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kytheskeptic
New Member
USA
25 Posts |
 Posted - 08/24/2010 : 19:57:10 [Permalink]
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An email I'm thinking of sending to my creationist friend... Let know what I should edit in and out... As you can tell, I'm not really aggressive, and I don't know how I want to finish it... Please let me know...
"Remember back a couple of months ago when you commented to one of my links about skepticism? If you don't remember here's a print screen.
http://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g95/severeimplement/Skepticism.jpg?t=1282700171
When we hung out that night, you told me to check it on Webster, which I quickly skimmed through without a critical analysis of what your previous comments were on facebook. But when I went home, at I actually looked over saw a fallacious statement, and created note titled "Definition of Skepticism by Webster" (which I edited today to fix some typos). But I wondered if you read it...
Per Webster's Dictionary
1 : an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object
2 a : the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertain
b : the method of suspended judgment, systematic doubt, or criticism characteristic of skeptics
3 : doubt concerning basic religious principles (as immortality, providence, and revelation) synonyms see uncertainty.
You threw out a straw man when you said "according to skepticism evidence simply does not, and cannot exists" and you told me that was the definition by Webster... I can see the bias, trying to imply something in the definition of 2a, which isn't there. But It states "True Knowledge or Knowledge in a particular area as uncertain", but to say "Evidence DOES NOT EXIST" is just a gross and dishonest definition for the word Skepticism. I don't see the word evidence in the definition of skepticism at all... do you? The definition also says "in a particular area", not everything. When you said, "You can't know anything", is a straw man as well.
I would honestly like to know... If a fallacy is pointed out to you like this, would you change your mind? When you say you hold "scrutiny/accountability to science", do you really hold scrutiny and accountability to what you hold consider science to your creationism/intelligent design? Because if a fallacy is brought up in your argument, I don't want you to switch to another rhetoric. I want you to honestly see the fallacy you bring on to the board, and understand that if the argument is fallacious, it should no longer be valid.
Like the latest comments with the guys on my link recently, when you said,"somehow we have worked ourselves backwards from micro-evolution/macro-evolution/biological evolution/chemical evolution/celestial evolution/singularity, OF WHICH WE CAN ONLY OBSERVE MICRO EVOLUTION IN REAL TIME."
By that logic, we would have to set a murderer free, even if the murder weapon contain both blood of the murderer, the blood of the victim, and the murderer's fingerprints. Just because no one actually witnessed the murder. Also to honestly scrutinize evenly so you don't have confirmation bias. By that same logic you brought up, scrutinize your Creation/I.D. the same way. From your same argument, because we didn't see a creator, or a creation, we can't say it happen."
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 08/24/2010 : 20:52:15 [Permalink]
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Pretty good, but expect him to shift the goalposts and change the subject if you send it.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 08/24/2010 : 21:04:17 [Permalink]
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Well, I just left this post on the thread. Nothing I haven't said before...
Meh... I sure don't know how I was insulting. But it really doesn't matter. Evolutionary biology, paleontology, geology and related sciences will keep moving forward and creationists will keep trying to push back. There is nothing new about that. I do think it's unfortunate that the "scientists" at the ICR and AIG must sign a statement of faith that basically says that the bible is historically accurate and must therefore be taken literally. What that means is they have put the cart before the horse, drawn a conclusion and will resist any all evidence to the contrary. That's not science. It does lead to some pretty tortured explanations for what the fossil record tells us, however. (At Ken Hams creation museum he has humans living with and getting along with velociraptors, for example. It's the Flinstones version of early man presented as a fact!)
I find it fascinating that given all the evidence for evolution from so many scientific disciplines, that creationists can even keep it up. It must be tiring. I also find it interesting that we can present them with what amounts to a several smoking guns, like feathered dinosaurs, or the predictability of the fossil record, ERV's and so on, and they will concoct a reasons why those animals aren't transitional or why the fossil record doesn't tell us what it does or search for ways to explain what is obvious to a molecular biologist.
Daniel calls it different world-views or looking through a different lens. But it's as willful as it was when Galelao was imprisoned for suggesting that the Earth isn't the center of the universe. It just didn't fit with doctrine so it couldn't be true. That's a different lens alright. But it's not a scientific lens. Still, doctrine is what's is at the bottom of the objections to evolution. And that's exactly why evolution is NOT controversial among those scientists actually doing the work. (I should point out here that there are plenty of evolutionary biologists who are Christian. How they work that out is a personal thing.) Only the mechanisms of evolution and the placement of this or that species, or the significance of some finds are argued, and so on. Not that evolution happens.
What I care more about is keeping science, and science only, in science classrooms. It's the politics of creationism that I find most annoying. Creationist influences on actual science is almost non existent, as it should be. But what we teach our children could change that. We need for them to know the difference between pseudo-science and science if we are to keep our edge in a world where other countries have begun to pass us up in scientific achievement on a pretty regular basis now.
And that pretty much sums it up for me... |
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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kytheskeptic
New Member
USA
25 Posts |
Posted - 08/24/2010 : 21:57:06 [Permalink]
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Yeah, I expect moving of goal post, a strong confirmation bias, and what not... but if I can get him to scrutinize everything evenly with this "High Standard" of his, and understand his fallacies, I can only hope it'll remove that confirmation bias somewhat.
I'll email him tomorrow morning... My expectations of him understanding and thinking it over....very low... Expectation of fallacies, straw mans, and BS from him... Extremely high. |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 08/24/2010 : 22:24:35 [Permalink]
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Basically what you're asking your friend is "if I go to all the trouble of pointing out why creationism is complete BS, will you be honest enough to admit it?"
Unfortunately, in my dealings with creationists, I've never met one where this has been the case. Presenting evidence is always a waste of time. I hope your friend is different.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
| Edited by - H. Humbert on 08/24/2010 22:51:05 |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
Posted - 08/25/2010 : 01:23:02 [Permalink]
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Ky, I hope you didn't mind that I posted him an invitation join our forum here.
The Facebook layout and interface is somewhat limiting, and contrary to several Christian discussion forums and blogs, we don't ban people who writes "uncomfortable" things. This is the most likely place to keep having an honest discussion (providing the participants enter with honest intentions (which in my experience, theists don't)).
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Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
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Starman
SFN Regular
Sweden
1613 Posts |
 Posted - 08/25/2010 : 02:26:12 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by H. Humbert
Unfortunately, in my dealings with creationists, I've never met one where this has been the case. Presenting evidence is always a waste of time. I hope your friend is different. |
Still, sometimes you are able plant a seed.... |
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moakley
SFN Regular
USA
1888 Posts |
Posted - 08/25/2010 : 18:01:03 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Starman
Originally posted by H. Humbert
Unfortunately, in my dealings with creationists, I've never met one where this has been the case. Presenting evidence is always a waste of time. I hope your friend is different. |
Still, sometimes you are able plant a seed....
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Yep. And as has been pointed out here several times. That seed may be planted with just a reader of the exchange. |
Life is good
Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. -Anonymous |
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chefcrsh
Skeptic Friend
Hong Kong
380 Posts |
Posted - 08/25/2010 : 21:55:11 [Permalink]
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| In replying to creationists I have found one tool in my repertoire that always seems to eventually come in handy: The raspberry. |
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THoR
Skeptic Friend
USA
151 Posts |
Posted - 08/29/2010 : 10:19:46 [Permalink]
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I have a major problem with those who believe life is the result of some magically concocted primordial soup conjured by the gods of lightning and carbon compounds just a few million years ago. They seem to CHOOSE to believe the implausible.
Life on this planet was initiated by a variety of elemental particles (aliens from outer space who arrived here long before Earth cooled) that have the natural attribute of "animation". Using the resources of the planet, they created protective and highly functional shells that EVOLVED into the myriad of life forms that now inhabit the Earth.
