rationalskepticism.org

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Darwinsbulldog wrote:

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Darwinsbulldog wrote:
The term first appeared in Europe in 1877,[12] and around this time it was used by sociologists opposed to the concept.[13] The term was popularized in the United States in 1944 by the American historian Richard Hofstadter who used it in the ideological war effort against fascism to denote a reactionary creed which promoted competitive strife, racism and chauvinism.

You talk of skeptical courage? Skeptical courage also takes intellectual honesty to be of use to anyone. Let me give you an example of REAL character, real intellectual courage. Tutors at Murdoch university have to do an induction course. Among other things, there were lectures by Indigenous people on Indigenous matters.

I was sitting there listing to one of these lecturers and he started gobbing off about Social "darwinism". I could not believe such ignorance! I politely interrupted the speaker and said, first of all, that social darwinism [invented by Herbert Spencer] had nothing to do with Charles Darwin's biological theory. Second, I claimed, Darwin published on Natural Selection in 1858 [in a paper with Wallace] and in his 1859 book "Origins". How could Darwin therefore be responsible for the Pinjarra massacre and other pogroms.

You know what this MAN did, this excellent human being? He accepted the facts, and admitted his opinion was wrong. Later, during the tea break, he told me he had a "young creationist" educational background. His "fault" was in assuming his religious missionary teachers were being honest and giving him the facts. I also pointed out that the science backs up aboriginal claims on the land, whereas creationism does not. Because creationists only give an age to the earth in thousands of years [6 to 10K years], whereas scientific evidence clearly indicates that aboriginals were present in Australia at least 50,000 years ago, or even 60,000 years ago.

The gentleman now knows the facts, and was intellectually honest enough to accept them. He realizes that science is not his enemy, ignorance is. That is intellectual courage. To admit that he was wrong. This is a guy who has had his ancestors murdered by whites, has experienced prejudice and hardship from racism, he had every reason not to believe me. But he did. Why? Because facts are facts.

The way you tell this story someone appointed to conscientise tutors is persuaded by an interruption from the audience that he was mistaken about part of his presentation and after a conversation with you, feels he needs to explain himself as having been misled by his own background. I don’t see the courage there’ it’s a tale of such a ludicrous climbdown that I can hardly trust your account.

What part of "admitting that the facts do not support your ideas is intellectually honest" do you not understand, JayJay?

As opposed to the usual creationist practice of twisting the facts to fit the ideas, or pretending that they don't exist?

It's a measure of the corrupting and perverting influence of creationism, that you demonstrate with your above words, either a searing inability to recognise this elementary concept, or a wilful refusal to do so, because you prefer your fantasies to the facts.

Jettisoning ideas that are demonstrated to be wrong by the real world data isn't a "climbdown", JayJay, it's a necessary and integral part of proper science.

It's also hideously telling, JayJay, that you openly admit above, that you don't trust DB's account, just because it fails to genuflect before your fabrications and fantasies, which is the ONLY reason you've ever rejected anything here.

Let's move on and see what other tedious and flagrantly dishonest apologetic fabrications you have waiting for us, shall we?

Jayjay4547 wrote:A courageous position would have been for the speaker to have said he would look into what you said.

Oh wait, what DB presented above were independently verifiable facts of an elementary nature, of a sort that an astute schoolchild could verify for itself. As a corollary, it would have been utterly ridiculous of DB to lie about them, though apparently the creationist "missionary teachers" referred to by the other participant in the conversation, had no qualms about peddling lies and bullshit to a captive audience.

Meanwhile, I have a personal reason to back up DB's account. Because a couple of years ago, he accepted my hospitality whilst on a visit to the UK. Want to know the lengths he went to, to provide evidence for some of his ideas in conversation? I'll tell you. He presented me with a DVD containing four gigabytes worth of scientific papers. Which I still have.

So before you try impugning his integrity here, you might want to factor in here that some of us happen to be in possession of knowledge you're not.

