This is all moving really fast for me. I thought I was an ape.
I have been telling people that evolution makes a monkey out of you and me.
And what are we going to with the John Henry story now?
Posted on 01/04/2009 5:39:47 AM PST by PurpleMountains
Human kind has been cursed with false priests and shamans from the beginning. I suspect it's almost genetic, and doubt if we'll ever fully escape shaman wannabes. It's a shame, you might say.
But this has nothing whatever to do with the scientific validity, or lack of validity, for the theory of evolution.
Your own words.
Here I thought I was hearing just a bit of the language of truth from you, but now right away you have to go careening off into blathering nonsense.
Which is all merely your opinion, as per you. Truth is a word best avoided in science. Seems that you only allow for opinions which agree with yours. All others are awarded the same derision which the other evos direct at someone who disagrees with them.
Define *science*.
Creationists, by contrast, are not writing in scientific language, or even in science-translated-into-ordinary language. Instead they use a pseudo-scientific argumentation, which combines half-digested scientific ideas with outdated criticisms, which abruptly shift to: therefore God must have done it.
In my view, there’s nothing scientific about those types of argument.
Actually I’ve heard this over and over and over but when one actually goes and investigates what the scientists DO actually say, there’s nothing at all unscientific about what they’re saying, let alone that it MUST be God.
click on the “scientists” link:
http://www.dissentfromdarwin.org
And I do find it rather fascinating that the theologian Darwin can publish a scientific paper, but let “real” scientists refute it and they’re the ones injecting religion into science?
Which is undoubtedly part of the problem. It's akin to counting on NBC for the definition of what is or isn't journalism.
theories (confirmed hypotheses).
really?
Like string theory and multiverse theory have been "confirmed"?
I’ve now said many times: by definition, science ONLY deals with the natural, material physical realm. I’ve also said there are other realms in which much of TRUTH may exist. But these realms are not science, and should not be taught as science. Do we really disagree here?
Actually, no it doesn’t.
“Appeal to authority” only works when the authority is a like-minded liberal.
Well now BroJoeK, it appears that some of the most respected minds in the Science Community (aka The Masters of the Universe) do not share the sentiments you express above:
In discussing Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion on the Ryan Tubridy Show, Dawkins had this to say, “Well the word delusion means a falsehood which is widely believed, and I think that is true of religion. It is remarkably widely believed, it’s as though almost all of the population or a substantial proportion of the population believed that they had been abducted by aliens in flying saucers. You’d call that a delusion. I think God is a similar delusion.” When Dawkins was quoted as describing God as a “misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully,” his response was, “That seems fair enough to me, yes.” If there is any question (wiggle room) in your mind that Dawkins was speaking as a scientist, the following should put you mind to rest on that score. In a 30 September, 2006, 90-minute debate arranged by them, TIME asked Professor Dawkins, “. . . if one truly understands science, is God then a delusion, as your book title suggests?” Dawkins’ response, “The question of whether there exists a supernatural creator, a God, is one of the most important that we have to answer. I think that it is a scientific question. My answer is no” (emphasis mine).
Steven Weinberg, Nobel prize-winner from the University of Texas at Austin, in remarks at the Freedom From Religion Association, “I personally feel that the teaching of modern science is corrosive to religious belief, and I’m all for that. If science helps bring about the end of religion,” he concluded, “it would be the most important contribution science could make” (emphasis mine).
Tufts philosopher and professor of evolutionary biology and cognitive science, Daniel Dennett, in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, delivers us the opinion that Darwinian evolution is “a universal acid” that dissolves all traditional religious and moral beliefs.
William B. Provine, Professor of Biological Sciences, Cornell University, in a 1998 Darwin Day Keynote Address entitled “Evolution: Free will and punishment and meaning in life,” saw fit to deliver himself of the opinion that “Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly.” He then went on to enumerate them; 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent.
