Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Reasons people debate ID on the Internet, particularly UD, TSZ, PandasThumb, TelicThoughts, ARN

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The ID debate takes place among a relatively small number people on the internet. I guess maybe there are 50 or so regular viewers of UD. Most threads have views around 300 views, which are not all unique. So why is time invested in these debates? Surely the UD and TSZ blogs aren’t reaching and extremely wide audience, and the other blogs and forums are relatively quiet. So why is there so much time spent in debate? I list here Mark Frank’s viewpoint and mine. Readers may offer their reasons.

Mark Frank in response to my query wrote:

Just noticed this from Sal

If its not too personal, and because I want to understand, not condemn, if you believe there is no God, why spend time debating ID proponents? For myself, if I believed there was no God, I’d probably be out there partying or something more enjoyable than the shouting matches on the net, spending time arguing with people (ID proponents and creationists) who are presumably deluded.

Good question! I often think I should spend time doing something more constructive but it is fun and slightly addictive. I find the arguments for ID intellectually interesting – much more so than the arguments for astrology. I am convinced they are faulty, but not obviously so, and it is interesting to understand why.

Also it is interesting to study online debate – how people behave in ways they would never contemplate were they face to face.

Finally there is an element among many IDists here I find slightly threatening and maybe I can contribute a little bit by publically confronting it from time to time. It is not actually to do with ID. I am concerned about the absolute certainty that many in this community have that their religion means that they know what is morally correct. In my view the very worst of the things to happen in this world have arisen from people who felt they had discovered some principle or other which means they know what is right. The principle is not necessarily religious – communism was another such principle, so was the French revolution. It is particularly dangerous when it is mixed with a fear that others are threatening that certainty. I absolutely don’t include you in this. You seem very able to think pragmatically and for yourself.

I am not very good at this. Lizzie is brilliant. Unfailingly polite, takes (almost) everyone seriously, – yet clear, logical and determined in making her case. Just by being a model debater I suspect she is winning over many lurkers.

My reasons:

If someone asked me why I spend time on the net arguing ID, it is in part because I’ve had doubt about its truthfulness. The process of debate has reassured me of some ideas, cast doubt on others, and falsified still others.

The net has been a public diary of my search for truth…

Right now, I find it personally difficult to think the universe and life were mindless accidents. I don’t think Darwinian evolution is true, and I don’t have reason to believe OOL will ever be solved.

Comment 5: Holy Rollers

[posted by scordova to assist News desk for 1 week with news and commentary]

