Fallacious pro-evolution arguments

[Aggie]

I thought non-Christians weren't supposed to post in the Origins section. I lurk there once in a while, and that's the impression I got - I haven't seen any atheists post there. Am I wrong?

It used to be that way, but they changed it last summer. I see atheists post there occasionally, although the majority of the posters are still Christians.

Creationists also make up a much higher percentage of the posters there than they do in this section, which I consider beneficial for a few reasons. One is that it means the evolution side isn’t able to smother their opponents through sheer numbers the way they can in this section, so winning arguments there has to rely on factual information and logic, kind of like the way this section used to be in 2004 and 2005. Possibly because of this, there also isn’t quite as high a concentration of creationists there who tend to ignore whatever flaws are pointed out in their beliefs. Together with the higher concentration of creationists in general, these two things give me the impression that I have a greater chance at accomplishing something there in terms of educating these people than I would have in this section.

 

[TheBear]

Aggie, you have every right to go where you feel comfortable. But there's no need for these drawn-out and dramatic goodbyes.

Go already!

Bye now!

 

[tanzanos]

The problem with Creationism Versus Evolution; boils down to the threat the Creationists pose on erudition. Creationists vie for the right to teach creationism in schools as science. The last time religion was held above science was in the dark ages. I fear the day creationism will be taught as the true origin of everything. They build creation museums, they harangue education boards into accepting creationism as a viable alternative to evolution. This is the main reason why there is so much animosity. The rest of the planet has no such problems. This is inherently an American problem and becomes a problem to the rest of the world because the US is a superpower and influences global politics.
Personally The threat creationism poses to mankind is far greater in the long run than any threat from any terrorist.

 

[Nitron]

Nitron, you haven’t been as bad as most of the people who contribute to this problem, but you employ a very strange tactic when someone refutes one of your posts. Even if someone specifically asks you a question in their rebuttal, or if you’ve promised to make an additional point after they’ve answered your first post, you never acknowledge their reply at all. I’ve seen you do the same thing at Gondolend, when other people argue with something you say there. I had been hoping that when you disappear from a thread after having one of your points refuted, you were at least listening to what had been pointed out there, but when you disappeared from my thread about AiG’s Gould quote (even though you’d told me in this post that you had more questions to ask me after I replied), you posted second thread less than a week later repeating the same points that Naraoia and I had already refuted. I asked you in post #9 of this thread why you were refusing to acknowledge our rebuttals, but you never replied to my question about that, either.

I've realized that a long time ago. The fact is that when someone refutes one of my points or sends me scrambling I always want to have a good enough reply. It then gets stretched out over days until I just forget it. And yes, I do listen- I just posted the comic because I came across it on Pharyngula and found it hilariously relevant.

I’ve seen you do the same thing at Gondolend, when other people argue with something you say there.

Now I'm curious. Care to point out specific threads?

 

[Aggie]

I've realized that a long time ago. The fact is that when someone refutes one of my points or sends me scrambling I always want to have a good enough reply. It then gets stretched out over days until I just forget it. And yes, I do listen- I just posted the comic because I came across it on Pharyngula and found it hilariously relevant.

What you said in your OP where you posted it, “It delivers the point better than I can”, suggested pretty strongly that you were trying to prove something with it. I think you should have at least acknowledged the fact that all of the points made in it had already been addressed by me and Naraoia.

Now I'm curious. Care to point out specific threads?

I can think of two examples offhand, although there are probably more than that. But I guess I’ll just keep it at two, since nobody who isn’t registered there will be able to see what I’m linking to.

The first one was in this thread, when you said you thought Tengu had stopped posting at Gondolend because of me. I asked:

How it that possible anyway, though? I know that her last post was in September of last year [2006], around four months before I showed up. How could she have been talking about leaving because of me when I wasn’t even a member yet?

You never answered my question about that. The second example was in my thread about what I think of the presidential candidates, when I was debating with Scott Hartman and Keesey about healthcare. You said “i see a flamewar right around the corner”, and Keesey replied:

Hmm, I thought the tone had been pretty civil so far.

I guess technically this wasn’t a question, but I was still expecting you to explain why were expecting a flamewar there. Is the reason why you generally don’t answer things like this just because you keep putting it off until you end up forgetting?

