Comments for DAN WALLACE MUSIC

Comment on Update: Lanier, Jodorowsky, de Beauvoir, Airbender, et al. by Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget, Part II: Bachelardian Neoteny | DAN WALLACE MUSIC

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:58:37 +0000

[...] week, I explored some of my reactions to the first half of Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto (originally published in [...]

Comment on Dear Hecklers and Haters: Your Folly’s Not Funny by WHAT NOT TO DO? Heckler for hire | LOOKING FOR DRAMA

WHAT NOT TO DO? Heckler for hire | LOOKING FOR DRAMA — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 07:06:22 +0000

[...] there for him/her, or is he/she there for us, the audience? Is heckling outright wrong? Click here for a view. But was this man a ‘performer’? In a world saturated with publicity, to [...]

Comment on Fell (For Two Musicians and a Computer) + Damn Dirty Hippies by Dan

Dan — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:30:35 +0000

Hi Greg – Thanks! Hope you’re doing great as well.

Comment on Fell (For Two Musicians and a Computer) + Damn Dirty Hippies by Greg Maddox

Greg Maddox — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 20:13:21 +0000

Dan this is great work! I hope you’re doing great!

Comment on The Question Intelligent Design Can’t Answer by Dan

Dan — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 04:20:55 +0000

Hi Steve, thanks for your comments and for breaking down the relationship between the propositions in the dichotomy. I wish more people would study rhetoric and logic at least a little, not just so that they could better engage in rational discourse and not be as easily manipulated by rhetoric, but also in order to be more aware of the limits of rationality. I actually would love to see it taught in public secondary schools, or to even younger students.

Comment on The Question Intelligent Design Can’t Answer by Steve

Steve — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 22:32:30 +0000

Dan –

Very good article. I believe in a creator-God, and I am also well educated in rhetoric and logic (insert joke here). I cannot find logical fault with your argument, and I appreciate your well-thought and respectful post.

At some point faith has to be illogical. Even in the Bible, faith is expressed as the “…the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. [He 11:1]“.

One fallacy I often see in this debate is the false dichotomy — if Creationism is true, Evolution is not (and vice versa). So often I see people defend Evolution with “Creationism is silly” (and vice versa). While such an approach can work:

A is false because B (incompatible with A) is true

It fails in this respect:

A is true because B (incompatible with A) is false

This is an important distinction, and were the truth of it known, half of the internet noise on this topic would be removed without comment.

In short, the arguments of Intelligent Design can be used to disprove Evolution, but they cannot be used to prove Existence of a Creator-God (this is the point of your post).

The existence of a Creator-God can only be proven if one could produce such a being (or such a being appeared)… the proof would be beyond rhetoric at that point.

Until that happens (and yes, I believe one day we will all come face-to-face with the Creator-God), it is simply an article of my faith that He exists. While I have great time discussing the implausability of Darwinism using I.D. arguments, I don’t pretend I could convince a faithless person my God exists using rhetoric.

Again, good post, good discussion!

Comment on American Irony by vintage

vintage — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 01:50:51 +0000

It sounds like Stephen Fry is more upset that such a statement is too oft used so that it becomes bleak, lazy and graceless. I didn’t see any points to prove that America isn’t an “irony free zone”.

Probably, this has developed into, or soon will develop into, a rather guilty pleasure. Can’t the Brits bask in the glow that they seem to understand better than the American counterparts who are considered mighty in terms of military and economy? Yet, to point out the obvious also seems rather tasteless, and ironically, makes them more similar to the Americans, if anything.