When a Scientist Believes Data Does Not Support Theory in Climate Models, What Then?

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@Mercer

How do you know those are the relevant portions?

[sound of jaw dropping] Ummm… perhaps because those are the portions which Tour disputes?

@Mercer

By the way, you didn’t respond when I offered to bet that @CrisprCAS9’s career would progress beyond yours, which obviously went nowhere after the PhD.

I don’t engage in fortune-telling or other forms of speculation (like evolutionary biology and origin-of-life research), so I have no interest in guessing where Crispr’s career will end up. Nor do I know what, if anything, Crispr has published, since he has not told us. I can only say that if “going nowhere” means several articles published in American, British, and Continental journals, a book chapter, an article in a major (traditional paper, not online) encyclopedia of philosophy, and two academic books (one from an American publisher, another from a binational publisher), with about a 95% positive review rate on those books, means “going nowhere”, then I guess I went nowhere.

By the way, you haven’t answered my question: Which two Christians were you referring to, as disagreeing with me on this page? Since this is the third time I’ve asked it, you can’t possibly have missed it. Why are you not answering?

[misterme987 (Andrew P.)]

@Eddie

[sound of jaw dropping] Ummm… perhaps because those are the portions which Tour disputes?

I believe what he’s asking is: How do you know that Tour is honest about what the relevant portions of the papers are, if you haven’t even read them?

@Eddie

I can only say that if “going nowhere” means several articles published in American, British, and Continental journals, a book chapter, an article in a major (traditional paper, not online) encyclopedia of philosophy, and two academic books (one from an American publisher, another from a binational publisher), with about a 95% positive review rate on those books, means “going nowhere”, then I guess I went nowhere.

If you’re going to continue with your credentialism, then why don’t you tell us who you are so that we can verify your credentials? Many other people here have given their real names without repercussions.

[John_Harshman]

@Eddie

I don’t engage in fortune-telling or other forms of speculation (like evolutionary biology and origin-of-life research)

Wait, are you now saying that evolutionary biology is speculation? That seems like an escalation of your position.

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@Eddie

@Mercer

How do you know those are the relevant portions?

[sound of jaw dropping] Ummm… perhaps because those are the portions which Tour disputes?

You’re missing the point. Tour’s falsehood is conceptual, not specific. This has been explained several times in this thread, with not a peep of substantive response from you.

@Rumraket

Presumably Tour would speculate that any pathway that led to this C molecule itself, which the researchers intend to use in a reaction R, would have other chemicals Cs produced in side-reactions. He could be right, but [and this is the important part] who knows? I’m asking because I don’t think Tour actually does know that. I think he speculates it. And I think he’s taking a host of assumptions on board to get to there. But even supposing he was right, that just leads to a new question:

How do you know this “purified” condition of C would be necessary? Do all pathways of synthesis of the precursor molecule C in question, necessarily lead to side-products Cs that would interfere with the reaction R the researchers are exploring? How does he know that?

You are clearly of the view that the answer to these questions is Yes: there would be side-reactions in the production of C, and the products of side-reactions Cs would interfere with R such that we do not obtain P in any state that could be relevant to the origin of life.

@CrisprCAS9

There is a more pressing question: How do you know the purified condition was required? It was used, because in the sciences we reduce variables, and using anything else would be stupid. That does not imply or suggest it to be required, as Tour dishonestly claims.

@CrisprCAS9

@Eddie

You haven’t proved there was any mistake

It is impossible that Tour could have done the necessary experimentation to back up the claim that a pure state is required. So… yeah. It was a lie.

In fact, you’ve ignorantly parroted that lie, just as you did with ribozymes:

@Eddie

But when some highly refined chemicals are alleged to have been available on the ancient earth…

Chemistry, Eddie. BIOchemistry.

Quote multiple such allegations verbatim, with special chemical emphasis on your condition of “highly refined.”

@Eddie

…and not a shred of evidence is provided by the origin of life investigators that they were likely to have been available,…

Precisely how many papers by OoL investigators have you read? You’d need a very thorough sampling to claim that there’s “not a shred” in good faith. I’m guessing that the number is zero.

