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To: donh
Just as the fact that we don't know everything there is to know about fossil bones does not prevent us from forming theories about them.

The assumptions of physics are backed up by numerous scientific experiments. The assumptions of paleontology are backed up by nothing at all. The true emptiness of paleontology can be shown by the problem of dinosaurs. This is the one major category of life for which there are absolutely no living examples. As a result the arguments about how they lived, and their biological makeup are endless and have been going on for over a hundred years with no definite resolution. The reason for this is that paleontology can teach us nothing new. All it can do is draw straight lines between two points - straight lines drawn from ignorance because the evidence before it is extremely scanty. These straight lines are proven false by the variety seen in living things. Even supposedly closely related species exhibit tremendous differences in behavior, function, and genetics which cannot be discerned from fossil remains. Therefore the 'trees' built up by this false methodology cannot stand and do not explain anything.

6,317 posted on 02/02/2003 6:11:11 AM PST by gore3000
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To: gore3000
The assumptions of physics are backed up by numerous scientific experiments. The assumptions of paleontology are backed up by nothing at all. The true emptiness of paleontology can be shown by the problem of dinosaurs. This is the one major category of life for which there are absolutely no living examples. As a result the arguments about how they lived, and their biological makeup are endless and have been going on for over a hundred years with no definite resolution. The reason for this is that paleontology can teach us nothing new. All it can do is draw straight lines between two points - straight lines drawn from ignorance because the evidence before it is extremely scanty. These straight lines are proven false by the variety seen in living things. Even supposedly closely related species exhibit tremendous differences in behavior, function, and genetics which cannot be discerned from fossil remains. Therefore the 'trees' built up by this false methodology cannot stand and do not explain anything.

Good grief. Yet again you set up a hurdle no science acknowledges and fault science for failure to jump through your hurdle. Where do you find any claim that science thinks it's drawn up a comprehensive picture of dinos, or the time they lived in? This argument is a glaring example of your unwillingness to acknowledge the notion of thinking through inductive reasoning, and accepting it's accompanying unremediable uncertainty. Get over it. Do you claim there were no dinosaurs because we don't have any living examples? If so, than you have accepted the first step in a long chain of inductive reasoning from partial evidence to irredemably imperfect, and imperfectly detailed, conclusions.

Tell me, do you think the assumptions of physics are now a closed set, and that we have no more to learn about the fundamental nature of the universe? Do you think that before the time of Kepler our knowledge of astro-physics was any more comprehensive than the details of the Age of Dinos is to us now? Science operates on whatever shreds of evidence it has available. Science cannot be indicted for doing so, your attempts to the contrary notwithstanding.

6,326 posted on 02/02/2003 10:36:49 AM PST by donh
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