Jayjay4547 wrote:And that his creationist educators had at least supported him as far as that lecture room to tell the audience some things they needed to know.

Oh please, no creationist ever has anything to tell the rest of us that we "need to know", because all the evidence I've seen thus far, is that creationists peddle lies and bullshit. Your posts have added to that body of evidence, and in a not insubstantial manner.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Darwinsbulldog wrote:The basic facts were easy enough to check. There were some 25-30 academics in the room. had I been deliberately lying I would have been caught out and that would have cost me a job. All tutors have smart phones, so the dates were easy for anyone to check. There were NO objections to my dates and basic facts.

For the record, I put in italics above some text you seem to have inadvertently carried forward from what I had inadvertently attributed to you, but came from my looking up the interesting history of the term “Social Darwinism”.

Wh do I smell more lies and bullshit about to be peddled by you here at this juncture? Oh wait, it's all I've ever seen from creationists on this subject. The reputation creationists have for peddling lies and bullshit precedes them.

Jayjay4547 wrote:My problem with your account wasn’t about what you regard as the “basic facts”. According to Wikipedia massacres of Australian aborigines occurred from long before 1858 to long after. Darwin didn’t cause those massacres rather 19th century Imperial-colonial British society produced both Darwin and those massacres in complex and partial association.

Except that of course, Darwin transcended his purportedly "imperialist" upbringing, because he chose fidelity to observable facts over doctrine.

And, of course, this is the same Darwin who became engaged in a furious debate with Captain Fitzroy aboard HMS Beagle, when Darwin made his opposition to slavery manifest. This was back in 1832. From Darwin's autobiography:

Fitz-Roy's temper was a most unfortunate one. This was shown not only by passion but by fits of long-continued moroseness against those who had offended him. His temper was usually worst in the early morning, and with his eagle eye he could generally detect something amiss about the ship, and was then unsparing in his blame. The junior officers when they relieved each other in the forenoon used to ask "whether much hot coffee had been served out this morning,—" which meant how was the Captain's temper? He was also somewhat suspicious and occasionally in very low spirits, on one occasion bordering on insanity. He seemed to me often to fail in sound judgment or common sense. He was extremely kind to me, but was a man very difficult to live with on the intimate terms which necessarily followed from our messing by ourselves in the same cabin. We had several quarrels; for when out of temper he was utterly unreasonable. For instance, early in the voyage at Bahia in Brazil he defended and praised slavery, which I abominated, and told me that he had just visited a great slave-owner, who had called up many of his slaves and asked them whether they were happy, and whether they wished to be free, and all answered "No." I then asked him, perhaps with a sneer, whether he thought that the answers of slaves in the presence of their master was worth anything. This made him excessively angry, and he said that as I doubted his word, we could not live any longer together. I thought that I should have been compelled to leave the ship; but as soon as the news spread, which it did quickly, as the captain sent for the first lieutenant to assuage his anger by abusing me, I was deeply gratified by receiving an invitation from all the gun-room officers to mess with them. But after a few hours Fitz-Roy showed his usual magnanimity by sending an officer to me with an apology and a request that I would continue to live with him.

Source

From the HMS Beagle diary, dated 12th March 1832, we have this account:

I have heard of interesting geological facts & am disabled from examining them; but instead of grumbling I must think myself lucky in having at all seen the glorious city of Bahia. — We have had some festivities on board; the day before yesterday there was a grand dinner on the quarter deck. — Cap Paget has paid us numberless visits & is always very amusing: he has mentioned in the presence of those who would if they could have contradicted him, facts about slavery so revolting, that |122| if I had read them in England, I should have placed them to the credulous zeal of well-meaning people: The extent to which the trade is carried on; the ferocity with which it is defended; the respectable (!) people who are concerned in it are far from being exaggerated at home. — I have no doubt the actual state of by far the greater part of the slave population is far happier than one would be previously inclined to believe. Interest & any good feelings the proprietor may possess would tend to this. — But it is utterly false (as Cap Paget satisfactorily proved) that any, even the very best treated, do not wish to return to their countries. — "If I could but see my father & my two sisters once again, I should be happy. I never can forget them." Such was the expression of one of these people, who are ranked by the polished savages in England as hardly their brethren, even in Gods eyes. — From instances I have seen of people so blindly & obstinately prejudiced, who in other points I would credit, on this one I shall never again scruple utterly to disbelieve: As far as my testimony goes, every individual |123| who has the glory of having exerted himself on the subject of slavery, may rely on it his labours are exerted against miseries perhaps even greater than he imagines.

Source

So before you erect the usual duplicitous quote mines and apologetic fabrications, take the above as a warning not to.

Jayjay4547 wrote:What astonished me about your account was the abject climb-down by this aborigine speaker, that you recall as an example of courage.

Oh, you don't think it courageous for someone to recognise that he has been lied to, and change his views accordingly? Particularly given the peer pressure and level of coercion that is frequently seen in circles where religion is in control?

Jayjay4547 wrote:Such an incident would be very unlikely in my country.

I think a certain Mr N. Mandela would have had something to say about that when he was alive. Who, in case you've forgotten, ended up serving 27 years in prison as a consequence of a youthful and foolish predilection for armed insurrection, almost certainly arising from a combination of youthful impatience for change, and the total intransigence of the extant Afrikaner rulers of the era. Those 27 years in prison could easily have embittered him, could easily have made him even more an enthusiast for violence. Indeed, I was reminded some time ago by a South African correspondent, how he could, upon achieving power, have plunged the country into bloody civil war, with just three words: "Kill the Boer". But he chose a different path, because he recognised that the situation had substantively changed, and that as a result of those changes, a peaceful transition to majority rule was possible. He learned that not all white people were his enemies, that even amongst some of the once-hated Afrikaners, he had support, because they were aware of practical realities, such as the power of his iconic status. He learned that none other than F. W. de Klerk, then South African President, was eager to broker terms for a handover of power and the end of Apartheid, that some of the most senior politicians in the once-hated National Party now regarded Apartheid as untenable, and sought his assistance in bringing it to a peaceful end.

Despite the seething discontent amongst many of the oppressed blacks, Mandela used his influence to tread the harder, but better road of peace. The man formerly branded a "terrorist" became the saviour of a nation. Indeed, it's telling of just how monumental was his influence for the better, that when he died, one satirical outlet described him as "the only politician who would ever be missed".

His change of mind, in the light of new facts, wasn't "capitulation" or "climbdown", it was a seized opportunity. Likewise, the incident DB describes above wasn't a "climbdown", it was an opportunity to acquaint himself with suppressed facts, deliberately withheld by duplicitous individuals in positions of authority in his youth. It was an opportunity to rid himself of lies he had been fed, and learn what the data was telling him, instead of what pedlars of doctrinal assertions were telling him.

But of course, you despise this new found freedom on the part of DB's conversation companion with a vengeance, because it exposes the vacuity and intellectual bankruptcy of your preference for fantasy over fact. It's why you resort to entirely predictable knee-jerk apologetic fabrications, whenever your duplicitous creationist "heroes" are exposed as the crooks and charlatans that they are. It's why you erect specious, synthetic bleating about post style, in order to avoid addressing substantive content that destroys your fantasies. Because all the evidence from your posts, betrays the pathological degree to which you're emotionally wedded to your fantasies, and how you would prefer death itself rather than feed those fantasies into the shredder. The position espoused by your posts, is so manifestly one of "if reality and doctrine differ, reality is wrong and doctrine is right", that no one here is in the least surprised that you're unable to comprehend elementary concepts of intellectual honesty, because instead of treating a data-driven change of ideas as a learning opportunity, you regard it in the same way as every other immovable doctrinal adherent, as a heretical pestilence to be extirpated. That's why you're posting the frankly hideous apologetic excrescences you're littering your post with, because at bottom, you hate any facts that don't genuflect before your fantasies. You're no different from any other creationist in this regard, it's a well-documented aspect of the aetiology, because creationist ideology relies not merely upon ignorance, but upon an out-and-out hatred for learning.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Firstly a member of an equivalent audience wouldn’t report that “he couldn’t believe such ignorance” about something the speaker had been “gobbing off” about.

