The original mission of TSZ, as intended by the U.K.’s Dr. Elizabeth Liddle, who promoted the site to apostate peers & ‘skeptics,’ often at anti-religious online forums, lists & discussion boards, has passed its due date. She & they (many of the early people who joined) shared the experience in common of being ‘expelled’ (banned) from the IDist blog Uncommon Descent (UD) & to have their own sandbox to critique UD was the main mission of TSZ. There was no ‘inspirational’ core that Liddle offered upon departure from her own site, but returning to it in November to talk mainly about UD again could only be a fool’s errand.
My argument here is that UD is by now pretty much outdated. UD is generally seen as oddball &/or gutter-level IDist discussion, far adrift from serious conversation on the topic. It is shrinking in relevance now year on year. It thus isn’t really worth ‘reporting’ on or ‘opposing’ UD at TSZ anymore, though that IDist site was the early focus of TSZ & what brought many (most) of the early participants together. Is UD really worth time for ‘skeptics’ nowadays?
More importantly, the new blog Peaceful Science (PS) has recently surpassed BioLogos in terms of daily & hourly regular traffic & far outreaches the topics that UD used to breach. It has actual scientists, elderly or retired ‘science & religion/worldview’ people who contribute often a LOT, woolly protestants & ‘unitarian’ (or maybe just one who posts as much as 5 people), pedantic ‘natural theologians’, & S. Joshua Swamidass actually just called one person a ‘prophet’ as a welcome greeting. PS even ‘welcomes’ atheists (Swamidass has made it a point to defend Freedom From Religion Foundation proponent who is a self-described ‘militant atheist’ against multiple Christians) & agnostics & patiently fields all legitimate ‘scientific’ questions. Are you skeptical of ‘Peaceful Science’ and a ‘Science of Adam’ as proclaimed by quasi-creationists, ideology-starved geneticists & fence-sitting ‘reformers’?
Well, regarding atheists, that is, they are apparently welcome at PS until they behave like a recent atheist visitor from TSZ who was banned there & subsequently also temporarily suspended here for making a post about PS & Swamidass that violated site rules. Nevertheless, one of the 2 atheist/agnostic TSZ moderators has started to post there, showing that TSZ has already begun taking an interest in PS. Indeed, I encourage more people from here to go there to participate as it is much more lively & interesting than here or UD.
What are the atheists/agnostics here waiting for when you can go discuss with ‘scientists’ (the ones you count as having the ‘most real’ or ‘most valuable’ knowledge) there too?
The author of this writing was likewise banned years ago from Uncommon Descent & considers it in hindsight & with distance now as one of the historically filthiest instruments of the IDM, though few from the DI post there anymore. ENV would quickly descend to the same level if it opened comments, which is why it doesn’t. UD, however, is much less active & important now than it was 3-7 years ago, after being founded by once-ID Poster Boy, then disgraced retiree, now reinvented ‘intelligence’ apologist, William Dembski.
At this point I will not discuss my distant personal relationship with Swamidass, only to say that I find his views highly distorted by an insidious ideology that he simply refuses to acknowledge openly & thus tosses himself into fits about each time we meet in public. Such philosophistry has a cure with time, Joshua! Nevertheless, I am quite pleased to see Swamidass’ founding & participation at Peaceful Science during the summer months. He has held back on Patreon for now (bombast necessitated he set up the page at least, right?), but will surely be looking for a sponsor to become the mantle he seems intently desirous to build for himself as ‘5th Voice’. If he keeps this up, he *will* find a sponsor soon, though TSZ won’t ever find a sponsor because it is largely valueless & merely ‘skeptical’ of what is full of value and good in comparison. I will continue to watch with interest as Dr. Swamidass is putting forward a position that looks like it will be thoroughly crushed by scholars and scientists alike, across the spectrum of atheist to theist. That is, if ever it enters the ‘actual’ arena that he has only pretended to have entered already; the arena of ‘strictly natural science’ with his almost Feyerabendian anarchism & scientistic views of biblical/scientific ‘Adam & Eve’. It’s a rather unique combination of views & more importantly attitude, that in its current discombobulated state is destined to collapse or just constantly ‘re-invent’ & ‘reform’ itself (as Luther’s shadows lately darken with discontent over PS & BioLogos).
