A little rant for desdamona

This post follows on from Message 98, but my words here would not be appropriate in that forum. Let me be blunt. You have a much more serious problem, and that is rudeness.If you come here calling people liars, and farts, and much else besides, a bit of formatting is not going to help much.Don't try to tell me it is others that started the matter. You have direct responsibility for your own behaviour, and it is not pretty. It is also compounded by a level of basic ignorance that is amongst the worst I have ever seen.The only possible way you can recapture a shred of dignity at this stage is to apologise, and rethink your whole approach.Note that criticism of another person is sometimes appropriate. You have, I think, recognized that your basic knowledge of evolution is not good, as in Message 93. There is no shame in admitting this; but you need to be more aware of the implications of your ignorance of evolution.Your charge that Darwin "appears" contradictory is wrong. You got that by reading a dishonest quote mine, not by any attempt to read Darwin for himself. Darwin's own text is perfectly clear and not remotely contradictory.Evolution is not faith. It is science, the same as physics, or chemistry, or any other field of science. It is not based on suppositions or a desire to reject God or a need to overturn the bible. It is based on observations and evidence and scientific inference just like any other field of science; and just like any other field of science it is used by believers and unbelievers alike.You simply do not know enough about the subject to have a meaningful scientific criticism at this stage; and more importantly you no basis for casting slurs on the integrity of those of us who accept basic evolutionary biology. There are people here (not me, however) who are professional scientists directly involved in evolutionary biology.There is no moral defect in disagreeing with us, of course. You can trust on faith that evolution is false. I would have no objection to that; but that is a quite different claim.It is also not a scientific criticism. In fact, it is not an argument of any kind. It is what you choose to believe. It makes not a scrap of difference to how others might think on the matter, especially those of us who have put a lot of effort into the hard work of becoming sufficiently educated on the subject to understand what it is about.If you have an actual scientific criticism, I will be happy to engage. But note that this is intended to be a debate forum. If I disagree with you strongly, and try to back up my views that you are mistaken on something, that does not mean I am being unfair or angry or unkind. It's debate. If you don't want to engage with views you don't share, then just go away. If you do want to engage, then show a bit more respect, or else you will only end up bringing disrepute on the views you want to defend. That's another hard fact of life as well.You can quickly find all kinds of supposedly scientific criticisms of evolution from various websites. There are very good reasons for the fact that these sites are almost all considered risible pseudoscience. It is not because they have the wrong conclusions. They are pseudoscience because of elementary scientific errors, and we can consider these on a case by case basis if there is a specific instance you want to propose.When you start making scientific criticisms, however, you need to back them up, and be prepared to talk to people who give arguments against what you propose. You are not ready for that yet; you need to learn a bit more of the elementary background. Questions, of course, are always welcome; and there is no obligation to accept the answers. Just be ready for substantive comments on the answers you give for debate... OK...The above was quite a rant, for me. My usual style of engagement is much more substantive, and I will return courtesy for courtesy; regardless of outstanding disagreements. Improvement in behaviour merits an instant clean slate. Can you do that for me, and for our other colleagues in this forum? You will be the major person to benefit from this.Cheers -- Sylas[This message has been edited by Sylas, 04-22-2004]

Fighting down my shy retiring nature and painful modesty... may I propose that you simply place a link to the Style Guides thread as a footnote in the existing forum guidelines? Posts already remain archived indefinitely, don't they?It is useful for a style guide to be a post itself; it serves as a fairly direct demonstration of some of concepts. Some people have already benefitted from just looking at the way I did things which were not actually discussed as guidelines. (You're welcome, Ned.)Cheers -- Sylas

