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Awesomelyglorious
Destroyer of worlds, reaver of souls
Joined: Dec 18, 2005
Posts: 5725
Location: United States
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 Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 11:47 am Post subject: |
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| Ragtime wrote: |
And again, for those in this thread who still don't get it, my argument is not
that evolution didn't happen. Why would I care one way or the other?
God exists either way. My only contention is scientists and teachers who are
not being completely honest with students and the general public about their data. |
I think that there is a good amount of honesty going on.
| Quote: | But some people apparently are for dishonesty, as long as it advances "Science".
For, only honesty of one's findings can advance real science,
while "Science" as a proper noun and underground political movement
is always advanced through dishonesty. |
Um.... yeah. Are you trying to talk about positivism vs spiritualism? Frankly, this seems like a conspiracy theorist's talk, and seems to mislabel a lot of people.
| Quote: | Maybe I should make a poll asking WP members if they believe in practicing
1) Honesty
or
2) Dishonesty |
Actually, I think most people here practice honesty, they just don't necessarily practice it with themselves.
| Quote: |
Some people are clearly for dishonesty, and that's okay, so long as they are
at least honest enough to, just this once, say so. |
The most dishonest seeming person in this discussion is likely you, and I already created a poll on that topic.
| Quote: |
Firstly, yes, I meant a biogenesis, and have now corrected that post.
Secondly, let's cut the BS: Are you suggesting that those two claims have been proven?
Say yes or no. |
Abiogenesis must be true. I mean, we all agree that there was non-life and then there was life, so there is nothing to prove, only theories on how this could have happened. ID just is invokes a supernatural cause. As well, as for the second claim, well, the issue isn't proof but evidence. This isn't math, it is science, we cannot prove things only advance better or less good theories. The skeletons of various beings such as homo erectus, homo habilus, and others before homo sapiens and less like some variant of monkey seem to provide good evidence for man's descent from more monkey-like. They don't prove it, but what could?
| Quote: |
Would you prefer the term cult? Both the true, all-encompassing definitions of cults and of religions are murky at best.
Therefore, I will call it either term you perfer: cult or religion. |
Why not use the proper term: scientific theory, rather than subjecting it to your ridiculous games. |
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Gromit
Velociraptor
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Joined: May 20, 2006
Posts: 492
Location: In Cognito
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| Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 11:51 am Post subject: |
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| Ragtime wrote: | Secondly, let's cut the BS: Are you suggesting that those two claims have been proven?
Say yes or no. |
Yes, let's cut the bullshit. I have twice asked you whether you understand the concepts of proof and testing, and how they are used in the natural sciences and in mathematics. You didn't respond. I have explained the difference to you in this thread, before the post you replied to. No theory in the natural sciences is ever proven the way a mathematical theorem can be proven. No single claim in the natural sciences is ever proven the way a mathematical theorem can be proven.
You have not stated what you have in mind when you ask whether either claim is proven. That is either ignorant, or dishonest. You are asking a trick question, much like "Have you stopped beating your wife? Say yes or no." If I said yes to that, I would concede having a wife whom I have beaten in the past. If I say no, I would concede to carrying on beating my wife. I haven't got a wife. Therefore "yes" and "no" are both wrong answers.
Your question about descent and abiogenesis is of the same type, and I gave you all the information you needed to understand that. No claim in the natural sciences is ever proven the way mathematical theorems are proven. Claims in the natural sciences can only range from disproven over unsupported to well supported. By the strict definition of proof, there is no proof in the natural sciences, ever. But if I say "no", you can then use a colloquial interpretation of "proof" and pretend that evolutionary theory, or an individual claim derived from evolutionary theory being applied to a specific data set, is unsupported or disproven. If I say "yes", you apply the concept of mathematical proof, and say that is wrong. Your question is a setup so you can switch the meaning of "proof" to claim I'm wrong, whatever I say. To avoid that sort of BS, I asked you before to make clear what you mean by proof. You evaded the question. I then explained the different meanings to you on the same page and before the post you responded to.
