Just my thoughts on the recent series of posts at Uncommon Descent on Darwin, Eldredge and the fossil record. Click on the link if you want to know more!
It all started with this post from Denyse O’Leary which Lizzie picked up on here at TSZ replying to O’Leary’s claim that Stephen Meyer’s presentation of Louis Agassiz’s question:
Why, he [Agassiz] asked, does the fossil record always happen to be incomplete at the nodes connecting major branches of Darwin’s tree of life, but rarely—in the parlance of modern paleontology—at the “terminal branches” representing the major already known groups of organisms?
Was there any easy answer to Agassiz’s argument? If so, beyond his stated willingness to wait for future fossil discoveries, Darwin didn’t offer one.
To which O’Leary offers:
And no one else has either.
Lizzie points out:
Oh, yes, they have, Denyse. That’s what what punk eek was. But it also falls readily out of any simulation – you see rapid diversification into a new niche at a node, and thus few exemplars, followed by an increasingly gradual approach to a static optimum, and thus lots of exemplars. But I present an even more graphic response: when you chop down a tree, and saw it up into logs for your fire, what proportion of your logs include a node?
While mung the Merciless links to Lizzie’s post, it doesn’t draw much attention but Uncommon Descent blog owner and bankruptcy lawyer, Barry Arrington decides to pick up on the theme with a post entitled “Steve Meyer: Cambrian gaps not being filled in”; Dr. Nicholas Matzke, well-known evolutionary biologist and former public information project director at the National Center for Science Education, comments, linking to his article on the Cambrian Period at Panda’s Thumb. I just can’t help myself (having had my ability to comment at Uncommon descent recently restored due, I believe, to the intercession of mung the mendacious) jumping in to fight with the tar baby, starting at comment twelve.
It might be worth mentioning here my attitude to commenting at Uncommon Descent. Having had posting privileges restored, I decided I would comment on my own terms, as and when I had time and inclination, neither seeking nor avoiding “death-by-cop” and generally only when I noticed the more blatant errors and claims by the more credible habitués.
Barry Arrington then authored a follow-on post where he posted a number of quotes purporting to support his claim that the fossil record does not support gradual evolution.
Alan Fox: “The current record is certainly not incompatible with gradual evolution over vast periods of time.”
Again, leading Darwinists disagree:
Darwin’s prediction of rampant, albeit gradual, change affecting all lineages through time is refuted. The record is there, and the record speaks for tremendous anatomical conservatism. Change in the manner Darwin expected is just not found in the fossil record. (Niles Eldredge and Ian Tattersall, The Myth of Human Evolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 45-46.)
In passing, it is worth noting the typo in the quoted publication. The correct title of the book is The Myths of Human Evolutiuon not “Myth”! The book was published in 1982. The iconic transitional fossil, Tiktaalik roseae, was found in 2004. Unimpressed with the quotes, I commented
Nice selection from the Bumper Book of Quote-mines, Barry.
as it was fairly obvious that the quotes were all obtained from secondary sources. Barry took umbrage at my impugning his integrity and another commenter, William J. Murray, took up Barry’s cause in posting:
You owe Mr.Arrington an apology for claiming he was quote-mining when he was obviously not, and you should admit you were wrong about what the known fossil record actually reveals wrt the prediction made by Darwin.
My response:
Maybe WJM has a point. I was under the impression that Barry didn’t think evolutionary processes were the explanation (or sufficient explanation) for the Cambrian period and the proliferation of stem groups that first put in an appearance over that period. Of course Eldredge is fully committed to the view that evolutionary processes are sufficient. If Barry agrees with Eldredge then I am sincerely sorry for thinking otherwise and welcome Barry into the fold of Darwinism.
was not considered an adequate apology. It was not published and I am now, presumably as I haven’t bothered to post any further comments, persona non grata at Uncommon Descent.
