I’m sure the name Jerry Falwell Jr means more to US members than it does to me. A friend passed on a link where I read:
Donald Trump appoints creationist college president to lead higher education reform taskforce
The focus will be on “overregulation and micromanagement of higher education,” according to university spokesman Len Stevens. This would be consistent with Falwell’s past positions, in which he has opposed federal regulations on funding and accreditation for American schools of higher learning.
Following the appointment of (Calvinist?) Betsy DeVos as Education secretary, should we be concerned for the future of public education in the US?
“The bill only applies to teaching scientific subjects included in the curriculum framework approved by the State Board of Education. It explicitly cannot be used to promote religious or non-religious doctrines.”
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2017/02/an_opening_for103473.html
keiths,
Missed that one.
I’m referring to the finding of the truth…Isn’t it your goal as well?
Sure it is.
Faith can’t be provisional?
Truth isn’t physical. Truth has no place in keith’s reality.
Mung,
Who’s Colin Patterson and when did he say this? Who did he mean by “we”?
Colin Patterson
From his wikipedia entry:
“Because creationists lack scientific research to support such theories as a young earth … a world-wide flood … or separate ancestry for humans and apes, their common tactic is to attack evolution by hunting out debate or dissent among evolutionary biologists. … I learned that one should think carefully about candour in argument (in publications, lectures, or correspondence) in case one was furnishing creationist campaigners with ammunition in the form of ‘quotable quotes’, often taken out of context.[8]”
Another case of creationist dishonesty?
Mung, do you have a link?
ETA: Ninja’d!
“The new legislation avoids the “Intelligent Design” phrase and uses the “strengths and weaknesses” euphemism instead.”
Creation Science!
No.
Intelligent Design Theory!
No.
Strengths and Weaknesses!
a similar slow retreat to one I’ve seen before:
Global Warming isn’t happening!
No.
Global Warming is happening but it’s not us!
No.
Global Warming is happening and it’s us, but…it might be good?
Science deniers are willing to look a little ridiculous, but they hate looking too ridiculous.
J-Mac:
keiths:
J-Mac:
Yes, which is why my physicalism is provisional and based on the evidence to date.
Now, where are these questions of yours that I supposedly can’t answer?
Sorry Alan, I have to go watch Lady Gaga. More later.
Evolutionism and Creationism
Page 15. First Paragraph.
Suck it dazz.
Did you read the whole lecture? Did you note where Patterson admits to being outrageous to stimulate debate? You disagree that you quote-mined him?
I take it as a given that anytime any evolutionist is quoted by anyone perceived to be an enemy of evolution that they are presumed guilty of quote-mining.
I think in the same lecture Patterson said he’s not an evolutionist. But I suppose if I quote him saying that I’ll again be accused of quote-mining.
At some point it’s just not worth the effort to argue about it.
Do you think I quote-mined him?
So you admit that you condone child abuse, even if you do so reluctantly. Another way to put it is that you sanction child abuse. People who live in glass houses, Patrick, and all that …
Oh yeah. Since back when he was a sports writer. Excellent.
Yes, and Hillary Clinton was just soooo dangerous! Much worse than Trump, you kept insisting. If Libertarians hadn’t voted for their own moron, all across the country, we wouldn’t have a daily Constitutional crisis. Now Trump says that any jurist that doesn’t agree with him is a “so-called” judge who should be attacked by the populace.
Awesome choice, libertarians and other Constitution lovers!
It was worth repeating.
Mung apparently doesn’t consider quote mining and plagiarism to be unethical.
Religion breeds authoritarianism. Do try to think outside your self-imposed box.
In an ideal world, Sal would be horsewhipped in the street. Utopia is not an option. The best available alternative is social censure.
While I’m in my images folder, this one seems appropriate for this thread:
I’m sure if I did I’d find a blog on which to pontificate about it, rather than doing something constructive.
Dogma of any kind breeds authoritarianism.
That sums up you and yours quite nicely, Patrick
Perhaps. I do tend to check the primary source when certain people pull out quotes. I’ve often been unsurprised to find that, in context, the text quoted becomes much more nuanced. So yes I’m skeptical.
I’ve just skimmed through that lecture (delivered in 1981) and I must have missed it. We could ask Dr Patterson to clarify his current view but I see he died in 1998. There is ample evidence he had no time for Young Earth Creationists.
It’s actually pointless.
As I define it, yes. I take the idiosyncratic view that there is strong quote-mining, trolling someone’s (someone usually respected in mainstream science) published work for quotes that can be presented as supporting some view they don’t/didn’t hold.
I think there is also lazy quote-mining, where someone picks up on a quote mined by someone else, without checking the primary source themselves. I’m wondering whether this is what you did. I’m finding it hard to believe you came across Patterson’s lecture notes yourself, read them and picked out those phrases yourself.
That’s right, I came across it in another book I was reading and of course was also familiar with it from previous books I’ve read. This one just seemed too timely to pass up.
I have an extensive literature on evolution and OOL just because I take charges of actual real quote-mining seriously. I like having primary source material.
Don’t you still owe us an OP on why Christianity is false, or some such nonsense? It’s probably been over a year now and still nothing.
