Re this:
The principles on which this site is run are summarised here and here. The key rule is: “assume other posters are posting in good faith”.
That does not mean that you have to believe that they are posting in good faith, simply that you should make that assumption for the purposes of discussion.
I will not “correct” posts – people are responsible for their own posts, and for any errors they contain. I will not delete posts, although I may move posts to a different thread, or to the Sandbox or to Guano. They remain publicly viewable. I will however, delete links to porn or malware, and posting such links or material are the only grounds on which I will ban anyone. Posters are complete free to disagree with me, with each other, and to be mistaken.
UD is run on different lines. Fine. I prefer mine.
I never realized that the site was full of immature juveniles.
(73 here).
Yes, I think so. It is a slight worry.
I’m 38. My god, I’m a baby.
Hey, that’s some vintage cultural vernacular you’re waving around there!
I’m also in my late 40’s. I suspect Miss Lizzie will seat us at the children’s table.
And it shows 😀
Why should that bother you?
I’ve never seen ID refute or prove anything to my satisfaction, William and I find their need to control message Talibanesque. What are they afraid of?
It doesn’t really bother me. As I have said, the most damaging thing that can be done to KF is simply to link to his posts.
I see the KFs posts that inspired this thread.
How pompous to tell people what to do here, when he won’t even venture here (free exchange too scary?)
“Comments are closed.”
American Taliban.
Indeed.
That and the heavy moderation / message control makes them the American Taliban in my view. KF is *at least* enabling and tacitly endorsing them, for shame. Do better KF. For record. End
No. Not forced to shut up, mocked for content. Freedom of expression is only free when even the most odious and Talibanesque (who would not grant it to others) have it.
I’ve seen the site that does most of the mocking. Mostly it just quotes and links.
There are also some photoshopped images which I think detract from the quality of the argument.
For the most part it is difficult to parody what is actually said at UD.
I will grant there are serious people there. I’ve learned from gpuccio and have had to do some reading to respond. But most threads these days degenerate into politics and religion.
It does bother me. I think all claims that such-and-such an idea “leads to evil” is bothering, especially when the idea in question is as ill-defined as KF’s portrayal of “evo-mat”. I do think that some ideas do tend to “lead to evil” and foremost in that list are ideas that involve the conviction that one group has The Truth and some other group does not.
The most important bulwark against the threat of such ideas is the opportunity to debate, discuss, and argue. While I do think that UD is not very important, and in any case, I think ID is losing the battle, it does bother me when I read on places like UD, and EnV, stuff that is simply untrue, but where there is no Right of Reply. For instance David Klinghoffer presented a “challenge” to “Darwinists” to come up with words of comfort for those bereaved by the Boston Bombing. That challenge was a fake – I wrote some words, here, and sent the link to Klinghoffer. No response. I sent a second link. No response. No acknowledgement on the blog.
That’s dishonest. It’s creating the impression for readers of EnV that Darwinists have no answer, when who knows how many responses there were.
Same with KF’s absurd essay challenge, which is supposed to include a “Darwinist” account for OOL. There is no “Darwinist” account for OOL. KF surely knows this. So why does he keep drawing attention to the challenge? And why issue a challenge at all a site from which “Darwinists” can be arbitrarily banned for content? His challenge amounts (in more ways than one) to: Have you stopped beating your wife?
To gloat about how such a challenge has gone unanswered in a forum for which there is limited right of reply is dishonest. I could tell KF here why I have not submitted an essay to his challenge, but readers of UD aren’t going to see that.
Again, it’s dishonest, IMO. Perhaps not dishonest on a per-person basis (KF doesn’t wield the banhammer, Barry does) but UD constitutes, as the Liberations Theologists would have it, IMO, a “structure of sin”. The combination of arbitrary bans plus “challenges” to those who can’t post there amounts to structural dishonesty, even if both actions can be justified individually.
I hold Barry responsible for that. If he wants to ban dissenting views from his blog, then he should also place a moratorium on public challenges to dissent.
Or just come over here.