Oh, and you wrote:

@Eddie

I don’t need to know as much biochemistry as Tour, or as Crispr, or as anyone else here, to see the point here. I just need to be able to know how to reason.

You really do, and you slipped up and used BIOchemistry. I’m a biochemist, and I can see the lie plain as day. Tour isn’t.

So again, since you slipped up, I’ll repeat my points:

@Mercer

By the way, you didn’t explain why synthetic chemistry is more relevant than biochemistry to Tour’s whining. [especially funny since you used biochemistry here]

By the way, you haven’t presented a speck of any sort of chemistry in anything you’ve written here. You know, that subject you claim to understand well enough to declare that Tour “demolished” someone?

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@nwrickert

I’m reading that as an admission that you did not read papers.

I never claimed that I had read all of any of the papers that Tour discusses. Nor was there any need for me to have done so, in order to understand his objections, since his objections were not to the entire papers, but only to particular portions of those papers. I claimed only to have read the portions of the papers that Tour analyzed and criticized.

@misterme987

I believe what he’s asking is: How do you know that Tour is honest about what the relevant portions of the papers are, if you haven’t even read them?

If that is what he is asking, he should ask it directly. He shouldn’t need you to interpret for him. But note that in his latest attack on me, he changes the focus and drops the concern about whether I have read all the specifics of the papers. See my answer to him below, in this post.

You haven’t watched the videos, have you? You don’t know the papers I’m referring to, or the portions of those papers that Tour talks about, do you? If you had watched the video and seen Tour’s analysis of the papers, and his highlighting of specific chemical steps offered by the authors of the papers, you would know that the issue you are trying to raise is a non-issue. And not even Crispr has accused me of foul for not reading the entire papers. He thinks that the wrongness of Tour’s conclusions can be shown even by looking at just the parts of the papers Tour focuses on. He has not accused Tour of misrepresenting anything in the papers other than the parts Tour focuses on, and he has not complained that I have misunderstood the papers because I didn’t read them in their entirety. So your vague hint that maybe Tour, by focusing only on parts of the papers, may be dishonestly causing us not to know what’s in the papers, is way off base. The issue you and Mercer are raising (how much of the papers did you read?) is a non-issue.

Rumraket and Crispr are at least focused on the correct issue. They are focusing on the substance of Tour’s critique of the relevant parts of the paper. They think Tour’s critique is invalid, not because it dishonestly conceals other parts of the paper, but because Tour’s reasoning is faulty. I agree with them that this is the issue.

But since none of us can now find the passages that only Crispr and I, of all the people posting strong opinions here, have actually ever viewed, it is pointless to continue this discussion, and anyone who tries to sustain it cannot have scientific goals in mind, but only a culture-war goal: further dumping on Tour and Eddie, at any and every opportunity. Only culture-warriors would pump out 5,000 to 10,000 words (as people here have done on this page) against videos they have not watched and arguments they have not heard about equations they have not seen.

@misterme987

If you’re going to continue with your credentialism,

There is no credentialism there. Credentialism would say, “Because I have all these credentials, I’m right about Point A and you, not having those credentials, are wrong.” I’m not doing that in the passage you cite, and you know it. I was answering Mercer’s (obviously baiting and completely gratuitous) personal remark that my career “went nowhere”. I did not use the fact of my publications to establish that I was right about any point of science or about any point of any subject whatsoever. I was merely informing Mercer here what body of work he said “went nowhere”. He is now welcome to compare how far I am from “nowhere” with how far Crispr is from “nowhere”.

@misterme987

Many other people here have given their real names without repercussions.

And many haven’t given their names, and I don’t see you objecting to their decision to keep their identities unknown. Crispr, for example, has not told us who he is. I respect his decision on that matter, as I respect all decisions of all internet posters on that matter. I have suffered much from private harassment from people who have known my identity, and so have many others.

Before he was here on PS, a certain PS member whose comments are on this page was on BioLogos, under at least five different pseudonyms. He many times there made boasts about his publications and his h-index and so on. But no one from the atheist or TE side who posted there ever asked him to verify his credentials. His right to keep his identity secret was respected. He has voluntarily waived that right here, probably because he is now retired and feels he can no longer be harmed by anyone’s knowing who he is. But the right of those who think, as he thought then, that it would not be prudent to identify themselves, should be respected on PS.

