Gee, that’s a compelling argument Nature’s Call. “Someone might demolish my entire argument with the simplest rebuttal. Anyone doing so is an idiot and must stop reaidng my argument"
I’m convinced. :rolleyes:
Cite.
You are right. Language is getting confused here. So how about we stick to dictionary definitions rather than shit we make up ourselves on the spur of the moment to support our positions?
From the OED
refutable
That may be ( rejected,) refuted, or disproved.
refute
To disprove, overthrow by argument, prove to be false: a statement, opinion, etc.
falsifiable
That may be falsified.
falsify
To make false or incorrect
So according to the OED ‘refutable” means “That may be proven to be false”. “Falsify” means “ That may be made false”.
The two words are synonyms for most purposes and I my argument is quite secure in claiming so. Now can we see which dictionary you pulled you defintions from?
Bad example.
Netwonian relativity refuted that claim over a hundred years ago. I can readily refute that the earth revolves around the sun simply by stating that the reference frame is relative and in some frames the sun revolves around the Erath.
Thank you proving my point so eloquently. Nothing in science is irrefutable.
Which as we have seen is not a fact at all, merely an hypothesis that explains conditions for one possible observation point.
You really couldn’t have picked a worse example than the Erath revolving around the sun. OTOH you couldn’t find a better one. Which is precisely my point, that there are no facts in science. Nothing is a fact. The Erath orbiting the sun is not a fact. Evolution is not a fact… Gravity is not a fact. These are merely well supported theories.
No they didn’t. Might I suggest a quick peruse of S.J. Gould’s “Rocks of Ages” to remove your ignorance pertaining to this legend?
[QUOTE=John Mace]
Now, can we get back to discussing evolution? No, one does not need to disprove all the other hypotheses (they/re not theories, btw) out there in order to prove evolution [by natural selection]. If one wants to displace the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection as the accepted explanation, you must show that your hypothesis is testable, that it has been tested, and that it explains all the data better. You also have to be able to use your knew “theory” to make predictions.
[QUOTE]
No. I can’t accept that. A wise man once said that an admission of ignorance must always* be a valid defence in science, and he was quite right. I don’t need to accept some cockamamie theory just because I can’t produce a competing theory that is testable.
Assume that 100 years ago I say that gravity is caused by Invisible Unicorns holding objects together. I then go on to construct an hypothesis that unicorns feed on ethereal ‘protonic emanations and thus more unicorns exist in objects with more protons (ie more massive) and so forth. The theory is perfectly testable because it has predictive power and so forth. But you are not obliged to accept my unicorn theory just because you can’t prove the existence of gravitons or gravity waves or observe gravitational lensing. That is absolutely ludicrous.
No. All you need to do is logically disprove or falsify my unicorn theory . Simply pointing out that unicorns lack hands to hold anything with would do just fine, as would pointing out that there is no evidence of unicorns or ‘protonic emanantions”. Then you may simply claim ignorance of the true cause of gravity. You don’t need actually construct the theory of Relativity in order to challenge my claim that unicorns cause gravity.
The fact that Creationism doesn’t make empirically testable claims (it does BTW) doesn’t mean that we have to accept evolution any more than the fact that ‘non-unicorns space’ makes no testable claims means that we need to accept unicorns.
If you have addressed it hen I have missed it. Nowhere can I see where you addressed the problem that X = Y+1 can produce an infinite number of values of X under varying conditions of Y. Under some conditions it can be true that X = 1, but that does not mean that it is inevitably true that X can never equal 4. That was my point and you never addressed it.
I agree that the strong religious interpretation is unfalisfiable, but that doesn’t address the problem. Diogenes stated that if we prove that X= 1 we have to always reject X = 4 even if we can’t know whether X can have more than one value under differing conditions. Clearly that is not true.
I can’t agreewith that in any way at all. Creationism is non-scientific, not psuedoscientific. Those are very different terms and you are arguing a strawman as soon as you introduce the term psuedo.
Creationism isn’t psuedo anthing, though it can be used as part of psuedo scientific ideas. Of course gravity, space flight, ballistics and evolution itself are all used as part of well know psuedoscientific ideas, that doesn’t make them psuedoscientific.
