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In science, the attitude is that things are objectively provable.
***The problem with the evo argument is that it is not objectively provable. We hear all the time about the “preponderance of the evidence” because it is an inductive area rather than deductive. That means there’s still room for error, certainly with the abiogenenesis argument when the probabilities come out to something like 10^-247 chance of polypeptide molecules forming into amino acids and all the way up the chain to a simple one-celled life form (note that 10^-50 is the traditional mathematical cutoff point for something that is impossible).

One reason why we need an ecumenical tag for some crevo threads is that the abiogenesis and evo theories have implications for religious thought. We see it all the time that the evo/abio theory is taken as proven, just like the “theory of gravity” — even though there is no one encompassing theory of gravity. There is a Law of Gravity, but we still don’t know why gravity exists, so there’s no settled theory of gravity.

So, since the evo crowd proceeds forth as if the evo theory is proven, they tend to trample into the realms of philosophy and religion. This trampling is what causes much of the acrimony we see. If we could reasonably expect science geeks to keep mum about religious implications and religious geeks to at least read up on scientific method, then there wouldn’t be this acrimony. I don’t think se can reasonably expect that from either camp, so a separation is in order.

Earlier I had mentioned an example about earthquakes —
If your faith was in something like, say the Vedas that said earthquakes are caused by elephants jumping up & down and it was demonstrated to you what earthquakes are, would you have to wrestle with your faith a bit? The response was
“I suppose I would know from the beginning that the ‘parable’ of elephants jumping up and down was written to convey some sort of spiritual truth (like a universal flood). Obviously no elephant could generate that kind of force, and plate tectonics shows that earthquakes have a non-supernatural origin. “ So there is a tension between the scientist who has extremely strong evidence about the origin of earthquakes and the implications for the Veda scriptures. On the crevo plane, the tension is higher because the scientific evidence is incomplete (certainly where abiogenesis is concerned) and the christian scriptures find a ready audience in a forum that starts out defining itself as “pro-God,...” and also, there is extremely strong textual criticism and archaeological evidence accompanying the christian scriptures.

Judging from the behavior on this thread, I don’t think an academic or Focused thread would work. There are several factors at play in it, some of which were mentioned upthread by the Religion Moderator. First, the mods don’t have the time, energy, nor wherewithal to babysit this monster. Second, the presence of Darwin Central shows that there already is a place for such discussion, and they have basically just as much acrimony as they did when they camped out here. Third, the emotions run very high on this subject — it is more akin to religion than anything else. Fourth, the religion mod claims there isn’t interest — which I think is baloney but since we would be asking the mods to shoulder a burden, they’d have to be shown in no uncertain terms that there is a ton of interest.

Scientists aren’t used to dealing with much on the inductive plane, they prefer the deductive plane. They’re constantly applying deductive logic to an inductive pursuit. They try to tackle a 3-headed dog with a 2-pronged pitchfork, saying such things as “prove that there’s such a thing as big foot”. I just finished reading a book called “Excess Heat” which chronicles the mounting evidence for Low Energy Nuclear Reactions, but mainstream science considers this area a pariah because they use deductive logic in the presence of a new, Unknown phenomena and say such things as “show us the Neutrons” or “if you really had those nuclear reactions, you’d be dead”. And yet, the results continue to be replicated in the lab.

In the Low Energy Nuclear Reaction birth of a science, we see that the existing scientific establishment did not follow protocol in dealing with this upstart information and summarily dismissed it. When you say, “All that is required are rules of academic discourse” it’s not enough because scientists won’t follow such rules and the referee system is going to be skewed one way or another, somehow, it’s just human nature.

Very nice essay. I agree that there is a greater similarity between the crevo debate and religion debates, than between some classic natural science debates and religion debates.

But that militates for what I proposed, academic threads. It does not point to adoption of Religion Forum Ecumenical designation. That is because the underlying idea in ecumenism is that despite confessional differences Christians have more in common than not. You cannot make that assumption in the crevo debate. Worse for your cause, the evolutionists will take the very suggestion thet they, too, are relying on faith as an argument in their disfavor and will sabotage your idea. We’ve seen that on the ecumenis threads quite a bit; someone with a known partizan personality will say somethign like “There is a lot I could say and refute your theory completely, but since you’ve chosen to hide behind the ecumenic label, I will let the absurdity and self contradiction of your position remain unchallenged”. One cannot construct a similar argument about an academic thread.

It is not true that academic threads are harder to police. They are easier to police. There are formal rules in academic debate, that one follow without studying up on the subject.

- impersonal tone
- stay on topic
- source your statements
- answer the question posed to you
- minimize banter and HTML gimmickry

How hard is that?

Naturally, it should be a forum-wide convention, not just one we exclusively burden the Religion Moderator with. FR could benefit from an elevated style of debate in other areas.