…Continued

<<Feel free to submit any scientific research which proves that the races in the USA or anywhere else have identical bell curves of intelligence.>>

I wouldn’t assume that they did, given all the variables I’ve mentioned in the past. The burden of proof is now on you to show that the psychological and sociological factors play a negligible role there. So far you have done a woeful job at doing this.

<<Feel free to also caste aspersions on the accuracy of IQ testing.>>

I’d loved the Freudian slip there.

The problems associated with the accuracy of IQ testing (on both an individual level and a cross-cultural level) are so well known that this has become somewhat of an axiom now. You can google this stuff and get hundreds of results explaining this.

A good peer-reviewed journal article that you could check out (complete with a ton of references for you to investigate further ) is What IQ Tests Test (http://www.swisswuff.ch/files/richardson2002whatiqteststest.pdf).

<<Put simply, education and civilisation increases intelligence over time.>>

Really? How? People don't just develop intelligence genes because they're doin' smart stuff. Natural selection determines which genes are passed on. This is good evidence for the nurture/cultural factors, but it's not so good for the genetic and evolutionary factors.

In what circumstances, after all, would the numeracy and literacy, that you mention, mean the difference between life and death? And how would the "forward planning" within civilisations prevent the less intelligent passing on their genes? You only need a handful of smart people in a civilised society; the rest are able to be dimmer and less forward thinking due to the predictability of living in a more advanced society.

Your civilisation arguments only further support what I've been saying about the cultural influences on IQ, and the cultural biases in IQ testing.

My last post to you, addressed your accusations about my debating style, and that your own style is above reproach.

You have accused me of twisting your words and misrepresenting your position. In response, I have accused you of not plainly stating your position, talking only in implications, and then complaining when I make reasonable assumptions about what I think is your position is. Rather than waste valuable debating space endlessly arguing points of order, and getting bogged down in detail, I have ignored your complaints and concentrated on debating the topic under discussion.

My last post to you, was an attempt to reset the debate and start with a clean sheet where you submitted your position and I submitted mine. I invited you to correct any misunderstandings about what your position is, instead of routinely complaining with high moral outrage and continuing to leave me in the dark.

Your response was extraordinary, and calculated to keep me guessing about where you stand. You claim that Racism is an ideology, but anti racism (or Egalitarianism) is not, therefore you do not have to state your position nor defend its premises. You have just unwittingly confirmed the validity of my complaint. Unsurprisingly, you petulantly insist that you intend to continue with your dishonest tactic.

This is the reason why I stopped being an egalitarian and became a racist. The egalitarian position is take for granted that their position is infallibly right and they have no need to provide any evidence or reasoned argument to defend it. Like creationists before them, they wish to create a "debate" where they just sit back and heckle with sneery one liners, deny every sensible argument, and refuse to make the most self evident connections.

If you consider yourself an intelligent liberal, you must feel uncomfortable resorting to tactics calculated to stifle reasoned debate and muddy the waters instead of arguing an issue on its merits. Your refusal to state plainly your position indicates to me that you know that your position is indefensible, your tactics are dishonest, and this "debate" a charade.

I have just learned another debating lesson. That is, to make certain that an egalitarian opponent unequivocally states his position prior to engaging in debate, so that he is forced to defend his premises. My mistake, was to presume that you were an honest person of liberal thought who was an egalitarian through faulty logic, and that I could begin the process of changing your mind by the application of reasoned argument.

But your last post confirmed my growing suspicion that you are an ideologue who considers his egalitarian ideology to be so far above reproach that it must be considered an absolute truth rather than an ideology. Perhaps you should read the recent OLO discussion topic relating to "fundamentalism" and make comparisons between that way of thinking and your own position?

Your post once again brought up the subjects about "ethical issues", " historically proven dangers regarding such studies", and "to what end should such research be carried out?" Could I reiterate that you are studying to be a Criminologist. Criminology is a science. Science is the objective investigation of natural phenomena to ascertain truth and reality. If "ethical issues" were pre eminent in directing scientific thought, we would still be claiming that the Earth was the centre of the universe, because it was "ethically" wrong to point out that the holy mother church got it wrong for 1500 years. Or that we should suppress the idea of evolution because the "ethical issues" regarding belief in God and Creation outweighed any responsibility to tell the truth.

If you consider yourself an honest, intelligent person of liberal thought, then you are obliged to think like a scientist instead of a fundamentalist. Especially, if you are studying to be a scientist. Your stubborn refusal to plainly state where you stand regarding racial equality is indicative that you know that your position is untenable and you do not want it's principles examined and argued out. You are prepared to suppress reasoned argument because you consider the propagation of an ideological ideal to be more important than an objective search for the truth

This just gets better and better as we go, LEGO. Not only do you not deny your arguments' dependence upon mine, you're now embracing it.

