Creation Science versus Evolutionary Theory is not a debate

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"Each of us know rather little first hand. If you accept inter-subjective testimony and second hand accounts of experiments one has never performed first hand then each of us can know a lot. In any case the only way we know that something exists is when someone (or other) perceives it and reports what he perceives."

I'm largely in agreement with this. However, when it comes to questions like these:

1. What political system constitutes the best that one could feasibly hope for?
2. What is an ethical or unethical action to perform is this scenario?
3. What standards should we apply to evaluating the aesthetic merit of works of art or music?

Or such as these:

1. What happens after we are dead?
2. Did anything exist before the Big Bang?
3. Why does consciousness exist at all?

If you can demonstrate that the empirical methods of science, and of science alone, can sufficiently answer all of these questions, then you might be on to something. But if these are not answerable purely by those means, then I question how you can denigrate other means of speculating about them. If these things are simply irrelevant to you, then I can respect that. But they are not to me, and I will not abandon my only means of coming to an understanding of them.

"If ruveyn were to say that he cannot claim that mind or the 1852 coelacanth exists, I would have no quibble."

Are you referring to the fish? Homely little buggers, they are!

"My problem is he asserts the NON-existence of anything he is unwilling to allow exists."

Is he doing that? I'll let him answer, I suppose. Or is he saying that he is not willing to assert that something does exist in the absence of independent, inter-subjectively verified evidence? Ruveyn?

"If you mean the immaterial Mind of Cartesian Dualism (res cogitans) I deny it outright."

Well, as I posted a few posts back:

"...my inclination is to reject a dualistic conception of the mind, given that I have never seen any evidence of mind existing as a separate, distinct substance apart from matter that can be measured as a force of nature."

Then we are in basic agreement. However, at a more subtle level, I question how you are defining "physical". Do you simply mean "natural", or are you implying that mentality is something indistinguishable from physical entities? While I agree that our mentality is something fully embedded in the natural world, it can still be regarded as distinct from the non-mental. This isn't to imply that it is categorically different in an absolute sense. I am agnostic on that question. But at least for the purposes of declaring what exists and what doesn't, I have to say that it is axiomatic that mentality does exist, even if we ultimately decide that we can't justify regarding it as anything more than a higher level emergent process that is the outcome of a complex, non-linear entity like the brain.

For me, the two (mental facts and brain facts) are so inextricably bound together that I have a hard time separating them. Still, when I observe the function of a brain on a CT scan or MRI, I don't regard that as the same thing as my personal, subjective experience of the world.

We have already had Atheists for a Democratic Society - with seriously mixed results thanks to the fact politics makes strange bedfellows some of whom are not without parasites.

But there were one or two non-lightweights capable of saying something more sophisticated than "Rilijun is Stuppid and Bad", that one could actually have a fruitful discussion with.

I do not say that all of those on the "Philosophy is Bunk" list are lightweights - indeed, I am sure some are not.

But will it in practice be possible to have a discussion that goes beyond "Philosophy is just dumb" "No it isn't" "Is so"?

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For the record I do not do or get Philosophy, and much of what passes for Philosophy is certainly no better than most English Department Lit Crit.

Twenty years ago I would have totally agreed with the proposition, though I would not have joined - not a joiner.

But it is twenty years later than twent years ago and I have been shown that there are people - among whom I have to number Socrates [though I do not swallow everything Plato put in his mouth], Kant, Wittgenstein, Weil. People who do Philosophy but are not blatting garbage.

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
 Is he able, but not willing?
 Then he is malevolent.
 Is he both able and willing?
 Then whence cometh evil? 
Is he neither able nor willing? 
Then why call him God?”-Epicurus

"For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us."-Charles Bukowski

What else is there?