Which is ultimately inexplicable, I suggest.
Hi Gisteron
What you say is all true based on materialistic thinking. The problem is materialistic thinking does not match the data in this case. This is actually an incredibly interesting case study.
If you look at the data and assume there is no design involved in the origin of life or the universe then common descent is the only possible explanation and we are simply missing the mechanism of how new genes and chromosome pairs are becoming fixed in new populations based on variation to the reproductive process.
The problem as we speak is that there is currently no evidence that this mechanism exists. Without a mechanism that explains the diversity of life there is no viable model that supports common descent (single origin) being true.
Except it does, as has been explained to you innumerable times over many years.
Except we aren’t missing this. This has also been explained to you innumerable times over many years.
Except that the evidence for this mechanism is so overwhelmingly conclusive that only thru massive deliberate effort and/or unfathomable stupidity can it be denied.
And, of course, this too been explained to you innumerable times over many years.
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What I find most bizarre is that the subject at hand is ostensibly genetic decay or its absence. How did we get into the origin of the universe or anything else in that paragraph?
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What is the alternative? What problem has immaterial thinking ever solved?
It does. It is just that you appear to neither understand the “materialistic thinking” or the data involved.
We need make no such assumption. It is merely the case that, when we compare the data to existing evolutionary theory, “design” becomes superfluous.
All that is “missing” is the fact that Bill Cole appears to have missed 160 odd years of Evolutionary Biology.
The only problem is that Bill Cole is utterly and obstinately ignorant of Evolutionary Biology.
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Just out of curiosity, can anybody explain to me what part of my “your idea does not qualify as a scientific model until and unless it makes any sort of experimentally testable predictions” is based on materialistic thinking? And assuming there exists a thinking where this sentiment does not hold, (a) what sort of thinking is that, exactly, and (b) what part of the sentiment does not hold in it?
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(a) Religious sentiment offers answers to why there is life, the Universe and everything.
(b) The sentiment that there are limits to human knowledge and understanding which cannot be explained by faith, meditation, reflection, or any approach that does not include observation, measuring, experimentation.
Science fails to provide religious answers. Whether religion provides the answers that science cannot is one religious question science cannot answer.
With all due respect, you could at least have waited for another dozen or so messages before so crudely quote-mining mine (if that’s not too generous of a term to pick for something where you had to even change words directly, just so as to twist it into meaning something clearly unsaid). As it is, everyone can see what was actually said, and how grossly you butchered it, all without needing to follow the reference or to scroll up.
Apologies. I thought the argument clinic was a not-particularly-serious thread. And, no I haven’t bothered reading the whole thread.
Though I used the copy facility to quote you, as you seemed to be asking for input from anyone reading, so I’m puzzled about the accusation of quote mining. What would be my purpose in doing that?
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Fine, I shall explain.
Indeed I was asking for input. I was asking – and there is no need to review the entire thread for that, nor would I have expected or demanded as much; the question was posed in its entirety in the very post you quoted from, which, frankly, was not all that much longer than the quoted passage – how the sentiment “Your idea does not qualify as a scientific model until and unless it makes any sort of experimentally testable predictions.” was based on materialistic thinking. You elected to cut that part out and replace my reference to this sentiment with “materialist”, suggesting that I was myself in agreement with the very thesis I was explicitly questioning. That is the quote-mining part I criticized.
As an aside, the reply you ended up giving also seems to not relate to the questions that were posed. So that awkward editing job I let get to me was entirely unnecessary, as it did not even pose a prompt for what you wanted to say. What you gave, despite being formally marked as a reply to my message, was no input on the topic at all. Here, I’ll illustrate:
Next back in my post I posed two corollary questions. The first was, paraphrasing, “What thinking is it, exactly, where the sentiment ‘Your idea does not qualify as a scientific model until and unless it makes any sort of experimentally testable predictions.’ does not hold?”. You chose to quote that part and reply to it by informing me and our readers of some “Religious sentiment”, what ever that is, saying that it offered answers to why there is life, the universe, and everything. Now, I may be charitable and assume that you were using the terms sentiment and thinking interchangeably. This is a rather hollow charity, of course, since while it may salvage some of that first reply (and we shall come to how little of that it does momentarily), it makes it so that you would have had to be struggling to comprehend what I was saying, reading it as if I was asking what thinking it was where materialistic thinking does not hold, i.e. what thinking other than materialist exists at all. Maybe that is indeed how uninformed you think I am, and maybe I have done little yet to remedy such impression. However, if you do not hold me for a child too young to fathom that people generally think in diverse ways, then the only remaining option is that you didn’t stop to consider if maybe I chose my words with more care and precision than you would have in that instance. Regardless, substituting “sentiment” for “thinking” in your own reply does little to make it relevant, for offering answers – setting aside whether religious thinking does that, for now – does not by default make a thinking conflict with another, or, for that matter, a sentiment that never even pertained to the questions so much as to the properties of candidate answers, if that.
