[Osx-nutters] The separation of church and state.

[Chris Gehlker]

On Dec 5, 2007, at 12:45 AM, Mark Smith wrote:

>
> On 05.12.2007, Chris Gehlker wrote:
>
> /something like:
>
>> you don't come across as having good persuasion skills
>
> and you do ?
>
> There isn't really any effort at persuading you on my part here and I
> hope, for your sake, that you are not doing your best to "persuade"
> me. You should choose your sources more carefully at the very least.
>
> I consider myself to be competent (but not unusually so) in
> persuasion. Its always easy to tell at the outset in a debate, whether
> there is any scope for persuasion at all and which persons involved
> could be persuaded to some extent.
>
> I've identified yourself as a lost cause in this regard. Stefano, who
> is far more "spiritually philosophical" than me (and I suspect
> yourself), seems to be more open to reason than you seem to be.
> (Despite his difficulties with mathematical modelling.)
>
> Some people react extremely defensively to any debate that
> destabilizes religion.
This  one sentence is comprehensible.
>
>
> Anyone who *doggedly* defends "belief", or more precisely "faith" as
> being compatible with scientific thought, is obviously not going to be
> trumped by mere facts.
>
> They see themselves as being on a plain *above* the mere factual.

I have no idea what you are talking about in this whole post except  
for the one identified sentence. If I am trying to persuade you of  
anything it is that your strategy of somehow 'excluding creationists  
from the table' sounds like a looser, but I am not  at all sure of  
that because I don't understand what you are advocating in practical  
terms. I looked back over your post and I'm just missing the big  
picture of what you are trying to convey. At one point you say that  
the argument for evolution is clearly more "robust" and yet you say  
"be very afraid."

Let me make my position very clear. I do not share your fear, if it is  
your fear, that the creationists are 'winning', at least in the US.  
They gained a toehold in a handful of school districts but that has  
been reversed. Two strategies have been employed against them  
effectively. One is David's of letting them present falsifyable  
hypothesis and then falsifying them. The other,  which actually proved  
effective in court, is simply to use their internal communications to  
prove that ID people are actually creationist who are just pretending  
to advance a scientific theory.

--
Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to  
those who do not wish to hear it.
-Samuel Butler, writer (1835-1902)