The Evolution of evcforum.net

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Mammathus, a superb and very knowledgeable poster whose demolition of old senile Davison was amazing, very informative, where has Mamm gone?

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I can answer that My absence has nothing to do with changes at EvC and everything to do with changes in my life/career. Guys like mick, Wounded King, and myself who are postdocs at some point have to find more stable jobs. I notice that WK has not posted as regularly either. I went on a publishing binge (that I am still in the middle of) and managed to land an assistant professorship and will be leaving Europe..so I have to start my lab...and go beg for money for my lab . This has meant I have had squat time for posting or even keeping up with the forums. That and I had to travel a lot because of job interviews etc. I do lurk when I can. But since I prefer to post in ongoing threads where I can present papers and debate their content, I just don't have the time for it. I simply have not been able to find a time where I could engage someone and stay engaged like the good old days of Peter Borger or the hilarious days of Salty. I know that SLPx and Joe Meert are under similar time constraints.It is a pity that the creationists don't even realize how much time the busy academics here have taken to respond to their questions or posts.If I ever get to a less hectic schedule, I will return to posting again...but who knows when that will be

Hi Brian,
Having only lurked recently I cannot say what the state of EvC is like currently. I did notice that people (creationists for the most part) were getting banned at a fairly rapid pace i.e buzzsaw, Faith banned then reinstated, mike the wiz etc. But the dearth of the Borger and Salty type of threads has to do more with the really tiny number of somewhat scientifically literate people who support creationism. Even when Borger and Salty were around, they were still vastly outnumbered by completely science ignorant creationists. It was just that their threads were very active and fun because they had those qualities and the complete nuts were easier to ignore. Stephen ben Yeshua was another case and randman was as well. With the exception of Stephen, all the others were ejected from EvC. So at some level, the problem is how things were being administered. Kooky threads are shut down way to quickly in my opinion. Also, banning should be used more sparingly. I don't particularly want a return of Salty mainly because he was way too repetitive for me. After 20 times smashing his arguements with different data sets just to have him start over from scratch each time lost its entertainment value. Borger kept the debate lively. So did Tranquility Base come to think of it (he as also banned). but of all of people I have mentioned, I only think Salty deserved to be banned.I think what has to be realized is that 99% of what creationists say when they come here will be based on ignorance and unsupportable. 1% will be somehow scientifically interesting. If for the sake of managing the board, you squeeze the nonesense out, you also lower the chances that a good old fashioned debate will occur. Though occasionally uncivil, the debates with Borger lasted months without the need of admin interference...now creationists have to run a gauntlet to get their topics approved. I don't think Behe would survive the low nonesense tolerance level at this point. And this is a problem. It lets the person vent the nonsense elswhere (like in Southern state school board meetings) and deprives us of the starting points for addressing the misconceptions/lies/and questions that come up when people are free to post. It might mean you get more trolls showing up to..but at least you get something for it the trouble. but I could be completely off and it couls all just be me. Percy started the Columnist's Corner and I wrote up two articles that were completely ignored. Before I went to lurk mode, most of the biological science forum thread died out too quickly..or responses were so sporadic that I lost track of the discussions. Unlike before, I don't seem to be a lightening rod for controversy among the creo's...must be getting old cheers,
M

Hi WK,
but that is just it..I originally came here for the bio forum and the coffee house and the biblical forums don't hold my attention. This at least was my impression before I got avalanched by my work life. The bio forum used to be one of the most active..now it is almost a side note.
cheers
M

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But to reiterate the point that you quoted, but I don't think that you're addressing: is the point to argue and disseminate information to those who may or may not know better? Or is the point to build some basic understanding between creationists and "evolutionists"?

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Why are the two mutually exclusive? It will be highly dependent on the personalities involved. If you are faced with a creationist who comes in with the usual claim of "I don't anything about biology but the ToE is wrong", there can be no basic understanding. Their premise is that their ignorance coupled with religious convictions supercedes everything else. These tend to be the most frequent and most troublesome people to deal with because it is like arguing with a 3 year old.Others come in (sometimes also with strong beliefs or misconceptions) but approach things with a "I heard there is a controversy but am not familiar, could you update me?" type of approach. These types of interactions tend to be more civil and involve the dissemination of information, often with additional explanation from resident experts.The situation is also not black and white. There are some who are interested in getting information on some subjects but are completely blindly dogmatic on other issues.From the evo side, the backgrounds tend to vary. For those of us who are biologists, there is a fairly narrow group of creationists that are really fun to debate. Those with at least a little bit of familiarity with biology (and evolution in particular) but who nonetheless are attacking it. Some only engage in the more religion or politics oriented debates. Others in the more geology or astronomy debates. Depends on the background and where people feel they can contribute.This is a long winded way of saying that most people get what they want out of EvC and that it should accomodate the different desires of the participants (with perhaps the exception of trolls). The problem I think Brian is indicating is that it has largely shifted away from its more balanced nature and is not as appealing to certain groups as it was before.

Hi TL,
Great that you are around again.

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There's a party over at Mammuthus' house. He's been published regularly lately, because he's brilliant and does excellent work.

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That is almost as controversial as EvC ..at least that is what the last reviewer said

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He and a few of his buddies are getting together to discuss Mammoth alleles.

