“The intellectual equivalent of spray painting graffiti”

_{William Dembski

August 10, 2009

Education, Intelligent Design, Science}

Share: Facebook; Twitter; LinkedIn; Flipboard; Print; Email

The folks at RichardDawkins.net have their panties in a bunch over some of my class assignments (go here):

Thanks to Baron Scarpia for alerting us to this website, which outlines the rigorous academic standards [Quote-miners, please note: this is sarcasm] which William Dembski’s students have to achieve in his courses on Intelligent Design and Christian Apologetics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary:

http://www.designinference.com/teaching/teaching.htm

If you follow the links, you will see that it is full of gems: we won’t spoil them for you by flagging them all up, but – just to whet your appetite – you will notice that, at both undergrad and masters level, there are courses for which 20% of the final marks come from having made 10 posts defending ID on ‘hostile’ websites! This could explain a lot.

You may be less amused at some of the questions in the final exam of the Christian Faith and Science module: http://www.designinference.com/teaching/2008_fall_sci-faith_mdiv/final_exam_10dec08.pdf. In particular, this one:

Trace the connections between Darwinian evolution, eugenics, abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia. Why are materialists so ready to embrace these as a package deal? What view of humanity and reality is required to resist them?

And this one:

You are the Templeton Foundation’s new program director and are charged with overseeing its programs and directing its funds. Sketch out a 20-year plan for defeating scientific materialism and the evolutionary worldview it has fostered if you had $50,000,000 per year in current value to do so. What sorts of programs would you institute? How would you spend the money?

It seems that sending my students to post on “hostile” websites, however, sticks especially in their craw. Slashdot has since picked up on it (go here — the keyword tags are precious).

Want to know how Darwinists really think? Go to the websites listed here and find out. Thus, when I require students to go to these websites and defend ID, it is sound pedagogy. Darwinists reflexively call this trolling (a projection of their own propensity to troll). One individual even emailed me that this is “requiring your students to participate in the intellectual equivalent of spray painting graffiti.” Nonsense. These sites provide a forum and, ostensibly, encourage discussion. My students go to these sites not to pretend to be something they are not but to defend their views — with civility.

In any case, I’ll make you a deal: let Darwinist, atheist, skeptic, freethinking, and infidel websites state prominently on their homepage the following warning — “Intelligent Design Supporters Strictly Prohibited” — and I’ll make sure my students don’t post on your sites.

Comments

brembs,
Anyway, Poe, Shmoe, I was being serious, even though it may not have looked like it to you.
Who is Poe and Shmoe?Clive Hayden_{August 12, 2009
August
08
Aug
12
12
2009
08:17 AM
8
08
17
AM
PDT}

KF-san, Kindly explain to me this exchange for instance, as just one case in point among many. (Note, Jack Krebs in that thread was a key figure in the Kansas State controversy.) 265 DaveScot 09/05/2008 6:02 pm Screw this. Jack Krebs and Ted Davis are no longer with us. Arguing with TE’s is like beating your head against a brick wall. If anyone wants to carry on their conversations with them then do it on their websites.Nakashima_{August 12, 2009
August
08
Aug
12
12
2009
05:16 AM
5
05
16
AM
PDT}

