Dissecting the Evolutionist Approach to Explanation and Persuation

The Evolutionist Approach to Explanation and PersuaSion as per the title of this thread, appears to be browbeating, bullying, harassment, ridicule, snowjobbing, demanding submission to your rules, upbraiding failure to meet your nightmarish standards, general abuse, rudeness, personal attack and character assassination --in the name of science so it gets by the Forum Rules, changing the subject, refusing to think about what the creationist said, "knowing" that the fossils aren't flood evidence so not needing to give it a second's thought, as you have admitted in your OP, and I'm sure I've missed quite a bit more. PD had the perspicacity to recognize some of this.I'm sure it's a very effective strategy for making evolutionists of high schoolers and undergrads, so why you would give a moment's consideration to possibly changing your tactics is beyond me.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-09-2006 12:46 AM

I'm sorry. This has been getting to me too much.

You are making a typical mistake. You are assuming that conditions were the same then as now, so that your measurements now would apply then. That is not a warranted assumption. AND YES, THIS IS OFF TOPIC, so let's cool it. This message has been edited by Faith, 03-09-2006 12:45 AM

Typical insulting suggestion rqb. Baby steps indeed. The problem is the mental set that can't think of ANYTHING but how to cram evolutionism down the creationist's throat whether by browbeating and ridicule or by baby steps and pablum. The problem is basic contempt. SO odd nobody notices. All anybody notices is when Faith gets at the end of her rope with it, and then it's Faith's fault.

This is a correct analysis.

You are about the worst here. And the browbeating of me started way before I started retaliating. Of course it is impossible to see who started it but on the very first thread I participated on a year ago (which is when I effectively started posting although I registered quite some time before that) I was greeted with the typical EvC harassing insistence that I toe some invisible line and was berated for my supposed failure and treated in the most unbelievably rude way. The worst offenders as I recall, from the beginning to now, were Nosy Ned and you, and you both have continued in form.

I have nothing against modern geology as long as it sticks to useful stuff. I'm sure it's very good at that. It's Old Earth theory I reject. I think you should aim for less tendentious terminology. Why don't you hang us by our feet over a vat of boiling oil and dip us every time we repeat ourselves?But let's get serious here. I repeat myself because I'm sure nobody bothered to think it through and that if they did they'd maybe finally "get" it. But I also know that they won't -- as you say in your OP you just "know" the huge numbers of fossils aren't evidence for a worldwide flood and you don't give it a second thought -- I just want then to try to keep it afloat.

Thank you but I'm not interested. I wasn't interested to begin with and I continue uninterested.

I think it's more about whether one is prepared to debate on your terms or not. It's not so much witnessing as not being prepared to be confronted by dozens of people who treat what you believe with contempt and consider their own wild speculations about how the flood couldn't have happened to be scientific finality.

I answered you. I think I AM defending it by repeating it. Bringing it to general attention again after somebody's attempt to bury it under what they consider to be contrary evidence.But I will stay out of this now.

If ToE is true we should see... is a prediction that can never be verified. It's all a matter of interpretation. There may be other explanations of what you predicted to occur and saw. You'll never know because there is no way to test it. So for instance congruence is predicted. But you already see the consistency of the phylogenetic tree. You are working with something that already has a certain logical direction to it. So you confirm that logical direction with a separate test from another angle and think you've supported the ToE. Well in a sense you have, but if the congruence isn't the result of genetic descent you won't have a way of finding that out by this test.This is not like REAL science of the sort Robin gave an example of where when something is predicted to happen based on a particular theory it actually does or doesn't happen and you can know for sure from the result that the theory was correct or not.

Fossil evidence is ALSO indirect. All these preserved dead things, that appear to have been laid down in a particular order. What's direct evidence about that?

It's not direct evidence unless you KNOW why they are in that order. It is merely suggestive evidence.

Thirty fragments of skulls isn't much evidence for anything.And the fact that one can make a visual progression of skeletons -- or skulls -- is no proof of descent.This message has been edited by Faith, 03-09-2006 02:18 PM

What I had in mind is what it's supposedly evidence FOR. As long as there is the possibility that there is some other explanation for the ordering of the fossils than the evolutionist explanation, I consider the evidence to be indirect FOR that conclusion. Perhaps "indirect" is the wrong term. In which case, fine, give me a better one for what I'm trying to say.