Then Democrats are the conservatives.
OTOH, the vast majority of those allegedly conservative evangelicals chanted “Blue Lives Matter,” not “Black Lives Matter.”
Your relentless labeling is misleading and interferes with understanding. That’s why you are confused by the enormous evangelical support for Trump.
Yet John Howard would be drummed out of today’s US Republican Party for his stand in favor of gun control.
In yet another English-speaking country, conservative Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said this:
“I know that we had all hoped this summer that we could put COVID behind us once and for all, that was certainly my hope and I said that very clearly. It is now clear that we were wrong, and for that I apologize.”
It is utterly inconceivable that any US Republican could be that honest in public and not suffer huge political consequences from within the party.
That’s probably true of any Western leader of the last half-century or more.
@Eddie - You brought an interesting book to our attention. Thanks for doing so.
@CrisprCAS9’s argument here is worth quoting at length because he has made an extremely strong case for the conclusion that Kookin’s book is not merely void of scientific merit but is in fact extremely misleading.
The central question you raised in your initial post is whether the book is worth a read. At this point, I find all the later debate over whether an argument was the genetic fallacy or ad hominem, the nature of the relationship between ad hominem arguments and genetic fallacies, and the question of whether @CrisprCAS9 read the entirety of the book excerpt prior to his initial response to be entirely irrelevant tangents.
Kookin has demonstrated that he is either clueless with respect to the science or actively mendacious. In either case, I find no reason to waste my time or my resources on his book.
I invite you to explain why @CrisprCAS9 is wrong on the science and Kookin is right, if you think such a case can be made. Otherwise, I would suggest we start a new thread on the merits of various climate change policy approaches and shut the book, so to speak, on this book recommendation thread.
Respectfully,
Chris Falter
At the very least, recommending a book you haven’t read seems problematic.
I’ve already suggested closing the discussion more than once, so that would be fine with me.
I didn’t actually “recommend” the book. I did praise its tone, but right from the start made it clear that I was making no judgment on its contents. Whatever may be the truth about its contents, I would still defend the tone of the introduction as the right one for this issue, or other controversial issues. A tone that invites discussion is better than a tone that sounds gauntlet-throwing.
Again, let’s end this discussion, which has been profitless from almost every point of view. However, I was interested in hearing about Puck’s conservative thought, so it wasn’t a total loss.
The entirety of the book? The way you word that suggests that Crispr, at the moment he first replied to my announcement, may have read a significant portion of the book, enough to judge its contents. That is not the most natural way of interpreting Crispr’s initial posts. The most natural way of interpreting Crispr’s initial posts was that he had read none of the book, and that he inferred its contents based on (a) its title and (b) Koonin’s area of academic training and Koonin’s alleged associations with the fossil fuel industry.
If he later actually read the excerpt, and responded to particular parts of the excerpt, then at least he was going on a partial (extremely limited) reading of the book, but there is no reason to assume that he had read even the excerpt before he reacted.
I was, as usual, protesting the “reaction without reading” – a reaction which is exceedingly common among science-trained individuals who post on internet blog sites concerning origins.
And, as usual, my protest against “reaction without reading” led to a long wrangle, with dozens of posts, as Crispr and others sought to justify, after the fact, the reaction without reading. Pavlov would have a field day interpreting the regular patterns of reactivity on this site.
Moderators, could you please put up my last reply (still in the holding dock), followed by this one?
I had read enough to judge its contents, namely the first 2-3 pages. In which Koonin makes several mistakes of the sort impossible for someone both competent and honest. At which point it is fair for me to infer that Koonin is either dishonest or incompetent. Or both.
The fact that you had read as much as I had at the time, but hadn’t recognized the fact that Koonin was blatantly wrong in such obvious ways says more about you than I think you realize.
In other words, you judged the book based on an extremely tiny fraction of the whole, and on introductory statements, even though it’s normal for a book to justify its introductory claims in the body of the work, not in the introduction. That’s like reading the Abstract of a scientific article and deciding that the thesis of the article is wrong, without reading the evidence the scientist-authors provide for their conclusions. But I’m used to faulty academic and intellectual procedure around here. In fact, for a good number of posters here, including some with science Ph.D.s, such faulty procedure is standard operating procedure.
Again, I never endorsed the book’s contents. But it’s always wrong to reject in its entirety a book which one has not read.
Once again, I thank Puck for his intellectually substantial comments on conservative thought. They constitute the only fresh line of argument on this page.
Which is why I didn’t recommend it. I said that it looked interesting, that it appeared to be written in a moderate tone, and that it “might” be good. I left it up to readers to read it or not read it, as they chose. The post was informational. Others chose to treat it as an endorsement.
There’s no rule here that says that anything that Eddie posts, even just an announcement of a new book which clearly indicates that Eddie hasn’t read the book and makes no judgment regarding the correctness of its contents, has to lead to rancorous debate several dozen posts in length. That this so often happens reveals a lot about the psychology of the people posting here.
Of course, there’s no reason to suppose it reveals anything about you.
I judged that the book contained lies after reading the lies. If I read the whole thing and flip to the front, will the intro no longer be there?
I didn’t reject the book in its entirety. It is entirely possible it contains some interesting anecdotes about Koonin’s personal life, for instance. However once an author has lost credibility on a subject through clear demonstration of either incompetence or dishonesty, it is reasonable to reject them as a reliable source on that subject. He disqualified himself in the introduction, so that’s all I need to read to dismiss him as a source.
You decided to present a book written by someone who has a track record of making misleading and incorrect claims about climate change and the science of climatology without putting in effort to vet it contents first. That speaks a lot about your so-called academic training.
Its also strange you criticize @CrisprCAS9 for discarding the entire book based on his reading of some of the introductory pages, but fail to see you drew the same conclusion on the tone of the entire book despite having read the same introductory pages as him.
Its better you come clean and tell us you suggested this book for reading because it aligns with your views on climate change. Stop pretending.
Which was a larger, and more relevant, fraction than you did. Also, @CrisprCAS9 criticized the author for and documented multiple, blatant misrepresentations of the evidence itself, none of which you have addressed. Why?
That’s quite a misrepresentation, as @CrisprCAS9 addressed the actual evidence. You haven’t addressed a single datum. Why?
That’s false. We have profited from learning of Koonin’s misrepresentation of evidence. Haven’t you?
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