Is talkorigins.org a propoganda site?

A direct question, what page were you referring to in Message 222?Now a refutation. You replied to my post Message 240 and you area saying that I should be honest and openly state that randman has showed where TO states universal common descent is a fact. If you read my Message 240 you will see: I did indeed openly state it. I did it twice actually, in my final paragraph I said you had referenced the wrong page and you should have referenced the one that actually supported your position:

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You should have used the 29+ evidences article to put forward your argument, an easy mistake to make.

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Questioning my integrity is fine, calling me a liar is not. I have not lied, and your character assasination as a result of an innocent mistake on your part reflects badly on you. You said in Message 222 that the 'evolution is fact and theory' article states that universal common descent is a fact. It doesn't, it says the opposite. It was an easy mistake to make, and I think it would be decent of you to simply admit the error so we can move on from this point. I can only surmise that your embarassment about making a rather easy and forgivable mistake has clouded your judgement. I don't care that you made the mistake. Indeed, you don't ever have to discuss the error, recant it or anything. I'll happily drop it with no further comment - its not really the topic here anyway.You have my word that if you wish to stop discussing the gaffe I will either never mention the goof again or publically apologize for my memory lapse for doing so. My integrity is my life randman, without it I would be nothing.

Where in my Message 244 did I state you haven't substantiated your points? Is this on topic?

How does this acerbic drivel pass as civil debate. You could have simply said 'you are wrong, mod' but instead you had to call me a liar? What the fuck is wrong with you? If you can't debate dispassionately might I suggest you go away from the computer?I am obviously involved in the debate so I will not take Admin action, I have integrity like that. And in several messages, including Message 238 I refuted it, by posting every single mention of the word common on the page. You say it says: The page says: Explicitly the opposite of what you claim it says. Are you just trying to fill the rest of this thread up with pointlessly bickering over your innocent mistake? It's starting to look like something more than an innocent mistake, that's all. This is the first time you've made any sense for some time. Heritable change/genetic drift are factual occurances. What is theoretical is their impact on population alelle frequencies (ie evolution). A fact is defined as something that has a lot of evidence for it. Universal common descent has a lot of evidence for it. It is therefore referred to as a fact. The fact vs theory page makes this explicitly clear, so I don't see this as propaganda.The same applies for gravity. The fact is that some force affects bodies, the theory is that this is caused by local distortions in space/time. On the contrary, I'm desperately trying to get you to tell me your points so that I can engage them, and have not once told a lie here. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe you are right. My being wrong does not make me a liar. If you do get suspended for this inflammatory debating technique, I hope you can come back cool and collected and discuss the good point you raised above in a calm fashion.

Hi rand,Care to take a step back and talk about the topic? I am sorry if you have taken offense by anything I have said. Maybe you have quoted something that backs up your claims, your posting style can make it difficult since you can be quite aggressive and derogatory to your opponents. Maybe I subconsciously filtered out your good points due to the sea of irrelevant ones. Agreed. They do say that, I say that. I agree with them on this. Have done for a while. I even started a thread about history vs theory and have worked hard on these boards to stress the difference between the phenomenon of evolution and the theory used to describe it. This can be confusing because in a sense the two things feedback from one another. There is this phenomenon: evolution. Life on earth has changed. The hypothesis put forward about this phenomenon is that we all descended from common ancestors conceivably going back to start of life. The theory is used to explain how this could work. The theory works so well in explaining common descent that common descent has become almost a corollary to the theory itself. The page 'fact vs theory' doesnt asesrt this, it asserts that 'common descent' is a fact but says that in the author's opinion universal common descent isn't a fact. It makes that perfectly clear, I trust you understand this now.The page '29+ Evidences' says that in his opinion universal common descent can be considered a fact (or rather it is often referred to as a fact).Is there any need to continue bashing this out? We don't disagree on this. Admit what? You do realise that Paul and I were discussing 'Fact vs Theory' because you said it said something that it didn't say. We just pointed that out to you. It should be clear now where the confusion lies, I don't know why we need to keep up with it.You said that 'theory vs fact' claims universal common descent is a fact. It doesn't. Paul and I pointed this out and that should be the end of it. I don't care about the error and will happily drop it since it isn't vital.

Hello again rand.You have made a false dichotomy here. The 'fact vs theory' page clearly discusses the mechanisms (theory), common ancestry of closely related species (fact) and universal common ancestry (which it explicitly states shouldn't be considered a fact).The other author disagrees with him and it considers that there is enough evidence to call it a fact.Its very straightforward. Correct. When somebody says 'x is not a fact' it should not be debatable whether they consider x a fact or not. There is a difference between being wrong and lying. In my opinion your points have been refuted, if you wish to prove me wrong, get to the point. As it stands you've hardly touched on propaganda since coming back to the thread. I only question you saying 'fact vs theory' says what you said it says about universal common descent. It doesn't say what you say it was. Why not respond to my near dozen refutations of your points and respond to them...or tell me what your points are now and we can discuss them.