But here you are making the error of assuming that you ontological starting point is more correct than a creationists. That is not logically valid.
Einstein started with the assumption ‘what if the data are correct” and proceeded. A creationist starts with the assumption “what if God exists” and proceeds. Neither is more or less logically supportable, they are just different ontological bases. And neither requires anyone to ignore data which contradicts their premise. All it means is that the data are interpreted according to that premise.
You and I assume as scientists that there is a physical world, that it is invarying, is knowable by observation and with certain broad ‘laws’ at play. That’s our ontology.
A creationist assumes that the physical world can be varied by God, the ultimate reality is not physical but spiritual, that the physical world is knowable only through interaction with God and the only ‘laws’ are the ones God decided on. That;s his ontology.
Neither is more or less valid logically than the other and neither requires that data concerning the physical world be ignored. The only difference is in the way that data is interpreted.
I never claimed he needed to question the dating methods every time he ran one. I did say that he has never verified it, though. In short, he was relying on a piece of data which he is presently unable to prove is valid. He assumes he can validate it. But there is that pesky word assume. This isn’t illogical, wrong or even unexpected. Given that he is certain evolution is true, then assuming a fact which supports evolution is also true is the exact right thing to do. It is logical. It isn’t scientific, but it is logical.
I wouldn’t really call it lumping everyone into the same category. It is more like an average over a large population. Given information which is neither black nor white, I think most people will tend to make an attempt to align it with whatever truths they believe. And this world is full of a lot of greys, unfortunately. So, once you have your viewpoint set, it is easy to look at something and say, “aha! That matches what I was expecting.” And the other guy on the other side is doing the exact same thing. And if something DOES happen to be more black than white, each side then tends to deal with it as I’ve tried to point out all along.
I was replying to Larry Borgia who brought up the issue of abortion. I agreed with you. I was saying my pointless point doesn’t really extend well into abstracts arguments that involve questions of right and wrong.
I obviously implied something I didn’t mean to. At the heart of evolutionary theory is the scientific method which gives us what we have today. At the heart of creationism is the supposition (I won’t grace it with the term “theory”) that “God did it”. Reaching one viewpoint through deduction and reason vs. “faith” are two very different things. But once entrenched in your viewpoint, my pointless point is that both creationist and evolutionist will react to new information in similar ways, as I’ve outlined above. A pure scientist, in an ideal world, would not make such a reaction. It would be really nice to think evolutionists are more open to conflicting data, but my own personal experiences and the reactions of Diogenes and cricetus convince me otherwise. Sure, three examples is hardly statistically significant. But to my mind, there was always this conflict of why creationists just couldn’t seem to react to new information logically. I have now come to this hypotheses, i.e., my pointless point.
I think all of us probably likes to think of ourselves as rational. We make decisions and conclusions based on what we know. An evolutionist, looking at a creationist, might find it hard to understand how the creationist is reacting rationally. This lack of understanding had always been a problem for me, to be sure. It just looked so wrong. Until I realized I do the same thing for the same reasons. It was when I realized that we started from different points and then dealt with the information from there that I realized they aren’t acting irrationally to the new information. Once I reached that point, I realized that if they aren’t acting irrationally to new information, then they aren’t going to move from their position. It isn’t until you can force someone to look deeper that you have a chance of getting them to move off their position. The force is usually the case of a compelling argument.
It is because scientists have been willing to move off their position, albeit sometimes getting that movement has been rather… difficult, that we have the sound theory of evolution we have today.
How do you resolve the twins paradox and keep it consistent with this viewpoint?
In this case, actually, you do need to accept the theory of evolution because it hasn’t been falsified. I agree that if it were falsified it could be called “cockamamie”, but since it has not, I don’t see where that comes from.
Since you have no idea how he arrived at his “assumption”, I’m not sure this is a valid statement. Just because you make an ontological argument doesn’t mean your argument is automatically as valid as anyone else’s. You’re still going to need to back it up.