However the quote-mine saga rolls on with Nick Matzke and also another commenter, Roy, (welcome to TSZ by the way) continuing to point out the obvious. Barry has no more read Eldredge’s original work The Myths of Evolution than I have flown to the Moon. This book is not available as a download so I have only managed to read the excerpts available via Google books that indicate it to be clear, well-written and aimed at high-school-level students. An essay by Niles Eldredge entitled Confessions of a Darwinist (PDF is here) makes it very clear that Eldredge’s views are very much in line with those of Charles Darwin.
The story continues at On Quote Mining and Breaking News!!!! Wesley R. Elsberry Solves 154 Year-Old Riddle of the Fossil Record; Awaits Call from Nobel Committe. The latest post is has the Kairosfocusesque title, Nick Matzke Admits His Quote Mining Accusation Was False; Instead of Apologizing Tries to Change the Definition of “Quote Mining” to “Refusing to Agree With Me”.
So, no apology from me to Barry Arrington.
ETA correct link to Eldredge
I think you should thank him for the own goal. This really is a priceless moment.
I took the title of this thread to be a Spike Milligan reference, with the added deliciousness that Barry Arrington’s name replaces… [cue rabid pearl-clutching by Gordon Mullings et al.]
At last someone spots the reference! Well done DNA Jock! 🙂
Nick Matzke continues to attempt to enlighten folks at UD over the facts that have caused Barry Arrington so much “offence”. Arrington has started a new thread. Nick’s comments are here and here
Barry retorts:
Answer question, Barry? We’d love to! We’d love to discuss the substantive issue as to whether you agree with Niles Eldredge and what it is, exactly, that you agree with him about. Let’s remind ourselves of what you wrote to me earlier:
I mean, call me stupid, but agreeing with Niles Eldredge about evolutionary theory sort of implies agreeing with evolutionary theory. Yet you object to being called a Darwinist, a label Eldredge embraces proudly. Doesn’t compute!
I think (to be fair) that he’s not really agreeing with Eldredge on anything except the lack of universal smooth gradation in the fossil record. Something Charles Darwin also noted.
What is not clear is who (including Darwin himself) ever really thought that the fossil record should show smooth gradation – even if the organisms themselves were tootling along at a steady rate of genetic change (which they don’t have to be for evolution to be true). Population size and geographic location changes (both particularly significant if most speciation is allopatric), and the intersection of those factors with appropriate conditions of preservation all prevent fossilisation from being a simplistic random sample along a lineage.
I’ve just skimmed over the UD threads again and I can’t find anything written by Arrington that sets out what he thinks Eldredge was saying in enough detail to be meaningful. It’s easy to say “I agree with Eldredge” as Arrington has done but he has avoided addressing the point that Eldredge is abundantly on record as accepting Darwinian evolution.
I fully agree with your second point that nobody expects evolution to proceed at a precise uniform rate in all circumstances. In his essay, Confessions of a Darwinist, Eldredge points out that Darwin didn’t expect that either. Eldredge has had a very bad press from creationists.
I was relegated to the moderation-queue, too:
@Barry Arrington:
1) “The quote was not fabricated. The book says exactly what I said that it said, and Eldredge meant exactly what I quoted him for.” – just not on the page which you explicitly stated. But everyone has to be expected to read a couple of pages further, I suppose.
On the other hand, it is to much of a burden to read some 25 words after the statement with which you took offense…
2) “contemptible – Nicky boy – kinda slimy – apologist for defamers – utterly shameless – boy” these are all words with which you address Nick Matzke in your comments above. That is quite surprising for someone who dedicates so many threads on demanding apologies!
3) I reiterate my questions:
Alan Fox,
The whole episode seems to me to point out the pointlessness of quoting anyone in support of anything outside of discussions about who said what. The person quoted said something, and this is (approximately) what it was!
No-one is obliged to agree with the authority – especially when other authorities disagree. And there’s a classic own-goal when people try and dismantle an authority by pointing out all the things they were ‘wrong’ about. They were wrong about everything except … this! This thing I’m trying to appeal to their authority to support!
