> Why not adhere to how scientists use the term rather than rely on
> secondary sources that suit your argument ?
You know I've had -plenty- of frustrating disagreements with Stephen, but
isn't he quite right in saying that definitions of evolution and creation
from leading science dictionaries show at least what many scientists
believe?
It's more than fair enough for either of you to point out their
inadequacies, and to stipulate that they're not the defns you're using for
"evolution" and "creation".
But it hardly seems fair to call that a straw man argument, unless he's
claiming against your assertions that this is what -you- or -all scientists-
believe (versus many, -maybe- even most, or most non-specialist scientists,
or the most aggressively polemical, or.... I'll let him specify his scope).
And as one sympathetic to evolutionary creationism I have to agree that the
many definitions of "evolution" -are- sometimes used by proponents
misleadingly, sometimes willfully, more often sloppily (scientists aren't
philosophers, and sometimes they don't write very clearly). (Both can
happen at the same time, too: inadvertent sloppiness that yields highly
desired rhetorical results can be easily missed in all sorts of discussions,
the deep pleasure of victory swamping the minor pain of subtle
equivocation.)
I think the innocent component of the problem is partly a matter of there
not being enough agreed upon qualifiers of "evolution". Philosophers will
often very clumsily but precisely number of the different meanings of a
given single word (e.g., "know [sub]1", "know [sub]2", etc.). It'd be nice
if philosophers and scientists would do this type of thing with "evolution",
but use verbal rather than quantitative differentiators. Terms like "macro
evolution", "micro evolution", "naturalistic evolution", "theistic
evolution", etc. are helpful, but as the first two terms show, the defns are
not widely shared, and so the terms aren't too useful.
(Didn't Walter ReMine do this? I can't check this instant.)
Until then, it might be useful to use abbreviated versions of the defns
themselves instead of "evolution" where confusion is otherwise likely to
result.
Does this make sense to you?
--John