This has all happened just in the past 2 years, with Swamidass loudly clawing at the hearts of Francis Collins’ BioLogos with his racism scandal involving Deborah Haarsma, Jim Stump & Dennis Venema that continues to rock Swamidass’ tense relationship with their all-white leadership. Three years ago the guy didn’t exist on the scene; now with tenure in hand he wants to genealogically & genetically relativise ‘Adam & Eve’ as loudly & defiantly of Christian orthodoxy as he can muster backed by naturalised authority & laboratory money. Thus, he continues to feud with BioLogos about how ostracised by fellow evangelicals he feels himself to be, while acting just as evangelically as ever before, armed to proselytize his own sketchy & often-changing personal ‘confessions’ as a ‘practising evolutionary scientist.’
At the same time, Seattle quakes its protective, sheltered voice with Discovery Institute Senior Fellows Ann Gauger & Paul Nelson now partially engaging people at PS too. Hurrah, Joshua! IDists are usually quite simple opponents in debate. Yet they claim they are not & puff up the DIs PR machine to protest otherwise. Still, when it really comes down to arguments, ‘Intelligent Design’ the way the DI means it & its political & (natural) theological proponents have aimed it, isn’t much to take apart, easy to set aside & quick to move safely beyond, though it still snares some people. Even for Abrahamic monotheists, who already accept the theological ‘design argument,’ it is not that difficult to politely & properly put away from polite conversation the sincere, often kind, usually earnest appeals of either naively misinformed, or chronically double-talking IDist authors from the DI.
With the recent arrival of the IDM’s gentle, wordy dragon Eddie Robinson at PS via retired MD & amateur social psychologist Jon Garvey’s blog of protest-oriented theological musings, fireworks seem set to ensue. This is largely because Eddie Robinson displays DI’s hyper-conservative fear-concocted ‘Expelled Syndrome,’ a psycho-social complex that several leaders of the IDM have developed, though Dr. Garvey leaves them all out of his analyses as ‘still reforming good guys’ & thus not actually in need of healing from Expelled Syndrome at all. Swamidass obviously welcomes too ‘non-denominational’ religious studies iconoclastic IDism as part of the promotion of defiant peace-making. They’ll have to do a LOT of off-site or private scripting to find a ‘middle road’ among them. Let us hope that together they can appeal to a greater good & find a better way forward than the warring & conflict language Swamidass so often returns to, using repetitive conflict-oriented, almost militaristic language (he gladly accepts self-described ‘militants’ at his site, which shocked this Canadian) in order to try to promote peace. I guess USAmericans have their own vision of ‘peace’ that most of the world simply does not accept & which makes it a rather difficult conversation given that most of the coordinated action on this topic is still USA-centred.
As a sociologist of this conversation for @15 years, I foresee major problems ahead at PS between George & Patrick, Eddie & Patrick, Eddie & George & between Swamidass & his embrace of evangelicalistic institutional power. Swamidass’ low-level philosophical relativism will ruin many opportunities that could have been achieved had he not started with unrealistic expectations placed upon himself & ‘Peaceful Science.’ There is Jeremiah 6:14 and yet Swamidass tries valiantly to be a peace-monger in a war-drenched, hyper-competitive nation of people. Again, he will deny all of this because it is outside of what he was ‘scientifically’ trained to understand, nevertheless, Swamidass’ ‘charming’ (word fumbling & stumbling) relativism may indeed be exactly the opening people here need to enter a conversation that has oftentimes eluded them. Why not visit PS to try it? Mung certainly won’t be waiting to test his IDist faith out there, right?
Swamidass seems to consider his own personality & family story as a force of Adamic empowerment. His desire is for people to sit up on the ‘Empty Chair’ he is showing everyone from right next to that Chair, in order to provide what he considers (after the BioLogos racism fiasco in which Swamidass basically dismissed himself) a much-needed ‘5th Voice’ – true Justice delivered by what he himself coined as ‘the Swamidass Model’ – among a larger cohort of mainly Millennial USAmericans. This is the ‘same approach, but different’ from most evangelical creationists, while at the same time Swamidass is vying for mainly evangelicals’ time, attention & missionary support. Swamidass sets himself up like a protestant guru of ‘genetic/genealogical Adam & Eve’ discourse, as if his message should be pertinent not only for every scholar in the academy, but specifically for non-evangelical Christians, Muslims, Jews & even Unitarians & Buddhists to embrace & celebrate GAE.
