Exactly!
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Stan Shannon wrote:
to leave out the devine being even if that devine being
I hate to be the spelling police, but it's bugging me. Divine.
Stan Shannon wrote:
He does if he is going to relate it to science. I mean, hell, I believe the universe was created as a purposeful, intelligent act also.
OK, so why does he then have to prove that it was NOT created by a divine being ? I mean, I agree that science has to go beyond 'He waved His hands and it was there', by definition. But, your statement seems a bit contradictory to me, unless you just mean he should either ignore science, or he should accept what science discovers. I would certainly say that I believe God created all life, but that science gives us an evolving understanding of how that life works.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. "! i don't exactly like or do programming and it only gives me a headache." - spotted in VB forums. I can do things with my brain that I can't even google. I can flex the front part of my brain instantly anytime I want. It can be exhausting and it even causes me vision problems for some reason. - CaptainSeeSharp
Christian Graus wrote:
Divine.
Sorry, but thats one I'll never get correct. So I gave up trying. Has something to do with the accent - it is pronounced dee-vine where I come from.
Christian Graus wrote:
OK, so why does he then have to prove that it was NOT created by a divine being ? I mean, I agree that science has to go beyond 'He waved His hands and it was there', by definition. But, your statement seems a bit contradictory to me, unless you just mean he should either ignore science, or he should accept what science discovers. I would certainly say that I believe God created all life, but that science gives us an evolving understanding of how that life works.
No, but science is a specific thing. And that thing is a way to understand phenomenon we observe in nature in a way that does not require or depend upon supernatural explanations. If I create a house and someone later wishes to know how it got there, you could either say "Stan did it" or you could describe the process for building a house. Either one is an explanation, but only one actually allows you to understand the means of building a house. To me it boils down to a simple question: Could science prove the existence of God? My answer is: No. Science is about understanding the material, not the spiritual.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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Christian Graus wrote:
Divine.
Sorry, but thats one I'll never get correct. So I gave up trying. Has something to do with the accent - it is pronounced dee-vine where I come from.
Christian Graus wrote:
OK, so why does he then have to prove that it was NOT created by a divine being ? I mean, I agree that science has to go beyond 'He waved His hands and it was there', by definition. But, your statement seems a bit contradictory to me, unless you just mean he should either ignore science, or he should accept what science discovers. I would certainly say that I believe God created all life, but that science gives us an evolving understanding of how that life works.
No, but science is a specific thing. And that thing is a way to understand phenomenon we observe in nature in a way that does not require or depend upon supernatural explanations. If I create a house and someone later wishes to know how it got there, you could either say "Stan did it" or you could describe the process for building a house. Either one is an explanation, but only one actually allows you to understand the means of building a house. To me it boils down to a simple question: Could science prove the existence of God? My answer is: No. Science is about understanding the material, not the spiritual.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
Stan Shannon wrote:
And that thing is a way to understand phenomenon we observe in nature in a way that does not require or depend upon supernatural explanations.
Sure, that's fine. And, if anyone wants to discuss science, it needs to be on those terms. But, surely I am free to discuss why I believe that God created life, and still trust in scientific evidence as being, quite obviously, our best theories based on current understanding of the evidence ?
Stan Shannon wrote:
If I create a house and someone later wishes to know how it got there, you could either say "Stan did it" or you could describe the process for building a house.
I may well say 'Stan did it, and I don't understand exactly how, but I've looked at the roof and it looks to me like it was probably done like this' ?
Stan Shannon wrote:
Could science prove the existence of God?
Of course not. But, your original comment seemed to suggest that the onus was on someone who believed in God, to come up with an explantion of how He doesn't really matter, or could perhaps not exist at all. Given that I don't believe that, I can't really make much of a case for it.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. "! i don't exactly like or do programming and it only gives me a headache." - spotted in VB forums. I can do things with my brain that I can't even google. I can flex the front part of my brain instantly anytime I want. It can be exhausting and it even causes me vision problems for some reason. - CaptainSeeSharp
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Stan Shannon wrote:
And that thing is a way to understand phenomenon we observe in nature in a way that does not require or depend upon supernatural explanations.
