Sarah Salviander & the Sequence of Biblical Creation

You are the one dodging, trying to distract from your inability to read what he said objectively. Unbiased. Right. You’re treating @Eddie like a YEC, when he is objectively not.

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Nevertheless, he is making use of common YEC tropes. As are you.

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What YEC ‘trope’ did I use? See if you can be objective.

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No, I’m merely reminding you of the adage, “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” I wonder if the chemistry professor who posted the item felt targeted by your remark? But even if he didn’t, some chemists might have. And some engineers.

Not in context. The context should have made clear that whether or not Hoyle was correct, he thought there was evidence, and it was his response to what he thought to be true that I was praising.

See above. He gets credit for thinking the thought, “Though I hate to admit it, I think there is evidence for a Designer” – and for voicing that thought publicly. Admitting it when you think your opponent has a point shows intellectual integrity. The more usual tactic of atheists writing on origins debates is to deny that their opponents have any evidence at all.

You’ve been swallowing the propaganda and conspiracy theories of Chris Mooney and others, I see.

The average scientist may be no different. But the vocal leadership of science – or people purporting to speak for science – has been behaving differently lately.

I know their writings well. I read them over and over again as a child, a teenager, and into my twenties. They, and several other atheist/agnostic scientists and writers about science, were my Bible in my youth. They personally were unbelievers, but they generally did not antagonize religion or religious people. Their writings showed humor and Sagan, who appeared on Johnny Carson, etc., showed a warm humanity. Quite different from what is conveyed in the writings of Krauss, P.Z. Myers, Coyne, Dawkins, etc., who come across as angry and militant, as zealous Puritans of scientism, as it were. If you don’t perceive the difference in tone and contents, I don’t know what else can be said.

Which is not what I said. Your phrase “the true history” was an exaggeration regarding what is known, but I did not say that what is known is nothing. Nor is extrapolation the same as speculation. Some extrapolations are more warranted than others. Extrapolations regarding the age of the earth have fairly solid grounds, but current extrapolations regarding the origin of life are unwarranted, and in fact should be regarded as speculation. That has nothing to do with any religious belief that I hold, but is simply the correct classification of propositions, on the basis of their epistemological soundness.

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OK, I’ll agree with that. But your words have meanings, including connotations. Note that you are implicitly accusing atheists of dishonesty when they deny that there is evidence. What is your basis for that? Your respect for Hoyle’s honesty is an implicit accusation of dishonesty in those who disagree with his assessment. And thus, the quality of Hoyle’s judgment is indeed an issue. If his judgment is faulty, perhaps those atheists have justification for their “usual tactic”.

Trumpite, are you? Global warming denier? Lung cancer denier?

I don’t think so. I think the difference is in your increasingly defensive attitude. Did you ever read The Demon-haunted World?

“Fairly”? Words still have meanings, and that’s a clear minimization of our state of knowledge. Your use of “extrapolation” is loaded too. Maybe you don’t realize you’re doing it, but I suspect otherwise. “The true history” is exaggerated only if you think that means our knowledge is complete, and I don’t think you can reasonably get that out of what I said. We know some things to a degree that we might as well say they’re true. The age of the earth, to great precision, is one of those things. The details of the origin of life are not, but universal common ancestry is.

You should stop. Your lack of objectivity is obvious to all, even if you can’t see it. Where did I use a YEC trope again?

“Expound about dark matter and dark energy for us, since you are so enlightened.”

What exactly did you mean by that? I took it to mean that I don’t know the true history of the universe, because I don’t know what dark matter and dark energy are. That’s a form of “Because we don’t know everything, therefore we know nothing.” We know quite a bit about the true history of the universe even if we can’t explain many things.

It was obvious from context what I meant by that. Understanding context, and as @Eddie has pointed out a couple of times already, is not your strong suit, maybe because of bias. Dark matter and dark energy are perfect examples of the use of extrapolation in cosmology.

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Why do contrarians so often focus on the process instead of the evidence?

Obviously, because sometimes the process can taint the evidence, or slant the way the evidence is read.

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Not only the details of the origin of life, but even the claim that life arose by accident, has not been established by anything resembling responsible or competent natural science. As for universal common ancestry, presuming you are using the term precisely (though you may not be doing so), it has been doubted by many with very great knowledge of the relevant genetics, e.g., Craig Venter.

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He was focusing on evidence – the evidence of

:slightly_smiling_face:

Not to me, and I see you haven’t managed to explain what you did mean. Sure, blame the victim.

Sure, play the victim. :slightly_smiling_face:

No argument. Though “by accident” is bizarre, loaded language. However, until there’s evidence for some kind of purposeful entity that long ago, it seems the way to bet.

Whatever would lead you to believe that?

Has it? When? Where? More importantly, why?

Still haven’t explained, I see. What was your point?

This only indicates that the evidence is a problem for your position.

And yet you push ID on everyone even though it lacks anything resembling responsible or competent natural science.

So even when there is mountains of responsible natural science backing a conclusion, you will reject it. Noted.

Good grief. That @Eddie was exactly right:

And that dark matter and dark energy are perfect examples of that.

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What? Those aren’t extrapolations to the past at all, except in the sense that all observations are of the past. Dark matter is observed from the behavior of stars and clusters in this and other galaxies, observations as close to the present as we can have from objects thousands or millions of light-years away. Dark energy is based on similar observations of distant galaxies. That’s nothing much to do with the history of the universe, i.e. deep time. Still, it’s a quibble. More importantly, why do you feel a need to instruct me on how science works?