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Postmodernism At Work
Independent Individualist ^ | Apr 29, 2008 | Reginald Firehammer

Posted on 04/29/2008 10:20:32 AM PDT by Hank Kerchief

Postmodernism At Work

The following two statements are parts of comments made on the Free Republic forum in response to Pamela Hewitt's "Problems of Evolution."

"Nothing in Science is ever “proven”, just provisionally accepted pending further data." (—allmendream)

All science is tentative, and nothing is ever proved! (—Coyoteman)

Normally, I would not bother with such mindless statements, but they just happen to perfectly exemplify the post-modernist nonsense that is being taught in today's colleges and universities. It is why we are living in the age of gullibility. Do not suppose this is just ignorance, however. These things are being taught with a purpose. The idea is, if you convince people nothing is ever certain, proved, or absolute, you can then put over just anything and call it science.

If "nothing in science is ever proven:"

I must assume these two have "living wills" specifying that cardioversion or defibrillation is not to be used on them since the principle of using electricity to convert a fibrillaing heart to a sinus rhythm has never been proved.

I am going to feel very sorry for these two if they ever need an operation, since the efficacy of anesthesia (once a great scientific controversy) has never been proved.

And they must really be missing out on all those television programs and phone calls transmitted by satellites launched into orbit around the earth's equator at a distance of about 22,300 miles which maintain a stationary position over the earth, by maintaining an orbital speed of approximately 6000 miles per hour, because, according to them, the physical principles such satellites are based on have never been proved.

They must only use electricity if it does not come from nuclear power plants, since the scientific principles describing a sustained chain nuclear reaction have never been proved. (Maybe they use no electricity at all, since they are sure the theory of combustion and Ohm's law have never been proved either.)

Nor must they use computers, or any other electronic devices that would not and could not work if the theories of electronics and quantum mechanics they are based on were not proved. They must avoid all Sky Scrapers because the laws of physics which are the basis of their engineering from the materials used to the structural design would fail if those physical principles were mere unproven hypotheses which, according to them, they are.

I do not know what planet these two live on, but on this planet the principle of an electric current being generated simply by moving a magnet in a coil of wire discovered by Michael Faraday, who was considered a charlatan by his contemporaries, has been proved. The unbelieved assertions by Nikola Tesla and Guglielmo Marconi that wireless communication is possible, has been proved.

What kind of demented mind can insist that nothing in science has been proved? One that assumes things without evidence, based on nothing more than the fact someone does not accept their particular faith. Here is the evidence (a concept totally foreign to such second-hand minds).

"Being a nurse doesn't QUALIFY one, in and of itself, to make an academic argument on Evolution or Genetics. ... Nothing better than an educated layman."

The fact that the "nurse" happens to be a degreed geneticist who has both worked in the field and lectured in it as well, these dimwits did not bother to discover. Evidence is not something they care about, since their cherished faith is being threatened by objective questions their little minds are incapable of answering.

They are dripping with hubris and patent snobbery, exactly like those "scientists" who were publishing papers proving heavier-than-air human flight was impossible while two laymen, who were obviously not educated well enough to learn what they were doing was "scientifically" impossible, were too busy flying to notice. According to these two jokers, the possibility of heavier-than-air human flight has never been proved. They're still waiting for, "further data."

If you believe nothing in science has been proved, it makes it easy to swallow totally made up stories such as the following:

"Evolutionary Biology has unequivocally established that all organisms evolved from a common ancestor over the last 3.5 billion years;" [From Rutgers University]

What's the difference between "unequivocally established" and "proved?" In normal English, even as spoken by scientists, there is no difference; but these story tellers can always say they never said it was "proved" we all came from a common ancestor. It's meant to deceive and gain unquestioned acceptance.

And it's pure fiction. There is no way such a thing could possibly be established. If evolution could happen once, there is nothing in reason or evidence that even suggests it could not happen more than once or even hundreds or thousands of times; but it's happening more than once would not fit their story, so just ignore that fact and present your story as, "unequivocally established," and all the gullible academics will swallow it whole.

—Reginald Firehammer


TOPICS: Science; Society
KEYWORDS: culture; education; evolution; postmodernism
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To: allmendream; Hank Kerchief
No, not sarcasm. But people who are NOT trained in biology inevitably tend to think that mutation ='three-headed-monster' which implies "harmful".

