For general discussion that would be off-topic in other threads!
The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
For general discussion that would be off-topic in other threads!
Can something please be done about Gregory? He is seriously misusing his moderator privileges. His latest trick is hold my posts in the moderation queue so they don’t appear, exactly as is done at UD.
It’s obvious to me this guy isn’t interested in good faith discussion. Why is he still given the benefit of the doubt after he has clearly shown his disingenuous intentions?
Double posted here and in “Moderation” to be sure it will be seen by the appropriate folks.
It’s an ad hom fest on the How Darwin Was Wrong thread.
‘thorton,’ among others, is clearly not at all interested in addressing the question. He is only interested in shooting the messenger. This is unacceptable.
TSZ should welcome skepticism even of Charles Robert Darwin’s ideas. This should be a healthy discussion, but has turned into a small flock of haters attacking me simply for asking the question.
Posts on topic are welcome. Attacks and diversions will be moved to Sandbox cont’d. As I understand it, this is exactly what Lizzie expects.
They appear when I move them to sandbox. And Gregory has no moderation ability on sandbox. His author privileges only give him that ability on threads for which he is author.
Say, anyone know what’s up with AtBC? My browser keeps timing out when I try to connect to it.
You, Gregsy, have the sheer, raw chutzpah to get up there on your hind legs before God and everybody, and whine about how you aren’t being treated with respect? Motes and beams! In the immortal words of the blogger whose nym is Popehat: Snort my taint, Gregsy.
You, of all people, Gregsy, are a fine one to talk about “disrespect”. If this blog actually did have any rules against “disrespectful” behavior, at least 50% (by conservative estimate) of the textyou’ve posted here would violate those rules. You want other people to give you respect? You first, Gregsy.
So which of those “many more… possible” answers are you trolling (in the fisherman’s sense) for, Gregsy? Better yet, why don’t you just tell us what particular answers you’re trolling for, and why you think those particular answers are in any significant way distinguishable from the ones you’ve already received? Feel free to explain yourself at any time, Gregsy, old son. Or, I guess, continue to exhibit the behavior of an arrogant, picayune, supercilious, mousetrap-setting asshole with a hidden agenda. Your choice entirely, Gregsy me lad—not that I have any serious doubts about which of those two options you’re going to run with.
Also, is there a reason that Cubist’s (albeit rather rude) post has disappeared entirely?
ETA: Ahh…there it has now shown up. All good.
Well gee, Gregory, you got the ad hom fest rolling with a gratuitous attack on Robert Byers, suggesting that because he is a YEC, he is unworthy of posting on your thread.
I happen not to think much of Byers, but he did post what he considers to be Darwin errors. Among adults, such posts invite rebuttal or ignoring, depending on one’s mood.
But you chose to attack his character and drag in his behavior on other threads, even linking to them.
With the possible exception of Kariosfocus, I’ve seen few examples that surpass Gregory for supercilious and sanctimonious behavior. But KF is charming by comparison, because he is a straight talker who puts his ideas on the line.
Gregory has, several times, alluded to the superior intellect of European (non-American) thinkers and the rather trivial demonstration they have of the inadequacy of atheism and materialism.
This seems to be somewhat like Fermat’s proof. Elegant, but unavailable.
I confess to finding Gregory’s point about “Anglo-American naturalism and/or atheism” inscrutable, insofar as
(i) there’s no shortage of German naturalists (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud), French naturalists (La Mettrie, Meillassoux), and even Russian naturalists (Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism being an unjustly neglected classic);
(ii) neither metaphysical naturalism nor methodological naturalism dominate in Anglo-American professional philosophy, as evidenced by the plenty of philosophers who are pragmatists, phenomenologists, existentialists, theists of some variety (usually Christian), or a priori metaphysicians.
And one could argue that’s all UncommonDescent do too.
You first, my dear. Anytime you wish to cease derailing your own thread with ad-hominem attacks on us is fine with me. Anytime now, dear Gregory, you can elevate the tone by sticking strictly to your own “simple, clear, concrete” question – instead of indulging yourself in your recurring snits about “atheism” “pseudonyms” “Americans” etc etc etc – or even, god willing, by actually supplying some answers you have expended the effort to research yourself.