 

[eri]

OK, thanks for the clarification. I may post there once in a while now - I've seen some painful misunderstandings of astronomy going on, and it was all I could do not to contribute to the conversation earlier, but I didn't want to end up losing my account.

 

[Nitron]

I guess technically this wasn’t a question, but I was still expecting you to explain why were expecting a flamewar there. Is the reason why you generally don’t answer things like this just because you keep putting it off until you end up forgetting?

Yeah. But I really don't see why this specific comment matters- it was a generalization of internet discussions on politics.

As to the one on the waffles thread, I had responded but later deleted all my posts in the thread.

Now let this die.

 

[Aggie]

As to the one on the waffles thread, I had responded but later deleted all my posts in the thread.

No, that isn’t right. You got Will Svensen to delete all your posts in that thread (only the troll posts) before I asked you that, and I know he didn’t delete any of your normal posts after that point. All the rest of your posts from after he did that are still there, so you would have had to delete only your reply to me, and none of the other posts you made after you stopped trolling. You also would have had to delete it before I had the chance to see it, and I was looking at that thread several times a day. If this whole problem is just a matter of you having bad memory, it’s even worse than I realized.

EDIT: It looks like you’ve deleted the rest of your posts now, but you must’ve done that pretty recently because the previous time I looked at that thread, all your posts from after you stopped trolling were still there. But even before you deleted them, you were still ignoring my question.

I get the feeling you’re trying to evade me here, which makes me suspicious about whether all of this is really just a matter of forgetfulness. Can you please address what I said about your OP in the comic thread? I’m willing to forget about my problem with the rest of the posters at this section of CF, since they won’t affect me much anymore now that I’ve stopped participating in the debates here, but you and I interact with one another at enough other websites that I’m not content with letting my opinion of you be lowered so easily.

 

[Loudmouth]

Hey Aggie,

You mentioned earlier that no one is giving detailed responses to creationist claims. Are there any specific claims you want us to focus on? Perhaps you could summarize the creationist claim here and we could give a one post refutation with references to the scientific evidence.

 

[Nitron]

I get the feeling you’re trying to evade me here, which makes me suspicious about whether all of this is really just a matter of forgetfulness. Can you please address what I said about your OP in the comic thread? I’m willing to forget about my problem with the rest of the posters at this section of CF, since they won’t affect me much anymore now that I’ve stopped participating in the debates here, but you and I interact with one another at enough other websites that I’m not content with letting my opinion of you be lowered so easily.

The comic thread was a mistake. I wouldn't attribute it to forgetfulness as much as foolishness.

No, that isn’t right. You got Will Svensen to delete all your posts in that thread (only the troll posts) before I asked you that, and I know he didn’t delete any of your normal posts after that point. All the rest of your posts from after he did that are still there, so you would have had to delete only your reply to me, and none of the other posts you made after you stopped trolling. You also would have had to delete it before I had the chance to see it, and I was looking at that thread several times a day. If this whole problem is just a matter of you having bad memory, it’s even worse than I realized

Actually, I had said that I had gotten the idea from "the old Gondolend and Deviantart" (Paraphrasing.) Will replied that "I wouldn't take it to heart", so I took it as a case closed.

And in my mind there's a difference with this type of forgetfulness and a bad memory. I put things off until replying to a comment would be not worth the hassle. It's still on my mind, and I feel bad about it, but I don't reply to it.

 

[NailsII]

3: Most atheists at this forum claim that there is no conflict between evolution and religion, because evolution is no reason not to believe in god. However, whenever the actual existence or non-existence of a god is discussed with any of these posters, the same people claim that since the theories of evolution and abiogenesis can explain life’s origin and development without involving a god, god becomes an unnecessary entity that is ruled out by Occam’s Razor. Richard Dawkins has explained this in the greatest detail—for a person who calls themselves a scientist to believe in god is similar to a “scientist” believing in homeopathy: you cannot trust someone to be capable of performing science in an unbiased manner when they simultaneously believe something so completely unsupported. The same people who claim this should not also be trying to win support for evolution with the argument that it does not conflict with religion.

I do have a problem with theistic evolution, but maybe it's because I don't understand it.
Therefore I would find it a good learning experience if someone would pick holes in the following few lines - hopefully I won't build up a straw man of my own.