I'm sorry to see you've been permanently suspended. It was warranted, since you were warned with the action and continued to engage in the behaviour. Perhaps one day you'll be allowed back, and I hope you'll be able to resume this debate with an air of detachment and dispassion.I understand why you might get so emotive over the subject, I am passionate about propaganda and so can sympathise with your state of mind somewhat. If T.O is propaganda, I want to know.For the record (and in case you do indeed read this), let me clear up a little misunderstanding you seem to have. I'm not really sure where it came from, but let's lay it to rest for all time, OK?If I ever said 'T.O never states that universal common descent is a fact' then I was wrong. I don't remember saying that (it's a big website and I've not read it all), what I remember saying is that the article I have dubbed 'fact vs theory' (for ease of typing), explicitly states it is not appropriate to call universal common descent a fact. I brought this up because in Message 222 and the messages around it you made the claim that this article does say that universal common descent is a fact. This is not the case. To paraphrase yourself, 'you refused to deal with the facts of what I quoted. I mean they are TO quotes for heaven's sake'.It was a perfectly innocent mistake and could have been cleared up easily and quickly so that we could discuss the article in which the author does believe we can safely call universal common descent a fact. I have never denied that '29+ evidences' says what you said it says in this regard. May I draw your attention to Message 244 I am as explicit as it is possible to be

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In 29+ Evidences they state that universal common descent is considered a fact.

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It is a shame that you had to get suspended over being so emotive over what is really only a minor issue.Take care randman, I hope you find peace in your heart and love of your neighbours. I am not angry for anything you have said tonight, I forgive you for getting angry with me. I wish you all the very best.God bless,
Mod

Might I suggest you read Message 244 where I said:

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In 29+ Evidences they state that universal common descent is considered a fact.

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I've referenced it before, but it seems you have missed it. PaulK has said the same thing. Yes, it says that. Very clear. What you are missing is that we were talking about universal common descent, and what that you said this article says about it. The article is very clear about it, it says that universal common descent shouldn't be considered a fact. Is that clear enough for you? It is obvious they are stating macroevolution is a fact, but you cannot engage in this kind of equivocation. Macroevolution is not the same as universal common descent. Universal common descent is the idea that all current life came from a single common ancestor. No. It considers macroevolution as a fact and universal common descent as very strongly supported by the evidence, with no contrary evidence, but not a fact because other reasonable scenarios exist:

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the statement that all organisms have descended from a single common ancestor is strongly supported by the available evidence, and there is no opposing evidence. However, it is not yet appropriate to call this a "fact" since there are reasonable alternatives.

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So, can we finally agree? I think you major problem here is their declaration of macroevolution as a fact. Your issue isn't with universal common descent at all. As such, we can (at last) put this confusion behind us.Is your major issue with the article declaring macroevolution as a fact? If so, explain to me the propaganda that is being employed, bearing in mind how the article defines a fact.

It defines evolution as any change in the gene pool of a population. This is the definition of evolution - they then discuss a simple example of gene pool changes. Its not an argument: its an explanation. Indeed - the title says everything, its an introduction to evolutionary biology.It says that evolution isn't about any change, but heritable change. Which is what the article goes on to say: Its pretty clear - microevolution being observed is not being used in 'proving' macroevolution. So the article is not 'a fallacious argument because they are leaving the impression that the broader concept of evolution is true, that the theory of evolution is true, just because one can define "evolution" as meaning any heritable change', since the article talks about the observation of microevolution and the evidence of macroevolution as being seperate things. It does say that the lessons we learn from microevolution can be applied to macroevolution, but dedicates quite a large section to macroevolution and how that is inferred.

You forgot about the part where it talks about what the change happens to - gene pools of populations. Abiogenesis is clearly not included in this. Looks like sloppy writing to me, but the meaning is clear. Evolution and common descent are considered fact by the scientific community. It doesn't look like that. Evolution seems to be 'heritable changes in a gene pool of a population', macroevolution is large scale changes, micro is small scale changes. The theory is the explanatory framework which is used to explain how these changes occur. The theory doesn't really include universal common descent, though one can make the case for universal common descent using the theory.

Welcome Dierotao!I had a look at pages you referenced. The Flat Earth thing could be seen as fair, out of context. Looking at it in context, it seems quite clear it is not as mocking as all that. It looks like the idea is to show 'The lengths to which one might go in a literal interpretation of the Bible'.More interestingly is your other comments. Let us look at the quotes in their context to see if poor logic is actually being displayed. Let us take this as true, and see if we end up with a logical contradiction with the second statement: This seems to be saying that we can attain a high degree of certainty if we have positive evidence and data. I see no contradiction here, despite the apparant one. We can attain high degrees of certainty if there is evidence for it, but as far as I know there is no evidence that would strongly suggest you have exhausted every natural explanation for an event. So it is not possible to know, with a high degree of certainty that you have exhausted all natural explanations. It probably should be stressed that the T.O website is written by taking notable posts on a bullettin board (and possibly submissions by email I'm not entirely sure), often by professional biologists but not in a professional arena. This gives the website a peculiar feel to it, where each page is written by someone else entirely who has a different way of explaining similar things. Often it can look like they are contradictory, sometimes they are. This is not propaganda, just disagreement.Once again, welcome to EvC. That was a more calm and reasonable tone to have adopted when critquing a website. It's good to have you on board here, and I hope you stick around!