Since this is Free for All, topic diversions are fine with me. In fact, it would be a good thing to leave a bit of scope to engage more personally and reduce tensions.Anyhow, the sub-title given is true. I was home schooled for my first three years of schooling. My mother acted as teacher for me and my brother. She is and remains a fine thoughtful Christian woman, and she gave my brother and I an excellent start for our education.I was a voracious reader as a child, and ate up any educational opportunity given me. I can't be sure of all the many factors which have made me as I am; but I am sure one of them is the intense interest my parents took in me and fostering my childish enthusiasm to find out and explore.The choice to home school was based more on circumstances than on principle. We used materials that were prepared for the Australian "School of the Air", which was intended for children learning at home in the far flung cattle stations of the outback. My parents were missionaries, and we were living in South Korea at the time. I sometimes think it would have been better for me to be at a Korean school, even if only to have the benefit of fluency in another language. But I understand something of why my parents chose as they did.Taking on home schooling is an awesome responsibility; and very time consuming. It also has some major benefits, especially in the early years. We have another person in this forum who is very actively involved in what is a kind of semi-home school situation, from what I can see: truthlover. Truthlover is a very evangelical Christian, living in a Christian community, although has come to reconcile evolution with his faith. A most interesting man with a rather fascinating story. See, for example, Message 17 and the followon in the rest of the thread.[This message has been edited by Sylas, 04-22-2004]

(This was quoted from Message 133, where it was off-topic. Quoted text reformatted to add white space after punctuation.)The above is bizarre. None of the above cause sharing of DNA. They can share various germs, or viruses, but your own DNA is unaffected.Germs, bacteria and viruses have their own DNA, of course, which is another matter. Your own human DNA is unaffected. The way a virus works has some association with DNA, since viruses tend to co-opt DNA duplication mechanisms in healthy cells to replicate themselves; but in the process they kill the cell. The real damage to health is from the destruction of the cell. This belongs in a new topic; but be warned. You don't actually know about DNA at all. Your comments are completely mistaken, and betray a total failure to comprehend what DNA is and how it might be involved with disease. People don't get sick by sharing DNA. In fact, this is just too stupid to be a new topic; so I am placing this here in the free for all thread, where topic diversions are less of a problem.In the very next message Message 134 describes AIDS as DNA sharing. It isn't; and by the way, multiple consecutive posts on the same topic are not appreciated. Desdamona describes marriage as a safe way to share DNA. You don't share DNA with your partner. Rather, your children will have their own unique genome, half from each parent; but both parents retain their own DNA regardless of effects of marriage, poor hygiene, disease, or AIDS.And finally (added in edit) from Message 141 Desdamona writes You can't share your DNA with anyone, except your children who get half of it by inheritance.Cheers -- Sylas[This message has been edited by Sylas, 04-22-2004]

This is a response to Message 143This heartfelt and honest question merits a clear answer. I have not professed any particular level of loving kindness. I do try to engage with respect and courtesy and substance; but I am not sugar coated; and at times I can be a curmudgeon.I do not believe that my discussions with you have failed to live up to standards of appropriate courtesy, even for a newcomer. I still don't think you quite appreciate that strong substantive disagreement with you is entirely consistent with courtesy.However, this is a matter in which all of us can stand to reconsider. How are we treating others? I want to pull no punches in the substance of my material, but neither do I want to be unfair or gratuitously insulting, for newcomers most especially. So I've used the search facility to look over all the posts in which I mention your name, to review whether or not I have been fair. You can check also, if you like. The following links are the posts in question. Message six was the first in which I mentioned the spelling and grammar problems; and you felt that was rude. I frankly disagree, and I tried to disclaim any intent to give a personal attack in that post, but I feel it very much needed to be said. Message ten also illustrated some corrections, after one of our forum administrators became fed up with the formatting errors, and tried to show you by example how it should appear. I took the chance to provide some of the other corrections also.Generally, those two posts are the one which I feel went closest to the edge. No-one enjoys being corrected on such things in public. But on balance, I think it was worth saying.You are writing here in an International forum. In one post you commented about "our nation" with the plain implication that I was in the USA. But in fact, I am in Australia. Your posts are quite literally being read all over the world. The errors were not just minor typos; but consistently dreadful. This has improved, by the way; and that is a good thing. It is well worth taking that extra bit of trouble. I usually have a dictionary beside me when writing.The Style Guidelines are something I had been thinking of for some time. Your posts were the final impetus I needed to write it up. It is intended to be helpful to newcomers, and to help everyone get the most out of the forum, without causing offence.Message 14 was my "little rant". No apologies. I think it was a much needed wake up call. I don't mind if you disagree; I will not make a habit of ranting. But at least you may appreciate how your posts have been coming across to others.You have been on a very steep learning curve here, and I have sympathy for that. I believe I have consistently given you appropriate and substantive responses, which live up to a good level of courtesy, while also giving a robust engagement with the many trivial errors of fact.The way to handle someone with limited knowledge, who in spite of that makes claims that are grossly incorrect, is not to sugar coat the response, but not to give gratuitous insults either. I think I have done that, and am satisfied with the manner in which I have conducted these exchanges.If you are willing to continue engagement, I will be more than happy. I think perhaps you know a bit more about what to expect, and how to engage. This is a debate forum. Disagreement is the reason we exist. It you don't understand something, and make undefended claims about it anyway, you can expect your argument to be ripped to shreds and exposed for ignorance. This is not insult or unkindness. It is debate.Best wishes -- Sylas