Comments
JDH, Could you post your comment on the soul thread itself? I'll respond to it there. I almost missed it, because I wasn't expecting anyone to respond here.keiths
July 9, 2013
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JDH
a big deal is made about the fact that the right brain has no ability to use words. Then how in the world is an abstract concept like atheism even communicated to the RHS
Speech production is certainly fairly left-lateralised, as are the phonological aspects of reading, but verbal comprehension is quite strongly bilateral, as is the semantic component of reading - i.e. meaning. In fact patients with right hemisphere deficits often have quite serious verbal comprehension difficulties, including rather over-literal understanding of language - the RH seems to be important for seeing the "big picture", the LH for getting things in the right order. But most functions are strongly bilateral, which is why people can recover function after quite serious lesions. In fact one reason proposed to explain why women do rather better after strokes than men is that their (our) brains tend to be rather less strongly lateralized.Elizabeth B Liddle
July 8, 2013
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keiths Could you please change the statement
It amazes me that so many commenters here believe in an immaterial soul of the kind being discussed, yet no one has been able to defend it against the split-brain evidence.
to ".. no one has been able to [ convince keiths there is any flaw in the argument of ] the split-brain evidence." I can easily defeat the split-brain evidence, it's not even hard. The question is, as always, will you accept the evidence presented. My inclination is that you will not. 1. The problem with contradictions: A big deal was made of the contradictions between right side and left side thinking. That sometimes they contradicted. Yet we don't even need to cut the brain to see that. a) Try telling your body not to breathe. b) Try telling a cut not to heal itself. c) Try telling your immune system not to produce histamine ( without using a OTC medicine ) d) Try telling your leg not to go up when the doctor hits just below the patella with a hammer. We already know that the body is hard wired to give certain responses and the soul can not control these. As a matter of fact, a sick person can be brain-washed to make their body give responses that contradict their very core beliefs. When we injure a brain, why should we not get some responses which the soul can not control, and that contradict the beliefs of the soul. 2. The problem with words. In the video - a big deal is made about the fact that the right brain has no ability to use words. Then how in the world is an abstract concept like atheism even communicated to the RHS. It is interesting if I viewed the video correctly, that the LHS continued to state the truth and the RHS that lost its ability to use words gave the contradictory answers. This only shows that the brain injury in this particular case left the left hand side in control and the RHS in a strange state. This is consistent with God's judgment. God says it is by our words that we will be judged. It is no surprise that the soul is integrated with the ability to use words. Nothing I have presented here gives positive evidence for a soul. There is enough of that already in the fact that I can create information. ( Like this response to you ). But what it does do is show you that what you think, because of your confirmation bias, is an iron clad argument for the non-existence in the soul, is in reality just another inconclusive experimental finding.JDH
July 8, 2013
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I don't consider the activity most of these so-called-critics engage in to be debating.Mung
July 7, 2013
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I’ll append another reason to my list: 8. If you care about the truth, then one of the best things you can do is to take your ideas to a venue where most people disagree with you and are highly motivated to find fault with your arguments. If they succeed, then you’ve learned something. If they fail, then you gain confidence in your position.
Well said. :-)scordova
July 7, 2013
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keiths:
It amazes me that so many commenters here believe in an immaterial soul of the kind being discussed...
That is not true. Not one commenter- other than you and perhaps other ignorant atheists- here believe in the immaterial soul of the kind being discussed. many commenters here have told you that. You are just a pathological liar.
8. If you care about the truth, then one of the best things you can do is to take your ideas to a venue where most people disagree with you and are highly motivated to find fault with your arguments.
And your "arguments" wrt the soul and unguided evolution have been shredded and yet you still persist. Who wouldn't be fascinated by your pathological nonsense?Joe
July 7, 2013
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I'll append another reason to my list: 8. If you care about the truth, then one of the best things you can do is to take your ideas to a venue where most people disagree with you and are highly motivated to find fault with your arguments. If they succeed, then you've learned something. If they fail, then you gain confidence in your position. Granville's thread and the immaterial soul thread are two good examples of the latter. The immaterial soul thread is particularly remarkable. It amazes me that so many commenters here believe in an immaterial soul of the kind being discussed, yet no one has been able to defend it against the split-brain evidence.keiths
July 7, 2013
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Moderator - Re "discouragement" (my previous post at #40): how does this site work? You've moderated my third ever post (#40, above), for which many thanks, but my first and second posts (on 3rd July's "Where is the difference here?", at 2.19pm and 2.39pm on 5th July) are *still* awaiting moderation! More than 70 posts have been published on that thread since I put my first comment/enquiry up, and the questions they raise could now be somewhat stale.Thomas2
July 7, 2013
