Ahoy Nonny-
Heu mihi Cecil quia peccavi nimis, in vita mea: quid faciam miser?
In one post in one Pit Thread I have wrecked 34 years of ignorance fighting and now the forces of darkness will rule.
“Sampiro, Sampiro, Sampiro” goes the refrain. “A million deaths of posts bringing enlightenment were not enough for Sampiro.”
Oh wait, maybe not…
quasi(a): having some resemblance; “a quasi success”; “a quasi contract”
This isn’t a quasi quote but an exact quote cut and pasted directly from the WND and with enough lead-up to give a reasonable facsimile of context.
As for “ad hominem attacks”, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means”, at least not in the context of debate. An “ad hom” is specifically an IRRELEVANT personal attack. Not all personal attacks are irrelevant.
Example:
In the above, the response is an ad hom attack. Neither Jefferson’s slaveowning nor his sex life are particularly relevant to his views on religion or religion’s separation from politics.
Now observe:
Now in this sequence the response, though the same word for word response as before, is NOT an ad-hom attack. The fact that Jefferson owned slaves and couldn’t free them is very relevant to his views on slavery and could well explain why he argued for their continued slavery: his increasingly white supremacist views could well have been based upon his inability to free his slaves.
Now you are probably saying, “But Pat Boone has not been a slaveowner in years, so that’s not relevant.” Well, no it’s not, but there is some commonality between the Jefferson example and Pat Boone.
Now, let us view Pat’s views in full context. I do not believe that Pat is truly trying to throw his hat into the ring of world class academic cosmologist, do you? Be honest… there we go, I didn’t think so. Why then would Pat be so concerned over whether life originated over billions of years and spontaneously versus whether it was created miraculously and divinely guided if he is not attempting to denigrate Darwin for scientific reasons alone? Here is a theory: Pat Boone is doing this because he (Boone) is a celebrity advocate of Fundamentalist Christianity and creationism furthers his own agenda as such, while Darwin and future evolutionists detract from that agenda’s reality and merit.
In the article Boone denigrates, more than once, the scientific knowledge of those with Ph.Ds in the sciences. To assert that Boone’s own scientific expertise is noticeably lacking is relevant to the argument. Pat Boone’s lack of formal scientific education (as evidenced by attending a Fundamentalist college before the notion fo DNA even became part of standard scientific curriculum), combined with absolutely no evidence that Boone later achieved any proven or reliable scientific expertise inside or outside of an academic environment, demonstrates that Boone is not able to speak with any type of authority or reliability upon highly complex scientific matters. Therefore, Pat’s education (or lack of) is relevant, not ad hom.
Since Creationism (which is clearly closer to Pat’s own philosophy and the one which he seems to be championing) is borne more of conservative Christianity than of science, Pat must therefore be attacking evolution more as a proponent of conservative Christianity spirituality than as an opponent of science, right? Of course right. Therefore let us examine his credentials as an authority on conservative Christianity spirituality.
In science expertise can be demonstrated by such quantifiable things as publication, formal education, successfully defended theses, the acknowledgement of one’s knowledge and work by those who are clearly well versed in scientific matters, etc… It is impossible to quantify a person’s religious spirituality as it is too intensely personal and non-intellecually falsifiable a matter. But as conservative Christianity is very much concerned with, in fact based upon, a particular moral and ethical behavior, perhaps that can be admitted as at least circumstantial evidence (and hereagain, circumstantial evidence, like ad homs, often gets a bad or at least misunderstood reputation: circumstantial evidence CAN be used in a court of law and the emphasis can be as much upon evidence as upon circumstantial, especially when harder evidence is unavailable or even impossible to attain).
Most Christians would agree that the ancient maxim known popularly as “The Golden Rule”, or
or, conversely (and more anciently)
is, along with the acceptance of certain supernatural elements, very much at the heart of Christianity and even a fair summation of its non-supernatural ethos. Has Pat Boone followed this rule?
Well, we know from experience that Pat Boone knowingly committed and financially profited from the sale of a product known as Acne-Statin. He was not just the official spokesperson for this item but he actively endorsed its use and spoke from personal knowledge of its effectiveness in clearing up the acne of his four daughters when they were teenagers and young adults. The FDA ruled that the product had not been tested, that it was no more effective than soap and water, and that its marketing was in fact an act of legal fraud. As punitive measures Boone, who was revealed to be an owner of the company manufacturing and distributing the product, was ordered to pay a significant amount of money in refunds and fines and even 2.5% of the monies he had received from the product solely for being the celebrity spokesperson.
Now, there are other ethical problems with Pat’s life (he’s profited from the distribution of licensed musical merchandising of such groups as The Beatles and Ozzie Osbourne even though he has claimed in print and in interviews that he finds them morally offensive and dangerous to youth, he has profited from singing songs in which the writers and artists were famously denied their royalties by his label [the history of black singer/songwriters of the 1950s is a notoriously corrupt one], etc.) but as I didn’t mention these above and as I’m tired of speaking on the subject I’l end it here.
Pat’s lack of business ethics (and the fact he was excommunicated [well, they don’t use that word, they use the word ‘churched’, though it means essentially the same thing] from the Church of Christ]) indicates to me that he is not even qualified as an expert advocate of true conservative Christianity as he does not follow its moral teachings. Therefore this is not ad hom.
The business of his wife and Liberace is an ad-hom attack, I’ll admit. I just think it’s a funny and weird story, but it is true.
As for cites, you’re quite right, I didn’t provide them. I generally assume Dopers are able to use Google and keywords to check information. However I will provide them later this weekend but for now I must run. (I will be using MLA citations unless you prefer APA or Chicago (though I will not use Turabian, evil dreadful antiquated style). For now I must run and will be gone for several hours.
Ciao,
J