Why would I tell you my name so that you can “verify my credentials”? What possible importance could it have for me that any of you acknowledge my credentials? I know what my credentials are, and whether or not anyone here believes I have them is completely uninteresting to me. Look, the people here completely disrespect and completely disagree with virtually everything that any ID proponent or creationist has ever said, even in the cases where those people’s names and credentials are fully known. (Behe, Meyer, Dembski, etc.) Why would I expect that I would be treated any differently from them, if my name were known? Your suggestion, if I adopted it, would not increase the amount of agreement with me with anyone here by even .001%, and it would be very inconvenient for me in other ways. So your suggestion is rejected.

@John_Harshman

Wait, are you now saying that evolutionary biology is speculation? That seems like an escalation of your position.

My extreme statement was of course meant as a playful elbow in the ribs. Remember that I was trained in philosophy by Oxbridge types, for whom academia is in part a gentleman’s playful sport, and some humor is permitted. No, I don’t think evolutionary biology is all speculation; obviously it has some straight empirical parts, e.g., paleontology, and some rigorous mathematical parts, e.g., population genetics; but it has a higher speculative component in it, than, say, fluid dynamics or electrochemistry. And origin of life is another area with a large speculative component.

@Mercer

You’re missing the point. Tour’s falsehood is conceptual, not specific.

Then why are you and others harping on whether I’ve read the entire articles Tour discusses? If you really believe his error is conceptual, not specific, it shouldn’t matter how much of the article I have read, or even how much of them Tour has read. Your argument is inconsistent.

Fourth time: Which two critics of me on this page are you calling Christians? And why did you mention the fact that there were two Christians posting on the page, if you had no intention of identifying them?

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@Eddie

Then why are you and others harping on whether I’ve read the entire articles Tour discusses?

Because they probably address relevant aspects of that in the Introduction section. So, which of them have alleged that:

@Eddie

…highly refined chemicals are alleged to have been available on the ancient earth…

Your claim, Eddie. Quote multiple such allegations verbatim, with special chemical emphasis on your condition of “highly refined.”

@Eddie

If you really believe his error is conceptual, not specific, it shouldn’t matter how much of the article I have read, or even how much of them Tour has read.

Yes, it would, because they are going to be much more modest than Tour portrays them. Remember, we’re past Tour, because YOU claim that:

@Eddie

…highly refined chemicals are alleged to have been available on the ancient earth…

You just made that up, didn’t you?

@Eddie

Fourth time:

Yes, it’s the fourth time for these:

@Mercer

By the way, you didn’t explain why synthetic chemistry is more relevant than biochemistry to Tour’s whining. [especially funny since you used biochemistry above]

By the way, you haven’t presented a speck of any sort of chemistry in anything you’ve written here. You know, that subject you claim to understand well enough to declare that Tour “demolished” someone?

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@Eddie

I claimed only to have read the portions of the papers that Tour analyzed and criticized.

Were statements like:

@Eddie

…highly refined chemicals are alleged to have been available on the ancient earth…

among those portions, or did you just make that up?

@Eddie

@misterme987

I believe what he’s asking is: How do you know that Tour is honest about what the relevant portions of the papers are, if you haven’t even read them?

If that is what he is asking, he should ask it directly.

How do you know that Tour is honest about what the relevant portions of the papers are, if you haven’t even read them?

@Eddie

You haven’t watched the videos, have you? You don’t know the papers I’m referring to, or the portions of those papers that Tour talks about, do you?

Why don’t you simply cite them here, as any competent academic would?

@Eddie

If you had watched the video and seen Tour’s analysis of the papers, and his highlighting of specific chemical steps offered by the authors of the papers, you would know that the issue you are trying to raise is a non-issue.

Did the authors of any of those papers claim that

@Eddie

…highly refined chemicals are alleged to have been available on the ancient earth…

or did you just make that up?