The emergence of Swamidass’ loud, ambitious & currently active position certainly has added many surprises to the conversation involving natural evolution, divine Creation & ideological IDism. I will be watching Swamidass’ new site curiously at a distance while working on other things. TSZers, they are inviting you there to engage ‘them’ in quite a new way. How many skeptics will dare challenge their skepsis with Swamidass & co.?
Gregory writes:
I think the major promoter of TSZ was Uncommon Descent.
At a quick glance, PS looks like its soaked in religion.
Just what we all need.
Yes, of course it is. They are looking for a “science of Adam”. What else could that be, other than creative fiction?
Still, if you avoid the religion, they have some mildly interesting discussions.
For me, Liddle’s banning at UD and subsequent starting of TSZ was just an occasion for joining this forum. I was never really interested in talking about Intelligent Design. I am interested in criticisms of naturalism and responses to those criticisms. In particular I’m interested in a fully naturalized understanding of rationality (which most of the Western philosophical tradition, from Plato to Kant and beyond, takes to be impossible). My involvement in TSZ is for me just a place where I can experiment with ideas and have interesting conversations with smart people I wouldn’t have had a chance to meet otherwise.
What a great idea!
I think we all should move to peaceful science blog since it is almost guaranteed keiths and his sock puppet Patrick will not drive us crazy with their baby sandbox nonsense… I have a feeling that all the angry Darwinists will not move there as they are going to get banned the moment they propose the nested hierarchies nonsense…
I’m in!
Are you still “J-Mac” there?
Answering myself. It seems that he is “J_Mac” at peaceful science.
J-Mac,
Nice work, J-Mac! Go & stay away from the “angry Darwinists”. They will have more edifying answers there than here. PS might even convert you to accept his ‘Science of Adam’ too.
This is the response I got from Dr.Swamidass on my introductory post:
“Peaceful Science is not a debate forum. Only stay here if you are on board with our goals
What do you think Gregory?
Should I stick around with the “true seekers of truth” at the peaceful science? Or, should I increase my efforts a TSZ to expose their hypocrisy?
ETA: https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/j-mac-looks-for-a-pupil/1404/4
I guess most can predict what my next few OPs are going to be all about…
Should I write a legal disclaimer at the beginning of my OPs? Alan?
Well, it didn’t take long for predictable unpleasantries and exactly between those individuals over at Peaceful Science! ; )
Joshua’s social media philosophy of protecting atheism via Patrick’s ‘militant atheist’ activistic FFRF approach to PS for political purposes is simply not destined to last. Eddie won’t tolerate Joshua’s smarminess & lack of accuracy, that’s guaranteed.
In think Josh thinks he can be the next president… lol
That’s a pretty big horse you rode in on. See if you can tone it down & have a ‘normal’ conversation with people. Which ‘new dimensions’ are you going to teach him? And
This site can be vicious, as you know. Joshua seems intent to be a bit of a mini-dictator Moderator who makes decisions without fellow mod input. The thing’s being run on his dime & time, after all. This summer’s performance for evangelical stardom: ‘The Science of Adam’!
Frankly, J-Mac, Swamidass seems to have developed psychological issues related to his recent tenure along with braggadocio that makes it functionally impossible for him to be ‘taught’ by an ‘anonymous’ person in a respectful way. Thus, you are immediately questioned from the beginning, even as a religious person, whereas the ‘non-anonymous’ Patrick can promote atheism at PS freely. It’s a protestant evangelical hang-up with individualism, it seems & Swamidass is ‘negotiating’ his way by dictating to certain people, while giving a free pass to others. Human nature revealed again, at PS.
I’m skeptical of your psychological analysis.
However, I do think that Swamidass might be making a mistake. The time he spends managing the Peaceful Science forum is time that he is not spending on research. And that will hurt him in future promotion decisions at his university.
J-Mac was not questioned as a religious person. He was questioned as a person with too much attitude. As you suggested, he needs to tone it down.
Patrick (the Patrick of PS, not our Patrick) does not have the same attitude problem, though he has got some pushback from other participants. But I think Swamidass needs someone like Patrick for balance, to keep the site from getting too religious.
Patrick really isn’t promoting atheism. He is promoting a strict secularism within science.
I can teach Swamisass a thing or two about his religious background… or the background he thinks he has… You probably know what I mean…
Swamidass is only interested in what he wants to hear… therefore the warning to me about his “goals”… I had known about his “goals” before I joined his blog… My kids lost the bet … They are going to clean the pool this looooong weekend… 😉
As Gregory said — you need to tone it down.
Use “Peaceful Science” to have useful discussion and maybe learn something. It is not the place for you to try changing the world.
