Doing Better with ID

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

Continuing the discussion from Does Source of Pay Create Bias?:

@Agauger, you make some points that I am sympathetic too.

@Agauger

I think I have pointed this out before, but there is a tendency here to read bad intentions or moral failings into what certain ID proponents do, especially Meyer, Axe, and Behe. I find it not at all surprising that they do not want to engage here. They will not get a fair hearing here, no matter what you say . The mentality is not to want to hear and understand, really understand what their work shows, it is almost always to score rhetorical points. My dialog with Mercer and Hunt are a case in point. For the longest time we were talking past each other, with a rather aggressive dismissive tone taken by one side of the dispute. That is not a fair hearing. I am certain the same thing would happen to Behe and Axe and Meyer, based on the attitudes expressed here on this thread.

I agree with much of this. I want to clarify a few things.

1. We have an invitation to Axe and Behe here, but if they feel the forum is poor venue, I am flexible. If they talk to us, I am happy to find a better way to do this. Perhaps we do a series of blog posts that they respond to at ENV. We can work with that.

2. I agree, there has been too much gamesmanship here. Now that the forum is growing even more (we just hit 100K views this month), it is likely we will have to continually be tightening up control over threads. In particular if Axe or Behe did want to engage here, we would lock down a thread so just designated people could participate on it.

3. For you @Agauger, I’m very glad you are here. How do we do a better job? For one, I’m not sure it is helpful to be calling you out at every turn. Right now, you are outnumbered. It can get out of hand very quickly, with just a deluge of things to respond to. I suggest that we find some ways to throttle this. So there is a more sane rate of exchange. At the very least, you should not feel responsible to respond to every post that comes up. I think we can also help in another way. IF you want to hit “snooze” on a conversation, please let the @moderators know. We will make sure that people aren’t badgering you with constant insistence to go over the same things.

Do you (@Agauger, and also @pnelson, @bjmiller) have any other ideas on how to make this a more welcoming place for ID leaders?