone better.
August 9, 2009 1:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh come on ... Mikey . . .
These folks aren't lazy. They're actually quite smart. They apparently know the method of your madness. That being, throw together a big long line of wackadoodlisms (man I love that word, thanks Josh) and attempt to sell it as some kind of big dealio. Then ya' ask dozens of unrelated questions to steer folks into dead ends and then feign that you're being picked on as some poor victim of everyone else's doing when they refuse to engage in your compulsion.
Too transparent to even bother... Dude!
~OGD~
August 9, 2009 4:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
But you bothered. Must not have been that transparent! (0;
August 10, 2009 2:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let's see. My posts are byzantine, and you've really got my number.
Except my posts are really transparent.
And these 'folks' with all their fine manners and good faith logic here must needs the duck to tell them they are pretty smart and can see through the byzantine yet transparent one.
Now there's a wackadoodalism!
August 10, 2009 3:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mikey employs . . .
Sentence #4 to attempt to deflect from the obvious method of his madness...
~OGD~
August 10, 2009 6:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Or I guess in your case it would be "quackadoodalism."
August 10, 2009 11:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually . . .
In Mikey's case it's just plain bullshit!
~OGD~
August 15, 2009 4:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
BTW, when people can't answer questions when those answers would substantiate their allegations, that is a dead end for the allegations.
August 10, 2009 11:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Facts and proof? Who needs those? Using my "hybrid epistemological efforts", I've determined that your article is full of shit.
Although I wouldn't read much into it, since ""hybrid epistemological efforts" is just a fancy way of saying "making stuff up", with the possible addition of "because Jeebus told us to" for some circles.
The whole article reads like a weakly-edited version of the output of the Postmodernism Generator. (http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/)
August 9, 2009 12:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
I can see that any openness to God's existence bearing in any way on intellectual pursuits, as in the humanities and classics, sends you into the shakes. That we may keep our mind open to possible ID theories which do not engage in philosophism is probably also a dogma of impossibility for you.
August 10, 2009 4:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's the problem. This blog is so poorly written and organized and thought out that I can't ascertain what your arguments actually are.
You can insult me all you like, but it doesn't change the fact that my first thought upon reading this rambling blog is that you are either a nutter or Sarah Palin.
August 9, 2009 1:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Uh-oh. In several comments, you indicate your understanding of what I wrote. How can you not understand any of it, then?
August 10, 2009 2:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Because you point was never to actually engage the ideas.
August 10, 2009 4:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Indecipherable? You want indecipherable? How's this --
I suppose if one spent enough time and had sufficient imagination one could assign a meaning, in the broadest sense of the word, to this paragraph. But what would be the point? Besides, if you did decipher it, you would find out it is just plain wrong and completely unsupported by any coherent argument.
Other than that, nice try, though at what I am not quite certain.
August 9, 2009 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
A sentence too long and too deep for the focus and depth of your mind?
August 10, 2009 11:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
I just want to know who is rec'ing this crap.
August 8, 2009 4:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
SERIOUSLY!
August 8, 2009 4:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
No shit. What's happening with the rec list in the last few days?
Stein is one of the dumbest mofos out there. Just flat out stupid.
August 8, 2009 6:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Really? Is that your assessment of the man and his career? If he was stupid, why did the Times publish him over time? Do you know his education, experience and background? He's written over 30 books. He's done all that and he's one of the stupidest mo-fo's out there? I'm not sure your deck has been unwrapped to see if all the same suit wasn't accidentally stuck in there.
August 9, 2009 2:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, he lives off his credentials. The man is an idiot. I dare you to tell me an original idea he has ever come up with. He has never contributed anything to the world but "bueller..Bueller".
Guy is the most parasitical kind of dipshit. smart enough to know that if he waves his papers around they will open doors, like the Times. Name one fucking thing he has contributed? Name an original idea?
Conservatives like Will, Brooks, Sowell, hell even fucking krauthammer are smart. They actually put forth interesting thought provoking shit that challenges. I can come up with numerous examples for each of them.
Stein? One of the dumbest mofo around.
You seem smarter than this, whats you real motivation here.
