The state of ID/YECism here at EvC

Is the enigma of a scientific refutation of the Theory of Evolution gone or has it just been lost from this forum? It seems to me that the arguments against evolution have ironically evolved to be nothing more than a glimmer of their past amusement. All you have to do is look at what our creationist contingent is both saying and not saying.We have 1 hardliner who only battles with a theological argument completely abandoning any scientific challenge to evolution. Any challenge to this basis for argument is met with cries of unfairness for not accepting their foundation and premises.We have another who has for all practical purposes isolated the discussion to social aspects of the theory claiming that past mistakes is indicative of a trend in science to be at best careless or at worst a conspiracy. (I probably would have never learned how to spell the name Haeckel otherwise)Except for very recently we have had little in the way of challenges to the age of the earth.We have one newbie who is trotting out very dusty ideas for flood mechanics.We have one more recently paroled who believes the mere presence of C14 means that all other dating is due to apparent age and who seems to have no problem calling the God of creation a liar.Add in the drive byes and really what else do you have except a political forum with a few tired, old, and useless arguments for ID and YECism lingering around in some modified form to allow for maximum self-delusion.The biggest kicker for me though is that this cannot be blamed on the lack of new stuff to talk about and defend. Here the Dover trial is over and the manuscripts are freely available and the complete lack of interest from the ID side of the house is deafening!Is no IDer up to the challenge of defending the testimony of their poster children in a situation where they actually have to answer hard questions about their supposed "theory"?Is no Christian IDer or YECer up to the task of defending these board members who under their oath and Christian values of bearing no false witness lied up on the stand for God's sake?Is there no one left except the niche few with their blanked of abstractness to hide the fact that they no longer have an argument?Or is this just a product of this forum on this little corner of the internet? If so why and is EvC doomed to a slow heat death of triviality?
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I don't want this to descend into personal attacks on the posters I referenced for the obvious reasons. I believe it is perfectly valid and within the acceptable realm of discussion to talk about the state of the ID/YEC arguments as a while without harping on or degrading one individual's tendencies. While some discussion of a style of argument of a particular poster may be warranted there seems to be a fine line between what is acceptable in this discussion and what is just plain bashing.

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I don't want this thread to segue into a discussion of the trial although I would absolutely love for an IDer to rise to the challenge and join one of the existing threads or start a new thread on the trial to address some of the standing criticisms.
Soc. Issues in EvC please!This message has been edited by Jazzns, 12-20-2005 08:42 PM

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No smoking signs by gas stations. No religion in the public square. The government should keep us from being engulfed in flames on earth, and that is pretty much it. -- Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

This must have looked like a hot potato, with no admin responding as yet.To me, it looks a little too much like gloating over the Dover decision. The use of a large font emphasizes that impression.I think there are some issues here worth discussing. I suggest you take a day or two to tone down the OP, and I'll take another look then.In the meantime, if other admin's have a different view, they should feel free to comment.

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I created the post in a text based browser so I didn't see that the formatting was a little bad. That is fixed.I actually created this topic before I knew about the decision and I was motivated by the lack of participation of IDers in the ID daze in court thread. The fact that the decision also came out is just icing on the cake and the continued lack of input of IDers in that thread is also interesting and also worth discussion I believe.

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No smoking signs by gas stations. No religion in the public square. The government should keep us from being engulfed in flames on earth, and that is pretty much it. -- Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Is there life after EvC? Uh oh, maybe it would have been better to lose in Dover, so that we'd have more to talk about... or they'd have more to talk about.In a way this raises the question of what the other side will do in the face of this? Hardcore Creationists shouldn't be hurt as they didn't like ID anyway. IDists though will have to reinvent themselves again, actually try and find some scientific evidence, or wait to try again elsehwere.After all the far right is still looking at overturning Roe v Wade through court packing. They could do the same for this. Wonder what the career track of that Judge is going to be after this? He must have lost some friends in high places.This message has been edited by holmes, 12-21-2005 05:26 AM

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

It is an uneven debate.
Creationism and ID do not progress. The same arguements are re-iterated over and over with no progress. It's persistence is the result of the near bottomless pit of scientifically ignorant people that adhere to mythology, misconceptions or the outright lies of creationist organizations.Evolutionary biology on the other hand results in novel published and peer reviewed work every single week...so while there is always more to talk about with regard to the science of evolution...there won't be anything really new to talk about with creationism or ID.

This issue will make its way back into the courts again. It seems to happen every 15 to 20 years or so. Next time it will be the special design movement or some other misnamed creationist organization.By the way, just got back from a 1 day Amsterdam trip yesterday..collected a ton of north sea mammoth bones...walked around the city a bit from the train station before heading off to Schiphol...maybe I walked past you I was the guy hunched over with a backback full of mammoth molars and muskox femurs.

And here is what strikes me as odd: why aren't more evos debating other evos?I know this isn't the EvE forum, but your observation and Holmes's lament about having nothing else to discuss made me wonder about this. I don't understand why the Evos present such a united camp in almost every thread.People keep referring to THE ToE, but which version?The funny thing is, saavy ID's could use more evolutionists arguments against them - at least here - since some of the evos seem as dogmatic as any ID/YEC.

Could you enumerate the versions for us?--Percy

Yet here are two versions I can think of off the top of my head:1- Neo-Darwinism
2- Punctuated EquilibriumIt would seem to me that some of the arguments made by the PE camp could be incorporated (and twisted) to help IDs attack many of the typical evo claims.For example, I constantly see a post explaining to some IDer or creo that "the reason we don't see many transitional fossils is because fossilization is so rare."

Evos debate other evos all the time...but in the scientific literature, scientific conferences, lab meetings and in labs every day..places where creationists are either not qualified or do not bother to go.As to a unified front, there have been arguments in the past among evos on evolution issues...(check any thread on biological basis of race for example). But on the main details of evolution, evos do agree...the concept that there are major disagreements about evolution within the scientific community is one of the old misconception/lies of creationists that I was referring to...the things evos do argue about are way over the head of 99.99% of the creationists I have encountered.

Then, apparently, there are also different flavors of Neo-Darwinism like Richard Dawkins.I am astounded that whenever creos are presented with the 'but we see evolution all around us every day' post none of them fire back with an 'according to Dawkins "Evolution has been observed. It's just that it hasn't been observed while it's happening."'Of course he's an athiest, but what the heck, ammunition is ammunition.

I thought PE was not accepted by all evos?This message has been edited by custard, 12-21-2005 09:37 AM

North sea mammoth bones? I didn't know they could swim.If you went through the red light district then you pretty much had to walk past me. If you avoided the RLD but made it to the dam then you were still pretty darn close. Well at one point I did hear people screaming outside...

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

PE is a generally accepted concept within evolution. What you may be thinking of is that PE is often denigrated as a novel concept, many feeling that it was introduced way back in the 20's (by R. A. Fischer perhaps, or maybe Sewall Wright, or maybe someone else, I honestly can't recall at the moment). Gould and Eldredge's contribution, which many within evolutionary circles feel is minor, is to link the concept of PE to the fossil distribution in the geologic column.--Percy