ID/Evolution Discuss

I just added a poll. Sorry it took so long. I was doing some work I was keeping secret from the government.

This is a success for “philosophy”.

While the slippery slope is a fallacy, I do think a distinction needs to be made to counter it. Mad Man P was relying on a heavily moralized point (ID is bad and worthy of censorship) while taking it as a given that this moral point was specific to ID and not other objectionable points. In absence of any reasonable metric of distinction, the slippery slope argument holds fairly well.

Sure, everyone involved in the debate (including the judges) agree that ID is bad, but what distinguishes that from Star Court justice? Under such conditions, how is “Free Speech”, as it is normally understood, maintained?

I knew that would bite me in the ass…

I thought i was sufficiently clear about NOT being against ID in general, so much as the “anti-evolution” part of it.

The “false information” angle was not based on the premis that ID was immoral… ID could be true, for all I know…

My premis was that spreading false information was immoral. The ad in question was making claims about the scientific status of evolution that were demonstrably false. The fact that the ad was false information was a given in the debate.

That is the equivolent of a group of people trying to make the case that you are a bad person by spreading the rumor that you cheated on your wife, when you didn’t. It’s called lying. Sure they might be honestly mistaken about it (maybe they thought the person they saw was you), but for someone who knows for a fact that you didn’t cheat on your wife to start spreading this rumor, is immoral. Even if he agrees that you are a bad person…

Which I understand – but in a society that embraces “free speech” does libel/slander apply to concepts or just people? I tend to favor the latter.

We all know that truth in advertising is pretty much dead. Under your metric we could ban ads for hair product that ask, “If you want full hair like this, buy our product!” while showing someone with perfect hair. Clearly the truth is being bent in that ad. Is it sufficient to warrant a ban? I think your argument left that sort of thing fairly murky, which from a funding standpoint is problematic.

But it’s speaking on behalf of the scientific community… which consists of people.

If I were to campaign by claiming that the catholic church, for example, had renounced Jesus christ as the massiah, and have that ad placed all over the place… do you think I should get sued? do you think they should win?

What if I dug up a few members of the church who actually confirmed what I was saying? Does that mean I was honestly mistaken when I thought these guys spoke for the greater community?

Also, I dealt with free speach and the relationship that it has to advertisement. Free speach gives you the option to decline speaking on someone elses behalf… no matter how much they pay you.

So the question is… should we decline?

The line really is drawn quite clearly… we can all see it being crossed… the one notion that seems to stop us from acting on it is “on which universally appliable principle, do we act?”

The answer is morality… it’s universaly appliable, you do not do or say that which you perceive to be wrong or harmful, on pain of being guilty of having done so.

Carleas’ defense was an attempt at avoiding this guilt by way of relegating the responsibility to an algorithm and pretending that there was no choice, along with a justification for why there OUGHT to be no choice, for the sake of philosophical neutrality.

I should have given chase when Carleas retreated into the advantages of philosophical neutrality for a forum such as this as a grounds for maintaining his moral neutrality… it would have been rather simple to show how the welfare of this forum didn’t magically render immoral behavior, moral nor does the fact that the forum needs money render advertising that crap the “lesser of two evils”… because there ARE alternatives… of even lesser evil…

but oh well… at least I’m holding my own in the poll (he said grasping at straws…) :smiley:

When I logged in last night, I was confronted by an ad for “The God who Wasn’t There”, the subtext of which explained it was an attempt to show that Jesus never existed. I have to say, the fact that we’re showing that ad should have figured prominently in the debate about the ID ads (which I didn’t read), yes?

I’ve got you covered. It was definitely worth noting.

I really think that the accusation of a lie is too subjective to apply here. Are the people who run these ads lying, or are they just saying things we disagree with?

Given that there are radical protestants out there that do essentially claim that the Catholics no longer worship Jesus and have renounced Christianity and many of them have a fairly wide base, I don’t think such an ad would be censored. Indeed, McCain got in a little bit of trouble when a preacher whose endorsement he had sought made claims along those lines about Catholics, but the water wasn’t too got. He didn’t denounce the preacher until the preacher said something about the Holocaust being God’s tool for founding Israel so the End of Times can come about. It isn’t an outlandish claim at all, nor is it one that warrants a proper lawsuit. Maybe a civil suit, but even then I am not sure how well it would fair.

As for the ideas being a representation of a group of people, I couldn’t agree more. However, when discussing the notion of free speech it is customary to separate the categories (the Enlightenment ideal of ideas existing as such is at play here). From a functional sense, I think that such an approach is not merely pragmatic but actually a necessary conclusion if free speech is to be authorized while libel is constrained. You could strike either/or and have a more parsimonious system, but I’m unconvinced that the cure in that case would be better than the disease.

This is a misrepresentation of the situation… It wasn’t a case of group A claiming group B’s ideas are so and so… It was the pretense that group B had said that group B’s ideas are so and so…

They dress themselves up as scientists and speak on behalf of the scientific community…

That’s like me claiming christian theologians have discovered that there is undisputable biblical evidence that Jesus did not exist… it’s not quite what the atheist ads are doing… and we all know it…

And I don’t know about the laws where you live, but if someone here tries to sell something by claiming their product can do something it can’t… then they will get sued… false advertisement is a crime here.

The court case against evolution being scientifically disporven or even challanged by ID, already settled the dispute… yet they keep advertising it… and I’m basically asking… why the hell is this page contributing to this stupidity?

I don’t disagree… that works very well.