If you want to change the world, then you need to setup your own site for that. And good luck with attracting visitors.
You really don’t get it, Neil…
Last thing I want is provide peaceful science and its host with the attention they don’t deserve…DI has already made that mistake…
Changing the world? You are more naïve than I thought…. The world can’t be changed… Look at catholic church! It’s going down while believing God will save it…PS is not much different… 😉
No, I don’t know what you mean. If you wish, about ‘his religious background,’ what are you going to ‘teach’ him?
DI doesn’t have many options left. The CSC has run it’s course imho. Meyer + West isn’t that stellar a combo. Bringing Dembski out of ‘retirement’ isn’t promising.
Joshua is doing what he’s been taught. It’s safe for him, though probably it feels risky enough. It’s an evangelical thing to try this way he is doing. But at least give him credit for his uniqueness. There are some ‘different’ things about what Joshua is doing & it’s not just about the chip on his shoulder about BioLogos which rejected him, a fellow evangelical.
The world is changing and human activity, along with the sheer quantity of us, is making that change so fast it is out of control.
What might be true is the world can’t be changed back!
There are two separate issues here…
Swamidass is an example of a “christian” I call “the Swedish Buffet Christian”…He picks and chooses what he wants to believe out of the supposed christian teachings or he simply calls them christian…
So, he believes in a god, who set up the laws of physics in such a way that life would create itself and then would evolve into more complex forms…something like that…
Here is the kicker: whenever he is faced with an evolutionary chasam; such as endosymbiosis for example, he says: “Maybe God guided the evolution of prokaryotic cell into eukaryotic…”
He is not much different than Darwinists, who say in the similar situations: “Scientist can’t explain this evolutionary mystery now, but it doesn’t mean God did it”.
In other words, Swamidess’ “uniqueness”, if you will, is that he fills the many great evolutionary chasms with God guided it…
Just because Swamidass’ approach to evolutionary lack of scientific evidence is unique, it doesn’t make it true or right…
What makes Swamidass a Christian? Just because he claims to be one?
My 13 and 15 year old kids could prove it with a few bible scriptures that he is not…
BTW: DI has to change their agenda. Whatever they have done so far is not working and teaching ID in schools is beyond what they could handle, even if they could.
Changing their motto of Intelligent Design to Purposeful Design would be a start…
No true scotsman eh? But what do you actually believe? Is the bible relevant or is it not? There’s no “quantum” in the bible. Are you a Christian yourself?
Why? What’s the purpose of the design then? If you can’t say, why suggest that? I mean, it’ll be question number one at the press launch of the rebrand, you know that right?
But that’s what you yourself say? Evolution did not do it, could not do it, and god did it. So what’s precisely the difference between you and Swamidass?
Who knows…What’s a true Scotsman? The same question you can ask about true Christians…I’ve asked that question Dr. Swamidass at peaceful science but I haven’t checked whether he responded yet…
Is the bible relevant? I’d ask this question: Is it compatible or accurate with the empirical evidence?
I’m pretty sure that there is no such word as “quantum” in the bible as there is no word “evolution”…
So, are there any hints that we could see quantum effects described in the bible? How about change overtime?
OMagain, you are my favourite contributor at TSZ…Do you know why?
BTW: Have you ever met Quantum Christians?
There is no design without purpose…If there is purpose, there has to be a purposerer…
If change didn’t happen overtime you and I could look the same.. You maybe be a good-looking exhibit, but I don’t think it would be very interesting to see us and Eves only….Don’t you think?
That is true…but how’s this affecting the way people perceive humanity?
How about “me first society” How about I couldn’t careless what you think society?
Why?
(To be clear, I believe that your assertion is false.)
How about your assertion that evolution is intelligent? Did you get any feedback from the “random-creative-society” yet?
This is the response I got from one the “regulars” at peacefulscience.org to my challenge:
What scientific, experimental evidence that convinced you the most that abiogenesis happened? Please do not overwhelm us! 10 examples of the experiments will do…
As very few here would predict, this the response I got:
“Experimental evidence is not the only way to do science. Observation is also worthwhile. Here is a recent observation that adds to investigation into the origin of life on Earth.”
Who can argue with is kind of “science” ? Belief over science at peacefulscience.org!
Shouldn’t be called preferential science instead? How about “we don’t care about science?” We (preferentialscience ) will use our preconceived ideas as the fundamentals of our science…
You asked a poor question. The origin of life is currently unexplained, and I do not know of any scientist who says otherwise.
