Maybe if you teach at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary? What kind of sick man reports professors like Eric Pianka to the Department of Homeland Security? The state needs to get something right here and sue the pants off Bill Dembski for friviolous finking. It's your tax dollar that Bill Demsbski is trying his best to waste on the mini-crusade he's waging apparently for the purpose of reaping perverse, hypocritical glee by backstabbing scientists with whom he (here: quite reasonably) disagrees. For a relatively poorly written account of Pianka's views by the editor of The Citizen Scientist, Forrest Mims, go here.
In point of fact, there is just no good reason for reporting Pianka to the DHS. Dembski's actions, in this respect, are not rationally motivated. Of course, I support Dembski's right to wage his other campaign against Pianka at the university level, but Pianka is not a national security threat. Why is Pianka not a national security threat? Well, for one, it appears that Pianka does not endorse the following principle, or at least, there is no evidence he endorses it:
(P) For any current state of affairs A and other, all things considered better, state of affairs A', it is good to act in such a way so as to bring about A'.
No rights-based theorist would endorse the above, obviously. Maybe we should be reporting more consequentialists to the Department of Homeland Security? Actually, Forrest Mim's poorly written remarks (linked above) suggest to me that Pianka probably believes we need to act quickly (forced sterilization) so as to avoid catastrophe. If you read Mim's article closely, you will see that he is exceedingly careful to avoid libel by never attributing to Pianka the view that it would be a good thing if 90% of the population was eliminated by a nasty virus such as Ebola. That Mim's is obviously working so hard to walk such a fine line, while failing to draw attention to this point, suggests to me that intentional inflammation is his goal. If so, this is dishonest reporting. Fellow graduate student Diana at Noodlefood is also somewhat skeptical, if less so than myself.
What about the philosophical ability of a man (Dembski) who constantly rants and raves about how the climate of modern academia so often hampers his ability to express his (scientifically unsupported) views, but reports other academics to the State for expressing their equally philosophical views? If it hasn't already been sufficiently called into question, it's time to reevaluate. Moreover, Dembski gives the ridiculous and bizarre questions of his colleagues a public airing when he rhetorically asks whether or not Pianka thinks that "the holocaust was an 'excellent thing'". The professorship of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary needs to learn to think critically, but then again, SBTS may not be the school of choice if acquiring critical thinking skills is your aim. It might have occured to this credulous group, if they weren't so easily inflamed, that Hitler endorsed (P) though Pianka has not. To his discredit, this points seems not to have occured to Dembski either. Finally, Dembski implicitly endorses (despite his attempt to waste your money) the view of a colleague who is angry that taxpayers (partially) fund Pianka's "pulpit". [via Pharyngula]
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