James Tour: Friendship Across Disagreements

Peaceful Science
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143

Of course he doesn’t, since agreeing would mean admitting that imputing motivations to people is not an acceptable form of argument, and such an admission would would put most or much of what he has said about Discovery, Behe, etc. in the category of “invalid argument.”

No, not “just”, but I will use the tools of culture warriors in order to resist aggression by culture warriors, if that helps create a “safe space” for the millions of people who are being bullied by them today. And I’m assured both by many “Likes” and by many private communications that my stance against aggressive culture warriors is appreciated.

As you or anyone here can see, in addition to responses that could be classed as “culture war” responses, I write much here that is expository, theoretical, philosophical, academic – aimed at getting at the truth through reasoning, not at scoring political or social victory. If this were a civilized scholarly setting, instead of a bear pit, I would write nothing but the latter kind of things here. But a writer has to write with a forum in mind. This forum is not a graduate seminar or a scholarly conference. It calls for a mixed mode of writing. Thoughtful, polite responses should get thoughtful, polite replies, and thuggish, bullying, sarcastic, low-motive-imputing responses should get what they deserve.

Compare the way I respond to people, including people who disagree with me, who write without polemics or sarcasm or imputation of low motivations to me and to ID people, with the way I respond to some others here. Ron Sewell has many times disagreed with me, but in such a gracious way, and with substantive content rather than “I’ve caught you in a slip” nitpicking, that he gets quite different responses from me than Roy or Tim or Mercer or Faizal get. And he often indicates appreciation of those responses (not implying complete agreement, I know) in a further response or in a “Like”. If the atheists here all wrote the way Ron does, both the tone and substantive content on this site would greatly improve.

Asking you to write one sentence to explain what you meant by a phrase hardly indicates any feeling of moral superiority.

Before the arrival of the internet and the laziness the internet has encouraged among writers, it was a normal conversational move to ask someone to clarify what he meant, and it was normal social manners for the person being asked to give a brief explanation. But now it’s considered acceptable social manners (by some) to say, in effect, “I have no obligation to explain; you have the obligation to Google.” I reject this new set of conversational manners. I continue to live under the older, more gracious and civilized, set of manners. If you can’t live with that, then don’t bother replying to my posts.

144

No matter how low one aims, the point will always sail right over the head of our “Eddie.”

145

It’s impossible to take you seriously.

Especially when you spout a cliche like “the lurkers support me in email”. Pomposity, thy name is Eddie. Or thy alias. Whatever.

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146

As pathetic as that is to begin with, it’s even sadder when you notice that there does not seem to be a single “Like” given to any his comments in this discussion.

147

Yes, I do say so, minus the word “exactly”, since I explicitly stated that I was putting your argument crudely (but not inaccurately regarding its main drift). Here is the argument you offered:

A detached observer, not wedded to either side in the culture war, would most naturally read your argument as I have read it: you are saying that Behe argues what he argues because he is religiously motivated to do so.

The same detached observer would also acknowledge that Behe might argue exactly the same things even without religious motivation, if he thought his biochemical reasoning etc. were correct and the scientific criticisms of his opponents invalid.

You still don’t grasp the difference between “Behe’s arguments are bad” and “Behe’s arguments are bad, and we can prove that he keeps making such bad arguments because of a religious motivation.” You keep trying to slide from one claim to the other, without providing any real argument. What you think is an “argument” for your latter conclusion consists of innuendo, loose connection of ideas, argumentum ad hominem (in particular, argument based on Behe’s associations), etc. And I see there is no way at present of curing you of this habit. To cure you of it, we would need to send you back to school to do a degree in philosophy, where you would have your papers ripped to shreds by your professors (and fellow students in seminars) every time you tried to argue based on alleged motivations rather than the contents of the propositions on the table.

You actually have enough time on your hands to take up work on a philosophy degree, at least on a part-time basis. The number of hours you spend here each week (including the time you spend reading, writing, and looking up things on the internet) and blogging on your own site would be enough for you to take one or even two courses of philosophy each semester, without giving up your day job. I’d recommend you start out with a nice, juicy course on Aristotle, and after that, maybe one on Hobbes or Descartes.

148

It’s impossible for people with the mentality of most of the atheists here to take me seriously, in the sense of considering the possibility that I might on occasion be right on a point. But that they take me seriously in another sense is quite obvious from the tens of thousands of words, often angry or sarcastic ones, hurled in my direction over the past three or four years. If they don’t take me seriously, the logical response would be never to reply to me at all. That’s how, say, professors of astronomy show that they don’t take claims about aliens at Roswell seriously, and how, say, professors of archaeology show that they don’t take Erich von Daniken seriously. But the atheists here don’t seem to be able to do that. Even Roy, who has recently sworn never to reply to me again, keeps on breaking his promise to himself and replying. If that is not “taking me seriously”, what is? I’ll believe that none of the atheists here “take me seriously” when all my postings here are met with complete silence from their end. You’re welcome to be the one to start the trend.

