That wasn't a strawman Mookie, you clearly stated the levels of science education has suffered since Harry Potter was appointed as head of American science.
Don't try and run from your statements

10 points for Gryffindor! :rotfl2:

When metaphors get taken as proof, all intellectuality has been corrupted and all reason is dead and all further communication has become useless. Avoid such people where they stay for themselves, but prevent them from coming to power, and fight them where they already have come to power. For the power you leave to them, they will turn against you.

So you don't have a problem with someone saying that anyone with a specific belief should be killed? Hmm - maybe they should have said that about people who like ferrets, or just kill all the finnish type folks who believe they are Scandinavian instead of Russian? Would that have been "quite civil"?

It's not me be being holier than thou - its simply expecting a little common decency. It isn't just here - its been running rampant around here for a while, and as I said - its sad to see. It isn't appropriate to call for the death of any large group of people for their belief, as well as its wrong to take one idiot's opinion and use it to mock an entire group. Those kinds of activities - not just in this thread but throughout the forum, have simply gotten way too old. I don't gripe about it in every thread - because I don't respond in every thread. Recent events have made this the "straw that broke the camels back" for me - and so I chose to say something.

I think the guy is a moron too - I got no problem with saying that. That doesn't justify the hatemongering that followed against a whole group though.

Now that - and some of the earlier ones (video included) were hilarious.

Poke fun at the person who makes a stupid statement. Don't assume that one person's opinion applies to everyone in a group. Treat people with differing views than you with a modicum of respect. Are those things too much to expect here anymore? Apparently so....

Sure, I have a problem if someone says something like that.
Andy's post to me comes off as having a go at creationists' stupidity (in his opinion), not calling for them to be killed.
Guess it's open for interpretation. :hmmm:


GT just being GT, it's a rollercoaster with ups and downs.
What got me in your post was the bit about newcomers coming here and being
put off by threads like this. Again, I must say that in my opinion, this thread
has been so far civil, given the subject at hand.


I agree with the rest of your post more or less. :yep:

Oh the drama.
Can we have a subsim award for overacting?:rotfl2:

I believe in the possibilty of intelligent design, but that also means the possibility that the Deists were right, that the Designer made it exactly the way science sees it, evolution and all. As for "blackballing", it looks to me that they've done a bit more than just "concede there is evidence". They've tried to promote "evidence" that isn't there, and shown themselves to be poor scientists, at least in that area.

Just my opinion, of course.

But the "documentary" did exactly that. "Intelligent Design" is the new term for "Biblical Creation", pure and simple. It's fine that they believe that, but to try to disguise it is dishonest in the extreme.

I'm not passionate about it at all. The only thing I care about is honesty, and I pointed out just a few of the places in which the filmmaker was anything but honest.

I haven't ridiculed you at all. That you take my honest criticism of the film as personal hostility toward you shows, to me, that your own passion might be controlling your thoughts instead of the other way around. My beef is with the filmmaker, not you.

Well, now, one has to understand the nature of passion in order to recognize it's signature. There are many forms of passion but for all intents and purposes, it is something that elicits emotion. Emotion tends to cause arousal.
The passion I was referring to deals with superfluity of response. There are reasonable responses and then there are responses that rise above that which is warranted or necessary. For instance, the arousal that would cause someone to pick apart another member's post, almost sentence by sentence while interjecting specific words with suggestion of attitude that would insinuate or suggest that the poster is ridiculous, uncouth, or any other derogatory indication.
Then there are shorter replies where passion is evident when those replies attempt to suggest something, or anything negative about the poster. Passion is the reason that homicide victims are sometime found in a state of overkill; i.e., they've been stabbed or shot many many times beyond that which was needed to cause the victim's death.
Want to see passion in a forum? Just look for overkill or supererogatory responses. That is, going beyond what is needed to make ones point or ridiculing/belittling another in order to make that point.:03:

Are you kidding? There are some forums that invite serious debate, but most of them openly ridicule any opinion different from their own, and don't allow actual debate at all.

I can see and understand not allowing debate on a forum, but ridiculing another is not debate. It's childish. Just because other forums/people behave in that manner doesn't mean we should all follow suit.

The only thing I addressed was your seeming incredulity that some religious forums would do that. I did not suggest that Subsim should do the same.

Point noted.:salute:
I don't get a lot of time to forum around.

Answer the question. You suggested a source, one person said they liked it without seeing it and a couple of others said they thought it was rubbish.
Reasons were given why the movie is simply crap.
So where are these passions you are claiming?

I think you are not interested in debate at all and were just chancing your arm thinking people hadn't seen the movie already and didn't know it for what it is.

However there is passion in this topic, its the sort which can take this....
I suspect the same technique would work with creationists. ;)
And turn it miracuously into this......
So you don't have a problem with someone saying that anyone with a specific belief should be killed?

Who said anyone should be killed? Nobody...

I thought I already did answer it. And yes, my OP does clearly indicate that some people may not have seen it. You're also correct in assuming that I have no interest in debate. It was also clear, to me anyway, that my OP was merely a suggestion about a movie that I thought might raise some eyebrows. Forgive me, but I completely missed your point about "So you don't have a problem with someone saying that anyone with a specific belief should be killed?".

Agreed!

Not sure why this point was even made.

Perhaps I made you and now control you through a chip in your head. You can create all the hypothetical scenarios you wish, so long as you realize it doesn't change reality or comprise evidence of anything.

I don't understand what you mean with the first statement, and I also disagree with the second part. I think you need to read up on the scientific method.

In other words, they have nothing.

Define "bashing". To point out that the ToE is proven and that the Bible has no evidence going for it isn't "bashing", it's stating facts, just like it was a statement of fact back when they discovered the Earth is round, and that it orbits the Sun.

I also disagree with your sweeping assessment that everyone who bashes science or religion does so for reasons of personal insecurity.

Of course, but the question of evolution is like the question of whether or not the Earth is round. Offensive and hurtful thought it might be to some to hear, one side has all the evidence and the other side has none.

Sure, the Earth could be flat, the US could really be just off the coast of Australia, and Apollo 11 could have veered off course and accidentally landed on some other rocky moon without realizing. But as a wise man once said, "it's possible for one side to be simply wrong".


I think you've misunderstood something fundamental about reality: it doesn't care what humans do.

Firstly, Dawkins isn't "mr. Evolution" by any stretch of the word. Science isn't a religion where we blindly believe things with no evidence because prophets tell us so, and you can damage that belief by attacking those prophets. The scientific method is based on actual observation of reality, and testable hypotheses.

Put another way: let's say a murderer says the Earth is round, while a minister who has devoted his entire life to helping people says the Earth is flat and that 2+2=22.
The killer, of course, is correct. You can jump up and down and yell "but he's a murderer, and he smells bad, and he stutters when you ask him questions, and he drinks all day, why do you listen to him?!", but it doesn't matter who he is or what he's done, it matters whether or not he's correct.

Unlike religion, the scientific method is not about upholding traditional tribal beliefs, but about discovering how the world actually works. Personal attacks, of course, are completely irrelevant in this regard. All that matters is evidence. Dawkins could've pissed his pants and fainted and then gone stark raving mad in some documentary, and it wouldn't matter one thing, because the ToE would still be proven, and the evidence would still be there.

Are you referring to the clip where they dishonestly cut together two clips that had nothing to do with each others?

I know. So are Michael Moore's documentaries. They've litterally manipulated hundreds of thousands of people. It's sad.

Ummmm, nope. It might seem so from the outside because of how rigidly it tests new ideas (which it has to, because, of course, it's about discovery, not tradition or believers' feelings), but it's the best tool we have, and it does strive towards discovery, not dogma.

Don't. There are people out there who actually are subjected to this kind of feelings, and you trying to elevate light-hearted jokes on an internet forum to murderous "hatefulness" is an insult to all of them.
For the love of God, grow up.

That is outstandingly well put.

No it isn't. Saying that the book of Genesis has been proven wrong is a fact. Saying that the Bible as a whole has been proven wrong is an opinion. A large number of Christians believe in Evolution, including a member of Darwin's party. The fact that we evolved from fish doesn't mean that Jesus didn't exist.