How to debate an IDer

[toddaa]

Courtesy of the Abstract Factory. This is hilarious.

http://abstractfactory.blogspot.com/2005/10/only-debate...

[rexcat]

1. Good laugh!

[progressoid]

2. That's Excellent!!

Scientist: Perhaps it only appears that I broke your kneecap. Certainly, all the evidence points to the hypothesis I broke your kneecap. For example, your kneecap is broken; it appears to be a fresh wound; and I am holding a baseball bat, which is spattered with your blood. However, a mere preponderance of evidence doesn't mean anything. Perhaps your kneecap was designed that way. Certainly, there are some features of the current situation that are inexplicable according to the "naturalistic" explanation you have just advanced, such as the exact contours of the excruciating pain that you are experiencing right now.

[Az]

3. There is a similar argument for dealing with extreme post modernists

When faced with someone that tries to argue that science cannot prove itself because we cannot even be certain of reality offer to pull out a baseball bat. Ask them if they can believe hard enough that the bat will not hurt when it hits them in the head.

[onager]

4. I'm a Profit! Er, prophet...!!!

I've been challenging woo-woos for years when they start up their crap about "we can't be sure of reality."

I ask them to perform a simple experiment. They should load a pistol, put it to their heads, and pull the trigger.

If their theories of Quantum Reality are correct, then their awesome super-speedy Quantum Brain Waves should simply alter the course of the bullet...which is governed by boring, tired old non-quantum physics. Obviously no match for Quantum Reality!

When I'm feeling more liberal, I suggest they jump from a high building and Quantumly alter the nature of their impact on the way down. That should be pretty simple.

More seriously... NO!...the latest issue of SKEPTIC magazine has a good article on the Great Philosopher responsible for a lot of this extreme po-mo silliness: Jacques Diarrhea...er, Derrida.

I had the great pleasure of hearing a lecture by the guys who hoaxed the entire extreme po-mo community. They got an article published in one of its leading journals, attacking the idea of "objective mathematics."



You can find the resulting huffing-and-puffing by the po-mo community all over the web. All sorts of excuses for why an article that the real experts spotted as a hoax immediately, sailed right over the heads of the pompous po-mo asses. "Yes, we knew it was a hoax and went along with the joke..." BWA!

The SKEPTIC article mentions this embarassing moment for the Subjective Reality folks.

[Az]

5. I remember that article

Had me rolling that they published the damn thing. You read through it and it says nothing. Absolutely nothing.

[onager]

6. That's right!

The authors simply cut-and-pasted all the mandatory po-mo phrases, then threw in a hilarious argument in favor of "subjective math," IIRC. It's been a while since I read it, and I should go back and give it another look.

I heard them at a Skeptics Society meeting. They had the whole audience rolling in the aisles. Partly because, as they explained, they never really thought they would get away with it.

"Nah, they can't be THAT dumb..."

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. An agressive form of Samuel Johnson's refutation of Bishop Berkeley

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- "I refute it thus."

http://www.samueljohnson.com/refutati.html

I admit, doing it to the other guy has a more immediate effect.