And when your definitions of the very words you are discussing with other are different, and neither of the parties discussing it realizes it, that makes things more complicated.

E.g. the female authority quoted by Hank seems to need some remedial education on some issues related to biochem, as another poster on this thread has pointed out.

Ignorance of a field is USUALLY a detriment, with the rare exception being when the points you are making about a subject are from an entirely different field of endeavor from the experts: e.g. the urban legend about the man complaining the radioastronomy dish was interfering with his analog TV reception. "That's impossible! The dish is a receiver, not a transmitter!" ...but the dish was in between the TV station's transmitter and the guy's house.

Cheers!

181 posted on 05/01/2008 3:50:40 PM PDT by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: Hank Kerchief
Returning to 131 -- the issue is one of theory vs. practice. It may be true (I'll leave it for later) to say "all REAL scientists are engaged in the search for truth etc.".

The problem is, a lot of the other folks with letters after their name, competing for funding, sutdents, and publication space, are engaged in a search for aggrandizing their career.

This can tend to crowd out the earnest truth-seekers, or make it harder for them to seek.

Cheers!

182 posted on 05/01/2008 3:54:09 PM PDT by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: allmendream

Mr Dreaming man.
I’ve directed you to my publications. I see you aren’t prepared to do the same. I’ve told you, look on your PubMed site. God, I’d never been there before last night, and I found my way around. Search aro9 ncrassa and be prepared to search. It’s actually the only paper on the subject. It turned out to be very difficult to sequence, and demonstrated multiple polymorphisms when cloned in several vectors and hosts. It’s been of interest to me to see no-one else has managed any work on it since I did.
But no matter how often I tell you of my work, you cant find it and that leaves you free to blame me somehow.
I note you have not answered one of the scientific questions I put up, neither of mine nor of Freds.
I have a simple conjecture - which I’m too honest to call an hypothesis.
1. That the fossil record is incomplete and too minimal to explain how species exist
2. that observations of differences in the morphology of varies species only demonstrates aspects of the use of that morphology and can tell us nothing of how they came into being
3. That when questing possible answers, one can often use a fact that is demonstrated which has a relationship to the question at hand
4. that we do know that all aspects of cellular and molecular structure and activity depend on an array of characteristics of their environment to both structure themselves in a specific way and to be fully functional
5. that everything interacts with everything else around it, one way or another
6. that this offers the “blueprint” that given all the giverns of what life on this earth consists of, which go to defining what life is, there could, ultimately, be only one way that life molecules can exist, and therefor there may be limited ways they can interact, leading to the final, that there is a limited range possible for morphology to be on this earth, and that, withing a narrow range of minor variations, everything that is here has always been here in pretty much its current form.

It’s not difficult to apprehend. It follows all the laws of science, and where it has variations open to debate, they should be debated.

Instead you chose to act, as you put it yourself, like a jerk.

Goodbye Mr. Dreamer.


183 posted on 05/01/2008 5:10:12 PM PDT by weatherwax (Let none who might belong to himself belong to another: Agrippa)
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To: weatherwax; ahayes
Do you often speak of yourself in the third person?

Still no paper. And it is your paper. Thanks for saying so.

The following term was not found: ncrassa.
See Details.

and only the three Belgian papers on aro9.

please copy and paste the address.

Can you answer any of the criticisms of your “summation” of the “problems of evolution” given by ahayes in post #114? Why should anyone take you seriously when the postulates that led to your “conjecture!!” (double !! mandatory) are so fundamentally ill informed?

184 posted on 05/01/2008 7:53:18 PM PDT by allmendream (Life begins at the moment of contraception. ;))
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To: allmendream

Do you often speak of yourself in the third person? Yes

Still no paper. Do your own damn homework. Still no paper from you.
And it is your paper. Thanks for saying so.

The following term was not found: ncrassa.

See Details. Eh? What details

and only the three Belgian papers on aro9.

type in ARO9 NCRASSA

please copy and paste the address. Do your own damn homework. What difference does it make anyway?

Can you answer any of the criticisms of your “summation” of the “problems of evolution” given by ahayes in post #114?
Yes

Why should anyone take you seriously when the postulates that led to your “conjecture!!” (double !! mandatory) are so fundamentally ill informed?

