pz

No, you have no special dispensation to treat him any differently than you would anyone else here.

I expect you to dissect his arguments thoroughly and dispassionately.

...which shouldn't be at all difficult, given the quality he has shown so far.

Doubting Didymus

Wearing moderator hat, I would like to request that in future debates with Nelson, participants restrict the conversation to only those topics and references that are relevant to what has been posted on these boards. Consistant reference to previous discussions on completely unaffiliated bulletin boards will make the threads of conversation untrackable and esoteric to those who have no previous experience on said boards.

There is little point in holding debates with the goal of education if only you, the participants, know what's going on. It has been some time since an anti-evolutionist of any kind of endurace has been present here, and I would very much like to see discussion that is fresh and new, rather than simply a continuation of sparring matches from other boards.

Wearing my ordinary, non-omnipotent human hat, I would like to note that Nelson is to my knowledge, the first poster to expouse ID since I have been here (that looks to be staying for any length of time, at any rate), and I would very much like to join in. So, how about we start brand new debates and discussions here, and leave the old ones on the boards that they started on? Ta!

-your freind... D

pz

I agree. I suspect that we have an opportunity for another Vanderzyden-quality experience here.

...with the many levels of meaning that particular phrase entails.

theyeti

Sorry, this is all my fault. I started off trying to say the same thing you just said, and then due to a coincidental debate with Nelson at another board, I got frustrated enough to vent. From now on I'm just going to adopt the same strategy I did with Vanderzyden, which is to let everyone else deal with it, and maybe occasionally watch from the sidelines.

theyeti

Principia

Moderators, fair enough.

The current point of contention, it seems, is whether or not P. Johnson is disingenuous and, well ... downright slimy when it comes to professing matters that are outside of his limited expertise. Of course, those of us critics watching the ID mvt. are well aware that Johnson is a lawyer, so it is not completely surprising to see him use tricks of the trade. For instance, I offer this little interview: In particular, I want to bring the focus on the last response. Let's compare and contrast.

Do you think the age of our planet is closer to 4000 million years or closer to 100,000 years? [You and your colleagues believe that there is no connection between HIV and AIDS?] -- Question.

The former, but with the caveat that I have made no effort to investigate the subject personally and am merely accepting the current scientific consensus. [Well, that's... probably not. I don't want to insist on a complete set of answers at this point, my own position, after all, I'm a supporter of the biochemists who are dissenting from this, but I don't purport to have solved all the questions. ] -- In either case, he makes an assertion that he is admittedly ill-equipped to answer. But he carefully adds caveats to what he says. This, imo, illustrates what theyeti would call an escape hatch tactic.

In lectures, I tell the audience that I assume that the earth is about 4.6 billion years old. If Darwinists would like to have more time, however, I am happy to grant them 46 billion years, or 460 billion. Regardless of the time available, their system of evolution cannot work because it never gets started with the essential job of creating new complex specified genetic information. See my review of Paul Davies’ book on the origin of life. [Now it's very complicated to explain this in just a moment, but I think the most important thing to understand is that the whole diagnosis of AIDS, and that HIV, this virus, is the cause of it, was said at a press conference in 1984, before there'd really been any scientific publication on the matter. So before the scientific community really had an opportunity to think about it, a theory was set in concrete, and has been unchangeable. Now, it's amazing how uncritical the scientists, and even the newspapers are about this.] -- This is quintessential PJ -- watch him carefully take an insignificant point, and shift it towards a full-blown attack on the opponents. Notice the question in either case is about what he believes about a certain position. But he deftly shifts the focus from what he doesn't know to what he thinks his opponents got completely wrong. As an aside, it is interesting that in the previous paragraph, we read PJ saying that he "accepts the scientific consensus" without critical analysis. Yet here he lambasts scientists for being uncritical. Once again, pure hypocrisy.

I would have more confidence in the dating evidence if I were assured that the scientists can tell the difference between speculative philosophy and empirical investigation. [ Now, one thing I've learned from my work with evolution, in Darwinism and evolution and in this AIDS crisis, you know, the scientific people are very very brilliant and very knowledgeable in their way, but they tend to work within a paradigm, within some master theory, that is just sacred, you see, and you don't challenge that and everybody goes along with the program once it's set. So if you challenge the basic program, like my colleague Duesberg did, you become an outsider. They kick you out of science, even though you're one of the most famous scientists in the world. So I've been trying to help professor Duesberg, together with the people that you name, we have Nobel Prize winners on our side, we have some very eminent scientific voices, but they cannot get a hearing, because the politics of AIDS, the pressure groups, the patient advocacy groups, and the drug companies, the scientific researchers whose livelihood depends on this, have managed to shut down all criticism.] -- And the attack continues. It is not his fault that he doesn't believe the HIV hypothesis or the age of the universe with more certainty. It is the scientists's dogmatic, short-sighted, philosophically untrained, speculative nonsense that led him to his current position. Waaahh... Another quintessential Johnson tactic seen here is the argument from authority -- "the Nobel Prize winners [sic]" reference is especially telling. At ARN, he consistently bashed naturalistic philosophy by appealing to "top philosphers and epistemologists."

