You wrote, "we have magic, superstition, wishful thinking, divine revelation, what the stars foretell and what the neighbors think, public opinion, Ouija boards, tarot cards, witch doctors, the unguessable verdict of history, and a host of other un-natural phenomena."
Do you think the man who wrote the lines in italics above was given over to magic, superstition, wishful thinking, etc.?
If you think so, then you destroy the authority of the scientific method itself.
Too many of you "Evo" guys are just "Johnny one-notes." FWIW.
Thanks for writing, coyoteman. Good to see you!
"Too many of you "Evo" guys are just "Johnny one-notes." FWIW."
Partly because I spent half this thread defining what Evolution is and isn't over and over and over again.
And on that quote, why God conceal himself and then punish people for not believing he exists? Whats with all the mind games? What a jerk!
With apologies to the “three blind men and the elephant”, these discussions remind me of the “three smart guys and the diesel engine”, or maybe its just two smart guys and my Uncle Harry.
The first smart guy tries to explain, sometimes patiently, sometimes less than patiently, that diesel engines are made from materials naturally appearing in the earth, that their operations are governed by the laws of physics, that there clearly is nothing magical about them. The proper response for a man of science would be to try to pull them apart to see how they work, and then to try to imagine the processes by which they might have been formed originally from nature.
We have, after all, earlier examples of diesel engines and even gas engines we’ve dug out of the land fill, which by extrapolating in reverse we ought to be able to guess what the first crude engines might have looked like.
Uncle Harry will have none of it. They were made in Detroit. He’s never been to Detroit, he’s never met anyone from Detroit, but he’s met people who claim to have met people from Detroit, and that’s good enough for him.
The smart guy ignores Uncle Harry, who is actually proud of the fact that he’s never studied diesels, and proceeds to try to calculate how long it would take for iron to become steel, and the natural forces it would take to shape the first crudely shaped pistons, considers arguments that comets striking the earth might have sped up the process, but in the absence of clear evidence (and its hard to re-create such an extra-terrestrial process) prefers the longer slower time-table.
Uncle Harry tries to convince him, there is really a Detroit, and a place where they stamp these babies out like cookies, but the only proof he can come up with is a Diana Ross album. The smart guy doesn’t even like Diana Ross, and clearly Diana Ross knows nothing about diesels either.
Along comes Betty, who is fascinated by the inner workings of diesels, loves to talk about compression ratios and firing orders. Uncle Harry is annoyed with her, because she seems to be denying his “just-so” Detroit story, to which she swears that she too loves Diana Ross.
The smart guy is annoyed with her for even allowing Diana Ross to be brought into the conversation, no one who even owns a Diana Ross album should be allowed to talk about diesels. He is further annoyed when she points out the wiring harness and the on-board computer, and suggests that it would be difficult for either to have been formed by comets or subterranean heat and pressure alone.
Earlier engines, the ones we dug out of the land-fill, don’t have on-board computers, and so obviously there is a progression over time, and just as obviously computers aren’t necessary components to diesel operation (since the earlier ones don't have them), and her computer theories are just the ravings of a Diana Ross fan. She might try to deny it, but the tape in the eight-track is all the proof that we need that she’s out of her league.
A crowd eventually gathers, some arguing that Diana Ross is really Michael Jackson, others pointing out that these recordings of recordings are insufficient proof that Diana is even a real person, and mocking anyone who would dream of doing engine maintenance from the lyrics of “Stop in the Name of Love”, I mean the whole idea is silly, isn’t it. So at some point Uncle Harry leaves to go and finish his Christmas shopping, and to pray for the godless commies who don’t even like Motown, and for Betty for even listening to their stories about pistons and alloys. Betty tries to wave me over to get into the conversation, but diesels scare me, and so does Motown, and enraged crowds in general.
I’m not going there.
I want the smart guys to keep digging engines out of the land fill, and taking them apart to find out how they work. I agree that Diana Ross looks strangely like Michael. But I’m also pretty curious about those chip things Betty keeps pointing at.
Merry Christmas all. I’ve got to make one more mad dash to Walmart. I’m putting on a couple of extra layers of clothing to soften the blows, shopping the day before the day before can be dangerous. You don't want my opinion of diesel engine design, if I'm not smart enough to have finished my shopping by now, I'm not smart enough to come in out of the rain.