BobRyan said:
lordkalvan said:
1. We see a selected piece of film in which Richard Dawkins pauses when asked a question. Filming is then stopped.
Indeed "we all see" that. We also "all see" that Dawkins CONFIRMS the very SEQUENCE we see in that video!
Why the exclamation mark, Bob? Why do you trumpet the sequence as if the sequence is the only relevant factor to consider? Richard Dawkins describes the sequence of events explicitly. He offers an alternative explanation for the pause, an explanation that you refuse to acknowledge as plausible for no reason that I can see other than that you neither like Dawkins nor the values he stands for.
2. We "all see" that in YOUR own skeptics-link Dawkins calls the QUESTION being asked "truculent".
Red herring. Richard Dawkins' opinion about the truculence or otherwise of the question is wholly irrelevant as to whether or not he is being misrepresented by the footage screened. Your point is meaningless and an attempt to discredit Dawkins' position simply because you dislike his choice of vocabulary.
3. We "all see" that this is the SAME question YOU just asked here on this thread.
An even bigger red herring, unless you think I am Richard Dawkins appearing here under a pseudonym or else in some way representing Richard Dawkins. And even then I fail entirely to understand whatever logic is driving this point. My questions and how I phrase them are wholly irrelevant to how Dawkins views a question that you believe to be similarly phrased - and posed, it should be pointed out, by individuals who gained access to his private residence under false pretenses. The point at hand is not the question - which not even Dawkins disagrees about - but the circumstances of its being asked and the reason for the ensuing pause.
4. We "all see" Dawkins whine in the skeptics link about his being question by anyone other than kool-aid drinking uncritical thinking pro-darinist CHEERLEADERS. (Truly an example of just how "enlightened" our darwinist icons actually are)
Yet another piece of irrelevance. I have no idea how you think this cheap piece of mud-slinging bears at all on the question of whether there is more than one plausible explanation for Richard Dawkins' hesitation in the film. Again, the argument is not about whether Dawkins is a nice person in the flesh (I have no reason to doubt that he is).
L.K
2. There are at leat two possible interpretations of Dawkins' pause (there may well be others):
- 2.1 Dawkins is flummoxed by the whip-smart question (your preferred interpretation and the interpretation that the film-makers clearly intend you to draw).
- 2.2 Dawkins is reflecting on the fact that his hospitality has been abused by the film-makers and is considering whether or not to eject them from his private residence, as Dawkins later writes.
Those who are in-the-tank for Darwinism will need a "lot of imagination" on this one -- I grant you that. circling the wagons around the "less than enlightened" position of Dawkins "I never allow Creationists to question me" and around his 11-second flummox plus "stop tape" are certainly providing lots of entertaining challenge for darwinist devotees to exercise their "imagination".
Imagination to consider the possibility that Richard Dawkins' description of the pause is entirely plausible? Imagination that allows you to put quotation marks around various phrases without any citations at all to show that they quotes from the person involved rather than something you have just made up?
All you demonstrate here, Bob, is the point I made in my previous post: your mulish refusal to acknowledge any possibility other than the one you are committed to, the only one that your bias and pre-existing assumptions appear to allow you to consider. I again make the point about your 11 day 'pause' on the thread previously linked to: was this a flummox (as I reasonably suppose it to be) or is there some alternative plausible explanation that can be offered? If there is, how much 'imagination' is required to consider the explanation credible, or do I argue that the pause itself is all the evidence required to conclude that the reason for it was a 'glaringly obvious' state of flummoxed-ness?
But my more objective suggestion for the darwinists who feel the need to "avoid the glaringly obvious" event they are witnessing in that video is that they ASK THEMSELVES to think critically for just a SECOND.
1. Ask themselves -- "Is this not an example of a junk science practitioner being asked an obvious yet difficult question by non-believers in that junk-science?" COULD that "possibly be"??? (in this case the question is so obviously necessary that even YOU asked it here on this board)
Bob, you read only what you want to read. I have already conceded (several times) that your interpretation may be correct. I am at the moment interested in whether even the possibility of your being wrong (and Dawkins being right) is part of your world-view? I notice again you raise the red herring of questions I pose as if this has any bearing on the subject at all. Questions I ask, the way in which I ask them and the reasons I ask them for are entirely irrelevant to Richard Dawkins' opinion of the intent or relevance of similar or other questions asked of him by individuals who have gained access to his private residence under false pretenses. That's lying, Bob.
2. Ask themsevles - "MIGHT that be the reason for someone claiming to be a scientist publically insisting that such questions are TRUCULENT if asked by non-believers in Darwinism"???
Multiple question marks do not make your question more devastating. Neither does the cap locks key. Whether Dawkins regarded the question as truculent or not is irrelevant to the point at issue. I see you are quite happy to imagine that there can be but one answer to this question. Can you imagine that Dawkins might be stating his position exactly as it was?
3. Ask themselves - HOW would a PHYSICS professor be EXPECTED to respond if a group came asking him about GRAVITY -- with a question like "Can you give us an example of an object in space being pulled toward earth by gravity?" --
Irrelevant. Neither the imagined question nor the imagined circumstances are the same as the actual question and the actual circumstances. You imagine a situation that you think makes your case, but the situation is entirely different, as you are well aware. But I note again your willingness to exercise imagination freely in circumstances that please you to do so.
Would that Professor say "ST'OP the tape!!"
Irrelevant, as discussed above.
Would that professor be expected to call such a critical objective question "truculent"???
Irrelevant, as discussed above.
Would that professor be expeted to go into "flummoxed mode" rather than simply say "EXCELLENT question -- let's talk about the MOON for a minute and the complex gravitational interactions between moon and earth".
Irrelevant, as discussed above.
Surely this is the glaringly obvious option for someone NOT engaged in junk-science the moment they click this link and view "in detail" the points listed there.
All that is glaringly obvious here is your inability to acknowledge the possibility that any understanding but your own is feasible.
lordkalvan said:
There are no 'objective conclusions' that you (or anyone else) can draw from the film because there are no criteria that you can use that allow you to absolutely determine whether 2.1 or 2.2 is the sole interpretation possible.
Or are you really stuck (as you claim in that quote above) "believing" that the viewers do not clearly see the glaringly obvious problem in Dawkins' antics both ON camera and OFF camera in that skeptics-link YOU gave us? How far down that "I - see nothing... I hear nothing" foxhole have you gone?
Please show the criteria for objectively determining the reasons behind Richard Dawkins' pause. Frequent use of the phrase 'glaringly obvious' has about the same level of debating persuasiveness behind it as a five-year old claiming 'Tis too! when told that something may not be so. How deeply have you dug yourself into the fox-hole of belief in your own infallibility that you are unable to acknowledge the possibility that you may be wrong about something? I am tempted to mention the Ebla tablets and the 'sedimentation rates of all major river deltas.'