Theistic evolution implies that life started (by the hand of god presumably) and evolved into what we observed today, and this process was set up and guided by said deity.

In my opinion, this brings up several major problems.
Firstly, evolution by natural selection does not include a supernatural hand, it relies on chance mutation to generate variety and selection pressure to weed out unfavourable traits.
Secondly, implying a supernatural involvement would reduce the improbability involved and mean that the timescales involved are outrageous. Compare this 'guiding hand' to artificial selection and see how much man had accumplished in just a few thousand years of guiding crops, fruits, and dogs.
Thirdly, if evolution (and presumably human evolution more so) has been guided, why are there so many genetic illnesses in the world today - not to mention diseases? Bad design of humans can also appear as a stumbling block to this way of thinking.
Lastly, to paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, why did god wait at least a hundred thouand years before revealing his plan to a few desert nomads in the middle of nowhere?

So surely, especially looking at the last point, a deistic viewpoint is more likely if theistic evolution is correct (if that makes sense) as the typical monotheistic god becomes unworkable given these constraints.

To conclude, Darwin's theory does not include a deity of any kind as science does not comment on the supernatural. But to extrapolate from Darwin's work, if supernatural influences are not required to explain speciation, are they required at all?

 

[Aggie]

Hey Aggie,

You mentioned earlier that no one is giving detailed responses to creationist claims. Are there any specific claims you want us to focus on? Perhaps you could summarize the creationist claim here and we could give a one post refutation with references to the scientific evidence.

There’s a reason I haven’t been replying to anyone other than Nitron here, which is because (as said in post #51) I was basically giving up on trying to improve this situation. I’ve tried to change it several times before, and sometimes I could cause it to get better for a few weeks, but then it would go back to the same way it was previously.

I’ll also point out something else I said earlier in this thread:

When a creationist posts a thread, I often have to look several pages into it before I can find a reply that contains more than just mockery.

Most of the time, an informative reply to a creationist claim does end up happening eventually. The biggest problem is that if this reply is on page three or four of a creationist thread, chances are that its poster it will have already abandoned the thread after seeing that the first two pages contained nothing but taunts. With this in mind, I don’t think compiling unanswered creationist claims in a separate thread would be especially helpful.

I’m going to keep lurking here, and if the problems I’ve described can improve permanently, I’ll start participating in the actual debates again. Wiccan_Child’s Evolutionary PRATTs thread looks promising, but it’s too soon to tell whether the benefit of this thread will last longer than the amount of time the thread remains active.

 

[Blayz]

There’s a reason I haven’t been replying to anyone other than Nitron here

Let me guess...you don't understand the concept of a debate forum?

Seriously, dying characters on day time soap operas have lingered for less time than you. Please, please please stop telling us why you want to go away, and just do it! How many pages of Good bye Aggie do you think we need?

 

[Aggie]

Let me guess...you don't understand the concept of a debate forum?

Seriously, dying characters on day time soap operas have lingered for less time than you. Please, please please stop telling us why you want to go away, and just do it! How many pages of Good bye Aggie do you think we need?

If you look at what USincognito has been doing—not just in this thread, mind you, but in the entire forum ever since he “left” it himself—it’s the same. He no longer gets involved in any debates, to the point of deliberately avoiding those of them in which he would normally get involved, but he doesn’t withhold his commentary on the state of this forum when it comes up. Now that I’m in the same situation myself, I don’t think there’s any other way of dealing with this that makes sense. We don’t think the debates themselves are worth our time, but when someone else is doing or saying something to try and improve what’s caused us to make this decision, it’s still worth encouraging.

All things considered, your post is a perfect example of what causes people like us to do this. It selectively quotes the first half of my sentence, while attaching your own conclusion to it that contradicts the rest of the sentence, and discourages any of the other members from doing anything differently in the way that could improve this problem. The more we see people like you replying in a manner that serves no purpose other than worsening the environment here, the more you ensure that we won’t want to take your side in any debates against creationists, but will continue replying to posts like yours out of frustration.

 

[Electric Skeptic]

The more we see people like you replying in a manner that serves no purpose other than worsening the environment here...

And you think you're serving a purpose other than worsening the environment here?