I make no effort to convince Nelson that Johnson is equivocating for a political and dishonest reason, but I believe that any reasonable person can see for himself the rhetorical tricks Johnson skillfuly employs when espousing his viewpoints to a lay audience. A single incident is by itself not revealing, but when one can go online and read the consistently disingenuous remarks by PJ, I think any defense of him seems wasted. Even the interviewer got a hint that he was talking to a moron. In the end of the interview, he threw a contemptuous curve ball at Johnson: One can only imagine the interview smirking or coughing when he said the word, "notoriety," and then juxtaposed it to the phrase "quite well known," to soften the blow. I mean just imagine, that of all the more euphemistic substitutes the interview could have used ("controversial spotlight," "personal crusade," "challenging the orthodoxy," etc.), the interviewer could only come up with "notorious," at the spur of the moment. But it is only fitting that the "Father of Intelligent Design" is notorious. After all, it seems that he laid the foundation for what the movement now regularly employs -- cheap rhetoric, and pseudoscientific theories without substance.

MrDarwin

Every time I see the title of this thread, it makes me think of "Where's Waldo?" and "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?"

pangloss

First off, please do not call me Scott.
I do not even know what AE is, and I am not JXD.
"Incomplete dialogue"?
As has been pointed out, you try to overwhelm with volume. I think I posted more than enough to prove my points, and I provided a link to another thread in which you use the same tactics. As should have been quite clear, I offered what I did to demonstrate your "debate" style, not to offer any specific topic for discussion.Blunder?
Mader's IS a textbook. In fact, I am looking at it right now. It is the test cited in Wells' claptrap.

I do suggest that you ty to get your facts in order BEFORE engaging in these idiotic bits of ego-gratification.

Sadly for you, Nelson, I archived several of our exchanges in the sad case that you would try (as all creationists do at some point) to distort history to make it appear as though you are a master debater:

************************************************
Wells gives Mader's "Biology" a D for 'Haeckel's embryoes'. Yet, as I sit with that very text in front of me, I see that the word Haeckel does not even appear in the section on evidence for evolution!

Wells also gives Mader an F for 'peppered moths'. Here is Wells criterion for 'grading' texts on this topic:

F = uses staged photos without mentioning that they misrepresent the natural situation; describes Kettlewell's experiments as a demonstration of natural selection, without mentioning their flaws or problems with the classical story.

Mader's text:
1. Does not use photos at all, except for photos of individual moths (not even side by side comparisons)
This also shows that Wells doens't seem to know how EXPERIMENTS are conducted. Wells did research on xenopus embryoes - I wonder if he did his experiments in the 'natural situation', i.e., if he let the eggs develop in situ or if he manipulated them in the lab...

2. Mader's text states that Kettlewells's experiments showed that predation was responsible for the unequal distribution of moths. It does not even mention NS. In fact, the Kettlewell experiments are mentioned by name in a section on scientific reasoning, and where they are mentioned in the section on evolution it is described as an example of 'microevolution.'

3. The 'classic story' is not mentioned anywhere.

Were I to go on and explore each of Wells' claims, at this point I am confient that I would find that his book is just an enhanced version of the misleading propaganda found at the ARN web site.

*******************************************

Please stop fibbing, Nelson.

Reading therough your post, something struck me. You write:
"And yes, it did have the peppered moth story, as well as the two pictures of moth glued to a tree trunk."


On p. 306, there are photos of different colored moths. They are not side-by-side, and they may or may not be glued.
However, right under the pictures is the caption "microevolution", as I indicated in my original post quoted above.

I suggest you get your photocopies in order and stop being so concerned about "winning at all costs."

pangloss

Notice that he has already abandoned the "multi-volume" bit of nonsense...

Ho hum...

pangloss

Whither Nelson?

:boohoo:

Doubting Didymus

He said he was going on holiday. Keep your pants on.