stevestory
Posts: 13407
Joined: Oct. 2005
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| Quote (Stephen Elliott @ April 02 2007,16:03) | | Quote (Ftk @ April 02 2007,13:43) | Alan,
Would you mind if I make a list of words and phrases taken from this forum which are highly inappropriate when discussing the issues surrounding this debate? It may take quite some time to put together as there is a lot to work with here, but I'd be willing to point them out to you.
Stating your case is one thing -- nasty and vulgar responses on a regular basis is another, and you're certainly not going to convince someone of your point when you act in such an unprofessional and childish manner. |
FTK,
Could you please consider this?
Scientific arguments are not about polite debate. Somebody spends time discovering evidence and then spends time to prepare and present it. At any time their hard work can be ridiculed and/or torn to shreds by counter evidence. Scientists accept this.
Science is not a polite conversation. Accept that or do not post on blogs that have scientists posting science.
I was also shocked at the way conversations happened on science blogs when I first started posting. BTW you really should check the talkorigins site before making arguments that got refuted years ago. |
Science gets heated sometimes, and it's impolite in the sense that scientists routinely challenge each others' fundamental beliefs, but it still needs to be respectful in the college classroom sense I mentioned.
To assist this discussion away from meta-issues about moderation and sincerity and things like that, and onto the meat of the scientific, legal, and political issues ID raises, I'll post here some questions for FtK to get the ball rolling:
1 ID claims to be revolutionary science. Real scientific revolutions lead to what Kuhn called 'normal science', where the new theory is used to solve lots of unsolved problems. ID isn't solving any problems. The ID journal PCID hasn't published an issue in a year and a half. What's wrong?
2 If William Dembski's work is a revolution in Information Theory, why has he never even been mentioned in an IEEE ITSOC publication? Not even once?
3 The Discovery Institute spends ~$4 million per year. A biology lab which spent that kind of money could hire 30-40 postdocs and would generate over 50 scientific publications per year. The discovery institute's money has generated 0 publications in the last year. Does that seem funny to you?
4 No matter how disturbing or unwanted, scientific revolutions only make headway when the revolutionaries convince their colleagues of its merits. The big bang, quantum mechanics, plate tectonics theory, none of these theories advanced by the lobbying of school boards. Rather, the researchers showed that the new hypothesis got results, and after a period of resistance, their colleagues relented. How are IDers hoping to achieve that without any new results in biology?
5 ID supporter and super-religious guy David Heddle used to be a nuclear physicist at Cornell. After much exposure to Dembski's works, he eventually concluded last year that
a) some ID efforts made christians look like fools
b) ID things like Irreducible Complexity aren't real science and don't lead to real experiments
c) Dembski's math is bogus
d) ID really is religious
e) the School Board efforts were a disaster
and finally "I am embarrassed by the ID movement: its tactics as well as the lack of intellectualism of many (though not all) of its leaders."
(http://helives.blogspot.com/2006/09/color-me-id-cynical.html)
Feel free to explain why Mr. Heddle is wrong on any of those points. Especially c.
(and if Dave Heddle wants to complain that I misrepresented anything he said, he's welcome to do so. It isn't my intention to quote mine. The 'S' in my name is followed by 'teve', not 'alvador'. )
6 The guy who proved the No Free Lunch theorems says Dembski's math doesn't prove anything. Is he wrong about his own theorem?
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