Tom,

I posted a comment on the other thread about this debate and said that in order to "win" such a debate one should understand the opposing philosophical systems. And I think this is where Bahnsen clearly was superior to Stein. If I remember correctly, Stein did his PhD in some biology field. Now I am a physicist and can testify that very little or even no attention is given to philosophical matters in the education of a physicist. For some it is only a matter of hardware experimental equipment and for others only a matter of mathematical manipulations. I don't think it is much different in biology although there some ethical questions may come up. It might not be a too unrealistic statement to say that most natural scientists don't know too much about philosophical systems of thought. And this, I think, is where Stein's weakness was. Just adding a bit of some philosophy to biology doesn't make you a philosopher. My impression of Bahnsen is that he really knew what it was about and that he also understood the philosophical system in which Stein operated but that the same could not be said about Stein. In fact Bahnsen says at the beginning of the debate that the debate is about different philosophical systems (I think that is what he said).

There is perhaps a present day example of the same thing. You must have heard of Richard Dawkins' book "The God Delusion". Dawkins is an Oxford biologist and a full blown evolutionist. A man named Cornwall, also an Oxford scholar, wrote a response to Dawkins' book called "Darwin's Angle". Cornwall is not a natural scientist but a philosopher of history (I think). When reading Cornwall's book you clearly come under the impression that while Dawkins may be a good biologist, he does not understand the philosophical arguments completely while Cornwall is the better philosopher.

The point here is that when you debate these issues, you cannot use the same reasoning as you will use in physics or some other empirical science. And this is where, it seems to me, some natural scientists make a mistake.

Johan

PS You surely can see from my posts that I too am not a philosopher!!! <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/ugh.gif" alt="" />