Or maybe we are just a bunch of “hard-core anti-ID activists” who are too mean and rude to engage in a civilized philosophical discussion. 
1 Like
Perhaps. Though my recent experiences in seeing what passes for philosophy give me reason to question whether “civilized” and “philosophical” are incompatible terms. These days I often see “philosophical” used to mean “I am talking out of my arse, and I have and need have no basis for the things I say about the world.” This precise phrasing might be rejected, but the sentiment is clearly near and dear to many hearts.
1 Like
My impression is different, though if you are mostly reading philosophy from theologians defending creationism, I can see why your experience would be discouraging.
1 Like
Undoubtedly that’s a lot of it, but not all. I had a brief stint as a philosophy major back in undergrad days (mid-Cretaceous) and found, to my great disappointment, that if you wanted to know something about stuff, you were better off learning about stuff than learning about ideas about stuff (or, as “philosophy” tended to be, ideas about the ideas about the stuff). It’s not that philosophy can’t be interesting, in some domains; it’s just that people tend to want to take it outside of its areas of competency and start establishing facts about reality by way of “arguments” which have homeopathic doses of fact in them – or, worse, adulterated doses of fact like the writings of the ID proponents.
The law has a resemblance to philosophy, but the law also has a practical side; if ever the saying “ideas have consequences” had its perfect application, it would be in the law, where they literally and directly do. So much of the time when philosophy is applied to questions of fact, rather than questions of values, or justice, or other important-but-intangible things, it turns out that all one really learns is that pure reason, after “cogito ergo sum,” is done teaching us anything.
1 Like
It’s a shame the discussion with Rope was shut down. That he said he ran out of time just as we might have started to get somewhere, and that his replies mostly just amounted to “read my book”.
Why even register on the forum then?
It’s still not clear on what exactly he was trying to say, but he elected to leave because he was too busy and important for anyone around here to get clarification it seems. And we can just go read his books or whatever.
2 Likes
I’d be tempted to read his book, but from the Amazon “look inside” it looks like one hell of a stinker, and it’s expensive, to boot. If it had a raftload of positive reviews there I’d feel that someone needed to inject some sense into that conversation, but this is apparently so bad that even the usual DI-tome-buying crowd can’t stomach it.
As for his scarpering, I’m sure it had nothing to do with workload. He was having a well-deserved can of whoopass opened on him and I think he knew that humiliation was the best imaginable outcome. Best to say, “I just remembered, I have a hair appointment” rather than stick around for that.
2 Likes
It seemed pretty clear to me: Living things like human beings are unlikely and God is the best explanation for why they exist.
What is not clear is why he thought the world needed yet another book making this hoary and long-debunked argument.
2 Likes
I must admit I hadn’t noticed that – out for 17 months (published August 2021), and not a single Amazon review (not even a vacuous fanboy review) – ouch!
1 Like
I think that when you aim your sights at the pseudointellectual crowd rather than at the traditional meth-and-chaw-addled crowd, the audience is just a lot smaller.
2 Likes
Yes, just too busy to discuss something so important to @Rope that he wrote two books about it!
Maybe @Swamidass can finally identify the pony he found (using @Puck_Mendelssohn’s metaphor).
I have begun digging for that pony in earnest. No pony so far, and if there is a pony after all under all this, it’s very deeply buried and likely has been infused with the aroma of its encasing material. But we have been promised that in the book all is made clear, so into the book one must go, however futile that quest does appear.