The War Before Kitzmas

Over at Elizabeth Liddle’s “The Skeptical Zone” (TSZ) blog, Salvador Cordova had something to say about being banned from the “Uncommon Descent” (UD) blog, now being managed (loosely speaking) by Barry K. Arrington.

Arrington did something for Cordova that he doesn’t do for most people banned from UD, which was to send Sal an explanatory letter, which Sal included in his TSZ post. I’ll quote it below the fold.

The letter as presented by Cordova:

I owe you an explanation for why you have been banned at UD.

We are in a war. That is not a metaphor. We are fighting a war for the soul of Western Civilization, and we are losing, badly. In the summer of 2015 we find ourselves in a positon very similar to Great Britain’s position 75 years ago in the summer of 1940 - alone, demoralized, and besieged on all sides by a great darkness that constitutes an existential threat to freedom, justice and even rationality itself.

There is another parallel to World War II. We have quislings among us. A quisling is a person who collaborates with an enemy occupying force. The word originates from the Norwegian war-time leader Vidkun Quisling, who headed a domestic Nazi collaborationist regime.

Sal, I accuse you of being a quisling every time you go over to The Skeptical Zone and give aid and comfort to the enemies of truth. Will you cease or will you continue to collaborate?

Barry K. Arrington

Neither of the folks involved there have impressed me for reliability of content, so it should be kept in mind that this is a putative quote several steps down a chain, without provenance. But if this is accurate, it does explain quite a lot concerning the odd ways UD has operated in recent months. And that the “intelligent design” creationist advocacy way with invidious comparisons is not restricted solely for use on enemies.

The quote appears to concede that IDC is failing (justly so, IMO), but that stands quite at odds with the triumphalist tone that UD manages in its posts, like this one by Arrington. If the quote from Cordova is accurate, then one has the documentation that IDC is presenting another facet of a sham beyond the standard one used by religious antievolution since 1968’s SCOTUS decision in Epperson v. Arkansas.The central falsehood since Epperson has been that a subset of the very same arguments used in support of creationism before 1968 are now to be treated as if they were science worthy of note in public school science classrooms. The new facet is that they are now apparently willfully misleading people as to the status of their political movement. Of course, there is the uncertainty of source involved here, so maybe there will be some rounds of denial and recrimination between Cordova and Arrington, which should at least be entertaining. I’d set up some popcorn, but that’s something my doctor has put on the forbidden list.