Summations Only

Hi Genomicus I believe that your posts do attempt to support your position with evidence (whether they do or not is subjective imho) and this puts you at odds with the more creationist types that rely on opinion and belief.Bolder-dash has also done some effort at supporting his positions, but he also falls into emotional responses, and I think that is where most moderation is encountered.Of course part of the problem is encountering cognitive dissonance when your beliefs are challenged by contrary empirical evidence, and it is a normal human reaction to be angry when this happens - it's almost inevitable if you think about it.
see Cognitive Dissonance and Cultural BeliefsEnjoy.Edited by RAZD, : added cog/dis

Yes, I've noticed that a lot of creationists get really emotional about this. I guess it's hard not to if you lack self-control. Another issue is the somewhat condescending manner of some of the individuals from the evolution side. I do think that many of the creationists make a big deal out of it and can't see through the condescending style, but at the same I think it needs to be realized that a lot of the creationists that come here didn't really benefit from a stellar education. Thus, politely showing them where they are wrong will help - except in the cases where the person is absolutely dogmatic.

Hi again Genomicus We are talking about core beliefs from childhood, products of parents, teachers, religious leaders, people regarded with the trust of children carried into adulthood being challenged -- it isn't so much the belief itself but what the challenge to it means for all this upbringing. It's like insulting your mother. Indeed this is the core problem -- that they have been mis-educated in many cases by people in positions of trust and respect, that carry the burden of entrenched cultural beliefs to the next generation even when there is contradictory evidence (ie young earth beliefs, etc).It is difficult to unlearn things and then start over. It would be like intentionally forgetting a language to learn a new one. Not only is it condescending and tacitly insulting and virtually guaranteed to create an emotional reaction even it that is resisted in posting a reply, but it is shown to be actually counterproductive in cognitive dissonance studies: it actually seems to give the person more reason to stay by his conviction and to recircle with his fellow believers for additional confirmation inputs.see Cognitive Dissonance and Cultural Beliefs if you haven't already. Indeed, that and helping them to review the information and answer questions is the ONLY approach that I have seen work here. This is what I would call a Cognitive Dissonance Bubble, the "hothouse" of dwise1's post Message 311.Enjoy.

One phrase: I concur

First off, I appreciate the intelligence of your posts. But the thing is, you don't really ever direct challenges to the underlying principles of Darwinian evolution, at least not in a comprehensive manner. Mostly you are just willing to debate some of the more subtle aspects of the mechanisms; aspects which only one or two other posters here are informed enough about to even comment on. Most of the others here readily admit they are not even sure they understand much of what you are talking about.As such it doesn't put you in any position to experience much of the biased moderation. And what you do experience, you don't seem to care about. You note that the evolutionists here do tend to post in a condescending manner, but you apparently don't mind the fact that if you were to respond equally condescendingly, you would be admonished for it by the moderators. So you come here willing to accept a somewhat un-level playing field to begin with. I don't.Also, when people either tell you that you don't know what you are talking about, or they state positions which are illogical, you are just willing to let that slide, without really questioning the fundamental premises behind their believes. Its sort of a c'est le vie attitude, which is certainly fine, and your prerogative, but if someone says something that doesn't make sense, I intend to challenge that, or else why bother being here.For instance, RAZD and Percy believe in a completely unguided process to evolution, and yet at the same time they believe in a deity that has some interaction with humans at some level-an interaction then is different than a deities interaction with say a rock presumably. And yet this is a pretty silly notion philosophically: They believe a process of organization was begun, which could have lead anywhere, like to a mindless sludge for example, but instead it just so happened to lead to a conscious being like humans, and then, only then did some deity decide, you know what, this is interesting, who knew that it would lead to consciousness, but since it did, NOW I will have some spiritual tie to it. Its a position that should at least be challenged, but this is not the forum that allows that position to be challenged fairly. Percy will call you off topic, no matter where you challenge it, or you will be subjected to insults, without being able to respond. So why bother.Finally, it insults my sensibilities to watch someone like Dr.A be able to post crap like this in another thread about cosmology to another poster who is so much smarter than he is, that he makes Dr.A look like a mosquito:

quote:

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Your opinions merely make me think that you're vain, lazy, and ill-educated. It is the manner in which you express them that gives me graver cause for concern. For example, have you noticed that you're referring to yourself in the third person and pretending to be a cat? I am only a layman in matters psychiatric, but I cannot think that this is a good sign.

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Without wanting to respond, you know what A, you are a complete windbag full of crap.But you don't particularly mind that, because you are allowed to talk about protein receptors while only being challenged with mild condescension-which you accept. Fair enough. Edited by Bolder-dash, : No reason given.Edited by Bolder-dash, : No reason given.

Talking of bias, it's odd that you don't find Maddenstein's post Message 169 equally bad...