 

[Aggie]

And you think you're serving a purpose other than worsening the environment here?

Yes.

At least five other people have already left this forum for the same reasons I’ve brought up, and they also happened to be five of the most intelligent, informative people whom I’ve seen post here. Since they left relatively quietly in comparison to me, nobody ever made much of an effort to change the problems that got them to stop posting. In my case, even though I no longer feel like the debates here are worthwhile, I feel like it’s at least worth putting forth the effort to make sure people like Blayz understand the effect they’re having on this forum.

 

[Electric Skeptic]

Yes.

At least five other people have already left this forum for the same reasons I’ve brought up, and they also happened to be five of the most intelligent, informative people whom I’ve seen post here. Since they left relatively quietly in comparison to me, nobody ever made much of an effort to change the problems that got them to stop posting. In my case, even though I no longer feel like the debates here are worthwhile, I feel like it’s at least worth putting forth the effort to make sure people like Blayz understand the effect they’re having on this forum.

You mean "people like Blayz understand the effect I think they're having on this forum". In any case, it's pretty certain that you've made your point. In what way does your extremely drawn-out goodbye help?

 

[Nathan45]

Aggie, you have to understand, some people just arn't polite . And if you point it out, don't be surprised when they tell you to GTFO.

All I see with this thread is furthering the mentality of "Oh, he hurt my feelings so he's obviously wrong!"

If you see someone make a fallacious pro-evolution argument, point it out to them. If they have any sense ( they may not), then they'll stop using it. And people will be people, politeness is all style and no substance.

Anyways, if you think you'll have better luck convincing creationists by invading the TE forum, go for it. If you stay here, you'll have to argue alongside those atheists who, rightly or wrongly, regard religion as the enemy; and you may not agree, but you'll have to respect that opinion also--or disrespect it, just deal with it.

 

[Nathan45]

Let me guess...you don't understand the concept of a debate forum?

Seriously, dying characters on day time soap operas have lingered for less time than you. Please, please please stop telling us why you want to go away, and just do it! How many pages of Good bye Aggie do you think we need?

Philosophical problem: how to exiting a discussion forum while still getting the last word in?

 

[Aggie]

You mean "people like Blayz understand the effect I think they're having on this forum". In any case, it's pretty certain that you've made your point. In what way does your extremely drawn-out goodbye help?

Did you actually read my post? A few pages earlier in this thread, two of the people who have contributed most to this forum over the past four years have said that this problem was affecting them in the same way. I suppose the most accurate way of putting this is that I want people like him and you to understand the effect that I, USincognito, OnceDecieved, and everyone else who’s mentioned this elsewhere think that you’re having on this forum.

If you actually think it’s just me who has this opinion, this is another good example of why I think it’s worth sticking around as much as it’s necessary to show this.

All I see with this thread is furthering the mentality of "Oh, he hurt my feelings so he's obviously wrong!"

If you see someone make a fallacious pro-evolution argument, point it out to them. If they have any sense ( they may not), then they'll stop using it. And people will be people, politeness is all style and no substance.

If you’ve read my OP in its entirety, I think you’ll know that this problem involves more than just rudeness. The rudeness comes at the expense of the logical quality of the arguments being used, so the way it appears to creationists here is that the people here aren’t able to support evolution without relying on these sorts of fallacies. RichardT has already told me he feels this way.

Blayz was a good example of this in one of the threads I linked to in my OP. I pointed out a false claim that I’ve often seen supporters of evolution using at this forum—that evolution has never been used in support of racism—and I explained how it actually has been, even though the people who do this usually don’t understand the theory properly and are drawing unwarranted conclusions from it. Blayz replied by selectively quoting my OP and claiming that I had no evidence to support the idea that evolution had been used for this, even though I had described the evidence for it in the post he was quoting. This is fairly typical of the response I get when pointing these things out, even if Blayz is a little worse than usual.

Philosophical problem: how to exiting a discussion forum while still getting the last word in?

I’ve pretty much decided, as long as it remains an open question here whether or not this problem actually exists, I’m going to continue participating in the discussions about that specific topic. It’s clear from the other people who have already left because of this problem that mentioning it once and then disappearing never changes anything, so before I leave entirely I’d like to see whether the most I’m able to do about this can make any difference.