What the H - Holmes is back!

You sneaky bastard.I could have sworn you were dead. Been telling everyone you were dead. And now here you are making a big liar out of me.Welcome back.

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Owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have occasionally used the academic jargon generator to produce phrases that even I don't fully understand. The jargons are not meant to offend anyone or to insult anyone's intelligence!

While you're at it, could you also try to tone down your philosophical writing style (aka philosophical lalaland) just a little bit?I know that you're a philosopher. But you have to realize that most of us are (or at least I am) not so philosophically... lalaland-like. Sorry to put it that way, but I really can't think of any other way to describe it. So far since you came back, you have been doing fine in expressing yourself in a coherent and linear fashion. But in the past before you left, sometime when you really got into a conversation you really made it very difficult for us to see what you wanted to say. I have no doubt that they were still coherent, but they were certainly not linear.Most of us here are biologists, physicists, mathematicians, etc. I don't know what it is with philosophers, but you guys tend to write like you're the only one that will ever read what you have to say. Other people are reading your stuff, too. It's like you guys were taught to model after 19th century German philosophers...Personally, in the past I had always been reluctant to converse with you directly. You could call it fear, fear of having to spend too much time decrypting what you have to say. In fact, I don't know how crashfrog could have the patience to read all the stuff you have to say. Not only are they long, they are downright cryptic.Personally, I'd recommend reading out loud what you just wrote. If you can imagine yourself talking out loud to a person facing you and not have him give you a weird look, you're fine. This isn't philosophy 500. This is an online debate forum.

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Owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have occasionally used the academic jargon generator to produce phrases that even I don't fully understand. The jargons are not meant to offend anyone or to insult anyone's intelligence!

See, I can endure more complex pieces. In college, I took many philosophy classes. I did fine in them.Just think of it like your upper body endurance and strength. Sure, I can comfortably do 200 on a chest bench. It doesn't mean I want to always lift 200 lb everytime I want to move an object.Perhaps it is normal for you to think and write the way you do sometimes, but it's not for the rest of us. If need be, I'll endure as many and as much complex pieces as need be. It doesn't mean I want to do it every time I get online.But please, don't let me stop you if that's your normal style and it would take extra effort for you to write the way you talk. Just remember that not all of us have the time to read through complex pieces. In fact, I tend to just speed read through most of the posts here. When I find something I'm interested in then I'll put a little more brain power into it. If it appears like something Brad McFall had written, I just skip right over it. Not really worth the time. Well, I wouldn't use the word "improve" as much as "temporarily change".Think of it this way. In a live debate, we talk to each other almost like the way we would talk in an everyday situation. When we submit our academic papers, they tend to be more complicated and they certainly resemble nothing like the way we talk. I tend to think of an online conversation as resembling more of a face to face thing than academic papers. The only difference, really, is we can't interrupt each other in the middle of a sentence.While you were gone, there was a thread about the way creationists tend to write on here. We concluded that the reason creationists tend to write so badly is because they try to immitate academic papers without actually being able to tell the difference between a technical paper and gibberish. I understand that the way you write is not gibberish, but when it gets to certain levels technical writings aren't that far from jargon.Please don't take this as a criticism of the way you write. It's not. I'm just telling you that a lot of us simply don't have the time to go through academic papers on an everyday basis. You don't have to do much, really, to change. Just write more like the way you talk and it will be just fine.PS Ever considered having a great debate with Brad McFall?

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Owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have occasionally used the academic jargon generator to produce phrases that even I don't fully understand. The jargons are not meant to offend anyone or to insult anyone's intelligence!

Speak for yourself. I am one of those that are constantly doubting our own interpretation of reality. Now, don't confuse this with absolutely not having any idea what something is not. While I still have doubts as to what right and wrong are, I can definitely tell that what you believe are wrong most of the time.Us skeptics are not as "all knowing" as people often think.Edited by Taz, : No reason given.

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Owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have occasionally used the academic jargon generator to produce phrases that even I don't fully understand. The jargons are not meant to offend anyone or to insult anyone's intelligence!

I said I am not sure what's real, not what's not real.It's sort of like this. Off the top of my head, I don't know what 5634.23 X 123456 is. You come waltzing along and tell me it's -24351. Now, I know for sure that's not right.Just because we can't tell what's right doesn't mean we can't tell what's wrong. As I have said before, I'm a moral absolutist. I must admit that I don't know what those moral absolutes are most of the time. However, your "opinions" look more to me like negative answers even though the problems only consisted of positive numbers.

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Owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have occasionally used the academic jargon generator to produce phrases that even I don't fully understand. The jargons are not meant to offend anyone or to insult anyone's intelligence!

Oh sure.Take Nem's stance on homosexuality being unnatural, for example. We observe the behavior in just about every part of the animal kingdom. We're not just talking about a dog randomly humping another dog. We're talking about animal that consistantly and persitantly pairing with other animal of the same sex. In species that are monogomous, like certain species of birds, these same sex animal actually pair with each other for life. Some would go as far as steal eggs from other birds and then care for the eggs. Not only this, some researchers have actually developed experimental procedures that (mostly involve chemical and hormonal treatments) have actually changed the sexual preferences of these homosexual animal.Now, as far as any intended cosmic purpose or whatever that goes on behind the scene, I'd have to say I don't know. But clearly, Nem's position that it's "not natural therefore it's wrong" bullshit is obviously wrong.

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Owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have occasionally used the academic jargon generator to produce phrases that even I don't fully understand. The jargons are not meant to offend anyone or to insult anyone's intelligence!