You aren’t paying me to provide answers for your next paper, are you? No, thought not. In which case, I’m not doing your research for free. Do your own and come back when you’ve got anything interesting to share.
Regarding Gregory’s alleged research project:
I don’t think he’s compiling a list of Darwin’s errors. Good god, that’s been done to death.
I suspect he has some hypothesis about how Darwinists think and is sampling us as typical experimental subjects.
Rather annoying, actually.
At any rate, any scholarly use of our responses is hosed and contaminated by the fact that we see what he is doing and are playing games with our responses. One good game deserves a counter-game.
At any rate, any use of this forum for anything other than conversation is not “in good faith.”
But did he get the approvals needed for experimentation with human subjects?
I’m not a hard-ass about this. I’m just annoyed that Gregory is not a straight talker. I would rather argue with Kariosfocus. At least he says what he believes in a way that allows you to respond.
This attitude that I’m [Gregory] so superior that I look down upon you atheists and materialists from Olympus and find you interesting in the way that one finds ants interesting, but not worthy of adult conversation, is simply annoying.
Lots of people here are skeptical of many of Darwin’s ideas (pangenesis, etc.). His two biggest and most famous ideas, common descent and that there is a mechanism, natural selection, capable of explaining why nature shows many adaptations, those have stood the test of time. Whether Darwin was or was not wrong about the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy is simply irrelevant to the validity of those two.
Shall we make a list of Newton’s errors? He was wrong about light being waves and not particles (at least about the not-particles part). He was wrong about alchemy. Do these cause us to call into question Newton’s laws of motion, or his invention of the calculus?
Almost all geologists before the 1960s were wrong by missing the evidence for plate tectonics. Does this mean that their interpretation of the age of the earth and the evidence from stratigraphy is wrong?
I don’t think that anyone here is denying that Darwin made some assertions that turned out to be wrong. Does making lists of them call into question his main arguments from The Origin of Species? Nope.
I agree. Gregory and his threads are not worth my time.
I’m finding it amusing.
This Gregory character is demonstrating how any kind of research should NOT be done; despite the fact that he apparently thinks he is the bee’s knees of the sociology of science.
I know what would happen to a character like this if one of them ever showed up in any of the research groups with which I have been associated over the years. We would be snickering among ourselves behind his back; and then we would be filling his head full of plausible-sounding bullshit whenever he asked a question.
Yes, so am I.
He’s gotten honest answers from us, in addition to the snarky ones.
But if he wants to know how we think, all he has to do is engage us in honest conversation. Minus the demand for respect.
This is the internet. Nobody can demand respect. Not the site owner, not the President. Not even god, Gregory.
You want respect? Get it the old fashioned way. Earn it.
At this point, I regard Gregsy as a chew toy. I’ll poke at him as and when it amuses me to do so, and when the arrogant waste of oxygenated protoplasm no longer amuses me, I will return to ignoring his supercilious verbiage.
Well looks like the conversation’s moved here. I think ideas will always try and find freer forums. Hence UD > TSZ.
It’s probably more about examining Darwinists than Darwin.
Posted here in case it gets…’eroded’ at UD.
Roy
———–
Mr Arrington,
You wrote that:
Darwin thought after further exploration the fossil record would ultimately show the “finely graduated organic chain” his theory predicted.
This is false.
In the text that follows the section you keep quoting, Darwin went on to explain why geology doesn’t
reveal finely graduated chains. He discussed erosion, dissolution of skeletal remains, conditions required for fossil accumulation and the rarity of preservation. And at the end of that discussion, he wrote this:
If then there be some degree of truth in these remarks, we have no right to expect to find, in our geological formations, an infinite number of those fine transitional forms which, on our theory, have connected all the past and present species of the same group into one long and branching chain of life.
Darwin did not think further exploration of the fossil record would uncover “finely graduated organic chain[s]”. He wrote that it _wouldn’t_.