Whether that lesson is a take-home remains to be seen. It seems clear that this practice comes most frequently from a tradition that relies upon text and authority, and they don’t appear to perceive as clearly as they might its futility when transferred to other arenas.
Barry Arrington returns to the high ground of reasoned argument! 😉
“What was done to you”, Barry, was that you were challenged on your cutting and pasting some out-of-context quotes that appear to be found on several creationist websites. In principle, you would be welcome to call Dr Matzke on his use of quotes from the scientific literature to see if they were taken out of context and, if so, chide him for it.
Would I be wrong in thinking the use of “boy” as a pejorative form of address could be considered racist abuse?
Barry probably thinks he can’t be accused of racism because (he thinks) Matzke cannot be a target of racial antagonism, being a white man. That is, Barry probably thinks he isn’t being racist if his choice of insults can’t be true – if he calls someone a greedy kike it could be racist only if it were possible that Barry’s victim was actually Jewish but not if Barry’s victim was obviously some other ethnicity. I imagine that he would self-censor and not call a black man “boy”, although I admit I may be giving him too much credit here. Barry is certain)y aware – every USian is – that “boy” is high on the list of unforgivable racist insults.
When Barry repeatedly calls Matzke “boy”, Barry is propagandizing his readers to see Matzke as the kind of feckless ignorant person who deserves to be called “boy” and deserves no respect despite Matzke’s scholarship and hard work. It’s poisoning the well. Barry’s just filthy that way.
I wouldn’t piss on Barry if he were on fire.
He has now started a new thread: On Being Slimed by Nick Matzke.
Sometimes when you’ve dug yourself into a hole, you just need more shovels.
Barry says “Of course I did not fabricate the quote as even they were later forced to admit. ”
By later he means in the same post?
Also Barry wants answers: “I asked a form of this question for the first time on Friday evening and I have asked it again and again since then. :”
Yet he wont answer how he came across the original “quote” (with a bad title and wrong page numbers)
Barry, tooting his own horn tells us ” I am, however, a lawyer, and when it comes to argument that has its advantages. As Phillip Johnson has noted, a lawyer is trained to detect logical fallacies, bad arguments, empty rhetoric disguised as evidence and other “spin” tactics and expose them for what they are.”
How many “L”s in Michelle, Barry? Do they teach that in law school?
My comment (see above) didn’t make it out of the moderation queue, so, I try it again in the new thread.
Brought to you by the “go on the batshit crazy offense school of damage control”.
Of course, that training doesn’t prevent lawyers from using those selfsame tactics whenever it suits them. Can you say “affluenza”, Barry?
And you could argue that the disadvantage of legal training is that, while philosophers are trained to try and arrive at the truth, the lawyers job in court is to win their case. If truth and justice happen to emerge from the trial process, all well and good, but a defense attorney representing a client accused of murder has a duty to do whatever he or she can to get that client acquitted, regardless of whether they believe that client is actually guilty.
Also: “I proceeded to show that I quoted Eldredge accurately…”
Did you quote Eldredge or copy someone else’s quote, Barry?
Just curious, what’s this referring to?
http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2010/08/michele_bachmann.php
and:
“@Barry Arrington, you seem to have missed my comment in the other thread… [snip]
UD Editors: And you seem to have missed the terms of reinstatement of your comment privileges. Apologize for your false quote mining accusation.”
I think its probably sour grapes over Matzke’s systematic dismantling of “Darwin’s Doubt”
Even giving Barry some slack on “I quoted” as just a harmless shorthand for “I copied someone else’s quote” and not as him trying to claim unearned credit for research he never could / never would perform … Even then it’s still a bald-faced lie. Barry knows it’s not an accurate quote in any reasonable sense of the word “accurate”. Yeah, it might be typographically accurate, but no-typos-copying is the absolute minimum standard of accuracy — what’s far more important, as Barry knows, is if it accurately captures the meaning in context of the original passage as intended by its author(s).
Matzke proved that quote, as used by Barry, does not even remotely support the argument Barry pretends it does, much less do so “accurately”. Barry continues to refuse to own up to the truth. He knows better than to approvingly copy creationist quotations without doing his own research of the source, but he does it anyway.