Sure, that's fine. And, if anyone wants to discuss science, it needs to be on those terms. But, surely I am free to discuss why I believe that God created life, and still trust in scientific evidence as being, quite obviously, our best theories based on current understanding of the evidence ?
Stan Shannon wrote:
If I create a house and someone later wishes to know how it got there, you could either say "Stan did it" or you could describe the process for building a house.
I may well say 'Stan did it, and I don't understand exactly how, but I've looked at the roof and it looks to me like it was probably done like this' ?
Stan Shannon wrote:
Could science prove the existence of God?
Of course not. But, your original comment seemed to suggest that the onus was on someone who believed in God, to come up with an explantion of how He doesn't really matter, or could perhaps not exist at all. Given that I don't believe that, I can't really make much of a case for it.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. "! i don't exactly like or do programming and it only gives me a headache." - spotted in VB forums. I can do things with my brain that I can't even google. I can flex the front part of my brain instantly anytime I want. It can be exhausting and it even causes me vision problems for some reason. - CaptainSeeSharp
It is perfectly appropriate to say "God did it". But if you are going to claim to be representing a scientific explanation it must exclude references to God, even if you do believe he did it. That is what sciece is - explaining the underlieing materialistic processes whether God did it or not. You have to ignore your beliefs so that you can accept the evidence at face value.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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Ilíon wrote:
Dude, you're a post-modernist!
I don't think so, although, actually, I can't even figure out what that is, and I've just spent the last 10 minutes reading about it. I firmly believe in a rational universe, purposefully create by an overt act of intelligence. The only other possibilities are that we live in either a purposeless universe which is rational for no particular reason at all, or that we live in a purposeless, irrational universe, which merely appears rational because thats how our brains just happen to work. Neitehr one of those , however, is very intellectually satisfying. I suppose one could also claim that an irrational, purposeful universe was an option, but I've never been able to figure out what that means (Could God purposefully create an irrational universe?)
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
I think the universe is quite predictable and rational. Its machinery is absolute precision in how it works.
Obloga Obama Blog[^] Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age to produce the sort of character and sort of beliefs that authorities consider desirable. Any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible.
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BoneSoft wrote:
Riddle me this Batman, how old is the Earth?
I have no idea ... and neither do you. But my psyche isn't invested in pretending that I do.
BoneSoft wrote:
Hmm... I fail to see how one broken assumption at the top of the pile is supposed to break the foundation.
But then, you're not really into reasoning validly, are you?
Ilíon wrote:
I have no idea ... and neither do you. But my psyche isn't invested in pretending that I do.
Neither is mine. But you are correct, I don't know how old the Earth is... Beyond 3.5 billion years that is. But here's the thing, the article says that one of the major reasons they believe that birds couldn't have evolved from dinosaurs is because many bird fossils predate dinosaurs. If you say you don't know how old the world is, then you obviously have no confidence in their dating methods. So, why are you willing to accept this article as some sort of proof of your stance, when you have no confidence in how they came to that conclusion?
Ilíon wrote:
But then, you're not really into reasoning validly, are you?
Instead of always only saying something similar to that, why not try reasoning. Do that and then we'll work on validity.
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect." - Mark Twain "Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggy' until you can find a rock." - Mark Twain "If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man." - Mark Twain "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." - Groucho Marx
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Stan Shannon wrote:
Science isn't about truth, but it is about knowledge.
:laugh: Knowledge is all about truth: "knowledge" which isn't true is not knowledge; it may be useful, but it isn't, you know, knowledge.
Stan Shannon wrote:
So yeah, if you're so smart, what's your theory? How do you account for the existence of birds as an observable natural phenomenon, an element of a materialistic universe, in a way that does not require an appeal to a devine being?