@Eddie

Remember that I was trained in philosophy by Oxbridge types,

No, we don’t remember anything of the sort. You’ve never shown that you were trained in anything, remember? Moreover, your behavior here reveals an nearly total absence of a sense of humor.

Simple question: which OoL researchers have claimed (and where) that

@Eddie

…highly refined chemicals are alleged to have been available on the ancient earth…

???

That’s the very essence of Tour’s falsehood. You have zero interest in knowing whether he is correct or not.

[Roy (34-year veteran)]

@Eddie

@Roy

I suppose species names are technically Latin,

Sometimes Latin, and sometimes Greek (with the Greek roots Latinized in spelling). But what’s your point?

My point would have been clearer had you included the rest of my sentence, rather than unnecessarily truncating it, and clearer still had you included the text to which I was replying.

I expect the intended recipients understood.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@Mercer

Moreover, your behavior here reveals an nearly total absence of a sense of humor.

Spoken by the poster here whose stabbing, belittling, one-line retorts betray a perpetual state of, if not rage, at least prickly irritation. Hardly one who would recognize humor if he saw it, I should think. And certainly not humor of the old Oxbridge sort, which did not employ the crude directness of the humor across the Atlantic.

I can see I’m never going to get the identity of the two Christians you spoke of. I can only infer that your reason for stressing that there were Christians as well as atheists opposing me was to score a debating point, not to inform me of anything. And of course, since my reply to the information might have asked what was meant by “Christian”, your ancient (since BioLogos days) reluctance to avoid discussing the contents of Christian belief may have something to do with it. Oh, well, let it pass.

I see no point in continuing this discussion about Tour further, since the Tour-Dave debate is tonight, and this tired discussion will doubtless be superseded by a discussion of new statements made by both. So I’ll exit now, until after the debate.

In the meantime, I hope everyone here is enjoying the conclusions of the Durham report.

[Faizal_Ali]

@Eddie

In the meantime, I hope everyone here is enjoying the conclusions of the Durham report.

As someone who, if he lived in America, would be a liberal Democrat I am absolutely delighted by the results of that report. You really must live in a very small and isolated bubble if you think it delivered anything remotely similar to what the Durham was tasked with delivering. How many indictments are going to follow from that report? As many as one would expect from “The Crime of the Century”?

Opinion | Special Counsel John Durham’s Trump-Russia report reveals nothing - The Washington Post

Anyway, one could have easily predicted that you would find some lame pretext to flee from this discussion one you were backed into a corner.

[misterme987 (Andrew P.)]

@Eddie

I can see I’m never going to get the identity of the two Christians you spoke of.

You were told by @nwrickert. Both @Mercer and I are openly Christians.

By the way, sorry if that credentialism remark offended. I’m not trying to say that you shouldn’t have a right to privacy, just like anyone else here. I’m just saying that we have no way to verify that what you’re saying is true if you don’t share your name.
You’re right that @CrisprCAS9 and I haven’t shared out names, but we’re also open about not having PhDs (yet), and we haven’t used our credentials to try to increase our legitimacy. I agree that if an evolutionary biologist here did not use their real name, but still used their credentials to increase their legitimacy, that would also be somewhat disingenuous.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@misterme987

You were told by @nwrickert. Both @Mercer and I are openly Christians.

But Mercer couldn’t have been referring to you when he first mentioned the two Christians. He first mentioned two Christians who disagreed with me in post 144 above. At that point, we were discussing abiogenesis, Tour, etc. So the natural assumption of any reader of his comment would be that he was talking about two Christians who had disagreed with me about abiogenesis. But at that point, your only post here (as far as I can see) was post #5, which (a) was not about abiogenesis; and (b) wasn’t disagreeing with me, and in fact agreed that the passage quoted from my post was “fair enough”. That is, you agreed that it was “wrong to say that all skeptics of AGW are wild-eyed fanatics or corrupt.” So Mercer must have been thinking of someone else when he mentioned two Christians (assuming he was counting himself as one, which he has not confirmed on this page, despite being asked four times) who disagreed with me. I’m waiting for him, not Neil Rickert (who admitted, “I’m not sure who Mercer had in mind”), to tell me who that someone else is.