Here's your big chance.Start a new thread, in the Science Forum, with your single best evidentiary point against the theory of evolution. Make sure your opening post states your position clearly -- in regards to both your evidence and the scientific method. In doing so, show us why the evidence currently used, and the scientific method -- both of which lead to the current theory of evolution -- are wrong.Please leave belief, dogma, divine revelation, scripture and other subjects for some other thread.Your goal is to show us where the theory of evolution is wrong, using evidence and the scientific method.Also, let's keep personalities out of this, as well as complaints about moderation.Just post your single best piece of evidence and we can debate that evidence.What could be more fair than that?

Hi Bolder-dash If that were really the positions I\we take, rather than your strawman misperception of them, then you might have a complaint. Of course that is one of the reasons he has not encountered moderation, he basically accepts the evidence of evolution, with a modified deistic\IDist beginning (closer to your portrayal of my position). I've said before that ID is not necessarily in conflict with any science, including evolution. It is the emotional responses over strongly conflicting views that brings out moderation.I'll go with Coyote here on you starting a new thread on challenges to the underlying principles of evolution (we don't need to restrict it to "Darwinian evolution" do we?). Maybe a Great Debate topic with Coyote to keep other posters from posting insulting comments ...Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : clrtyEdited by RAZD, : great debate

All I've ever said is that I believe in God. I don't think I've ever been more specific than that, unless my statements that I don't have any evidence for God count, so I don't know where you're getting the rest of it. I'll keep my specific beliefs private, but I will say that unsupported as they are by any evidence they are inconsistent and make no sense. They're my beliefs. I'm rather fond of them, I like them and feel comfortable with them, and I don't see any need to reconcile them with the real world or logic or rationality or anything else.--Percy

I have to admit, I can't argue with that. Its the most honest and reasonable message I have seen you write.

As of yet, I've argued in favor of the ID hypothesis of front-loading and proposed an ID hypothesis for the engineering of certain molecular machines. But here's the deal: ID and evolution can work together, and complement each other. You can have engineering and evolution. They are not mutually exclusive. What is exclusive is either the view that intelligent design must deny evolution or that evolution implies that every feature in biology must be the product of random mutation and natural selection (and other mechanisms). To be honest, I haven't experienced any moderation, so there's no moderation I have experienced to be able to care about.Occasionally, there will be some individual who makes a snarky post in response to something I've said. But, c'mon, if that person can't control his/her temper then maybe you should discuss these things with someone who can, and just see through the snarkiness? I assure you that you will never, ever get anywhere if you hurl an insult back, because the conversation will ultimately turn into a flame-war. So, I'm asking you to simply refuse to bring yourself to the level of insulting someone who insults you. Does that mean it's not a level playing field? Yes, it certainly does. But other members of this forum will notice that someone is insulting you even though you're not hurling any insults, and they may very well call that person out. In my early days of posting here, a certain user was being rather insulting to me. So what did I do? I ignored the insults. Soon enough, the other members of the forum called that certain person out.We're all human, so we may all have our moments of rage. But try to keep in mind that we are human, so if someone insults you, just remember that you're related to them by ~99.99% of your DNA.

Just to clarify: I'm not necessarily a deist, and when discussing ID, I'm taking supernatural designers off the table.

Perhaps Genomicus is smart enough to understand that the way to change a scientific theory is to come up with something better.

This is false. One of the fundamental principles of the modern synthesis is the independence of mutation and selection. This is expressed by the idea that mutations are random with respect to fitness. One of the posters here was citing Shapiro and Wright as supporters of the notion that mutations were not truly random with respect to fitness. So what happened? I took the time to read and understand an article written by Wright that dealt with this very issue. I spent the time going through each of the figures and tables and discussed both the methods and results in a way that was understandable to the layperson. I discussed how the evidence failed to show a non-random relationship beetween mutagenesis and fitness. You can find the thread here:EvC Forum: Wright et al. on the Process of MutationOf your two posts in the thread both were deemed off-topic, and they clearly were. Neither of your posts discussed the Wright paper at all which was the topic of discussion. I would be happy to start another thread on the peer reviewed primary paper of your choice (no review papers please, they are just too long and cover too much ground for a focused discussion).Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

I don't think accepting evidence for evolution is the key. I think Genomicus avoids moderator intervention because he makes efforts to present evidence based arguments for his own propositions.If your position is essentially that the scientific method is crap and that you aren't bound to use evidence, then you are going to have difficulty presenting your case according to the rules governing the science forum. Unfortunately the rules, when evenly applied, do stack the deck against proponents of Creation Science. Further, attempts to avoid empirical evidence invite dogpiling and mocking because the departure is pretty easy to spot.There are threads in which arguing about whether the scientific method is appropriate, but that argument cannot be the center of every single thread. Science threads about a specific science topic are about the evidence and the conclusions to be drawn from the evidence. If you really have an issue with that limitation, it ought to be discussed in a thread of its own.At any rate, I really don't think Bolder-dash is interested in science based discussion. His primary goal these days is to complain about the forum rules. I don't think he is banned from the science forums, he simply doesn't have any purpose there other than complaining that a topic is being discussed at all.