Vladimir Point. I forgot, there was much huffing and puffing on this one. Some other helps on tracing such connexions (and yes, they are all too sadly real -- and too often denied, rather than faced, addressed and learned from . . . ):1, 2, 3, 4 -- these from a "professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus" specialising in the relevant period; 5, 6, 7. The last of these is from a popular science fiction novel of 1897, which shockingly anticipated the history iof the century just past -- a novel by a student of Huxley, H G Wells. Namely, the opening chapter of War of the Worlds: _______________ >> No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water . . . No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us . . . . looking across space with instruments, and intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of, they see, at its nearest distance only 35,000,000 of miles sunward of them, a morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas. And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its cooling and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward is, indeed, their only escape from the destruction that, generation after generation, creeps upon them. And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races . . . >> ______________ You may wonder why a novel -- however popular -- is a key link in the chain. the answer is that it documents that by the close of C19, the key ideas were gelled into a so plausible cluster that H G Wells could OPEN a novel withthem as a stated premise. And, he had sufficient clarity of vision and conscience to point a warning finger. Wells did not use Darwin's cool projection in Ch 6 of Descent of Man [in not only the first but successive Edns too] supermen of Europe wiping out inferior races such as Negroes at the same time as they wiped out higher apes until "The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla." Instead, he turned the tables, with evolutionarily and technologically superior Martians, facing a struggle for existence, crossing 35 million miles of space to seize lebensraum at he expense of those same -- but now inferior -- Europeans. Plainly, the hint was not heeded. And, so we read in Ch XI of Hitler's infamous My Struggle: _________________ >> Any crossing of two beings not at exactly the same level produces a medium between the level of the two parents . . . Consequently, it will later succumb in the struggle against the higher level. Such mating is contrary to the will of Nature for a higher breeding of all life . . . The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he after all is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development of organic living beings would be unthinkable . . . . you will never find a fox who in his inner attitude might, for example, show humanitarian tendencies toward geese, as similarly there is no cat with a friendly inclination toward mice . . . . In the struggle for daily bread all those who are weak and sickly or less determined succumb, while the struggle of the males for the female grants the right or opportunity to propagate only to the healthiest. [That is, Darwinian sexual selection.] And struggle is always a means for improving a species’ health and power of resistance and, therefore, a cause of its higher development. [Explicitly drawn out of the evolutionary scheme.] If the process were different, all further and higher development would cease and the opposite would occur. For, since the inferior always predominates numerically over the best [NB: this is a theme in Darwin's discussion of the Irish, the Scots and the English in Descent], if both had the same possibility of preserving life and propagating, the inferior would multiply so much more rapidly that in the end the best would inevitably be driven into the background, unless a correction of this state of affairs were undertaken. Nature does just this by subjecting the weaker part to such severe living conditions that by them alone the number is limited, and by not permitting the remainder to increase promiscuously, but making a new and ruthless choice according to strength and health . . . >> _________________ That was 1925 in the Landsberg prison. In 20 years, the same lessons would be written in blood and fire across Europe. In today's version, "unwanted" preborn children are in the sights, as well as the ill or comatose. (The very term, "persistent VEGETATIVE state should chill us to the heart.) GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{August 12, 2009
August
08
Aug
12
12
2009
04:34 AM
4
04
34
AM
PDT}

Trace the connections between Darwinian evolution, eugenics, abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia.
This can help for that assignment.Vladimir Krondan_{August 12, 2009
August
08
Aug
12
12
2009
01:50 AM
1
01
50
AM
PDT}

A09: Re, No 37: "Rose tinted glasses"? Kindly explain to me this exchange for instance, as just one case in point among many; where a substantial matter was seriously addressed across a considerable period of time with full and free participation on both sides of the issue. (Note, JK in that thread was a key figure in the Kansas State controversy, on which I have noted here about the underlying issue. ) I repeat: I -- as a regular observer and participant -- found that most of the time the real issue with "dissenters" here at UD was not dissent per se, but that they were far too often typically rude, disrespectful, closed-mindedly spewing out standard talking points with no responsiveness to cogent responses [cf the current situation with typical disregard for the cogency of the Weak Argument correctives accessible from every page here at UD; e.g. Mr brown and his HuffPo article accusing Dr Dembski of "lying, as addressed not only in WAC 7 which he ignored in composing the article, but as is step by step addressed starting with comment no 4 and culminating in 104 - 5 and 146, here], or otherwise willfully obtuse or even outright abusive. [Observe from the same tread the ongoing case of outing and threatened reporting of the undersigned to the US Homeland Security Dept that the offender has now claimed was just a bit of "satire" in a parallel thread.] And, you will observe [a] that I have pointed out that here were points where the moderation was arbitrary [which is what the "policy change" is about], and [b] it was not on just one side of the issue, e.g. look up Mr Rzeppa's story. In short, this is yet another distractive red herring dragged across the track of the truth and led out to a strawman soaked in ad hominems and ignited to cloud, confuse, choke, poison and polarise the atmosphere, frustrating serious discussion of serious issues. On the issue in the main for this thread, it should be obvious that it is useful and indeed probably innovative pedagogy to make proponents of an unpopular idea engage live debate in its natural environment. [BTW, the grade subtractors is a useful way of forcing students to do certain basic things as a base for effectively doing the course; I bet they are not "popular" though!] Similarly, forcing students to compose a 20-year strategic plan for a movement tests their ability to strategise, which should be a major concern of tertiary education from the B.X level onwards. [The US$ 50 mn/yr fantasy budget effectively takes "budget" off the table, and shows that WD knows that budgeting too often substitutes for strategy.] Making seminary students -- that is where serial expulsion has forced Dr Dembski to work from -- put together a 6- week Sunday School set of lessons in outline shows ability to compose a syllabus, and to address the issues of communicating with people where they are. (And leaving intake audience level issues implicit probably cross-tests the capability as curriculum designers.) Etc etc. In short -- speaking as an experienced educator at secondary and tertiary levels -- Dr Dembski is doing educationally justifiable things, in light of the particular context he faces, now that the expulsion campaigns have pushed him into a seminary. (The underlying insinuative appeal to the slander of theocracy against ID is thus exposed as a blatant piece of hypocrisy on the part of those who have gleefully cheered on or participated in such expulsion campaigns.) GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{August 12, 2009
August
08
Aug
12
12
2009
12:52 AM
12
12
52
AM
PDT}