I’m sure you realize they (and I) don’t see it that way at all. We see it as protecting a house of reason and civil discourse from being overrun by Alinsky-style, anti-ID idealogues and sophists that would clog up meaningful dialogue about ID with endless sophistry and irrational blather. We’re not afraid of it, but there’s no reason to allow that sort into your home just because they stand outside and accuse you of being unfair and close-minded.
I personally think that materialism/physicalism/determinism/atheism are metaphysically more accommodating to evil behavior that theism, but I don’t think those philosophies themselves can cause any evil behavior.
And I laugh as you enjoy a freedom you’d deny others, William.
Let me tell you something about Truth, William. It delights in scrutiny, testing, challenge. It is Truth, it cannot be overturned and it delights in each opportunity to reaffirm itself.
I don’t think “making posts at someone’s else’s blog” rises to the level of being a “freedom” of any significance. When the IRS delays for years your tax-exempt application because of your political views, then come talk to me about freedoms being denied.
I don’t see the tactics over at UD as being significantly different from the tactics employed by the ID/creationists since their formal beginning in 1970 with the formation of the Institute for Creation “Research” by Henry Morris.
Throughout their entire history, ID/creationists have been outrageous in their claims and in their accusations against the scientific community. Their taunts are filled with histrionics and paranoid persecution complexes. The main purpose of this tactic was – and still is – to taunt the scientific community into debates and responses that would give the appearance of “legitimacy” to ID/creationists.
They even respond to pointed technical queries about their assertions with accusations that they are being personally attacked and abused by those posing the questions.
Granville Sewell whines about eleven years of being persecuted over his thermodynamic “argument” against evolution. Kairosfocus screams persecution of his family when he can’t answer pointed questions about his “CSI calculations.” Every thread over at UD is filled with sneers and mockery over something somebody in the scientific community is alleged to have said.
The generally tenor of the UD website is that they seem to hate anyone and everything secular. They don’t like atheists, they don’t like science, they don’t like scientists, they don’t like people who know things they don’t, they don’t like questions that get right to the heart of the matter, and they especially don’t like the people who ask such questions.
They seem to believe they are morally and ethically superior to “evolutionists” and atheists, and they frequently conflate those two words. They portray themselves as having superior knowledge of science even though not one of them appears to be able to pass high school level science.
I think the UD site is nothing more than a ramped-up pompous posturing of what has been going on in the ID/creationist community since its formal beginning as a culture war movement. Since the scientific community will no longer be taunted into debating them, ID/creationists appear to be getting more outrageous and ridiculous in their taunts. It’s the only way they seem to think that they can be noticed.
What does the ID/creationist community have left? They have to rely on public apathy in the political process in order to gain a foothold in public education, or they have to scream loudly and ludicrously in order to be heard or to get anyone to talk to them.
The more they have become marginalized, the more paranoid and pathetic they have become.
I applaud UD’s purity of essence.
Only those who are part of the American Taliban would cringe in fear of the name “Alinsky”.
I think politics derail intelligent discussion, and I would ask political posts to be moved.
KF uses politics to derail discussion of science, and I think it is a mistake to allow him to do that.
Perhaps this post contradicts my point, but I don’t think so. There is a difference between discussing the use of political controversy to derail discussion, and engaging in the particulars of a political controversy.
^ An example of the kind of posts I’m talking about.
Why should UD allow this kind of stuff to flood out the threads? There are plenty of sites where this kind of invective is welcome; why insist it be allowed in every blog especially a blog dedicated to serving the ID community?
And as long as you’re the one choosing what is significant, everyone should be okay! The freedoms William thinks are important and the ones he’ll let you have are the ones you need, folks.
We still at war with Eurasia?
Reason? Baseless assertions, vague to the point of useless definitions, equivocation, and shrill claims to non-existent proofs and calculations do not constitute reason.
Civil discourse? UD has Joe, Mung, kairosfocus, PaV, Upright BiPed, and Barry Arrington, just off the top of my head, who routinely post comments that would get an ID opponent banned there and moved to Guano here.