As I keep pointing out, you "science" groupies refuse to reason properly and soundly. An "explanation" which isn't true is not an explanation; it may be useful, but it isn't, you know, an explanation.
Ilíon wrote:
Knowledge is all about truth: "knowledge" which isn't true is not knowledge; it may be useful, but it isn't, you know, knowledge.
Ilíon wrote:
As I keep pointing out, you "science" groupies refuse to reason properly and soundly.
Ilíon wrote:
An "explanation" which isn't true is not an explanation; it may be useful, but it isn't, you know, an explanation.
You completely misunderstand the idea behind science. You're treating it as if it were mathematics, where things can be proven because you have the ability to define the axioms that comprise the logical framework you're in. It is a formal system. Science, on the other hand, must work in a world that we don't have the rule book for. We can only converge asymptotically towards the rules through repeated experiment and observation. What you should do, is read something written by an actual biologist, instead of fifty word sound-bites written by bloggers. X|
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It is perfectly appropriate to say "God did it". But if you are going to claim to be representing a scientific explanation it must exclude references to God, even if you do believe he did it. That is what sciece is - explaining the underlieing materialistic processes whether God did it or not. You have to ignore your beliefs so that you can accept the evidence at face value.
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
Stan Shannon wrote:
You have to ignore your beliefs so that you can accept the evidence at face value.
Sure, that's fine. I expect you just worded yourself poorly to start with, or I misread it, because I don't disagree with anything you've said, since.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. "! i don't exactly like or do programming and it only gives me a headache." - spotted in VB forums. I can do things with my brain that I can't even google. I can flex the front part of my brain instantly anytime I want. It can be exhausting and it even causes me vision problems for some reason. - CaptainSeeSharp
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Ilíon wrote:
I have no idea ... and neither do you. But my psyche isn't invested in pretending that I do.
Neither is mine. But you are correct, I don't know how old the Earth is... Beyond 3.5 billion years that is. But here's the thing, the article says that one of the major reasons they believe that birds couldn't have evolved from dinosaurs is because many bird fossils predate dinosaurs. If you say you don't know how old the world is, then you obviously have no confidence in their dating methods. So, why are you willing to accept this article as some sort of proof of your stance, when you have no confidence in how they came to that conclusion?
Ilíon wrote:
But then, you're not really into reasoning validly, are you?
Instead of always only saying something similar to that, why not try reasoning. Do that and then we'll work on validity.
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect." - Mark Twain "Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggy' until you can find a rock." - Mark Twain "If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man." - Mark Twain "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." - Groucho Marx
BoneSoft wrote:
But you are correct, I don't know how old the Earth is... Beyond 3.5 billion years that is.
But you *don't* know that; you don't even yourself reason to that figure. You take someone else's word for it: you don't test the reasoning, not nor the assumptions, from which that figure derives. Hell! you're not even curious about how it is that the earth has aged about 2.5 billion years in the time since I was a lad (when I was a child, the earth was only 2 billion years old). Pssst: today's "scientific truth" about the earth's age is that it is about 4.5 billion years old. I've also, somewhere, seen the figure 4.65 billion (which number is obviously more accurate than 4.5 :laugh: ).
BoneSoft wrote:
But here's the thing, the article says that one of the major reasons they believe that birds couldn't have evolved from dinosaurs is because many bird fossils predate dinosaurs. If you say you don't know how old the world is, then you obviously have no confidence in their dating methods. So, why are you willing to accept this article as some sort of proof of your stance, when you have no confidence in how they came to that conclusion?
If you really were into logical reasoning, then you'd not bother even to ask such a question, for you'd understand already that my distrust of the unsupported assumptions of evolutionism has no effect, one way or another, on the faulty reasoning advanced in support of evolutionism. It doesn't matter that I distrust their dating scheme. What matters is that given their dating scheme, they are declining to reason properly and in accord with that scheme. Your very question betrays you.
BoneSoft wrote:
Instead of always only saying something similar to that, why not try reasoning. Do that and then we'll work on validity.
Dewd! You judge an act of reasoning to be valid by the conclusion reached (just look at the content of the very post I'm responding to). There is no way in Heaven that you and I can reason together; not until you fix that. edit:
BoneSoft wrote:
Neither is mine.
Then why does it always appear to threaten you so that I don't trust and believe the content of evolutionism? Why do you generally call me stupid because I point to the illogic and inconsiste
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Ilíon wrote:
For, among other things, it's utterly impossible to attack science
How do you figure ?
Ilíon wrote:
(though, one may certainly the fetish that some call "science").
Ah, you redefine it before you attack it. Gotcha.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. "! i don't exactly like or do programming and it only gives me a headache." - spotted in VB forums. I can do things with my brain that I can't even google. I can flex the front part of my brain instantly anytime I want. It can be exhausting and it even causes me vision problems for some reason. - CaptainSeeSharp
Christian Graus wrote:
Ilíon: For, among other things, it's utterly impossible to attack science Christian Graus: How do you figure ?
What does the word 'science' mean? It means several different things, of course; but none of the proper meanings of the term are things to which the word 'attack' may properly apply. The very whinge, "you're attacking science" is utterly anti-scientific; the whinge betrays the whinger's mindset.
Christian Graus wrote:
Ilíon: (though, one may certainly the fetish that some call "science"). PAPMan, the superhero: Ah, you redefine it before you attack it. Gotcha.
And you're a willful fool. But, tell you what, instead of whinging that I'm "attacking science" and thereby imagining that anyone in his right mind is impressed by that, why don't you "science" fetishists *explain* just how it is that I am "attacking science" -- and *explain* just how it is that that is something deserving of moral condemnation (which is, after all, what the whings is all about).
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Ilíon wrote:
Knowledge is all about truth: "knowledge" which isn't true is not knowledge; it may be useful, but it isn't, you know, knowledge.
Ilíon wrote:
As I keep pointing out, you "science" groupies refuse to reason properly and soundly.
Ilíon wrote:
An "explanation" which isn't true is not an explanation; it may be useful, but it isn't, you know, an explanation.
You completely misunderstand the idea behind science. You're treating it as if it were mathematics, where things can be proven because you have the ability to define the axioms that comprise the logical framework you're in. It is a formal system. Science, on the other hand, must work in a world that we don't have the rule book for. We can only converge asymptotically towards the rules through repeated experiment and observation. What you should do, is read something written by an actual biologist, instead of fifty word sound-bites written by bloggers. X|
Ravel H. Joyce wrote:
You completely misunderstand the idea behind science. You're treating it as if it were mathematics, where things can be proven because you have the ability to define the axioms that comprise the logical framework you're in. It is a formal system. Science, on the other hand, must work in a world that we don't have the rule book for. We can only converge asymptotically towards the rules through repeated experiment and observation. What you should do, is read something written by an actual biologist, instead of fifty word sound-bites written by bloggers. X|
And you're a "science" fetishist (and a fool); go bother someone else.
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BoneSoft wrote:
But you are correct, I don't know how old the Earth is... Beyond 3.5 billion years that is.
But you *don't* know that; you don't even yourself reason to that figure. You take someone else's word for it: you don't test the reasoning, not nor the assumptions, from which that figure derives. Hell! you're not even curious about how it is that the earth has aged about 2.5 billion years in the time since I was a lad (when I was a child, the earth was only 2 billion years old). Pssst: today's "scientific truth" about the earth's age is that it is about 4.5 billion years old. I've also, somewhere, seen the figure 4.65 billion (which number is obviously more accurate than 4.5 :laugh: ).
BoneSoft wrote:
But here's the thing, the article says that one of the major reasons they believe that birds couldn't have evolved from dinosaurs is because many bird fossils predate dinosaurs. If you say you don't know how old the world is, then you obviously have no confidence in their dating methods. So, why are you willing to accept this article as some sort of proof of your stance, when you have no confidence in how they came to that conclusion?
