This message is messge 43 of the "Wyatt Museum - Archaeology and Noah's Ark II" topic, where it a very off-topic. I have used it to create this new topic. For lack of a better idea, I'm in part using that message's subtitle for part of the topic title here (subject to a better title coming along).- Adminnemooseus
quote:
OTOH, this is the first time I've seen someone's "credentials" being questioned when that individual didn't first try and use them as an argument in favor of their position (a la inkorrekt, etc).
To an extent, you are right about this. However the truth of the matter is that while I stick within the forum guidelines, I have no interest or motivation in trying to convince anyone here of the wrongness of their position. It's a complete waste of time and resources.
The people who post here are those (on both sides) who are already convinced of their "rightness" and while we sometimes see some minor shifts (generally in scientific terms and away from literal creation science), most of the long-term posters are complete entrenched.
The weaker ones on the creationist side will disappear very quickly once it becomes clear that a) "Hey I don't know what I'm talking about!" and b) "Hey if I don't know what I'm talking about, maybe the rest of it is nonsense as well - geez that's scary, better stop going to that site" (
information blunting).
The important battle is here is for the hearts and minds of the
lurkers and those who end up here via google or other mechanisms. I'd like to say that facts and evidence are the important aspects of the battle but for those people, it needs to be simple and it needs to be straight forward - those who want a more complex explanation will generally join in with the debate.
We keep talking about how scientists doing their debate via peer review rather than internet forum, it's true and it's also an illustration that science is a complex business and one that the average man in the street will struggle to get a grasp of without a significant investment of time. It's why the creationists are so effective on the internet - they pitch their material at the right level (it's irrelevant to an extent that it's made-up!).
Therefore there needs to be a level of discourse on those boards pitched at people with little or no experience or understanding of the sciences or the atheist/theist debate. Iano also digs me for my relatively short posts - but it's entirely intentional, I occassionally write long posts but will delete them and replace them with something much shorter.
The truth of the matter is that most of the lurkers
will skip straight past the long posts for a varity of reasons (This is not off the top of my head, my real-world "expertise" is around the information-seeking behaviour of individuals and organizations. Therefore I have a fair idea of the process and the best mechanisms to attract attention). It's at this problem perpection level that I am trying to reach the lurkers - when they are still trying to define their source selection criteria.
At that level, it's more useful to try and get them to consider the
source rather than what the source is saying/providing as evidence. The "education" in the
relevence of the evidence is already provided by people like Razd, wounded king and others. People will seek out that information when they feel able to cope with it.
That's why as a element of any debate it
is useful to question the motivations and backgrounds of the organizations that what they are actually saying.
Am I attacking the messenger? No I'm just highlighting aspects of their expertise and their bias that the reader should consider. It's an attempt to act out what in social cognitive theory terms is termed as "behaviour modeling". Many of the lurkers on here would struggle to replicate the questioning techniques of RAZD or Wounded King or many of the others in terms of evidence but attempting to model the lurkers behaviour in terms of source selection is slightly straight forward.
Let me give a practical example not associated with WAR to finish.
If someone starts discussing a piece from ICR as evidence of a young earth (Rapid Metamorphism of Rocks for example) - there are lots of people to attack such an account at a scientific level. A level that goes straight over the head of many people. However, if you point them to
The Biblical record of primeval earth history in Genesis 1-11 is fully historical and perspicuous, including the creation and the fall of man, the curse on the creation and its subjection to the bondage of decay, the promised Redeemer, the worldwide cataclysmic deluge in the days of Noah, the post-diluvian renewal, man's commission to subdue the earth (now augmented by the institution of human government), and the origin of nations and languages at the tower of Babel.
Many of the non-literalists will then read that and dismiss that site as a source.
Now I know to an extent that goes again the concept of "debate the evidence not the provider" that many people here to stick by but I can see how the world is going and I'm more interesting in ensuring that the fundmentalist agenda is exposed far and wide. So full-spectrum warfare it is!
(I've used Lurkers as a very broad post in there but in reality I'm talking about the people who are only casually considering those issues or just starting to think about them).