Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   The sub-thread I started was related to the mocking of other people
> > because of their beliefs, not to whether creationists are right or wrong.

> Actually, looking back, nobody was much mocking Ken Ham. The original 
> author mocked the museum, and creationism, even while admiring the 
> execution of the concept.

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

  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.

  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.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   Regardless of what is the truth, that just seems to be mocking for the
> > sake of mocking. "Hahahaa! Look at all those idiots!"

> By the way, do you object to the mocking, or the desire to mock, or the 
> mocking not to his face?  All of the above?  Would it be OK to think 
> everything this guy said but just not say it out loud, because it's a 
> politeness thing? Or do you think it's wrong to be so harsh of someone's 
> fringe ideas at all?

  I think a serious counter-argumentation of the false claims would have
been more constructive and instructive.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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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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Warp wrote:
>   I think a serious counter-argumentation of the false claims would have
> been more constructive and instructive.

Errr, where does one start? :-) It's all been done before, firstly. 
Secondly, much of the mocking was in the form of pointing out the false 
claims and contradictions and laughing, because they were so obviously 
false.

Anyway, that didn't really answer the question. Do you think it's wrong 
to be so confident (arrogant) as to be able to dismiss unsupported 
nonsense out of hand, or do you only object to actually offending the 
believers of the unsupported nonsense?

My take on it is yah, while it's *possible* all that stuff is true, the 
likelihood is *so* low that it's best to ignore that possibility. Like 
not bothering to wear lightning rods in your hat unless it's raining. 
It's not that I know The Ultimate Truth, but that Creationism isn't any 
more likely than Thor and Zeus making lightning or Apollo towing the sun 
across the sky.  I won't be buying fur coats for Ragnarok either.

-- 
   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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>> Again, there is no way to disprove such a lack of creativity, but
>> why would you replace a perfectly acceptable explanation by a
>> rabbit out of a hat?
> 
> The simplest explanation is not always the correct explanation. 
> Simplicity is no proof.
> 

Ever heard of Occam's razor?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

"The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make
as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no
difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis
or theory."

Finding a more complicated way of explaining things is usually easy. 
Going to the simplest is more valuable.

-- 
Vincent

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Warp wrote:
> andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>>  From reading this thread and others before this, I know that you have a 
>> rather different idea of what evolution theory comprises than what is 
>> common in my surroundings.
> 
>   That's curious, given that I have made absolutely no claims about the
> evolution theory. 
No you have, you said for instance that: 'You don't have to accept the 
entire evolution theory as true in order to accept the similarities 
between the hearts and take advantage of that'. Which is incompatible 
with my definition of evolution. Simply because it implicitly assumes 
that there is an 'entire' version of it and hence a probably less entire 
one. So my question remains: what do you think the evolution theory is 
about?

I also note that you did not answer any question on how you can apply 
any knowledge derived from mice to humans without a common ancestor. You 
don't have to, but I am still curious.

>(The only claim I have made even remotely related to
> that is the generic claim that it's perfectly valid to doubt a theory,
> any theory, even if you can't offer any plausible alternative. Note,
> however, that I'm not saying *I* doubt some theory here. I'm just saying
> that it's *valid* to doubt a theory.)
> 
>   People tend to read too much between the lines.
> 
>>>   Similar physiology between animals and humans doesn't prove evolution.
>>> It only proves that there's similar physiology between animals and humans.
>>> (*Evidence* is different from *proof*.)
>>>
>> The physiology is so mind boggling similar that the only explanation is 
>> a common descent.
> 
>   "I can't think of any other explanation" is no proof. Really strong
> evidence yes, but no proof.
> 
>> You can not *disprove* that at some point in time both 
>> species were independently created. But why would the creator copy 
>> everything from one design to another, including all the bugs, patches 
>> and obsolete code?
> 
>   Now you are talking philosophically. Philosophical arguments are no
> proof of anything.
> 
>> Again, there is no way to disprove such a lack of 
>> creativity, but why would you replace a perfectly acceptable explanation 
>> by a rabbit out of a hat?
> 
>   The simplest explanation is not always the correct explanation.
> Simplicity is no proof.
> 