If you really were into logical reasoning, then you'd not bother even to ask such a question, for you'd understand already that my distrust of the unsupported assumptions of evolutionism has no effect, one way or another, on the faulty reasoning advanced in support of evolutionism. It doesn't matter that I distrust their dating scheme. What matters is that given their dating scheme, they are declining to reason properly and in accord with that scheme. Your very question betrays you.
BoneSoft wrote:
Instead of always only saying something similar to that, why not try reasoning. Do that and then we'll work on validity.
Dewd! You judge an act of reasoning to be valid by the conclusion reached (just look at the content of the very post I'm responding to). There is no way in Heaven that you and I can reason together; not until you fix that. edit:
BoneSoft wrote:
Neither is mine.
Then why does it always appear to threaten you so that I don't trust and believe the content of evolutionism? Why do you generally call me stupid because I point to the illogic and inconsiste
There is just a very slight chance that you might find this of interest. http://www.asa3.org/ASA/RESOURCES/WIENS.html[^]
John Carson
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Ravel H. Joyce wrote:
You completely misunderstand the idea behind science. You're treating it as if it were mathematics, where things can be proven because you have the ability to define the axioms that comprise the logical framework you're in. It is a formal system. Science, on the other hand, must work in a world that we don't have the rule book for. We can only converge asymptotically towards the rules through repeated experiment and observation. What you should do, is read something written by an actual biologist, instead of fifty word sound-bites written by bloggers. X|
And you're a "science" fetishist (and a fool); go bother someone else.
But you're so fun to bother! You fancy yourself an intellectual but you know very little.
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BoneSoft wrote:
But you are correct, I don't know how old the Earth is... Beyond 3.5 billion years that is.
But you *don't* know that; you don't even yourself reason to that figure. You take someone else's word for it: you don't test the reasoning, not nor the assumptions, from which that figure derives. Hell! you're not even curious about how it is that the earth has aged about 2.5 billion years in the time since I was a lad (when I was a child, the earth was only 2 billion years old). Pssst: today's "scientific truth" about the earth's age is that it is about 4.5 billion years old. I've also, somewhere, seen the figure 4.65 billion (which number is obviously more accurate than 4.5 :laugh: ).
BoneSoft wrote:
But here's the thing, the article says that one of the major reasons they believe that birds couldn't have evolved from dinosaurs is because many bird fossils predate dinosaurs. If you say you don't know how old the world is, then you obviously have no confidence in their dating methods. So, why are you willing to accept this article as some sort of proof of your stance, when you have no confidence in how they came to that conclusion?
If you really were into logical reasoning, then you'd not bother even to ask such a question, for you'd understand already that my distrust of the unsupported assumptions of evolutionism has no effect, one way or another, on the faulty reasoning advanced in support of evolutionism. It doesn't matter that I distrust their dating scheme. What matters is that given their dating scheme, they are declining to reason properly and in accord with that scheme. Your very question betrays you.
BoneSoft wrote:
Instead of always only saying something similar to that, why not try reasoning. Do that and then we'll work on validity.
Dewd! You judge an act of reasoning to be valid by the conclusion reached (just look at the content of the very post I'm responding to). There is no way in Heaven that you and I can reason together; not until you fix that. edit:
BoneSoft wrote:
Neither is mine.
Then why does it always appear to threaten you so that I don't trust and believe the content of evolutionism? Why do you generally call me stupid because I point to the illogic and inconsiste
Ilíon wrote:
It doesn't matter that I distrust their dating scheme. What matters is that given their dating scheme, they are declining to reason properly and in accord with that scheme.
Don't you mean 'schemes'? There are at least 10 fundamentally different scientific disciplines that have independently converged on the value of 4.56 billion years. Unless the geologists are in cahoots with the nuclear physicists and the dendrochronologists... It's all a freakin' CONSPIRACY!
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BoneSoft wrote:
But you are correct, I don't know how old the Earth is... Beyond 3.5 billion years that is.
