Richard
On Tue, 30 May 2000 11:42:10 +0100, Richard Wein wrote:
[...]
>SJ>Maybe Richard really isn't covering anything up. But he *appears*
>>to be trying to hide something behind his ridicule, and that is what
>>count in my (and I am sure the public's) perception.
RW>Actually, I've been quite frank about my views (and am sometimes criticized
>for it). The true explanation is that I've seen that you're not open to
>rational arguments, so I sometimes resort to ridicule out of exasperation,
>and for the fun of it. Perhaps that doesn't reflect very well on me. Oh
>well, I'm only human.
The key to the above would no doubt be Richard's definition of "rational"!
It is too easy to protect one's shaky position from challenge by ruling out
apriori one's critics as not "rational".
>SJ>BTW I meant to ask what exactly was wrong with my assumption:
>>
>>"That Leishman does not get Dembski's name right, only adds to its
>>genuineness as a non-partisan opinion (I had never heard of him
>>before this)."
>>
>>Does Richard really believe that a journalist (whose stock-in-trade
>>is words), could be a member of the ID movement and yet repeatedly
>>spell Dembski's name "Dembsky"?
RW>First of all, I've frequently seen ID supporters mis-spell Dembski's name as
>"Demski", so yes I can believe that a member of the ID movement could make
>such a mistake.
That might be true of email composed hastily. I have probablly done it myself.
But has Richard ever seen an ID supporter do it in a *publication*?
RW>Secondly, that a journalist repeatedly mis-spells a name
>doesn't inspire confidence that his views on Dembski's work are of any
>value--has he even read one of Dembski's books?
This supports my argument!
RW>Finally, this is just an incredibly flimsy appeal to authority.
Richard doesn't say what is "an incredibly flimsy appeal to authority"?
Steve
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"A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology
and paleontology have unfortunately gotten the idea that the fossil record is
far more Darwinian than it is. This probably comes from the
oversimplification inevitable in secondary sources: low-level textbooks,
semipopular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful
thinking involved. In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find
predictable progressions. In general, these have not been found-yet the
optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks."
(Raup D.M., "Evolution and the Fossil Record", Science, Vol. 213, No.
4505, 17 July 1981, p289).
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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