Who's Held To Higher Standards At EvC?

I wouldn't be so quick to bandy about solipcism. The problem with it is that it undermines your knowledge to the same degree as ours, if not worse. Under solipcism, all knowledge may be equally untrustworthy, but scientific knowledge is the only knowledge that's at all useful.You sure you want to go there?

Nosy closed this thread a couple hundred messages ago because of topic drift, and while I recognized this danger, I thought the topic important in order to be fair to Buzsaw, and I thought I could keep the topic on course. But I also thought most of the dialogue would be with Buzsaw and didn't anticipate Maestro232 interjecting his hyperactive and very brief message style and pushing the message count so high so fast. A couple hundred messages in 30 hours is bit tough to moderate carefully, but I'd like to try to bring this topic back on track.The topic is whether standards are being unevenly applied here at EvC Forum. Before one can answer this question, one must establish what the standards are.Evolutionists believe that the standards of science should be applied, and science was characterized as being natural, supported by evidence, falsifiable and replicable. There are other ways to characterize it, and some may want to do so.Maestro232 rejects the standards of science, but hasn't proposed what standards he would use in their place.Buzsaw is still upset about unfair treatment in his God/thermo thread and hasn't engaged the topic yet.Further discussion in this thread should address whether the standards of science are being fairly and evenly applied here. Provide evidence by reference to specific messages as necessary. Further discussion can also argue that there are different standards that should instead be applied, but you must be specific about what those standards are.And please, no more replying to detailed arguments with short replies that address none of the details and merely repeat your position. The Forum Guidelines require that participants work toward moving the discussion forward.I'm posting this as Admin rather than as Percy to indicate that participants will be held to the requests being made.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

I thought the tone of the above remark was a little uncalled for.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------This message has been edited by robinrohan, 12-17-2004 08:36 PM

"Seems to" and "appears to" are words which an hypothesis might include before graduation to the status of theory. Does that make sense or is that nonsense? My remarks were in response to Paul who falsly implied that I posted stuff which I figured just had to be right.

Give me some time to go over the thead and come up with something for an op. How much debate time are you talking and what post limit?

I'd say let's try to button it up 72 hours after it starts. If we are talking what you had in your OP I'll only need one message.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I need to discuss the rules of a great debate, what you mean by one message, etc. Are there set rules, or is it open to what is agreed upon by participants? Would it be considered off topic here or is there a place where we can discuss this?

We can certainly discuss it here, but a seperate thread might be better simply to keep it focused. If you want I'll start one in the Coffee House where we can discuss just this. let me know what you prefer.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Coffee house sounds good. I'll buy. I do need to leave my computer soon for the night. Tomorrow is Sabbath school and church with eat out afterwards. You can either open a thread now or wait tomorrow PM for the coffee house. I have a busy life, so will need to fit this in peacemeal.

Quetzal, you make good points as usual, but everyone seems to think I am contrasting science with religion, which is not what I am doing.Everybody jumps to conclusions, which I feel is unhealthy.Earlier I addressed the real issue of this forum, and what I suggested was that creationists should pay attention to the weight of scientific opinion--that is, accept TOE on authority (they can address the issue of abiogenesis much more meaningfully). If you accept something on "authority," it means that you trust those who tell you the facts, even though you have no access to the facts.But the more you know about a given field, the less you have to accept it on authority--as is the case with certain people who post here.The info. that people gave me on the convincing evidence of TOE--including yours--I accept on authority. If somebody handed me a fossil, I would not know what I was looking at. Nonetheless the info. provided was convincing to me.But having addressed creationists, I begin to wonder, why should they accept "authority"? And what I was trying to do was figure out some rationale for that procedure. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that we all accept an incredible amount on authority.And then I began to wonder, how deep does that reliance on authority go?That's where I am right now. I'm just sort of sharing my thoughts--such as they are--as they occur to me.I've got a follow-up, but it belongs elsewhere.

I'll go ahead and start it and you can join when able.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Thanks.

What nonsense.

I'm not so sure about that. Let us examine two cases:Case #1: A young man is sitting alone in his house and he has an emotional religious experience. This experience is perhaps delusory, but to him it seems authentic. As a result, he accepts the proposition that God exists.Case #2: A young man is sitting along in his room and devises a logical argument for the existence of God. It is probably flawed, but to him it is very convincing, and he accepts the proposition that God exists.Neither of these is dependent on authority.(Of course, another thought comes to mind: there might be a type of insanity that consists of an obsessive and abnormal lack of trust in the opinion of authorities--paranoid schizophrenia is a possibility).This message has been edited by robinrohan, 12-17-2004 11:44 PM

From where you sit, Ned.
Not from where I stand. The creationist/Christian who truly understands, will never press the Christian God on anyone. That would be me, Ned. No religion of any kind in a classroom of any kind, and no theocratic government.
That may be difficult for you to comprehend, but I'd give my life for that.
Any Christian, who'll suggest otherwise, misrepresents his Maker, and I'd go so far as to say, is immoral and deadly and will be stopped.
There are many others like me, believe it.So, your live and let live is contingent on getting what you want, eh? You're not saying much. I'll grant it to you, even if you don't grant it to me. Hope that suits you.

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"Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit!"
2 Cor. 7:1