#455: Barry Arrington

Barry Arrington is a lawyer specializing in representing the middle management agents of conservative right wing thought, and is, in fact, quite a wingnut nutjob himself. Arrington officially runs William Dembski’s blog Uncommon Descent (ever since Dembski “withdrew” in 2008 to focus on “research”). Arrington is thus for instance in charge of the moderation policies at that site, and is therefore behind the policy (typical to the point of definitional of crackpot sites) of not allowing comments that provide coherent criticism of Intelligent Design Creationism (some records of the activity are kept here). True to the spirit of the movement, Arrington deletes and denies critical comments to the posts on the blog, and subsequently proclaims that the lack of comments from ID critics means that he won the argument (for instance here). In fact, it is not only critics of evolution who receives this treatment. After Arrington had asserted that Darwin was a firm racist, Uncommon Descent blogger DaveScot wrote a post in which he happened to point out that some Christians had been racists too. Arrington then banned DaveScot from Uncommon Descent for violating its policies by posting such claims. (Arrington’s actual reply was that these purported Christians were not really Christians and that atheists are worse). Intelligent Design should nevertheless be taught in public schools since it is important that kids hear both sides.

Among other activities Arrington has also attempted to run for a position on the Colorado school board, and he is (or was) the treasurer of MichelePAC, Michele Bachmann's fundraising organization – he even managed to misspell Bachmann’s name on the FEC filings. Arrington has also tried to place the blame for church shootings on atheist writers, primarily because he wants to see a connection and is a screaming douche. The imaginary status of his evidence is rather mind-boggling, but from the evidence he concludes – predictably, and through inference by fallacy – that morality is impossible without God. He has also claimed that using the fossil record to argue for evolution is cheating since it is based on science (indeed). After all, Arrington is at a deeply unfair disadvantage here – how can he win possibly win an honest discussion when his opponents are the ones who have all the truth, evidence, reason, reality, science, intellectual honesty, and accountability on their side?

Diagnosis: Complete idiot whose inability to distinguish between providing reasons for X and bullying critics of X into silence makes him a perfect moderator for ID outlets.