Jeff's Lunchbreak: Follow Up, Part III: Leaving Comments on Other Sites - Birds as Dinosaurs and Fossil Evidence for Evolution

Archaeopteryx - Berlin Specimen Well, it appears that my back and forth with R. K. Sepetjian has come to an end. If you'll recall from a few previous entries(Leaving Comments on Other Sites - Birds as Dinosaurs and Fossil Evidence for Evolution, Follow Up, and Follow Up Part II), I caught a case of SIWOTI syndrome after reading a couple entries on the blog, Across the Fruited Plain - Are Dinosaurs Alive Today As Birds?: Refuting Archaeopteryx as "Evidence" for Evolution and Refuting Fossil "Evidence" for Evolution: The Data is NOT in the Strata. I left a comment to each of those articles, and after a few weeks with my comments held up in moderation, Sepetjian saw and approved them, and then responded to them. Well, the conversation didn't exactly go the way I would have preferred it to. I wanted to discuss the original topics, mainly evolution. But Sepetjian turned it into a discussion on epistemology, or the nature of knowledge. As I wrote in the last installment of this series, "It wasn't very productive - neither of us did any convincing of the other."

So, I left a comment saying I was no longer interested in going round and round in such an unproductive conversation, which I quoted in full in my last entry. What I found especially amusing is that I predicted what path the conversation would take if it were to continue. In particular, I said:

And you'll keep making arguments of the sort, 'Aha! You admit you don't have absolute certainty, therefore you can't know anything. Whereas I believe in God, and can therefore have absolute certainty.'

And look at what he wrote as a part of his final reply:

I have been doing my best to answer you and in so doing, believe I have demonstrated that my truth claims are unassailable, while yours are unjustifiable.

His final statement in his last response was as follows:

Therefore, if you'll permit one more question: By what objective standard of morality are you appealing to when you express that those things are wrong?

So, once again, the conversation wasn't getting back to evolution, and once again, I was drawn into responding. If you follow this blog at all (which I'm guessing is the only reason anybody would have read this far into this entry), you can probably guess at my response, which included, in part, "I don't think there is an objective morality. Morality is based on values, which are in the realm of the subjective." I went on to mention the Euthypro Dilemma in anticipation of Sepetjian claiming God as the source of objective morality, and gave a couple examples.

But Sepetjian hasn't responded in almost a week, whereas at the peak of our discussion, we were each posting something daily. So, I fear that Sepetjian has grown tired of arguing with me, or sees me as a lost cause, or feels he has better things to do with his time. At this point, I'm not expecting a response on his part, but if he does, I'll be sure to mention it here.