But you *don't* know that; you don't even yourself reason to that figure. You take someone else's word for it: you don't test the reasoning, not nor the assumptions, from which that figure derives. Hell! you're not even curious about how it is that the earth has aged about 2.5 billion years in the time since I was a lad (when I was a child, the earth was only 2 billion years old). Pssst: today's "scientific truth" about the earth's age is that it is about 4.5 billion years old. I've also, somewhere, seen the figure 4.65 billion (which number is obviously more accurate than 4.5 :laugh: ).
BoneSoft wrote:
But here's the thing, the article says that one of the major reasons they believe that birds couldn't have evolved from dinosaurs is because many bird fossils predate dinosaurs. If you say you don't know how old the world is, then you obviously have no confidence in their dating methods. So, why are you willing to accept this article as some sort of proof of your stance, when you have no confidence in how they came to that conclusion?
If you really were into logical reasoning, then you'd not bother even to ask such a question, for you'd understand already that my distrust of the unsupported assumptions of evolutionism has no effect, one way or another, on the faulty reasoning advanced in support of evolutionism. It doesn't matter that I distrust their dating scheme. What matters is that given their dating scheme, they are declining to reason properly and in accord with that scheme. Your very question betrays you.
BoneSoft wrote:
Instead of always only saying something similar to that, why not try reasoning. Do that and then we'll work on validity.
Dewd! You judge an act of reasoning to be valid by the conclusion reached (just look at the content of the very post I'm responding to). There is no way in Heaven that you and I can reason together; not until you fix that. edit:
BoneSoft wrote:
Neither is mine.
Then why does it always appear to threaten you so that I don't trust and believe the content of evolutionism? Why do you generally call me stupid because I point to the illogic and inconsiste
You don't even know how isotopes decay, or what genetic drift is, or what allopatric speciation is - you haven't a clue how they date objects, how they compare species, how they determine the history of languages, how they measure the composition and velocity of a star, the difference between Oligochaeta and Arthropoda, what meiotic non-disjunction is, or why alleles cross over.
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Ilíon wrote:
What "science" is all about is protecting reductionistic materialism.
I tend to agree with you about that. However, even if it were not, even if science remained a prestine means of unraveling the phenomenon we observe in the natural world, the purpose of science is ultimately to provide for precisely the ability to update and enhance formerly accepted conclusions as more information becomes available and new observations are conducted. It certainly does no damage to the theory of evolution whether birds are, or are not, a kind of flying dinosaur. The purpose of science is, in fact, to increase our understanding of the purely materialistic aspects of nature. Science isn't about truth, but it is about knowledge. And acquiring knowledge must include the ability to reject former conclusions. So yeah, if you're so smart, what's your theory? How do you account for the existence of birds as an observable natural phenomenon, an element of a materialistic universe, in a way that does not require an appeal to a devine being?
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
Stan Shannon wrote:
what's your theory? How do you account for the existence of birds as an observable natural phenomenon, an element of a materialistic universe
I completely agree with you. Birds were created for a purpose in this material universe. Birds of one kind were created for the purpose of crapping on statues and cars parked under trees. Birds of another kind were created for the purpose of being whistled at.
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Ilíon wrote:
Dude, you're a post-modernist!
I don't think so, although, actually, I can't even figure out what that is, and I've just spent the last 10 minutes reading about it. I firmly believe in a rational universe, purposefully create by an overt act of intelligence. The only other possibilities are that we live in either a purposeless universe which is rational for no particular reason at all, or that we live in a purposeless, irrational universe, which merely appears rational because thats how our brains just happen to work. Neitehr one of those , however, is very intellectually satisfying. I suppose one could also claim that an irrational, purposeful universe was an option, but I've never been able to figure out what that means (Could God purposefully create an irrational universe?)
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
Stan Shannon wrote:
I don't think so, although, actually, I can't even figure out what that is, and I've just spent the last 10 minutes reading about it.
