Refuting straw men, ultimate futility of

Chris Cogan (ccogan@sfo.com)
Wed, 15 Dec 1999 10:49:37 -0800

> >CL>...Irreducible complexity may be just the
> >>old problem of incipience, but discussion of it has got to be of more
> >>scientific interest than ad hominem arguments in a context of old-style
> >>creationism-bashing.
>
> >CC>>That's true, I think. I was talking with someone just yesterday about
this,
> >and that's almost the conclusion I've been approaching. Trying to get
> >Stephen to quit misrepresnting Gould, Dawkins, myself, Susan, and anyone
> >else who's handy may be a waste of time. In fact, even bothering to point
> >these occurrences out to people may be a waste of time.
>
Stephen
> No "may" about it. It *is* a "a waste of time". It does not matter in the
> slightest what Chris imagines my character to be.

CC
It's not *primarily* about character. It's about the persistent and nearly
uniform misrepresentation of your opponents' views and arguments. It only
became a character issue after several *months* of people trying to get you
to correct this obvious pattern of behavior. Let me try one more time by
repeating: You *don't* do your case any good in the long run by such
misrepresentations. If you deal with what people *actually* say (and clearly
mean), you have a better chance than if you continue to present their views
(and evolutionary theory) as something other than what they are. If they are
so badly flawed as you claim, you should be able to refute them on their
merits (or lack of merit) alone. If it's merely an unconscious bad habit,
it's a *very* bad habit, and you need to become a lot more careful in your
reading (and in your editing of quotations, etc.). You do not ultimately
help your cause (unless it's something other than what you say it is) by
emulating Johnson (who is also not helping his cause, if it's what he says
it is). If macroevolution, for example, does not occur, we will never find
out from you or Johnson, because it'll be (at best) lost in the morass of
misrepresentation.

Almost your sole method is attacking your opponent's views. Fine. Attack
*them*, not some jury-rigged weird modified version of them that you came up
with because you didn't read carefully enough. If you attack straw men, the
problem is that the *real* opposing views are ultimately left standing,
because your argument was aimed at something else. When people realize that
the argument or view you refuted was not the one your opponents actually
hold, they'll think, "Hmmmm. Maybe these ideas aren't so bad after all.
Stephen only refuted *that* idea, not the one Gould [or Dawkins, etc.]
*actually* favors."