Clearly your omniscience is slipping Taylor…my motivations do not match your projection.
You ignored my initial main point of “to overtly teach entirely unfounded beliefs to me is a crime. I cry for humanity's future.” Rather than engage in a civil discussion, you took the red meat that I dangled. So, yes, I admit to pulling the tiger’s tail here a little. (‘Manipulation’ in fact takes agreement.) This said, normally I appreciate a good discussion and drop such tidbits to weed out the more rabid reactions if they are present. So, yes, I hesitate to follow through in some cases. But not for the reasons you imply but more in the vein that there is no function in a dialectic where there is no apparent openness for exploration, sharing and/or learning. Further, we both know how easy it is to use ‘critique’ to negate any thought and/or belief. This is the power as well as the weakness of skepticism. You may appreciate the role of grand inquisitor, but it does little to elicit open process. In a different thread I even asked you if you cared about my view...my intuition was fairly clear as to how you might react and this was quickly borne out by your response of ‘no’. The almost humorous thing here is that, overall, we seem to have agreed about the main topic, although I have used different words. I’m even aghast at your cousin’s kids only owning a storybook on Noah’s arc, although I didn’t sense your emotions in your post. I have seen that on many things we seem to agree….perhaps not in temperament though. In this discussion, you have not shared whether you agree with the original or even the current theory of evolution. Perhaps you have done this elsewhere and even ad nauseam. I don’t know. I did present my feelings about teaching unfounded beliefs (creationism) as well as the possibility of critiques of Darwinism. I even went further than clog’s accurate guess about Prof Reiss’s view(s) being one of the critiques I meant when I referenced evolution. And, in addition to it I presented something from an entirely different arena when you pressed just to add spice to the discussion. In this case, an erudite scholar, scientist and practitioner. Although I had guessed some sort of comment about appeal to authority would arise from it, your “Fortunately, I have successfully maneuvered you into being slightly more forthcoming, even though you still need to route your beliefs through a third-party.”…was beyond the pale and smacks of flaming. It appears you don’t wish to address your term ‘woo’ either. This makes our interaction even more opaque to me. So, if you wish to self disclose more about how you view the topic, even a link would be nice, we could continue a discussion here or elsewhere about specifics if you like. I’m sure I could learn a lot from you. Personally, I have no bone to pick with you nor such things as Darwinism. On the other hand, if you don't want to interact in much other than sound bites or as a fanatic, flamer and meglalomaniac, that is fine with me. If you in fact, as you said, are not interested in my thoughts, this too is fine. In no way am I evangelical. Its just that, so far, I haven’t seen an intellectually honest invitation to engage let alone any true interest in the process. Unless of course, it is to argue for argumentation’s sake. This would be of absolutely no interest to me. Dialectics has its place, true, but I quickly tire of pseudo attempts at debate. And, of course, (again) you ignore the content of my posts and leap to the ad hominem. See how easy that method of ‘examination’ is? (irony, if you can’t tell) Would you like to explore in the spirit of an adventure together? Or not? If the former, I’d love to bury the hatchet. If the latter, so be it. On Sep 16, 6:23 pm, Taylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > <<I didn’t expect snarky and entrenched reactions. Silly me. >> > > What you really don't want is to expose your own beliefs to criticism, > which is why you dance all over the place in order to avoid saying > something definitive. You advance a hint of an idea and then back > away from it rapidly when someone tries to pin you down. That's hardly > an "open and critical discussion of ideas." > > Fortunately, I have successfully maneuvered you into being slightly > more forthcoming, even though you still need to route your beliefs > through a third-party. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Memphis Freethought Alliance" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/memphisfreethoughtalliance?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
