Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 63 (9161 total)
2 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,581 Year: 2,838/9,624 Month: 683/1,588 Week: 89/229 Day: 61/28 Hour: 0/3


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Is there a legitimate argument for design?
Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3973
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 6.9


Message 575 of 638 (737186)
09-18-2014 10:05 PM
Reply to: Message 572 by taiji2
09-18-2014 8:42 PM


Re: The Tao
taiji2 writes:
Ok,
Having found no potential for intellectually honest debate on this thread, I will leave all you good people to go about whatever it is you do.
If you don't understand intellectually honest debate, look it up.
Well, I'm disappointed.
Apparently whatever else the Tao designed, it designed you overbearingly and stiffly proud.
All of us here find our ideas challenged as boldly and sharply as yours were. No one was dishonest in their discussions with you.
In your search for intellectual honesty, don't bother holding your lamp to the mirror.
Sorry for having wasted your time.
You are excused for wasting mine.
The Tao wept.

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 572 by taiji2, posted 09-18-2014 8:42 PM taiji2 has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 577 by Stile, posted 09-19-2014 1:00 PM Omnivorous has not replied

  
Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3973
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 6.9


(3)
Message 586 of 638 (737217)
09-19-2014 4:05 PM
Reply to: Message 580 by taiji2
09-19-2014 3:16 PM


Re: Current Summary
Huh. I hate it when people play the vet card, but...
I'm 63, Army vet, there--39th Engineer Battalion (Combat), "Fight Build and Destroy"--and other balmy environs and missions that don't get into files.
My experiences were relevant, too: especially with the candy-asses who had to take their turn in the barrel and couldn't take the heat.
You had to be coaxed into staying past a few gruff words from jar, and went all squealy girly when you faced sharp return fire (refutation caliber).
So your wife, the lawyer, totally objectively, agrees that your incomprehension of the nature of evidence would win the day in court. Your attempt to typify her as totally objective is laughable: lawyers are partisans, to the bone--they're supposed to be. (Btw, I'm sure she is a fine attorney and a good person, no offense intended to her--she's supposed to take your side.)
You turned the give-and-take of debate into a farce: when your interlocutors paraphrased your assertions or pointed out their consequences, you reached for the quibble dictionary, rather than working to clarify your meaning. Try that in court.
At any rate, as you say, the record is here for anyone to review and judge independently.
Any shots taken were parting shots only because you ran away.
Less than impressed, soldier.

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 580 by taiji2, posted 09-19-2014 3:16 PM taiji2 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 589 by taiji2, posted 09-19-2014 6:06 PM Omnivorous has replied

  
Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3973
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 6.9


Message 592 of 638 (737229)
09-19-2014 7:20 PM
Reply to: Message 589 by taiji2
09-19-2014 6:06 PM


Re: Current Summary
See? You can talk plain when you want to, and the vaporous clouds of Tao part to reveal...what? A petulant child whose own service should not be questioned, but who smirks and dismisses mine--and every combat engineer's--as suspect.
One difference between us is that I, like most vets, don't give a shit what you think about my service, or need to prove my macho with bring-it-on web threats. Are you really a vet?
See how easy that is? Cheap, huh?
I lost interest in internet tough guy acts a long time ago: sorry 'bout that. You want to test my mettle, find me. Should be a breeze for a blooded Tao warrior like you.
Meanwhile, learn to put some spine in the defense of your own ideas: that's the arena you're in now. The Nam was long ago, and if it remains the defining experience of your life, nearly 50 years later, that's just pathetic. The defining experience of my life is the love of my wife, children, and grandchildren.
Just sayin'.
Weren't you leaving?
AbE: Apologies, Percy. I'll stop here.
Edited by Omnivorous, : No reason given.