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You are clairvoyant..I was at a meeting two weeks ago doing exactly that.

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It's a novel issue, and to preserve accuracy and the dissemination of good information, there will be no beer allowed, and reviewers from Cell Magazine will be there to moderate the discussion.

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Ok, to preserve accuracy and dissemination of good information..there is always beer allowed!cheers,
M

Hi Ben,
I am not sure I get what you are saying. The EvC issue is factual. A huge group of facts connected and explained by a theory is the ToE. The social issue is that a large segment of the population (US in particular) is willfully ignorant of both the facts and theory while stating categorically that the facts don't exist and the theory is wrong.In any case, completely false statements are made by creationists (usually the same false statements repeated over and over again). These false statements can only be corrected with facts. If someone says "I don't believe in the ToE because my cat does not give birth to a rhino", it requires discussion of facts to clarify this (extremely often repeated) misconception.Ultimately, the social issue you are bringing up is to find out why so many people reject science (and reality) to cling to their beliefs...and why they feel the need to force their beliefs on others. But this also cannot be done without reference to fact...or at least I don't see how.It could be that very often, the Evo side is on the "defensive" clearing up misconceptions/mistatements/ and outright strawmen arguements which takes time, effort and a great deal of explanation. Making the erroneous/false statements takes little time or effort and that in my opinion obscures the real issues.

Hi Ben,
Ok, I get what you are saying and I completely agree. However, I still don't see how one could respond to (much less debate) a creationist without at some point getting into a discussion of the facts. I guess it would actually require Evo's to ask more direct questions of why creos think what they think instead of spending so much time correcting the completely bizarre stuff that they say.

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The question is, in my country (the US), what demands do we make of the general population? How do we as a culture want to interpret science? What is the role of science in government, and how does that affect religious freedom in this country?

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A well distilled set of questions i.e. you quite nicely summarized the entire forum! The first question is why the debate often ends up mostly in the political forums and not the science fora. If one believes the polls, most Americans wish to turn their backs on science and return to a an anti-science theocracy. Given that the world depends more and more on technology, this would be like midieval China having turned away from its dominant position in science and technology and its subsequent long period as a backwater country with very little geopolitical influence. A large segment of the US seems to want to become like the Amish at a national level. Maybe you could propose this question as is, as a topic?The question of interpreting science as a culture is something that is not so directly discussed here. It was most recently addressed when the Kansas State Board wanted to re-define science to include the supernatural i.e. that science is just another belief system. This view is ambigiously expressed by creationists on occassion, i.e. they might say they appreciate science but think scientists don't really know what science should be. Or physics is science but evolution is not without explaining why they make that distinction.The role of science in government is often discussed here. There have been several cases where creationists have openly stated they want to remove scientist input from influencing what is taught in public school. The more extreme want it replaced by their particular flavor of religion.I think I see though why you feel facts get in the way. There are way more posts dealing with fallacies put forth by creos and way less dealing with why this situation exists in the first place.

Hi MT

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To be honest I often could never get past the extracts of references posted by folks like you and Joe Meert but I've always just liked acquiring knowledge. EvC gave me access to people who knew about gentics, cosmology, physics, chemistry, mathmetics and statistics, geology, paleantology and a raft of other subjects.

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The problem for me (and for Joe) is that there are piles and piles of studies that we use to support our arguements. I try to link to a few studies, explain how they support what I say, and leave it up to the reader to explore it further if they want. If it is another biologist, they will probably read the paper...laypeople, probably not though sometimes. But for a creationist who claims I have no support for my statements and then ignores the literature because "it is too complicated" reveals their hypocrisy. There have been about 2 creationists off the top of my head who actually were willing to read papers and debate them..they in turn posted links to articles that we then debated. This was a lot of fun for me. But I am not surprised this is rare since there are so vanishingly few people with a biology background who reject evolution.However, I have to agree with Ben that this is probably not the correct focus of the site. Creationists and IDists don't have have any support for their arguements. Creationists cannot formulate a testable and falsifiable hypothesis of "goddidit" and IDists cannot do it for IC. So what Percy wants will never work. Thus, the main issue boils down to why do specific people and groups reject biological sciences in such large numbers? Even without having the slightest background? After years here, I still don't understand how people can be so willfully ignorant yet arrogant. But a draw to the site is to try to find out..and see what the common themes are.Like you though, I was initially drawn by the really interesting professionals and amateurs.

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Having said that I do agree that there are many on this forum, like yourself, that have engaged them in thoughtful dialogue. But in the majority of threads there is someone like crashfrog that will come in with the tooth fairy thing, (which is insulting to all people of faith whether they are YEC or not), and the whole tone of the thread changes.

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I want to point out that you are putting all the emphasis on non-believers not showing the utmost respect for the beliefs of theists. However, you make no mention of the beleivers who not only misrepresent, caricature, and insult non-believers but also those who are theists but do not believe as they do. Why exactly should one group be exempt from restrictions and the other not? I am not advocating flame wars, but you are laying all the blame on one side. The number of rational and civil YECs, IDists, and biblical literalists is vanishingly small.Rudeness, references to tooth fairies and pink unicorns have been present at the site since I arrived here years ago. The lack of interesting debates is something relatively new. I don't think the general tone of the participants explains the change in quality of the debates IMO.