A little rant for desdamona

In Message 200, written on April 24 10:42 PM, Desdamona implodes and goes back to worse behaviour than ever. Formatting is fixed in the following extract, but the text is unchanged. This stream of venom is very ugly indeed, and completely unjustified. Desdamona is responding to mark24. Mark24 is much better informed on evolutionary biology than most other contributors here, I suspect. He has also called Desdamona on untruths and hypocrisy; and with cause. Desdamona apparently thinks this is the way to deal with such criticism.No-one is above criticism, Desdamona. Sometimes it is appropriate to call someone a hypocrite; though it is a serious change that should be used with care and with good reason. Mark24 has given reasons for such terms. You have not.Your behaviour here is abominable, and indicates that you are just not learning from your previous mistakes.You don’t know enough about evolutionary biology to comment meaningfully on that subject or on the matter of evidence. In fact, mark24 is correct; there is an overwhelming amount of evidence for evolution, both as a process ongoing right now and as a process which has been occurring for millions of years. You disbelieve in evolution because of your religious beliefs; not because you understand it or have any coherent criticism.Mark24 is a valued poster, with considerable knowledge and background. He knows what he is talking about, and your accusations are without foundation and without honour. You should be ashamed of yourself.SylasPS. berberry -- optimistism is good; but I have no optimism any more in this case.{Footnote from Adminnemooseus (so not to create a new message) - Desdamona, I hope you realize that Admin, Adminnemooseus, and AdminAsgara are truly "bending over backwards" to try to let your involvement in work. Had you been on the evolution side, you would have been suspended a long time ago.}[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 04-25-2004]

Sylas writes:

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PS. berberry -- optimistism is good; but I have no optimism any more in this case.

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Nor do I. I'm back to where I was a couple nights ago when I more or less requested her suspension. I later thought there was a potential for some learning in des's case, but that thought has passed.If I may say so, what you call her worse-than-ever behavior should be more than enough to warrant suspension. Rocket was suspended for what seems like far less. He was a bit more offensive toward the administrators directly, but I think des has been just as bad if not worse toward most everyone else. It's time for her to go.

Rocket was suspended, I feel, for simply acting like a dumbass when he's intelligent enough to do better. Also, if I'm not mistaken wasn't it a self-suspension?Either way, I agree with you that desdamona has let us down in our hopes that she would have opened her mind by now. The poster with the
avatar of Angelica(I think the name is Denesha) said that throwing her out permanently would just leave an impression of intolerance. That may be true but a suspension may well be necessary. Adminmoose
shouldn't baby people on the theistic side; we're just as responsible for our actions as the atheists on here.Hate to say it, but if we're taking votes on whether or not to suspend desdamona I say yes...Partly because that squirrel might be a pretty good shot. Hey, if Adminmoose and berberry were to join forces they'd be moose&squirrel! That's neat.

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Wanna feel God? Step onto the wrestling mat and you'd be crazy to deny the uplifting spirit.

Aw, gee. Like Rocky & Bullwinkle, eh? I don't know if I should feel honored or embarrased.Seriously though, thanks for the thought.

