Why Speir Distrusts Us

Isn’t that exactly what I did? Did you read my response or not? S. Joshua Swamidass: The Rejoinder for the Sapientia Symposium

What did you think of my reasoning in that response?

You may not have realized this, but I’ve had @pnelson’s review for about 2 months now. This is actually the second version of it. And I wrote my response to him about a month ago. So the conversation on the forum is a bit after the fact.

He will be back. Don’t worry. He is an off and on participant. We are on good terms.

When you see people disparaging his character you are supposed to flag the post. Did you do this? @moderators will look into it and usually we will approve flags by minorities on the forum such as yourself. You can’t really blame us for the behavior of random people on an open forum if you don’t give us a chance to correct it.

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You might have missed this thread where several of us took someone to task for being unwelcoming to @pnelson: Anti-Evolutionists are Welcome Here - #2 .

I hope not. Sounds like shuckin’ and jivin’ to me. @r_speir is more or less asking you to acknowledge Paul’s infinite, near-godlike superiority to you. You’re going to take that?

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I certainly thanked him for reading the book and responding. I took his review seriously and responded with seriousness, explaining what I think he got wrong.

But this is not what @r_speir asked you to do. Read him more closely.

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For the part I quoted, his phraseology is a bit over the top, but I hold that sentiment. I am thankful to @pnelson for engaging the book and bringing it to the ENV audience. I hope that he can teach me something new that would change my direction. That’s a great posture to have, and that has been the way I received his review.

However, it turns out that he misread some important things in the book, and much of his review does not make much sense. Maybe next time he will do better.

@r_speir did not say I should treat Paul as superior to me, but to treat him with respect. I’m fine with that.

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Doubtless from an excess of charity, you are misreading him.

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No @John_Harshman. You are incorrect. Dr S is reading me just fine.

Is he, now? What did you mean by this?:

Looks to me as if Paul Nelson is a godlike being who may condescend to drop a few pearls of wisdom on those beneath, changing their lives forever.

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The bigger issue is why he thinks I will flat out lie to him. That’s pretty extreme distrust, I wonder if it is cognition dissonance impacting his judgement.

Yes John, I was wondering about this myself. I apologise in advance to Joshua for sidestepping his “bigger issue” for the issue that tweaks my curiosity.

Who is Paul Nelson? As a long-time creationism-watcher, I’m aware of the name, that he’s an ID advocate, a YEC philosopher of science, and that he once made, but completely failed to substantiate, some claims about something called Ontogenetic Depth. But I was aware of little else about him. Certainly nothing to bestow on him the right to anything more than common respect.

So I’ve done a little bit of digging. He seems to be the co-author of a few ID books, but the sole author of none. The Wedge Document claimed that his PhD thesis (on his disagreement with Common Descent) was going to be turned into a book, but that never eventuated.

I can find no evidence of peer-reviewed academic publication by him since around the time of his PhD thesis (in the late 1990s).

The sole affiliation I’ve been able to track down for him, outside of the Discovery Institute, is that at some stage he was (and possibly still is) an adjunct professor in Science and Religion at Biola University.

This would seem to be more of another cautionary tale about how an obsession with ID can leave you decades older, with little to show for it, than the biography of an intellectual titan, whose wisdom we should await with bated breath.

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@tim point taken.

At times, common respect has not been extended to @pnelson. This undermines trust, and I think this is what @r_speir was concerned of here.

Now, of course, ID often does not extend common respect the other direction, but this a different issue. Even if they don’t treat us with respect, we should not return in kind. Treating them with respect makes it harder to ignore the substance of our critique of them.

I still don’t see why @r_speir does not trust my basic honesty, or that of @glipsnort and others who have always been honest with him. I hope he can explain or back of that distrust.

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@swamidass

I would not advocate treating any participant of this forum with less than common respect.

However respect is a two-way street, and is likely to wear thin when one side appears to indulge in evasive, obfuscative, and/or misrepresentative (as Nelson’s recent blatant quotemine of Carroll demonstrated) tactics, that may be viewed as less than respectful of its audience.

This is why I have little-to-no trust of Nelson (or for that matter anybody else that I can think of associated with the Discovery Institute).

Addendum: my justification to calling Nelson’s Carroll quote a “quotemine” can be found here: Comments on Why Spier Distrusts

r_speir objects to that label (see below). You may disagree with my reasoning, and I would welcome reasoned criticism of my position.

I cannot however say that I’m particularly happy at having this justification split off from r_speir’s objection, particularly as it calls my position “Malarkey” & “Ridiculous” without substantiation – hardly a civil response.

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Malarkey. He did not quote mine. This is precisely what why a rift exists between people like you and me. I read the full page from Carroll and Nelson not once took him out of context. Nelson was even nice enough to come back around later and clarify his point - part of his unstated point being that you are incorrect about the quotemine. Ridiculous.

Ok, so I got your message and note that I never included you. On purpose. I said your comrades lost my trust. Stay different. It helps.

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Thanks for clarifying.

Let’s discuss @glipsnort. He has been above reproach, always honest, and never even argumentative. What is different between @glipsnort and I? Why do you trust me and not him?

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Hey, I get cranky sometimes.

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I forgot the argument. I think I still have it. I will have to investigate and get back with you.

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Relationship are important. I do think this is serious enough of a charge that it merits some reflection and investigation. I think he deserves a chance to make it right if he did wrong. If he did not, he deserves an apology, and a chance to be trusted by you.

5 posts were split to a new topic: Comments on Why Spier Distrusts