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 589 by taiji2, posted 09-19-2014 6:06 PM taiji2 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 594 by taiji2, posted 09-19-2014 7:24 PM Omnivorous has not replied
 Message 595 by taiji2, posted 09-19-2014 7:31 PM Omnivorous has not replied

  
Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3973
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 6.9


Message 598 of 638 (737237)
09-19-2014 11:38 PM


Confirmation bias, taiji2 and me
Perverse as it may sound, I'm trying to view this dust-up through the lens of the topic.
Design proponents impress me with the sincerity of their beliefs: the "Just look at it, can't you see it?" appeal is not an affectation; the clear apprehension of design they report is real, which partly explains the frustrated exasperation, and the charges of intellectual dishonesty, with which such discussions end. To their debate opponents, the confirmation bias is as apparent as design is to the IDist, and most of our experience here has been with Christian (explicitly or thinly veiled) champions of ID,
In that context, I was intrigued by taiji2's first tentative posts. A truly non-Christian proponent of ID!--this promised some genuinely fresh perspectives. I encouraged him to stay and participate out of sincere curiosity, and largely stayed out of the discussion to help minimize the dog-pile effect that sours so many new creationist members. That is not my natural bent.
Alas and alack. Whether due to the dog-pile effect or his unfamiliarity with the ID debate, most of his responses struck us as tactical rather than substantive: I'm not writing this to attack taiji2, so I'm seeking neutral wording. I was, as I posted, disappointed at his departure and his charge of premeditated intellectual dishonesty; however, I found it interesting, as I saw it, that powerful confirmation bias can be fueled quite as well by philosophy or mysticism as by religion.
Ah temper, ah mores...I took particular offense at taiji2's assertion that he had been baited into a trap, since I worked hard to keep him around; thus I took his charge of intellectual dishonesty more personally than I might otherwise do.
A necessary digression: the ARVN forces were comprised of an officer corps seeking political advancement and corrupt wealth; many of them came from the Francophile Catholic families that fled the north and formed the ruling class in the south; many of the "enlisted" men were animist or Buddhist peasants with little use for the northern Catholics who were seen as collaborators with the French (well, they were). The Vietnamese have a long, heroic martial history of resisting invasions and tossing out occupiers, mostly the Chinese.
So: officers seeking influence and money, soldiers conscripted by force majeure or economic who loathed their officers and the ruling elite: neither had any good reason to fight. They were not cowards. South Vietnam was an American fiction to which no one felt any loyalty--what sane man would die for it? Our leaders were mad to send us there.
Thus, taiji2's extended military analogy felt unfair to both them and us here at EvC, as well as a little, well, phony.
Enter my own confirmation bias. This understanding that differs so much from my own is further evidence of the phoniness with which he entered the thread. I pushed his buttons in a way I knew would inflame a Vietnam veteran, precisely because his take on the South Vietnamese and his use of that take in an internet debate offended me.
Ironically, his enraged replies were the most persuasive rebuttal of "phoniness" he could have offered. I've experienced that rage here as well: some years ago a passing poster suggested my entire military service was dishonorable: as I recall, I demanded to have an encounter in which I would "pith you like a frog." Talk about actionable. I'm not proud of that moment, to say the least.
Taiji2 indulged his own confirmation bias when he decided that my vague description of other "balmy climes" during my military service was evidence of my phoniness.
As a simple matter of fact, throughout that era the U.S. military did things they weren't supposed to do in places they weren't supposed to be. I had temporary duty assignments with attachments in Thailand and Korea about which I was never to speak; they weren't glorious or dramatic, but they were occasionally hazardous. I'm sure taiji2 knows these sorts of operations and these down-low sorts of assignments were quite common. One might have thought he would simply challenge my military service altogether; instead, he saw, and seized upon, something he interpreted as confirming his worst instincts about me, that despised thing, the pretender.
Confirmation bias: "The tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses."
Religion, philosophy, accidents of personal history, anger: apparently every potent human engine can cause confirmation bias to flare from a background effect to an acute instance.
Well, that's the best I can do to attempt some profit of understanding here. My apologies to the forum for helping that train off the rails. I suppose I even owe taiji2 an apology of sorts; he's welcome to it if he finds it here.
In the meantime, I wonder: the thread asks "Is there a legitimate argument for design?"
I would ask, is there any argument for design that cannot be read as exceptionally strong, "just look at it!" confirmation bias?
Thanks for your patience.

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

Replies to this message:
 Message 599 by taiji2, posted 09-20-2014 3:52 AM Omnivorous has replied

  
Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3973
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 6.9


(2)
Message 600 of 638 (737239)
09-20-2014 5:15 AM
Reply to: Message 599 by taiji2
09-20-2014 3:52 AM


Re: Confirmation bias, taiji2 and me
That went well.

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 599 by taiji2, posted 09-20-2014 3:52 AM taiji2 has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024