At which point the creationist must make a choice: just because God can, will He? If the answer is yes, it is pointless to study the physical world. If the answer it no, then you are back to square one. If He isn’t going to change it, then what laws did He make? The scientist thinks the laws are unchanging and are knowable. Whether or not a god created them is irrelevant.
Einstein was able to predict quite a few things once he had extrapolated from his original assumption. Practically everything he predicted has been shown to happen. Gravity Probe B is in orbit right now taking data to confirm the only prediction still unconfirmed.
Mathematical proofs are altogether different entities than science (empirical, that is). I don’t see the value in comparing the scientific method with a mathematical proof.
Works for me either way. I only call it pseudo when it tries to pass itself off as science; when someone claims that “God did it” is an hypothesis that can be tested. It can’t, if we accept the definition of God as being supernatural.
It’s well outside the realm of this discussion, but that observation is the cause of the twins paradox. It doesn’t need resolving. The paradox exists because there is no absolute ‘there’ and no absolute ‘then’, it’s all relative to your FOR.
I never said that you did falsify, or that you did call it cockamamie. My point was quite clearly stated: that you don’t need to accept any theory, no matter how cockamamie, just because you can’t propose a testable alternative.
I do know that he arrived at form some ontological starting point though. It can’t be otherwise since it was constructed by a human mind.
NO, that’s the whole point of ontological arguments. All ontologies are equally valid. So long as the argument itself isn’t invalid it doesn’t need to be backed up with anything.
That is total non sequitur. It’s akin to saying that since an artist can choose to alter their own works it is pointless to study the works of living artists. It’s a nonsensical argument with a non sequitur as the conclusion.
Yes I said that above. I also pointed out that this particular part of scientific ontology is an arbitrary belief, just like the creationists belief that it is otherwise.
I don’t either. Diogenes apparently thinks it is a highly valuable comparison, which is why he made it. It was his comparison of mathematical proofs and science that I was addressing. Since we both agree that his comparison is worthless we apparently have no dispute.
Moreover you yourself claimed to have proved my point wrong. You apparently haven’t done any such thing and see no point in doing so. That’s fair enough, but please don’t claim to have disproved an analogy extension that you don’t even intend to address beyond pointing out that it is invalid. Of course it’s invalid. My whole point was that the analogy was invalid and doesn’t stand up to basic scrutiny.
Has anyone in this discussion tried to pass it off as science? I certainly haven’t, and g_under_p has specifically said “I never put creationism on the same level as a legitimate scientific hypothesis”
Doesn’t that make the use of the psuedoscience label a strawman? A characicature of a position, one that nobody has actually adopted in this thread?
“The data are correct” is not a data point?
What exactly is this banal statement meant to establish? You haven’t actually addressed my criticism in any way. I am well aware that ““God exists” is not a data point.
Indeed that was the entire point of my criticism of your position. God exists is neither more nor less a data point than “the data are correct”. But starting from those two equally non-data-point assumptions people can proceed and, using the same observations, arrive at different but equally logically valid conclusions. Neither is more or less logically supportable, they are just different ontological bases.
Hence my criticism that you are making the error of assuming that you ontological starting point is more correct than a creationists. That is not logically valid.
There are a few examples I could give, but first I have to know what the relevance of this is. It appears to be a total red herring. One might just as well ask how many souls a scientist has saved.
Those “reactions” had nothing to do with challenges to evolutionary theory. You didn’t present us with “information,” at all, but school-boy challenges (Diogenes) and poorly constructed, flawed, and unexplained mathematical proofs (my case). These are not even anecdotal cases of evolutionists reacting to “new information” that contradicts evolution, but random people on the Internet, bot non-Scientists, reacting to poorly worded, poorly phrased posts on the Internet. If you point was that Internet posters tend not to make a life’s work of either proving something to a random stranger on the Internet, or making sense of random posts by random strangers on the Internet, then you have done so. But to even presume that you have exposed something about the characters of Dio and myself is arrogant, ill-informed, and wrongheaded. I said before that you had not only moved the goal posts, but changed games. I know now that the game is three-card Monty.