Hi folks,This is the Laminator; our fascinating experiment in splicing Velociraptor genes into a human genome. Cute, isn't he. (Down boy. Bad laminator. It's not dinnertime yet; leave that cat alone.)He's really quite lovable and harmless. Throw him a raw steak now and again, and he's good as gold. Usually. Quite often anyway.Cheers -- SylasPS. [This message has been edited by Sylas, 04-23-2004]

In Message 200, written on April 24 10:42 PM, Desdamona implodes and goes back to worse behaviour than ever. Formatting is fixed in the following extract, but the text is unchanged. This stream of venom is very ugly indeed, and completely unjustified. Desdamona is responding to mark24. Mark24 is much better informed on evolutionary biology than most other contributors here, I suspect. He has also called Desdamona on untruths and hypocrisy; and with cause. Desdamona apparently thinks this is the way to deal with such criticism.No-one is above criticism, Desdamona. Sometimes it is appropriate to call someone a hypocrite; though it is a serious change that should be used with care and with good reason. Mark24 has given reasons for such terms. You have not.Your behaviour here is abominable, and indicates that you are just not learning from your previous mistakes.You don’t know enough about evolutionary biology to comment meaningfully on that subject or on the matter of evidence. In fact, mark24 is correct; there is an overwhelming amount of evidence for evolution, both as a process ongoing right now and as a process which has been occurring for millions of years. You disbelieve in evolution because of your religious beliefs; not because you understand it or have any coherent criticism.Mark24 is a valued poster, with considerable knowledge and background. He knows what he is talking about, and your accusations are without foundation and without honour. You should be ashamed of yourself.SylasPS. berberry -- optimistism is good; but I have no optimism any more in this case.{Footnote from Adminnemooseus (so not to create a new message) - Desdamona, I hope you realize that Admin, Adminnemooseus, and AdminAsgara are truly "bending over backwards" to try to let your involvement in work. Had you been on the evolution side, you would have been suspended a long time ago.}[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 04-25-2004]

I disagree. I created the thread, and I think it has been useful.The thread was started becuase of a newbie user who has had a lot of trouble staying on topic in her threads, and who has been extraordinarily rude in some of her remarks. What response should one apply?At first, one tries to engage substantively, and to point out some of the guidelines for staying on topic, and engaging with substance rather than simply with abuse.Finally, I felt that it was important to be completely blunt with a wake up call as to how her posts were going so badly awry. I took it to a new thread, precisely because I don't want other substantive threads to be diluted with meta-discussions. The insults and abuse will certainly generate responses. Better to get those responses here in Free For All rather than start up cascades of meta-response on behaviour in other forums.I think that the comments made here have helped a bit; at least for a while. It was worth a try.Adminnemooseus is right. If an evolutionist behaved like the newbie in question, they would have been suspended long ago. Admins have bent over backwards to try and help her use this forum effectively. That will absolutely require dealing with the problems mentioned in this thread.Have a look, for example, at my Message 46 in the thread. Tell be honestly; what do you think should be done? Should that kind of abuse be ignored? Is there anything wrong with taking issues of such abuse to a different thread.I would certainly be very glad to hear of any constructive ideas about how to deal with this kind of problem. What would you suggest?This is a serious question.One of my own thoughts is that perhaps it is not actually a favour to hold off suspensions for so long. It may have been better for everyone, the newbie included, if a suspension had been applied earlier on. This has the effect of preventing everyone else from trying to help deal with the problem, which comes across as a pile-on. There is an informal restriction applied at present; that is good and shows that admins are aware of the problem and monitoring the situation.Best wishes -- Sylas[This message has been edited by Sylas, 04-25-2004]