AJP, a contradiction is just a contradiction. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

I realise you feel somewhat offended by my comments, but I watched a very good friend spend years doing "counter-apologetics" engaged with apologeticists completely fruitlessly. With the greatest of respect, your arguments are neither new to me or correct and the form of the discussion is not likely to be productive. You are taking a faith-based approach, which you are entirely sincere about, but is not going to ever allow you to accept that a view different to your own faith is acceptable. You will go on trying to "change my mind", as every good evangelist is driven to do.

So I commend you for your zeal and wish you well

George,

I’m afraid, through either loose wording or a misunderstanding of Dawkins’ position, david f has not communicated Dawkins’ position well. Which has lead to this false analogy from you...

<<It is like condemning all blacks, Germans, Jews or what you have just because some among them are silly...>>

Dawkins does not condemn all believers just because they are a part of a religion consisting of others who support biblical literalism. He does, however, point out that non-literalists (as with the moderates versus fundamentalists) enable, or open the door to, literalists.

It is not like condemning all blacks, Germans or Jews because some among them are silly; because being black, German or Jewish is not enabling the silly among them. We don’t have a choice about our heritage either.

Your analogy is invalid.

.

Craig Minns,

The point about ‘broken clocks’ is that if someone voices enough opinions often enough, then they’re bound to be right about something eventually through sheer dumb luck. It has nothing to do with contradictions. What on earth were you getting at?

<<...a contradiction is just a contradiction.>>

Not if the person doing the contradicting demonstrates that their contradiction is sound by following it up with evidence and/or reasoning. The contradictions Michael Palin was talking about were just short, sharp responses like “No it’s not”.

Again though, this has nothing to do with ‘broken clocks’.

<<You are taking a faith-based approach, which you are entirely sincere about, but is not going to ever allow you to accept that a view different to your own faith is acceptable.>>

This is just an ad hominem. If you had heard my arguments before, then you could simply counter them without resorting to lowbrow tactics like this. As it stands, every parallel you’ve tried to draw between science and religion has fallen flat.

You have not demonstrated that I have a faith-based position either. Nor could you know that I am not willing to be convinced by opposing opinions. I am not the one here ducking, weaving, and continuously having to be reminded of the initial bone of contention.

AJ Philips,

>>Your analogy is invalid.<<

OK, so I assume a “valid” analogy would be condemning teachers of English for “enabling or opening the door to” some people who say rude or stupid things in English.

No sorry, George.

That wouldn’t be accurate either because non-literalists generally aren’t considered teachers of literalists, nor do they necessarily exist to teach anything. On the contrary, I see what I suspect to be a lot of convenient overlooking from non-literalists of what literalists believe, in what appears to be a wish to not contradict someone who at least shares the same fundamental belief in a god.

More importantly, however, is the fact that the literalism, dangerous fundamentalism and everything in between - elements for which we see all sorts of undesirable real world manifestations result from, thus rendering the continued membership of a club that contains such absurd and/or dangerous elements makes one an enabler of, or akin to a mafia wife to, those literalists/fundamentalists who draw their legitimacy from the billions of their fellow travellers - do not exist with language or its study.

Religion allows people in the millions to believe what only a crazy person could believe alone. I don’t think we could say the same for English.

Dear Sells;

You wrote;

“Constance, I take a dim view of people who use this thread, not to discuss the article but to push their own agenda. Would you please desist.”

May I say sir what a miserable and totally inadequate response.

You appear to take some ownership of the thread, which is fine as it was your article that was being discussed, but when a member of your own faith comes on and spews vitriol and anti-Semitic hatred of the kind that ultimately saw fruition in the horror of the extermination camps, the greatest admonishment you seem capable of mustering is a charge of not addressing your article.

There seems to be a constant refrain in this country that the Muslim community has to take greater responsibility for the transgressions of their lunatic fringe, well that has to cut both ways. I invite you to do the right thing and repudiate the heinous rantings of this hateful and deluded poster.

SR, I thought Peter's response was well calculated and it seems to have been effective. Requiring him to explicitly disavow the rantings of a loon of a different sectarian background is hardly reasonable.

I'm at a bit of a loss as to why GY doesn't take some form of action though. Not just against Constance, but the equally hateful, although slightly more contained (in the sense that he limits himself to his own articles and their threads, so at least he's easy to avoid) David Singer, who spouts precisely the same sort of guff on a somewhat reciprocal vector.

I read a paper recently on paralinguistics, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paralanguage, which touched on the issue of communication on the internet, prompted by Peter's comment on this thread. The upshot is that people tend to become more extremist over time in their comments because they are trying to make a written form of communication conform to more "natural" modes, but without the immediate extrinsic feedback that is a feature of modes like speech (or signing for the deaf), it can lead to a kind of runaway auto-feedback. Writing is a medium that is suited to precision of argument much more than speech is. It is time-delayed and any errors in construction are readily caught by either the writer or the careful reader. Someone who feels passionately about a subject, especially if they feel their views are not shared by their audience, may not even notice how extreme or absolute their views as written have become as they hone their writing to have what they think will be maximum impact. This has been a problem for pamphleteers and polemicists since writing was invented, I suspect.

On the internet, it is much harder because selection bias and confirmation bias come into play and some people only seek sources of information which reinforce their views, so writing with balance becomes impossible for them.

I'm by no means immune, in that I rarely bother to write unless I have some bone of contention to chew on. I'm sure you could say the same.