> I respond only to make it clear that I did not exhibit unchristian
behavior in publicly speaking so bluntly. My post was to you alone, not to
the ASA list. Making private posts public is considered improper if not
unethical.
David F. Siemens, Jr.
I made the post public because you were digressing into unjustified useless
stereotyping and name-calling. My past experience has been people who make
such digressions are less likely to do so if their comments are made public.
I have no interest in such digressions and prefer to keep the discussion
constructive; thus, I prefer to carry the discussion in public rather than
private. Such was my motivation which is not unethical. In fact your final
response indicates you do not prefer your insults to be made public so you
confirmed my intuition.
Excerpt from Section 6.8 of http://members.aol.com/SHinrichs9/reason.htm
"Often people use adjectives to characterize others in a way that is not
accurate, resulting in a misleading characterization of that person. Sometime
this is done intentionally to unfairly dismiss or misrepresent the person.
Other times it is done unintentionally out of a misunderstanding or false
information. The adjectives are often general stereotypes with a negative
tone such as "ridiculous", "old-fashioned" or "backwards". General
stereotypes such as these typically mean quite different things to people and
most of the time there are much better ways to describe a person without
adding negative characterizations that may not be accurate. A technique often
used is to assign a negative adjective to a position that insults the other
to make it sound as if they have no credibility and should be given no
respect. For example, a politician may characterize a position that goes
against his as arrogant or selfish, when he may be just wanting to maintain
his positions for essentially just his own selfish political gain. Certainly
there are times when for ease of communication stereotypes or general
adjective should be used. However, they should be used in a way that is
accurate and do not mislead, otherwise they are confusing and hinder the
rational process of accurately determining the truth about people."
The approach presented in http://members.aol.com/SHinrichs9/spntid.htm uses
proof by elimination a key logical principle used in science. My method of
using proof by elimination for substantiating supernatural claims allows
claims for the supernatural to be dismissed by just proposing that there is
possible hypothesis that has not been shown implausible. The approach
provides a basis to critic and potentially dismiss claims because it puts a
priority on the natural explanation if it is successful and requires
probability estimates to be conservative; thus, the approach is falsifiable
and deserved to be considered as scientific.
In Section 4.1.2 of http://members.aol.com/SHinrichs9/spntid.htm I state
objective means for rejecting more specific claims from sacred religious
books. I list the historical criterion in Section 3.4 of
http://members.aol.com/SHinrichs9/reason.htm. Thus, I do present valid means
for showing religious beliefs false. So your comments that my approach allows
my beliefs to be immune from evidence is not justified. In fact, I have
changed my belief that species did not share a common ancestor to species do
share a common ancestor as argued in
http://members.aol.com/SHinrichs9/descent/descent.htm.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jan 11 2001 - 09:29:39 EST