Resubmit the questions, and do it where you do not mock, and I’ll allow them through.
I don't really remember exactly all my questions and it's probably way behind the actuality of this thread. I think the gist was: is my impression correct that Mr. Dembski is training his students in debating skills rather than factual knowledge and if so, why? ----------------------------- I'm trying to remember my more detailed questions: I think it all was along the lines of me not fully understanding if the degree is a scientific or philosophical/theological degree. I'd have expected exams on mechanisms, such as how molecules are rearranged to design mutations that look accidental to a scientist but designed to a non-scientist. Basically along the lines of how whatever-it-was designed, mechanistically. Did he/she/it use tools and technology or was it 'magic'? If the latter, what is magic? 'Sufficiently advanced technology' or 'real' magic? In the latter case, is this really completely unpredictable and if so, what is the difference to chance? Does 'magic' follow statistics? How would you design experiments to answer all of these questions? The reason I'm asking these questions is that in our scientific education, we never train students in debate (maybe we should?), so I wondered why there was this emphasis on debate, rather than factual knowledge. This was a fundamental difference between our science courses and Mr. Dembski's course. Our exam questions are never like "argue this or that" they are always like "explain how an action potential forms" or "calculate the number of generations it takes for allele a to reach X% frequency in a population given properties YZ over allele b and c". Our exams and course requirements are factual and not argumentative. What's the reason for that difference? If the reason is that the course is theological rather than scientific, whatever happened to the argument that ID is not religious? I was just trying to take the design argument seriously (even though I find it mocking, but more to that below) and those were the questions I had: if there really was a designer, how did it to it? In some cases, we can pinpoint the events causing evolutionary change: duplications, inversions, translocations, single-nucleotide polymorphisms, etc. How did the designer accomplish these events? I can only speculate why these questions seem like mocking to you. Maybe it was my choice of examples, such as a Star Trek-like replicator tool or the question how clay can turn into DNA, carbs and protein. Maybe it was my question of whether ID is thin on factual knowledge and therefore must resort to argumentative exams. Whatever it was, I was being totally serious. I can't blame you for not believing me that I was serious, because I have an equally hard time believing the ID movement can be serious (I live in Europe and this sort of thing doesn't really exist over here). Thus, probably in the same way you felt mocked when I was posing my serious questions, scientists feel mocked when they hear the arguments of creationists. Maybe it's not that surprising that mockery and ridicule is often the answer? Anyway, Poe, Shmoe, I was being serious, even though it may not have looked like it to you.brembs_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
11:59 PM
11
11
59
PM
PDT}

It is me, Joel. I am sitting in my home in Woodway, Texas across the table from my lovely wife, Frankie. Now, can I have my coolness points back? :-)fbeckwith_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
07:32 PM
7
07
32
PM
PDT}

