Re: [asa] On the semantics of "evolution" (long)

   Recently a friend told me about a discussion, on this list, of a
web-page I wrote. I read criticisms by Murray Hogg (responding to
criticisms by Gregory Arago) and Murray persuaded me that what I had
written was not clear, so I've revised it.
   One change (replacing "Total Evolution" with "Complete Formational
Evolution") is at http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/te-cr.htm#te
and you can see an added section by clicking the end-of-section link asking
"What is and isn't included in theistic evolution?"

   My original ideas were OK (I think) but they were expressed in a way
that allowed (or even encouraged) unwarranted extrapolations beyond what I
wrote. In writing, a constant challenge is balancing brevity and clarity;
for maximum clarity, everything should be included in every paragraph. (or
every sentence or every phrase?) But few people are patient enough to read
this kind of writing. In the parts Murray didn't like, I erred on the side
of insufficient clarity. And I didn't anticipate the ways that (by
ignoring what I wrote in the rest of the page) "total evolution" could be
over-extrapolated and misunderstood.

   I agree that terms are important, and a writer shouldn't expect a reader
to read everything, that each chunk (section, paragraph, sentence, phrase,
or even term) should "stand on its own" as much as this is possible.
   Another page, which has terms (and the ideas they imply) as its main
theme, is http://www.asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/naturalism.htm#i which
ends (in the appendix) with "five terms we should avoid."

Craig Rusbult

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Received on Fri May 30 14:29:15 2008