Bet51987 wrote:I didn't say anything that personal that required a pm. At least I didn't think so.
Normally, when you have a question about why a moderator did something, you should ask in a PM instead of in the forum. This is in case they had reason to keep something out of the public eye.
If they're being unreasonable, PM an admin, and if that doesn't help, then make it a public issue. But, in general, you should start with a PM and go from there.
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Bettina wrote:No matter how you use the letters ID, or who spells it, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that the intention is to prove Intellegent Design in the Universe
YOU ARE WRONG.
Really. I've said before that I'm not trying to use this as some sort of back door to trick people into believing in God. I'm not a liar; I'm not trying to deceive you. Why do you have such a hard time believing me here?
Look at a sampling of quotes from me:
Lothar wrote:"What I'm interested in is the general problem of recognizing intelligence, not the specific problem of recognizing design in biology."
"no, we're not trying to lull people in to a false sense of security so we can drop some bombshell about human origins. We're not trying to sucker anyone into accepting ID so that they'll accept the conclusions some people try to make about origins (mis)using ID. We just want to explore and develop ID as a general pursuit, and to correct people's misconceptions of what ID is."
"we're not talking about evolution or origins or selection or the stuff you THINK intelligent design means, we're talking about the abstract principles of detecting intelligence in general."
"So you think the abstract problem is interesting, but you don't think Drakona and I could honestly be interested in it? You think that's a neat problem, but think Drakona and I are only pretending to focus on that problem so we can somehow sneakily convert people even though we've said we won't?"(
read the whole post.)
"Honestly, my main use for the ideas is in textual interpretation -- in trying to understand the ideas that led to a particular set of words being written, and in particular, trying to understand which parts of the text point to actual underlying ideas vs. which parts of the text are incidental."
"It would be pretty cool if we could use ID to detect a designer of the cosmos, and some people have tried. But that's not the problem we're talking about."
Now, when you respond to statements like that with statemens like these:
Bettina wrote:"The bottom line for me is that ID implies a designer, which implies a creator, which implies a god.... they have not one shred of evidence that there is a god, but are intent on convincing us there is"
"I see two religious people who are asking a clever question. However, the title of the thread, though presented as a game, is "Intelligent Design" and those two words, no matter how you play with them, have absolutely everything to do with the origins of life and the universe."
"ID is a trojan horse.....that implys a creator. Nothing more."
"it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that the intention is to prove Intellegent Design in the Universe, which implies a creator, which implies a god."
... you're calling me a liar.
Do you realize that? I've said at least half a dozen times, in this thread alone, that I'm not talking about the design of the universe or the design of life. I've said half a dozen times that I'm not trying to sucker somebody into believing in God by getting them on the "ID bandwagon" and then changing the subject. But you respond by saying that ID is just a trojan horse or a cheap trick -- so you're calling me a liar.
You say you have respect for me, you admire me, whatever. So
stop treating me like you think I'm lying to you or trying to trick you. (Unless, of course, you really think I'm lying to you -- in which case, there's not much point to continuing the discussion.)
It doesn't matter what the Kansas schoolboard, Pat Robertson, or you say ID is about. Drakona and I have stated in our own words what we mean by ID, and the problems we're interested in looking at within an ID framework, based on study of the actual key works in ID like "The Design Inference". Please stop pretending we're trying to get you to believe the stuff the Kansas schoolboard or Pat Robertson talk about through some tricky argument. We're not. We're trying to
"explore and develop ID as a general pursuit, and to correct people's misconceptions of what ID is." Nothing more.
Bettina wrote:There is nothing to understand or learn about ID because there is no evidence or any predictive information to learn from.
Within the context of the origin of life and the origin of species, there's no predictive information. There's a little evidence, but certainly not enough to make the sort of arguments people try to make from it.
Bettina wrote:It is just two words that cannot support itself yet wants to be considered valid and be taught (forced) along with "accepted" science in schools.
I repeat: "As for the question of whether ID belongs in the science classroom: Not in the form I'm talking about (the abstract.) It's not developed well enough to be taught to anyone yet -- it's still a work in progress. I honestly don't know enough about the ID-origins position to be able to say whether or not there's enough valid information there for it to be brought into the public school curriculum, but I certainly won't be pushing for it."
Bettina wrote:I just oppose ID (not you) in any form...
Right... you dogmatically oppose ID. Because of the way some people have talked about ID as it relates to origins, you oppose anything labelled as ID, regardless of whether or not it has anything to do with origins.
I guess I was no better when I was 16... if someone said the word "evolution" I wanted to oppose them, even if they were talking about the evolution of software or the evolution of the American legal system from ancient Greek ideals. Any mention of the word "evolution" made me think people were trying to trick me into believing in an atheistic worldview, so I dogmatically opposed it.
I'm asking you to learn from my mistake. Opposing all ideas that use a particular label because you have something against one of the ideas that uses the label is stupidly dogmatic. Break out of that pattern; be better than the fundamentalists you oppose instead of just being a fundamentalist for the other side. Instead of just rejecting the fundamentalist idea of a 6-day creation, reject the fundamentalist pattern of thought that says you have to reject whole categories of ideas just because one particular idea bugs you.
Bettina wrote:Lothar wrote:every person within that 15 is wrong, at least if they answered the question that was actually asked.... I bet that's the question you and the rest of the 15 imagined was being asked. All this really shows is that there are at least 15 of you whose preconceptions and biases on this subject are so strong that you read in pretexts or subtexts that aren't there.
I'm sorry your upset and to have offended you but don't be mad at the other 14 because of me.
I'm not offended or mad at anyone. I'm just very straightforward when I argue.
All 15 of you are wrong, because all 15 of you continue to treat it as though we're all talking about the form of ID the Kansas school board is talking about*. All 15 of you are stuck on the idea that when we say "ID" we mean "God created the universe", when we're really talking more about the general principle of detecting intelligence.
It's funny... if I came in here and talked about a
Turing Test, nobody would bat an eye or complain about how I was trying to trick them into believing in God. But the Turing test is an attempt to define a method of detecting intelligence. It's easily within the boundaries of what I'm referring to as "ID". It just doesn't have the name "ID" attached to it, so it's somehow more acceptable to people. It's time to drop the knee-jerk opposition to the ID label. Every single person here is capable of better reasoning skills than that.
* I could be wrong here -- maybe there's someone who really thinks you can't reliably tell the difference between spam and real e-mail. But I doubt it...