The simple fact is that a generation of slimeball creationists have been misusing that Eldredge quote and Barry got caught. The term for the misuse of a quotation like that is “quotemine”. Sucks to be identified as a quotemine user, doesn’t it, Barry.
Such a wonderful example of christians’ superior morality in action, isn’t it.
Tee hee
So much for Barry’s self-pinned Medal of Heroic Accuracy.
Richardthughes,
“Apologize for your false quote mining accusation” – At the moment, I’ve no intention to do so, it seems to be false to think that I made an accusation of quote mining. But I may make such an accusation in the future, Eldredge’s book should soon arrive via Fernleihe…
It’s a clash of cultures: scientists try to address lines of reasoning, not single statements. That’s why they write articles, not greeting cards.
Earlier today a friend of mine introduced me to the phrase “concept-blind”. As he put it, someone is “concept-blind” if “one treats with and reacts to only the words one uses and their immediate perceived meaning, and not the concepts they imply or the intellectual background that would give them currency.” I would elaborate on this slightly and say that someone is concept-blind if he or she uses a term without any deeper appreciation of the context of the term, the history that has shaped its use, how the person using it situates him or herself with regard to that history, and so on.
As the matter stands, it is perfectly clear that Eldrege’s point isn’t really about what Darwin did or did not expect, but about the lack of paleontological evidence for transition between closely-related species, and that is perfectly consistent with abundant paleontological evidence for transitions between more distantly-related species. Arrington (and creationists in general) doesn’t grasp this because he is concept-blind about the phrase “transitional fossil”.
A related point is that creationists seem to think that we would need to have a completely detailed picture of how each species evolved into some further species in order to justify the evolutionary linkages at the level of family, order, or class. So, for example, they sometimes think that it’s not reasonable to hold that mammals evolved from reptiles because not each and every species (or even genus) in that transitional sequence has been found.
The upshot is that the idealized picture of biological history that would the end of paleontology (and other biological sciences) is the picture that they demand having now — put otherwise, that it is not reasonable to accept what the sciences tell us now and that only a completely finished science is rationally acceptable. (And in the meantime, those foolish scientists keep on changing their minds!)
BA@UD channelling Phillip Johnson
But not to distinguish the passive from the active voice, and the role of the subject in such a sentence? “It was fabricated” vs “X fabricated it”.
Anyway, it’s fortunate lawyers are trained only to detect dodgy argumentation, and not to pursue it.They would never dream of using their powers for ill. It must be the opposing counsel doing that!
Thanks for the heads-up to the new thread a tUncommon Descent, Neil.
Barry claims;
Can anyone recall any post or comment from Arrington that tallies with this? I have seen no proposition in any of the flock of threads on what Eldredge and Gould were proposing with their punctuated equilibrium ideas where Arrington actually lays out any coherent proposition relating to evolutionary theory.
Well, Arrington’s first statement is indisputable. And I’m sure Barry’s legal skills have their place. We appear to have different goals however. I’m curious about the world and what makes it tick. Barry appears to want to win arguments, come what may, for which his knowledge of the law and how to stifle free speech seems useful.
My enthusiasm for reconstructing the history rapidly waned and was soon extinguished, but I believe I have the gist of the answer.
In an exchange between Barry Arrington and Alan Fox:
whereupon Arrington produces the Eldredge quote.
Now, I take it that Arrington is basically contending that
(1) Darwin predicted that future paleontological discoveries would provide the intermediate forms that his theory requires;
(2) Eldredge claims that Darwin’s prediction has turned out to be false;
(3) Arrington has been falsely accused of “quote-mining” in appealing to (2) to bolster the claim that Darwin’s prediction is false;
(4) So, the claims made by Matzke, Hughes, Fox, etc. are libelous.