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Kairosfocus, I was able to get the ebook version of Meyer's book the first day. It was fairly inexpensive. I know you live outside the US and also know that Amazon, Apple and Barnes and Noble charge a lot more for ebooks in most countries so it may not be economical to do it in certain places. I also bought the physical copy since for certain books I want to be able to see the charts more closely and to show it to other people. Hope your copy arrives soon. Meyer discusses the non coding information in several places and I am a little bit fuzzy on it. It is a new topic for me and was one of the eye opening parts of the book. Most of the book is a thorough review of information that I have seen before but the different types of epigenetic information is new and comes from developmental biology. It is apparently more complex than the information in the genome and resides in various places in the egg. A lot of the information resides in the membrane of the egg and is composed of various types of molecules, and some of the most prevalent are sugar molecules. So sugar molecules may be acting like nucleotides and these molecules don't seem to be coding for something like proteins but are acting as forces that drive the gestation process. Actually more incredible sounding then the encoding process. As I say my understanding is very fuzzy but it looks like this is where a lot of the discussion on evolution is headed.jerry
July 7, 2013
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Sal, My guess that the web analytics you quoted are wrong and underestimate the actual values for the web site. I have my own business site and did a similar analysis and the information from http://digsitesvalue.net was about 1/4 of what Google tells me is happening. Also it does not include one key measure and that is new visitors to the site which can be gotten on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. That would be an interesting statistics given the discussion and someone who has control of the site should post the information. They must be using Google Analytics since they set up the script in the source code to do this.jerry
July 7, 2013
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My longer list of reasons for participating in these debates, including a couple from an earlier comment:
I’ll post a longer list later, but two of my reasons for debating ID on the Internet are: 1. It’s fun! I don’t watch TV, so much of my entertainment comes via the Internet. ID debates can be very entertaining. 2. I was a Christian and a creationist in my youth, long before the advent of the Web. I think my deconversion would have happened sooner and gone much more smoothly if I had had access to arguments, pro and con, on the Web. (More on that subject in this thread.) When I am posting, I think about my younger self and the possibility that some young gal or guy out there, growing up in similar circumstances and beginning to have doubts, might — just might — benefit from from what I am writing.
3. I've done some fun sleuthing, such as
a) exposing Bill Dembski as the frequency-shifted voice of Judge Jones in the infamous and infantile fart animation (link: Dembski confesses), and b) exposing the content of Caroline Crocker's classroom slides when she complained of being unjustly terminated by her employer.
4. They say that the best way to learn a subject is to teach it, and I think this is also true of debating. I've clarified my thinking and learned a tremendous amount by participating in these debates. 5. It's made my writing better. The ability to craft a persuasive argument improves with practice. 6. After Dover and the Wedge Document, I think it's important to keep an eye on creationists and IDers and to publicly discredit their ideas. 7. The psychology of creationists and IDers is fascinating. Bornagain77, Joe G, kairosfocus, DaveScot, Eric Anderson, Sal Cordova, Barry Arrington -- who wouldn't be fascinated by these folks?keiths
July 7, 2013
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Charles B. Dumas:
Funny one, is this The Liddle that got destroy by upright Bipedal?
Not in this universe. Did you make a wrong turn at the wormhole?keiths
July 6, 2013
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Querius,
In fact, I don’t remember EVER seeing a response by anyone that reads anything like, “Gee, I think you’re right. Thanks for clearing up my misconception.” Have you?
It happened to me just a couple of days ago. keiths:
Lizzie, One correction. You wrote:
People form at the cost of increased entropy in the food they consume, which themselves are local entropy decrease gained by virtue of the steadily increasing entropy in the sun.
It’s not the entropy increase of the sun that compensates for the entropy decrease of food production. Rather, it’s the entropy increase of Earth’s surroundings. I explained this to Eric here.
Lizzie:
Thanks, keiths :)
And:
I am always open to counter-argument. Indeed, keiths pointed out an important error I had made, which was to think that any local thermodynamic entropy increase on earth was “paid for” by decreased solar entropy. This is not the case – even if we consider the earth a closed system, local increases in entropy are “paid for” by entropy decreases in the immediate surroundings on earth.
keiths
July 6, 2013
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JDH #43 Understood - thanks for apologising.Mark Frank
July 6, 2013
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One more thing. I'd rather be proved wrong or educated than to "win" an argument. In fact, I don't remember EVER seeing a response by anyone that reads anything like, "Gee, I think you're right. Thanks for clearing up my misconception." Have you? But isn't this how we learn? When I was a kid, I always wondered about artists' conceptions and museum displays of saber-toothed cats. Their jaws were always wide open (I mean the cats' jaws, of course) to the point of dislocation, and even with their mouths improbably wide, it would seem as though they would be unable to bite anything much larger than a gerbil. Is it possible that their canines could be simply decorative or used for intimidation? Was there any evidence that these large cats used their canines for digging or maybe peeling bark off a tree? Did you ever wonder about this too? Then, many years later, I stumbled across the web site of a university project looking into exactly this question! I was amazed at what they found and the evidences for their conclusions about saber-tooth cat behavior, including skeletal stress fractures, and broken canines. If you're interested, here's one of many interesting links on the subject: http://www.pnas.org/content/104/41/16010.longQuerius
July 6, 2013
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For my part, I very much enjoy the articles here! The discussions that follow are also often interesting (however, the really long posts are tedious). I like to read the challenges, arguments (as long as the participants are fair), and to follow the links that people include. I post a comment when I want to question a statement or conclusion, have something to add from my experience or thinking, or want to add a little fun or humor to the exchanges. I value posts that are cogent, relevant, and terse by people who are insightful, well-informed, and respectful. Conversely, I distain posts that employ techniques to "win" such as ad hominem attacks ("Obviously you don't know anything about Science"), browbeating, word avalanches, demands for trivial definitions, and so on. QueriusQuerius
