Rudeness from the "DI crew"?

Conversation
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I can assure you that if I were responding to a purely scientific discussion by Ms. Smith, one which contained no polemics or personal shots against anyone, I would not use the expression “arrogant young twit,” and would not speak about her at all, but would simply address her scientific claims.

However, given that the piece of writing we are discussing did contain direct and indirect personal insults to another scientist, one cannot avoid having thoughts about her as well as about her scientific claims. And the thought “arrogant young twit” naturally springs to mind. There are other words that come to mind, based on other utterances. For example, if she indeed said what she is alleged to have said about another female scientist (see the website discussion linked by Ron), the words “potty-mouthed” and “vulgar” would naturally present themselves.

In short, ad hominem remarks (whether flattering or negative) have no place at all in a scientific discussion, but they are perfectly appropriate when the subject of discussion is not nature, but the behavior and character of another human being.

Is it “respectful” to call someone “arrogant” when that person is behaving arrogantly? Perhaps not, but if is truthful, why does that matter? Is it “respectful” to call someone “selfish” for double-parking and thus preventing another person from obtaining a parking space? Perhaps not, but if it is truthful, why does it matter? People who are behaving badly ought to be told they are behaving badly; it’s the only way they can learn to improve. My guess is that Ms. Smith, growing up, was not frequently told by parents, teachers, and friends when she was behaving badly, and thus never learned how to speak respectfully to people with whom she disagreed. But whatever may be the cause, it is not necessary to be “respectful” when one tells someone else to stop insulting people. One need not be vicious or brutal, but one can be quite blunt; and indeed, often bluntness is the only thing that works, when the person who needs the correction is proud and insensitive.

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“You kill-a my father. Prepare to die.”

Or possibly “I am not left-handed.” Perhaps he studied genetics at the ICR?

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As well as various contributing authorships, S. Abigail Smith is lead author on these HIV focused papers:

2020 - Ex vivo rectal explant model reveals potential opposing roles of Natural Killer cells and Marginal Zone-like B cells in HIV-1 infection

2019 - VH1-69 Utilizing Antibodies Are Capable of Mediating Non-neutralizing Fc-Mediated Effector Functions Against the Transmitted/Founder gp120

2017 - P-C2 Characterization of the early antibody landscape in HIV-1 infected individuals who develop poor to elite levels of neutralization breadth

2017 - New Connections: Cell-to-Cell HIV-1 Transmission, Resistance to Broadly Neutralizing Antibodies, and an Envelope Sorting Motif

2016 - Diversification in the HIV-1 Envelope Hyper-variable Domains V2, V4, and V5 and Higher Probability of Transmitted/Founder Envelope Glycosylation Favor the Development of Heterologous Neutralization Breadth

2016 - Characterization of the Early Antibody Landscape in HIV-1 Infected Individuals Who Develop Poor to Elite Levels of Neutralization Breadth

2016 - Harnessing the protective potential of HIV-1 neutralizing antibodies

2015 - A pathway to HIV-1 neutralization breadth

2015 - Signatures in SIVsmE660 Envelope gp120 are Associated with Mucosal Transmission but not Vaccination Breakthrough in Rhesus Macaques

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A post was split to a new topic: Science Fueled a White Supremacist?

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It’s worth mentioning that women leave their PhD programs in biology without finishing at a higher rate than men do. At least a partial explanation for that is the stress of frequent harassment, denigration, and abuse of the sort that Eddie is attempting here.

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Setting slow mode for a few days to cool off.

Despicable.

However, let’s not cross these two topics. Maybe a new thread?

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That also says she’s a PhD. :man_shrugging:

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This was scientific discussion.

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You’re being petty and quarrelsome (again). The context of my remarks should have made clear that I meant that Darwin had no formal qualifications in biology, as we today would think of formal qualifications – courses formally registered in and passed, exams taken and passed, degrees conferred, etc. Yet he knew much more about biology – at least, the descriptive biology of animals and plants – than someone today with a Bachelor’s degree in the subject. Indeed, on that descriptive level, he probably knew a good deal more than many current Ph.D.s in the subject.

Wikipedia is inaccurate on lots of things. However, he did “sign up”, so to speak, for a course of lectures by Henslow. But as he says in his Autobiography, attending lectures at Cambridge at that time was voluntary. He couldn’t “lose marks” if he missed some of Henslow’s lectures. Lectures weren’t parts of “courses” as we now understand the term. You weren’t tested at the end of the series of lectures. They were learning resources which students could avail themselves of, if they found them helpful, and ignore, if they did not. Darwin listened to Henslow because he was interested in botany, not because he needed anything Henslow said for his degree, which was in Classics, Theology, and Mathematics. Darwin’s account of the almost complete disconnection between the content of the lectures he attended (whether on botany, geology, or anything else) and what he was actually supposed to be studying is confirmed in Himmelfarb’s biography, pp. 29-31.