Quoting my web page:
"You probably consider yourself to be a single being, which is why you call yourself 'I' instead of 'we'. Your body; however, is a plurality - a collection of billions of separate elements or fundamental particles, each with its own individual properties. Each basic particle pre-existed your birth and will ultimately survive your demise. Each has a unique history, a separate location and physical domain. Logically this presents a conundrum. How can you be a single existence if that physical manifestation which you consider to be 'yourself' is a collection of multiple existences? Indeed, one existence will always have a single history or 'set of experiences' and a collection of existences will always have separate, individual sets of experience equal to the number of elements in the set. If you were simply a collection of elements, 'you' would have multiple separate sets of experience and an equivalent number of individual identities.
In order to reconcile this disparity, scholarly pundits with alphabet soup after their names profess that if you toss just the right combination of terrestrial ingredients into a primordial cauldron and stir it really, really hard for a very long time, you can produce a composite that thinks, propagates and experiences a unique existence as a single identity. That may sound silly (I call it the Pinocchio hypothesis) but which lowly layman in his right mind would dare contradict an entire horde of scholarly pundits, especially when they are immersed in alphabet soup. So, with an eye of newt and wing of bat, a pinch of this and a dash of that, the pundits dub this egregious departure from logic the 'phenomenon of emergent properties' and they credit it with the creation of all life on Earth.
Hogwarts! If this is science, then Harry Potter is the next Isaac Newton. If you believe you are the corporal product of emergent properties then you are claiming that you are an occurrence, not an existence. I have a major problem with that reasoning."
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I would procrastinate but I never seem to get around to it. |
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Rogah702
New Member
1 Post |
Posted - 08/29/2010 : 11:21:16 [Permalink]
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Life on this planet was initiated by a variety of elemental particles (aliens from outer space who arrived here long before Earth cooled) that have the natural attribute of "animation". Using the resources of the planet, they created protective and highly functional shells that EVOLVED into the myriad of life forms that now inhabit the Earth.
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So these aliens travelled through space, to come to earth, to start action ? science fiction at its best...... |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
Posted - 08/29/2010 : 13:14:48 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by THoR
You probably consider yourself to be a single being, which is why you call yourself 'I' instead of 'we'. Your body; however, is a plurality - a collection of billions of separate elements or fundamental particles, each with its own individual properties. |
Borrowing the Scientology theory of Thetans and stretch it in absurdum. If you hadn't done that, I'm not sure I would have recognized your piece as parody.
Is there a Poe-equivalent for generic discussions?
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Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
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kytheskeptic
New Member
USA
25 Posts |
Posted - 08/29/2010 : 17:25:18 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by THoR
Life on this planet was initiated by a variety of elemental particles (aliens from outer space who arrived here long before Earth cooled) that have the natural attribute of "animation". Using the resources of the planet, they created protective and highly functional shells that EVOLVED into the myriad of life forms that now inhabit the Earth.
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So... Other than the lack of evidence, and how it seems science fiction, wouldn't there be an infinite regress because we'd have to ask how the aliens came about? Even magical thinking of God, it's pretty much the same with the alien scenario. God/aliens had to evolve to get the information to create... With Occam's Razor, using the less assumptions, and with the evidence at hand, all we can say that we evolved. Everything involving God/aliens would be an argument from ignorance as there's no evidence for the God/alien, nor is there the string of evidence connecting us to a God/alien. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 08/30/2010 : 07:26:19 [Permalink]
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He could be saying that the elemental particles themselves are merely alien in reference to this area of space. And that isn't wrong, is it? Our solar system formed from elements that were formed in much older, bigger stars that burned themselves to supernovas in a very short time. So the elements that form us are, technically, alien.
Or he could just be talkin teh crezy!
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Need help on replying to Creationist
