<<Yeah, I read it, but it did not relate to your quotes from Wallace to
counter Darwin.>>
But originally he wrote:
<<The rest of Jim's post added more of Wallace's thoughts along this vein.>>
I am beginning to be as confused by you as I am by Glenn. Which
characterization is the one you want to use?
The key charge of bias by you, Steve, was that there was nothing of "hard
evidence" in my post. I cleared that up, by citing Goodman, not Wallace. That
evidentiary summary has yet to be dealt with by you, Glenn or anyone else.
Instead we get intonations like "misleading."
Here is a step in the right direction:
<<I didn't state my point clearly, perhaps. The point is that when a similar
discussion has an evolution bent, it is immediately labeled as having a
naturalistic bias, and thus dismissed.>>
Well, okay. There's something we can discuss. But we need to look at this bias
a little more clearly:
You state:
<<The lack of an acceptable naturalistic mechanism for the appearance of
humans, does not automatically require one to invoke a supernatural
explanation. This is a bias as large as what you accuse Glenn of having.>>
I don't think so. In Glenn's case (and yours, I assume) the reasoning goes
like this:
Data, which cannot thus far be accounted for naturalistically (and, in fact,
frustrates naturalistic predictions) MUST have a naturalistic answer...which
we will patiently await even as we reject the non-naturalistic answer.
That last step, rejection, is not called for or compelled by your reasoning.
It is an ELIMINATION of explanatory possibilities, but without basis.
That is usually called bias. Phil Johnson calls it "Defining to Exclude" in
chapter 5 of Reason in the Balance:
"Naturalistic rules require that theories employ only two kinds of
forces--chance and necessity, random variation and impersonal law. The only
debate is over details liek the relative importance of chance (mutation) and
necessity (natural selection), or the mechanism of heredity. **The rules also
provide that a theory retains its authority even in the teeth of a great deal
of noncomforming evidence unless critics can provide a better theory**." [pp
105-6]
That last sentence describes Glenn's reasoning process, and why it is biased.
And why, I might add, I find it absolutely indistinguishable from atheistic
Naturalism, and more harmful than not to hypothetical young minds.
Jim