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.
(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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