desdemona, Is this the true face of Christianity?Let's be clear about this, des. I have called you a liar, & shown WHY you are lying. I have shown you to be a hypocrite & shown WHY you are a hypocrite. Given you clearly disagree, wouldn't the sensible thing be to show my why you are not, through reasoned argument? Simply saying "am not" is simply childish, & is in fact suggestive that you can't defend yourself. Is it the Christian way that you are allowed to lie & be a hypocrite & pretend you aren't? Somehow I don't think that's what you are supposed to do at all. Isn't the Christian thing to do to 'fess up to your mistakes?And once again, des, I haven't called you names. I've pointed out that you have met the standards by which you have made a liar of yourself, & also a hypocrite. You could always retract your comments & replace them with something truthful & consistent, is that too much too ask?The name calling is all yours, mate. Translated into Christian fundamentalism;"You have presented legitimate scientific evidence, I am, however, to unschooled scientifically to understand the multiplicative value of corroborative evidence, & how it supports a legitimate scientific theory, which shows it now to be tested beyond reasonable doubt (10^300:1 passes as "beyond reasonable doubt" in anyones lexicon, except fundies, of course). In fact, I don't have a scooby as to what you showed me, so I have to resort to denial, & I certainly don't feel compelled to explain why I reject your evidence, & let's face it, I don't have a reason to reject it other than that it contradicts what I want to be true. Moreover, explaining why will force me to admit all of the above, so an unsupported, unreasoned, illogical, "no-it-isn't" denial will have to suffice." That's why I supported my argument with science. How can you claim to not have a problem with science when you simply hand wave it away without any comment when it doesn't suit you? Nope, I am most definately not the one purveying untruths. You are the one saying you've seen what you believe when you haven't. Support this comment by showing how I am saying something that I know to be untrue, or do the Christian thing & retract. I have supported EVERYTHING I have said about you, you have descended into name calling. But I do follow the rules. I know what logic is, & I know what an inductively derived hypothesis is & when it can subsequently be deductively tested, using the aforemtioned rules of logic, no less. You however, clearly do NOT. You wouldn't reject the study I cited because you didn't witness the "experiments", yet accept the rest of science despite not witnessing the "experiments" if it were otherwise.How can you claim to be following the rules when you break them yourself? Outstanding! You couldn't make it up, des, you really couldn't. You really do think there's one set of rules for your beliefs & another one for the rest of us, don't you.Unlike you, des, I'm not going to descend into childish name calling. You have, however, not told the truth. Nor have you retracted or explained yourself when this was pointed out. This makes you a liar. You are also utterly inconsistent as regards the standards others must attain relative to your own, this makes you a hypocrite. You have had ample opportunity to correct yourself. You have condemned yourself on both counts, & I have supplied reasoned argument as to why you are these things. You have called me both, & supplied absolutely no reasoning as to why.You should be ashamed.Mark[This message has been edited by mark24, 04-25-2004]

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"Physical Reality of Matchette’s EVOLUTIONARY zero-atom-unit in a transcendental c/e illusion" - Brad McFall

I guess the concern I have with des is that she repeatedly seems to have an "understanding" of everything and "wishes to learn", but as soon as you turn your back, she's back to running around with a blindfold.Despite repeatedly going over evolution not requiring abiogenesis she continues to make comments about how she can't believe in evolution because she doesn't think life came from non-life in the ID thread.I guess "Denial ain't just a river in Egypt..." (Stuart Smalley)Then when asked to give evidence about certain accusations she makes, she often resorts to simply saying "I know xxx is true, and I know xxx is true!" without anything to give me a single reason to believe her.I also dislike how her only evidence towards one of our arguments was some random email her cousin sent her. (Of which had holes in it that were made aware to her) Then she actually accuses others of needing "viable" sources. Des does all of this while constantly claiming she wants to learn, and that she likes everyone. She's like a mad-man with her one hand stretched out to shake yours, and the other with an axe to cut it off.[This message has been edited by Garf, 04-25-2004]

Here we have a gang of super-smart atheo-evos, who have nothing better to do, so they create a rape room and take a much deserving female fundie inside to exact some revenge.You all have sacrificed the high ground and shown you are no better.I'm not impressed.

I disagree. I created the thread, and I think it has been useful.The thread was started becuase of a newbie user who has had a lot of trouble staying on topic in her threads, and who has been extraordinarily rude in some of her remarks. What response should one apply?At first, one tries to engage substantively, and to point out some of the guidelines for staying on topic, and engaging with substance rather than simply with abuse.Finally, I felt that it was important to be completely blunt with a wake up call as to how her posts were going so badly awry. I took it to a new thread, precisely because I don't want other substantive threads to be diluted with meta-discussions. The insults and abuse will certainly generate responses. Better to get those responses here in Free For All rather than start up cascades of meta-response on behaviour in other forums.I think that the comments made here have helped a bit; at least for a while. It was worth a try.Adminnemooseus is right. If an evolutionist behaved like the newbie in question, they would have been suspended long ago. Admins have bent over backwards to try and help her use this forum effectively. That will absolutely require dealing with the problems mentioned in this thread.Have a look, for example, at my Message 46 in the thread. Tell be honestly; what do you think should be done? Should that kind of abuse be ignored? Is there anything wrong with taking issues of such abuse to a different thread.I would certainly be very glad to hear of any constructive ideas about how to deal with this kind of problem. What would you suggest?This is a serious question.One of my own thoughts is that perhaps it is not actually a favour to hold off suspensions for so long. It may have been better for everyone, the newbie included, if a suspension had been applied earlier on. This has the effect of preventing everyone else from trying to help deal with the problem, which comes across as a pile-on. There is an informal restriction applied at present; that is good and shows that admins are aware of the problem and monitoring the situation.Best wishes -- Sylas[This message has been edited by Sylas, 04-25-2004]

I just got back from my 3 days road trip. Looks like desdamona will never learn.WILLOWTREE, just take a look at desdamona's posts before you say anything in here.