Ah, yet more specious whingeing about style, to avoid addressing content.

You obviously haven't circulated amongst Australians. They don't take prisoners with their words. They call a spade a spade. They don't usually fuck around with floral niceties, instead they get straight to the point, and tell it like it is. It's one of the reasons, along with their sardonic humour, that they have a habit of winning fans amongst those who understand what's going on, namely, that they have, as a nation, a particular aversion to bullshit, and aren't afraid to shout out loud whenever they see it on the horizon. I'm tempted to suggest that a combative linguistic streak is at least in part, the product of living in a country whose wildlife is out to kill you at every turn, and where even a lot of the harmless stuff looks as if it's going for your jugular. But that's a personal speculation I don't yet claim to have evidence for, temptiing though the indulgence is, and that's another essential difference between us, JayJay, I'm honest about presenting speculation as such.

Jayjay4547 wrote:He wouldn’t report that he had interrupted the speaker to correct him. And during the tea break the speaker wouldn’t have explained himself in such abject terms. More likely there would have been a serious row.

You mean the way Fitzroy blew a gasket when Darwin criticised the former's defence of slavery? We've all seen how well that worked out. Indeed, the account I gave above demonstrates conclusively that Fitzroy was blown out of the water by the evidence a few days later.

There comes a point, JayJay, when commitment to an idea ceases to be heroic tenacity, and starts becoming instead foolish and petulant intransigence, that point being reached whenever the data says you're wrong. Now learn this elementary concept once and for all.

Jayjay4547 wrote:The lecturer would have been disinclined to accept that this interrupter represented some group that was somehow on his side, especially on such flimsy grounds as that this group believed the speaker’s ancestors had occupied the land even longer.

That you dismiss an evidentially supported postulate as "flimsy grounds" is so much more telling here about your position, JayJay, than it is about ours.

Jayjay4547 wrote:That contrast between your and my country could be because an equivalent speaker in mine would be encouraged by his political power and moral authority to hold his opinions with some grip.

Once again, JayJay, you manifestly don't understand even elementary concepts, courtesy of those ideological blinkers of yours. Once again, I'll spell it out for you. There comes a point, JayJay, when commitment to an idea ceases to be heroic tenacity, and starts becoming instead foolish and petulant intransigence, that point being reached whenever the data says you're wrong.

Jayjay4547 wrote:So your account of someone displaying intellectual courage quite clearly showed the opposite.

Poppycock. Dealt with this at length above. Changing your mind, and dropping ideas, no matter how beloved or cherished, when the REAL WORLD DATA tells you to, is practically the definition of intellectual honesty and courage. That you don't understand this elementary concept speaks volumes about how long you've been dwelling in an ideological honesty-free zone.

Jayjay4547 wrote:

Darwinsbulldog wrote: These were WORKSHOPS, ie interactive lectures where the group leaders not only allowed interruptions, but EXPECTED them.

If interruptions were expected then why did you need to say above that you had “politely” interrupted the lecturer? Why did you now recall “WORKSHOPS” when earlier recalled the context as “LECTURES by Indigenous people on Indigenous matters"? If it was so interactive, why did the “lecturer” do this big climb down during a tea break not in the interactive workshop discussion? You are subtly changing your account of what happened to suit yourself.