To all these I can only say that I though I made it clear that I know 
that rabbits are always an alternative for an explanation. What your 
arguments boils down to is that because you cannot refute a claim that 
the world was created yesterday at 13:26 including all memories of 
earlier events, you cannot prove anything that happened before that time.
You may also want to reread from 'Goedel, Escher, Bach' the 'Birthday 
Cantatatata' between Achilles and the tortoise about proof systems and 
the meta proof system that you need to confirm the proof system and the 
meta-meta proof system ...

Anyway, I choose to live in a rabbit free world (the philosophical ones 
I mean, I don't mind the physical ones).

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Vincent Le Chevalier <gal### [at] libertyallsurfspamfr> wrote:
> > The simplest explanation is not always the correct explanation. 
> > Simplicity is no proof.

> Ever heard of Occam's razor?

  It doesn't make what I said above untrue.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> >   That's curious, given that I have made absolutely no claims about the
> > evolution theory. 
> No you have, you said for instance that: 'You don't have to accept the 
> entire evolution theory as true in order to accept the similarities 
> between the hearts and take advantage of that'. Which is incompatible 
> with my definition of evolution.

  What I said does not say anything about the evolution theory.
Accepting something which can be used as evidence pro evolution is not
the same thing as accepting evolution.

> I also note that you did not answer any question on how you can apply 
> any knowledge derived from mice to humans without a common ancestor. You 
> don't have to, but I am still curious.

  You are asking me to give arguments against the evolution theory.
I won't. I have never claimed the evolution theory is false (nor that
it's true, for that matter). I don't want to get into a discussion on
whether the evolution theory is true or not. You can try to drag me on
that direction all you want, but I won't go there.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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> Vincent Le Chevalier <gal### [at] libertyallsurfspamfr> wrote:
>>> The simplest explanation is not always the correct explanation. 
>>> Simplicity is no proof.
> 
>> Ever heard of Occam's razor?
> 
>   It doesn't make what I said above untrue.
> 

Depends on what you mean by "correct".

If we have a set of experimental facts and observations, and two 
competing theories that explain the facts, the consensus is that the 
correct theory is the simplest.

Short of bringing new facts to the table, the more complex theory has no 
purpose. But apparently you don't mind adding complexities for the sake 
of it.

I know you don't want philosophy, but really it all boils down to what 
you mean by truth or correctness. You always seem to be talking about 
some definitive and complete truth, which does not exist in the 
scientific world. Religion on the other hand is all about it...

-- 
Vincent

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Warp wrote:
> andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>>>   That's curious, given that I have made absolutely no claims about the
>>> evolution theory. 
>> No you have, you said for instance that: 'You don't have to accept the 
>> entire evolution theory as true in order to accept the similarities 
>> between the hearts and take advantage of that'. Which is incompatible 
>> with my definition of evolution.
> 
>   What I said does not say anything about the evolution theory.

It does, it says it is something that can be subdivided. See also my 
next lines that you snipped.

> Accepting something which can be used as evidence pro evolution is not
> the same thing as accepting evolution.

you lost me there. I don't see what this open door has to do with this 
discussion. Possibly caused by the misconception that I want you to 
accept evolution, see also below.

>> I also note that you did not answer any question on how you can apply 
>> any knowledge derived from mice to humans without a common ancestor. You 
>> don't have to, but I am still curious.
> 
>   You are asking me to give arguments against the evolution theory.

No, not at all. You claim that you know a way to reconcile applying 
knowledge from animal experiments to humans and not believing that they 
have a common ancestor. That made me curious because I don't know one. I 
am not asking whether you believe it or not. It is just for the 
intellectual fun of it.

> I won't. I have never claimed the evolution theory is false (nor that
> it's true, for that matter). I don't want to get into a discussion on
> whether the evolution theory is true or not. You can try to drag me on
> that direction all you want, but I won't go there.
>

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