But while we are at it, I notice that your description of yourself on your profile reads: “Christian universalist (not pluralist).” Can you elaborate for me what you mean by those terms? Do they denote a traditional, orthodox “Nicene” Christian, or something else? In both undergraduate and graduate study in religion I learned the doctrines of the Eastern Orthodox, the Roman Catholic, the Anglican, the Reformed, the Lutheran, the Anabaptist, etc. – in some cases in great detail. But “Christian universalist (not pluralist)” is not a term that I came across in the standard academic literature, nor did I ever hear the term used by any of the large number of professors in my department or the even larger number of graduate students. (Bear in mind that the internet did not yet exist when I did my degrees, so we learned from books and journals and the talks of visiting scholars from Ivy League schools, etc., not online sources.)

I know I could look up the term on the internet and get various definitions from various popular websites, but I’d rather hear how you define it. What are the doctrinal contents of “Christian universalism” as you understand it? Where does it stand, or where do you stand (if you differ on some points from the main drift of your fellow Christian universalists), on (for example) the doctrines of Creation, Fall, Election of Israel, Incarnation, Trinity, Redemption, etc.? I don’t mean you have to cover all doctrine in detail; I’m just trying to get a rough idea. I’m familiar with “Unitarian Universalists”, and I’m familiar with most varieties of “Christians”, but I want to make sure I understand what you mean by “Christian Universalist” and your added qualification “not pluralist”.

Finally, on this point:

@misterme987

I’m just saying that we have no way to verify that what you’re saying is true if you don’t share your name.

I understand that. But if anyone here told me that they had published X articles, Y books, etc., I would take them at their word, unless I had some specific reason to doubt it. Now, if I had said that I had published all those things in the field of biology, that would of course leave room for doubt, since it’s obvious from my conversation that I’m not a professional biologist. But I’ve made very clear that my fields are religion and philosophy and related humanities and social science subjects, and it’s obvious from my discussions elsewhere here (e.g., my detailed discussions of Hebrew Bible on many threads, which have garnered “Likes” from two bona fide Bible scholars here), that I do have detailed knowledge of religious texts and methodological questions in the study of religion, so my claim to have published things (though not in biology or other natural sciences) is eminently plausible.

So how Mercer could know that my academic career went “nowhere”, when he knows none of the fields I have taught in, and published in, is beyond me. Not that I care what he thinks or believes about me, since he reacts negatively to me in an almost Pavlovian manner and that will never change; but I just wanted to set the record straight for others who might be reading my reply to him. I have indeed published all the things I said I published, and many more semi-popular articles as well; and I have taught at various universities over a period of close to 40 years. That Mercer and Faizal don’t believe me is an utterly unimportant truth-blockage in their minds that does not cost me even one minute’s sleep each night.

Thanks for your gracious tone here, by the way. Much appreciated.

[John_Harshman]

@Eddie

My extreme statement was of course meant as a playful elbow in the ribs.

There is no “of course” in it. Humor is not one of your skills, and it doesn’t combine well with pomposity. (I except unconscious humor, of which you provide an abundance.)

Also, I have no idea whether you were actually trained in philosophy at all, much less by “Oxbridge types”. But there’s no need to bother explaining all your prestigious credentials, since they’re irrelevant.

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@Eddie

At that point, we were discussing abiogenesis, Tour, etc. So the natural assumption of any reader of his comment would be that he was talking about two Christians who had disagreed with me about abiogenesis. But at that point, your only post here (as far as I can see) was post #5, which (a) was not about abiogenesis; and (b) wasn’t disagreeing with me, and in fact agreed that the passage quoted from my post was “fair enough”. That is, you agreed that it was “wrong to say that all skeptics of AGW are wild-eyed fanatics or corrupt.”

You left out:

@misterme987

However, seeing as the overwhelming majority of climatologists are in agreement that AGW is real, and I’m not qualified to decide for myself, I’m very much inclined to think that AGW is real.

[Faizal_Ali]

If your still going to post reams of text here, it is not unreasonable to ask whether you have any intention of answering the most pertinent question that have been posed to you:

Do you accuse OOL researchers of claiming the chemicals they used in a highly refined and purified state in their experiments existed in such a highly refined and purified state on prebiotic earth? If so, will you provide citations to the specific passages where these claims were made?