Irrational blather? Yeah, UD has plenty of that, I’ll grant you. Plenty of ideologues and sophists, too.
You may not be afraid, William, and you’ve earned some respect by venturing out of the echo chamber of UD. The rest of the denizens there are palpably terrified of exposing their claims to scrutiny. On the rare occasion when one is seen in the wild, he hurriedly runs back behind Barry’s skirts when their failures of logic, reason, and evidence are laid bare.
If ID really had a scientific hypothesis and any evidence to back it up, UD would be welcoming all comers. The fact that it needs to be so insular is as powerful an argument against it as any.
If ID were open, William, that post wouldn’t be necessary, or correct.
52 here.
I have used that phrase (well, the ‘grandmother’ variant) on occasion, but my mother certainly used it regularly. I was raised in Yorkshire, my parents in Scotland.
71 here.
“Teaching your grandma to suck eggs.”
^ And yet more invective of the very sort I was talking about.
As a comment on the main issue: I think many of the people at UD who are very offended by comments about them here at TSZ are actually very sincere. They are always saying that “Darwinists” are fundamentally motivated by pushing atheism, that they are propounding an ideology that leads to being a Nazi, to being a racist. That the academics among us are blinkered ideologues who are unable to see that there is no evidence for (evolution, common descent, Darwinism, choose your favorite term) and we are just defending our plush academic jobs and trying to brainwash students. That we would not know the truth if it bit us.
However they think of all these statements as the honest truth, so we would be insincere if we took them as insults. So they simply can’t see that there are any insults made by the UD regulars, just their open discussion of the honest truth.
Sheesh.
Thank goodness we’ve got William to protect us from viewpoint he disagrees with! You remake my point with every post.
I actually agree with this. I think the main casualty of the reluctance of so many ID proponents to engage with the counter-arguments is ID, although I do understand that those in the minority risk more by venturing into the wider forum. However, I think the result has been a degree of paranoia within the ID movement that I think is ultimately self-destructive. If ID has the best evidential support and argument then it will be ultimately accepted, The idea that it has to compete against a materialist conspiracy, implicit or overt, it, I suggest, a myth.
What is wrong with the ID argument is that it doesn’t work.
Which doesn’t mean its conclusion is wrong.
No reason. But it’s not just “invective” that is banned.
Precisely. I was banned twice from UD simply for posts in which I linked to scientific papers that tended to refute things claimed by ID-friendly posters. There was no incivility on my part, no insults, no invective. I was, I thought, simply contributing to what could have been interesting debates.
IIRC, in both instances the threads were in any case rapidly trashed by the usual stuff from Joe
Evidence for record, for shame:
http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?s=519e8b19e4f913a7;act=ST;f=14;t=5141
I was banned twice purely for the content of my argument.
Yes, I do realise that. And, as KF would say, I find it sad. Once you have convinced yourself (not you personally, generic “you”) that your opponents are engaged in “sophistry and irrational blather” you have insulated yourself from the possibility that they many not be.
And the same is true in reverse – I think there are a few cynical operators in ID, and even more in creationism, but mostly I think ID proponents are absolutely sincere. I don’t think the ID arguments are “sophistry and irrational blather”. I think the argument is fundamentally fallacious, but fallacies can be hard to spot sometimes, even, or perhaps especially, in one’s own argument. What is “obvious” ain’t necessarily so.
I often find in my own writing that when even a co-author (someone in sympathy with my argument!) finds something unclear, it’s usually because there’s a lack of clarity in my thinking that I simply hadn’t noticed – an assumption I’ve made, or an equivalency I’ve implied, that isn’t justified. But that’s all the more reason to engage in debate.
I have found the recent UD threads on “Specfication” refreshing. It’s been clear to many of us for years that Dembski’s mathematical definition didn’t work. It’s good to see that finally being acknowledged explicity at UD! Sometimes that “sophistry” is worth listening to! Look at poor Joe and Cantor!
tbh, I don’t think one is worse than the other. I think both can be used to justify evil. I think the strongest bulwark against evil is being constantly open to the possibility of being mistaken.
