Effective Posting Styles (And Suggested Improvements)

I don't think you're a troll either, for what that's worth. You're here and you love a tussle - I figure that indicates enthusiasm for science. And that's basically awesome.

Well, for starters it's "primordial", not "pre-mordial." "Yada" isn't a noun that means babble, it's an onomatopoeia that describes the sound of nonsense babbling (as in the phrase "yada yada yada.") It makes no more sense to say that something "is yada" than it does to say that "the rooster is cock-a-doodle-do." You say this, but you offer no evidence to support these positions or any authority by which we should believe them, because I suspect you think they're "self-evident." But they're not. The Laws of Thermodynamics apply to thermodynamic systems which, from the name, even you should be able to glean are systems where heat is moving. It took a hundred years and the invention of the steam engine to elucidate the laws of thermodynamics, but for some reason you think you can understand them based on creationist websites. Here's a sentence where the front half doesn't match the back half, you've got this massive subjunctive clause "Some folks... understand that for a tiny nation of Jews..." and then you don't go on to connect anything to that. It's like you forgot halfway through what point you were trying to make. There's enough criticism of your supposed "prophecy" to which you've never replied - I believe I have a post I wrote about it in 2003 that you've never responded to - that I won't repeat those rebuttals here. This thread is about "posting styles" and I'm trying to highlight the ways in which your efforts at communication are not typically successful. Number one, as I continually tell you, is your constant indulgence of "word-of-the-day calendar"-type verbosity, almost always paired with a failure to actually use those terms correctly. I mean you're not only not understanding the definition of the term, somehow you manage ignorance of what part of speech the word actually is - noun, verb, adjective, none of it seems to matter to you. The result, frequently, is a post that reads like a parody of Jabberwocky.

Jesus Fucking Christ, Buz.The words are "site", "expected", and "whose". Can't afford a dictionary on the government dole?

Are you here to produce heat, or light?

And I'd genuinely like to see you accomplish all of those things. But I think an interesting and enlightening post has to be more than just an admonition to read a bunch of unspecified other posts, don't you?I know you think you've presented killer evidence in the past, and that now your sole task is to get us to admit it. But I think you'd be more effective at meeting your goals: if you adopted, or from your perspective returned to, a posting style where you presented and defended evidence that supports your views. (And for god's sake, there's nothing wrong with your authentic voice. There's no reason for you to insist on ineptly dressing up your language with ten-dollar words. Don't pretend to be a professor, just talk to us like we're all regular people.)

I don't understand. Are you saying you don't ever do this? Limiting the scope to messages that are about a "debate" topic, as opposed to you defending yourself against attacks, it seems like about 50% of your messages these days are where you claim you already had this debate, and that interested parties should just go back and look at the evidence you've already posted. Although you frequently don't link to any specific post which is why I referred to the posts as "unspecified." Try not to get too hung up on the language, here, but it's not uncommon for you to claim that you've posted something that, to a "reasonable" or "objective" person, would settle the debate. For instance, in Message 59 you said

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Objective people, having read and assembled all of the evidence Buz has cited for the Biblical record would know why they support Buz.

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I would characterize this as both a reference to unspecified posts and a claim of having presented debate-ending evidence. I understand that you might object to both characterizations, but that's how it looks to the rest of us. If that's not the impression you wish to give, then I invite you to work on your communication skills. Yeah, but our pants go on one leg at a time just like yours. Having scientific knowledge doesn't somehow remove us from the human race, Buz. We're just folks, just like you, only there's something we know that you don't, just like there's stuff that you know that we don't.We're parents, children, teachers, students, workers, retirees. We're not some alien species, Buz, we're just regular people who know some science, who have a passion and a thirst to be informed about the natural world. Some of us have jobs in these areas. Some of us are purely amateurs. None of us have undergone any sort of brainwashing procedure, or something, that would as dramatically shift our perspective as you seem to think happened. (I'm referring again to Message 59 where you claim that we've had our "minds programmed.") I invite you to have as much fun as you please, but you stated that you had, as goals:

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To spark up some interest, move the thread topic forward and to enlighten.

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which I think are great goals to have. I'm simply making an effort to explain how, in my opinion, you have habits that are obstacles to these goals. Don't feel that you have to change a thing just to please me. I'm just calling it like I see it, and you're as free as always to take it or leave it, as you see fit. (It's not going to hurt my feelings either way.)