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• Starting up the mailbag
• Logic????
• Statement

Sent: 06/01/03 01:52 by Tangents

Hi, folks!

I'm not sure yet what shape this little forum will take. I tentatively envision it as mostly individual comments and replies. However, it might evolve into something resembling a (delayed-action) bulletin board or newsgroup, with multi-party conversations. On the other hand (given the woeful history of the now defunct message board), it could turn out to be the deadest spot on the site. The quantity and quality of activity will determine how fancy it gets. It's up to you.

I'll suggest a few topics, but please feel free to propose your own. (If you can't think of anything, maybe the "Questions" item on the ISSUES menu will trigger a thought or two.) Be concise or verbose, diplomatic or frank, as suits your preference, but avoid abuse or excessive vulgarity. (We aren't prudes, but we're civilized!)

Okay! Just check out the few guidelines above, and any messages below. Whenever you're ready, click "Add My Thoughts" and let's get things started!

=SAJ=
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Sent: 03/10/06 10:14 by Thomas Teed

You tout that your site is based on logic when clearly it is driven by bias and poorly researched data. For example, your information used in the religion section to camplare to a Christian timeline is obviously based on a "Scofield" type timeline which is not accepted by any thinking creationist that I know. Your right as an American is to express your opinion--make sure it is labeled correclty: as opinion rather than logic (or perhaps you may want to do some more research). If you actually do want the challenge, try many reputable sites on creationism for (like the "Institute for Creation Research"
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Sent: 03/13/06 10:34 by Tangents

I couldn't agree more about proper labeling. (For instance, I'd be delighted to see "truth in advertising" laws applied to the religion industry.) It's downright frustrating to deal with folks who routinely confuse belief with knowledge, dogma with reason, speculation with theory, policy with reality, etc.

I make an effort to ensure that items on my web site are not misidentified, but errors do occur. I rely on my attentive guests to point them out, so I can correct them, and I'm grateful to those who've brought them to my attention.

But I need specifics, and unfortunately Mr. Teed neglects to specify the particular "information used in the religion section" that he finds deficient, leaving me to search my haystack for what he supposes to be a needle. I realize that Mr. Teed's time is probably very valuable, but evidently something he found here is important enough to warrant a minute or two to voice his opinion. So if, in addition, he'd be kind enough to supply a page title and cite specific text, and maybe briefly explain what's "illogical," "biased," or "poorly researched" about it, that should be enough to point the way to meaningful resolution. Otherwise, whatever needs fixing won't get fixed, because, neither sharing Mr. Teed's frame of reference nor being a mind-reader, I can't guess what it might be.

By the way, I visited the "Institute for Creation Research" site <www.icr.org>, which Mr. Teed recommends. What challenges do these reputable researchers raise? "Is the Earth Really Round?" and "Why Did God Give the Rainbow Sign?" seem typical. But I would guess that items grouped with "Theistic Evolution and the Creation-Evolution Controversy" are more relevant to Mr. Teed's objections, whatever they might be. Oh yes, I urge everyone reading this message to explore that site--and then to compare that material to the hard evidence and tight reasoning in modern texts on history, biology, geology, and physics, written by real historians and scientists. Additional commentary from anyone would be welcome.
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Sent: 03/20/06 10:45 by Thomas Teed

I will be glad to give you a couple and some resources as my time is limited before my students come in.

Here is a copy from your website:

"But simply tacking the word "science" onto a legend doesn't make it science, any more than calling an elephant's trunk and tail "legs" makes a pachyderm an animal that walks on six legs. Natural science has a strict discipline, called scientific method , for systematically examining evidence and developing testable hypotheses leading to independently verifiable conclusions accounting for all pertinent facts. Almost comically, so-called Creation Science attempts to do it backward. Starting with a conclusion (the irrefutable Truth of religious scripture), it selects or rejects evidence, not on the basis of reliability, but on whether it appears to support or undermine the presumed conclusion. To deal with facts which remain troublesome, Creation Science contrives highly imaginative (and typically unverifiable) explanations."
[From "A Word about Creation Science," SAJ]

