Why I am creationist

Have you been disciplined, suspended, or censored for expressing different views?Or have people simply disagreed with you?It would seem, Ichi, that dissenting opinions are very much allowed here...but as this is a debate forum, they tend to be met with a number of people who like to debate on those dissenting views.Peg, Buzsaw, and ICANT to put out a few examples have been members here for quite some time despite being staunch Creationists. Buz in particular has some views that are rejected vehemently by the majority here...and yet he's never once been suspended for expressing those views.

Hi Ichi,Others have taken the tactic of discrediting your quotes from Ruse, Keith and Wald, saying that the quotes are "Creationist lies."I'm going to take a different tactic:Who cares what Ruse, Keith, and Wald may or may not have said? Regardless of the authenticity of those quotes, they still represent an Appeal to Authority, a logical fallacy.This means that their statements, even if valid, are still irrelevant and do nothing to support your argument.The person making an argument is irrelevant. Only the argument itself, its logical consistency, and the evidence supporting it are relevant.In teh case of the Theory of Evolution...there is more than ample evidence, both deduced from evidence in the fossil record and cladistic taxonomy, and directly observed in genetics, breeding experiments in the laboratory, direct observation of populations in the wild, etc that supports the theory that life's diversity increases over generations through a process of descent with modification guided by natural selection.Claiming that people pursue evolution with "religious fervor" is irrelevant. Claiming that it functions as an alternative for supernatural Creation is both irrelevant and wrong (the vast majority of those who support the Theory of Evolution as accurate are in fact theists who believe in God. Claiming that evolution implies Spontaneous Generation is factually incorrect (the Theory of Evolution makes no statement on the origin of life, only on the origin of new species as they arise from pre-existing life). The arguments put forth in your quotes are irrelevant and/or wrong, and do not in any way refute the Theory of Evolution.If you'd like to discuss the Theory of Evolution in detail, including attempting to refute it with evidence and logical argument, propose a new thread for the Science forums where we'll all be held to those standards.Attacking any position with authoritative quotes, however, does nothing to assail an actual argument. It works quite well in politics, granted, but not in a moderated debate forum like this one. Appeals to Authority, Popularity, Emotion, Consequence, etc are all just logical fallacies and mean that any argument based on them is invalid.

There's an important distinction between appealing to the authority of a person and accepting an expert's explanation. In the former, no actual argument is made - the statements boil down to "because this guys says so." In the latter, there is an actual argument.Look at the quotes Ichi presented. there's no arguemtn in there. They simply say "evolution is a religion" and "evolution is accepted because we're uncomfortable with creationism." There's no evidence, no logical argument, no explanation.When cavediver tells us something, it would be perfectly acceptable for a Creationist to say "why should we believe you?" After all, that's what many of us say to the Creationists, and turnabout is fair play. I don't question cavediver because I know just enough to know that I don't understand cosmology, physics, and math enough to actually debate on his level on those subjects. That doesn't mean Creationists should just take him at his word - in a science thread he's just as bound to requirements for evidence as anyone else. That the Creationists tend not to actually avail themselves of that option and instead fall back to faith doesn't make my trust of cavediver a logical fallacy. You'll note that I don't ever say to ICANT in those threads, "you're wrong, because cavediver said so." Certainly. Yet it's not actually in and of itself a refutation of evolution. That would require pointing out specific inaccuracies and logical breaks in the evolutionary model, or discrediting the evidence it rests on or the predictions it makes.What it all boils down to is this: if a person is arguing that x is true because person y said so, then that is the logical fallacy of the Appeal to Authority, and teh argument is invalid (even if the conclusion turns out to be right). What I'm doing by calling out the fallacy is telling Ichi that to actually discredit evolution, he'll need to actually provide a critical analysis of the theory and show, with evidence and logic, where it breaks down and why it is false. "This guy said so" is irrelevant - if Richard Dawkins suddenly converted to Christianity tomorrow, I wouldn't count that as a refutation of atheism, and the same if the Pope suddenly converted to Islam.Whether you "buy it" or not, an Appeal to Authority is a logical fallacy.

Quite simply, there's a difference between what "we all do" in everyday life and how we practice debate on a debate forum.For one, I'm much nicer in real life For me, part of the point of participating in debate is to find those parts of my own views where I am committing logical fallacies in my everyday life that I wasn't able to see myself.