August 9, 2009 3:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Freedom for everyone, not just the folks you like.
I'm trying to figure out where you get the animosity regarding Stein. It is bad enough that it can't simply be because you disagree with him.
If it were because you thought him truly stupid, it seems you would pity him instead of repeatedly trash him. Also, you assume those who hire him or have used his services must be dumber than he is if they hired him. You also assume that they must be even dumber to keep him on. That's a lot of stupid people out there that the great Saladin is instructing.
And to think all the advice is free, right here on TPMCafe. Hodah Hafez, buddy.
August 9, 2009 3:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm trying to figure out where you get the animosity regarding Stein. It is bad enough that it can't simply be because you disagree with him
Its simple: He doesn't challenge. He doesn't have interesting ideas. He rides his credentials to riches.
Thats it. I love smart people who challenge. No matter what political persuasion. He doesn't.
Parasite.
August 9, 2009 3:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'll bet...this could be the article that killed Stein in New York, entitled "Congratulations Bankers, You're Rich Again" and I'll paste an excerpt from it as a clue:
http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/yourlife/181560
"As bank profits skyrocketed, the pay of bankers reached unbelievably high levels, with immense percentages of the national wealth being paid to a few thousand bankers in New York City."
--Ben Stein
Whoops! There goes the NEW YORK Times column.
August 9, 2009 3:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, I am sure that after decades of shilling lassie faire bs that this column must surely be why he was fired. Yep the reason that the whole system crashed and needed TARP, well its reall=ly all geitners fault.
I certainly don't disagree with this particular trite. Bit so what? He is simply regurgitating leftist talking points here and blaming the admin for structural problems. (e.g. real wages have been declining since Reagan, while CEO pay has skyrocketed-which side has Ben been on?) It ain't mine.
Regardless, name an ordinal thought he has ever said?
dude's a tool. Even worse he's boring.
August 9, 2009 4:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
BTW-why on earth would I pity idiots who spread stupidity? Maybe I betray my own conservatism but they can do better. The bastards are lazy.
I suppose that is the root of my animosity (that and the negative influence they sow)
August 9, 2009 3:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
If it was crap, why did you feel the need to write so much against it?
Are you the guardian of ideology here under this bridge?
August 9, 2009 2:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
No Mike just trying to prevent people from getting ripped off.
You know the drill...thou shall not steal...thou shall not bear false witness...that kind of stuff....
August 9, 2009 1:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
What services are delivered by the company for the monthly fee? Do you even know?
August 10, 2009 11:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you weren't so lazy and read my link you would know.
August 11, 2009 1:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mike, I know you have strongly held feelings about intelligent design. But I don't think Stein's firing has anything to do with that. It's just that over the last couple of years he has been more and more called on his really crappy financial journalism. He makes Megan McArdle look like a genius. And now he has gone around the bend by labeling Obama's agenda as ultraleftist, and worse. Which is hilarious given that it's to the right of what any right-wing European government would even dare to adhere to. He's failing miserably at his supposed core competence and is becoming outright nutty on issues no-one really expects any competence from him.
August 8, 2009 4:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wow. You may be one of the only people who has actually made a coherent argument and supported it with examples to support it. That is underrated I can tell you.
Ben Stein's probably right about Obama, but he'd only be right about Obama if he were also saying the same about former Treasury Sec. Paulson; in other words, if the US Chamber and the entire GOP who voted for the anti-capitalistic bailout were also ultra-leftists for their own favored class of donors.
This is why I suspect the partisans move closer to each other in their mutually provoked insanity and farther apart on areas where the country really needs them to work together with some governing wisdom. We're still waiting.
August 9, 2009 3:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ben Stein's probably right about Obama, but he'd only be right about Obama if he were also saying the same about former Treasury Sec. Paulson
Most coherent thing you have written.
August 9, 2009 4:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Huh?
I'm surprised to hear that the newspaper of record is itself built on the pretext of conflict of interest. Who'd a thunk?
Can you site one example of Stein going to bat to find alternate explanations to evolution? And FYI, physics and biology are in the science buildings. Religious studies are in ...er...other buildings.
