Evolution micro debate

[Lusankya]

Those Chinese character arguments which "prove" Christianity are stupid. If I decided to use the same retarded way of dissecting the characters that they did, then I would end up deciding that the character 芜 （which means overgrown) means "an absence of vegetation", since it's made up of the grass radical, and the character 无 (without).

Aside from that, it also seems really stupid to argue that the Chinese somehow hid the story of Genesis in their characters... but not in their actual flood myths.

[PainRack]

Those Chinese character arguments which "prove" Christianity are stupid. If I decided to use the same retarded way of dissecting the characters that they did, then I would end up deciding that the character 芜 （which means overgrown) means "an absence of vegetation", since it's made up of the grass radical, and the character 无 (without).

Aside from that, it also seems really stupid to argue that the Chinese somehow hid the story of Genesis in their characters... but not in their actual flood myths.

Oh they did. It just that its only "accurate" when recorded by a southern tribe thousand of years later, with the more original accounts of the flood being hopelessly corrupted and Nuwa is obviously male, not female.

Guess Fuxi was truly a saint then, for being the world first homosexual family unit. Hate to imagine what the dragon tails now mean though:D

Frankly, I'm using the word elephant and resemble. Resemble has the radical for man added to the phonetic symbol elephant in it, so, do humans resemble elephants? To make things more interesting, according to this,http://www.ancientscripts.com/chinese.html, the two words were depicted like that in ancient script, something I didn't know back in 2005.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Hi. Need help again on a topic regarding Chinese words proving Noah ark and Christianity bit again. Apparently, he been reading up on some... more recent literature than the Discovery in Genesis book which started this trend.


Anyone can point me to better resources than the talkorigins archive?

Detail the argument a bit, I have not ever seen this.

[Lusankya]

The argument is basically that the constructions of certain Chinese characters "prove" that there's some kind of intrinsic understanding of Christianity which is shared by all cultures.

One of their favourite characters is the character for "boat" 船, which combines the characters for "eight"* "mouth" and "container"**, which "proves" that Chinese people have an intrinsic understanding of the flood story, because there were eight people on Noah's ark. Never mind that neither of the two major Chinese flood myths actually resembles the Bible story.

Another favourite is the character for "demon", 鬼. It's a pictographic character - which means that if you have a close look at it, you can see that it's a thing with a big head (田), legs (儿), a tail (厶) and a horn (the dot on the top). Unless you're a crazy person fundamentalist, though. If you're someone like that, then rather than just accepting that the component parts are there as part of a standardisation procedure, you interpret all the components separately (except for the horn, which you ignore). See, 田 means "garden" or "field", 儿 means "son", which is a kind of person, and 厶 means "secret". So "devil" is "secret person in the garden"! Just like the snake in Genesis!

It is retarded on so many levels.


*Actually, it's the character for several, but whatever.
*Whenever I've seen people arguing this, they say that 舟 means container, but it actually means boat in and of itself.

[NDR-113]

I would suggest exposing him to some of the works of Carl Sagan if you can do so - at the very least you'll be able to find some good clips on YouTube.

Carl Sagan is awesome--no doubt about it--but if you really want some of the fundamental facts and evidence for evolution, you should try Richard Dawkins. See particularly The Greatest Show on Earth: the Evidence for Evolution.
I don't know if you'll get him to read it; he may not even understand it, it's a little technical. But mostly it's pretty straightforward. That is, if you're still arguing with him about evolution--like most fundamentalists, once he's been outwitted in one topic, he moves to a completely random one, like "You are such a cynical person I am happier blah blah blah."

[someone_else]

That is, if you're still arguing with him about evolution--like most fundamentalists, once he's been outwitted in one topic, he moves to a completely random one, like "You are such a cynical person I am happier blah blah blah."

At which point you can safely post "haha, I won and you lost!!!!!".

[PainRack]

How does one shut down a Gish Gallop?

[Alyrium Denryle]

How does one shut down a Gish Gallop?

Call them out on it, then completely destroy one or two examples from their gallop, then follow that up with

"I do not have the time allotted to me in order to deal with his/her other claims. However, if any of you wish to see me afterward, I can go over it in detail"

subsequently, be prepared to back it up.

If you know you will be facing one in advance, it is possible to prepare if you have a sample of that person's other debates. You can create pre-canned rebuttals that are optimized to use the minimum amount of time per argument.

As for your positive case, you can incorporate rebuttals into its structure if you know what you will see from your opponent in advance.

[Iroscato]

Okay, so you guys have probably gone over this a million times, but I wan't to make sure I'm not just being really thick.
I'm semi-debating this guy on the subject of evolution (it come's from a debate on ESP) and... well, i'll copy paste

There is a big differance between evolution and adaptation, they've mutated fruit flies and got countless varieties but they are still fruit flies and after several generations they revert back to their origional form, Darwin "saw" evolution in finches in his travels because differant islands had differant types of beak again not evolution just adaptation to an enviroment, they were still finches they wern't turning into anything else. Mice who lived in a butchers freezers grew fur coats but were still mice

He said that. I replied with:

Adaptation is evolution. Evolution is natural selection in order to find the best adaptation for an environment. SO those finches were evolving, as were those fruit flies. You have just made a basic result in debating evolution, and that is believing that evolution=new species.

Am I right? Am I being stupid?
He came back with something seemingly moronic about a cat turning into a dog being evolution.
What I'm also worried about: Is this guy debating like a creationist?

Ok, this is scary. I`m also locked in an argument with a creationist, who said the same thing about adaptation, and even came out with some BS about cats turning into dogs...
Is this guy ginger? If so, we`ve been talking to the same guy

[Akhlut]

While it is entirely within reason that they are the same person, it is also entirely within reason that they are getting their arguments from a single source and just using copy-pasta to make an argument.

[PainRack]

Call them out on it, then completely destroy one or two examples from their gallop, then follow that up with

"I do not have the time allotted to me in order to deal with his/her other claims. However, if any of you wish to see me afterward, I can go over it in detail"

subsequently, be prepared to back it up.

If you know you will be facing one in advance, it is possible to prepare if you have a sample of that person's other debates. You can create pre-canned rebuttals that are optimized to use the minimum amount of time per argument.

As for your positive case, you can incorporate rebuttals into its structure if you know what you will see from your opponent in advance.

For reference, the current thread is over here.
http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/showt ... ?t=2925630
The forum format is... a bit clumsy, especially since I can't get real post numbers and etc without spending more time and work and its annoying.
Its annoying because no matter how I call and attempt to shut it down, he's STILL expanding the topics over and over again. And then using Argumentum ad nauseam, if a rebuttal was made, he drags it out for a couple of pages, wait a while and then repeats the statement. Again.

Seriously. Its the first time I seen post necromancy used as a troll defence...........

Ok, this is scary. I`m also locked in an argument with a creationist, who said the same thing about adaptation, and even came out with some BS about cats turning into dogs...
Is this guy ginger? If so, we`ve been talking to the same guy

They're quoting from the same website and DVD actually. CMI, AIG, and Darwin Voyage.

[Alyrium Denryle]

nd then using Argumentum ad nauseam, if a rebuttal was made, he drags it out for a couple of pages, wait a while and then repeats the statement. Again.

Then just copy and past the rebuttal.