Posted on 05/25/2005 3:41:22 AM PDT by billorites
On the contrary, you cannot assert human science extends beyond what humans have been able to observe first hand and report. Where assumptions are made regarding past or future events, the human mind is all there is, and the human mind according to the story of evolution, wasn't around 4.5 billion years ago.
Please, spare us that satanic macro-math.
What's your point? You want to call me a dumbass? Feel free. Science will be forever ingratiated for your insight in that regard.
Existence as a single, human, observer. Are you something more?
Yeah? Well why don't you throw out a fishing line and see if you can reel in a few prime numbers for us all to look at? Might as well fish for something objective while your fishing for a 4.5 billion year old earth.
Which would reduce the claim that the Earth was just cooling from its accretion 4.5 billion years ago to the status of "some kind of guess or speculation." This is a very uninformed position. To disallow the inference of the Hadean Earth, you have to throw out astronomy, nuclear chemistry, and various other multiple lines of evidence that the whole solar system was formed 4.5 billion years ago (versus 14 or so billion years for the universe as a whole).
To go there, you have to really want a Young Earth. It means that the laws of physics we observe now are a fluke of recent times, or just an illusion. You have disallowed any sort of forensic reconstruction of past events from present evidence. YECs happily accept the bargain. None of that stuff is important.
I thoutht you had argued elsewhere that the laws of nature are intelligently designed. I don't see any factual errors in the outline, but it is just an outline. It's pretty hard to put the sum of human knowledge in an outline.
I maintain that the laws of nature are evidence of intelligent design. I do so because the things humans design are intended, for the most part, to remain constant.
It's pretty hard to put the sum of human knowledge in an outline.
Yes it is. I would hardly expect a biology textbook to lay it all out, let alone an outline. At the same time I would hope either one could do better than suggest abiogenesis and leave it at that.
What the heck? I'm only disallowing inferences. Ha!
No. I don't want to be cavalier in disallowing inferences, but inferences are inferences. Furthermore, I should not be expected by law to be taught and graded on other peoples inferences. As a single observer I should be able to take the evidence that is presented to my eyes and ears and evaluate it critically and come to my own conclusions.
You say all those disciplines have evidence to support an old earth. Fine. Why should I take any more stock in what you say than what the Bible says? You say the earth revolves around the sun, yet all your life you've seen the sun rise in the east. Why should you take any more stock in what your eyes tell you than what Galileo said?
That is my point and I have achieved it many times. Unfortunately, you have self-achieved it, without realizing it, even more times than I have. But, then again, that is the nature of the unabashed, ultraignorant, unrepentant dumbass.
Far be it from me to disallow human reason the capacity to observe, record, and interpret evidence of past events. When I find my wallet where I last left it I can be reasonably certain a.) I was the one who last put it there, and b.) only Ichneumon could be responsible for the $100.00 that is missing.
(As if I can afford to keep that kind of cash on hand! donh still owes some rent.)
As you well know, this is not a scientific question. One can ask for evidence (for or against) a scientific theory, but never proof. Are you parodying creationists and their constant bellowing for "proof," i.e. certainty?
Can you show me how the theory of gravity can be used to calculate which slit a bucky ball will fall through in the slit experment?
According to Newton, it will fall through the one it's above. According to Einstein it will fall through the one that intersects the geodesic it will follow. Is this a trick question?
"Fully Deterministic" could be a pretty bold claim--is it in this case?,
Yes, both are fully deterministic. Surely you're familiar with the claim that a complete knowledge of the positions and velocities of all particles completely determines both past and future in Newton's physics.
... can you tell me how the orbital velocities of the electrons were measured?
A web search found this. Maybe you could follow up on your own. It's just something I read about some time ago.
F=mA is just symbols in a row without some philosophy attached to it.
Maybe now we're getting to the issue. I'd say that they are just symbols in a row without some interpretation attached to them. In mathematics they call the interpretation a model of a theory although usually it simply relates the symbols to something in another mathematical theory. You seem to agree with this meaning given your next sentence. Are you calling an interpretation or model a philosophy?
I'm curious what elegant criteria you have discovered that tells you that some things that seem to be highly abstract statements about the way the universe is organized are philosophy, and some are not?
It's not so elegant. If it is a statement subject to falsification then it is not a philosophy. On the other hand, a statement about the form a scientific theory should take is philosophical.
A theory is not a material entity; it is not a tangible force; it is not an part of a formal mathematical proof
In fact, a scientific theory is a mathematical theory plus a physical interpretation of the theory's undefined terms. It is applied by making deductions from the mathematical theory and relating them to the world through the interpretation.
Do you think the parable of the cave is not philosophy?
I'm only passingly familiar with it, but I would say that, as I understand it, it is at least not a scientific claim. For it to be so it would have to say something about what is not possible to observe. So if it must be either scientific or philosophical or both, I'd have to conclude that it is philosophical.
I note that you are avoiding answering my questions so that you can be pinned down as to what, exactly, consititutes "first hand observation".
I think you can rest assured that many fossils have been recovered "first hand" by archaeologists, and that their chronological placement in the fossil record due to their morphological configuration has been achieved by first-hand observation of relative congruities between forms, as well.
How does this differ from investigating conjectures about how semi-conductor configurations behave, using oscilloscope signals in the nanosecond range? Can you detect signals that occurs in a few nanoseconds with your eyes, or your bear hands? Your perceptions basically don't exist in the nanosecond range so you can only read an oscilloscope signal long after what it measured actually occured. How can you claim to be making "first hand" observations when you read a high speed oscilloscope?
Or do you now contend that anything I read off a high speed oscilloscope can't be science?
I guess. It goes through both slits simultaneously--a determinist might conceivably find this a tad annoying.
It seems that the author isn't being discriminated against. Perhaps the rejected article isn't up to his usual standards. Note that self-organizing systems are closely related to chaotic systems. Absent a chaotic component, self-organizing systems are often unstable.
What is the mathematical theory at the heart of evolutionary biology?
Those who accept that 1 + 1 = 0 do tend to drift into computer design, though.
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