In other words, you'll trust them where it's convenient to trust them but not where it conflicts with your cherished beliefs?
Yes, that's right. I'm not giving up my precious religious beliefs just because there is a collection of scientific data that says this and that.
I'd rather believe in storks, damnit. I'm keeping my fricking religious beliefs. That's not to say I don't respect your beliefs, because I think everyone has the right to decide things for themselves. We can still be friends and disagree strongly about key things.
If I may be so bold. I believe this is a certifiable case of William kicking against the pricks.
Very Respectfully,
Doctor CamNC4Me
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
In other words, you'll trust them where it's convenient to trust them but not where it conflicts with your cherished beliefs?
Yes, that's right. I'm not giving up my precious religious beliefs just because there is a collection of scientific data that says this and that.
I'd rather believe in storks, damnit. I'm keeping my fricking religious beliefs. That's not to say I don't respect your beliefs, because I think everyone has the right to decide things for themselves. We can still be friends and disagree strongly about key things.
Paul O
Curious a bit here. Have you ever condemned a Mormon for refusing to see the foolishness that is their religion?
Daniel Peterson wrote:Where, on this thread, has Will used such language to describe you people?
Hello, Daniel. I am glad to see you entering the thread. You strike me as an honest apologist, I have never seen or heard of you denying well established fact within science. How do you rectify the issues I mentioned in my OP? JB took a good stab at it, but seems maybe too NOM. I would appreciate any response you may have.
Where, on this thread, has Will used such language to describe you people?
The only place you can get away with such blatant displays of arrogant illogic is with your circle-jerk buddies here on this message board.
(ps, it's pretty funny you had to specify "on this thread" to try and be safe)
I think DCP was talking about the use of the epithet "prick" specifically. He was exploiting the double entendre of DocterCamNC4Me's "kicking against the pricks" phrase.
I think DCP was talking about the use of the epithet "prick" specifically. He was exploiting the double entendre of DocterCamNC4Me's "kicking against the pricks" phrase.
LOL
We hate to seem like we don’t trust every nut with a story, but there’s evidence we can point to, and dance while shouting taunting phrases.
JohnStuartMill wrote:I think the concept that is tripping Will up is the ex post nature of most of our explanations for survival. If we're trying to explain how birds evolved, then we point to actual outcomes: although dinosaurs that had bony armor might have had a higher probability of survival from a Cretaceous standpoint, dinosaurs that had feathers actually survived to propagate their genes, so we know that feathers ended up conferring "fitness". Because a lot of the evidence for evolution is in the fossil record, a lot of the support for evolution consists of pointing to these actual events, and ignoring the ex ante survival probabilities that didn't pan out because of bottlenecking or abrupt environmental changes or whatever**. Will's problem is that he isn't separating the two.
Interesting analysis, but I don't think that's what is going on. Will just heard somewhere that "survival of the fittest" is a tautology and therefore Darwinian evolution is fatally flawed. We can backtrack and parse and explain until we reach page 29, but every time he will go back to arguing from his unexamined operational definitions that force a tautology, and insist that nobody has addressed it.
"And yet another little spot is smoothed out of the echo chamber wall..." Bond