:: Running from the Thought Police ::

:: Thursday, March 17, 2005 ::

Index Of The Evolution/ID Correspondence Series

Because this is becoming quite long, I've decided to create a list of all posts dealing with this topic. Those posts marked by italics are those which were not sent by email but were instead povided as commentary on the blog itself. Such posts may, however, be hyperlinked to in later emails as a means of cutting down the length of that email. This post will be updated as needed.

NOTE (2 December 2005): If you land at this site after finding one of RockofIsrael8's flyers, please read this post first before reading any more of the correspondence series or dealing with Doug directly. I know a lot more about the subject of evolution now than I did when I wrote this series, and have better access to online resources to deal with the likes of Doug. You should know about them too before getting involved with him.

People Are This Stupid - My transcription of the flier originally posted by Rockofisrael8@aol.com. The bit about DNA having "electrical impusles" is a real hoot.

Response To Illogic - My rebuttal of everything on the flier, plus my summary dismissal of Intelligent Design as a faulty hypothesis. If you've ever wondered why some people are lactose intolerant, read this post.

Illogic's Response - Rockofisrael8's response to my email. Here we learn his name is Doug, and that, apparently, his only exposure to biology is through ID.

Parry, Reposte - My response to his limited rebuttals. I chastise him a lot for not reading the stuff I sent him about the "RNA World" hypothesis. There's also some good bit about enzymes getting it on with other substrates.

Interesting Bits - My thoughts on the first two pages of the PDF that Doug sent me.

My Dear Lord - My breakdown of the PDF's first real paragraph of "facts." Believe me, the rest of it is just more of the same.

Apparently, Ignorance Is Love - Doug claims his motivation is love and then makes a major leap of faith in saying that "If evolution is true, then life is pointless and meaningless."

Response Research, Part I - Looking at an article specifically cited by Doug, I find it fatally lacking in persuasive ability due to various logical fallacies, including ad hominem attacks, arguements from ignorance, false analogies, and invalid conclusions.

Response Research, Part II - Out of curiosity, I ran all the names of scientists supposedly "distinguished leaders in their fields" who support ID that Doug gave me through Google Scholar. What I found was that not one of them had published a peer reviewed article that Google could find. That I found more articles debunking these men then peer reviewed articles written by them speaks to their lack of scientific authority.

Being Nice Takes Longer - Instead of assuming that Doug the Creationist has a firm background in biology (which, for all the terms he tosses about, seems the case), I methodically went step by step through my reasoning using as simple terminology as I could come up with. Consequently, this email to Doug is the longest yet in the series. I had posted an early "preview" of this post, which you can read instead if you don't want to read the whole thing.

Read First, Then Reply - Doug reads through my response, doesn't have time to deal with the science stuff, deals with the rest and tosses some scientific examples that would support his side if I hadn't already dealt with the methodologies to disprove them in my previous email to him.

Yes, I'm Not An Atheist, Deal With It - Because Doug hadn't had a chance to digest the email before this one, I stuck mainly to the theological side of things, referring a good deal of his scientific points to a previous blog post in this series.

Still Statistically Impaired - Doug gets back from a business trip, admits that he lost a past email of mine, and then stuffs words into my mouth.

"We Can't," The Snake Replied, "We're Adders." - Besides having the punchline of a Noah joke in the post title, I broke down the relative probablilities of the RNA World hypothesis. I also reminded Doug that the probabilities of independent events with the same outcome are added, not multiplied, all while bolding important points. After describing punctuated equilibrium, I challenged Doug to provide ID-inspired explainations for a bunch of things. I then further challenged Doug to provide NT references to Genesis that get thrown out of whack by evolution. All in all, a busy letter.

Happy Trails To You - After running out of arguments for me to dispense with, Doug decided to take offence at my calling him a liar (even though I'd called him that - and worse - before). He then used it as an excuse to end our correspondence.

As far as I can tell, this correspondence series is now over. If it starts back up again, or if someone else drops by and wants to rehash all this, I'll probably make a new index post and link to it from here.

UPDATE, 2 December 2005: Rearing His Ugly Head - After a few google hits for Rockofisrael8, I posted a notice for anyone who runs across Doug and his drivel under the assumption that he's posted some more flyers.

UPDATE, 9 December 2005: I've since started up another series, this time with a Young Earth Creationist named Eric.

:: The Squire 10:14 PM :: email this post :: ::
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