Posted on 04/29/2008 10:20:32 AM PDT by Hank Kerchief
(If you want on or off this list please freepmail me.)
Hank
And the philosophers I read on these threads seem always to be whining about science, and how it has passed them by:
"Please pay attention to us! We were here first! Please, oh pretty please, pay some attention to us."And science keeps on doing what it is best at, which is figuring out how things work.
You go ahead and unscrew the inscrutable, or gaze at your naval or whatever. I'll stick to science.
Except for Anthropogenic Global Warming.
< /sarcasm>
You need to ponder the difference between the weight of the evidence and the concept of proof. Science depends on the weight of the evidence. Proof is limited to logic and mathematics, which deal with representations of reality, not the reality itself, which is the subject of science.
In science the weight of the evidence approaches, but never equals proof. That means the probability associated with the accuracy and precision of the theory and the representations used therein approaches one, as the weight of the evidence increases. Theory is simply the limit of an accurate representation, as the uncertainty appoaches zero.
It is the idea that all viewpoints are equally valid.
Neither Coyoteman (AFAIK) or I embrace that viewpoint.
Your “medical professional” (i.e. a nurse) who is a “degreed geneticist” (what pray tell is her degree? And what is her degree in?) is nothing better than an ILL educated layman. Her essay was full of basic and fundamental errors right from the beginning.
It is Post-modernism to suggest that her viewpoint is just as valid as the view of actual experts in the field (you know people who arn’t afraid to actually state their qualifications).
And everything in Science is only provisionally true, awaiting further data. It is one of the fundamental underpinnings of Science; we like to call it “falsification”. Without it Science would be dogma and there could be no Scientific advancement.
Your argument, as with most Creationists/”cdesign proponentists”, is with Science; Not with either Coyoteman or I. And it is YOUR view that is a liberal postmodern ‘a layman's ill educated view (without any supporting evidence that was not fundamentally incorrect) is just as valid as the evidence supported view of actual experts in the field.”
So what qualifications does this nurse have? Or is their view “just as valid” - without actually stating any qualifications other than “degreed” and “medical provisional”? How very postmodern of you to suggest that it is so.
And my condescension was based entirely upon the writers shoddy understanding of the subject, not their supposed (and unstated in specifics) “qualifications”.
Note that the age of gullibility arguably got started in Genesis 3.
‘It seems to me, that if you do not know the answer, or how to proceed to acquire the answer; all you can do is wax philosophical about it.’
as well as....
‘It seems to me that after many centuries of philosophy there has been no gain in knowledge from it, and no answers to the fundamental questions that plague mankind.’
But Science isn't the end all be all. And Philosophy is nice sometimes, because some questions are unanswerable with Science; and those are usually the biggies.
Science can tell us how to get into Space, but not why we would want to go there, or what to do when we get there. That would take some sort of cosmic manifest destiny philosophy.
Or the very human desire to see what is over the next mountain...
Here is one of my favorite quotes about the true “value” of Science by a great man, a great American, the Scientist/Cowboy Robert R. Wilson talking in front of the U.S. Senate.
in testimony before the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, 17 April 1969.
Senator Pastore: Is there anything connected with the hopes of this accelerator that in any way involves the security of the country?
Robert Wilson: No sir, I don’t believe so.
Pastore: Nothing at all?
Wilson: Nothing at all.
Pastore: It has no value in that respect?
Wilson: It has only to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending.
“I’ll stick to science.”
Ah... exactly what are you qualifications as a scientist again?
I’m the defender science. You’re the one that says it cannot prove anything.
Hank
“There is never a point at which one can claim something is absolutely “proven” in science because there is never a point where you will have obtained all knowledge there is to have about everything, everywhere. This has nothing to do with postmodernist moral relativism.”
It has everything to do with postmodernist anti-rationality, and you’ve bought it.
Here’s is your mistake. You do not have to know everything before you can know something. Are you still waiting for more evidence before you’ll be convinced heavier-than-air human flight is possible?
Good grief, man. Do I have know everything about everything in the universe to know what the composition of water is?
Hank
Actually, you'd be surprised at home much we don't know about the simple water molecule.
“Theory is simply the limit of an accurate representation, as the uncertainty appoaches zero.”
Rubbish. The postmodernists have done their job well.
Are you using a computer. Do you have any doubts about it? Are you absolutely certain?
If you aren’t, you have a severe psychological problem. If you are, what’s all the gibberish about “as the uncertainty approaches zero?” What exactly is the unit of measure of uncertainty?
Hank
Aren’t they saying that ID is not a valid theory because there is no situation in which it can be evidentially disproven?
From what I can see, since evo is not possibly experimentally demonstrated, and they claim that that lack of evidence is meaningless... is not evo in the same boat in that there is no means by which it can be disproven?
‘Proof’ is a specific mathematical term where someone ends up with a statement like ‘3 = 3’. Someone else can check their work but they can’t do another ‘proof’ that shows contrary results. Whereas in science a given experiment provides not proof but evidence. Others can perform endless other experiments to try and show contrary results and so on.
read later
You want postmodernism? Here’s postmodernism.
“Ultimately, the [evolution versus creation] argument is about how you interpret the facts—and this depends upon your belief about history. The real difference is that we have different ‘histories’…, which we use to interpret the science and facts of the present.”
“Creationists and evolutionists… all have the same evidence—the same facts,” he insists in another article on evidentiary proof, emphasizing that our presuppositions frame how we interpret those facts. “Christians,” he writes, have the Bible and the stories therein provide “a set of presuppositions to build a way of thinking which enables [Christians] to interpret the evidence.” Evolutionists, on the other hand, “have certain beliefs about the past/present that they presuppose, e.g. no God... so they build a different way of thinking to interpret the evidence of the present.”
That there can be multiple definitions held by multiple people is obvious. Arguing over the definitions as a method to discover some kind of larger truth is a waste of time.
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