...and here is another:

"Misperceptions A common myth (a remnant of smug overconfidence of the 19th century, that science had essentially answered all questions worth asking) is that science is supposed to prove ideas true or false. This is not the case. Science deals in probabilities, not certainties ...
Thus, if someone claims to know that an idea is "an absolutely scientifically proven fact," we can be sure only that he or she knows nothing of the sort, and understands little if anything about science itself. On the other hand, if we know that an idea is a scientific theory, we can be confident that, though the idea is not absolutely certain, it is better supported by abundant evidence and cogent reason than are most ideas in human experience—a far cry from the mere speculation that typically passes for "theory" in non-scientific pursuits."
[From "Scientific Method," citation edited for brevity, SAJ]

Evolution, Creation, and intelligent design, are by nature "theories" or perhaps, even more clearly "models" from which to work. No one has seen "evolution", non one has observed "creation". One must observe the results of "unknown processes" and draw conclusions. NEITHER is technically science. Both are conclusions drawn from evidence seen. Both have presuppositions. Either needs some "faith" to answers some of the questions not answerable to observation.

Darwin himself, after observing some simple organisms, expressed his own doubts about the more complex. Many take his quote out of context by stopping at "...absurd in the highest possible degree.". I will include the whole quote, for I believe it exposes even more his struggle with it's explanation:

To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself firs t originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound. (Darwin 1872, 143-144)Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be ren dered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound. (Darwin 1872, 143-144).

My personal favorite is the "How a nerve comes to be sensative to light, hardly concerns us..." as he struggles to comprehend its irreducable complexity. Below is one example of an evolutionist's attempt to counter a Creationist's theory and the Creationist's response:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe/review.html

http://www.arn.org/docs/behe/mb_toresp.htm

I wish I had a lot of time to devote to debating this with you in this format--it keeps my mind sharp! However, I must also give time to my classes, business, and family. I really wish you would take the time to read some articles on the following as far as timing and theory of creationism in the link below--you may find it very interesting (all scientists, not lay people with an agenda, but educated and professional men searching science for answers). You claim to be a logical person--please look at the information offered. Perhaps Christ has steered us together to guide you back to Him.

http://www.icr.org/
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Sent: 11/05/04 04:21 [anonymous]

Loser!
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Sent: 11/05/04 15:05 by Tangents

I quite agree. Since election day 2004, we're all losers—including those who haven't realized it yet.

(Thanks for your mature, insightful, and inspiring commentary. With such wit and eloquence, your desire for anonymity is certainly understandable.)
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Category: General

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Category: Government & Politics

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• belief
• ontological
• equality

Sent: 12/14/05 11:52
URL: http://www.holyghostchurch.com

You spent so much time putting your website together, I thought it only fair that one more of us nuts tries to lead you to Christ. Plus, I've been to Middletown and Centerville and met some super people there. We need some of those nice folks up in heaven.
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Sent: 06/09/04 08:04 by Shelby Sherman

I was directed to your site by Adam at Ebon Musings. I appreciate your article, 'Beyond Belief' and took the liberty to republish it (with proper credits) at my web site. I was particularly impressed by your analysis of conditional and committed belief, concepts that cut right to the heart of the fundamental flaw of organized religion. Science observes and then explains, while the religiously impaired do just the opposite, i.e. starting with an unshakable conclusion, then twisting and perverting information to try to support these conclusions. I've been there as I explained in my deconversion essay at Adam's site.
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Sent 06/09/04 13:18 by Tangents

Curiously enough, the writing of "Beyond Belief" was inspired, not by religion, but by someone's remark about "not wanting to believe in" global warming or some such thing. Granted, after thousands of years, arbitrarily preferential belief continues to be the primary way of dealing with unverifiable concepts of the supernatural. But it strikes me as an extremely naïve way of relating to the natural sciences, for which much more reliable ways of evaluating information and testing hypotheses have been developed. It is amazing (and perhaps alarming), centuries since Galileo and Newton, in our age of airplanes and computers and television and wonder drugs, that many folks still haven't a ghost of a clue what science and reason are about, supposing them to be just another belief system.
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Sent: 06/04/04 17:59 by Chad, chad@nogod.cjb.net
URL: http://nogod.cjb.net