They turned me into a newt!
If you are going to make unsupported claims, William, you should expect to be called on them.
How about addressing the content of my comment rather than the tone? Demonstrate how Lizzie, for an example, was less civil than any of the UD regulars before she was banned. Provide pointers to some “meaningful dialogue” about ID.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”
George Santayana
The current crop of ID/creationists are classical examples of this.
Learn some history, William; and by all means, please learn some science.
Especially the science. What is wrong with ID is not the conclusion, but the science.
(Which includes the math)
DNA_Jock,
Interesting. The gender must have flipped somewhere over the Atlantic.
Wow. I just Googled it, and the phrase goes back to at least 1707:
Teaching grandmother to suck eggs
What I want to know is, why are Grandma and Grandpa presumed to be good at egg-sucking?
Never mind. Further Googling yields the answer:
damitall2,
Likewise. Ironically, in the light of William and KF’s pearl-clutching, I was banned for asking Barry to substantiate, or retract, his claim that another poster condoned child-rape.
But William would also have banned me for this ‘crime’, apparently.
Sheeesh, indeed.
My last banning was similar. I asked Barry to support his claim regarding “people like Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins who believe the fundamental questions in biology have been settled and all that is left is to suss out the details.”
Barry couldn’t back up his claim, so he banned me. He also edited one of his earlier comments when he knew I could no longer respond.
And he’s off again:
Bonus for linking to expelled, which in no way compares anyone to Nazis…
and the American Taliban have closed the comments…
Why does it concern you so, Liz? If ID proponents are just a small group of fringe ideologues clinging to a dying idea through echo chamber blogs and circular arguments, why on Earth are you spending any time attempting to debate what you consider to be fallacious arguments with those that don’t even want you posting on their blog?
Briefly:
Whilst initially sceptical of Lizzie’s approach I am completely won over. The only thing is she usually posts something I agree with before I get chance and says it more eloquently How annoying is that!
Never said anything as remotely emotionally charged as that. However, I did see right wing politicians and religious leaders working in a kind of “unholy alliance”,to the extent that US got two terms of GWB. I do worry that, if such an unholy alliance gained real power, that could be a real threat to freedom of ideas and exchange of information. I do also think that intellectual freedom is a basic human right, and a life totally without intellectual freedom is not much of a life.
Intelligent Design does not impress me at all. Whilst some ID proponents seem nice guys, the whole concept is indeed bogus. Thankfully, the idea is no longer selling. I used to think it would disappear within a few years but I guess it may take a generation to fizzle out completely. However, the price of supporting the free exchange of ideas and free exchange of information is that right must be granted to everyone*.
*Subject to the caveat that speech that promotes genocide, racism etc infringes the rights of others and has to be curtailed.
Never said that, though I have said that the ID movement is an “unholy alliance” of right wing fundamentalist politicians and religious groups. And I do suspect that, should such groups gain political power in any significant way, personal freedom would likely suffer.
I see KF is following this. The essential argument seems to be:
I think we can take it as a given that when one is characterised in the formula “both the Nazis and X think that . . . ” one is being compared to Nazis.
In a way obviously intended to taint one with the justly deserved odium that attaches to Nazism.
In short, the utterly offensive — and demonstrably unwarranted — suggestion is being made that one is a Nazi.
The last sentence obviously does not follow from the first two.
I’m stunned by his chutzpah. After a for-God’s-sake-give-it-a-rest determination to see OM’s comments as directly saying he (KF) is a Nazi, he adds this:
So: “don’t taint me with associations, but Darwinists…! You MUST accept that ‘Darwinism’ [lest we forget, a scientific theory regarding the natural world] is tainted by a possible influence upon Hitler’s genocidal policies. If you deny it, you are guilty by association, and we are condemned to repeat history” (and presumably, as ‘enablers’, we will be ‘marched around the camps’ to confront our sins).
You don’t see the double standard here, KF? Really?