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The Laminator

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The following response is to The Pure One from this thread.
At the risk of being wrong, here are some of my educated guesses based on what I have read so far. Please note that the following comments are only my educated guesses based on desdamona's posts so far.Desdamona was born into a very conservative christian family. I would guess that she was homeschooled, but I just don't see how she could have passed all the state exams required for homeschool people to take. Therefore, she probably attended schools that only emphasized on biblical texts and christian fundamentalist world view teachings.She probably only completed geometry while in high school with a barely passing grade (from her comments on mathematics). I would also guess that she never attended a biology or physics class that ended up with a passing grade. This would greatly explain her skepticisms about the validity of mathematics and the scientific method. This would also explain her ignorance of some of the most obvious facts; such as the fact that the speed of light was finite, "falling stars" are not actually literally falling stars, and that people don't actually "share DNA."From her actually writing skills and her claim that she used to be a poet, I would guess that she only passed her english classes with the minimum grades to pass. Further more, she probably always thought that the grammatical and sentencing structures in the bible are the correct ones rather than modern english. This would also explain her poor reading comprehension.I can safely say that she never attended an accredited college meant for higher education purposes. Desdamona said before that she was considering taking some biology and physics classes to "disprove" the fields of science. This suggests 2 things: that she never attended any bio or physics classes in the first place and that she has access to at least a community college.Anyway, after I have thought about it for some time, I now feel very sorry for her. She is very deprived. Looking back in my past, I could have been as easily deprived as desdamona is. I grew up in a similar family setting, where the only answer to every question I had was "goddunit." I was exactly like desdamona before 10th grade in high school, always immune to new information and prepared to defend the word of the bible to the death. It took me quite a while to finally got myself out of that mindset (another reason why I am such an anti-religion freak).I truly hope that desdamona's children will not end up like her. No, I do not believe desdamona will ever be able to be cured. She is just too brainwashed by organized religion to be any better.

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The Laminator

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Lam errs:

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I do not believe desdamona will ever be able to be cured. She is just too brainwashed by organized religion to be any better.

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I disagree. I've seen people like des change far too often. In rural areas of the Deep South fundamentalist Christianity goes virtually unchallenged. Everyone believes as des believes. When people from these areas move to the larger towns and cities, they encounter other ideas that don't jibe with their fundie world view. Sometimes they're changed by this experience. Des is quite possibly being seriously exposed to the idea of evolution for the first time in her life. Whether she has mental problems or not, she is going to have a very difficult time dealing with the conflicts between what she's always been taught and what she (may) want to investigate for herself.Someone commented earlier that des seemed to warm up a bit when she realized that she was being taken seriously, at least on some level, in spite of the fact that she's a woman. That could be more telling than anyone here knows. If she has been completed shielded from any ideas about women's rights for her entire life, I wonder if any discussion about the concepts of evolution and the big bang might be a case of putting the cart before the horse.In any case, des must not only agree to be civil she must practice civility if she is to get anything out of her participation here. Her record is not good and I'm in no way convinced that it's going to get better. I wonder if perhaps her journey to the truth, assuming she's embarked, might be best served by a temporary detour elsewhere.

WT, you have made assertions which are completely contrary to the evidence provided or referenced in this thread.You are not impressive.

Thank you Berberry. I have been a bit harsh to Des myself. You are right. We have to remember what people have been subjected to.

LAM quote:
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will ever be able to be cured. She is just too brainwashed by organized religion to be any better
______________________________________________________________________Your brain is too by your to ever be cured, and your freedom to pursue it - the it being your god.[This message has been edited by WILLOWTREE, 04-26-2004]

Could a moderator slap this guy upside the head, please?