The core of post-modernism may be expressed in either a "strong" or a "weak" version: 1) "strong" post-modernism -- there exists no truth whatsoever 2) "weak" post-modernism -- should there exist any truth, it is quite unknowable. Both versions are self-refuting.
Stan Shannon wrote:
Stan Shannon: Science isn't about truth, but it is about knowledge. Ilíon: Knowledge is all about truth: "knowledge" which isn't true is not knowledge; it may be useful, but it isn't, you know, knowledge. Stan Shannon: I disagree completely. Newtonian physics, for example, isn't "truth" in the sense that it accurately and completely explains gravity. However, it does represent knowledge in the sense that it allows for a means of more predictably manipulating our natural environment.
Neither Newtonian physics nor the physics built on Einstein's work explains gravity -- physics, at best, describes gravity; to be more precise, physics describes the effects of gravity. If we had an explanation of gravity, we could turn it off and on at will. You're conflating knowledge of and about a workable description of a thing for truth/knowledge of the thing itself; these are two quite different things.
Stan Shannon wrote:
Ilíon: An "explanation" which isn't true is not an explanation; it may be useful, but it isn't, you know, an explanation. Stan Shannon: No, it is merely an incomplete explanation.
But, of course, I didn't say that a proposed explanation must be complete to really be an explanation, it said it must be true. It must be true as far as it goes -- it may not include a falseness, nor may it deny some part of the complete truth. If I were to shoot something with a bow and arrow, one might describe in intricate (and, theoretically, in complete) detail the physiological changes in my body as I draw and release the bow, one might describe in intricate (and, theoretically, in complete) detail the physics of the arrow's flight and subsequent impact. One might, therefore, have explained -- according to a truncated sense of 'what' (and of 'explain') -- just *what* happened; but one's expla
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But you're so fun to bother! You fancy yourself an intellectual but you know very little.
Ravel H. Joyce wrote:
But you're so fun to bother! You fancy yourself an intellectual but you know very little.
More of your ingorance, on both counts. I don't fancy myself an intellectual X|, but I know quite a bit (and far more than you do). However, keep in mind what you've said next time you whinge at me, demanding that I justify why I torment you kiddies in your self-satisfied ignorance.
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There is just a very slight chance that you might find this of interest. http://www.asa3.org/ASA/RESOURCES/WIENS.html[^]
John Carson
It's totally irrelevant to the discussion. The discussion is not about whether some religious persons subscribe to the unfounded assumptions of evolutionism. The discussion is not even about whether I am wrong in believing that the assumptions of evolutionism are unfounded and unsupportable. The discussion is about the fact that even given the assumptions of evolutionism, evolutionists do not reason in accord with logic. It's a different thing altogether, you see.
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Ravel H. Joyce wrote:
But you're so fun to bother! You fancy yourself an intellectual but you know very little.
More of your ingorance, on both counts. I don't fancy myself an intellectual X|, but I know quite a bit (and far more than you do). However, keep in mind what you've said next time you whinge at me, demanding that I justify why I torment you kiddies in your self-satisfied ignorance.
Ilíon wrote:
More of your ingorance, on both counts. I don't fancy myself an intellectual Dead, but I know quite a bit (and far more than you do).
I know what a jejunum is, what catalysis is, and what the photoelectric effect is. You know what the subjunctive form is. I'm so massively impressed, no, really.
Ilíon wrote:
However, keep in mind what you've said next time you whinge at me, demanding that I justify why I torment you kiddies in your self-satisfied ignorance.
I've never demanded such a thing.
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It's totally irrelevant to the discussion. The discussion is not about whether some religious persons subscribe to the unfounded assumptions of evolutionism. The discussion is not even about whether I am wrong in believing that the assumptions of evolutionism are unfounded and unsupportable. The discussion is about the fact that even given the assumptions of evolutionism, evolutionists do not reason in accord with logic. It's a different thing altogether, you see.
Tell me, if evolution is wrong, then why do humans have embryonic gill slits and a cloaca and a postanal tail, just like all Chordates?