"I agree about the new moderation policy. I used to be regularly banned for anti-ID comments" Why don't you point to the instances where you were banned so we can see some examples of your anti-ID comments.jerry_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
06:42 PM
6
06
42
PM
PDT}

Theology students are intellectual partisans to begin with. The people who are dissing Dr Dembski's course requirements should find out how common this kind of requirement is, first. This is the craft guild tradition, learn by doing! Of course it is possible to question what lesson they are learning, not in ID but in hypocrisy, by comparing the policies of UD with the policies of those sites they were sent to comment on. I would love to hear the comments of a student who actually took one of these courses.Nakashima_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
06:07 PM
6
06
07
PM
PDT}

fbeckwith - If this is Dr. Frank Beckwith, then as I've come to expect from you, excellent observation (I also just read your article "The Explanatory Power of the Substance View of Persons" [Christian Bioethics, 2004a] and thoroughly enjoyed it). If this isn't Dr. Frank Beckwith, then your comment still rings true, but does regrettably lose coolness points.Joel Borofsky_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
06:05 PM
6
06
05
PM
PDT}

Why does Dawkins seem to assume that there is anything wrong with Dembski's syllabus and his assignments? Does Dawkins believe that the mind has a proper function such that a faulty syllabus can distort or disturb that proper function of the minds of those students who are in such a class? Oh my, it seems as though Dawkins believes in formal and final causes after all. If you scratch a materialist while he's in a fit of righteous anger issuing normative judgments, you're bound to find an Aristotelean.fbeckwith_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
05:40 PM
5
05
40
PM
PDT}

Here is a skeptical forum where at least some folks would not mind a "creationist troll" at all, though others disagree. Link is to discussion of same: Ignoring trolls may now be a moral duty.Abdul Alhazred_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
04:59 PM
4
04
59
PM
PDT}

Jamesbond, on the issue of impossibility- this only applies to impossibilities that are themselves impossible by definition. Physical miracles are not conceptual impossibilities. We can imagine them happening. We cannot however conceptually synthesize a yes and a no together. As in yes God can create a rock that NO he cannot move but yes God can move all rocks. This is a paradox by the nature of its form. In the case of physical laws we can imagine matter doing virtually anything- in fact E=MC2 shows all energy and matter are interchangeable. Quantum mechanics also allows for a chance of miracles- regardless of how small that chance is. But logically constructed paradoxes are not dealing with possibility realities but merely purposeful contradictions of terms. The question is a problem of the machinery of logic. Logic allows for any yes or no questions to be aksed so it allows for absudities or meaningless statements. You could also allow for the anser to the stone paradox to be "Yes"- and when the question abviously becomes how can God be omnipotent and not be able to lift the stone the anser can be - "God can do anyhting even paradoxical things" Then they try to say that God is illogical - but paradoxes are logical constructs or results. This shows you how meaningless the question is. So either GOd can be logical or he cannot do paradoxical things because they are impossbile. If the question is in regards to physics then God can do paradoxcial things- such as do seemingly physcially impossible things llike create matter- or change the motion of the sun. If we are tlakign about terminological paradoxes then God cannot do what cannot be done. Our understanding of omnipotence can only apply to what we can imagine possbile.Frost122585_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
04:41 PM
4
04
41
PM
PDT}

Jamesbond, What we are saying (or least what im saying) is that there is a conceptual impossiblity here being put together in a logically valid form. For example you could also ask the more obviously useless question- could God be and imperfect at the same time if we wanted to be? This is just taking opposties and constructing them in a logically valid FORM*. Kurt Godel showed that formal logic cannot express the truth of all axioms- that is Kurt concluded that mind was more than a machine. We know things that we cannot prove and we cannot prove anything with 100% certainty. The stoen queston is a man made paradox. It asks if God could be imperfect if we wanted to be- but it fails to consider that perfect beings might not ever want to be imperfect nor do imperfect things. That is, why would an all powerful God want to mmake a rock he cannot lift? Also if he could not do it that would only show he could not do imperfect things- onceagain this does not rationally make him imperfect. God is logical and rational- and can do all possible things- logic however can create paradoxes that have no answer. Therefore logic itself is revealed as true paradox here. This is the probllem of form- which shows that the axioms and significance of logical questions transcend the machinery of logic itself. This is what Kurt basically belived. This is not a problem for reason, nor one of rationality -as i have given a rational reason why the stone paradox is one beggin itself.Frost122585_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
04:28 PM
4
04
28
PM
PDT}

