Warp wrote:
>> While mocking people is indeed rude (even tho I don't rule it out), how 
>> do you feel about mocking ideas?
> 
>   I think you are resorting to a technicality of definitions.

I'm really not. I spent quite some time developing a separation between 
my sense of self and the ideas I currently hold. If you read what I type 
carefully, you can often even see it in the way I frame statements.

> You know
> perfectly well that mocking someone's idea, which he firmly believes,

I have no evidence that Ken Ham actually believes any of that.

> will insult also the person who believes it. "I'm not making fun of the
> person, only of his ideas" may be a comforting excuse, but you know that
> the person will feel insulted too.

What if I didn't know the person held those beliefs?

Would it be wrong for me to mock Holocaust deniers if someone there is a 
Holocaust denier and I didn't know it?  That's the question I'm asking.

Sure, ethnic jokes and such can be nasty, but mainly because they're 
playing on stereotypes and such that the person can't change.

But if I mock an entire class of really bad judgement, and some stranger 
there happens to consistently and aggressively practice that bad 
judgement as well as try to get other people to practice that bad 
judgement, should I be bothered if that person gets upset?

Should I be bothered if you mock the really bad things some politician I 
voted for did?

>   Now, if you discredit his ideas with calm, rational and scientific
> well-founded argumentation, which doesn't even try to make fun of anything,
> then that's a completely different story.

But that has been done repeatedly, and it didn't help, and he's still 
trying to spread lies. Whether just for money or whether he really 
believes it, who knows?

>   I have never said it's wrong to debunk any false claims young earth
> creationists are spreading. I'm just questioning mockery as a tool for
> that.

They've already been debunked. If one still wishes to believe that in 
spite of debunking, it seems obvious that only an irrational approach 
has a possibility of changing your mind. Hence the mocking.

(Note: When I say "irrational", it doesn't necessarily mean "bad." Love 
is irrational. Religion is irrational. Stuffed animals for children are 
irrational. I just mean ... not rational. Same with illogical: Not 
necessarily bad, just not obeying Modus Ponens and all that.)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     Remember the good old days, when we
     used to complain about cryptography
     being export-restricted?

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