Thanks.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@Mercer

You left out:

@misterme987

However, seeing as the overwhelming majority of climatologists are in agreement that AGW is real, and I’m not qualified to decide for myself, I’m very much inclined to think that AGW is real.

I didn’t “leave it out” in any important sense. I didn’t reproduce it, but that’s because it was not relevant. You were speaking of a disagreement with me. But since I had not said that “AGW is not real”, and do not believe that “AGW is not real”, there was no disagreement. You might try making an effort to read and comprehend what I actually said.

@Faizal_Ali

Do you accuse OOL researchers of claiming the chemicals they used in a highly refined and purified state in their experiments existed in such a highly refined and purified state on prebiotic earth?

No. I didn’t accuse any of them of claiming that. Nor did Tour say that they claimed that. But what someone claims, and what someone unwittingly implies by his experimental procedure, can be two different things. Tour was analyzing and criticizing experimental procedures – experimental procedures which were supposedly relevant to the situation on a prebiotic earth.

Without your being able to look at the exact procedures Tour is analyzing (and you can’t; none of us can, because none of us can find the relevant parts of Tour’s videos at the moment), any further comment by you about what Tour said and what the investigators did or claimed or implied would be fatuous speculation on your part, and it would show wisdom on your part to remain silent beyond this point. (I am not expecting you will show wisdom, of course.)

[Faizal_Ali]

@Eddie

No. I didn’t accuse any of them of claiming that. Nor did Tour say that they claimed that. But what someone claims, and what someone unwittingly implies by his experimental procedure, can be two different things. Tour was analyzing and criticizing experimental procedures – experimental procedures which were supposedly relevant to the situation on a prebiotic earth.

Ah. So your problem is that you do not understand the bare basics of the scientific method.

I have participated in a few clinical trials of antipsychotic medications as an investigator. When we are assessing subjects for the trial, we do our best to ensure we have as “pure” a sample of subjects as possible with a diagnosis of schizophrenia (if that is what we are investigating). This entails doing a careful diagnostic assessment to ensure they do not have co-morbidities such as active substance use or traumatic brain injury.

The reason should be clear: We do not want other factors influencing the response to the medication that might obscure our ability to determine the efficacy of the drug being investigated.

However, it would be very foolish for someone to criticize and dismiss such a study by accusing the investigators of assuming that people with schizophrenia do not ever have substance use disorders or brain injuries.

I can explain further if you need me to.

It is perhaps understandable that someone whose background is in “Religious Studies and Natural Theology” and who has likely never conducted a scientific experiment in his life would not understand this basic concept.

But I do not know why Tour would make such an amateur error.

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@Eddie

I can see I’m never going to get the identity of the two Christians you spoke of. I can only infer that your reason for stressing that there were Christians as well as atheists opposing me was to score a debating point, not to inform me of anything.

It was to point out that the sides are not Christians vs. atheists, as you portrayed it. Why did you misrepresent it? To score a debating point?

@Eddie

Oh, well, let it pass.

Dude. You wrote a paragraph. That’s not letting it pass.

@Eddie

I see no point in continuing this discussion about Tour further, since the Tour-Dave debate is tonight, and this tired discussion will doubtless be superseded by a discussion of new statements made by both. So I’ll exit now, until after the debate.

You’re not discussing. If you were, you would have supported or retracted your silly claim about OoL researchers:

@Eddie

But when some highly refined chemicals are alleged to have been available on the ancient earth, and not a shred of evidence is provided by the origin of life investigators that they were likely to have been available, there is an obvious methodological objection to proposed “unguided chemical evolutionary pathways” relying upon such chemicals.

@Eddie

In the meantime, I hope everyone here is enjoying the conclusions of the Durham report.

I’m enjoying that it’s a nothingburger. I did, however, enjoy the two acquittals more.

@Eddie

No. I didn’t accuse any of them of claiming that. Nor did Tour say that they claimed that. But what someone claims, and what someone unwittingly implies by his experimental procedure, can be two different things.

