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To: donh

It appears to me to be the case that you vouchsafed an argument from the book, I explained in fairly concrete terms why the arguement is not considered new



One last try.

I did not present the conversation between Spetner and Korthof for the purposes of saying that I agree with anything Spetner said. I presented it as a case of an evolutionist and anti-evolutionist having an intelligent, scientific discussion. Which, unfortunately is all too rare.

Therefore, I did not to respond to the substance of your critique, nor did I represent that I can even grasp all of what is being said. I tried to make it clear to you my interest is in honest discussion. Finding examples of it. Finding evolutionists who believe there is even a need for a sucha discussion etc.

So far I'm very impressed with Gert Korthoff's pages. I think he is an evolutionist who knows how to explore without being threatened, and critique his opponents without trashing them.

On these threads stremba and thatcherite and jwalsh07 seem like they might be interested in that.

Now, really, I'm out.


154 posted on 02/15/2005 2:51:45 PM PST by Rippin
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To: Rippin
herefore, I did not to respond to the substance of your critique, nor did I represent that I can even grasp all of what is being said. I tried to make it clear to you my interest is in honest discussion. Finding examples of it. Finding evolutionists who believe there is even a need for a sucha discussion etc.

Well, how very fair-minded. All actions have consequences, and all opinions have implications. If you wish to have a discussion that rises to the level of seriousness of drunken late nite high school bullsession, than you are right on the money. However, you have stumbled onto a forum that takes it's conversation more seriously than that, as a general rule.

If we accept that you are ferreting out rhetoric virtue in this quest, that carries with it some interesting freight. it suggests that both sides of this discussion have dragged in meat of relatively equal intellectual sustenance upon which to feast. In every schoolboard meeting across the country right now, regarding science textbooks, the creationists are striving 'til they sweat blood to create exactly this impression. If the astrologists and the flat-earthers were doing the same thing, the issue would be a little clearer to schoolboards, and so would the problem with your supposedly fair and neutral quest for dialog.

This is not a democracy, The two sides of this discussion are not on equal footing due to some high school decorum rule of rhetorical manners. The one side is scientists, speaking in the language of science, about issues that they are extremely, and uniquely qualified to handle, and doing so with an excruciatingly high standard of honesty, self-criticism, and care, and the other is theologens with a demonstrated, extremely careless attitude toward believable facts, and a well-understood predisposing agenda, putting up an extremely thin pretense of being scientists, on the basis of a handful of well-educated cranks, that does not automatically buy them equal time at the scientific table--the only table scientists are any more qualified than anyone else to talk at.

Creationists are making a concerted assault on what science currently believes with these ID arguments--which are rediculously thin--not because they are necessarily wrong, but because they are necessarily lacking in the meat and potatoes of science--incontrovertable, tangible positive material evidence--and lacking in the other important touchstone of such evidence as is available: falsifiability. (If I insist the something I don't presently understand happened because aliens with incomprehenisble powers intervened--how do I then set up tests or predictions regarding what the next incomprehensible act will be?)

Acting as if creationists in ID clothing and and scientists were being bulky and childlike because one or the other refuses to sit at your table a play by your rules where the implication is that their positions are of roughly enough equal intellectual merit as to make discussion fruitful is, in itself, an opinion that I may attack quite reasonably, on intellectual grounds. Furthermore, amongst adults, I should reasonably expect to be able to do so without being castigated for it by someone who thinks he has arrogated to himself the warrant to establish such equality without the need of putting up an argument, instead of bleating and gnashing about fairness.

So, my suggestion is...make a real argument, or give up; your stance strikes me as unduly patronizing and proudly incompetent, and I think you should find a forum where fairness counts for more than precise argumentation. They abound; you won't be lonely.

155 posted on 02/15/2005 4:45:09 PM PST by donh
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