Karma's a Bitch

One of my earliest posts in this blog, was a commentary on one of the fundamental points most of us learned in elementary school: If you want respect, earn it. The gist of that blog was that if you repeatedly reject the option to earn some respect and instead act like a fool, then you deserve to be ridiculed.

Unfortunately, this lesson is one that Behe, like so many other creationists, seems to have never learned. Instead, they continue to make a mockery of the very foundation of science, making grand claims that go unsupported, offering up untestable hypothesies, fallacies of bifurcation, maintaining willful ignorance and downright lying. Of course, Behe keeps up this fine tradition.

So when ERV decided to take on his nonsense and give Behe the well earned ribbing he's earned. But maybe Behe's finally learned the lesson that is even obvious to most children. So he posts an announcement saying he's going to rebut the letters directed towards him. It's a grand flourish and I was sincerely hoping that Behe was setting up for something big and would actually, I don't know, address the arguments?

So what's the first thing he says?

"Whhhhhhaaaaaaah. I'm being made fun of."

That's right. Behe plays the victim card and claims that he's the victim of an ad hominem attack. But he wasn't. For a real ad hominem, it requires that the offender substitute an argument with a mocking. This is not the case. Rather, the argument was supplemented with a mocking that matched the mockery Behe and his fellows make of science.

But after that, is Behe finally ready to grow up? I'm not going to pretend I understand the technical exchange any more than Behe would be able to follow articles in the Astrophysical Journal (although Behe's buddy Dembski apparently knows everything about everything), but there's a few keys phrases that are amazingly typical of creationists trying to worm their way out of being confronted with evidence.

#1) "It is not clear to me why you call that Smith’s "core argument."" - Translation: I don't get it because I'm too busy repeating my claims ad nauseum to actually read anything. Careful Behe. You let that pesky reality pile up on you too long and it will bite you in the ass like it did on the stand at Dover.

#2) "...as her own citations show" - Translation: ...as her own citations show if you ignore everything except that introductory sentence used as a literary device, disregard all the evidence that supports her and buy into my quote mining bullshit. FTK might consider out of context quotes as indicative of "an open issue", but those of us that keep reading to discover the issue is well on the way towards a resolution don't buy into such sleazy tricks.

#3) "I think this is a trivial biochemical change..." - Call it trivial and ignore it. Or if "trivial" isn't your cup of tea, you can always call it pathetic.

I'll wait for a layman's version of the technical bits, but right now, it's looking pretty clear that Behe is just up to the same old nonsense: Flaunt, cry, obfuscate. Someone let me know when the reruns are over and something new is on.

Meanwhile, Behe has the audacity to say, "One of the very basic prerequisites for education is to be able to engage in civil discourse...".

Guess what Behe, so is actually backing up your arguments without lying.