From: Don Frack <dcfrack@sowest.net>
>An individual's formal background does not determine competence, knowledge
>of the subject material does. I have only seen anti-evolutionists confuse
>competence with eye-rolling dismissal of "elitism", "priesthoods", etc.,
>etc. My very first confrontation years ago over this was an unexpected
>attack when I suggested someone should be competent in a field for his
>opinion to be worthwhile. I was accused of refusing anyone outside the
>"priesthood" from commenting. What, do these guys attend classes to
memorize
>the knee-jerk response?
A person's qualifications are really only relevant if we're being asked to
accept that person's statements as authoritative. Troy didn't claim to be an
authority.
Creationists, on the other hand, regularly quote from sources with the
implication that the source should be treated as an authority. This would be
useful if they were quoting statements of fact, e.g. results of research,
but usually they're quoting opinions. Opinions are of limited value even if
they're being quoted fairly, but since creationists often edit the
quotes to give a misleading impression of the author's opinion, they are of
no use at all, except to mislead the unwary and to discredit the integrity
of the quoter.
While it's quite reasonable for a person to express his own opinions, and I
may be interested in hearing them, I'm not interested in second-hand
opinions (even if they're quoted fairly). The useful part of any rational
discussion is not opinions but arguments based on facts. If
creationists based their arguments more on facts, and less on
opinions, the discussions might be more productive. (The problem for them,
of course, is that the facts are generally not supportive of their
arguments, which is no doubt why they resort to quote mining.)
Richard Wein (Tich)
Please note my new email address <rwein@lineone.net>
and web address <http://website.lineone.net/~rwein/>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue May 02 2000 - 05:59:33 EDT