Talking some sense into randman

We should teach both sides of the controversy, as I have said here
EvC Forum: Silly Design Institute: Let's discuss BOTH sides of the Design Controversy...Perhaps you would care to comment?Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

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If I was the only one you guys made what I consider ludicrous claims about, you could have a point, but as we all witnessed with the insane bashing of Faith, there is something more going on here than creationists or IDers just being unreasonable.

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Yeah, coz faith was just the sweetest, most mild-mannered dearheart who never called anyone any names, never tried to ream someone a new anus, and never, ever attacked anyone personally in any way.

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It's not I am unreasonable, or don't back up my claims, or my arguments are not honest.

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Oh? You haven't backed up your claims on the Welfare Myths thread yet. Someone even linked to your very words, your original claim.They are there for all to see, as are your repeated and persistent dodges and attempts to avoid supporting or withdrawing them. More can be found in the thread Yaro started on fossils, and in holmes' thread on non-secular education in the US. There are several more besides those.You may be able to lie to yourself about the reality of if you support all of your claims or not, but your record is a pretty bad one, and we can all see that.

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That's what I see here. The outsiders of the belief system are always wrong, unreasonable, heck even immoral, dishonest, etc,...and there is no sense that maybe all the outsiders are as objective, and are reasonable, intelligent, educated, honest, etc,...

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Tell me, randman, do cult members make many requests from those who disagree with them to show them data and sources of information to support what their opponents are claiming?If I was in such an "insular" mindset, why would I be after you so dilligently to show me evidence that is contrary to my current notions?If you have information from a reliable source that shows that ADC really is the sole or major cause of a sharp increase in poor, single women having children, then I really want to see it. I don't want to be mistaken about this, and if my current ideas are wrong, i really want to correct them. Seriously. I have told you this several times now, and I mean it.Why are you being so stingy with your sources of statistics and reliable information?

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I think that's because the standard approach seems to always resort to attacking creationism, or some other theory,

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Creationism is a theory now? Like, a scientific theory? Is it written down somewhere, can I see it?

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Which brings me to another point. One of the telling indicators of such a group cultish mentality is to dismiss ideas and smear the originators of them without ever really listening or understanding what those ideas are. I mean Wheeler is a giant in the field of physics and was a mentor to other giants. Zellinger is one of the foremost quantum physicists in the field, as far as I can tell, but they are lightly dismissed as new agers, postmodernists, or whatever, just because I dare suggest that some of their ideas might indicate an ID mechanism.

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Yeah, and John Mack is a noted tenured Psychiatrist at Harvard who believes that people are being abducted by aliens. He wrote a big bestseller called Abduction, you might remember it.Just because a few notable scientists decide to speculate in popular press books about their personal views about how physics relates to the supernatural has no bearing on if those speculations could withstand the rigors of peer review, or if those musings reflect any sort of reproducable, falsifiable reality. They are personal opinions and nothing more. They could even be right, but it is outside the purview of science, so science cannot address it.

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I know that the word "cult" or really just cultishness may cause some to fly off the handle, but how else should I see it? Why are facts not given a fair hearing?

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They are. Of course, getting you to present them is often pretty difficult. And, getting you to accept them when you don't like them is nigh well impossible.

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Why is the creationists that are evil, dishonest people?

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I do not think most Creationists are evil people. Mistaken, deluded, often uneducated on the subjects they expound upon, frequently terribly illogical and hampered by many religiouly-based biases, and sometimes disturbed, but not evil.

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Is there no sense that just maybe you could be wrong?

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Of course! But the scientific method and the standards of evidence require much more rigor than a few popular press books and the speculations of a couple of scientists.The weight of evidence and history is not in your favor.The millions, perhaps billions of individual opportunities to support or refute the ToE have yet to show it to be false, regardless of your handwaving all of that away. The last 200 years of the "apparent" hand of God in everyday life has become smaller and smaller as science gives us a greater and greater understanding of the natural world. The God who used to directly move entire planets now is reduced to occasionally fiddling with a molecule or two.