You also demonstrated that you have a more general problem understanding the concept of proof.
| Ragtime wrote: | | history, math, and physics have been tested and proven over and over again. |
That is impossible. You can't prove a whole field of study. If you meant proving all claims in a field, Goedel has proven that is not possible in maths. You can't even prove single claims or theories in history of physics. Your understanding of the concept of proof is rather shaky. Read again my last post in this thread. Your response shows that either I wasn't clear enough (but then you'd have asked for clarification), or you haven't got the brains to get the point, or you are deliberately ignorant (a lie by your own standards), or you are knowingly and directly dishonest. Pick one, and we can carry on from there, without BS. Or perhaps you just didn't read my post. If that is the problem, go back and do read it.
| Ragtime wrote: | | Gromit wrote: | | Ragtime wrote: | | It's just its own little religion, plain and simple. |
Religions make statements about supernatural events, and make moral claims. Where is the supernatural in evolution, where are the moral claims? Try to avoid moral claims that depend on the naturalistic fallacy. That is not part of evolutionary theory. |
Would you prefer the term cult? Both the true, all-encompassing definitions of cults and of religions are murky at best.
Therefore, I will call it either term you perfer: cult or religion. |
You are evading the question again, in the best style of political campaigns, where impression is everything, and only the appearance of honest debate is needed. I ask again, where is the supernatural in evolution, where are the moral claims? If you don't want to imply both, you should not use the term religion or cult. If you are willing to cut the BS, that is.
Last edited by Gromit on Wed May 14, 2008 11:57 am; edited 2 times in total |
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monty
Phoenix
Joined: Sep 05, 2007
Posts: 2273
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| Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 11:53 am Post subject: |
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| Ragtime wrote: |
Secondly, let's cut the BS: Are you suggesting that those two claims have been proven? |
Humans are apes. Biologically, there is no doubt about it. You and I are apes. Our immediate ancestors (parents, grandparents, ...) were apes. The idea that we descended from apes is not unusual if ones accepts the fact that we are in fact animals, and that we are in the category of apes.
Genesis talks of abiogenesis in metaphorical terms - man was fashioned from clay. Was this clay literally potter's clay, or does it mean minerals in general? Would it really shatter your world view if God worked over millions of years instead of 7 days, and if evolution was the mechanism God used? |
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Ragtime
Legal Eagle Eye
Joined: Nov 03, 2006
Age: 29
Posts: 7393
Location: Dallas, Texas
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| Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 12:26 pm Post subject: |
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| Gromit wrote: | We had the beginning of a real discussion. Now you are drifting back into the tactics of political campaigning.
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Just because I'm not following your particular line of reasoning?
Get ready to dismiss virtually everyone on the planet,
if they must either follow your exact way of thinking or be wrong.
| Gromit wrote: |
Can we get back to a real discussion? You've shown that you can do that. |
I wish we could!
If only people would agree to basic, widespread, and obvious facts,
we could actually been to make progress.
But as it is, neither you nor anyone else appears to be listening. 
And I've made it SO, SO simple, and yet seemingly all of you
still will not admit to simple logic, let alone basic premises and occurances.
So, I'm basically done with this thread.
I don't talk to deaf people, and I don't make slides for blind people.
_________________
Anyone who is interested in philosophy, the of meaning of life, and answers to our hardest questions, I suggest you check out the free, online mp3 archive of Ravi Zacharias at www.rzim.org. |
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Gromit
Velociraptor
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Joined: May 20, 2006
Posts: 492
Location: In Cognito
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| Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 2:09 pm Post subject: |
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| Ragtime wrote: | | Gromit wrote: | | We had the beginning of a real discussion. Now you are drifting back into the tactics of political campaigning. |
Just because I'm not following your particular line of reasoning?
Get ready to dismiss virtually everyone on the planet,
if they must either follow your exact way of thinking or be wrong. |
You didn't follow my line of reasoning or my way of thinking when I thought we were finally getting to a real discussion. Your allegation itself is an example of the tactics from political campaigning, you are trying to divert my attention by annoying me.
I have explained in detail what makes me think you mostly behave like a troll. Perhaps it was coincidental that just after you must have reached that post (just after you had replied to the posts before mine) you did at last put forward a substantial argument. Now you are back to unsubstantiated allegations, and when you are asked to back them up, you try to divert attention by trick questions and by attempting to be insulting or annoying.
| Ragtime wrote: | | Gromit wrote: | | Can we get back to a real discussion? You've shown that you can do that. |
I wish we could!
