David Kellog:”CEI receives a lot of funding from Exxon to spread anti-global warming stuff, but they won’t reveal much about their funding — their commitment to transparency is a bit suspect.”

Jehu: “That is the kind of “poison the well” argument that only appeals to people who are either too stupid or too lazy to examine the evidence and hear the arguments presented.”

Doesn’t matter what the topic Davids first line of defense is to poison the well rather than dealing with the arguments presented.

Vivid

Its called poisoning the well and is a form of ad hominem. Its Davids favorite fallacious and I might add invalid argument. I dont think a day goes by without him employing this fallacy across all threads.

Vivid

So someone who thinks that science and logic leads to the conclusion that an immense intelligence created the world is a creationist but someone who believed that God created the universe is not a creationist.

Interesting distinction.

Why don’t you admit you blew it and that the definition of a creationist is fuzzy at best and probably one should not use it except in specific circumstances.

I have no problem with you using the term to refer to young earth creationists and there may be other groups that may also qualify. I recently got Numbers book on the history of modern creationism in order to understand just what it is since I know so little about them. Maybe some others besides YEC’s could be legitimately called creationists but I don’t think believing in God or that God created the universe and life or even guided evolution qualifies.

Do you know what Thaxton and Kenyon actually believe? I don’t and if they believe the Judeo Christian God created the universe and life, that does not make them creationists as far as I am concerned. In fact it makes them in sync with a lot of the current world and a large percentage of the people in history.

But as someone said on another thread, what has that got to do with their science and those who use the term creationist with them are just showing that they fear their science on these issues. So referring to people such as Thaxton, Kenyon, Behe, Myers and Dembski as creationists is just a sign of insecurity. Deal with their ideas. It may get one points over on Panda’s Thumb but not here.

Silly me, I took the bait. Now he can say I called him a name because he asked me to.

science and logic indicate a God like intelligence exists

Nothing to do with your belief in God. Has to do with your belief in what science can do.

I’m sorry you took “probably” as a weasel word. In all honesty, I meant it as a gesture of respect. I don’t know you personally and I have no interest in calling you or not calling you anything.

I said I’d probably call you a creationist, but not “because [you] believe in God or that [you] thought God created the universe.” I explicitly said my criteria were about your view of science, not your view of God. Why twist my words?

DK

“Not by me. Who told you that?”

by David Kellogg

You did and some others at times on this site who equated belief in God as being a creationist. Here is what I said the other day.

“Am I a creationists? I believe that some intelligence outside our universe created the universe. I believe there is no evidence from science that this is the Judeo Christian God but that science and logic indicate a God like intelligence exists and does not contradict the Judeo Christian God.

I believe that an intelligence created life and probably guided the evolution of it in some places. This intelligence could be outside our universe or in it and if outside it could be the Judeo Christian God but there is no proof of this.

Am I a creationist? And if so of what use is the term other than to pigeon hole people and their beliefs and create an a priori discrimination against them.”

To which you said

“jerry, I would probably say you are a creationist (as would Stephen Meyer). What distinguishes a creationist is not his/her views on God but his/her views on science.”

Now you should know what my views are on science and you identified me as a creationist. You did have a WEASEL word “probably” in that sentence. But my views on life are not much different than Sir Richard’s on the creation of life who said he thought an outside intelligence was an intriguing possibility. But I bet if you pressed Sir Richard, he would have said if the outside intelligence was responsible for life then there was a possibility that they had an input for later transitions too. The conversation never got that far.

So yes “J’accuse” that David Kellogg said I was a creationist.

Now hold on a minute!!

If you mean YEC then it can be very wrong indeed—which I suspect it is—for YEC makes some very strong claims regarding the age of the things. Darwinism, on the other hand, approaches the “not even wrong” position … at least as lipsynched by its loyal adherents. Mike Behe suggests some means of refutation in his Edge of Evolution, but what I hear from the Darwinists is that there just couldn’t be any such. The only way to refute Darwin, we’re told, would be to find something like, say, human bones in the pre-Cambrian, or perhaps “Hashem created me” coded in Hebrew in every strand of DNA. Barring something like that Darwin just has to be true—and thus not even wrong.

A lot of their critiques of Darwinian processes. Other than that I do not know of any.