Any number of other prominent scientists have chosen to express similar sentiments and, off those sentiments, to declare many value judgments, religious pronouncements, cultural conclusions and philosophical opinions. And they ground this all in Science! Among those who indulge in this behavior we have these worthies: Steven Pinker, Stephen J. Gould, Peter Sanger, Michael Tooley, Richard Lewontin, Carl Sagan (now deceased), Marc Hauser, and Victor Stenger. By no means is this an exhaustive list.
Moreover, it would seem that this deplorable attitude is not confined merely to certain aberrant individuals. It appears to have spread and become an institutional infection! See a Berkeley University website entitled “From soup to cells – the origin of life”, under the rubric “evolution 101” and described as “your one-stop source for information on evolution” http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/origsoflife_01. A number of other universities list the Berkeley website as a recommended resource on their own Evolution websites.
To spare evolution propagandists such as yourself embarrassment, why Berkeley has not seen fit to revise this website and put considerably more distance between it and evolution is a question for Berkeley to answer, but there can be little doubt that much of the Science Community thinks that speculation on abiogenesis is infused and informed by Evolution Theory. So what the The Masters of the Universe choose to say to us depends very much on who they perceive they are speaking to this day, and which side of their mouth they are using at the moment.
At this point I suppose that it would be appropriate, using your own standard of judgment, to call you a liar and demand that you recant some of your more categorical declarations. I’m not going to do that, even though outing you as a liar would be a fact by definition and not a personal attack. Instead, I prefer simply to observe that you are mistaken in many of your attacks, and to recommend that you withdraw briefly and contemplate your method of participation in this forum. How you respond to this suggestion will go a long way in demonstrating to all of us if you are merely a propagandizing bully, or if you have a more beneficial motive for your participation.
Ping to post 1447
What he said......
Bump for later answer.
Indeed, dear YHAOS, I imagine that for many if not most on your list of famous names, this "universal acid" is Darwinian evolution's "chief virtue."
You left out the name of Nobel Laureate Jacques Monod. He had this to say:
Everything can be reduced to simple, evident, mechanical interactions. The cell is a machine; the animal is a machine; the man is a machine.I guess we need daily doses of "universal acid" in order to accept that man is a machine.
Thanks. But no thanks.
Doesn’t BroJoe realize that he is a fanatical disciple of the religious teachings of Charles Darwin and his neo-Darwinist co-religionists? Doesn’t BroJoe realize that Darwin’s fanciful creation myth (which sought to explain the entire history of biology) was based on some minor variations between finches, and not a shred of additional evidence? Doesn’t BroJoe realize that Darwin wasn’t even a scientist, but rather a med school dropout whose only earned degree was in theology? Doesn’t BroJoe realize that neo-Darwinism is increasingly becoming an embarrassment and a laughing stock, even among evolutionists? Given the above, one can only wonder at what point in history BroJoe thinks Darwin’s religious movement finally deserved to be called scientific.
This is all moving really fast for me. I thought I was an ape.
I have been telling people that evolution makes a monkey out of you and me.
And what are we going to with the John Henry story now?
Define *science*.
I think your wide-sweeping criticism of my posts is unwarranted. I've been careful to distinguish between what is fact and what just my opinions, and of course, you're free to challenge me on anything, if you don't think I can back it up.
My point here was, that my opinions should be considered just as valid as those of the supposed "scientists" at "major universities" who signed you statement claiming they were "skeptical" of evolution. My guess is that few if any of those "scientists" do evolution related work, and for certain none has ever published peer-reviewed articles in recognized journals on the subject.
So, of course everyone can have an opinion, but on this subject my opinions should weigh just as heavy as theirs -- which is to say, in so many words, obviously not very much!
On the definition of the word "science," you might start with this Wikipedia article:
Note especially that "science" and "natural philosophy" were considered almost synonymous.
But more to the point is this discussion by Eugenie Scott (p50):
"Twentieth- and twenty-first-century scientists limit themselves to explaining natural phenomena using only natural causes for another practical reason: if a scientist is "allowed" to refer to God as a direct causal force, then there is no reason to continue looking for a natural explanation.