Are you suggesting that there is something wrong with observation?
No? So, based on what scientific evidence do you, or Dr Swamidass, assume that life created itself if life’s origins is unexplained?
Can you answer that?
I don’t assume that life created itself. Rather, I take the origin of life to be unexplained.
I would guess that Swamidass looks to Genesis as explaining the origin of life.
Boy, Neil! Have you ever even considered what it would take to create even the simplest life form? Even if all the necessary components were somewhere available in the ideal conditions, it is not credible to suppose that they would fold into a function protein… Since a living cell requires hundreds or even thousands of functioning proteins, your stand that life origins is unexplained is simply nonsense or deliberate refusal of what is obvious… just like the whole materialistic bamboozle philosophy…
I don’t care what you chose to believe….I only wonder why?
Can explanation admit of degrees, do you think? Would it make sense to say that we can explain abiogenesis sort of, just not completely?
All explanations are partial, some doubly so. The beginning of life is presumed to be an historical event rather than a recurring phenomenon.
I don’t think you should assume anything about Dr. Swamidass… especially about Genesis because of his “Swedish Buffet Pick and Choose Belief System” …
It is safe to say that he may as well write his own version of Genesis and proclaim to be Moses II… 😉
Yes, I have considered it. That’s why I see it as unexplained, and likely to remain unexplained for a long time.
I’m not sure what is your problem.
I don’t actually believe anything about the origin of life, as I have said several times.
If you don’t care what I believe, why do you keep hammering on me about this?
Abiogenesis has not been explained and never will be…unless someone comes up with a definition of what life is that the great majority will agree upon…
Without including quantum mechanics, and possibly some kind of energy beyond the subatomic level, like dark energy, it is going to be futile because nobody knows what connects the great chasm between inanimate and animate matter…
Craig Venter and Jack Szostak have learned it first hand…And then, there is the interdependence of life systems; another layer of irreducible complexity, if you will, of even the “simplest” of cells… All the indispensable components have to be present, and functional, or there is no life…
Speculations obviously abound how life could have created itself…but are they scientific? Are they consistent with the scientific knowledge? Are they logical? Some are forced to say “yes” because the obvious alternative is unthinkable to them…
I just don’t know why….
I’m not so sure that makes sense.
It is notable that life seems to have arisen on earth not long after it cooled down enough to support life. So this seems to suggest that either life can get started fairly easily, or that life is ubiquitous in the cosmos (a kind of panspermia). But I would call not that a partial explanation.
I’m not surprised… You should have added that you don’t believe in anything and you are willing to believe anything…
I’m not assuming anything. Nothing important is based on my guess.
As for that “Swedish Buffet Pick” — any scientist who becomes Christian is going to have similar beliefs. Swamidass in not twisting and bending his science to fit with his Christianity. If anything, he is bending and twisting his Christianity to fit with his science. And that’s what any good scientist will do if he is also Christian.
Does not follow, if someone willing to believe anything how can they not believe in anything?
It does… It involves the deeper meaning of the word “belief”…
Absolutely not!
Swamidass is twisting the truth to accommodate his beliefs in evolution… He views change over time, or the variation within set kinds as proof of evolution of new kinds… It’s nonsense that has been refuted by experiences, including Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, Venter and 100 years of Drosophila fruitless experiments…
Yeah, Darwinists continue to speculate…
What else do they have left? Everything they believe is in their imagination only…
Belief as in unquestioning belief?
“The truth” — what is that, other than your own subjective viewpoint.
Swamidass is correcting his views when further evidence shows that such correction is needed. That seems entirely reasonable to me.
Yes, you are right — it is nonsense. Evolution, as you understand it, is nonsense. Did it ever occur to you that maybe there is a problem with your understanding of evolution?
For what it’s worth, I never expected anything remarkable to emerge from those Drosophila experiments. So what you describe as “100 years of Drosophila fruitless experiments” does not suggest any problems in my understanding of evolution.
Neil Rickert,
What science really challenges Christianity?
Not sure science or the scientific method challenges Christianity as such. It’s when religious claims are testable it becomes a problem. The classic example being YEC claims that the Earth came into existence 6,000 years ago.
Alan Fox,
I agree.
Hey, I had more examples! 🙂
That depends on which branch of Christianity. For sure, science challenges (refutes) the YEC version. But a sensible Christianity is not challenged by science.