So you’ve opted for another bite at the apple?
”. . . if I've said anything you believe untruthful, by all means challenge me support it.”
Now don’t be putting words in my mouth. I intimated that, by your own standard of judgment, you were not being truthful. Apparently you do not apply the same standards to yourself that you apply to others, so now you want to wiggle out.
”I think I've been careful to distinguish between facts and my opinions. Facts I can reference, opinions I can explain why.”
You’ve been careful to identify as factual those scientist’s understandings of science that agree with your opinion and to dismiss as mere opinion the concepts of science as applied by Dawkins, Weinberg, Provine, Pinker, Gould, Sanger, Tooley, Monod, Lewontin, Sagan, Hauser, Stenger, et al. Remarkably, you (a self-proclaimed rank scientific amateur) seem to regard your grasp of science to be superior to many of the most accomplished and distinguished scientists in the world. Explain that glaring discrepancy if you can.
”Our Creationists / IDer's core argument is that science itself is lying to us about evolution.”
Given the chasm existing between what scientists say and what they do and their inability to agree even among themselves exactly how their discipline should be described and defined, is it any wonder that they leave confusion in their wake? You certainly haven’t exercised any great care in familiarizing yourself with how scientists characterize their own discipline.
”Not just that science is mistaken, but that it's actively suppressing "alternate views," in the defense of false evolutionary theories.”
Well, is it (suppressing “alternate views”)? Have you discussed the data and the logic? Or, have you merely cried “liar!” and galloped on down the pike?
”. . . if anti-evolutionists start off calling someone else a liar, then why would they NOT expect to be called liars in return?”
Pot, meet kettle. Kettle, pot. There’s plenty of that going around. But who started it is a complicated matter that I don’t think either you or I are ever going to adequately explain or resolve.
”Finally, please note that almost every post I've made here was in response to someone else's post addressed to me.”
Sure. You were minding your own business when all those messages came flying over the transom from people you had never heard of. But, you enjoyed them anyway.
”Obviously, I enjoy these exchanges, or I'd not continue with them. And, I have to assume that people sending posts to me feel the same way about it. Do you disagree?”
I can’t explain people’s motivations. I can’t say I always enjoy these exchanges. I’ve learned a lot.
I seriously think you must be mistaking me for someone else, because your argument here makes no sense.
Schaef21 made that same complaint to me -- he said I had him confused with someone else, and he never said what I claimed he said.
And my apologies went to Schaef21, because I had indeed just assumed he was your typical Creationist, and I failed to notice the fine points of distinction.
In your case, YHAOS, I suspect something similar, since I have no clue what you're talking about here. This is a long long thread, no doubt it's hard to keep the posters distinctly in mind.
YHAOS: "Pot, meet kettle. Kettle, pot. There’s plenty of that going around. But who started it is a complicated matter that I don’t think either you or I are ever going to adequately explain or resolve."
I think, YHAOS, you don't know quite as much as you think you know about this, and you're shooting wild here. This history is not that complicated (btw, my education is not in science, but it is in history):
The Biblical account of creation was accepted as fact by nearly everyone until the 19th century. Then geologists began to realize that rock strata had to be very ancient, and biologists like Darwin began to see that relationships among species had to date back very far in time.
By the early 1900s, when the theory of evolution became widely known, laws were passed in the US to prevent it being taught in schools, for fear of evolution overturning a biblical world view.
By the 1960s these anti-evolution laws were themselves being overturned, as courts declared them unconstitutional teachings of religion.
Since the 1960s, Creationists and now Intelligent Designers have been fighting politically to get back into the public science classes -- so far without much success.
Back in the early 1900s, Creationists at least argued the truth, which was that the Biblical world view had to be protected from inroads by science.
Today, by contrast, they can only argue a Big Lie, which is that they have a serious "scientific alternative" to Evolution. They don't. None of their so-called science has been accepted by any major scientific group.
If it WERE, then we would have a MUCH different debate here.
So let me mention briefly, differences between the debates over evolution and "global warming."
In global warming there ARE major scientists doing serious work in that field who publish peer-reviewed articles saying, in effect: "wait just a minute here, AlGore is full of beens." We see articles on this almost every day in Free Republic.
So, Global Warming is a serious debate amongst scientists. But Evolution is not. There is no serious debate about basic evolution amongst scientists, because the basic science is completely accepted, by scientists.
And, as always, it's completely rejected by Creationists, who today pretend to be scientific Intelligent Designers, but so far have made no actual inroad into real science.
Here's my opinion: the "debate" over evolution resembles less the true debate over global warming than the fake "debate" over the Holocaust.