Evolution vs. Creation- serious discussion only please

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You've actually given me a good opportunity to illustrate my meaning better.

I would hope that the person who dismisses these arguments does so because they have the information to know WHY they are untrue. If I hear something like that, I will look at it and the facts will come to mind VERY quickly that refute it, because there are a lot of facts out there. (And Fuzzy, to address your own point about this question--how much time I spend actually engaging that person in conversation may vary greatly depending on the circumstances...but in my own mind I will at least give a thought to the facts even if I don't voice it.)

I'm NOT going to simply stick my fingers in my ears, though, and act like that person never even spoke.



Yep. Those are the people that (for instance) immediately scream it's the devil when they hear an opposing view. I don't like that any more than any of you do, and I say that as a Christian, since I don't believe that kind of emotionally-driven reaction does any good towards our understanding WHY we believe.



If you're talking about people who insist on warping statistics and evidence, then I have no patience with it. I see no rational basis when people try to claim the world is 6000 years old and so forth. I do not, however, believe that science can prove or disprove the existence of God, of objective right and wrong, or that it can define our or the world's purpose for existing, and I find that its own form of dishonesty, to use methods that are not capable of making those determinations, to make those claims.

What is six times six? How much thought did you have to give it? I'm betting you didnt give much thought to the facts: you knew what the answer was. If I claim it is 37, you have no cognitive dissonance about my claims. You spend no time on my nonsense.

More complicated axioms than this are used to assemble a persons perception, and the ability to navigate these correctly seem to be the basis of stratified intelligence. The adoption of stereotypes and automatic responses is a short cut to success in the face of a problem. The goal of science(and logic) is to sort these schema into useful and junk categories so as to advance the human condition.

Sports follows this philosophy as well. The martial artist and the runner are taught to minimize extraneous motion and to abrogate negative thought.

It is our biological imperative to discard the nonsense in our perceptions and the useless actions.

I don't find myself compelled to respond to something dug up from the grave that I wrote 2 years ago.

So, would an automatic response of rejecting evolutionary propaganda (such is my perception) be in less valid than another person rejecting anything against evolutionary propaganda off hand. Such dismissal may very well be automatic, but it is not just on the side of whoever is right or wrong, but on both sides of any issue. People most willingly believe that which they already do, and the most begrudgingly accept anything to the contrary.

I believe you are failing to understand me. This is less about science and more about errors in logic. Not, that I'm a master logician myself, of course. The issue is the nature of denying absolutes. A statement which denies absolutes is itself a statement of absolute truth, in effect that there are none. Such a statement is absurd.

Not even trying to be egotistical, I just know that what's going on is just pointless. Y'see, some conversations can be "solved" as people's claims can be made to make sense. Others just... can't be. This looks like the latter.

I cant disagree with anything you said. My point was just that she, like any human, makes snap judgments based on their personal assemblage of perception.

Other than that I did imply that truth should be self correcting, and that intelligent people should make headway against it more quickly. Any controversy over that?

I mentioned that science seems to understand and minimize error. In light of the scientific method that seems reasonable. What did I say about religion? Nothing, though it seems to be more about salvation than corrective refinement.

But I dont think you have a problem with the scientific method per se, do you? Perhaps with its application and interpretation, but even biased journals cannot refute practical results. The truth will work itself out.

OK. I accept that. It is useless to argue with someone who has vestigialized their capability to think. But it passes the time.

It may just be a matter of the meaning of words here, but I think that truth is not something that is "self-correcting" so much as truth is something that needs to be sought after. It is an innate ability of the human mind to make explanations for things, whether they are true or false. Determining whether an explanation is true or false requires effort on the part of the person seeking it out. In that manner, truth is not self correcting. Contrarily, people tend to like explanations which suit them better. For example, when dealing with other people, it is often easiest to think the worst of them - and such is most preferable among gossips because it enables them to invent more and "better" gossip as previous gossip builds upon itself and refining itself with the effort of the busybody. In such a case, truth is not even desirable, because truth, more often than not, silences such garbage.

No, I don't have an issue with the scientific method. Perhaps over the next centuries things in the academic communities will work themselves out, but to some extent I think that it wont. People like to be polarized and defend that which is sacrosanct within their cliques in general and their own hobbyhorses in specific. I think that aspect of human nature will remain for all generations of humanity.

You summed up what I was thinking in better terms than me. We are not in disagreement.



Agreed, it will always be a problem, but is it less of a problem than say, 1000 years ago? (I'm deliberately avoiding mention of times of purity predating certain events such as the tower of babel or the flood).

Actually, I believe you fail to really comprehend the issue around knowledge of absolute truth, and it is about science because empirical evidence was in place in this discussion, and because Sand puts more value to it than religious faith.