If only people would agree to basic, widespread, and obvious facts,
we could actually been to make progress. |
I suggest we start by looking at how scientific theories are tested. You keep going on about evolution as a whole being unproven, and specific claims following from the theory being unproven, but you demonstrate ignorance of what proof is. If you believe something like "history, math, and physics have been tested and proven over and over again", how can you hope to understand the status of a scientific theory? If you merely expressed yourself badly (happens to all of us), how can you hope to have a discussion if you don't want to make clear what you really mean?
| Ragtime wrote: | And I've made it SO, SO simple, and yet seemingly all of you
still will not admit to simple logic, let alone basic premises and occurances. |
I've been begging you to give us all that, but usually after making a sweeping claim you ignore all requests for clarification. What you really ask is that we uncritically accept your conclusions, that we simply have faith in you, without cause or question. |
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greenblue
¸.·´´¯`··.¸.·´
Joined: Mar 26, 2007
Posts: 7642
Location: Home
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| Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 2:23 pm Post subject: |
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| Ragtime wrote: | If only people would agree to basic, widespread, and obvious facts,
we could actually been to make progress.
But as it is, neither you nor anyone else appears to be listening.
And I've made it SO, SO simple, and yet seemingly all of you
still will not admit to simple logic, let alone basic premises and occurances. |
The way I see it, is that lots of posts on these related threads seem to be logic based and their arguments comes from knowledge and logical analysis about the issue.
| Quote: | | I don't talk to deaf people, and I don't make slides for blind people. |
Curiously, your accusations made to people here, are very likely how they see you.
_________________
We all dream; we do not understand our dreams, yet we act as if nothing strange goes on in our sleep minds, strange at least by comparison with the logical, purposeful doings of our minds when we are awake. -Erich Fromm |
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Awesomelyglorious
Destroyer of worlds, reaver of souls
Joined: Dec 18, 2005
Posts: 5725
Location: United States
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| Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 3:48 pm Post subject: |
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| Ragtime wrote: |
Just because I'm not following your particular line of reasoning?
Get ready to dismiss virtually everyone on the planet,
if they must either follow your exact way of thinking or be wrong. |
Well, if only one line of reasoning is correct, and I believe I have that line of reasoning, then dismissing others or scoring them on their similarity to my line of reasoning does not seem wrong. If I though my line of reasoning were not right, then I would seek to refine my line of reasoning, and if I thought there was no right line of reasoning, then there is no reason to discuss reasonings anyway. Really though, his concern on your line of reasoning, does not seem invalid as you are shifting from what is the actual issue involved to something that should not be a part of the discussion.
| Quote: |
I wish we could!
If only people would agree to basic, widespread, and obvious facts,
we could actually been to make progress.
But as it is, neither you nor anyone else appears to be listening.
And I've made it SO, SO simple, and yet seemingly all of you
still will not admit to simple logic, let alone basic premises and occurances.
So, I'm basically done with this thread.
I don't talk to deaf people, and I don't make slides for blind people. |
We could make so much progress, but as it is, one dummy is screwing everything up by making stupid utterances, and then complaining about everyone else rejecting them and trying to hammer down on the real issues. Frankly, the issue isn't simple logic, but wrong logic. We use it correctly, you seem to use your head as a hat rack though.
Well, it is a good thing you don't talk to deaf people or make slides for blind people, as a blind and deaf person, you have problems talking and making slides to begin with! |
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Odin
Supreme Genius
Joined: Oct 13, 2006
Age: 22
Posts: 1885
Location: Moorhead, Minnesota, USA
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| Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 3:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Sedaka wrote: | | Odin wrote: | Paleontology is like Archeology. If one thinks that evolution over geological time scales isn't science because it "can't be tested in the lab" one would have to logically say the same thing of historical facts of cultural change and migrations based on archeology. Studying the evolutionary relationships of life in earth using fossil evidence is little different epistemologically from studying the evolution of human societies using archaeological artifacts.
