SpaghettiSawUs
Posts: 77
Joined: June 2007
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| Quote (Ichthyic @ June 18 2007,20:40) | be careful, though, many of the more "vehement" posts were removed.
again, you should also see the discussion on PT we had with Allen after the course was finished.
I'm still of the opinion that there is NO evidence whatsoever that his approach was anything other than a course in reinforcement for both sides, and served as free advertising for the likes of ID supporters like Hannah.
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From what I've seen Hannah is a particularly strong example. She calls "insult" far too often in the face of reasonable questions. I was reading the CSI thread which really had me grinning. At least there's a formula offered (which is later qualified as only part of the overall - still not put forward - algebra) Bagged to hard drive, will digest. | Quote |
take your time, though, there is a LOT there to chew on.
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Will do, alot of other reading going on atm. Cheers. I think that's the same link as above? Ok, I'll read that one first. | Quote |
pay close attention to the claims those supporting the course were making as opposed to the actual evidence presented as to the course's efficacy.
oh, and IIRC, this is also a separate thread here on this topic here at ATBC as well (was a few months back).
I'll dredge it up to continue the discussion, if you wish. |
Cheers again Ichthy...
alot to digest, I'm trying to follow alot of it but it gets hard to follow one thread of thought because of the huge number of fallacies and diversions which appear from point one in any creo-argument.
I see alot of "symmetry" claims: e.g. the evidence appears to support either view depending on your old-earth versus young-earth presumption. This is where the difficulty comes in: they simply cannot accept that there is no such thing as an "old-earth presumption", although there was once a "young-earth presumption" (which they themselves claim) until such time as the evidence invalidated it. I really think these guys should all be forced to take a basic philosophy course. Learning not to weasel around definitions, how to build a logical progression from a sound premise, in short, identifying logical fallacies, etc. It's done me the world of good.
Another point they really need help with is that in developing a timeline we must work backwards from today, following the evidence in progression back in time. It is not done from assuming some historic event (e.g. creation week) and working from that, which they (through supposed symmetry again) accuse "darwinists" of doing likewise (in order to retro-fit evil-ution).
I agree with your thoughts as to how the McNeill exercise has been used by IDists as just a further validation. This was predicted widely of course, based on the observed desperation of the ID/YEC community for "recognition" of any kind. You could call it a very emotionally insecure "theory".
There's alot to read. I've also downloaded the final papers from the Cornell blog, and will give them some time. I was pleased to see the article on "intentionality" as I think this is a key area in understanding consciousness, but also in understanding evolution of abstraction, pattern recognition and other traits, leading to language and mathematics for example. I would love to see how this can be dovetailed with genetics, and I think some success has already been acheived in relation to primates.
Anyways, thanks for all of that.
I think a preliminary comment would be that getting through to anyone with a cultic viewpoint is always difficult, particularly when they're in prozelytising mode. I recall my own behavours: not listening to an argument other than to home in on some point from which I can hang my next discussion. In short, not listening with a view to comprehension. This is because I already knew the truth.
In order to get out of the mind-control of JWs a large shove came in learning to question the authority of the leaders. Anything which obviously spoke to their character was hard to sidestep, and it tended to stay in the mind, naggingly.
That leads to another point: the more aggressive and mouthy the creo-bot becomes in conversation, the greater the dissonance they are experiencing. It pays to tie them down on one point, keep their feet to the fire, force them to face the dissonance. It's hard to do this in open fora. The formal debate can be a great opportunity to put the weaknesses of open forum out of the way and limit the input to two people. Another way, if only it could be made to work, is to limit the number of participants in a thread.
Either way, deprogramming is the key. It's much more than just having the science wrong. The creo doesn't even know how to think, the science is irrelevant. Trust in the authority of the "ministers" of ID/YEC is a foundation which needs to be worn down too.
In the end it has to come down to brainwashing: deconversion requires deprogramming, not science lessons.
Cheers
Spags
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On June 23, 2007, 01:06 PM AFDave wrote: "How can we dismiss their theories without first reading their work?"
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are willing to let folks like Sal lie, over and over again, just because of some seemingly ridiculous need to bring a false sense of civility to the discussion. (see any similarities, BTW? 
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