One Bad Pig's pick for June 27th 2006 ~ A plea for moderate discourse

[One Bad Pig]

Originally posted by Avin in the thread What are the "core Issues" ? on June 27th 2006:

Hi all,

I just read through this thread and I have to say that I am absolutely disgusted at the way this discussion has gone. I think the fault is not with any one person, but rather almost everyone who has participated in this thread has contributed to the general feeling of disgust.

Jorge, let me start with you. You started on this thread with a post that attempted to address the topic, but as you continued to post your remarks were frequently one liners, filled with smileys, or baseless ridicule. Now I recognize that a couple more times you did attempt to contribute more substance, but by and large your posts seem to have been filled with the former, and it seemed that anytime you did really post you were more or less ignored because of the average quality of your replies is so poor. This irritated me to no end. Let me give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you have indeed long since addressed many of the questions being asked previously in other threads on this forum. Yet, if that is the case, why use that as excuse to contribute nothing but tripe and inanity? To take Jesus as an example, he surely experienced the same sense of having to repeat himself to people who simply did not listen, and frequently used harsh rhetoric against his opponents for their actions, but note that he never came off sounding like a fool! However, you most certainly do, even though I can see that you really do have something you might be able to say if you took the effort. Perhaps you are younger than I am giving you credit for and are just immature, perhaps not: either way, if you are going to participate in discussions like these, if you do not wish to contribute more then simply don't post. You do nothing for whatever cause you might be defending if you act the way you have been; rather it almost makes me prejudiced against everything you say. The verse from Proverbs that oxmixmudd quoted at you applies completely, and I hope you are not above being deservedly reproached from your opponent.

Now, to HRG_new, Snarf, and bandecoot, regarding your initial response to johnmartin's first post on this thread, isn't his post exactly the sort of thing the topic was going after? You wanted a YEC to post a bullet point explanation : this sounds to me like a request to understand your opponents better. Yet as soon as johnmartin attempts to answer you, it feels like you all jump down his throat and immediately begin discrediting his points from your perspective, without attempting to even remotely understand his. What sort of discussion is this? It makes it seem like the entire point of the thread was to serve as bait to lure some unsuspecting non-Jorge YEC to post a sincere reply just so you could all jump down his back. If his initial post was not what you all were looking for, how about asking for clarification and steering him politely toward what you were looking for rather than dismissing everything he said? If you want to claim that you are on the side of truth, why are you so inclined to dismiss everything without trying to understand it first?

Now, johnmartin, although I have the least to criticize about your posting attitude, the one thing I do have to say is that you seem awfully persistent about trying to stick to a topic that it seems your opponents have no desire to talk about to your satisfaction, and vice versa, in your attempt to pin down a rigorous definition of "science" and their attempt to pin you down to a procedural definition and extract a set of principles. Perhaps it would be better rather than sticking to try to win your way to just post what you've got to say and then leave it at that.

As for bandecoot, the same thing above applies to you, but being the topic creator, you seem to have been abusing the role to try to control what happens in "your thread." That strikes me as being incredibly juvenile. Is it so bad if in trying to address your query, someone tries to do so in a slightly roundabout way that requires actual dialog and not just a list of bullets, especially given your propensity to just dismiss that as noted above? Admittedly as I mentioned above, johnmartin is being somewhat stubborn in his argument, but you are being just as stubborn in response. Now this is my first post on TWeb and I'm not too certain how things work here yet, but it still seems rather childish when someone posts something you don't like to threaten to kick them out of your thread. By doing that you will fill this thread with only people who already agree with you and declare a hollow victory because no one on the opposite side would want to have a discussion with you.

All that being said, I wouldn't dream of actually posting a serious response to the original topic given the history of the thread unless things shape up. Is it possible to hope that might happen?

Well said, Avin. We could all do with a little less sniping and a little more careful refutation of the other side's points, even if we think it's utter tosh.

[Teallaura]

[Alien]

Avin, join the ranks of "new" posters who have expressed similar sentiments. I wrote something similar myself, a long time ago.

You won't get anywhere, regrettably. This kind of behavior is unfortunately typical of some posters. I think they enjoy it.