So it’s only natural for Luskin to try to redefine “not the same kind of Christian as me” as “not Christian.”

Incidentally regarding Greg’s response to BAllanJ’s remark: there’s a more serious point there: a lot of individuals have an essentially distorted way of what sort of quoting is acceptable and how much context is necessary to preserve meaning. That’s what I think BAllan is getting at. In many cases, they are so used to using what amounts to quote-mining as a form of reasoning (generally called using “proof-texts”) that there is a an attitude/belief that such quoting is valid and is an effective way of arguing.

Which would first need science finding it, right?

At this point, the unusual aspects of humans are primarily abilities to combine/recombine different types of information and knowledge in order to gain/synthesize/infer new understanding; to apply the same rule or solution to one problem to a different and new situation; to create and apply symbolic representations of computation and sensory input; to detach modes of thought from raw sensory and perceptual input; and possibly to feel disgust.

That’s not much to put us as “God’s special children”.

The man is incapable of honest exposition precisely because of what he’s promoting. How can you promote a lie with truth? If the economy was better, I’d suggest he try an honorable profession like selling used cars.

Bob nailed it — there’s a wide spectrum of approaches on the other side of the debate. We need as many different kinds of approaches to counter them. If you think of it like a bloodless version of a real-time sim like Age of Empires, each unit on its own is vulnerable to another kind of unit, and only a balanced army is likely to thrive. If you have too many of one unit, the opposing army constructs the counterunits and you lose.

People like him seem to sincerely believe that they can strip words out of their surrounding context without changing their meaning and intent.

We see the practice as pernicious and underhanded. They see it as routine.

I know, Mooney et. al. have ‘proven’ beyond a shadow of doubt that giving these asshats a public drubbing is counterproductive, damaging even; I should “Shut up, that’s why.” and leave this to the self-appointed pros. After all, they have evidence to back up their position, which I presume is only temporarily unavailable, just like Bush’s WMDs and Capt. Caine’s strawberries. In the interim, I want a spokesman with a rhetorical cricket bat to tenderize the headbones of the Discovery Institute’s trained buffoons. Let Genie Scott reach the reachable and teach the teachable, and leave the rest to those with a take-no-prisoners approach.