I may have erred in calling Darwin’s exams the “Tripos”. The “Tri” might have misled me, because he wrote three exams over three days, and I assumed that was where the “Tri” came in. In any case, his exams were not about biology at all. In fact, as Himmelfarb explains, in Darwin’s day, the natural sciences (other than the mathematics and physics that were part of Darwin’s third exam) were not part of the Cambridge curriculum at all; the curriculum pertained only to the exams; science lectures in subjects such as botany or mineralogy, when offered (by no means regularly in Darwin’s day), were extras that Cambridge offered for gentlemen aiming to pick up a little knowledge of natural history.

I already granted that Darwin learned from listening to lecturers. But that learning was entirely detached from any “credits” or formal qualifications. The same thing can happen today. You can go to a university for a degree in economics, but attend history lectures, and read lots of books on history, and participate in the Society for Creative Anachronism, because you find history interesting. Your courses will be in economics, your exams will be in economics, and your degree will say “Economics” on it, but you might well know as much about history as about economics. Yet according to the world, you would be an unqualified quack in history. That is what I meant when I spoke of lacking formal qualifications. And I was agreeing with another poster that formal qualifications were not the only measure of learning. I gave Darwin as an example of someone in whom formal biological qualifications and substantive biological learning were in complete mismatch. Why you chose to quibble about this is beyond me.

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SPROINGGG!

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No, his other famous catchphrase:

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I took a look at part 2 of Behe’s response to Smith’s Vpu protein discussion,

She goes on to write that Vpu acts to degrade CD4 molecules by binding to them and recruiting the pathway that degrades CD4. Unfortunately, she seems not to have read the beginning of chapter 8 of The Edge of Evolution (“Objections to the Edge”), where I make some careful distinctions:

This chapter makes some important distinctions and addresses potential objections. It considers counter-arguments to my attempt to define the edge of evolution — not philosophical ones, about the “other side” of that boundary, but technical and logical ones about the line itself….

Another, more important point to note is that I’m considering just cellular proteins binding to other cellular proteins, not to foreign proteins. Foreign proteins injected into a cell by an invading virus or bacterium make up a different category . [emphasis added here] The foreign proteins of pathogens almost always are intended to cripple a cell in any way possible. Since there are so many more ways to break a machine than to improve it, this is the kind of task at which Darwinism excels.

While many pathogens are just out to digest a quick meal, Behe is here fundamentally and breathtakingly wrong as concerns viruses. The foreign proteins of pathogens are not intended to cripple a cell, but to co-opt the cell.

The distinction is not just some wordplay; it is both vital and basic, and I would question the expertise of anyone who fails to understand why. Understanding this is a heuristic necessity for the study of viruses. It is in the interest of a virus to maintain the integrity of its host cell for as long as possible and in some cases indefinitely. A virus does not just inject its D/RNA into a cell and just walk in and own the place, and the cell does not helpfully ask how can I be of assistance? The virus must see to it that genetic material is adopted and actively transported, bootstrap proteins may be required, intra-cellular defenses defused, and the cellular machinery actively employed for replication of genetic and structural units. No part of the cell in this process is broken or crippled, although the virus may tamper down cellular processes which do not advance its own replication. All of this requires the most exact of biochemistry and is highly constrained. Like a super spy sleeper agent, everything must appear more native than the locals. It is only after the cell has been exhausted of all its potential does it burst its innards out.

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Behe acted out his negative feelings. He could have expressed his irritation without resorting to imitating Smith’s immaturity. I provided examples in a comment above.

I don’t disagree with you. I think one reason is that there are fewer ID-sympathetic people so they get piled on when they show up especially if they themselves are a bit aggressive. I find Peaceful Science somewhat better than most other evolution discussion boards that I have been at. Perhaps a topic on how we can tone down some of the rhetoric would help.

I think your sweep is too broad. There are many people on here, atheists included, that are respectful of others.

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I agree with you, Dr. Robert. Among the atheists, I have found that T. aquaticus avoids ad hominem remarks and sticks to the issues. Rumraket sometimes takes this path as well (though occasionally he “loses it” and sounds like the others). But the prevailing tone among the atheists here is gauntlet-throwing, baiting, and jeering.

