Has the bias made this forum essentially irrelevant?

Jar's comment was not about the idiotic position of creationism in and of itself, but about Dawn's post being dumb, which is usual Bertot fashion.

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"What can be asserted without proof, can be dismissed without proof."-Hitch.

You really have to admit that creationist/fundamentalist/literalist attitude most of the time comes hand in hand with ignorance of the most basic knowledge of science.Of all my years in this debate, I have only run into may be 2 people who actually knows a thing or two about science.Off and on, over the years I have tried to play devil's advocate. Sometimes, I really really tried to think with a creationist mindset and from what I know of science to come up with arguments. Percy probably have noticed this over the years. The problem I have always run into is not knowing everything.Which brings me to my next point. Science is pretty much unified. Those of us who dedicate our lives to scientific research will agree with each other on the principles of science. Creationism lacks this unity. Every creationist has his own version of creationism. And because of this fact, in a debate you will rarely ever see creationists helping each other out and backing each other up.Not only that, but creationists never seem to have what it takes to correct each other. On the side of science, you will always see people correcting each other all the time. Suppose I make a statement "linear momentum can be converted into angular momentum." Every person with the most basic knowledge of physics will pile on me to correct this statement.I'm sorry, but you simply don't see the same kind of systematic self-correction in the creationist community. Creationist A might make a totally out of wack statement and creationists B, C, D, and E will simply let it pass. On another forum, there was a creationist that claimed that he can prove the existence of god by the fact that there should be an external power source for the earth but that we simply don't see any external power source for the earth. Not a single creationist jumped in to tell him we have the sun...The point is the reason why we have a lack of creationist number on this forum is because many of us here are involved in some kind of scientific field. We have physicists, biologists, geologists, etc. here so creationists will find very quickly that they can't bullshit their way through a debate. I myself am a material science engineer doing research on alternate materials for construction projects. People like myself, coyote, etc. can sniff out bullshit too easily for creationists to stick around too long.

Hi TazI don't have any disagreement with your post. My only point is that by using sarcasm, ridicule, labelling etc it drives creationists away and the reason for this forum, at least as I understand it, is gone.If discusions were made respectfully then just maybe there would be more left that at least could benefit from some of the knowledge on this forum.I happen to be one of those with no scientific nor theological background. I actually started here because I was interested in science and sometimes the discussions actually get down to a basic enough level that even I benefit.I am just trying to address the isssue in the OP. I do think that there is a lack of respect for creationists on this forum. Not everyone has the benefit of higher education but they also like to think that there ideas have some value. I thhink they desreve respect.

I appreciate GDRs comments, but that notwithstanding I believe you should calm down, slow down and try and see things from someone elses perspective.To us, me, your positions on these issues are as ridiculous and stupid. sorry if i ever used those terms. For example, i believe your hatred for creationist and and religion in general has blinded you to even the simplest of reasoning abilitesTo me, you start in the middle of a conversation on ID and creationism, due to the fact that you do not understand that ID is initially and primarily a logical proposition set and pitted against reality.You seem to not understand that reality and logic (not the Bible), are the fundamental elements as to whether ID is valid or not.The positions on these issues have been around long before the written wordit may be arguable that evo has nothing to do with Atheism,. in the same way that ID has nothing to do with evolution, initially and primarily as a simple logical and testable propositionSurely you are smart enough to see that whether evo is true or not, is has little or nothing to say about whether is was designed to evolve, or whether it was designed at all. Evolution wont help you to make that determinationAs to the method and model Ive set it out so many times now, it silly to suggest I have not.You like so many others here ignore fundamentals and let your emotions and biases dictate your argument formWhat seems reasonable to you, seems silly and dumb to me, because I can see you making simple misguided mistakesHere is an illustration from the past. In times past you have attempted to demonstrate that Jesus was and could not be the fulfillment of said prophecies and challenged anyone to demonstrate otherwise.immediately I recognized the simple mistake you were making in connection with Biblical prophecy. You believed that because Jesus existed far into the future that he could not be the fulfillment of said prophecies. You believed that the prophecy had to refer only to the individual it was spoken of at that timeYour fundamental mistake was twofold. all prophecy, parable and proverb is primarily about God or Gods principles, not about the individual or the event itself.Secondly, even if the word or term, young maiden is used in the old, it does not affect the term virgin in the New. Due to the fact that God is the concern primarily and that original situation was used as a shadow or type. Of course God could only make that known through inspiration, in another writergiven these facts it becomes obvious you were making simple mistakes concerning Biblical prophecy and it naturethis is why John said of Christ, "the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, a highway in the desert for our God"regardless of who or what the the original prophecy was about, its primary meaning was about God in both testaments. If the original prophecy was about or concerning Jeruselum or Israel, its primary purpose was about God himselfso the prophecy can and was about Christ and was fulfilled by Christ, due to the fact that he was God in the fleshThis simple misunderstanding by yourself could have cleared up much concerning whether Christ was the fulfillmentIn the same way you have simple misunderstandings concerning what is the nature of ID and creationism, which blocks any rational understanding of my positiontry and see things from a simple and logical proposition initially. try and see things from someones elses propositon and understandingthen if you disagree, try and refute it in the sameway, without sarcasm and insult.If however, that is all you have (sarcasm and insult)atleast incorrperate it with a rational responserespond to my arguments not the personyou grouchy ole bag of crap. just kiddingDawn BertotEdited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.

Yes.
You are clearly not someone that frequently uses insults and abuse as an argument. Edited by Panda, : No reason given.Edited by Panda, : No reason given.

I can understand the frustration. Not only do creationists don't know the most basic things about science, they think they know everything and they think those of us who work in science are a bunch of dumbasses.As I understand it, crashfrog has a degree in biology. I can understand that it's frustrating as hell talking to someone who not only not understand the most basic things about science but also thinks you're a dumbass.Speaking as a researcher and an engineer, I try to avoid talking to people about my field because most people think they know everything about the world. Quite annoying.

So you are an engineer who studies construction materials, and you feel that make you more qualified to make assessments about the validity of arguments than someone who studies philosophy, or logic, or even say classical literature?I think this is part of your problem, your background gives you no intellectual advantage to understanding the doubts of the ToE. And not only that, but even studying standard biology really doesn't fully qualify one to be able to judge the theory as a whole. because, as we have seen here on numerous occasions, biology alone can't answer many of the fundamental problems of evolution (such as how the heck it happened). The answer of the origins of life does not lie solely in understanding how any specific biological function performs, or writing down any math formula, as surely you can understand. It is one of connecting a whole series of dots, of looking at so many forms of evidence, and drawing conclusions that can't be seen and instead must be inferred.Inference is not an exclusive domain of any one profession. So the whole premise of scientists being the only one who can logically understand the ToE problem is itself bullshit.But even if you were right, that its only "scientists" who understand the problem, what ever the heck that means, here is a list that took me about 2.3 seconds to find, of scientists who DON"T believe in the contemporary ToE:Agard, E. Theo
Allan, James
Anderson, Kevin
Armstrong, Harold
Arndt, Alexander
Austin, Steven
Barnes, Thomas
Batten, Don
Baumgardner, John
Bergman, Jerry
Boudreaux, Edward
Byl, John
Catchpoole, David
Chadwick, Arthur
Chaffin, Eugene
Chittick, Donald
Cimbala, John
Clausen, Ben
Cole, Sid
Cook, Melvin
Cumming, Ken
Cuozzo, Jack
Darrall, Nancy
Dewitt, David
DeYoung, Donald
Downes, Geoff
Eckel, Robert
Faulkner, Danny
Ford, Dwain
Frair, Wayne
Gentry, Robert
Giem, Paul
Gillen, Alan
Gish, Duane
Gitt, Werner
Gower, D.B.
Grebe, John
Grocott, Stephen
Harrub, Brad
Hawke, George
Hollowell, Kelly
Holroyd, Edmond
Hosken, Bob
Howe, George
Humphreys, D. Russell
Javor, George
Jones, Arthur
Kaufmann, David
Kennedy, Elaine
Klotz, John
Koop, C. Everett
Korochkin, Leonid
Kramer, John
Lammerts, Walter
Lester, Lane
Livingston, David
Lopez, Raul
Marcus, John
Marsh, Frank
Mastropaolo, Joseph
McCombs, Charles
McIntosh, Andrew
McMullen, Tom
Meyer, Angela
Meyer, John
Mitchell, Colin
Morris, Henry
Morris, John
Mumma, Stanley
Parker, Gary
Peet, J. H. John
Rankin, John
Rosevear, David
Roth, Ariel
Rusch, Wilbert
Sarfati, Jonathan
Snelling, Andrew
Standish, Timothy
Taylor, Stephen
Thaxton, Charles
Thompson, Bert
Thomson, Ker
Vardiman, Larry
Veith, Walter
Walter, Jeremy
Wanser, Keith
Whitcomb, John
White, A.J.(Monty)
Wilder-Smith, Arthur Ernest
Wile, Jay
Williams, Emmett
Wise, Kurt
Wolfrom, Glen
Zuill, HenryThe list is of course simplistic and totally incomplete, but that is besides the point. Any scientist can disagree very easily with the ToE simply because all we know about the ToE is based on assumptions and little else. Now at this point I am not going to even get into arguing with you that this is true, (at least I am not gong to on this forum), because as I have said and I repeat, I don't feel this forum provides a fair platform for that argument to be made. As Percy has shown once again, he will jump right in and immediately admonish Dawn, claiming that she didn't address the topic, while he says absolutely nothing about all the other ad-hominen nonsense that has been thrown out in the 20 posts previous to hers. Its business as usual here.So you can claim to have some superiority of knowledge on the subject, and claim to have logically beat back the so called creationists to the point that they have no reply, but that argument is nothing more than an empty boast. It is not possible to have that discussion with you or anyone else on this forum.You have a theory based on inference more than evidence. The problem that many people have is not in understanding the evidence as you claim, but rather of interpreting that evidence in a critical and objective manner. Every proclamation your side makes of having won any arguments is really just another demonstration of the attempts at muffling the discussion and trying to control every aspect of the discourse-how long did it take Percy to unwittingly demonstrate that so quickly once again?So yea, I can tell you ten ways that your theory doesn't hold up so well to evidential scrutiny, but as soon as I did, Percy will claim I am off topic,or allow the discussion to become mangled by personal attacks, and one sided brow beating, or claim that I am solely not following the rules, or what have you, so...carry on as you like.

And tada you just demonstrated another major reason why people such as myself are often frustrated by creationists.At no point did I say that what I do makes me more qualified to make assessments about the validity of arguments... what a mouth full.Misreading/misinterpreting people's words is another characteristic that plagues the creationist community. Well, may be. While I agree with you that my background in evolutionary biology probably isn't my strongest, most of the time we don't even get that detailed about evolutionary biology.Going to an example earlier that I gave. There was a poster that declared his proof of god's existence and continued influence in our lives is that the earth required a huge amount of energy from an external source. And his reasoning was that because there was no such source of energy, god must be the source of energy. This person failed completely to account for that big-ass bright object in the sky we call the sun.But more importantly, what I do DOES give me an edge over people who are do not work in science. Why? Because I understand how scientific research work. I understand the approach a researcher takes and the journey the researcher must go through to get his work verified over and over before it is recognized by mainstream science.Did you really believe each field of science works in a vacuum? And goddunit answers it? Have you ever tried to read honest to god messages from creationists? Most of them show the total lack of understanding of the most basic things about science. And I'm not talking specifically about evolutionary biology. I'm talking about everything in science. Those of us who work in a field of science and have talked to creationists at one point or other know how frustrating it is to talk to a creationist about any subject in science. Most of them lack the most basic understanding of how science works. Why not propose a topic and give us your 10 ways evolution doesn't stand up to scrutiny?Edit.Here's an extreme example of how frustrating it is to talk to a creationist. I'm showing you an extreme example to demonstrate my point just how frustrating it is to talk to people who (1) lack the most basic understanding of science and (2) think they know all.EvC Forum: desdamona Topic IndexSomeone linked me to her posts a while back. Made me shudder while I read her posts. Notice how this person felt the need to weigh in on every subject known to man.Now, I'm a man who knows my limits. You will never see me discuss topics like genetics and geology. The reason creationists drive us off the deep end is because they think they know everything about everything, and nothing bother us more than people who try to sound like they know what's going on but we can see right through that they don't know jack shit.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

To summarize:* You wish to have the luxury of stating your half-baked dogmas without making even the faintest pretense at justifying them.* You wish to pretend that your inability to justify your opinions is the fault of the moderators rather than of the inadequacy of your views and your impotence to argue for them.* You are in fact well aware that the moderators are so indulgent towards creationists in general and you in particular that they will let you get away with this cowardly and dishonest behavior even when you aggravate it by attacking and denigrating them as you did in your OP.

You have no position.You have never presented the model or method that the asserted designer uses to interfere and influence life and genetics; and you have never presented any evidence such a critter as the Designer even exists.Until you do you have nothing.It really is that simple.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

I'm going to join the debate as Percy, so I will not be playing any moderator role here. Any comments I make about moderation or member behavior are as a member, not a moderator.It has always been my hope that EvC Forum could serve as a haven for informed, dispassionate and constructive discussion, something rare on the Internet. I think we do a better job of that here than most other debate sites on controversial topics, but for the most part my original vision remains unachieved and may be an unreasonable expectation.It has been my position from the very beginning that bad debate pushes out good debate. I'll bet if you do a search that you find me saying that way back in 2003 and 2004. Back then I used to permanently suspend members who were irrational and/or incoherent and/or abusive, and their threads were quickly replaced by others with higher quality dialog.I no longer observe this happening. As compared to the first half of the first 2000's decade there seems to be a paucity of creationists here, informed or otherwise. If anything moderation has become more lenient in tolerating irrational/incoherent contributions, so I can't see that as the reason.What I have observed is that the creationists coming here now are both more uninformed and more insistent. Just look at Intellen over in the Who designed the ID designer(s)? thread where he tries to explain how he proves that Jesus Christ is the intelligent designer (his messages begin at Message 183). Intellen is unable to produce any recognizable chain of rational argument, and even worse, is completely unaware of this inability. He sincerely believes he has persuasive arguments. He has a series of over 20 slide presentations over at YouTube.While it is true that creationists are unable to support one another in discussion threads because they all believe different things (e.g., Intellen: Jesus Christ is the intelligent designer; Marc9000: Intelligent design is not supernatural), this has been true since before this website began in early 2001, so I don't think that's a factor in the diminished creationist participation.I continue to believe that Dover represents a line of demarcation. The impact of Judge Jone's decision was profound and very nearly immediate. In the aftermath participation by ID proponents reduced drastically, and there was a sudden spike in advocates for traditional creationist positions like the shrinking sun and a Grand Canyon formed by Noah's flood, and finally overall creationist participation began to diminish, too.But whatever the cause, I don't think there can be any doubt that creationist participation here is less than it has been in the past. However, I don't believe moderation is responsible. I know creationists like Bolder-dash and Dawn Bertot strongly feel there is moderation bias, but I see it as creationists refusing to take responsibility for or acknowledge or even have an awareness of their own ignorance.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo.

Yea right.And you immediately jumping on Dawn and saying that she didn't address the topic, while at the same time allowing others to call her stupid, ill informed and illiterate without even batting an eye, has absolutely nothing to do with creationists leaving this site!And we are the irrational ones? Right

If by 'We' you mean Dawn and yourself, then I concur.

I think I see part of the problem. Since you joined EvC Forum has acquired new features that allow moderation to take place in the background. Private Messaging is one of them, member-specific word censoring is another, and there are others. The fact that you see no moderator messages does not mean no moderation is taking place. Trust me, moderators are often as dismayed at Jar's contributions as you are.But you're starting to come across as a one-trick pony interested only in complaining and feeding your own sense of outrage. There have been some thoughtful contributions to this thread, it would be nice to see some thoughtful responses.--Percy

Oh the great Percy has spoken, I am the one trick pony. The problem is me (and of course every other one of the creationists that has left). Its all our fault.Don't worry Percy, I won't ever expect you to admit to being wrong about anything, I don't see that in your character. You are a one trick Percy.You claim to be all about open honest debating, and then you say that you are handling the others who break the rules by sending them private messages. so has the private messages done the trick? Have they stopped doing the inappropriate behavior? Has Dr. A starting addressing the issues instead of the posters. Ha, what a funny concept.Do you remember what you suspended me for last time, for one month? What was my post? What was the topic? You are going to try to tell me that was worse than the crap that goes on here everyday? Present the evidence, let everyone decide.You have got to be joking or else just completely delusional. You don't like me, I get it. Who cares Percy. Your feelings about me are irrelevant.I don't believe you for a minute when you say your goal is to promote open, spirited neutral debate. You scheme about the best ways to influence the fence sitters who might be watching. You want to control the national discourse on evolution. You want every other theory gagged in schools, and you want the public to be persuaded to accept your version. You don't want open debate, you want to win public opinion. You act like Karl Rove with a liberal hat on. Edited by Bolder-dash, : No reason given.