The real issue is about scientific inquiry versus religious faith, and which one is more reasonable to consider to get closer to reality. While religion, often deals with absolute truths, science does not, given that absolute certainty is incompatible with the scientific method. So your position against that is out of place, and that epistemological justification doesn't seem to be problematic as it looks to you, and it tends to be considered more reasonable than religious absolute truths (ie creationism), as well as it is about stating that we cannot know the absolute truth, rather than claiming that the absolute truth doesn't exist, and I doubt Sand meant the latter.

Last edited by greenblue on 06 Aug 2010, 1:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

I don't think it is less of a problem than a thousand years ago, which was actually about when Norway adopted Catholicism I think. The type of contrarian nature today was probably the same back then as well. two thousand and seventy years ago, prior to the fall of the Roman Republic, people were, in my opinion, near equivalently polarized and set against each other. Today, it seems to me anyway, that we have the same classes of Patricians and Plebeians. We have the same basic opinions regarding the academic community as were among the Romans. And to some degree, there's even modern versions of Stoics and Epicureans and the debate as seen in Cicero's De Natura Deorum continues to this day, just in more advanced forms for each side's argumentation.

So many so-called certainties have been shown to be untrue that it is unrealistic to assume that new information will not contradict any known belief. All pragmatic certainties may well fall under information advances. Science prospers under new understanding. Religion dwindles.

I'm not the one who has a problem with the scientific method. I'm a person who embraces science more often than not. Absolute certainty and absolute truth are NOT incompatible with the scientific method. The scientific method itself is a rigorous study of evidence and interpretation of observed data. If a scientist does not use the method, he doesn't really have anything to stand on in the realm of science. If the way in which he uses the method is faulty, the results of his inquiry are faulty. There are rare moments when you'll hear about scientific journals printing retractions because of one faulty or even fraudulent study or another. RARE, but it does happen. And some of these you hear about. Supposedly there was "conclusive" evidence that vaccines caused autism. Most people saw what was wrong with this from the beginning, even if they weren't scientists themselves and even if they didn't have the evidence in front of them. And, indeed, it is no surprise that someone brought forth proper evidence that vaccines do NOT cause autism. Misuse of the method produces false evidence, proper use of the method produces reliable evidence.

The method itself IS an absolute. Scientific inquiry is generally unwavering on that one. If there is no method, by what means can we establish what empirical evidence is?

If there are no absolute truths, then what is empirical evidence? Is there even such a thing as empirical evidence? Either such a thing as empirical evidence exists or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then no one, not even "scientists" themselves, should even believe what they do has any merit. If it does, then scientists may draw such conclusions as evidence leads them until new evidence leads them otherwise.

If a scientist is doing his job, he's collecting and recording data based on observation. That evidence is NOT going to change. It is what it is. If you, for example, take a survey of a random sample from a control group and a random sample from an experimental group, you can't go back and change the results of that survey. If you change it, what was the point in even conducting the study? The results must be accepted as an absolute if the study is to have any meaning. Now, if you instinctively feel that the (absolute, unchanging) results did not produce what you expected, then you may examine the method in which the study was done to look for a bias you unknowingly introduced into the study. If the errors aren't yours, then perhaps the error lies in the sampled population. Perhaps the sampling was affected by cultural attitudes (for example) and different results might occur with a different population. So you sample a different population, using the same method with control and experimental groups, and you find that the results are consistent with what you initially suspected with the added knowledge that specific outside factors affect the study. Based on that, you draw conclusions about the results of the study itself and what external factors affect whatever it is you are studying.

The point is that you cannot go back and undo what has already been done and call it a scientific study. The results are the results. If the findings (which don't change after the study is completed) are discovered to be in error, then the proper thing to do is document the errors and make adjustments in the next study. It is not responsible for a scientist to throw out the results of one study just because he didn't like the results. A good study will account for all of its findings, not just the ones that support what the conductor of the study believes.

I had the misfortune in my first semester graduate experience to take an intensive course in research methods, which had absolutely NOTHING to do with my field. A question that came up, since others in the class were concerned about writing an acceptable researched-based thesis, was about what happens when a study "fails," i.e. doesn't produce the expected results. The professor said that "success" or "failure" in a study is irrelevant because the concern is not in "proving" some pre-conceived idea of the one conducting the study but rather of collecting and examining the evidence. The one conducting the study has to accept that the results may show something unexpected, and a "failed" study is still useful because it provides a starting point for the next study. Master's degree candidates are always free to request theses from previous students to see what studies HAVE been done, and it is not uncommon for a thesis to show possible courses of further inquiry based on the findings of that study.