<<Your response was extraordinary, and calculated to keep me guessing about where you stand.>>

Why do you need to know my position? I have pointed to the problems with your racist beliefs. Why is it then not enough to simply counter my arguments?

I see three possibilities here (or a combination there of):

1. The basis for your racist beliefs is so weak that it can only be bolstered by leveraging it off of the opposite extreme (only effective if your opponent is of the opposite extreme).

2. You need your opponent's beliefs there on the table ready to divert attention to in a red herring when the numerous holes in your logic start appearing.

3. It provides you with ammunition with which to bully your opponent into leaving; thus making you feel like you've won the debate (with winning being an obvious goal of yours), when you're not doing so well.

But here's the nub:

You are so oblivious to what your desire to know your opponent's position means for your arguments that you unabashedly state later in your reply:

"I have just learned another debating lesson. That is, to make certain that an egalitarian opponent unequivocally states his position prior to engaging in debate..."

and why..?

"...so that he is forced to defend his premises."

Wow! Forced? What on earth do your opponent's arguments have to do with yours anyway?

This is an admission so astonishing that you could not have possibly understood the implications of it. You are effectively admitting that your arguments are not strong enough to stand on their own merit. You are the only person on OLO that I have come across who is (apparently) so insecure about the veracity of their beliefs that they insisted that I state mine else the debate be stifled. Most people are confident enough in their arguments' abilities to stand on their own that they don't need to know what others believe.

Continued...

...Continued

It frustrates you so much that I don't make the broad generalisations and assertions that you want me to make, that you interpret my clearly stated premises as an attempt on my behalf to keep you guessing and stifle the debate; despite the fact that they're not even relevant to my rebuttals of your arguments.

<<You claim that Racism is an ideology, but anti racism (or Egalitarianism) is not therefore you do not have to state your position nor defend its premises.>>

Actually, it's questionable whether racism in an of itself is an ideology, because ideologies tend to consist of both goals and methods of achieving those goals is. But hey, let's both agree that they're all ideologies if you think it'll make things easier for you. I have never denied having one anyway. I've even mentioned my ideology twice now (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15856#275605). I'm happy to take 'anti-racist', and 'egalitarian' too, if you want to go strictly by the dictionary definition, without adding any creative assertions that you may want tack on to them.

So what? What difference does it make to your arguments? I have clearly stated and defended my position and premises multiple times regardless. You're just annoyed that they weren't the ones you wanted.

I’ll ignore the rest of your smears here since you still cannot provide any examples and evidence for them. I will, however, continue to point out, step-by-step, examples of your attempts to manipulate the debate in your favour.

<<Science is the objective investigation of natural phenomena to ascertain truth and reality.>>

And its purpose is to produce useful models of reality.

As for your Galileo and Darwin analogies that I showed previously to be false (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15856#275389), they imply that there may be some benefits to genetically linking race to IQ that we just don't know of yet; they, consequently, assume that people in those times could not have possibly imagined the benefits of such discoveries; and they ignore the fact that - unlike the people of those times - we can actually demonstrate the dangers of such a discovery.

Your analogies are bunk.

It is amusing to see that you are pretending that you won the debate. I have debated many egalitarians over the last ten years, and it is not hard to corner them. The simple reason why, is that races do exist, they do have different physical differences, different physical attributes, and different mental abilities as well. The last attribute is difficult to prove outright, but you just keep piling on the evidence until the weight is overwhelming. And it isn't too hard to counter their arguments.

They usually go through stages. First, is the pose of intellectual and moral superiority, which thins as I get the better of them. Next, comes the stage where they exhibit shock and anger that I am winning. This results in them submitting posts in which they start to play games. They stonewall, use double standards, refuse to make the most obvious connections, and resort to sneery one liners instead of debating. Then they either get respectful and disappear into cyberspace, in which case you know you achieved something, or they continue to sneer and insult, then disappear, in which case you have at least got the better of them, and they know it.

With one exception, every one of them had the intellectual honesty to understand that we were debating two sides of a question here. The exception, was a particularly sly and experienced debater who presented his position in exactly the same way that you did. He really had me going for quite a long time, and he bogged me down in detail in which the laboured every point, until I figured out what he was doing. I was shocked that an educated person would misrepresent his position by claiming he did not need one, which is self evidently dishonest in a debate.

I was aware from the start in this debate that you had not clearly stated your position. But I had presumed that dishonest left wing Shiite ideologues who would do anything to suppress the truth, because they think that their ideology is more important, are very thin on the ground