Realy like your article about the Ontological argument. Another good way to refute it is by showing that existance is not perfection. For example, you imagine a painting in your mind but when you paint it it is not as good as your mental visualisation.
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Sent: 03/15/04 23:42 by sanysidrocliff@nethere.net

In Spirit, ALL ARE EQUAL; but in religion, One is mightier than All, some are more important than others, and we, us and our guys are better than them, they and those who do not believe as we do.
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Sent: 03/16/04 10:00 by Tangents

I'm not sure what you mean by "In Spirit, ALL ARE EQUAL." If you mean simply that every living person has something we call spirit, that's one thing; but if you're suggesting that all spirits are equal in all respects, that's something else. Is the spirit of a Jimmy Swaggart equal to that of a John-Paul II? What about a Ted Bundy and a Clara Barton? A Stalin and a Nehru? An Eichmann and an Einstein? There appear to be significant qualitative differences, even if we share a similar concept of what spirit is, and put religious considerations aside.
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Category: Philosophy & Religion

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• Plain English

Sent: 12/31/04 15:48 by Andrew Klaassen
URL:  http://www.livejournal.com/users/lost_piousness/

I noticed a major problem with your discussion of "like" in the article "Plain English and How Not To...", which I thought I might bring to your attention.

In your examples, you provide sentences such as:

"They like went to the movie."

"George Bush is like a Republican."

You have, unfortunately, punctuated these sentences entirely incorrectly, which renders most of your discussion of this usage of "like" incorrect. "Like" in these sentences should be punctuated the same way that "say" would be in the same grammatical situation, with commas on either side of it. Corrected, your example sentences would look like this:

"They, like, went to the movie."

"George Bush is, like, a Republican."

When you say that the second sentence "[implies] that Bush is not really a Republican, but merely resembles a Republican in some way", you are, quite simply, wrong. Your mistake comes from using incorrect grammar for this usage of "like".

There *is* - as I have described - a grammatically correct way to use "like" in this way in these sentences. It is certainly, however, a sign of immaturity, and not considered acceptable in formal English. You are right to proscribe it, but you do so for the wrong reasons.
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Sent: 01/02/05 11:30 by Tangents

I have to disagree, though I must warn you that a full explanation is rather long-winded.  However, if you'll bear with me...

First consider: What part of speech is the word "like"?  As it turns out, it's quite versatile, and may assume any of several parts of speech:

(1) As a PREPOSITION, "like" is a synonym for "similar to," and requires an object.  "A Porsche is like a Volkswagen on steroids."

(2) As an ADJECTIVE, "like" is a modifier, pointing out the sameness of two or more items.  "The girders of the truss bridge are arranged in like triangles to form a rigid structure.  In a like manner, a honeycomb is made up of like hexagons."

(3) As a NOUN, "like" is a synonym for "pleasure."  "Fresh peaches are among my greatest likes."

(4) As a VERB, "like" means to enjoy or appreciate something.  "I like opera."

If I understand correctly, you contend that, when used offhandedly, "like" is equivalent to the verb "say."  So, substituting that word in our earlier example, we get:

"George Bush is, say, a Republican."

Okay so far.  The sentence is understandable, though its meaning is clearly different from the simple declaration, "George Bush is a Republican."  Inserting the word "say" changes the nuance of the sentence, from asserting something, to presenting one of a presumed group of options or examples--"Republican" being one, with maybe "male," "Christian," and "Texan" being others.

However, we must still analyze the grammatical aspect of this construction.  When we do, we realize that here the expression "say" actually constitutes a shortened form of the imperative phrase, "let's [let us] say," whose auxiliary verb and subject, though unstated, are readily understood.  We can see they are exactly equivalent, since replacing the abbreviated phrase with the complete one has no effect on the meaning.