To Anthony09, I agree about the new moderation policy. I used to be regularly banned for anti-ID comments. Bills frequent explanation was that its his blog & he can do what he wants, but this turned the whole thing into a booring echo chamber. If Bill wants to use words like science then he should encourage dissent.Graham_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
02:56 PM
2
02
56
PM
PDT}

So, what the generally accepted solution to the "stone" paradox, amongst Christians and atheists alike is, is that God _cannot_ perform tasks that are impossible? I.e. God cannot draw a square circle? Does this apply only to logically (or, perhaps, linguistically) impossible things, or things that defy physical laws, like conservation of energy and mass?JamesBond_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
02:22 PM
2
02
22
PM
PDT}

Jerry @ 44: First, sorry about the "Jerry" at the bottom of my post. It was not a signature; it was left over from a cut and paste.
Do you have a reading comprehension problem? I said if you were civil and knowledgeable, there would be no problem. When people made mindless repetitive irrelevant arguments and used ad hominems they got banned.
You never mentioned ad hominem at all. You said:
My experience in the four years that I have been here is that there has rarely been an anti ID person who has commented here who has served the ID community in any manner. Instead we are treated to mindless drivel that barely qualifies as an argument on any sort. Occasionally we get some good insight and a couple of anti ID posters have been very helpful. But in general they waste the time of those wanting to learn more about cosmology, origin of life, evolution and ID.
"Mindless drivel that barely qualifies as an argument"? That comment addresses content, not behavior. You said that what the post is "mindless drivel"-- i.e. content that, in your words, does not "serve the ID community." Far from me having a reading comprehension problem, it seems that you might have a problem expressing yourself clearly, because my summary of your comments were an apt report of what you actually said. Maybe you intended to say something else, but you didn't.
I never saw anyone get banned or moderated for content that was relevant.
I did and so did you. Your confirmation bias is flaring up again. I think they sell a cream for that. ;)Anthony09_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
02:15 PM
2
02
15
PM
PDT}

"Jerry @ 38: The question is incredibly fallacious. It is also incredibly leading" This is again nonsense. You can answer a statement by disagreeing with all of it or part of it. It is a test of the student's knowledge and ability to reason correctly. One learns from disagreement and I would often push students with hyperbole in one direction to see if they could push back and challenge and find counter examples.jerry_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
02:07 PM
2
02
07
PM
PDT}

Rude, "What you get there is ONLY personal attack, obfuscation, and appeals to authority. I’ll guarantee that if anyone comes on here with a logical anti-ID argument the folks will perk up. Many here are ready for battle—not the name calling and fog creating kind of their opponents—but the kind that one who has the winds of logic at his back relishes." With your name, you'd almost fit in there unnoticed. :) I sense that all the common arguments against ID get regurgitated so often on the "enemy" sites that they begin to think they are good arguments. So nobody really practices soundness - just soundbites. If I hear the FSM non-argument one more time, I'm going to hurl my spaghetti. :) I used to be intimidated by them but lately I've been waiting patiently to "perk up."CannuckianYankee_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
02:05 PM
2
02
05
PM
PDT}

"Jerry, you prove my point. You just stated that it was content that would get you banned. Essentially you are claiming that because someone posts an argument that you disagree with in content, they should be moderated. Unfortunately, the past mods of UD (Dembski and DaveScot spring to mind in particular) agreed with you and enforced their agreement with vehemence. What was that phrase they loved to use? Oh yes, “Poster X is no longer with us.” So again, this is quite ironic." Do you have a reading comprehension problem? I said if you were civil and knowledgeable, there would be no problem. When people made mindless repetitive irrelevant arguments and used ad hominems they got banned. I never saw anyone get banned or moderated for content that was relevant.jerry_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
02:00 PM
2
02
00
PM
PDT}