Of these, (4) is the most transparently ridiculous. The only interesting question here is whether the kind of transitional forms that Eldredge claims the paleontological record does not indicate is the same kind of intermediate forms that Darwin predicted would be found. (And here it might be just a little bit helpful to consider the difference in available paleontological evidence between 1859 and 1982, let alone between 1982 and 2013.)
This isn’t something that can be taken for granted — it has to be shown that when Darwin asserts p and Eldredge denies p, this is the same p that Arrington is denying in his exchange with Fox. For only if Eldredge and Arrington are denying the same claim is Eldredge’s denial of that claim even so much as relevant for Arrington’s claim.
My conclusion is that Arrington is indeed guilty of using a quote-mined passage because he would need to provide the rest of the text in order to argue that he and Eldredge are denying the same proposition. He is just insisting that he and Eldredge are denying the same proposition (indeed, that he and Eldredge are denying the same claim that Darwin affirmed!) without doing any real work to entitle himself to that.
Or they pretend to think that, as part of strategy to win arguments, to fleece the sheep, to get their sectarian books into science classes …
But as Kurt Vonnegut said: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
I have had similar thoughts; however, I suspect that “concept blindness” is only a part of the issue with ID/creationists. It is true that they cannot read a textbook or article and grasp the concepts being described; however, they don’t even try because they have another purpose for scouring literature.
Instead, ID/creationists are always bending and breaking concepts to fit with their sectarian dogma. We see this going on all the time, ever since Henry Morris started it back in 1970. For example, Sal Cordova is consciously constructing an ID/creationist “statistical mechanics” based on the “law of large numbers” at this very moment over on UD; the real concepts be damned.
Arrington is following the ID/creationist tradition of cherry-picking material from scientists and popularizations of science in order to bolster his sectarian dogma. It doesn’t matter to him where he gets it; and if anyone points out that the material he copy/pasted was lifted out of some larger context, he will engage in personal attacks and switch the debate away from the concepts onto nit-picking about anything but concepts.
ID/creationist debating is about mud wrestling with anyone in order to give the appearance that there is a raging controversy in science. Their preference is to climb on the backs of scientists who have name-recognition; and they will respond with sneering condescension to anyone they perceive to be a mere peon. They want those free rides on the backs of well-known scientists.
I believe it was Phillip Johnson who said something to the effect that, because they can’t get Nobel laureates to debate with them, trying to get a debate is no longer worth the effort. I’ll keep looking for that statement, but Johnson’s frustration came after the scientific community finally caught on to ID/creationist debating tactics and stopped debating them.
So I am not sure “concept blindness” is the entire issue. ID/creationists are careful to avoid the real concepts in science; and this suggests that they have at least some primitive awareness of just how dangerous the real scientific concepts are to their religion. But they can’t – or won’t – articulate any scientific concepts at even the high school level; they recoil from these concepts at every opportunity.
Their behaviors over the last 50 some odd years suggests that they are carefully constructing a Potempkin Village around their sectarian dogma as they engage in cargo cult science in order to make their sectarian beliefs appear to be rationally superior to all other religions.
Arrington is nothing more than an angry poseur trying to protect his Potempkin Village by bullying anyone who shows it to be a fake.
If you’re censoring posts and suppressing opposing viewpoints, refusing to answer others questions whilst demanding they answer yours and you refuse to leave your heavily moderated home to engage in free discussion elsewhere, you’re probably:
1) One of the good guys
2) Searching for truth not defending dogma
3) Winning
😉
Does Western Michigan State University physicist Mike Elzinga consider Francis Collins a ‘creationist’? It certainly doesn’t appear that Collins, former head of the humane genome project and current director of the NIH, accepts the hyper-active spin that Elzinga writes about “how dangerous the real scientific concepts are to their religion”. So, do you trust Elzinga at WMSU or Collins at NIH?
“climb on the backs of scientists who have name-recognition”
All ‘sides’ do this. In the case of Collins (and many, many others, including myself), the outdated warfare/conflict model re: science, philosophy, theology/worldview that Elzinga is peddling here is simply not worth taking seriously anymore. Readers might want to apply their skepticism to such backwards, insular thinking, and instead rise to embrace the interdisciplinarity and indeed, potential reconciliation beyond old-school warfare/conflict scenarios as Elzinga paints-by-numbers.