"Scientific explanation screeches to a halt. If there were a natural explanation, perhaps unknown or not yet able to be studied given technological limits or inadequate theory, then it would never be discovered if scientists, giving up in despair, invoked the supernatural. Scientists are quite used to saying, "I don't know yet."
"Perhaps the most important reason scientists restrict themselves to materialist explanations is that the methods of science are inadequate to test explanations involving supernatural forces.
"Recall that one of the hallmarks of science is the ability to hold some variables constant in order to be able to test the role of others. If indeed there is an omnipotent force that intervenes in the material world, by definition it is not possible to control for -- to hold constant -- such actions.
"As one wag put it, 'You can't put God in a test tube'; and one must add, you can't keep Him out of one, either. Such is the nature of omnipotence -- by definition.
"As a result, scientists do not consider supernatural explanations as scientific. As a matter of fact, limiting scientific explanation to natural causes has been extraordinarily fruitful. In the spirit of of the adage 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it,' scientists continue to seek explanations in natural processes when doing science, whether they are believers or nonbelievers in an omnipotent power.
Every field of science has its own journals, where recognized scientists publish their peer-reviewed results. These journals act, in effect, as disciplinarians on scientists, forcing them to justify everything they say. Even so, occasionally a fraudulent report will slip through, causing a big scandal when it's later discovered false. So their system is not fool-proof, but it's the best they can do.
And there are lots of true scientific questions relating to evolution being researched and reported on. Whether any of this research has ever resulted in findings supporting "creationism," I don't know. But I've never heard of it.
Now what all goes on OUTSIDE the world of recognized science, I couldn't begin to guess, but we have to assume that every little social movement has its own journals. And occasionally, a really good radical idea, possibly modified will make the jump from "fringe-kook group" to mainstream science, but not very often.
You might even say that science imposes a process of "natural selection" intended to weed out ideas unfit for mainstream acceptance. ;-)
tpanther: Which is undoubtedly part of the problem. It's akin to counting on NBC for the definition of what is or isn't journalism.
BroJoeK: "theories (confirmed hypotheses)."
tpanther: really?
Like string theory and multiverse theory have been "confirmed"?
If I understand your words, you're trying to tell us that all of "mainstream science," is just bunk, right?
And I'm supposed to believe this on the grounds that they won't publish your "Creation Science" or "Intelligent Design" "scientific results," right?
Sorry, but I don't think so...
As for your cogent point about "string theory" and "multiverse theory," I couldn't say how much "confirmation" they have. But I would readily agree that the popular press is far too eager to label every young scientist's intellectual wet dream a "theory." No doubt some of these "theories" are more accurately called "hypotheses."
Let's see if I understand your point.
I said, science can't deal with the supernatural.
You provide quote after quote where certain scientists express their opinions rejecting the supernatural.
You then suggest these quotes demonstrate that I've been less than truthful, right?
I would respond that everyone is entitled to their personal opinions and religious beliefs, and there are no doubt more scientists who believe in God than don't. But this has nothing to do with the working processes of science.
I've said over and over, science itself, by definition deals only with the natural material physical world. As soon as you try injecting supernatural elements, then by definition, it's no longer "science."
What exactly is your problem with this?
By the way, I do have to work for a living, and will soon be headed off to it. So take your time to think things over. ;-)
Sorry pal, but that's just bunk. As of today, evolution is the only scientific game in town. When you guys can come up with an actual scientific theory to replace it, then I'll take some notice.
By the way, I've mentioned before, you might consider Newton and Einstein. When Einstein overthrew Newton's laws, Einstein's theories did not reject Newton outright. Einstein mearly showed circumstances where Newton's laws don't apply. My guess would be, if there's ANY validity to the anti-evolution argument, it will turn out to be something like that.
Ernst Haeckel and Natural-Scientific Materialism , V.I. Lenin
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