I said:
It sounds first like you are saying that I decide which side of an issue is true by how many people are on each side.
To which Yorzhik replied:
That's what you said: "many fundamentalist ideas about what the Old Testament says are diametrically in opposition to the science that is routinely and successfully used and taught in every major university and industry in the world."
The quoted part from me is simply a statement of fact. It has no dependence on whether I side with the universities or whether you do or don’t. I think it has long been clear that I have a lot of respect for almost all science as it is taught in premier colleges, but my siding with them most assuredly was not predicated on me counting how many people were on each side of the issue. If we consider the adult population as a whole, I honestly don’t know how many people are on each side on some of the disputed issues. Nor do I care much.
Popularity is a bad way to determine truth.
I agree, but that is a message you need to direct to Cadry. Quite regularly he brags about how many Bibles have been sold, and how many Christians there are that disbelieve some aspect of science or the other.
Instead of the popularity game, I am far more interested in how each side came to its conclusions. On the science side, I see the cumulative result of a vast amount of study and research, performed by and concurred in by a diverse array of scientists. These scientists span all cultures, religions, and nationalities.
You have never been able to have a rational conversation on the topic of common descent. You're nothing but a ball of emotion.
Then pick up your toys and go home. If you choose to dialogue with someone who you really think is “nothing but a ball of emotion”, then that reflects poorly on you more than on me.
We determine what is true by what is consistent within itself, what is coherent as a set ideas and/or events that follow one another, and by what has predictive power. Any of these things are weighed against the opposing idea to create a level of confidence in one side or the other.
Not what I expected you to say, but I’ll buy into this, Bring it on.