But there's the problem. He's not responding to anything or anybody. He's behaving like paragraph-generating software that periodically posts the same assortment of unsupported claims using more or less the same catch-phrases like
Gestapo tactics and
functional design with no evidence that the responses to his posts are being read.
I continue to respond to his posts even though I have no expectation of getting an answer back because I enjoy it anyway.
He's not interested in what you (or anybody else) know(s). He's here to teach us, or so he says, although he never gets around to it. But he is surely not receptive to what the thread has to offer him.
No, it's you that is running from discussion. You just preach.
Why would that matter to anybody but them?
People who reject Darwin's theory do so on faith. The evidence points the other way.
One can also believe the theory on faith alone just as one can believe anything else by faith if one is still able to choose what to believe - many thinkers simply can't decide to believe something and make themselves do it - but one also has the option to study the evidence and its supporting arguments and come to believe the theory because the evidence in support of it is compelling.
If creationists want to be accepted by the scientific community, all they need do is generate good science.
The only tactics science uses are studying nature, vetting the results of studies, and disseminating the new learning.
Isn't it pretty predictable that if you're a creationist and enter into one of the scientific fields that contradicts your faith-based beliefs, that you are going to have a tough time? I would call that a foolish career choice, and wouldn't lament the difficulties such a person encountered thereafter as you seem to do.
Creationists don't lie about photosynthesis research because they have no reason to do so. It doesn't contradict their religious beliefs.
I hope you don't believe that we haven't noticed that creationists only call the science that contradicts them
bad science, or that creationists generally have no interest in science except to attack it when it challenges their beliefs, which they generally do so in the presence of people that are well-versed in the sciences - people that have always loved science, and who can see quickly that this person has never been interested in science and still isn't.
Except that such people have no credibility in the scientific community, and therefore no voice. Only evolutionary scientists have a vote, and their consensus is that the theory is sound and workable.
Nobody is afraid of creationists. They are irrelevant in science, just like Scientlogists
Mainstream scientists have no interest in discussing creationism with creationists. You'll need to give them an incentive - pay them, perhaps, or at least take the scientist out for a meal for his time and expertise. That's how you earn access to the time of another who isn't particularly interested in what you're promoting. Time-share sale people with give you a microwave for your time. Drug reps take a physician out for a meal to get an hour to present promotional material.
We teach. You attempt brainwashing. We provide arguments and evidence. You simply repeat unsupported claims. You're the propagandist here.
No, it doesn't go both ways. You don't do your part.
Sure they do - have the freedom to express their doubts. How about your list of dissenting scientists, or at least the non-fraudulent part of the list that represents scientists who actually do dissent? They were and still are free to express themselves just as others are free to ignore, rebuke or shun them.
You've already been corrected on this before. Science does not have to sell the idea that no intelligent designer was involved. It is enough that it is possible that none played a part in the advent and evolution of life, an idea that needs no selling.
No intelligent designer is needed in any of the sciences, so none have been posited.
Again, no thanks. How would that serve our interests?
How would it serve yours, which seems to be to ignore everything written to you?
What we claim is that science works, which is testimony to the validity of its foundational principles and methods. Proof and truth are your words. We have evidence that the science is valid, and we require nothing more than that to consider its theories, laws, facts, and methods (empiricism, skepticism, etc) as close to truth as we need it to be.
Is Newton's work on gravitation true? Is that really a good word to describe a body of work that has been improved upon since by showing that the work was incomplete, but is still useful for most applications in science, technology, and engineering?
"Proven" and "true" are words I'm using less and less. If an idea has demonstrated its usefulness in reliably predicting and at times controlling outcomes, the idea is a keeper and is appropriate to add to one's fund of knowledge whether one considers that proof or truth or not. Consider these terms:
- Instrumentalism - belief that statements or theories may be used as tools for useful prediction without reference to their possible truth or falsity. Peirce and other pragmatists defended an instrumentalist account of modern science.
- Empirical adequacy - A theory is empirically adequate, roughly, if all of what it says about observable aspects of the world (past, present, and future) can be confirmed
- Fallibilism - the principle that propositions concerning empirical knowledge can be accepted even though they cannot be proved with certainty.
It's interesting that its always the creationist clamoring for proof, when he has none, can offer none, and doesn't use evidence to decide what is true. There is no burden of proof with such people. The concept of burden of proof assumes that the one hearing the argument is willing and capable of being persuaded by a compelling, evidenced argument. When that is not the case, there will be no learning.
