A petty, caviling objection to my point. I was perfectly aware that Rumraket was quoting someone else, and I’m also perfectly aware that someone can quote something without agreeing with it. But context strongly suggested that Rumraket thought the procedure recommended by Scott Minnich was good. The opening statement of Rumraket’s post was not in the gray of a block of quotation, but in the white of Rumraket’s own voice, and it read:
The words “most probably” indicated that Rumraket found the described procedure highly plausible. And Rumraket knew that in the quoted matter there was a reference to Dr. Scott Minnich, who advised on structuring the experiment. The most natural inference is that Rumraket thought that Dr. Scott Minnich had made at least some (however small) intelligent contribution to the experiment. And since the experiment was, in Rumraket’s view, a pretty good one, the most natural inference is that Rumraket was conceding that Scott Minnich contributed something good with his advice.
Note, since you are being pedantic, that I did not say that Rumraket said that Scott Minnich provided good guidance; I said he suggested it – meaning that his endorsement of an experiment shaped significantly by Minnich suggested that he would grant some credit to Minnich. So my language was careful, and made no attempt to be materially misleading.
Next, I would ask you to find me any earlier opinion expressed by a PS poster, either directly stating or suggesting that Scott Minnich had ever provided good scientific input about anything.
Finally, I would point out that certain persons here in the past, including Roy and, if memory serves, you as well, have accused me of misleading by leaving out part of some quoted words. Well, that’s exactly what you did here. I originally wrote:
But you quoted me with some words missing, i.e.:
– without noting that I had prefaced the words you quoted with “I believe this is…” indicating uncertainty and openness to correction. I was in effect inviting anyone with knowledge to either confirm or deny that this was the first (albeit here only indirect) compliment paid to Minnich by a poster on this site. I was not writing declaratively.
The spirit of “catching someone out” around here on small matters of form is both pervasive and petty. My comment was a tentative suggestion that Minnich, an ID proponent, had actually received a compliment here, possibly the first ever. And it was offered in the spirit of play, the joke being that one of the inveterate disrespecters of ID scientists around here had (perhaps unwittingly) paid a Dover Trial witness a scientific compliment. I was trying to get a smile out of people. But apparently wit by itself is not sufficient around here; from now on, I guess I will have to add a smiley face even where I think the humorous intent should be obvious. (Though I would have thought the addition of “A red-letter day!” should have been sufficient to competent readers, even without the smiley face, to indicate that I was bantering playfully.)
OK, back to the Shroud …
(about which, by the way, I have no firm opinion and find tones of certainty – for either yea or nay – to be inappropriate, given all the unknowns)