I do not think you have deliberately misrepresented Darwin’s ideas. I think it is more likely that you either didn’t comprehend, or didn’t read, the rest of that chapter. But the fact remains that you have used Darwin’s words in support of a position diametrically opposed to the position he actually held.
Roy
“In case”? You optimist, you…
What has become of AtBC?
That is a typically bizarre UD post by Arrington.
And look at the explanation by Mapou.
In other words, according to Mapou, all species occupied all parts of the Earth in the same proportions at all times.
It’s nice to see that Barry Arrington posted on the passing of Fr. Oakes, despite being befuddled by the Father’s (and the Church’s) position on evolution. For UDers who do not understand the relevance of Fr. Oakes to Intelligent Design theory, I posted links to his 2005 interview:
Evolution in the Eyes of the Church (Part 1)
Evolution in the Eyes of the Church (Part 2)
Because this is the first time I’ve been able to post since being banned, my comment may languish days/weeks/months unnoticed in UD’s purgatory. I sincerely hope that’s the only reason for the delay. In any case, I hope TSZers read the interview as well.
Guys, I see there is discussion up thread on moderation issues. If there are any outstanding issues that need attention, please raise them in the moderation thread and I’ll try and resolve them. I’m sorry I haven’t had time this week to more than look in occasionally.
I have to say Lizzie’s rules are reasonable, clear and not onerous. It maybe that admins are lacking time or have overlooked comments outside the rules so it would be much appreciated if people could self-moderate. I suggest instead of including abuse in an otherwise acceptable comment, make two comments, one with the substantive points and the other with the abuse. Then delete the abuse yourself.
Simple!
Thanks for your consideration!
Gregory
Only admins can move posts. All authors are technically able to delete comments and put them in moderation but cannot move posts. Authors are asked not to delete posts and I am assuming, unless Lizzie says otherwise, that putting comments into the moderation queue is effectively the same as deletion. Please don’t do it.
If you have issues with the rules, you can email Lizzie or me. I’m contactable via alanfoxATfree.fr. I hope this is clear.If you think comments in your threads need moving, ask an admin. Until Lizzie has time to review the functionality of her blog, perhaps the best place for such requests is the moderation thread which I will try and monitor as time permits.
Roy,
Heh heh. He tries to lawyer his way out of it by arguing that the word ‘our’ refers only to local formations, and he fully expected the evidence to be found in someone else’s!
An equally valid reading is that ‘our’ formations means ‘those on earth’.
Would anyone be interested if I authored a thread on Barry Arrington saga? It seems quite a few of the comments here currently relate to Arrington, Darwin, Eldredge and quote-mining.
I would like to let Barry know why I won’t be apologising to him for stating his selective quoting fest was essentially quote-mining. AtBC is probably the more appropriate venue but it has been down for a while.
Working Title: Barry Arrington, his part in my downfall. 🙂
Alan Fox,
+1
Just to clarify my intentions at least:
To give people rights to post OPs there is a category called “author” – I give people that category rather than “contributor”, as it means that the post doesn’t stay in moderation till approved.
However it also comes with moderator tools for that thread. I ask people NOT to use them, and to leave moderation to the people with “admin” permissions, who are, effectively “moderators” for this site (and can sort some other stuff too).
After next week (when my schedule looks a little less hairy!) I’ll try to fix the permissions so that they do something closer to what we want. In the mean time, please do not take action that involves hiding or deleting a comment.
Moving is all we do here, and the only edits should be to take out malicious links or NSFW material.
Thanks for the links, rhampton. I’d seen the Schönborn article and many others referring to it, but somehow this one by Fr. Oakes slipped by my radar.
Amazing! Barry Arrington responded in a discussion which originated with his irritation at being accused of using quote-mines… by using quotes from quote-miners! And by stripping off context! It beggars belief.
Roy
Again, just in case:
Mr Arrington,
I envisaged various ways in which you might respond, but this was not one of them.