And Evolution does make predictions that can be tested. In the early 90s an increasing number of paleontologists hypothesized that bird-like theropod dinosaurs, such as dromeosaurs ("raptors") should have feathers. Sure enough, in the late 90s at a fossil site in China we started finding feathered dinosaurs. These fossils also shows how feathers evolved. "Raptors" and related groups have full-blown quill-type feathers while compsagnathids, basal tyrannosaurs, and other less bird-like dinosaurs had only downy protofeathers. |
to be fair... several of these dino with feather fossils are fakes. i can't say all... but there are some. |
As Far as I know there were no fakes, though there was one that could be considered a "partial fake," that is, the "Archeoraptor" debacle, somebody mixed together pterosaur remains with remains of what we now know to be those of a small dromeosaur called Microraptor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microraptor
| Quote: | | Like Archaeopteryx, Microraptor provides important evidence about the evolutionary relationship between birds and dinosaurs. Microraptor had long pennaceous feathers that form wing-like surfaces on the arms and tail but also, surprisingly, on the legs. This led Xu (2003) to describe it as a "four winged dinosaur", and to speculate that it may have glided using all four limbs for lift. |
| Quote: | | The naming of Microraptor is controversial, because of the unusual circumstances of its first description. The first specimen to be described was part of a chimeric specimen — a patchwork of unrelated feathered dinosaur species assembled from multiple specimens in China and smuggled to the USA for sale. After the forgery was revealed by Xu Xing of Beijing's Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Storrs L. Olson, curator of birds in the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution, published a description of the tail in an obscure journal, giving it the name Archaeoraptor liaoningensis in an attempt to remove the name from the paleornithological record by assigning it to the part least likely to be a bird.[6] However, Xu had discovered the remainder of the specimen from which the tail had been taken and published a description of it later that year, giving it the name Microraptor zhaoianus.[7] |
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My Blog: http://selzshaven.blogspot.com |
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Quatermass
Yahtzee's Protege
Joined: Apr 28, 2006
Posts: 16832
Location: Somewhere with a sweet hat and a chip on my shoulder
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| Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 6:15 pm Post subject: |
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| Speckles wrote: | | Quatermass wrote: | | I hope you're being satirical, because otherwise, I am living nowhere. |
Obviously you're in on it  . |
Bite me. Lemme put it this way, I spend a few morning swearing at too-noisy cockatoos. Not pets.
Plus, I'm freezing my arse off at the moment. But you lot are in the middle of spring. Nothing like freezing my arse off to make me evolve thicker fur, if you'd believe an idiot like Trofim Lysenko.
_________________
At moments when monsters spawn in by rising up from the ground, it turns the action into a gory, protracted session of Whack-A-Mole.
-Yahtzee on Clive Barker's Jericho |
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Kalister1
Phoenix
Joined: Sep 09, 2007
Posts: 2882
Location: California
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| Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 6:35 pm Post subject: |
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| Quatermass wrote: | | Speckles wrote: | | Quatermass wrote: | | I hope you're being satirical, because otherwise, I am living nowhere. |
Obviously you're in on it . |
Bite me. Lemme put it this way, I spend a few morning swearing at too-noisy cockatoos. Not pets.
Plus, I'm freezing my arse off at the moment. But you lot are in the middle of spring. Nothing like freezing my arse off to make me evolve thicker fur, if you'd believe an idiot like Trofim Lysenko. |
Hey Quatermass, if you didn't notice, its satire. 
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Warghh!!!!!!!!!!! |
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techstepgenr8tion
cleveland audio assassin
Joined: Feb 07, 2005
Age: 28
Posts: 5478
Location: That's for me to know and for you to find out.
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| Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 6:37 pm Post subject: |
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This is definitely an interesting thread. My opinion, science does lend itself and results (when done right) almost completely to evolution or at least after some specific given point. That being the case, if one chooses to still believe in God, one has to come to terms with the possibility of neither ruling out the other. Dennis Prager was talking the other day about how a famous Jewish rabbi even said that by his own thoughts an experience - God created doubt; going on that angle and if one took that view into account it would explain genetics, evolution, natural law, even how evil (largely induced by people choosing to be animals first and people second) can not only exist but triumph in many cases - if it were just given to a person that God existed what would their faith be worth?
Not that I specifically share the same views but, its a suggestion. |
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Quatermass
Yahtzee's Protege
Joined: Apr 28, 2006
Posts: 16832
Location: Somewhere with a sweet hat and a chip on my shoulder
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| Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 5:02 am Post subject: |
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I have found a few good extracts from The Science of Discworld III: Darwin's Watch. The scientific segments are written by Ian Stewart (mathematician) and Jack Cohen (biologist), so their qualifications are good.
For example, here they illustrate your common or garden evolution ignorance in this transcript of a radio talk show from the Bible Belt:
HOST: So, Jerry, what do you think about evolution? Should we take any notice of Darwin's theories?
JERRY: That Darwin guy never got a Nobel prize, did he? If he's so great, how come he don't get no Nobel?
HOST: I think you have a very good point there, Jerry.
Now, can anyone see the fallacy? I mean, beyond the stupidity of bad grammar?
I'll post more extracts from the book later, more illuminating than this. Just figure out why these guys are wrong. It's too easy.
_________________
At moments when monsters spawn in by rising up from the ground, it turns the action into a gory, protracted session of Whack-A-Mole.