Jerry @ 38: The question is incredibly fallacious. It is also incredibly leading. I can answer it in sketch form in a way that would please Dembski very easily. "Trace the connections between Darwinian evolution, eugenics, abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia." Darwinian evolution is the root cause of the modern eugenics movement, the support for abortion and infanticide, and euthanasia. "Why are materialists so ready to embrace these as a package deal?" Because Darwinian evolution teaches that humans descended from animals and thus mere animals themselves. The implication is that human life has no intrinsic value. Unwanted humans can be disposed of, and genetics tampered with at will. "What view of humanity and reality is required to resist them?" Ummm, the Christian view? Of course this is all BS, because the supporters of Darwinian evolution do not support eugenics or infanticide, and their incidental and individual support of abortion rights and/or euthanasia rights doesn't relate to their admission that the facts show that Darwinian evolution is true. A less fallacious and less leading version of the question would be: "Is there a connection between Darwinian evolution, eugenics, abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia. Are materialists ready to embrace these as a package deal, or can one disagree with these views and support Darwinian evolution? What view or views of humanity and reality is required to resist them?" Rude: The difference between the moderation policy at, say, Pharyngula, and UD, is that at the former all comments are permitted and one has to work to get banned. Essentially people are banned if they post the same thing over and over again, spam, etc. It is perhaps true that the regular commenters are rude to what they perceive as foolish people, but there is no set policy to not allow people to comment based on the content of their statements, but rather only on their behavior. UD used to have a very strict moderation policy, and any anti-ID comments, valid or not and civil or not, would get deleted and often get the poster banned. In other words, the content of your post was what would cause you to get banned, not your behavior. And mods were very quick on the trigger-- don't post in support of ID? Banned. Jerry, you prove my point. You just stated that it was content that would get you banned. Essentially you are claiming that because someone posts an argument that you disagree with in content, they should be moderated. Unfortunately, the past mods of UD (Dembski and DaveScot spring to mind in particular) agreed with you and enforced their agreement with vehemence. What was that phrase they loved to use? Oh yes, "Poster X is no longer with us." So again, this is quite ironic. JerryAnthony09_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
01:49 PM
1
01
49
PM
PDT}

Cannuckian Yankee, Thanks for the good words. I suspect the "rock argument" is meant to counter the absolute transcendance crowd. If God is not limited by logic then he could create an object too heavy for him to lift, but then this refutes the absolute omnipotence argument. Perhaps this kind of thinking was anticipated by the author of Proverbs 8.Rude_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
01:23 PM
1
01
23
PM
PDT}

"The occasional soft dissenter may have been allowed through as a token, but by and large “run with an iron fist” describes things pretty well. Dissenters were moderated and banned." Maybe one should look at the title of the home page of this site. It is Uncommon Descent - Serving the Intelligent Design Community. My experience in the four years that I have been here is that there has rarely been an anti ID person who has commented here who has served the ID community in any manner. Instead we are treated to mindless drivel that barely qualifies as an argument on any sort. Occasionally we get some good insight and a couple of anti ID posters have been very helpful. But in general they waste the time of those wanting to learn more about cosmology, origin of life, evolution and ID. They do not serve the ID community and if not, why should they be suffered? As far as moderation during the time Bill Dembski looked over the sight carefully, we had one excellent anti ID person who never got banned or moderated and who was a gentleman and a scholar. That was great_ape and he had few peers for knowledge and civility.jerry_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
01:21 PM
1
01
21
PM
PDT}