"George Bush is, let's say, a Republican."

As a phrase, "[let's] say" is grammatically coherent and complete, and it plays a clear role in the sentence.  It is set off by commas because, with its own subject and verb, it is structurally external to the sentence's main clause.  Is the same true of "like"?  If we treat "like" as a verb, and try to complete the phrase in the same way, we end up with:

"George Bush is, let's like, a Republican."

That doesn't make sense, does it?  It appears "like" and "say" don't work the same after all.

But perhaps we don't want to give up, so let's try a different approach.  We'll substitute other synonyms for "like" and see what we get.

(1) "George Bush is, similar to, a Republican." [preposition]
(2) "George Bush is, same, a Republican." [adjective]
(3) "George Bush is, pleasure, a Republican." [noun]
(4) "George bush is, enjoy, a Republican." [verb]

In the first case, it would make a peculiar kind of sense--but only if we were to drop the commas.  The other examples make no sense at all, with or without commas.  Now we're running out of possibilities.  One other that occurs to me is that many people nowadays use "like" as an interjection (roughly equivalent to "duh," as far as I can tell from context).

"George Bush is, duh, a Republican."

Now, that's an amusing possibility!  But if it's one we'd rather not consider seriously (and obviously I don't), then we must face the fact that "like" is not only extraneous in such cases, but completely out-of-place.  It has no grammatical function or connection to the sentence; there is just no reason for it to be there.  Don't get me wrong: "like" is a perfectly good, even indispensable, multi-purpose word--like "round." 

We can savor a nice, round peach. [adjective]
We can round the corners of a piece of wood. [verb]
We can sing a round as we drink a round of beer. [noun]
We can even go round the corner. [preposition]

But "multi-purpose" doesn't mean "all-purpose," as we can see:

"George Bush is round a Republican."
"George Bush is round, a Republican."
"George Bush is, round a Republican."
"George Bush is, round, a Republican."

Being multi-purpose doesn't mean a word can be used anywhere and everywhere, with or without commas.  As much as we might love words, we have to accept that:
*indiscriminately dumping them in places they don't really belong is a bad idea;
*simply wrapping a bad idea in commas doesn't make it a good idea; and
*persistent abuse by juveniles doesn't make the abuse correct.
Like, I'm like, it's not only, like, aesthetically awkward, but, like, grammatically wrong as well, like.

However, I sometimes overlook things that seem obvious to others, and I concede that's possibly the case here.  So if anyone can explain to me the exact part of speech and grammatical function of "like" in the sentence, "They, like, went to the movie," I'm prepared to reconsider.
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Sent: 05/25/05 12:45 by Cristi
URL: http://inuse.blogspot.com

Don't get me wrong:  If the philosophy student in question wants to sound "cool" to his teenage classmates, I have no quarrel with that.  But if he hopes to be taken seriously by his professor or eventually by a potential employer, he needs to lose the kiddy stuff, and get into the habit of expressing himself as an educated and capable adult.
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Category: Social Issues

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• Stem Cell Research

Sent: 05/27/05 01:02 by DrewB

I was wondering about everyone's thoughts on Stem Cell Research. I havent heard so much about it in the news recently compared to all the uproar not too long ago. It seems to me that the people with objections to the research mainly stem (no pun intended) from the religious (primarily christian) crowd. Their main concern is that the research is being done on fetuses (IE potential people, same as their abortion objections). Ignoring the fact that there is a lot of stem cell research being performed on non-fetuses (as in adult stem cells), the forementioned people are against anything stem cell related and even the phrase "stem cell research" will throw them into a frenzie. Im mainly wondering if it IS only the religious that are opposed to the fetus research (despite the fact that a lot of the fetuses are being thrown away anyway, and why not use them to help people) or are there others that think it is wrong.
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Category: Science & Technology

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Category: Odds & Ends

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