Posted on 02/13/2004 3:14:29 AM PST by The Raven
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:51:05 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Even before Darwin, critics attacked the idea of biological evolution with one or another version of, "Evolve this!"
Whether they invoked a human, an eye, or the whip-like flagella that propel bacteria and sperm, the contention that natural processes of mutation and natural selection cannot explain the complexity of living things has been alive and well for 200 years.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
It is not intensely abstract to expect that words should not have diametrically opposite meanings at the same time, even if some people with degrees in natural science misuse them thusly. Does "proved" means something that is subject to question? Or not? Or are you simply going to continue to insist that "proved" means both things at the same time?
Hogwash. Believing in things provisionally does not prevent me from using them or thinking about them in the least.
As to your grue, you were merely stating an observation.
No, I am not, I propounded a theory regarding the specific nature of a specific entity, in plain declarative english any 9 year old of normal intelligence could follow.
Then used the fallacious logic example in reasoning for your proof, all dogs have four legs, a cat has four legs, therefor a a cat is a dog.
If you define a dog as anything with 4 legs, then, indeed, a cat is a dog. & at any rate, this is not an example of a logical fallacy. It is an example of perfectly good logic, with a predicate you don't happen to accept as true.
[snip]
Most of those civilizations were long-lived due to isolation, or rather, the lack of competition for the resources and the people. The same for the American Indian.
[snip]
Now go back to my original statement and list a successful, self-sustaining secular nation with reasonable longevity.
There are problems with your question - like I alluded to before - definition. What is reasonable longevity?
You have been given examples but the counterargument came down to "they're not here anymore" expect for the Indians who didn't have competition for resources when in fact, the various tribes were in a state of almost constant warfare for land and resources.
If a nation has to last forever, then no nation will meet your criteria. If it has to last 200 years, then many nations fit your criteria. If it has to have the same government as the original, the even the US wouldn't fit your criteria.
Words have different meanings to different people of different backgrounds. If I were to say I needed to abduct your arm - you might wonder why this nut wants to take away your arm - when all I wanted to do was test the range of motion and move your arm away from your body.
If I say that a fact is a well observed occurrence and that a coherent set of supportive facts can be offered as proof of a hypothesis then I am using different definitions for fact and proof than you are. My set comes from my background and are understood and usable in my environment.
Right.
Logic is only as good as its precepts or assumptions.
Whether logic is "good" or not (and it's probably pretty safe to say, at this point, that classic boolean logic is "good"), if it operates on false predicates, it will produce unreliable results. The predicates that logic operates on are interchangable in logical formulations, and some are false, and some are true, but none of them are fallacies, in and of themselves.
Uh huh. And when you stand up before a school board to defend science, what set of definitions of the word "proof" do you think will make the most sense? You cannot have your cake and eat it too. If "proved" doesn't mean unquestionably true, than it means questionable. The theory of evolution is, by your lights "proved", ie. questionable. And the theory of creationism is also "proved" in that sense. So they are even. So both should be taught.
What you have achieved, by the sloppy use of the word "proof" in your circles, is an abdication of the responsibility to explicate the very conditional nature of scientific acceptance, just when it needs to be most carefully understood in educational circles, if they are to avoid being pulled back into the Middle Ages by creationists, flat-earthers, and astrologers.
Creationism is in no sense proved - it only has a limited interpretation put forth by an equally limited sect of one biblical writing.
What you have achieved, by the sloppy use of the word "proof" in your circles, is an abdication of the responsibility to explicate the very conditional nature of scientific acceptance,
What we have achieved is scientific principles and proofs necessary to develop new life-saving drugs, new surgical techniques, and the understandings of disease that once killed millions. Not bad for an abdication of responsibility.
just when it needs to be most carefully understood in educational circles,
It does need to be understood - not just in abstract terminology but concrete examples of the scientific method and the very real results it produces.
Ophiucus, read what you wrote! You wrote the meaning of the Constitution (mostly) correctly, but you totally misunderstood what you wrote. To my knowledge at no time in history has the congress passed a law "respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". It has not happened. Therefore, the 1st Amendment protection of religion, intended to protect the states and the people from the federal government, has never been usurped by federal lawmakers. It has been usurped, many times, by unelected federal judges who have imposed their wills and ideologies on the states and the people.
... the US attempted to establish a secular government with a nonsecular people.
I'm not so sure about that, Ophiucus. One of the first things the first congress did was to establish a daily, Christian prayer. Certainly the first congress would been in a better position to know the intent of the constitution than you or I. Justice Story, in his Commentaries, disputes the notion that the original intent was to create a secular nation. The notion that this is a secular nation is new-fangled, worming its way into our "laws" via judiciary usurpation within the last 40 or 50 years.
Pardon me for jumping in, but this example is actually a matter of fallacious reasoning. Insofar as the syllogism can be restated thusly:
All dogs have four legs.
My cat has four legs.
Therefore, my cat is a dog.
...this is, in fact, an illustration of a logical fallacy. In this case, this is the fallacy of the undistributed middle - there is no proposition that refers generally to the class of all things with four legs. And even if we revise it to define all things with four legs as being dogs, that still leaves the logic rather far from being perfectly good.. Consider:
All animals with four legs are dogs.
My cat has four legs.
Therefore, my cat is a dog.
While the logic here is valid - the conclusion is a necessary consequence of the premises - it is also unsound, insofar as the first premise is known to be false. In order for a syllogism to definitively establish the actual truth of the conclusion, the logic must be sound - the logic must be valid and all the premises must be true. Only then is the truth of the conclusion a matter of logical certainty. And this is so even if the conclusion is, in fact, true. For example:
All birds are mammals.
All bats are birds.
Therefore, all bats are mammals.
The conclusion is undeniably true here, but that truth has not been established as a matter of logical certainty on the strength of this argument alone.
Nah, I'll leave that up to the guys who think a theory should be tossed out because it has 'holes'.
"I like how you toss about "new theories" as if they were a dime a dozen."
Nice strawman. LOL
Theories without holes are hard to come by, of course. Like I said, the theory of evolution has its own holes. (But I would imagine that you, and they, conveniently forget that.)
I don't where you got that notion, but there have been no failed prophecies. If you want to play with words you could argue that the prophecy of the destruction of Nineveh 'failed'; but in reality God simply changed his mind when the people of Nineveh repented of their wickedness.
But if prophecy is to be fulfilled, why would any earthly laws/theories have any bearing on them at all? An All powerful God couldn't care less about change in allele frequecies over time, He is supernatural and can supercede any silly earthly law at any time.
That has been exactly my point.
I thought that was essentially a major part of the rapture; you're spirit anyway, will fly up and leave us heathen evolutionists back here on earth to rot.
LOL. If you believe that you most certainly want to avoid being 'meek' (for ye shall inherit the earth if ye are meek). LOL. Listen. It is written that God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world. It is also written that the earth abideth forever. And after the judgement, there are still nations, there are still kings, the curse is removed, and the nations are healed. In other words, according to the Revelation of Jesus Christ, everyone lives happily ever after (well, except for "dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie" [Revelation 22:15]).
Ahhh yes. The evo's explanation in a nutshell: the eye evolved from a primitive zit.
Your faith is showing.
LOL I can see you are fulfilling my every expectation - you are indeed in denial about the holes in evolutionary theory.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.