The problem with EVC

Lots of people answer you. You probably get more answers than anybody else that posts. What are you complaining about? This is a discussion board. People express opinions and other people argue with them. As far as discussion boards go it's pretty open. Do you have any specific problems with it?A lot of the people here are pretty intelligent so people can't easily get away with talking nonsense. Is that what you mean by it being a snobbish clique?And what do you mean by, 'It's far too political'? It's clearly pro-evolution in purpose, but I can't see that it's propagandist about it. It allows pretty free rein to intelligent fundamentalists like Faith and iano. You wouldn't see many creationist sites allowing supporters of evolution such freedom.

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

As rr says, you're making assumptions. From my reading of his posts, it's pretty clear that he's an atheist. He just approaches a lot of subjects from an acute angle .

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

You shouldn't allow yourself to be bullied. As iano says in another post, if someone tells you they've got a degree from a world-class university, you're probably winning the argument.But equally, if you stray into someone's field of expertise, take the correction gracefully. It will help you to firm up your arguments in future.

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

You're missing the point, rr. And all those people who are trying to explain how the FSM is equivalent to God are missing the point too.The FSM is a satire on ID, not on God or religion. ID, in order to maintain its status as 'science', has to remain neutral about who the designer is. So, theoretically a proponent of ID has to accept that any intelligent being could be the designer, including a Flying Spaghetti Monster. If they don't accept that and instead insist that the intelligent designer can only be something with the attributes of a creator God then they're doing religion instead of science and they've lost their special status.If the FSM were equivalent to God the satire would lose its point rather, don't you think?

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

Yes, I think bringing up CP Snow was a bit of an own goal there, Faith. His main targets were the cultural snobs in England who knew lots about Anglo-Saxon poetry and ancient Greek history, but nothing at all about modern science.But he wasn't arguing that one culture was right and the other wrong, as you seem to be. His point was that a fully-rounded person must have a foot in both cultures, must be as comfortable with the laws of thermodynamics as with the works of Shakespeare.Personally, I feel happy in both camps. I don't see any conflict between my artistic world view and my scientific world view. Knowing about the neuroscience of vision doesn't undermine my enjoyment of Picasso, any more than knowing about the rules of grammar undermines my enjoyment of Shakespeare.I suspect that your problem is not a conflict between art and science, but between religion and science, for they really are conflicting systems with competing interpretations of the nature of the universe. Just a pedantic point, Faith. You don't want people to mistake you for a humanist. That term is generally used to mean someone who rejects a religious interpretion of the universe, i.e. a materialistic atheist like me .

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

Yes, I remember those battles. Behaviourist psychology, especially the extreme forms, always seemed like simplistic nonsense to me. I don't know how much you've been following the latest neuroscience research, but, amusingly, all the real, hard science that neuroscience has been doing has forced behaviourists to shut up about their supposedly scientific world view. Behaviourism now has to follow around as an afterthought in terms like cognitive-behavioural therapy.
(End of my rant ) I think I understand what you mean. There's an English scientist, Simon Baron-Cohen, who has some theories about this. Here's an extract from his Wikipedia entry (I'm in a rush, otherwise I'd explore this a bit more): Edited by JavaMan, : Edited typoEdited by JavaMan, : Edited typo

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

Aaaaaaaaaaaaagh . (And that's my last word on this subject).

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

Robin, there might be a purpose in worrying about all this if the FSM were a philosophical argument against the existence of God, rather than a very specific satire on ID. But it's not, so let it go.And if your opponents are seriously basing a philosophical argument on the FSM (rather than just winding you up) then they're being foolish - and you can quote me on that .

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible

Looking over my previous post, I'd be surprised if you didn't find it a little cryptic! In my haste I forgot to explain the train of thought that led from your criticisms of the scientific world view to the work of Simon Baron-Cohen .So here's the train of thought I left out:1. What you seem to dislike is the over-emphasis on a rational, analytical approach to human nature and society. Much of the scientific argument here seems to completely ignore most of the stuff that makes our lives characteristically human - our emotional life, our sense of purpose, our aesthetic pleasures, and so on. And while this is understandable as long as we're just talking about elementary particles or geology, as soon as we start to apply this approach to the human domain you feel that this undermines, not so much our specialness, but rather the importance of our own experience of living, our sense of what life is like for us as living, breathing, individual human beings.2. Now part of what you're complaining about can be put down to the format of a discussion board, and the subject matter that people are discussing, but I must admit I've noticed myself a tendency in some posters to imply that the rational, analytical approach to things is something they believe can be applied to the whole of life. I've even seen a few posters suggest that they live their lives by the scientific method!(Warning: The following point is a rhetorical flourish and isn't strictly necessary for following my train of thought.3. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who claims to live their life by the scientific method is either deceiving themselves, or is living such an impoverished life that they should be banned from using reason for five years and forced to fall in love (badly) until they've learnt some perspective.End of rhetorical flourish)4. So how does that lead me to Simon Baron-Cohen? You've probably noticed that most of the posters here are male. Well, it's a man thing .Maybe I should give a bit more detail ... Simon Baron-Cohen is an expert on autism, and his particular approach to understanding it emphasizes two different dimensions of personality and behaviour which he terms 'empathizing' and 'systemizing'. Autistic people are very good at 'systemizing', i.e. understanding the world in terms of rules and laws, but very poor at 'empathizing'. Baron-Cohen believes that all of us exist on a spectrum with respect to these two traits, and that men are hard-wired to be better at 'systemizing' than women, and women hard-wired to be more 'empathizing' than men.So the final link in my chain of thought is this: is the world-view you are complaining about the kind of world-view you would expect from someone who was excessively 'systemizing' in Baron-Cohen's terms?

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The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible