Books By Creationists?

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Well, I'll first note that you haven't really offered a whole lot of reasoning also, simply saying ''no I think it wouldn't be dishonest ... ''

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I can hardly refute a reason that you haven't given. So why would I need to give a reason?.

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But beyond that, you quoted my reason to view it as dishonest. If you adopt an attitude that makes it more likely for you to misrepresent it, then that attitude is dishonest, in the sense that it lacks fairness.

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Of course it is not true that that attitude is unfair in itself, so you do not have a valid reason to claim that it is dishonest.And if going into any research with a predetermined idea of the conclusions is dishonest in itself then an awful lot of creationist work is dishonest. Or did you think that the creationists working on the Noah's Ark paper that you cited today expected to show that the Ark was unseaworthy ? And that is if it is honest in every other respect!My position is that at worst it creates a risk of dishonesty, but one that can be resisted.There's no need to cite your other "examples" because just moving the same behaviour into different contexts doesn't change anything. My point remains that honesty and fairness must be judged on the outcome, not the attitude taken going into the investigation. Indeed, your attitude appears to be nothing more than an attempt to prejudge the outcome, and since you will not permit the actual outcome to change your mind it is itself extremely unfair, and if used to dismiss a valid critique it would be a clear example of dishonesty.

Your example here shows that you do not distinguish the difference I am trying to make between too situations that are similar, but not the same.I an not saying coming in with already an idea of the conclusion, is dishonest, I am saying having a firm decision on what the conclusion will at the very beginning is dishonest. And yet I emphasised a portion here where what you say comes down to exactly what I have been trying to say.Someone who approaches a book, having already concluded what the outcome will be(not simply having an idea of what it will be), is exactly the same attitude as someone who ''will not permit the actual outcome to change [his] mind'', which is an attitude you jsut said is dishonest.

Of course not, if it is sufficiently obvious that what is being presented is complete idiocy. If I saw a book claiming to present evidence of geocentrism, I would approach it with a wry smile, and no doubt of my conclusion. Same happened in Heffers, nearly 20 years ago, when I came upon a book entitled "Has Hawking Erred?" written by an engineer

So does this mean that if it not sufficiently obvious that what is being presented is complete idiocy, then you would agree with me that that attitude would be dishonest ?

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Your example here shows that you do not distinguish the difference I am trying to make between too situations that are similar, but not the same.

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I an not saying coming in with already an idea of the conclusion, is dishonest, I am saying having a firm decision on what the conclusion will at the very beginning is dishonest.

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I'd say that the authors of that paper had a very firm idea of their conclusion. So by your standards I should consider them dishonest, even if there is nothing wrong with their paper.

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And yet I emphasised a portion here where what you say comes down to exactly what I have been trying to say.

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Someone who approaches a book, having already concluded what the outcome will be(not simply having an idea of what it will be), is exactly the same attitude as someone who ''will not permit the actual outcome to change [his] mind'', which is an attitude you jsut said is dishonest.

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Well here YOU are being dishonest. Firstly it is NOT "exactly" the same, because even a firm idea is not the same as an unchangeably closed mind. Secondly, I did NOT describe even that as dishonest as can be plainly seen.

I wonder how you could ever know how ''firm'' their idea of the conclusion was beforehand, so we have no way of saying if they were dishonest or not.I'm pretty sure they expected a result, which turned out to be the one they had, as does everyone doing research. But I can't speculate beyond that. And there comes a point where the two are one and the same, and trying to differentiate between the two simply becomes playing on words.I think this point is reached in a situation where someone has laready made up his mind on, and planned that he will debunk, a book before even reading it. Maybe my english comprehension failed me, but I thought you were saying that at that point it was dishonest.

No, definitely not dishonest. It would just be bizarre and contradictory.In this particular case, it is quite obvious from the subject matter and the authors in particular that this is pure idiocy. Edited by cavediver, : No reason given.

We're talking in general here, not this particular case of ''the answers book.''What if you were about to read ''genetic entropy'' by Dr. Sanford ? Would it be dishonest to read it with the sole intention of debunking it ? Even considering he has made a great career in genetics, has believed in the theory of evolution for the majority of his career and just recently realized that YEC was true ?His particular case is interesting, since he fits nowhere in the ''either ignorant, stupid or insane'' false dichotomy.Edited by slevesque, : No reason given.

Absolutely not. YEC is demonstrably and completely shown to be false.The existence of even a single example of a uranium halo shows that YEC is just nonsense.

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

Again, I don't think I'd ever use the word "dishonest". To me, it's just the wrong connotation. Possibly "unfair" fits in some contexts, and "mistaken" in others. This would immediately make me doubt anything he had to say that touched on the fact that he had recently become a YEC - so anything related to science I would assume he is completely wrong as a default position, and only accept once receiving confirmation from an alternativge source. I disagree - in all seriousness, it means he fits all three to greater and lesser degrees.

I would add two others, willfully ignorant and dishonest as possibilities.There's gold in them thar creationists.

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

Trichotomy. And what do you call someone with such a flagrantly bad argument?

I don't read books by creationists as much as I research them. I have a number of them in my library.Rather than read them I will usually look up their statements on particular subjects with which I am familiar. It does me less good to see what they say about subjects I know nothing about.I research subjects I know well, like radiocarbon dating and evidence for the flood, and see what they say. In most cases I need to go back to original sources and see if I can find the sources of various errors. However, sometimes the books I am researching are the original sources of the errors. For example, I have found a number of blatant errors in Ken Ham, Andrew Snelling, and Carl Weiland’s The Answers Book.When the creationists' books make a claim that sounds false, I go to the original sources (if they even cite them) and see what those sources say. The error rate is quite high on those claims that I have been able to track down and fully examine.If the creationist literature is as poorly researched in all fields as I have found it to be in the fields I know, then it is a pretty sorry lot.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Fairness requires you to be willing to change your mind if the evidence demands it. It doesn't require you to have nothing in your mind to start with.It would be dishonest to pretend that you can go into such a situation completely free of bias.

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If you have nothing to say, you could have done so much more concisely. -- Dr Adequate

I think we all agree on this. I have said this multiple times already.The point of contention seems to be at what point do we effectively have an attitude that makes it practically impossible for the evidence to change our minds.My contention here is that someone reading a book specifically with the sole intention of debunking it has such an attitude. I say this because such a person not only has an idea of what his conclusion will be, bu hs actually consciously decided that conclusion before reading a single word.Now I may be wrong on this obviously, and I am willing to change my mind if a compelling argument shows up here, but up until I have not seen any.