My second corollary question was to clarify, given an alternative thinking, where the sentiment “Your idea does not qualify as a scientific model until and unless it makes any sort of experimentally testable predictions.” does not hold, exactly what part of it did not hold in said thinking. Once more you replied by naming a sentiment, and this time you actually expressed it. However, “There are limits to human knowledge and understanding which cannot be explained by faith, meditation, reflection, or any approach that does not include observation, measuring, experimentation.” is not (overtly, at least) a part of “Your idea does not qualify as a scientific model until and unless it makes any sort of experimentally testable predictions.”, so it is not a reply to a question about what part of the latter would not hold in the alternate thinking supplied to query (a).
In summary, the contents of your post amount, for better or for worse, to ruminations on the “Science & Religion” topic in the broadest sense, and are not input pertaining to the specific message they were marked to be a reply to. And that’s fine, too. All I’m saying is there was no need to make yourself look worse by quote-mining.
I don’t believe that is the problem. Billions of people in the world might be ignorant of evolutionary biology and perhaps hundreds of millions with potential access to this forum. The overwhelming majority would be unlikely to keep posting the exact same arguments year after year after having read the rebuttals.
“Beware the fisherman
who’s casting out his line,
into a dried out riverbed.
But don’t try to tell him
'cause he won’t believe you.”
Lyrics from “Heathaze”, by Genesis.
The fisherman is not ignorant. He is simply incapable of perceiving otherwise.
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Hi Argon
What rebuttals do think the design side is missing? I think evolutionary theory does a great job estimating changes to existing populations. What it does not do is explain the origin of those populations beyond very limited instances.
I think the fisherman is ignorant, and willfully so – otherwise you wouldn’t have the case where “he won’t believe you” when you tell him otherwise.
Likewise @colewd isn’t just willfully ignorant, he is “obstinately” so. This is what sets him apart from the “hundreds of millions”.
He also has poor reading comprehension, or he’d have realised that the “rebuttals” you were talking about were those of Intelligent Design, not by ID.
This is just you, not knowing what you’re talking about, spewing word salad. You should know that new populations descend from previous populations, which sometimes split into two or more. How is this in any way a problem?
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It does not account for the observed genetic differences between many of the species.
We had a 1100 post discussion on this with various deer species. When we are talking about a specific population with similar genetics, allowing for generational reproduction, then the theory works.
Show your math or show yourself out.
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That’s the first time you have mentioned observed genetic differences. I was responding to what you actually said rather than what you were secretly imagining, whatever that may have been. The observed genetic differences are due to changes in previously existing populations, which you have said evolutionary theory does a great job of estimating. You seem incapable of clearly saying what you mean, not in 1100 posts, not in any number.
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So… years ago I was having a meal at the local McBurger King in the Box. I noticed that another man, sitting alone, pulled a salami out of his pocket and started having a conversation with it. Over time, he got more agitated, arguing with whatever the salami was telling him. I suppose I could’ve have walked over to the man and tried to explain that salamis don’t talk and are physically incapable of having an argument. I could have worked through all the evidence and presented more likely alternate explanations (schizophrenia, for example).
And when I was done presenting my reasonable and perfectly constructed case to the man, no doubt he would have seen that he was mistakenly projecting agency and vocal attributes to a salami. Thus enlightened and being a totally rational man, he would endeavor to never making that error again.
Well no. He was always going to argue with the salami. But that’s not something to get angry about. This wasn’t willful ignorance at work. He was simply incapable of seeing otherwise. He was an honest agent, earnest in his beliefs, nutty as they were. The same for Peter Duesberg and his continued refusal to accept HIV as the casual factor in AIDS. I don’t think it is willful ignorance at the root, it’s that he is simply mentally incapable of believing otherwise. Arguing with him is like arguing with the salami man. There appears to be a lack of free will to change… A meme / mental state that can’t be shaken.
Can this be hard to see? Most of us come into discussions presuming we’re dealing with “honest, rational agents”. When we don’t see that behavior we tend to conclude we’re dealing with a rational but dishonest agent – Probably because trolls abound on the Internet. But there are also ‘honest, irrational agents’, e.g. Duesberg, or salami man. There’s no deceit at work… There’s nothing willful about it. This is not something they can control.
Most people don’t try to continue rational arguments with salami man for long, at least not on the topic of cured meats. And we also don’t often get angry or upset at salami man when he insists the meat is speaking with a French accent. I think the thing to now is that others may have a similar sort of blind spot or affliction but which manifest on other topics.
PS. A few weeks after the salami incident I was walking across campus with a friend and holding up an umbrella because of the rain. Out of the gloom, salami man walked up to us, looked at me and said, ‘You must be master of the universe because you’ve got the umbrella.’ And he walked off. I knew right then that while he may have been completely daft about salami, he was definitely a good judge about people.
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Ah, unfortunately I don’t have time for even a five minute argument currently but, if I’m spared, I may manage the full half hour next week.
Yes, there were 1100 posts in which you completely failed to show any problems with deer evolution.
Though you did show us that you couldn’t do arithmetic, further undermining any claim you make about anything involving mathematics.
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