And of course, while that tone will endear them to their “base” (to use political language), it alienates the “swing voters” (to continue the political metaphor). No moderate, open-minded, undecided sort of person, after several doses of the polemics on this site, is going to be more attracted to atheism, materialism, and reductionism than he or she was before, and many will end up less so. Whereas the writing of Asimov and Sagan, because of its intrinsic charm and humanity, made atheist thought seem attractive (I know, because I devoured their works growing up), the writing of current atheists, especially in the blogosphere, often makes atheist thought seem repulsive. It seems to be governed by rage and indignation, and often seems accompanied by an elitist disdain for the common people.
So their behavior very likely generates sympathy for the things they are opposing, such as ID and creationism.

Actually, I’m an example. I ended up leaving my scholarly corner (where my interest in ID arose from an independent philosophical interest in teleology, not from the Bible) and joining in on these public debates because of the vicious personal attacks on Behe and other ID proponents, dishonest debating tactics, the deliberate telling of lies and half-truths, etc. It’s much the same with global warming. I actually think that there is a fair bit of evidence for the human contribution to warming, and I’m not entirely against certain policy measures to reduce it. But the willingness of some in the AGW camp to lie, to not tell the public the whole truth about uncertainty in the models (as M. Mann advised his friends in now-published private e-mails), and the habit of demonizing polite, honest, well-trained and highly published scientists in the field (such as J. Curry), caused me to want to stand up against the bullying and the character assassination on that subject-matter. It’s evident that some people here regard me as a sort of Frankenstein’s monster, but ironically, it’s their behavior (and that of others like them, since I first started following the ID debate in 2005 or so) that created the monster. If there were even a modicum of fairness in argument, if there were a willingness to occasionally grant an opponent a point, and a willingness to withdraw characterizations of another person’s position that that person has indicated are false and offensive (as when Behe indicated to Eugenie Scott etc. that he did not want to be called a creationist, to no avail), the atheists here (and elsewhere in the blogosphere) would never have seen hide nor hair of me. I’m a creature of their own making.

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Beautifully put.

As a virologist, I find Behe’s presentation to be utterly wrong. But we should keep in mind the simpler thing: Behe claimed that HIV had evolved zero new binding sites. The existence of the Vpu viroporin makes him simply, objectively, and blatantly wrong. He even admitted that, but did not correct the book.

That ain’t scholarly.

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… is the sexist behavior of some of their mostly male graduate supervisors. So it’s male biology profs you should be lambasting, not me. In case you haven’t noticed, I have never taught in a biology department.

A cheap shot. I have not engaged in any harassment, denigration, or abuse of woman graduate students, women undergraduate students, or women in general here. I have called out one particular woman student for her bad and vulgar manners. About all other women on the planet, I have said nothing in this discussion. You should apologize for imputing evil motives to me without evidence.

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Right. The scientific evidence is meaningless to you in this debate. You don’t understand it, and you have no intention of trying to understand it. We already know that, but thanks for the reminder.

Here’s an idea: You produce a single example of any of the above, pertaining to the scientific evidence, that has been produced by a critic of ID. Then we get to respond with one from the ID side. We then keep going and see which side runs out of examples first.

Care to try?

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Eddie has deleted both his claim and my response, leaving only my note that Wikipedia is usually accurate. This can’t be accidental, since he’s cut my response in half, so must be because he doesn’t want anyone reading his reply to know what Wikipedia is being accurate on.

So here’s the context restored:

Why might Eddie be writing this?

Eddie’s (restored) point was that Darwin learnt biology on his own. Obviously this can’t be true if Darwin attended a series of botany lectures. So it appears Eddie is trying, without explicitly saying so, to suggest that Darwin skipped the lectures.

But Eddie has provided no evidence that Darwin skimped on the botany course. In fact, the opposite is true. Rather than skipping the lectures, Darwin was so keen that he gained the nickname “the man who walks with Henslow” due to his close attendance on the botany field trips.

Had Eddie not omitted to quote his original claim (that “If he learned a lot about biology at Cambridge, he learned it on his own”) it would be obvious that he’s now contradicted himself. So much effort to try to hide being wrong.

There’s no “may have” about it, Eddie. You erred.

You said “If he learned a lot about biology at Cambridge, he learned it on his own.” That’s not learning from lecturers. It wasn’t true.

Credibility. If some-one is reluctant to admit or correct errors (such as by hiding the erroneous claim when responding) then anything they have written could be a known but uncorrected error.