I wasn't actively moderating when Faith first started participating on a regular basis, but I took a very active role when I noticed the difficulties her threads were experiencing. I held the evolutionists to strict standards with many suspensions while allowing Faith free rein. I had to abandon this because there seemed no post so inoccuous that Faith couldn't find a way to become outraged into an fit of excoriation of everything and everyone evolution. With all Faith's abuse of the Forum Guidelines and of fellow debaters across many months in many threads, I just can't imagine how you can say this.Faith was coddled here for a long time, and I took a lot of abuse for it from the evolution side. If I and the other moderators are not even going to be acknowledged for it by the Creationist side, i.e., by people like you, if you guys can't even tell it is happening, well, I guess I just don't know what to say. I guess I'll just say it feels to me that you must either be uninformed or irrational on this topic.--Percy

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That's your perception of what happened. My perception is the exact opposite.

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Faith called me "the stupidest person on this board".How is that not mean, nasty, and insulting?

Slightly off-topic:

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Faith was coddled here for a long time, and I took a lot of abuse for it from the evolution side.

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I just want to say, Percy, that I, for one, had no problem with this.

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Randman is getting a bad rap, imo, by some folks who don't understand what it's like to be the lone contender in a given topic.

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Actually, Randman is getting a lot of grief because he tends to make many fatual claims that contradict accepted, well-supported science, yet refuses to back them up with any sort of reliable evidence.If he doesn't want to be chased around with demands for evidence, he should consider limiting himself to making claims that he is sure he can back up with some good, reliable support.

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That's your opinion. Imo, I have not done this once ever here on this forum,

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Holmes' thread on education.
My thread on Welfare.
Yaro's thread on fossils.etcetera.

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1. Most students, teachers and professors never look into the facts for themselves.

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Uh, the professors are the ones who are finding out the facts in the first place.The professors are the scientists, the researchers.So, let me ask you. If the ToE is all false, and is built on a shaky house of cards, then why did the discovery of Genetics not cause it to come tumbling down? Why, in fact, did the morphological trees of life (that were developed before the gene was discovered) match so well to the subsequently drawn genetic trees of life?Why do we call the integration of Genetics into Evolutionary Theory "The Modern Synthesis"?This message has been edited by schrafinator, 11-20-2005 09:31 AM

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He is or was teaching as a college professor. "Altering the facts" unfortunately has been a very prominent mainstay within evolutionism as it is taught, imo.

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So, all Biologists are liars? A great conspiracy? The thousands of peer-reviewed papers published by Biologists all contain lies? All of the Biologists are fudging their data?Tell me, where are they having their meetings, so they can all agree on how to lie, and maintain this lie to an unwitting public?Do they have a tattoo that hurts and turns black when the barely-alive Stephen Jay Gould calls them to him? (He didn't really die, you know. His faithful servent, Elderedge, has been keeping him in a demonically-assisted state of semi-life to bide his time before his eventual return to power over all Biologists)

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Critics of evolution are kept out of classrooms and education when allowing their criticisms would assist students and the community in general in knowing the facts, and thus correct some of these mistakes.

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Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Elderedge were critics of Evolution, and they became famous within Evolutionary Biology and among the public for altering part of the theory.

We've already had 50+ messages today, and we're only about a third of the way through the day.Adminnemooseus

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I was thinking of giving randman a suspension, a vacation in the literal sense.He is trying to single-handedly hold down doing one side of the debate in too many topics. While part of this may be his own fault, there also seems to be a good supply of new topics happening, aimed specifically at him.Here at , members of the "liberal-evo" side need randman. If he were not here, you would have few to no opponents to debate against. As such, you need to realize some appreciation of his efforts, however flawed they may be.IMO, this specific topic was on shaky ground from the beginning. Now it has certainly fragmented into many specific topics, many of which are not even of "Coffee House" type.Permanently closed.Adminnemooseus

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