Explaining how to use blogs to a Religious Apologist

A confusing conversation about when and how to use a blog...

"So consider for the moment if you were a scientist and had made a posit and offered such for review from others and their on topic critiques. Would it matter in the least that their critiques came from a blog, or if they held a certain political position, or any of the other ad hominem responses that you continue to offer when you are at a loss as to how to respond to critiques of your posits on topic?"

(The background to this question is provided at the bottom of the page)

First of all, an explanation of the purpose of this blog site, which is not actually a blog although it uses the blogger.com platform. It's an archive of information and conversations on a particular discussion board. Unlike most discussion boards, that one does not provide a history or archive of topics and posts, making it impossible to cross-refer. By referring to content on this site, repetition is avoided. That is the purpose of hyperlinks.

Component Parts of the Question

Part	Text
1	Consider for the moment if you were a scientist and had made a posit and offered such for review from others and their on topic critiques.
2	Would it matter in the least that their critiques came from a blog?
3	Would it matter in the least if they held a certain political position?
4	...or any of the other ad hominem responses that you continue to offer
5	...when you are at a loss as to how to respond to critiques of your posits on topic?

Part 1

“Consider for the moment if you were a scientist and had made a posit and offered such for review from others and their on topic critiques”

1.1 Short Answer If a scientist used a blog as the basis of a posit and offered it for review, he or she would be breaking the basic rules of presentation of an idea. So this would be unacceptable (for a scientist).

1.2 Detailed answer

We have to make an assumption here that the word “scientist” is relevant, presumably the “posit” would be a scientific hypothesis being offered for peer review. If that's the case then the scientist should ensure his or her “posit” fulfils four criteria, but these criteria can be applied to any “posit” whether The Poster is a scientist or not...

Originality 

The posit must be original and make a further contribution to what is already published.

Quality

The concept being explained must be clearly defined and appropriately answered, backed up with an adequately designed study and with justified claims.

Quantity

Has enough research or experimentation been done? Does the author need to carry out more research in order to justify their claims?

Readability

Is the information presented clearly, with no superfluous information which obscures the central point?

If we apply these criteria to the scenario described in the background section above, we see that The Poster failed to meet any of the four criteria. 

Part 2

”Would it matter in the least that their critiques came from a blog?”

2.1 Short answer: Yes it would matter a great deal. The blog would have been written before the scientist had provided their “posit”. Furthermore, if someone is critiquing a posit from a scientist who had offered such for review they must ensure that they use their own knowledge to carry out the review. This is a fundamental principle of peer review.

2.2 Detailed answer

This is a different scenario to the one described in the Background section. In this scenario, The Responder is using a blog to provide “their critiques”. In the original scenario it was The Poster who was using a blog to begin a discussion, it was not The Responder who was using a blog.

In this new scenario, it would matter a great deal if The Responder's critique came from a blog. In fact it would be totally unacceptable, the main reasons being that the blog would have been written before the scientist had provided their “posit” and The Blogger could not have possibly seen the idea presented by The Poster. 

If someone is critiquing a “posit” from a scientist who had “offered such for review” they must ensure that they use their own knowledge to carry out the review. Using a blog as the basis of the review does not meet this requirement. 

Furthermore, a reviewer should be critical and ideally provide suggestions on how to improve the information provided by the scientist. 

Part 3

“Would it matter in the least if they held a certain political position?”

3.1 Short Answer Yes it would matter if the political position is relevant to the context. Reviews of global warming research is a classic example.

3.2 Detailed Answer

It is unclear if this refers to The Poster or The Responder, but in any case, the answer is yes that it does matter, if the political position is relevant to the context. The situation described in the Background section is one where the political position of The Blogger is well known to be anti-liberal, to equate liberalism with atheism and to publicly attack atheists and atheist philosophers because of their atheism. 

If the question is asking about the political position of the people reviewing the scientist's ideas, then again they absolutely must not begin to review anything from a scientist that they have strong feelings about, be they political or otherwise, and be they negative or positive, as such a review is bound to be biased. The political position of the scientist and/or of the reviewers, should be irrelevant, unless the scientist or the reviewer position themselves as political commentators, in which case, are they the right people to provide or review scientific ideas. 

A classic example of this are the review of climate change research, which are often politically motivated. And some reviewers would argue that some of the climate change research is politically motivated and therefore irrelevant. Using the example described in the Background section, a political blog was copied and pasted into a religion discussion board, therefore this also fails the relevance test. 

Part 4

“...or any of the other ad hominem responses that you continue to offer”

In fact none of the above can remotely be described as “ad hominem”

Part 5

“...when you are at a loss as to how to respond to critiques of your posits on topic?”

There seems to be two contradictions here: Firstly, the scenario described in The Background section is all about a critique to a posit, not a response to a critique of a posit. Or maybe the suggestion is that The Responder was “at a loss as to how to respond” which is factually incorrect, as it is the response from The Responder which triggered the situation described in The Background section. 

Background

This question was posed by someone who was questioned for copying and pasting over 900 words from a political blog as a post on the Religion discussion board. The Poster reacted angrily to being questioned about copying large sections of text from blogs, and continued for several weeks to try to justify the copying and pasting of third party opinions, specifically from blogs, as the basis for discussion on a discussion board. The Poster even suggested that being questioned for doing so was "ad hominem". The most recent question related to this episode is shown above, but it is actually several questions and is best dealt with by breaking it down into component parts.

This question follows a situation where a post was made (by “The Poster”) on a discussion board, where the post was text copied and pasted from a blog. The response (by “The Responder”) to this post covered four aspects:

a) The Responder questioned the validity of presenting a third party opinion for discussion (provided by “The Blogger”), given that The Blogger is not a subscriber to the discussion board, and the blog already has dozens of comments from anonymous people who subscribe to the blog (“The Commenters”).

b) The Responder questioned the context of the text that had been copied and pasted, as it wasn't clear whether this text was limited to The Blogger's text, or whether it also included text from the anonymous people who commented on the blog.

c) The Responder questioned the motives of The Blogger, whose opinions are well known for being politically motivated, who described himself as “a racialist”, who is an “ultra conservative” well known for being anti-liberal, who equates liberalism with atheism, and who is well known for his rhetoric and misrepresentation of anyone who is a liberal or an atheist. 

d) The Responder pointed out that the premises of the blog were factually incorrect. The first premise was that Nietzsche was a nihilist (he wasn't) and that nihilism was the cause of Nietzsche's mental illness (Nietzsche was afflicted with dementia).