I’ll start with your title. The point I made was not whether Darwin thought more fossils would be found that vindicated his theory, but whether he thought that a “finely graduated organic chain” would be found. He did not, for the reason already stated, that the fossil record is both sparse and discontinuous. Thus your entire argument misses the point entirely, and the many quotes you’ve produced regarding the small percentage of the fossil record then known are irrelevant.
Secondly, this:
By “our geological formations” Darwin did not mean the geological formations of the whole world.
is bovine faeces.
The quote you provide refers to “the area over which our geological formations have been carefully examined,” with the clear inference that there are areas of “our geological formations” that have not been carefully examined, refuting your claim that “our geological formations” refers only to those areas extensively explored.
Your use of Eldredge and Tattersall is an appeal to authority, and would be ignorable on those grounds alone even if the positioning of the ellipses didn’t suggest you lifted it from Harun Yahya or some similar secondary source rather than taking it directly from their text.
Finally, it’s worth noting that quoting, as you do, this:
The case at present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained. To show that it may hereafter receive some explanation, I will give the following hypothesis …
without quoting either the case or the hypothesis to which Darwin is referring, renders any attempt by you to deny that you quote out of context utterly worthless.
I noticed that too but was laughing too hard to point it out!
Barry’s latest claim about how he is not quote mining is in the OP here
Did Darwin Believe The Fossil Record Would Never Improve?
His ellipse filled quote from Eldredge and Tattersall is example #37 on the TalkOrigins Quote Mine Project page here.
Arrington is lowering UD to new uncharted depths.
I think there are many good reasons why someone would chose to post under a pseudonym. It can be liberating and an opportunity to experiment with different identities — much like drag, or a costume party.
You sometimes seem to insinuate that people post under pseudonyms because they are ashamed of revealing their true identities, or that it’s an act of cowardice; if you intend that implication, I completely disagree. At any rate one would need extraordinary evidence to vindicate the attribution of that particular motive.
Gregsy does not display any comprehension of why it is that he’s gotten unfavorable reactions from multiple people hereabouts. Perhaps Gregsy genuinely is as clueless about those reasons as his self-portrayal implies; perhaps he knows exactly why he’s received the response he’s received, and his therefore-bogus self-portrayal is just part of the game for him; perhaps something else entirely is going on in Gregsy’s little brain. Either way, it may be worthwhile to lay out some of the relevant context for the aforementioned unfavorable reactions.
The relevant context I speak of is the decades-long ‘culture war’ between Creationists and people who support real science. Exactly when that war began is arguable, but it’s certainly been rolling along since at least as far back as the 1961 publication of Whitcomb & Morris’ The Genesis Flood, and if someone wanted to trace it back to George McCready Price (who made pretty much the same arguments contemporary Creationists use today, except Price was making those arguments as far back as 1906-1926), that would be a decently defensible position.
So as I said, the culture war has been going for quite a long time. As it happens, a fair few of the regulars here at TSZ have been involved with this war—mostly on the pro-science side, albeit we do also have some anti-science people like Byers—for some time now. And those of us on the pro-science side of the war have, as a result, a goodly amount of exposure to Creationists ‘in the wild’. Thanks to said exposure, we’ve developed a certain degree of familiarity with the tactics, and behavior in general, of Creationists.
And… well… pattern recognition is a thing. When some John Doe comes along who displays tactics/behavior of the sort we’ve come to associate with Creationists, we’re probably going to regard John Doe as a Creationist, too, regardless of whether or not John Doe explicitly affirms that association. Because we’ve seen too damned many crypto-Creationists come down the pike who start off making noise about how they’re fully on board with real science, really they are… but after a few exchanges of posted remarks, their true (Creationist) colors are revealed for all to see.
And… well… call it ‘profiling’ if you like, but Gregsy, you fit the profile of a Creationist. Pattern recognition in action. Sucks to be you.
Gregory does not appear to be a young earth creationist, but he seems deeply offended by any whiff of atheism. More specifically, any whiff of disrespect for Abrahamic religion.
He keeps saying that Anglo-American atheism (Would that be The Dawkins/Coyne/Myers Axis?) can easily be set aside, but we haven’t seen the actual argument.
