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To: GourmetDan
Do you see how easily you fell into logical fallacy here? You went from 'cannot test what isn't there' to 'test, examine, or quantitate something of which there is no evidence'. Very smooth move there. Very smooth.

Wow, I don't even want to try to wrap my brain around that one. How you can assume that something is present despite no evidence of it is beyond me. By that (lack of) logic, I must assume that the lack of evidence of an elephant being in this room does not indicate that there really is no elephant here. Wow.

The assumed events known as the Big Bang, long-ages, abiogenesis and macroevolution are clearly untestable and may or may not exist. By slipping in the requirement for 'no evidence' you have moved from science to interpretation and philosophy. This allows you to claim that 'evidence' (no matter how flimsy) for these assumed events exists that allows you to 'quantitate' them.

I'm not a physicist, so I won't address the evidence that led to the big bang theory. I'm not sure what you mean by "abiogenesis", unless you mean the hypothesis that living creatures can arise from non-living matter. That hypothesis is only taught as a matter of history in science classes, in order to demonstrate how the scientific method was used to show that it was a false hypothesis that was correctly rejected. And simply rejecting the huge body of evidence supporting "macro" evolution because you think that evolution is proof-positive that God does not exist and you don't want to believe that God doesn't exist is not a valid argument. If you want to address the actual evidence, and you can offer a scientifically-sound, hypothesis-driven alternate theory, by all means, feel free to do so. This may take you a few years...

I should also point out that just because a science is primarily observation based, and not controlled-experiment based, does not make the science invalid. I already discussed this.

In reality, you are not 'quantitating', you are extrapolating and that act assumes that extrapolation is not only possible but appropriate; something that you must assume and cannot know. This is not science, no matter how often you claim that it is. It is philosophy.

Here, I have not quantitated anything. I generally save the quantitating for when I'm in the lab gathering data. As far as extrapolating goes, that is a perfectly valid method of advancing science. In order to extrapolate, one must make certain assumptions which one believes are supported by the data. Those assumptions can be tested. If what one has extrapolated then turns out to not be the case, then one must revisit the assumptions and data. This is an iterative process, familiar to most, if not all, scientists.

559 posted on 03/17/2012 10:51:01 AM PDT by exDemMom (Now that I've finally accepted that I'm living a bad hair life, I'm more at peace with the world.)
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To: exDemMom
"How you can assume that something is present despite no evidence of it is beyond me."

No, the point was that you claim to be able to 'test' something that may not be there because you claim to be able to 'quantitate' from 'evidence' when what you are really doing is extrapolating based on a philosophy.

"And simply rejecting the huge body of evidence supporting "macro" evolution because you think that evolution is proof-positive that God does not exist and you don't want to believe that God doesn't exist is not a valid argument."

So now you claim to know that I "think that evolution is proof-positive that God does not exist and you don't want to believe that God doesn't exist is not a valid argument." Not even an original strawman but entirely fallacious nonetheless.

"If you want to address the actual evidence, and you can offer a scientifically-sound, hypothesis-driven alternate theory, by all means, feel free to do so."

Again... the 'evidence' is simply philosophy masquerading as 'science'.

"I should also point out that just because a science is primarily observation based, and not controlled-experiment based, does not make the science invalid. I already discussed this."

And I already pointed out that extrapolating observations into unobservable, assumed events is not science but philosophy.

"As far as extrapolating goes, that is a perfectly valid method of advancing science. In order to extrapolate, one must make certain assumptions which one believes are supported by the data. Those assumptions can be tested."

So how does one test extrapolations made back into unobserved time and unobservable assumed events?

561 posted on 03/17/2012 11:08:34 AM PDT by GourmetDan (Eccl 10:2 - The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left.)
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