They were different, six months ago, even three months ago. But in the past few weeks, there has been an upsurge of “angry atheism” here, as I think you yourself have noted a couple of times. You even asked me what we could do about it.
There are about half a dozen posters here who couldn’t care less about Christianity, and at times show hostility to it, and they get lots of free air time.
I’m not talking about the intellectual issues you mention here. I’m talking about a recent change in atmosphere. The atheist/materialist swagger is more prominent. And now blanket statements are being made by a complete quack in evolutionary theory that the actual practitioners of evolutionary science are quacks. And people who oppose the atheist domination of the conversations are told that they make the site “suck” or that they are “idiots.”
The only consolation I have is that my number of “Likes” keeps going up by leaps and bounds. So even if a handful of loud detractors can’t stand my posts, lots of others say they benefit from them. But I don’t think even that is enough to keep me around much longer.
Hi George
Eddie is right. As long as you have people here that have no intention of having a conversation and facts and proper philosophic discourse don’t matter this site is going in the wrong direction.
You’re damned right we are. As are the reasonable and informed theists in this group here. I’m glad you are capable of at least understanding some things.
I have been begging to put Atheist disputes into an unlocked-but-soundproofed section…
[by sound-proof, I mean that the only way to know which threads are active is to actually enter the section!].
The sooner we get the atheistic discussions (please note, Mr. Atheist, that I’m not talking about segregating the atheists themselves), the work towards “peace” can begin anew and with more obvious results!
And on this point, Geneal.Adam/Eve supporters would agree with you completely.
It’s the footnote to ID’s work that gets in the way: back at BioLogos, it made sense to discuss “God’s Guidance”, because there were so few BioLogos folks who were comfortable with that idea.
But now that there is PeacefulScience.Org, ID folks seem incapable of dropping the topic of “Science proving Teleology”… which becomes a divisive conversation just as much as Atheist discussions on Evolution become divisive!
Wrong. They need to come up with an actual workable hypothesis and publish some research to back it up. Which they will never do. So, no, they don’t get a place at the table, unless it’s to clear away the dishes after the grown ups are done with their discussion.
You’ve got it wrong. Facts and proper philosophical and scientific discourse are what I’m here for. But since creationists are unable and unwilling to engage in this, they are a major impediment to that goal.
I haven’t noticed any atmospheric shifts … to me it’s just another “peak in the cycle” which has been running through this iteration of PeacefulScience.Org.
Yes it’s worse right now … but I’ve seen it equally worse in prior quarters.
Sometimes I would get lynched in the public square - - being accused of trying to silence Atheistic discussions - - but each time I would patiently wait for the embers of my fire-y purgatory to die down and point out that housing atheistic discussions in a closed-but-not-locked room is all we need …
… and @Eddie, the same should apply to those Creationists who want to argue that Science can demonstrate teleology. These discussions are just as divisive as the Atheistic ones!
How do I know? Because Joshua and I have long ago agreed that God Guides (or can guide) all Creation (evolution included)… which is all that is necessary to build agreement with some schools or factions of Christianity.
But there are plenty of Creationists who want to keep the fires of division burning bright … because they have their political aims to nurture.
The sooner that both discussion topics are set aside into a quiet corner, the sooner the “building unity” work can begin!
If one agrees with “Eddie,” all other credentials are irrelevant. If one doesn’t, that’s a different story. Interestingly, Eddie’s appeals to credentialism rarely extend beyond having a PhD in a particular subject, typically ignoring empirical publications.
I have not seen that so far. You misrepresent arguments. You argue with logical fallacies and then deny you do. You don’t seek to understand opposing arguments. You are simply here to bash creationist arguments some of which are weak but some of them have do have substance.
Eddie is a very intelligent and thoughtful contributor and you have been extremely disrespectful.
Patrick is an atheist and we disagree a lot but the conversation is respectful and I learn from our engagements.
Even the ID creationists themselves admit they have no workable hypothesis.
I also don’t think that there is really a theory of intelligent design at the present time to propose as a comparable alternative to the Darwinian theory, which is, whatever errors it might contain, a fully worked out scheme. There is no intelligent design theory that’s comparable. Working out a positive theory is the job of the scientific people that we have affiliated with the movement. Some of them are quite convinced that it’s doable, but that’s for them to prove…No product is ready for competition in the educational world.
Philip E Johnson, Berkeley Science Review (Spring 2006)
As to his being respectful, please point out where I have made unsubstantiated accusations against him of incompetence in his professional field, as he has done with me.
Strange kind of unity, in which all dissenting opinions are sent off to a separate room. Maybe you can set up your own forum where no one else is allowed to join and you could just post things for yourself to read. That’ll give you as much “unity” as you could want.
Don’t be confused by the terminology. “Unity” doesn’t mean agreement in all things.
PeacefulScience.Org is not supposed to build peace by arguing about everything!!!
Similarly, when someone builds a synagogue to provide unity amongst Jewish brethren, they don’t usually encourage and invite Catholics and Muslims to take part.
The ending has a message for Eddie: "There have now been many essays on why a new, or supposedly new, viewpoint or approach is warranted. If advocates of an EES are to convince many biologists, they will need to provide empirical support. To remain vital, a field of science requires challengers who aim to topple traditional views; but if it is not to be knocked about and smashed by unruly children (I am thinking of current politics in my country), the science also needs traditionalists. John Maynard Smith [152], one of the most broad-minded of great evolutionary biologists, wrote, ‘It is in the nature of science that once a position becomes orthodox it should be subjected to criticism…It does not follow that because a position is orthodox, it is wrong’."
Everyone understand the ID “arguments” just fine Bill. It’s just the scientifically educated people here have examined them and rejected them for being unsupported science-free garbage.
“Does’t agree with’s Bill’s religious views” =/= “doesn’t understand”.
I love this account of part of the Royal Society Meeting, written by someone who actually attended (Which I doubt @Eddie did):
Here’s how Evolution News & Views (sic) sees the meeting,
“The opening presentation at the Royal Society conference by one of those world-class biologists, Austrian evolutionary theorist Gerd Müller, underscored exactly Meyer’s point. Müller opened the meeting by discussing several of the fundamental ‘explanatory deficits’ of ‘the modern synthesis,’ that is, textbook neo-Darwinian theory.”
That’s exactly right. Müller complained about the Modern Synthesis version of evolutionary theory where mutation plus natural selection equals evolution. He claimed that this was the version presented in all the modern textbooks and it’s wrong.
The next talk was by Douglas Futuyma, author of the leading textbook on evolution. He pointed out that even his first edition, in 1986, contained most of what Müller talked about. Futuyma described how his textbook differed from the old-fashioned view of the Modern Synthesis that Müller claims is promoted in every textbook. In other words, the audience was treated to a masterful repudiation of just about everything Müller said about the textbooks and the modern view of evolutionary theory. (I doubt very much that Gerd Müller has even read a modern textbook because he seems to be ignorant of Neutral Theory and random genetic drift, both of which are extensively covered in all textbooks.)
Of course, Eddie knows nothing of this, because all he knows of the meeting is the propaganda he’s been fed by the ID Creationists for him to vomit up on discussion boards like this one.
Eddie: