I imagine brother js1138 is a master of the debate tactic of indirection: He manages to avoid having to engage unpleasant arguments simply by changing the subject.
Of course, that always leaves me wondering: Why does he want to change the subject in the first place?
You are so subtle when you engage in name calling. I almost missed it.
I just read a very interesting essay on that topic, written around the Twenties or Thirties. The essay was called "Climates of Thought." I've forgotten the name of the author, but he made reference early in the essay to some thoughts of Bertrand Russell.
The point of the essay is that devotees of the new scientific mindset are both ignorant of and hostile to all modes of intellectual reasoning. Science used to be proud to be known as "natural philosophy," but now they utterly abhor any connection between "science" and "philosophy."
As your interlocutor pointed out in a recent comment, he rejects all thought that passes beyond the scope of "hypothesis, testing, new hypothesis, testing, new hypothesis, etc."
One can recognize that his method has produced some significant results in the field of scientific discovery, while still pointing out the fact that this type of reductionist approach to the intellectual life is inherently dehumanizing.
According to the author of this essay (who was a secular humanist), any possible dialog between St. Thomas Aquinas and a modern scientist was impossible because their respective modes of thinking were so utterly foreign to each other.
One witnesses the author's thesis proven in action here on these evolution threads where the respective disciples of teleological thought and non-telelogical thought are virtually incapable of communication with each other.
[[Of course, that always leaves me wondering: Why does he want to change the subject in the first place? ]]
Exactly, because it betrays their claims of objectivity- they ask for examples of ID IC, and hwen they get them, (and in my opinion, this whole williams and BB issue regarding metainfo is a VERY powerful example), it seems they always go off topic.
JS- not that you quesitons and side topics aren’t fascinating, they are, but one hting I’ve noticed is the tendancy of Macroevos to appeal to single or scant few examples on issues and try to extrapolate it to mean that every species must hterefore have experienced the same issues, when we know from fact, and many hundreds of years of experiemnts, that htis couldn’t be the case. I read through Talkorigin’s ‘refutaiton’ of Entropy being detrimental to life, and then I found TRUEORIGIN’s complete demolishing of talkorigin’s article, and htere is just no comparison between the intellectual honesty of hte two. Talkorigin tried ot make hte case that since crystals form patterns without drawing energy, then that ‘could mean’ (apparently) that every biological system could hterefore have done hte same.
Time and time again I see these types of attempted extrapolations, and it boggles the mind that someoen could pin hteir hopes on such an impossible longshot- and hten turn around and call ID supporters ‘anti-science’- but whatever.