Atheism is a religion. Do try to think outside your self-imposed box.
First paragraph.
“I’m tackling two subjects about which I feel I know nothing at all. One of the reasons I started taking a non-evolutionary view was my sudden realisation after working, as I thought, on evolution for 20 years, that I knew nothing whatever about it: It was quite a shock to learn that one could be so misled for so long. Either there was something wrong with me, or something wrong with evolution, and naturally I suppose there is nothing wrong with me.”
It’s certainly a dogmatic metaphysics, but calling atheism a religion by virtue of being a dogmatic metaphysics threatens to strip these words of their customary uses.
If you were to say that atheism is a dogmatic metaphysics, just as religions are, I’d have no quarrel.
Is this a quote mine?
Do you think Patterson was lying?
Hi KN, thank you for your comment.
Now if you could put yourself in Patrick’s shoes, wouldn’t “metaphysical” and “dogmatic” be your definition of a religion?
You would agree that not all religions are theistic I think? I was doing some reading today that mentioned there have been US court cases touching on this subject but have not had a chance to research. Quick Google turns up this article at ENV.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/07/for_first_amend1087481.html
Maybe we could do another Scopes and find some teacher willing to teach atheism in a public school, lol.
I wouldn’t presume to put myself in Patrick’s shoes, since he and I disagree on some fundamental issues.
I would rather speak for myself and say that
(1) most metaphysics is dogmatic;
(2) metaphysics is not necessarily dogmatic;
(3) most religions involve dogmatic metaphysics;
(4) some religions do not involve dogmatic metaphysics (e.g. Buddhism)
(As an aside, I’ve been reading Sextus Empiricus’s Outline of Pyrrhonism the past few days. It’s a fantastic read, and is helping me see much more clearly how skepticism functions as a rejection of metaphysics in the Western tradition. I think it’s only been in the last hundred years, maybe less, that we finally figured out a way of doing metaphysics that isn’t vulnerable to Skeptical challenge.)
Buddhism is an interesting case here. It is usually called a ‘religion’, but I wonder if that is a bit of exoticizing because it is non-Western. (What Edward Said called ‘orientialism’.) Buddhism is similar in many ways to Stoicism, yet Buddhism is called a “religion” and Stoicism is called a “philosophy”. Though Buddhists often acknowledge the existence of gods and other spirits, the Buddha taught that they are just as much prisoners of the cycles of death and rebirth as we and the “lower” animals are. Even the gods need liberation from the suffering of existence.
Buddha was a wonderful psychologist. Very acute, I believe. I don’t see that he was immune from dogmatism, though.
As a Christian I guess I could pray that Patrick would achieve enlightenment, but that seems wrong somehow. But as an atheist, isn’t he already enlightened?
None of us, really.
I agree. But I also think I am more likely to admit to being dogmatic about certain things than is someone who only sees others as being the dogmatic ones.
Another question for you Alan.
Let say I had written instead that Colin Patters once said that the level of knowledge about evolution is pretty low and that we know it ought not to be taught in high school and that’s about all.
Is that a quote mine?
Claiming that Colin Patterson didn’t accept evolution is indeed quote-mining. I heard him speak once, and his point was that one should not assume evolution a priori when doing phylogenetic analysis, so as to avoid circular reasoning and to be able to use the resulting trees as evidence for evolution. Rather than rejecting evolution he sought to make the evidence for it more rigorous. (I don’t agree with his claim, but that’s what it was.) If he actually said he wasn’t an evolutionist, it didn’t mean what Mung thinks.
Quote mining (or whatever it pleases one to call it) is a ludicrous practice. The assumption that anyone should care is what puzzles me. “X doesn’t accept evolution” (even if true). So what? There are lots of X’s. Personally, I do. There are a lot of eminent scientists who do. Including no small number of biologists, best placed to judge. I can only assume it gives the quoter some crumb of comfort. Or, it’s a scriptural authority thing.
It depends on how you are defining “evolution”. The question would be why would anyone accept evolution by means of blind and mindless processes seeing that it cannot be tested?
And bald is a hair color.
The definition I have for dogma is “a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.” Are you using a different one? If not then I’m not dogmatic about being an atheist. I’m happy to entertain any evidence or argument for the existence of a god or gods. I’m an atheist because I’ve never seen a compelling reason not to be.
Of course not. Do you think he was genuine when he complained of being quoted out of context by Creationists?
Taht depends. Did he provide evidence or did he just make a blanket claim that anyone quoting him and thought to be a creationist could be beaten over the head with. Was he vague or specific?
From what I’ve seen you’re pretty dogmatic about the definition of “atheist.”
Did Patterson say that? In his lecture he says (just after the bit you quoted previously):
Notice “not interested in the controversy over high school teaching” and “evolutionism and creationism as they apply to systematics”.
That’s what comes across in his lecture. I wonder if his view would have changed if the genome sequence information we have now had been available then.
Wouldn’t the evidence be available by looking at the context of his statement quoted which seemed to support a view which he had already was not his?
It’s most annoying when the person quote-mined is no longer alive to clarify their intended meaning or refute misrepresentation.