If you do take my advice on this point, and I don’t hear from you again, I would like it put on record that my last recorded question to you, regarding what you meant by the phrase “owning the libs,” was never answered.

149

Well, now you are misrepresenting yourself. There you are just summarizing my conclusion, not my argument. And I have not denied that that is my conclusion.

However, earlier, you claimed to accurately, albeit “crudely”, represent my argument as:

Surely, after having quoted my argument in full, you don’t still hold to that, do you?

150

It doesn’t have to be one or the other; a plan or design might be executed by natural means. I’m objecting to the sarcastic or polemical use of the phrase “God did it” in these popular discussions. One can believe that a Mind or intelligence was involved without asserting that God popped in and out of the world, doing miracles.

The point of mentioning Wallace was that everyone here would think he was right about natural selection; the case of Wallace shows that one can agree with Darwin that natural selection is operative in nature, and important in explaining origins, without agreeing with Darwin that mind or intelligence had no role to play. I’m not trying to prove that Behe’s conception of origins is the correct one, but merely to indicate that he is a recent member of a long tradition, going back to Wallace and beyond, which embraces evolutionary change while setting it in a context of design or teleology. It was not considered “unscientific” to affirm the two things together, and many of the people who did affirm the two things together were respected as men of science in their day. Gould’s massive work SET discusses various teleological conceptions of evolution that were abroad in the early days. His discussion is well worth reading for anyone whose interest in evolutionary theory goes beyond arguments about genetic nuts and bolts.

151

My, you do go on. Here:

152

The word “argument” is in normal English very often used to indicate “the conclusion that one arrives at.” For example, it is very common to say, e.g., that historian X “argues” that the success of the Reformation was due to the printing press. Here what is called the “argument” of the historian is in fact the conclusion of the historian, rather than all the steps of reasoning that led to the conclusion.
This is very common and perfectly acceptable English usage, and I see it in academic works all the time. Similarly, you “argue” that the reason Behe defends (or fails to defend) his position in the way he does is that he is motivated for religious concerns.

Are we going to quibble about the meaning of the phrase “argue for” something? Must all discussions here end in quarrels over semantics? I think you know what I meant by my summary, and I think you agree that my summary is roughly accurate; you are merely nitpicking over whether I should have called it a summary of your “argument” rather than a summary of your “conclusion.”

If your substantive (as opposed to nitpicking) complaint is that I have accurately represented your conclusion but have not done justice to your reasoning (by which you reached your conclusion), that is not the case; I explained why your steps in reasoning don’t get you to the conclusion you want to maintain. For example, “Behe is a member of Discovery” (one of your points of evidence) does not establish that “Behe’s motives are religious” – and I already explained why. (Different members of a big tent organization may have very different motives; and if you want an example of that, Berlinski is a Discovery Fellow, but not religious.) I suggest you reread what I wrote in my several posts, more slowly and carefully.

You can dodge and evade all you like, but the fact is that you frequently make allegations about people’s motives that you cannot demonstrate. (You also make allegations of fact that you cannot demonstrate, e.g., that Behe’s lifestyle is “lavish,” but that’s a side point.)

153

Thank you. You could have done that when I first asked, and saved wrangling. But better late than never.

I did suspect that the usage of “own” was slang, as the article indicates.

The difference between my remark above (that triggered all this) and what is described in your article is this: I don’t think Behe writes what he does about evolution “in order to upset” anyone (liberals, Coyne, Dawkins, the NCSE, etc.). I think he writes what he does because he thinks it is true. He of course knows, based on his experience of academics, biologists, etc., that many people will be upset by what he writes, but he doesn’t do it for the purpose of getting an angry reaction out of them.

And when I say that I love to see Behe’s opponents blowing a gasket, I’m not saying that I write here in order to blow more gaskets. I write here to make arguments against what I consider to be bad arguments. But I do get pleasure whenever I see any self-satisfied, intellectually un-self-critical group of people get angry when their certainties are challenged. The indignation, the foaming at the mouth, etc., all have their comical side. It has nothing to do with ID in particular, since I get the same pleasure when I see Michael Mann’s arrogance challenged, or when I see establishment “educators” criticized for the rubbish theories of education they have endorsed and imposed on taxpayers since the 1960s which have contributed to innumeracy, illiteracy, horrible grammar, ignorance of history, etc., or when I see feminist theorists challenged on university campuses by faculty who will not bow to their tyranny, etc. I enjoy seeing unclothed emperors having their nakedness pointed out to them, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this. Need I add that my favorite philosopher was Socrates?