July 6, 2013
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Mark, I apologize profusely for the way I phrased that. I don't think you are being dishonest as in telling a lie. Please notice that I did not say that believers in A/M are lying. What I mean by being dishonest is that believers in A/M allow contradictions to exist in their basic thinking that they can not logically solve. So please accept my apology I do not want anyone to think I was accusing them of lying. BTW - You could turn the tables and make the same argument to me. You could say I am dishonest in that I allow seeming contradictions ( like how can we have free will and yet God is omniscient). The problem is that if you believe in materialism being all that there is, you can't appeal to there being a God who, due to something beyond our grasp, is able to make sense of the apparent contradictions. I can believe that because that is consistent with my stated belief.JDH
July 6, 2013
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JDH
No one else I have read is honest about the ramifications of a) the belief that one can’t really believe, b) the choice that one really can’t choose or c) the proposition that one really can’t really propose anything.
While you may think the arguments for materialism/atheism are wrong, it is tough to assume that we are being dishonest. What would be the motive? It would be so nice if there was a father figure watching over us and eternal life. I think that those who believe that some kind of theism/dualism is necessary to explain belief, free will and morality just haven't thought it through - but I don't for a moment suppose they are being dishonest.Mark Frank
July 6, 2013
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The reason I participate in ID decisions is actually two fold. 1. I sincerely apologize to everyone who holds that materialism and atheism are viable positions, but I just don't see it. One may argue that many intelligent ( whatever that means ) people are atheist and/or materialist, but my thinking on that is that this is not necessarily a point in A/M's favor. It seems to me that it takes some amount of cleverness to be able to cover up the self contradictions that allow one to believe in the absurdity that is materialism. I realize however, that I am a flawed human being, and sometimes I don't see the obvious things right in front of me. I keep looking for a belief in A/M that is internally consistent. The closest I have found is Will Provine. No one else I have read is honest about the ramifications of a) the belief that one can't really believe, b) the choice that one really can't choose or c) the proposition that one really can't really propose anything. IMHO A/M is hopelessly self-contraditiory and I have only read foolish arguments and obfuscation counter to this despite participating in several discussions. 2. I really want people who IMHO decide to be honest about the ramifications of atheism/materialism and come to the again IMHO conclusion that they can no longer keep up the facade to consider my Lord Jesus Christ. Again, I apologize for the harsh sounding language. I just have never ever seen a logical argument for atheism/materialism.JDH
July 6, 2013
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I suspect that there are rather more than just 50 regular viewers - just that most don't post (probably because they, like me, haven't time to get drawn into long discussions,or possibly because they find the process discouraging: this is my third post ever on this site - my first was 24 hours ago, [2.19pm, blog time, on 5th July], and I'm still waiting for it to be moderated!)Thomas2
July 6, 2013
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KF,
For the news feature maybe one of those cycling panels?
Excellent idea. That way, active discussion threads wouldn't be pushed off the front page so quickly.keiths
July 6, 2013
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KF, I think the FYI-FTR posts would be a great addition that help bring together multiple lines of argumentation that sometimes get spread across multiple posts.TheMapleKind
July 6, 2013
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It’s better than being associated with company I haven’t chosen!
Speaking of being associated with company I haven't chosen: https://uncommondescent.com/humor/dissing-a-pro-id-author-without-reading-his-book-will-sal-do-a-nick-matzke-immitation/scordova
July 6, 2013
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KN: You seem to be choosing the company you wish to be associated with. KF
It's better than being associated with company I haven't chosen!Kantian Naturalist
July 6, 2013
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FYI-FTR.kairosfocus
July 6, 2013
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KN: You seem to be choosing the company you wish to be associated with. KFkairosfocus
July 6, 2013
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For the news feature maybe one of those cycling panels?kairosfocus
July 6, 2013
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I'll echo Mark Frank's and RDFish's reasons for participating in these discussions. In addition, I take a morbid interest in "the culture wars" -- I find them fascinating, but also a monumental distraction from the really important political and economic issues -- so the relation between the "Darwinism"/"intelligent design" meta-debate and "the culture wars" intrigues me -- perhaps to an unhealthy degree. Alan -- I knew that Russell's position was "theoretically, agnosticism; practically, atheism," though I hadn't read that specific essay. I think that makes for a perfectly fine example of an honest atheism.Kantian Naturalist
July 6, 2013
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I like these debates because it exposes the ignorance of evolutionists as well as the total emptiness of their position. It's fun to continually expose all of that and watch them flail away in an attempt to distract from those facts. The most hilarious part was when keiths sed that unguided evolution has the evidence to support it and then presented evidence that has nothing to do with unguided evolution!Joe
July 6, 2013
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Thanks BA77!scordova
July 6, 2013
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