I never asked you or anyone to take me seriously. Dont. Why should I care.
I object to be called - and I quote - “an ill educated layman” when I have a first class Honours degree in Molecular genetics and Microbiology, a Masters degree for a thesis on the molecular research into a fungal cloned gene, years of other laboratory research, experience as the lab manager of a production facility involved in making restriction enzymes, multiple probes and the production of animal growth hormone from cloned genes, more years of lecturing in science at university level and even more years of reading and studying and discussing issues related to evolution.

I will answer the post 114 at The Autonomist over the weekend. I’m currently a program manager for implementing a new program over 90 sites / hospitals. It keeps an ill educated lout like me busy !!


185 posted on 05/01/2008 10:24:16 PM PDT by weatherwax (Let none who might belong to himself belong to another: Agrippa)
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To: weatherwax
I am telling you that the term “Ncrassus” is not recognized by PubMed. I know it is also N. crassus or Neoconocephalus crassus but neither of those search terms return a result involving aro9. The only aro9 papers are the three out of Belgium.

I await your answers to the Scientific criticisms raised in post #114.

186 posted on 05/02/2008 10:00:13 AM PDT by allmendream (Life begins at the moment of contraception. ;))
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To: allmendream

Well, I’m not surprised. No such thing as Ncrassus as far as I know. No idea what your Neocon thing is either.
Still, since you dont seem able to search, I’ll get you started

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&DbFrom=pubmed&Cmd=Link&LinkName=pubmed_pubmed&LinkReadableName=Related%20Articles&IdsFromResult=10207060&ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

There you go. Have fun.


187 posted on 05/02/2008 4:43:09 PM PDT by weatherwax (Let none who might belong to himself belong to another: Agrippa)
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To: Coyoteman
I see you've been dancing with the Purveyors of Unknowledge again... So, without further adieu, once again I present my essay:



In the history of the world, only a tiny fraction of all the people who ever lived have had the opportunity to ask highly qualified scientists direct questions, and learn from their wisdom. Happily, because of the internet and places like FR, it was possible for people from all walks of life to converse directly with all sorts of scientific experts; we have had physicists, microbiologists, mathematicians, astronomers, and chemists, to specify but a few, roaming these threads, and eager to explain what they know and how they know it to virtually anyone willing to ask an intelligent question.

But there is another segment of people on these threads who, instead of asking these learned folks intelligent questions and thus expanding their knowledge and understanding, insist instead upon bludgeoning them with their ignorance, and questioning the patriotism, honesty, and intellect of people who have dedicated their lives to the pursuit of scientific knowledge.

I submit that such people are not here to learn anything, but are in fact interested in quite the opposite. I submit they are here to interfere with the dissemination of scientific knowledge that they find offensive. They don't want other people to ask the experts questions and learn from them; no, they are here to attack the experts and cast doubt upon their wisdom, in the desperate hope that others will turn away and not listen to them.

IMHO that is why the same people show up over and over again parroting the same refuted diatribes and misinformation, and spewing the same bogus out-of-context quotes designed specifically to disrupt the dissemination of scientific knowledge. That's why the same people show up over and over again misrepresenting what scientific theories and laws are, despite having had it explained to them 1720th time; they are here to instill confusion and spread their ignorance, not to disseminate knowledge.

The experts [who were once] here on these threads ought to be revered and thanked for sharing with us their insights and explanations of the natural world around us; instead scorn is heaped upon them and their knowledge by the belligerently ignorant. I submit that these purveyors of unknowledge should be treated for the intellectual disruptors that they are. They stare stared the best opportunity any of us will ever have to gain more insight and understanding in the eye, and spit spat in the faces of those who offer and have the knowledge to help make that a reality.

Behold, I give you the belligerently ignorant, the intellectual Luddites of our time. Know them for the anti-knowledge disruptors they are.

Sadly, the Purveyors of Unknowledge have been very, very effective and chasing away most of the scientists and pro-science posters we one had on FR, to the point where bedwetting buffoons feel it is safe to insult the few remaining scientists on FR while parading their own ignorance for all to see. The patience that you, and the handful other scientists who are still on FR, manifest in the face of the onslaught of belligerent ignorance is enough to make Job weep.