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I imputed no evil motives to you. I’m sure your attitude is entirely unconscious, and certainly you seem not to know yourself very well. I suggest you read what you said and try to think about it without getting all huffy.

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Which debate? The debate over whether there is evidence for design in nature? No, scientific evidence is not meaningless to me for that debate. And in fact I have given you the names of books which you should read, but by your own admission have not read (e.g., Denton’s Nature’s Destiny and his recent series of shorter books on fine tuning), that contain plenty of evidence. But that debate is not what we are talking about here. Here we are talking about the rhetorical side of things, how people argue, what sort of manners and attitude they bring to discussions on the topics of origins, design, climate change, etc. My comments on this page have been about that. If you have nothing to say about that subject, then you are free to remain silent while others discuss it. But if you keep trying to turn a discussion whose subject is “rudeness” into a discussion whose subject is “the evidence for ID”, I will continue to ignore your conversational bullying. You will be talking to thin air. (But hey, if University of Toronto psychiatry professors have so much time on their hands that they can spent a good part of their supposed Monday to Friday working hours trying to cajole people on internet sites into debating the evidence for design when the topic is something else, then you are welcome to keep talking into thin air.)

People who live in glass houses… Considering that you, by your own admission, don’t have a single peer-reviewed publication even in your own field of training (psychiatry), I don’t have a great deal of confidence in your scientific knowledge in any other field – biology, chemistry, genetics, evolutionary theory, etc. But of course, the question whether I or you understands any particular scientific point is not relevant here, since I’m discussing only the rhetorical, political aspects of these debates.

I’m trying to explain to you and the other atheists here why you guys are hated so much, not just by the extreme fundamentalists, but even by moderate and undecided seekers after truth. You are alienating all the moderates and undecideds on origins questions (and on global warming, and COVID lockdowns, and on anything else you discuss) by your bellicose rhetoric, your unwillingness to concede even the tiniest point to opponents, your not infrequent personal digs and false charges about other people’s motivations, etc. The people who come to this site include many Christians and people of other religious and non-religious views who are looking for a discussion about origins that isn’t a high-heat, low-light affair, but a genuine dialogue in which there is give and take, and mutual learning. You atheists (or most of you, T. aquaticus being one of the few steady exceptions) turn it into a “take no prisoners” combat zone, in which anything said by any ID proponent or any creationist must be reflexively opposed, and in which your opponents are routinely characterized as stupid, ignorant, planning a theocratic takeover of the world, etc. Moderate, open-minded people don’t like discussions like that. (And as I’ve already mentioned, elsewhere, most women don’t like discussions like that, and that’s why there are hardly any of them here, an ironic situation considering how often the atheists here virtue-signal about their progressive attitudes regarding women. If most women rarely stick around here, one would think all these virtue-signaling leftists here might wonder if there is some “systemic sexism” in the format here, but that consideration doesn’t seem to dawn on them.)

So if we look at the “culture wars” as a conflict between two committed groups, with a third body of people in the middle, observing the two groups, the side most likely to win the culture wars is the side that is the least strident, the most flexible in admitting errors, in conceding that its opponents aren’t all evil morons, etc. The side that comes off best in those categories is the side that is most likely to win over the moderate middle. The moderate middle is not attracted to extreme forms of fundamentalism, such as Ken Ham’s. And it’s not attracted to the Four Horsemen style of strident atheism and materialism. The moderate middle is looking for something else, a more nuanced characterization of reality. The atheists here, and in the blogosphere generally, are not interested in providing such a nuanced account.

The wise and moderate (and polite) people will slowly gravitate toward people who, whether they lean toward design or non-design, write without polemics and just calmly discuss nature with an open mind. They will thus be attracted to atheists not like Coyne or Myers or Dawkins or Krauss, but atheists like Bradley Monton and Thomas Nagel; they will be attracted not to theists like Ken Ham or Duane Gish but to theists like Scott Turner or Lydia McGrew; they will be attracted to discussions of design not like those of Barbara Forrest or Eugenie Scott, but like those of Del Ratzsch or Rope Kojonen or Michael Denton.

People like Abbie Smith are actually harming the cause they stand for. And that’s fine with me. They make it more likely that the cause they stand for will lose out in the social and cultural sphere. So if you want to lose the social and cultural sympathy of the moderate middle and the undecideds, Faizal, just keep doing what you’re doing. Just keep putting forward people like potty-mouthed Abbie Smith as exemplars of reasonableness and fairness in argument, and keep defending their rhetorical style as virtuous and noble. The public will turn against your cause. And that will be for the good of Western civilization.