Terry at the Talk Origins board

I sometimes lurk on that board and find it quite amusing.In addition to Terry (and the creepily conservative EdenNod) there is a hilarious old duffer writing under the name of salty who was once (or perhaps still is) a biology professor and who seems to think he is taking part in some high-falutin' academic forum. He constantly refers any one who queries any of his opinions to his published papers, refuses to discuss anything except by way of publication in journals, gleefully expresses his disdain for authority while simultaneously deriding any opponents for their lack of publication, and expects people to regard his views as evidence while at the same time flaunting his distrust of anything so upstart as "logic." Terry seems to indulge him for the one reason that he also has a vitriolic hatred of anything to do with Darwin. He's well worth watching for the amusing vacuity of his posts and his pomposity. I saw him once claiming to be "humble", which reminded me of the Scottish saying, "There are two things no-one can believe if you speak them: I am humble and I am dead."Recently one of my countrymen (a historian who I think I know) who posts on the board as "dan" seems to have got to the core of Terry's "technique" as something like this::: Take a position held by a scientist (or anyone else he chooses to turn his fire on);
:: oversimplify it to the point of absurdity;
:: attack the oversimplified postion, preferably with some homely anecdote about the creek in his backyard, or his dog;
:: claim overwhelming victory in the debate on account of this.You can see this pretty clearly in the example you posted.(Even worse in this case, he is incapable of distinguishing between bad journalism and bad science!)

quote:

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Originally posted by minnemooseus:
I'll then refute it one last time (also with a bit of new data), and declare a victory.

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Moose

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Ah you had better watch it Moose. I see that salty now finds you "tiresome" - surely the end is nigh.BTW: can't you just imagine salty sitting in the corner of a pub somewhere, a lonely disappointed man, muttering into his beer about "Darwinists" and how they would never listen to him? That's the picture that always comes to my mind, anyway.