"

188 posted on 05/02/2008 5:14:09 PM PDT by longshadow (FReeper #405, entering his tenth year of ignoring nitwits, nutcases, and recycled newbies)
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To: longshadow
"pro-science" [excerpt]

Would that be naturalistic science?
189 posted on 05/02/2008 5:36:27 PM PDT by Fichori (Truth is one of those non-negotiable facts of life that most people cannot stand.)
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To: Fichori; longshadow
Would that be naturalistic science?

Could it be he was describing you in that essay?

190 posted on 05/02/2008 6:33:27 PM PDT by Coyoteman (Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.)
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To: Coyoteman; longshadow
"Could it be he was describing you in that essay?"

Depends on if he is talking about empirical science or Naturalistic Science.

191 posted on 05/02/2008 6:44:41 PM PDT by Fichori (Truth is one of those non-negotiable facts of life that most people cannot stand.)
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To: longshadow
.....bedwetting buffoons.....

Bwahahahahahahahahahaha!!!! Nice alliteration!

192 posted on 05/03/2008 1:54:33 PM PDT by DoctorMichael (Creationists on the internet: The Ignorant, amplifying the Stupid.)
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To: DoctorMichael

Boy, these ‘highly qualified scientists’ sure are mature!


193 posted on 05/03/2008 3:08:09 PM PDT by Fichori (FreeRepublic.com: Full speed ahead on the road to Wikipediaism.)
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To: Fichori
Boy, these ‘highly qualified scientists’ sure are mature!

Most have quietly left this site because of folks like you.

194 posted on 05/03/2008 4:02:25 PM PDT by Coyoteman (Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.)
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To: Coyoteman

If these mature scientist who have quietly left because of people like me were proponents of non-empirical sudo-science, then I am thrilled.

Something based on philosophical assumptions is not empirical.


195 posted on 05/03/2008 4:19:26 PM PDT by Fichori (FreeRepublic.com: Full speed ahead on the road to Wikipediaism.)
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To: Fichori
If these mature scientist who have quietly left because of people like me were proponents of non-empirical sudo-science, then I am thrilled.

Something based on philosophical assumptions is not empirical.

Perhaps if you would leave AnswersInGenesis and those other creationist websites alone for a while, and learn some science, then you could lecture scientists on what it is they do.

AnswersInGenesis and those other sites will feed you nothing but creationist dogma, and when it comes to science they routinely lie.

196 posted on 05/03/2008 5:19:23 PM PDT by Coyoteman (Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.)
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To: Coyoteman

"Perhaps if you would leave AnswersInGenesis and those other creationist websites alone for a while, and learn some science, then you could lecture scientists on what it is they do.

AnswersInGenesis and those other sites will feed you nothing but creationist dogma, and when it comes to science they routinely lie."


I have actually been using your posts and definitions to demonstrate the dogmatic philosophical assumptions of Methodological Naturalism.

197 posted on 05/03/2008 8:08:38 PM PDT by Fichori (FreeRepublic.com: Full speed ahead on the road to Wikipediaism.)
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To: Hank Kerchief
(repeating...)

We're sure gettin' some nasty religion arguments going on in The FRee World.

With so many posts which turn to blows between Protestants and Catholics, I wonder if we're becoming a religion site instead of a political site.


198 posted on 05/03/2008 8:14:04 PM PDT by bannie (clintons CHEAT! It's their only weapon.; & Barry/Barack has two faces.)
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To: bannie; Hank Kerchief

There does seem to be a lot of bad blood between the two.

There seems to be a profusion of religious clique threads that are a minefield to the un-elect.

Make the ignorant mistake posting on one of these threads and the Religious Police show up with Guns drawn.

The bad blood seems to come in when a non-catholic posts on a catholic clique thread because the catholics refuse to debate on other threads.

Then the non-catholics posts all get pulled and the catholics commence personal attacks against the non-catholic poster who is then unable to reply.

There may be more to it than that, but thats the way it looks to me.


199 posted on 05/03/2008 8:43:13 PM PDT by Fichori (FreeRepublic.com: Full speed ahead on the road to Wikipediaism.)
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To: Fichori
I've had to duck-n-cover before, myself. The posts are vicious and over-reactive. It's folly to even mention a belief differing from the "loudest" group.

Arguing FAITH is silly; and since no one is going to change his/her beliefs over the threads, they seem counter-productive--unless the "product" is self-gratification.

200 posted on 05/03/2008 8:58:34 PM PDT by bannie (clintons CHEAT! It's their only weapon.; & Barry/Barack has two faces.)
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