His Philness's Experience with Evolutionists

I found his experience interesting because it so closely tracks with mine.

Finally after several weeks of silent note-taking, I summoned the courage to ask about abiogenesis; and the second law of thermodynamics; and the presence of intelligent, ordered data in DNA; and the scarcity of intermediate forms in the fossil record; and whatnot. I didn't raise those questions all at once, but over a period of two weeks or so. I gradually got to the point where I suppose I was asking a question or two every day.

And something very quickly became obvious: this guy had no good answers to the hard questions. He had never really thought through those issues. He was a doctrinaire evolutionist whose presuppositions were dogmatically atheistic, and he had never seriously considered any arguments against his views. When I (and soon others) began to question his claims, he knew he was in over his head. His cool braggadocio gave
way to agitated frustration.

So for three weeks he brought in a guest lecturer from the department of geosciences at the University of Texas in Dallas. And you know what? That guy had no sensible answers either. All the two of them could do was mock and fulminate against whoever was raising the questions.

Anymore, I seldom wind up arguing with evolutionists. I consider the whole thing ridiculous, and my experience with them is generally the same: question their paradigm, and they just get this bug-eyed look on their faces and move right past argumentation and into bluster and insult.

One of the best--that is, funniest--encounters I had was with a lady whom I asked, "Of the different theories of evolution (I can think of five without difficulty), to which one do you subscribe, and why do you think that the evidence for it falsifies the others?"

Her answer--I kid thee not--was, "The one the scientists believe."

She was an ardent evolutionist, yet did not know enough about the subject to know that there are competing theories of evolution. She was darn sure that I was wrong, though. The pitiful part is that she was (presumably still is) so darn typical...

The Center is Not as Safe as You Think It Is

I've been meaning to write a short bit about this for some time, and may yet, but in the meantime, Phil Johnson offers a thought similar to the ones I've been having:

...this week they've been discovering what any highway engineer will tell you: on a freeway where heavy traffic is moving at high speed in opposing directions, there's no such thing as "common ground." Furthermore, you won't get very far pretending the yellow line is the common-ground marker. You're liable to get clobbered by traffic from both sides.

More often than not, when someone consistently tells me they're in the "center," that they're a "centrist," or a "moderate," it seems to me that what is actually going on is that they simply don't want, in taking a clear and definable position, for their ideas to be subject to attack from those who don't agree with them. They don't want to--it seems to them, anyway--spend their lives arguing, so they decide that they're going to be a centrist or moderate. Surely moderates can at least get along with everyone, right?

Not really. It's a good way to wind up roadkill. People just think you won't make up your mind.

Say It Ain't So!

Emergent can't be dying or dead; I ain't finished dissectin' it yet!

I must have 'bout half a dozen things left to publish on the subject, stuff that's written, and stuff that's half-written.

I almost wish the "conversation" would linger, just so, when I eventually publish that material, I could avoid being accused of beating a dead horse.

But only "almost."