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From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Sitting on the Seashore
Message-ID: <426@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 25-Mar-85 14:01:51 EST
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.426
Posted: Mon Mar 25 14:01:51 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 28-Mar-85 06:24:28 EST
References: <822@uwmacc.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Distribution: net
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 46
Summary: 

In article <822@uwmacc.UUCP> dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (Paul DuBois) writes:
> > [Ernest Hua / Keebler]
> > So you still insist on playing cheap debating games?!
> I thought maybe you needed some company!

It seems obvious to me that Paul is gratified by pulling our tails.
Instead of focusing the debate on the subject, he is trying to defocus
as much as possible onto trechnique of argument.  And he's not even doing
that well.

> > Why are you excusing your vagueness/ambiguity by saying that
> > evolutionists do it too?  Is this valid?  Really, Mr. Dubois!
> 
> I'm not excusing myself, I'm saying that while such might be true for
> me, it is also true of you.  The inference that I'm making an excuse
> is incorrect.

Denial of the tu quoque fallacy of argument doesn't make it any less so.
You are merely evading admitting that your argument was wrong.

> Well, from the glee with which some evolutionary writers (J. Huxley, for
> example) heralded the "liberation" of science from its religious
> framework, one would get the idea that science was at one time done
> from within that framework.  And what did that framework have to say
> about creation?  It was accepted.

Oh, was it accepted?  Science (as we now think of it) is fairly recent.
I think a pretty fair argument can be made that science was done in spite
of that obstructing framework.  Great advances were almost always made by
rejecting applicable parts of the framework.  Nor were the Galileos and
Darwins the only scientists who rejected the religious framework.

> Your argument also contains within itself the seeds of its own
> destruction.  Leaving creationism vague doesn't make it difficult to
> challenge.  You demonstrate that, by asserting the vagueness, and
> attacking creationism on that ground.  Your refute yourself!

So eager to goad, you leap into erroneous arguments.  Difficult is not
impossible.  No self refutation occurred there.  Sheesh.

I think, Paul, you'd enjoy reading about the Forteans.  They operate in much
the same vein as you do.  You can get a start in Martin Gardiner's
"Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science".
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh