FR evo-kooks are many, I agree with you. However, the motives of such folk....
Frankly, it is a big mystery, or is it really?
All your comments about definitions ring very, very true. But though the evo-kooks would love to argue this point, the fact is w/ Dover, they have revealed their true saviors: lawyers and judges. Scienctists have decided that Lawyers and Judges, not scientists, are more trustworthy, w/ regards to who are the stewards of what words mean.
So, the debate is not about 'science' but about 'law'. And thus the debaters are not really science defenders, but law lovers.
To be a law lover is the default human position in my view. When I was growing up in my public high school ... why it was clear: the cool table had the cool kids ... and no one else. Once you got to be a cool kid, why by GOD, you had better know, and enforce, ALL the cool rules. Becoming a cool kid was a one way street .... no second chances.
Once ejected from the cool table, a formerly cool kid was never allowed back in.
It appears this as much a part of human behavior as the fact all humans are hairy.
But what about the deceptions? I mean, for example, here 'scientists' never really come out and say that lawyers truely are their best buddies, their designated enforcers of what definitions mean.
Even though it is a very, very, rare lawyer who has a traditional science degree. They act deceptively in this regard in my view, both the scientists and the lawyers. But I'm still wondering about the motive about that.
It is kind of mystery. But maybe not. Maybe the act of enforcing and promoting the cool rules has something about it that is its own reward ... sort of like a hit of mental meth.
And when it comes to rules, the lawyers and scientists are birds of a feather - they just sit at same cool table in different schools. But funny strange, no arguement seems to exist about who is the higher authority: the lawyers. The ones who, are illnumerate as a class of men and women. But, maybe they are even more numerate than the scientists...
But I'm not sure about any of this. That is why freepville is so much fun. I see folks like yourself who seem to share some of what I think, engaging, not illiterately, but literatly, w/ evo-kooks ... I really really like that term ... and I watch them ignore your fundamental argument and proceed to beat the drum.
Well, time to define some geophysical acts on the golf course. Golf is a deeply rational activity you know. Rational ... hmmmm. from the root, Latin .... ratio .... which in essence means ... to number. My numeracy proceeds apace, but not to the speed of my liking.
Are you a golfer Mamzelle?
And always remember that there's a nice big FRee world outside the evo-holes.
Go explore, and it wont be long before you find many niches. Some are of the photoshop fun and games (like the Viking Kitty goes a Zottin'), there are artists and musicians to talk to. I've been here awhile and speak to many scientists wouldn't set a keyboard toe inside an dank little evo-hole. Thery're too busy actually doing science to want to spend time with obsessives who lust to dominate a few fellow freepers.
But the point about lawyers is interesting--they do have that will to dominate. But what they also revealed with the outcome of Dover is a (hysterically) gleeful "so there" to the religious, and an insidious "the GOP needs to unload the religious, or it'll be thought of as the anti-science party.." "Maybe we should go after Santorum in the primaries, wound him for the general election."
ding--an agenda here,not a debate. It was at this point that I started keeping better track of what goes on in the evo-holes.