If there are no absolutes, then there are no results for there cannot be results if there are no things from which to find. The idea that only religion provides absolutes is false, and I suspect that you are attacking my statement based on what you know about my religious beliefs. Such an attack is unnecessary since it isn't impossible for some elements of science and religion to hold things in common. It is also not uncommon for religious people to work in scientific fields. They obviously don't feel threatened by empirical evidence, nor need we fear bias because people of faith are scientists. Scientists would probably see such a gross misinterpretation as prejudicial. But since I'm only speculating regarding your attack, which may or may not be intended as such, further study is needed.

hmm, Falsiability. Do you really think that falsiability and absolute truths work togheter and that are compatible? Unlike sand, you are the one who seems to want to reconcile two actual opossite things.


The method is very rigurous, and it gives no room for ideas considered absolute truths, rather they have to be accepted as being potentially false and the possibility of error, given that scientific theories are and must be falsiable, by now you must realise what falsiability means and what implicates.


You still fail to understand the issue,
#1 The issue is not negating the existence of absolute truths, but wether we are able to get there.

#2 Science is the best tool that gives us the best picture of reality than anything else, and given that science can be regarded as an epistemological justification, does not mean it deals with absolute truths but near as possible and considered to be better than any other way.


That doesn't make sense, are you saying that empirical evidence to be valid they have to support absolute truths? or are you saying that because of not dealing with absolute truths it automatically leads to philosophical skepticism? That is absurd.

The issue is that stating that we cannot know anything for sure is very valid, within scientific grounds, and what you claim that science deals with absolute truths is more of a problem than the former, and given that you miss the point on the issue, the absurdity lies on your part.

Greenblue:

You're confusing hypotheses/theories with with the evidence used to support them. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, we're still arguing geocentrism vs. heliocentrism with no more evidence than the typical observer in a fixed position with no more tools than our own two eyes. With no more evidence than either of us had, I could perfectly well make a well-evidenced argument that the sun revolves around the earth. You could make a similar case for the sun being the center of the universe by showing how a spinning earth creates the illusion of the sun moving around the earth.

Either way, neither argument changes the fact that the sun still rises and sets, which was the real evidence in the first place.

Evidence doesn't change in scientific inquiry. Whatever observation you make at a given point in time, THAT'S the observation you're required to document.

You might, for example, note that I'm sitting on a couch right now. The fact I'm sitting on a couch in and of itself isn't special. But the question is why. I would say I'm just supervising my children while they sit on the floor watching a movie. You might observe my behavior on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday and say that I'm in the habit of doing so. And then you might notice that I don't sit here the same time on the weekends. And then on Wednesday you might note I'm not here because I'm at a band rehearsal. So you might induce that, provided nothing out of the ordinary happens, then I spend time sitting on the couch at this time every day.

How those conclusions are useful is anyone's guess, but that's foundational to elementary scientific observation. Certain things you cannot change: You CANNOT change the evidence to suit whatever you want it to mean. The plain fact is that, at this moment in time, I was observed sitting on my couch. That may change in 5 minutes, but the observation has already been made and documented as being a record of this exact point in time. This cannot be changed, no more than you can prevent the sun from rising. It is an absolute.

I don't mean to imply that EVERYTHING is absolute. I may or may not be sitting here at this same time next week. Ptolemaic theory worked because it allowed people to make accurate predictions. But so does Copernican theory. So why discard one theory for another? Well, further observation might reveal something assumed to be true may not actually be so. Perhaps there is a good reason why I sit on the couch when I watch movies with my kids. But perhaps, on a whim, I decide I'd rather sit on a recliner. Why? Perhaps my wife's friend came over and was sitting on the couch. That would appear to falsify claim that I always sit on the couch. You could no longer make an absolute claim that I always sit on the couch at this time every day because you absolutely DID observe me once sitting in the chair. You might have to adjust the claim to say that USUALLY or NORMALLY I sit on the couch this time every day, but on certain days I'm not even here and on others we have house guests who prevent me from sitting on the couch.

Thus you can't absolutely say I always sit on the couch. But you CAN absolutely say that I DID sit on the couch. That would be an absolute truth.

When we talk about something being falsifiable, we're talking about things that can be tested. When you test something, you gather information about its state at a given point in time. Test results don't change. Now, the same results may not match up with later test results. It just means that the results have been affected by some unknown factor. The orbits of planets, for instance, have a high degree of predictability. But when astronomers first began recording the positions of planets and predicting the position of certain outer planets, they noticed that the planets were NOT where they were supposed to be. The only explanation was that there HAD to be some other planet whose gravitational force was affecting the position of the observed planet. And given time, the planet that was affecting the position of the other was eventually discovered. Given the known effect of the gravitational force of one planet on another, accurate predictions could again be made. The idea that the planets followed a specific orbital path could be predicted and those predictions tested is the essence of falsifiability. But falsifiability relies on absolute evidence, observations that cannot be undone.

To say that there are NO absolutes is to suggest that the results of a particular test are in flux. To deny the absoluteness of a set of observed data is absurd.