I wanted to comment a little on the Whatever suspension that occurred as a result of his behavior in
Which religion's creation story should be taught? starting at around
Message 46.
I'm not going to sift through the various positions, but will only address Whatever's approach to discussion, which puzzles me a great deal. I think Crash's comment really hit the mark. In fact, I saw Crash's comment before reading the thread and figured it was just overstatement or exaggeration, but it wasn't. Crash said that Whatever seemed to believe he was successful if he refused to believe anything anybody else said.
While this characterization
*is* an oversimplification, it is the key point. Whatever refused to address almost all the arguments from the other side, and those he did address were given a strong dose of illogic.
If Whatever's approach were an isolated case then it wouldn't be worth commenting on, but with the recent participation of Robert Byers, RiverRat, John Paul (ID Man) and WillowTree, and with the return of Salty, we must ask ourselves why it often seems impossible to engage Creationists on the field of rationality and logic with active moderators to nudge discussion back into productive channels. This board was created under the assumption that this was possible, but I'm beginning to wonder. I see little evidence supporting this hypothesis.
Whatever kept saying that churches accept a common creator, not a common designer, in response to any and all evidence that churches accept evolution, and refused to actually discuss anything. John Paul kept cut-n-pasting his description of the construction process of the bacterial flagellum as evidence of design, but refused to actually discuss how this constituted genuine evidence. Salty will tell us how horrible we are, not that he cares, and list over and over and over again the scientists he claims support him, but never address any of the rebuttals. I could go on with examples of others, but won't.
This leads to the question, are there any Creationists out there capable of making sense? The question is rhetorical, because of course there are. So the more relevant question is, why aren't capable Creationists coming here? What are we doing wrong? I really want to know.
--Percy
PS: I think restriction to the [forum=-15] forum among the Main Topic forums would also have been an acceptable alternative, as it would allow Whatever to discuss his situation in the Side Order forums instead of just with me via email.
The [forum=-15] forum was originally introduced as
Remedial, but I shared the concerns expressed by Ooook! in
Message 12 and felt a quick name change was necessary with no time for moderator discussion - forum name changes are easy to do, and the moderators will likely be discussing the name again, so suggestions for new names are still helpful).
--Percy
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