-Yahtzee on Clive Barker's Jericho |
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Escuerd
Blue Jay
Joined: May 02, 2008
Age: 24
Posts: 97
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| Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 6:03 am Post subject: |
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| Quatermass wrote: | I have found a few good extracts from The Science of Discworld III: Darwin's Watch. The scientific segments are written by Ian Stewart (mathematician) and Jack Cohen (biologist), so their qualifications are good.
For example, here they illustrate your common or garden evolution ignorance in this transcript of a radio talk show from the Bible Belt:
HOST: So, Jerry, what do you think about evolution? Should we take any notice of Darwin's theories?
JERRY: That Darwin guy never got a Nobel prize, did he? If he's so great, how come he don't get no Nobel?
HOST: I think you have a very good point there, Jerry.
Now, can anyone see the fallacy? I mean, beyond the stupidity of bad grammar?
I'll post more extracts from the book later, more illuminating than this. Just figure out why these guys are wrong. It's too easy. |
Oh my. You mean there's just one?
Well, Darwin died almost 20 years before the first Nobel Prize. Even people who lived to see the prize given and did great things didn't get one if their work preceded the creation of the prize (Mendeleev, anyone?). Winning a Nobel Prize isn't a criterion for truth. The theory isn't a static entity that's remained unchanged over the years, and what happened during Darwin's lifetime has little relevance to it today. The ridiculousness is just too dense.
Granted, one shouldn't only pick on the worst examples of someone arguing a position to criticize that position (there are people who believe true statements for terrible reasons). But it puts some things in perspective to see, from time to time, how common such jaw-dropping arguments are, and how confidently they're made (technically it was a question, but I'm assuming it's a rhetorical one). I'm just at a loss for the words that one could say to someone making an argument like that. |
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Quatermass
Yahtzee's Protege
Joined: Apr 28, 2006
Posts: 16832
Location: Somewhere with a sweet hat and a chip on my shoulder
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| Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 6:35 am Post subject: |
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Thank you, Escuerd. It was meant as an example of one of the slightly more idiotic things they say.
Here's a rather more intellectual extract, from page 13, Chapter Two: Paley's Watch.
| Quote: | | There are many aspects of evolution that scientists don't yet understand. The details behind Darwin's theory are still up for grabs, and every year brings new shifts of opinion as scientists try to improve their understanding. Bible-Belters understand even less about evolution, and they typically distort it into a caricature: 'blind chance'. They have no interest whatsoever in improving their understanding. But they do understand, far better than effete Europeans, that the theory of evolution constitutes a very dangerous attack on the psychology of religious belief. Not on its substance (because anything science discovers can be attributed to the Deity and viewed as His mechanism for bringing the associated events about) but on its attitude. Once God is removed from the day-to-day running of the planet, and installed somewhere behind DNA biochemistry and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it is no longer obvious that He must be fundamental to people's daily lives. In particular, there is no special reason to believe that He affects those lives in any way, or would wish to, so the fundamentalist preachers could well be out of a job.Which is how Darwin's lack of a Nobel can become a debating point on American local radio. It is also the general line along which Darwin's own thinking evolved- he began his adult life as a theology student and ended it as a somewhat tormented agnostic. |
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At moments when monsters spawn in by rising up from the ground, it turns the action into a gory, protracted session of Whack-A-Mole.
-Yahtzee on Clive Barker's Jericho |
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Phagocyte
Low-Functioning NT
Joined: Oct 16, 2007
Age: 18
Posts: 1836
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| Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 10:07 am Post subject: |
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| Ragtime wrote: | | So it's an elective, but it's required. Could one of you be a little more clear, please? |
"Evolution" as a standalone course, as in a course devoted entirely to the theory, is an elective.
However, in general biology (the introductory survey course taught to students in the biological sciences, typically during their first year) evolution is touched upon along with other subjects. You need to have a rudimentary understanding of evolution to make sense of much else in biology. In general bio, it's taught among a plethora of other things. It's not that difficult to understand, for example, you can learn about Shakespeare in an introductory English class, without the class being devoted entirely to Shakespeare.
But to answer the original question, Evolution is the underlying theory of biological diversity, so you need to grasp it to move on. Or, like me, you can just enjoy gaining knowledge for the sake of it.
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I am neurotypical - I just want to find out more about Asperger's Syndrome.
But Master! Does not the fire need water too? Does not the mountain need the storm? Does not your scrotum need kicking?
-Chever |
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