Gregory is not a YEC but seems to be a sort of new-age-ish nutjob philosopher. Following the links from his profile lead to this bit of psychobabble:
Peace for Evolution’s Puzzle: the Arrival of Human Extension
“Abstract: A response to the review “Evolution is Still Puzzling” (2008) of “Pieces of Evolution’s Puzzle” (2008) that makes an attempt to answer the challenge of a lack of alternative to evolutionary theories in human-social sciences. By putting forward a candidate for a legitimate alternative to evolution, the evolutionary puzzle and its exaggeration from biology into improper humanities fields is potentially solved. This paper offers a paradigm shift primarily for sociology, the author’s home field, but also for four other fields that have been neutralized from providing peaceful alternatives in the study of change and development for human societies, instead of succumbing to the totalising logic of evolutionistic ideology. Human extension marks a moment of reversal from evolutionism with its arrival as a post-evolutionary general methodology.”
There you have it. Greggo has found nothing less that a legitimate alternative to evolution.
Aren’t you impressed?
cubist,
The “culture war” is very old — in one important sense, it can be traced to the three-way struggle between the radical Enlightenment, the moderate Enlightenment, and the aristocratic/clerical order that began in earnest with the anonymous publication of Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise in 1670.
The backlash against 19th-century progressivism received a major boost from the publication of The Fundamentals (1910-1915). My understanding is that the aftermath of Scopes Trial was pretty much when evolution got dragged into the 20th-century culture war, and modern creationism was born from that.
I don’t think that Gregory is a creationist, which is a distinctively American thing, — his admiration of Tolstoy and Berdyaev (he referred a few weeks ago to how much he loves teaching Berdyaev) puts him in a familiar camp of Russian Christian existentialism, and he’s somehow affiliated with Steven Fuller (maybe studied under him?), and his views are recognizably similar to Fuller’s, if you know Fuller’s writings on design theory.
For example, Gregory seems to share Fuller’s view that the refusal to identify the designer is a transparent and feeble end-run around Edwards vs. Aguillard (which almost all critics of ID would agree with) — to which the right response (Fuller thinks) is to stop caring about America’s parochial obsession with the division of church and state and work on a global ID movement in which the theological motivations for doing science are not unmentionable in the classroom.
Fuller has this lovely phrase — that for design theory, “biology is divine technology” — and also has a really nice way of putting the contrast between naturalism and design theory — that the former views human beings as “senior creatures” and the latter views us as “junior creators” — with correspondingly different views about what science is for and what makes it valuable.
Fixed it for you.
Like hell you did, Willum.
I can’t even imagine what this means or could mean.
Sorry — I was writing too fast and missed some steps.
As I understood Science v. Religion? Intelligent Design and the Problem of Evolution, Fuller thinks that the U.S. is very unusual in having separation of church and state, which is why its unconstitutional to teach creationism in public, K-12 schools. As those of us in the reality-based community all know, the intelligent design movement was promoted to circumvent that restriction, which is why the identifying the designer as God is supposed to be an “implication” of the theory rather than part of the theory itself. (Of course, an implication of a theory is a part of a theory; if a theory is a set of logically related sentences, then any sentence entailed by those sentences is part of that set.)
However, Fuller contends, in countries where the church/state division is not part of the local politics, then there’s no need to enforce a “don’t mention God!” rule — the non-American I.D. advocate can admit that the theory is fundamentally religious, in public, with a clean conscience, and without worrying about constitutional infractions.
Judging from Fuller’s testimony in Kitzmiller vs. Dover I got the impression that Fuller doesn’t recognize or admit the fact that ID/creationism is pseudoscience.
Mike Elzinga,
I’d be astonished if Fuller admitted the category of “pseudoscience” — he’s of the generation of philosophers of science/sociologists of science who take it that the failure to provide a completely unambiguous demarcation criterion entails that we shouldn’t use the concept of “pseudoscience” – there’s just good science (science that works) and bad science (science that doesn’t).