154

No, it’s more than that. It has a pejorative meaning. It means taking quotations out of context and employing them for purposes not intended by the original author, with the suggestion that those purposes are in some sense dishonest or at least unscholarly. Not all quotations are “quote-mining”, not even when they reproduce only parts of a sentence or paragraph. They become “quote-mining” when the leaving out of context is used to mislead readers about the original intention of the author who is quoted.

In my quotation of Faizal I had no intention of misleading anyone. I thought that the limited portion I quoted (regarding who subsidized Behe) was all that was necessary to make the point, and I did not think the use of more of the original would have made any difference: the ambiguity to which I referred is not eliminated by reproducing the entire passage.

If Faizal wants to say that I misread his meaning, he is welcome to explain what he meant and how I misread it, but he has not done so. All he has done is complain about “quote-mining.” He would do better if he simply rewrote the small number of words that I found ambiguous, to eliminate the ambiguity; with that done, I might then remove my original objection. But admitting that he might not have written as clearly as he could have does not seem to be in his playbook.

155

Ah, I see. So you were simply explaining to people that my belief is that Behe does not admit that he is wrong, and he has religious motivations for his claims regarding “Darwinism.”

The question, then, is why you think anyone needed such a long-winded explanation of something that was already so blatantly obvious.

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156

The explanation only became “long-winded” when you would not concede that your reasons were insufficient to establish your conclusion – or, if not concede, at least respond to my arguments that they were insufficient. I then had to respond to your various evasions. If you don’t want long-winded analyses, simply concede reasonable points to your opponents now and then. Conceding points reduces the number of topics to be discussed, and leads to shorter discussions.

157

Ah. So you were talking about my argument, and not just my conclusions.

Why did you just deny this, then?

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158

Of course. However, in the absence of evidence supporting the involvement of a conscious intelligence in natural processes the idea simply becomes irrelevant to science.

Sure, but Behe goes on to attack the standard, and generally well-supported natural explanations for those events that do not consider conscious design at all. Instead of doing the needed studies to support ID and give it better scientific footing, he has spent the better part of his time writing books for lay audiences that attack the capacity of natural mechanisms to fully account for the origin of modern biodiversity. Thus, in the absence of any substantial evidence for ID from Behe, his arguments boil down to “God must have done it”. As I said, Behe should borrow a leaf from Swamidass on presenting interesting, but unsupported ideas to the scientific community.

What matters is the evidence base of the claims being made. There are many religious persons who believe God was involved in our natural evolutionary history, but I don’t see them spending their time attacking robust natural theories like Behe does.

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159

Not quite.

His argument is always “Darwinism (sic) couldn’t have done it.”

And even if that was true, it would not lead to the conclusion he is trying to support, which is “God must’ve done it”.

But the situation is even worse, because he supports his claim that “Darwinism couldn’t have done it” with falsehoods and pseudoscience that is no more sound than that used to support YEC.

160

I didn’t. You’re still caviling over the exact timing of my use of the words “argument”, “conclusion”, etc. Why don’t you stop nitpicking and stick to the substance? Here is the substance (and I’ll use the words “thesis” and “reasoning” to avoid any further nitpicking from you regarding who meant what by the terms “argument” and “conclusion”):

1-- Your thesis is that Behe does lousy science because he is motivated by religious beliefs.

2-- The reasoning which you have offered to demonstrate your thesis is not only insufficient, but weak.

Regarding point 1, you have already agreed that I have characterized your thesis correctly. Regarding point 2, about the weakness of your reasoning, I have already covered that in earlier posts.

I don’t see what more there is to be said. If you are willing to stick with lines of argument which would likely fail an undergraduate philosophy paper, and whose weaknesses have been pointed out here, we’ll just have to leave it at that.

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The key word in your statement is “fully”. He does not deny that proposed mechanisms can explain much of modern biodiversity, and he gives many examples. He does deny that they fully account for it. But since no serious academic evolutionary theorist (as opposed to dogmatic blogger or web site commenter) claims that current theory can explain everything, I don’t see why that in itself should be an offense. The offense, rather, is that he thinks one of the causal factors influencing evolutionary outcomes is “design.” That’s what moves him out of the category of “collegial critic” to “biological heretic.”

162

IOW, that is my conclusion. We have already agreed on that.

IOW, you were talking about my argument, even though you earlier denied that this is what you were talking about.

Moreover, as I initially pointed out, your attempted response to my argument was based on your inaccurate summary of that argument. Which is why, on that point, my response remains “Faizal Ali does not agree,” as that is the appropriate response to an attempted counterargument that relies on straw manning.

Looks like everything has been cleared up. If you feel compelled to try understand my actual argument and attempt a relevant response, I won’t stop you.