August 8, 2009 5:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
CVille, this is about academic freedom. The prevailing thought of the day was never the voice of revolutionary science that turned it on its end.
However, not all was turned on its head. What is happening too often is philosophism, not science, threatens academic freedom.
August 9, 2009 4:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wow ... philosophism?
We had an elderly Bible thumping friend of the family that was quite a snake charmer back in his younger heyday in Missouri as a preacher who would rant and rave about the coming of the end times and use the word philosophism so often we referred to the sweet old codger as 'Phil O. Fallacy' ... May his soul rest in peace.
Ya' know, they don't make characters like his type today.
Or ... do they?
Eh ... Mikey?
~OGD~
August 9, 2009 4:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mikey ... Oh Mikey . . .
Do they still make characters like the fine ol' Reverend 'Phil O. Fallacy' ???
You'd be the first to know...
Help me out here ... Dude!
~OGD~
August 10, 2009 6:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know about "they," but you're the only person I've known to make up fictional characters that make fictional points about irrelevant topics, and that without support. Trolling, I think it's called.
August 11, 2009 12:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
I couldn't figure out what Mike was talking about either, but apparently the nature of human evolution/intelligent design has something to with it.
The process has been very well explained, and I recommend the explanation to readers at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpNoQaB2LT0
August 8, 2009 6:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
I suggest you condescend to read the post again if you had such trouble understanding it, oh high minded one.
The point in this post was that Stein isn't anti-science, he's against requiring that it be the only path to knowledge, or that it be set above all others as defined by those who politicize science and call it pure. These are philosophes, not scientists.
Richard Dawkins' gaffe implying that humanities and classics should be omitted from state school curricula is exactly the sort of overreaching in the "name" of science that I believe Stein objects to.
August 9, 2009 2:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
What does that have to do with making commercials for a company that is duping people out of their money, using his standing as an esteemed author for the New York Times? His association with that paper would make some people think the company he is flacking must be on the up and up.
It is a ridiculous stretch to say that this is because he is for academic freedom. Whatever his stance on that is (which you have not cited in any way), all that was in place, no doubt before he was hired at the NYT. These commercials are new, and the Times is responding to that, and rightly so.
You really are out in left field today, but that is nothing new.
August 9, 2009 10:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Cville I'm out in left field every time I post a blog here. This IS left field. Actually, it's like the French castle in Monty Python. I gallop up to it clip-clopping along, and hail the people manning the walls to discuss issues of the land. But I'm not a French American, so the lefties dump vats of excrement over the wall onto my non-partisan blog.
This comment of yours is pretty normal though. You argue that my reasoning is incorrect that academic freedom could be the Times' reason for canning Stein because his viewpoint on professors who themselves are canned for remaining open to versions of ID predated his column. That depends how long he's been writing the column. He did Expelled about a year and a half ago and versions of its argument before that.
I think this is a critical mass thing: they were looking for something as a pretext because of all with which he has offended the left, but not only that, worse, he offended NY bankers with his column the day before he was canned.
August 11, 2009 12:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Obama doesn't have any 'eugenic notions'.
Right wing white hypocrites like yourself did legalize and engage in the practice eugenics in America in the early 20th century, until they were stopped by liberals.
See War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race
mike7woodson has expressed notions of legally controlling the reproductive tracts of fertile females he doesn't know or care about, he is one sick puppy.
August 8, 2009 11:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
There's nothing noble about what you just wrote.
So I guess you see those abortion proscriptions allowed to the states by the Supreme Court in Roe as unconstitutional because they "control" a woman's reproductivity? The Burger Court was sick?
You might want to tone down your extremism; it typifies the site.
August 9, 2009 2:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh and just to debunk a little more, Mikey here is a complete fundie and has this persecution complex that Ben Stein tries to cash in on.
You see good ole Ben knows that controversy sells, so he creates this "documentary" which tries persuade the audience to disbelieve evolution. He also tries to make the case that certain people of religious affiliation are being persecuted and fired for their religious non belief in evolution. The truth that the people mentioned in the film were complete fuckups and should never have a position in the educational/scientific profession, doesn't seem to make it into the film.
It seems kind of ironic that Ben got fired from NYT for also being a fuckup, but of course he will be the martyr for the fundie right, like our friend Mikey here is trying to portray him.
That pretty much sums it up, right Mike?
August 9, 2009 12:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
If you were to write a comment designed to persecute another person, how would you write it?
August 9, 2009 2:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well ... Mikey . . .
If someone were to write a comment designed to persecute another person, you could always start with something along the lines of accusing the person of being a soulless philosophist and thereby connecting that individual to Satan. I mean it was Satan who was so bold as to ask the philosophical question, "Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?"
I hope that doesn't fly over your head.
~OGD~
August 9, 2009 5:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Philosophism isn't what you're thinking it is in the context of this conversation. Philosophism is using philosophy and conflating it with science to obtain the legitimacy of the scientific method. Those disposed toward anti-theistic philosophies can do it as can those toward theistic ones.
I don't think either side should do philosophism even though both have the right. I think both sides have the right to try to overcome the problem, that is, finding the honest relationships between their philosophies and science while remaining open to revolutionary capabilities and discoveries which could change the assumptions and expand or contract definitions.
August 10, 2009 3:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
And I'd add that both 'sides' are not monolithic, but have many different shades. There is seldom any attempt at remaining open to this possibility within the intelligent design discussion.
August 10, 2009 3:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mikey's original question was . . .
And my answer was:
So -- My hope was dashed. It totally flew over Mikey's head...
That... or Mikey has simply employed Sentence #4 in my initial comment in this thread.
~OGD~
August 10, 2009 6:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
If that flew over my head I must have been hanging upside down.
August 10, 2009 11:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Uh . . .
When isn't Mikey hanging upside down?
~OGD~
August 15, 2009 4:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
OK, NOW I get why Mike is on a soapbox about Ben Stein! That explains all. Ben Stein doesn't believe in evolution!
August 9, 2009 11:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
You've summed up "the people mentioned in the film". Where's your evidence that they are what you say?
August 10, 2009 4:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh Oh ... There he goes again . . .
Call the cops. Where's the lawyer? We need a judge.
~OGD~
August 10, 2009 6:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
What TPM needs is a device to find out who the recommender are, exactly. I always wondered who was recommending my posts. I would guess the recommenders are not regular posters. We have never seen this level of rec's except in very unusual circumstances, i.e. getting Gumbun and Ripper to the Helathcare rally. It's fixed, for sure. It seems a party with no ideas to promote has to derail the ideas of those who have them.
August 9, 2009 1:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
I've never had this number of recommendations, but your conspiracy theory stuff implies that I know something about where the 50 recs came from. You want to substantiate that?
I'd go under oath and say I don't know how this many recommendations were attributed to my posting.
What's more interesting to me is that because I did appear to get 50 recommendations from wherever they came, a number of commenters here felt they had to get onto my blog and start firing the personal stuff as if to counter the positive recommendations.
August 9, 2009 3:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
"What's more interesting to me is that because I did appear to get 50 recommendations from wherever they came, a number of commenters here felt they had to get onto my blog and start firing the personal stuff as if to counter the positive recommendations."
Now who is being conspiratorial. There is no truth to this claim. The comments recognizing your blog as tripe began immediately.
August 9, 2009 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, immediately without even reading it.
August 10, 2009 3:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
What evidence do you have that the commentors did not read your article.
August 10, 2009 3:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Lack of reference, lack of anything to say on the issues raised in it; Summary, conclusory comments; that kind of thing.
August 11, 2009 12:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
garbage in garbage out.
August 11, 2009 7:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
I find it hilarious that you are accusing Mike7Woodson of rigging the recommends. If ever there was a poster here who didn't give a damn what everyone else here thinks of him, it's Mike, year in, year out, Mike will disappear for a while, but then comes back for more, and does it not only civilly, but cheerfully.
It does seem fishy, though, along the order of the system having gone wack, as in my experience, Mike has more frequently than not been the only person to recommend his blogs.