Here’s what you wrote:

@Eddie

But when some highly refined chemicals are alleged to have been available on the ancient earth, and not a shred of evidence is provided by the origin of life investigators that they were likely to have been available,…

Alleging is not unwittingly implying. Implying is not correct, either. Inferring might be, but you haven’t read the papers, so there’s no basis for your inference.

@Eddie

Without your being able to look at the exact procedures Tour is analyzing (and you can’t; none of us can, because none of us can find the relevant parts of Tour’s videos at the moment), any further comment by you about what Tour said and what the investigators did or claimed or implied would be fatuous speculation on your part…

No, we now have your fatuous claims on the table.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@Faizal_Ali

I have participated in a few clinical trials of antipsychotic medications as an investigator…

As I expected, you unwisely tried to say more, this time by drawing a faulty parallel from experiments you know about to experiments you never saw described, because you did not watch the videos. Oh well, keep talking all you like. I won’t be listening, but maybe the three lurkers out there who have not yet abandoned reading this tedious discussion will be spellbound by your remarks.

As for “scientific method”, almost the last people on earth who can talk about that are psychiatrists; only psychologists, education theorists, and “gender theorists” (practitioners of the newest pseudoscience) rank below psychiatrists as rigorously scientific. I’ll continue to use “meat and potatoes” scientific subjects such as chemistry and physics as my models for scientific theory and practice, thanks.

@Faizal_Ali

It is perhaps understandable that someone whose background is in “Religious Studies and Natural Theology” and who has likely never conducted a scientific experiment in his life

I spent a whole summer in an industrial chemical lab, performing scientific experiments to determine the stability of various chemical products in various solutions at various temperatures etc. Quite interesting. I did more titrations that summer than I had done in all my previous years of studying chemistry combined. And had to keep a proper record book with purpose, method, observations, etc. all set down for each experiment. And learned about scores of new chemicals, and how pilot plants worked, and so on.

@Mercer

It was to point out that the sides are not Christians vs. atheists, as you portrayed it.

Until I know who the purported Christians are and the contents of what they call Christianity, I cannot confirm that your statement is correct. For example, there are congregations within churches on this continent (including one that I read about that is in or near Toronto, where Faizal lives – maybe some of his U of T colleagues even go there) that are institutionally part of a historically Christian denomination, but who have openly atheist pastors. They celebrate Jesus as a good man and role model, but nothing more. I am unwilling to call atheism with a Christian veneer “Christianity”. But I’ll wait and see. Maybe one or even both of the people you refuse to name will come forward with an honest, non-evasive statement of the contents of their religious belief. Then I’ll know whether or not your claim is correct.

@Mercer

Alleging is not unwittingly implying.

You’re right, I should have chosen a different word; they didn’t “allege” that.

@Mercer

Implying is not correct, either. Inferring might be, but you haven’t read the papers, so there’s no basis for your inference.

But I have read the exact portions of the papers that Tour objects to. Unlike you, who haven’t read them at all, and haven’t heard Tour’s description of their experiments and reasoning, and therefore can’t possibly know whether “implying” or “inferring” is the right word. You comment without knowledge of the facts. So much for your devotion to “data” – you freely speculate about what a paper or person probably said, instead of first ascertaining was said.

What’s stopping you from spending a few hours watching the video series, as I did? You’re retired now, and you clearly have several hours a week to blow here, bickering, often with non-scientists who have nothing to teach you about chemistry. Why not listen to what a world-class scientist has to say about the chemical processes described in specific research papers? Or are you less interested in learning the nitty-gritty of those experiments than in bashing Tour?

Anyhow, Tour may clarify some things in the debate tonight. I hope he keeps to the high road and does not try to defeat Farina by sinking to Farina’s Neanderthal cultural level. (I know, I know, I’m being unfair to the Neanderthals – how about “Australopithecine”?)

[Faizal_Ali]

@Eddie

As I expected, you unwisely tried to say more, this time by drawing a faulty parallel from experiments you know about to experiments you never saw described, because you did not watch the videos.

What makes you think I have not watched those videos?

What exactly do you find faulty about my parallel? Please be specific.