One doesn’t need to embrace either IDism or YECism to see through the fantasy conflict scenario Elzinga is promoting, when he could just as well seek collaboration if he ever found it in his heart.
LOL! I love these types of empty retorts. “Oh yeah…well…well…you too!” (rolls eyes)
So Gregory, I’m just curious…can you even give one example of a scientist “climbing on the back of”…a creationist or IDist for name recognition? Any example at all?
And Mark Frank has Barry on the ropes:
“Barry ArringtonDecember 17, 2013 at 8:24 am
>MF:
>then presumably it is easy to explain what it does mean to the benighted masses who do not understand it
I categorically reject the premise of the question. You do understand the phrase (everyone with a basic grasp of English grammar and syntax understands the phrase). But you believe it is in your interest to pretend otherwise. Not going to rise to your bait Mark.
>Many of you clearly think that asking Barry to clarify his OP is perverse stupidity and the meaning is obvious.
Truth.
>All I am asking for is some clarity about the hypothesis that is being rejected . . .
No, you are obfuscating and dissembling.”
——–
Do I smell a ‘no true Scotsman’ in “(everyone with a basic grasp of English grammar and syntax understands the phrase)”?
The history of the configuration cannot be inferred from the configuration. That is what Mark is saying.
And once again, Arrington and his band of Merry Men demonstrate that the “science” of intelligent design relies on simplistic answers to poorly-formulated questions. If this is what “the intelligent design movement” has come do, I don’t think we have anything to worry about.
Climate-change denial, on the other hand, is much more serious — because the issue is much more controversial.
Hi KN
Thanks for this. (Excuse the late response. I’ve been laid low with man-flu the last few days 🙁 ) This was the point I was trying to emphasize, that amid all Barry’s bluster, he’d studiously avoided identifying what it is that he was allegedly agreeing with Eldredge about.
Seems he’s trying the same blustering approach towards Nick And Mark and it appears to be equally effective! 😉
Barry in full bluster mode:
I would think that climate change denial is much more serious because the consequences of being wrong will have a significant impact on significantly more life on this plant.
Hypocrisy, Gregory. You come here to flame and insult us all then you have the gall to claim that you are one of the superior men who has “risen” above “insular” thinking. Well, since I can’t read your mind, you might not be thinking like that, but you are visibly behaving like that.
When you learn to watch your mouth and have the manners you should, then maybe someone other than your clan will start to give you the respect you think you’re entitled to.
Gregory,
What you do not appear to appreciate is that the conflict model is the appropriate model for thinking about creationism and intelligent design in the United States (perhaps elsewhere, but the US has unique conditions). So although you’re quite right that there is nothing necessary about the conflict model, and that there are highly attractive alternatives, those alternatives don’t matter as far as the discussion of U.S. creationism and intelligent design is concerned.
With folks running for office in Texas on a platform or returning creationism to high school classrooms, what is the appropriate response?
Gregory, are you not capable of observing that this is not a mystical, disembodied issue, but one dealing with whether we teach children that the bible is literal and inerrant?
If someone wants to believe god works behind the scenes in ways that are, in principle, undetectable, I say, so what? But that isn’t what is happening at UD or in the creationist movement. And the ID movement in the U.S. is profoundly creationist and literalist.
I’m wondering if Gregory could give an example in which a “collaboration” would be more fruitful.
For it is seen that materialist science has been extremely fruitful over the past 150 years or so.
What could “collaborations” have added?
It seems to me that YECs and their political ilk are so disposed to the ready and repeated outright lie as to make anyone collaborate with them.
It’s worse than most people think. I don’t live in Texas; I live in a blue state which is in the top rank of education levels in the US, with up-to-date standards for curriculum materials. And yet, at a parent-teacher meeting at my kids’ school, the biology teacher blatantly said “Evolution is just a theory. we don’t teach that it’s correct.”