That’s not entirely true. A mainstay of both the evolution and anthropogenic global warming skepticism movements is that they do use “real” scientists to back their claims. But they are either a) not very good scientists in their field, b) in a completely unrelated field, or c) in a completely unrelated discipline that people associate with research science (like engineering), or some combination thereof. It isn’t lying, it is misrepresenting. And that is what ads do! Like the hair model saying, “Buy this shampoo” the inferred claim is that if you do, your hair will be like hers. And no doubt the model has used that shampoo – along with some other very expensive products not mentioned. I don’t know about Denmark, but in the US most commercials have a whole lot of text clarifying the claims made in the commercial to get around the bent truth presented in it. But the letters are so small that they are almost below the resolution of the average TV screen and are either written in a light color displayed on a light background or a dark color on a dark background. Nobody can actually read them. Even when they are blown up and put on movie screens they are barely legible, and certainly not readable within the short viewing time they are presented.

Also, Creationism takes a very post-modern approach to science, eschewing the standard narrative and weaving their own. Within the narrative that they operate under, what they are saying is entirely true. It is just at 90 degrees from the orthodox understanding. Couple that with some emotional claims, and a dash of anecdotal evidence and what you’ve got isn’t a lie, per se, just a truth that looks like a pretzel!

Mad Man P

It's a perfect parallel- on one hand you have scientists questioning well established scientific claims about evolution, and on the other hand, you have historians questioning well established historical claims about Jesus. In both cases, the 'research' is fronted by people who's primary interest is not science/history, but a religious view.

This is the sort of misconception that leads to people thinking ID is on par with evolution.

Because person A is trained as a scientists, does not mean that all of person A’s statements and opinions are scientific! nor is everything a hitorian says verified or justified historically…

The pretense is that they are being scientific when they say evolution is impossible…

If the atheist ad is doing something simular than that is utter bullshit as well and should be treated the same way…

Why assume I want atheists to lie and cheat in order to make their case? I feel great contempt for all varieties of bullshit of any kind from any side of the fence… and I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone knowing it to be bullshit would help spread it around… they are doing a great disservice to their audience.

I think you misunderstood Ucci’s point, which was about inference.

A is to A’ as B is to B’. In this case it is “scientists” pursuing a particular agenda as opposed to the demands to their discipline to create ID just as it is “historians” pursuing a particular agenda as opposed to the demands of their discipline to create the notion that Jesus didn’t exist. They are actually very similar arguments. A historian, even an amateur one can make a very good case that Jesus never existed based on the evidence presented. The problem is that if they are intellectually honest, they would have to apply that same degree of skepticism to all figures in the historical record, right? When that is done, all of a sudden a lot of people stop existing. But, of course, they leave that little bit out. Misrepresentation again. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should think the Gospels contain what we would think of as a modern historical account, but so what? Neither are contemporary Greco-Roman historical accounts that we don’t bother to put under the magnifying glass. I don’t think Vespasian performed any miracles, but I do think he existed!

I said “If” because I can’t verify that they are doing the same thing… I havn’t actually noticed any athist ad on the forum. But if they ARE guilty of the same sort of dishonsety and misrepresenation of their field, then they too ought to be corrected, not aided in spreading their lies.

Some things are fact… some things are opinion.
Evolution has not been disproven scientifically, nor even shown to be unlikely. That’s a verifiable fact.
“God created everything and science is mistaken about evolution” that’s an opinion, and I wouldn’t mind in the least if anyone wanted to advertise that opinion.

I mind when someone tries to suppress a fact or misrepresent it… that’s necissarily dishonest or ignorant and a moral person ought to deny a request to aid or spread such garbage.

Or at least… that’s my opinion…

I agree. But that runs counter to the notion of a “free society” and brings us closer in line with Muslims espousing Sharia law than it does with Enlightenment thinkers. The suppression of immoral untruths, while laudable, is necessarily dictatorial.

Everything comes in degrees… we don’t have absolute freedom because that would be anarchy. We have positive and negative freedom in a “free” society such as a democracy.

The positive freedoms are in the form of what we are allowed to do. Such as speak our minds, recieve free education, pray to whatever god we wish, or not pray at all.
The Negative freedom’s are in the form of what we are allowed to be free from. Such as being beaten up by strangers, forced to vote for a pollitical party, or having to listen to people’s bullshit.

These freedoms, among other things, give you the option to DECLINE the invitation to spread “honestly” mistaken beliefs that are demonstrably false, such as say the claims made about evolution’s scientific status, or the verifiability of the existence of Jesus… or whatnot.

and the state definatly is obligated to remain neutral about such things… much less have the “freedom” to promote such demonstrably false ideas at any of it’s institutions.

So if you wish to compare this forum to the state than step one ought to be all of us members chipping in to support the site, (pay tax) and as a result all have a say in who moderates and administrates the place, not to mention require that no ads or philosophical positions of any kind be displayed or promoted by the forum itself… ect… you get the picture…

I don’t mean to be a doom sayer, but it seems that an ID/evo debate will end in nuclear winter.

Mad man,

Having moderated on this site at one time as well as a few others, let me share my perspective…

First and probably foremost: Websites are not a democracy. They are owned by one person or a group regardless whether costs are paid by the owner, advertising, donations, or subscriptions. While the owners may choose to filter advertising content, they are under no obligation to do so. That advertising may appear in a website is not an automatic endorsement by the owner(s) of the content. There is no way that an open to the general public cannot have some form of advertisements that aren’t offensive to some segment of that general public. Typically, the people who bundle advertisements and place them in receptive websites are responsible for insuring that there are no legal prohibitions on the content they are selling - ie - no blatant hate messages, legally defined porno, etc.

Open websites, such as ILP, are a business, not a pulpit. Whether advertising or opinions expressed in the forums, there will always be viewpoints with which we disagree. (shrug)

I’ll mention a statement by Mencken (my favorite curmudgeon) “The only people who have freedom of the press are those who own one.”

“Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration ~ courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness and above all, love of the truth.” H. L. Mencken

I think he would make a good conversational companion.