But Eddie fully supports Bill, 'cause they’re both Sharks.
I agree with all of that, but I think it’s pretty clear in context that the complaints Marty and I have registered are not against atheists as such, but atheists as they typically behave in online forums on origins – like this one. Again, most of my oldest and dearest personal friends are atheists, or agnostics whose lives exemplify “practical atheism,” but they don’t talk to me – or anyone – the way many people here do. Nor even do casual atheist acquaintances I have made tend to talk this way. Something about the internet brings out the worst in atheists. And yes, sometimes it brings out the worst on the other side, too. The difference is, I’m willing to admit that sometimes ID and creationists posters on this sites misbehave, but as you can see from the remarks of Roy, faded glory, Faizal, Paul King, etc. the atheists seem to honestly believe that they never over-react, are never unfair, and that all their rage and insults and ad hominem remarks are totally justified because their opponents are all stubborn and liars and knaves. And this brings me to your last point:
I agree, but for that to happen, both sides have to agree that they have sometimes been unjust, gratuitously insulting, etc. And I have not seen any admission of that from any of the atheists on this site.
The other day I was several times called a liar in a very angry post coming from Europe. The person gave reasons why he was so ticked off at me. In a long reply, I acknowledged that I had contributed to his reaction by provocative remarks, and agreed to take half the blame. But he still has not retracted his charge that I am a “liar.” I tried to be better, but will he? Frankly, I don’t expect to see any change. I’ve been posting here three or four years, and the atheists who started out aggressive and belligerent are still as belligerent as ever. They’ve made no effort to “be better” – yet they think people on the other side have an obligation to do so.
I’m not of course speaking of you, Dan, or of T. aquaticus. But just about every other atheist here has engaged in nasty accusations about motives, and some of them do so with great regularity. And it was exactly the same with the atheists on BioLogos, many of the atheists on Panda’s Thumb and Uncommon Descent, etc. I know it’s not atheism per se that produces this. It is coming from a certain sort of politically active atheist-materialist. But it gets in the way of a project called Peaceful science on a daily basis.
Eddie must throw his little barbs - false as they are.
I have never said any such thing only opining that Christians should be behaving a little better than the non-Christians. I certainly do not advocate anyone fighting like “New York street gangs of the 1930s”.
To illuminate the actual situation on this board I will explain why I called Eddy a shameless liar.
I when replying to Eddie’s point that we did not need to know the motives of the pyramid builders I neglected to mention their actual motive of building tombs, seeing it as irrelevant. When Eddie objected I repeated that I considered it irrelevant - after all if we don’t need to know the motive it can’t matter what it is.
Eddie responded thus:
In fairness I did give Eddie more than one chance to explain what point he meant - specifically asking why the intended use as tombs was so important.
When Eddie finally replied we got this:
Note that there is absolutely no mention of why it mattered that the ancient Egyptians particular motive mattered at all.
To add insult to injury Eddie continued:
In fact my actual reply was this:
Which seems close enough to me. It certainly is focussed on the conceptual issues rather than the details.
Now I will admit that maybe I was a little too hasty and maybe Eddy believes the obviously false excuses he invents to try to cover his errors and pretend that he is the “good guy” in this. But that is hardly any less disruptive to discussion, and suggests either delusion or a cavalier disregard for fairness and truth.
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Which is exactly how many YECs and IDers feel about the responses of you and several other people here, so it should be “understandable” to you if their nerves become “frayed” and their decorum becomes more “lax.” Yet it never becomes nearly so lax as yours, or Mercer’s, or Roy’s…
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Alright, let’s all stop picking on Eddie. even if you think he deserves it. 
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The first admission in probably 100 posts to or about me of this kind. It looks good on Paul King, and slightly raises my evaluation of his motives. But then, look at the follow-up:
So what one hand gives, the other mostly takes away. Well, I’ll take the little I can get, I suppose.
If you have another explanation for why you would accuse me of “arrogantly dismissing” a point that you never made, or for complaining that I didn’t give an answer of the sort I actually did give, I would like to hear it.
I’m a big fan of the movie version. Natalie Wood isn’t as pretty as my wife, but still…
I thought the discussion here concerned the dialogical tactics of atheists on this site, but I don’t recall anyone saying that all opponents of ID anywhere (or even on this site alone) are atheists. I certainly don’t affirm or believe that. Indeed, on BioLogos my main goal was to forcefully resist the arguments, not of atheists, but of TEs! But of course the atheists there, despite their contempt for the religious beliefs of the BioLogos leaders, made common cause with them against ID people, and quite often side-discussions about atheism vs. Christianity started up. So I’d criticize a theologically false statement by Falk or Ard Louis, and find myself attacked by four or five atheists, who weren’t the slightest bit interested in discussing the theological point, but just wanted to attack an ID proponent at every public opportunity. If exclusively Christian opponents of ID posted on these sites, I’d be criticizing TEs, not atheists. And in such cases, the debates would be more civil, because TEs aren’t in the habit of calling their opponents liars and hypocrites and cowards etc. (Well, actually there was one TE who frequently came close to that debating tone, but he later abandoned Christianity; most TEs took the dialogical high ground.)
Not the worst in atheists, but the worst among atheists - and everyone else. There tend to be a few individuals in any group who are addicted to self righteousness.
I’ve actually seen considerable effort towards improvement in several frequent contributors. This has not eliminated aggressive and belligerent behavior, but it has changed for the better.
I want to note another sort of belligerent behavior, which is repeating false claims in the face of expertise and facts to the contrary. For me this is usually someone repeatedly making claims involving math and statistics that are misguided or wrong. It’s difficult to explain to someone why they are wrong when they don’t have a grasp of the topic ITFP, and they never listen anyway. We have a number of real experts in the group who probably feel the same way about claims in their own area of knowledge.
The other side of this is topics that are entirely opinion based, and strong statements may draw equally strong criticism. I won’t comment more on this one just now - work to do!
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That’s your problem. No, it concerns, if anything, the people who argue against ID, whatever their religious proclivities or lack thereof. Your responses seem more and more tribal.
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I don’t think you understood me. I was not talking about discussions on this site generally. I was talking about this particular discussion, in which Marty and I have been raising the issue of unwarranted aggression in postings against ID proponents, which very often comes from people such as Faizal and Roy, and not from people such as Joshua and Daniel Ang.
And the responses of Roy and Faizal don’t?
That’s utterly tribal, particularly since the subject of the thread is Marty’s testable ID hypothesis–that protein-protein binding regulates enzyme activity by increasing it.
Do you or Marty know of any cases in which it does?
Yes, that’s the subject of the thread, but as you know, threads here often spread out into other topics (you should know, as one of the leading topic-diverters here, having raised peptidyl transferase about 50 times when nobody was talking about anything related), and the main topic this one has spread out to is the topic of how people here treat their opponents. Marty has raised a point here which needs to be raised, and which any honest observer of this site notices, i.e., that the tone and manner of debate here is often ugly and unnecessarily personal. Indeed, from the length of time Marty has spent on this thread discussing questions of tone and attitude, I think his participation here (he was at first not going to participate) was at least as much to point out this attitude problem as to talk about the specifics of his hypothesis. I jumped in to second his concern. As for the hypothesis itself, I leave it to Marty and others to discuss it.
By the way, while I have your attention: In the past, I have often referred to what a scientist “argues” or have challenged people to refute a particular “argument.” When I have done that, you have often said things like, “science isn’t about argument, it’s about evidence.” I want to run something by you:
“… the best books in biology, ever since Darwin, have been arguments.”
Is this, in your view, just another stupid statement by an Eddie-like person who doesn’t understand that science is about evidence and data, not argument?
I am not talking about how people feel the discussions go, but how they actually go.
In the discussion of Howe’s diagram, is it your position that the ID proponent(s) are understanding what has been explained to them, and that their interlocutors have stubbornly refused to accept the facts provided by the ID proponent(s)?
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No, it’s a statement by a person who understands that books, since Darwin, are no longer the scientific primary literature; they are supposed to introduce you to a subject and whet your appetite to dive into the primary literature.
We routinely make arguments in the Discussion sections of the primary literature, in reviews (both peer reviews and the secondary literature), in grant applications, and in cover letters. All of those argumentative forms still need to be grounded in evidence, not some hopelessly vague “belief in evidence” that you are trying to pretend is scientific.
Do you not understand this distinction?
This is the first time you’ve ever conceded to me that biologists make use of arguments anywhere. In all past cases where you wrote dismissively of my use of the word “argument,” you said nothing like the above. Maybe you should have written more clearly from the beginning. But then, if your aim was not clarity but polemics, your silence was understandable.
They don’t. They may be rude, but they aren’t apparently dividing the world into two tribes, the Christian IDers and the atheist anti-IDers.
I suppose the plural is warranted, but only barely, since the ID proponents who have been harping on this diagram would be Bill Cole, period. Though he got it from Sal Cordova, Sal hasn’t been seen for the longest time.
Not true. Some books are indeed primary literature, and as Darwin said, no fact is useful unless it’s evidence for some theory and used as part of an argument. The discussion sections of the literature are where the important cases are made.
This particular controversy (don’t want to call it an argument) seems purely semantic.
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I know that OoS is, but they sure haven’t been primary literature in any of my fields for a very, very long time.
Agreed. Eddie’s trying to place rhetoric above evidence, because rhetoric is all the IDcreationists have and produce.
So, Eddie, how’s the Lane book going?
I write dismissively of your attempts to substitute argument for evidence. Beliefs about evidence aren’t evidence, either.
Or maybe you should strive to achieve understanding than to acquire polemic weapons for your Culture War.
They have been in my field. Many books contain reports of original research. Edited volumes and single-author both.
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