Yes, this is “warfare” we have to fight against deliberate ignorance inflicted upon the whole population by an unholy alliance of religious kooks and Right-Wing Authoritarians.
No, Gregory is not capable of observing that or of empathizing with anyone not within his comfy little academic nest.
Gregory is simply taunting and trying to piss me off while puffing himself up by padding his “CV”. He gets everything dead wrong; so his “research skills” are obviously verschlecht.
He’s a fake. Let him wallow in his own ignorance.
When I was in college (50 years ago) the prevailing prejudice was that:
Physics was for people who couldn’t make it in math;
Chemistry for those who couldn’t make it in physics;
Biology for those who couldn’t make it in chemistry;
Psychology for those who couldn’t make it in biology;
Sociology for those who couldn’t make it in psychology;
Humanities for everyone else;
Political science for those who couldn’t make it in humanities.
This scale, of course, had no basis in reality.
Well, I don’t think Gregory is a “fake scholar”. But I think being a scholar is worthless if one can’t get even the basic priorities right. I don’t see value in anyone who believes himself too good to enter the dirty mundane world where the real people – like me and you – live.
In fact, I’ll put it more strongly: I detest those academics like Gregory who leave it up to me (and you, and the others who are sharp enough to notice and caring enough to fight) to do all the hard work against the premeditated imposition of ignorance upon our children by RWA goons. Gregory’s kind sit smugly in their urbane nests feeling comfy and safe, but if it isn’t for us working on behalf of reason, science, and fair public education, their position won’t last another decade against the know-nothing forces who intend to cripple public institutions.
Oh, but Gregory isn’t living in the benighted US nor UK, so why should he give a fig? Why shouldn’t he look down from the castle walls and sneer at those who can’t escape the battles?
Umm, Gregory, leaving aside simple human empathy, the reason is because about 40 percent of USians intend to make this a global war, literally a war, for religious domination and they’ve got all the money and all the weapons. Your precious Lithuanian walls aren’t going to keep out the next Dark Ages. Meanwhile you piddle around trying to decide whether “evolutionism” or “scientism” is a bigger sin.
Priorities, man, check your priorities!
And law school for those so predatory that even sharks wouldn’t touch ’em.
Sorry, sincere apologies to dedicated ethical lawyers out there — I just wanted to bring the thread back to its topic of our dear B. Arrington, Esq.
🙂
Gregory,
I agree that the conflict model need not apply, and have made references to the cooperative approach of the Catholic Church (which UDers reject as “Christian Darwinism”) on many previous occasions.
Gregory would be one of those “academics” who missed completely the phenomenon of ID/creationism and the Right Wing radicalism currently paralyzing many of our state legislatures and the US Congress.
He appears to me to be more of a Walter Mitty type of person whose mere presence puts others in danger during a crisis because he imagines himself to be a take-charge hero even thought he is completely out of touch with reality.
He has fantasies of scholarship but doesn’t really understand the real world in which knowledge about things really does mean doing a lot of hard, gritty work and getting one’s hands dirty; not merely fantasizing one is doing hard, gritty work by reading the writings of others.
One occasionally runs across sneering, condescending “academics” that have some notion that the “mental life of contemplation” is all that is worth doing. These are frequently people who rely on “filthy peons” to pull their irons out of the fire while they take credit for everything others do for them. They are usually people who have had sheltered, pampered lives while crediting themselves with “superior” intellects.
Whether they are found in academia, in business, in government, the military, or in politics, these people leave a trail of destruction behind them that others have to clean up. Their “analyses” of situations are nearly always naive and wrong; and Gregory’s imagined analyses of things follow a similar pattern.
He lives inside his own head and imagines himself to be an intellectual. However, there is no way he can know what experiences others have had; and since he misrepresents and abuses such information about everyone here, I would recommend that he doesn’t need be told anything. Let him sneer; he gets no free ride on my back.
As Wolfgang Pauli would have said of Gregory, “So young, and already so unknown.”
I’m offended. You left out Earth Sciences.