Mike: You've often reminded me of how the early Christians drove the Romans nuts. And also how they purportedly had skills to soothe the savage beasts (trolls). :-)
August 11, 2009 2:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Get a room . . .
~OGD~
August 15, 2009 4:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mike, when academia begins with an assumption of knowledge being represented by either logical argument or falsifiable theory, it is not limiting intellectual freedom to exclude revelation or other internal-mental-state types of knowing. That I know my own feelings is not knowledge.
For others can add to knowledge requires it to be based on repeatable observation. So saying there are other ways of knowing is not sufficient. Meditation is not shared knowledge, and academia is precisely about sharing the search.
And Ben Stein is just an annoying worshiper of his father's economics.
August 9, 2009 9:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Tom, thanks for addressing me directly. Refreshing.
You may read some of my other responses.
Briefly, I am talking about revolutionary science requiring an openness to expanding what science may find, or its capability for eventually making a theory falsifiable (plus the alteration of a theory to help close that gap).
August 10, 2009 3:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mike -
Unless Stein has done something recent in the Creationism category, why would you assume that the Times let him go because of his belief in Creationism vs acting as pitchman for Freescore.com?
Expelled was 2 years ago. One supposes the Times would have ditched him then if that was the problem.
August 10, 2009 8:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not if the ditching is to appear to be for something else, like this Freescore.com pretext. As I said to cville, I think this is a critical mass thing with Stein and the left. He angered plenty of folks on the left, and specifically, he angered NY bankers with his column of the 7th and he was canned on the 8th. If the bankers pressed the Times behind the scenes, the Times and leftist power brokers would likely go along with what the bankers wanted because they already had it out for Stein.
In his Aug 7th column Stein wrote that large sums of the nation's wealth had been flowing to a handful of NYC's bankers during the excesses of the mortgage loan binge.
August 11, 2009 12:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Not if the ditching is to appear to be for something else, like this Freescore.com pretext. As I said to cville, I think this is a critical mass thing with Stein and the left. He angered plenty of folks on the left, and specifically, he angered NY bankers with his column of the 7th and he was canned on the 8th. If the bankers pressed the Times behind the scenes, the Times and leftist power brokers would likely go along with what the bankers wanted because they already had it out for Stein.
In his Aug 7th column Stein wrote that large sums of the nation's wealth had been flowing to a handful of NYC's bankers during the excesses of the mortgage loan binge.
August 11, 2009 12:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, Mikey, if it doesn't stand up to the scientific method, it doesn't belong in a science class. All of the "intelligent design" crap belongs in a comparative religion class, and then, only if you're stooping so low in credibiltiy as to include Scientology and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, too.
August 13, 2009 8:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
The question here is not whether intelligent design in the form of creationism or creation science is legitimate.
In my mind, intelligent design is a proposition much larger than those narrower attempts at defining cosmology by certain sectarian readings of the Bible's creation accounts.
It isn't the creation accounts I'd disagree with, but the interpretation of the creation accounts that often leads to creationism or creation 'science.'
Intelligent design is not a religion as I see it. Intelligent design is related to the proposition of all religions that claim that God or gods created the universe we live (and do science) in.
Intelligent design beyond its labeling & association with creationism, is a philosophical position that doesn't necessarily rely on science for validation. And yet, if science were to develop its measurement methods to reach beyond physical things which religious persons have long labeled spiritual, a proponent of intelligent design could theoretically use scientific findings as validation. The problem: There may be some who would always label things discovered beyond the physical as categories of the physical even if they are not physical. To such persons, it is their labeling of something as part of the physical realm that obviates it from being something non-physical. Doing that is not science, but labeling.
On another level, intelligent design is the meaning that many give to scientific findings. That assignment of meaning comes not only from their belief system, but from their perceptual and brain activity that perceives signs of intelligence as part of their interpretation of scientific findings. Another part of their interpretation would also be the narrower physical aspect of the finding. It would only be the atheist assumption (itself not falsifiable) that would claim that no scientific finding can possibly point to God, merely because the atheist assumption is that there is no God before the inquiry ever starts.
September 30, 2009 6:41 PM | Reply | Permalink