Er, no he's not. Do pay attention to his actual words, JayJay, as well as the facts. The moment that DB's aboriginal discoursive participant learned, that the ideas he had been misled to believe were purportedly responsible for various atrocities, did not come into being until at least two decades AFTER those atrocities, meant that he now knew that he HAD been misled. An idea or an individual cannot, at least in the normal universe of logical consistency, be responsible for events that took place before that idea or individual existed. That elementary FACT, JayJay, is what led to what you laughably refer to as a "climbdown".

Darwinsbulldog wrote: it is clear to me you have never attended an academic meeting or workshop involving educators at any university.

I feel sorry for you jayjay, for it seems evident you have never attended a community of scholars where intellectual honesty was expected and normal.

You would be quite wrong; I have had 31 years as full time student and lecturer at four universities.[/quote]

Why am I tempted to regard this assertion as hyperbolic? Oh, wait, your reputation for peddling assertions later found to be complete falsehoods precedes you.

Jayjay4547 wrote:It’s interesting how quickly and snobbishly you pull this university education card.

What part of the relevant elementary concepts do you not understand, JayJay?

Let me go through them again.

[1] Changing your mind, and dropping ideas, no matter how beloved or cherished, when the REAL WORLD DATA tells you to, is practically the definition of intellectual honesty and courage.

[2] There comes a point, JayJay, when commitment to an idea ceases to be heroic tenacity, and starts becoming instead foolish and petulant intransigence, that point being reached whenever the data says you're wrong.

[3] In the usual logically consistent universe most of us live in, ideas or individuals cannot be responsible for events that took place before those ideas or individuals existed.

Acceptance of these elementary concepts, JayJay, isn't "snobbish", it's something that reasonably astute schoolchildren learn to treat as central to discourse here in my country. If they don't in yours, your country's educational system needs a huge kick up the arse.

Jayjay4547 wrote:A major aspect of the evo-creo divide is that between the University Educated and the Great Unwashed. The children of parents who didn’t themselves go to university often come as creationists and get licked into shape pretty smartly;

And once again, your misrepresentation of entirely proper education as some sort of "indoctrination" process in a rival "doctrine", is precisely that, a misrepresentation. Once again, what part of REAL WORLD DATA do you not understand? Or, for that matter, how REAL WORLD DATA trumps made up shit every time?

Jayjay4547 wrote:in my experience, in sociology and history classes that have nothing to do with biology.

Heh, back in the 1980s, when I was a student, sociology was a breeding ground for rampant Marxist fantasising, not an appreciation of evolutionary biology or its implications.

Jayjay4547 wrote:Then graduates wear their evolutionary belief

Yawn, yawn, yawn, here we go again aboard the creationist bullshit train!

Evolutionary theory isn't a matter of fucking "belief", JayJay, we leave that to mythology fetishists. Evolutionary theory is a matter of evidence and data. Fucking learn this once and for all.

Jayjay4547 wrote:as a badge of their superiority.

Oh, the little matter of them exerting diligent effort to acquaint themselves with FACTS, as opposed to made up shit, is something you're going to pretend, in typical duplicitous creationist fashion, purportedly didn't take place? Oh no, in JayJay Alternative RealityTM, bothering to acquaint oneself with FACTS and DATA purportedly constitutes "atheist ideology". You have three guesses which orifice you can insert this - the one it was manifestly emitted from being a prime candidate.

Jayjay4547 wrote:That’s behind the vituperation thrown here at professor Michael Behe, he is called a cunt basically because he doesn’t fit the miserable mold.

Bollocks. He's called a cunt because he peddles lies and bullshit, and gets paid for it by other pedlars of lies and bullshit. Learn this elementary fact once and for all. Behe is another dishonest pedlar of apologetics for a sad masturbation fantasy of a doctrine, he's sold his integrity in exchange for a creationist pay cheque, bankrolled by a corporate edifice steeped in lies. His career from that moment on became shabby, sleazy, shot through with mendacity, and in some respects even worse, incompetent.