Rude, Thanks for the reply. I've struggled with the issue of a "supernatural" God's reality, because I'm not certain if God is really supernatural, or if He is natural, but on a different plain of reality that our reality can't really touch. The only way of touching God's reality is through the means He provides. Faith does not imply that God is unreachable through the common means of logical inquiry. It simply means that God is the transcendant one; not ourselves. He is the necessary one, and we are contingent on His reality. We can know this through logical inquiry. However, what God is capable of and whatnot are really secondary issues that are best answered through other means - theology, etc. This is the point I think Flew makes. It's unfortunate that quite often we don't listen to the arguments that some insightful secularists make as to their difficulties with the concept of God. I think it's because we've "spiritualized" God to the extent that He seems unreal. When logically He must be real. Could it be our perceptions of His reality that are off base? I'll put Plantinga's book on my reading list as most of the quotes I've read from him have been right on with the way I think. The only contention that I have with Flew is that he limits God to what can be known through natural theology. Natural theology has its place, but is incomplete, and there is a rationality behind Christian theology that I think would surprise him. BTW, I also appreciate your recognizing Lenoxus' difficulty with the rock argument. I have difficulty with this argument as well, as it doesn't appear very coherent. It's not a religious problem, but a problem with logic. Secularists often think that all our objections to their arguments are religious in nature. They are not. So I too appreciate that Lenoxus sees a problem with the argument as well. It appears to neglect belief in God as so religiously motivated that it fails to commply with sound logic. It's laughable that such an unsound argument such as the heavy rock should be utilized to make that point. I prefer a more challenging contention.CannuckianYankee_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
01:14 PM
1
01
14
PM
PDT}

Anthony 09, What's the big point? A blog where there is no moderation whatsoever becomes utterly boring. UD may have varied a little over the years in its moderation, but just compare the enemy blogs. I should think it a fine challenge for a proID young Turk to try and get a logical word in edgewise at one of those sites. It'd be good for the other side too. What you get there is ONLY personal attack, obfuscation, and appeals to authority. I'll guarantee that if anyone comes on here with a logical anti-ID argument the folks will perk up. Many here are ready for battle---not the name calling and fog creating kind of their opponents---but the kind that one who has the winds of logic at his back relishes.Rude_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
01:03 PM
1
01
03
PM
PDT}

"That is called the fallacy of complex question. I would think that, as an educator, you’d try to teach your students to avoid fallacies, not provide examples of them yourself." This is nonsense. It is easy to answer such a question if you understand all the issues and was the type of question I would ask when I was teaching graduate students. They have to discern if there is any connection, how much of one is related and maybe only some or none of the other are relevant and what types of issues could moderate your answer. For example, maybe the connection is strong between Darwinism and eugenics (fairly easily shown) but not much or anything between it and Euthanasia. Or maybe the connection is one of sequence and one leads in a chain to each succeeding one etc. This is a good question and how it is answered depends upon what one views as causal, highly influential, slightly influential, or having no relationship at all.jerry_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
12:57 PM
12
12
57
PM
PDT}

Clive, by admitting that there was a change in moderation policy you prove my point. Kairosfocus: You have on rose-colored glasses. The occasional soft dissenter may have been allowed through as a token, but by and large "run with an iron fist" describes things pretty well. Dissenters were moderated and banned.Anthony09_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
12:22 PM
12
12
22
PM
PDT}

Graham, ----"The fallacy of the complex question, You might have added that its also like asking when you stopped beating your wife." Which is a perfectly legitimate question when a man has been beating his wife.Clive Hayden_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
11:38 AM
11
11
38
AM
PDT}

Pardon a footnote on a point of balancing fact: Ever since I "unlurked" in April 06, I have observed many dissenting voices at UD. What happened is that there was a sharper policy of moderation for what seemed willful obtuseness (e.g. insistent repetition of talking points in the teeth of cogent corrective rebuttals), and banning for offensive conduct. (E.g. TE would have probably been banned outright for the "report you to the US HSD" stunt he pulled this morning, without further warning.] Sometimes, it went overboard, and not only on one side. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
11:16 AM
11
11
16
AM
PDT}

Anthony09,
Clive, please respond to the context of what I was saying. I said, I remember when this blog was run by Dembski. You were responsible for a policy shift when you took over, which you know full well, since you posted about dissenting comments now being allowed at UD. Please don’t rewrite history.
Not true. I was responsible for nothing. Dr. Dembski and Barry agreed to the new moderation policy of letting folks dissent.Clive Hayden_{August 11, 2009
August
08
Aug
11
11
2009
11:00 AM
11
11
00
AM
PDT}

Prev 1 2 3 4 Next

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Leave a Reply