Now, I don’t presume you’ve intended to make this a game of “gotcha,” but your nearly pathological insistence on making this about how other posters misunderstood you or failed to meet your challenges, while steadfastly failing to meet people halfway, have made into such a game.
Well, I’ll concede my reply was not exactly answering the point you were making. Though I’ll still say that the ability of a theory to predict something (call it refutable, falsifiable, Harvey, whatever) gives me cause to believe it’s more worthy of attention than one that predicts nothing testable.
More to the original point, I will note that Einstein’s starting point (i.e., Maxwell’s equations regarding electromagnetism) is to me a far more solid proposition than “God exists.” That my TV works (one designed and built by mere mortals using knowledge of those same equations), leads me to this conclusion.
However, I’ll admit that even after staring at the dictionary definition for several minutes I still have no idea what “ontological” means, so I’ll just be quiet and watch the thread for now.
To cricetus - First, let me state that I’m really glad you didn’t keep to your word to go away. I really couldn’t ask for a better example than you. Thanks for that. Sincerely.
I again ask by what credentials you have to judge calculus posts? You say you’ve never taken calculus, didn’t understand it, called it mumbo-jumbo, and declared yourself the victor.
And with this post, you are demonstrating your total lack of ability to comprehend the posts that have occurred since you last walked out on us. I never claimed you were reacting to new information about evolution. Quote me where I said that. I said your example is anecdotal of how people react to new information that contradicts a present understanding. I didn’t say had anything to do with evolution. And, if I really need to show you again how you badly reacted to it, I will. Because, well, it’s fun.
[quote]
Originally by cricetus
But to even presume that you have exposed something about the characters of Dio and myself is arrogant, ill-informed, and wrongheaded. **
I’ll summarize what happened. I’ll post it as a cite if you insist, but it is all recorded here in this thread.
I post a bogus proof of 2=1 to demonstrate a point. It involves calculus, something which you know nothing about. You say that one of the steps is wrong, and I post not only the right answer, but a link to a cite which backs up my claim. My “pointless point” tells me that you will react by completely dismissing my point because it doesn’t fit in your reality. You called it “mumbo-jumbo” and completely dismissed it. You’re right, I didn’t expose anything.
If you still think that, I can’t help you. It would take me a long time to get you to understand why you are wrong, and quite frankly I have little patience to explain these things again to someone who dismisses ideas you don’t understand and who shows an obvious intolerance for even trying to understand.You want to call the moving the goalposts? Knock yourself out. Once again, dismissing what you don’t understand only further serves to demonstrate my original premise.
People started this by calling me a closet creationist and insisting this is a hidden agenda intended to pull a “gotcha” about evolution/creation. For some reason, being accused of things I wasn’t, and being told I was doing things I wasn’t, made me want to defend that.
Tell me, cricetus, what should I have done? I entered this in MPSIMS, not GD. Once it moved here, people came in here guns blazing ready to shoot down things that just weren’t there, calling me things I’m not. If I had just let all that go, I never would have convinced anyone differently. Maybe I still haven’t. Oh wait, I have:
I stuck with it, trying to find the right way to get my “pointless point” at least understood. Maybe that part I still haven’t. And I’m okay with that, because remember I put this in MPSIMS to begin with. But once the accusations of a “hidden agenda” came about, I felt the need to clarify to where people at least understood the point so they would at least understand there wasn’t a hidden agenda. I’ve been calling it a pointless point for several pages. I didn’t stick with this for so long because I thought I came up with some hugely wonderful insight.I stuck with it to clear up the notion I’m a closet creationist. The only way to do that was to get people to understand the original point was, well, nearly pointless.
Just admitted that people had a point - that one doesn’t have to have knowledge of all the details of evolution (or anything else) to have a belief in something that is not based on some kind of “faith” – which is the only thing people were trying to explain.
You despair that people are not reading your posts, not comprehending your posts. We all know what you’re trying to say, grace. Nobody here as delusions of omnipotence. We are not dogmatic, and we are not the evolutionary versions of the fundamentalist creationists. We’re just saying that our information, limited as it is, is sufficient enough to give us a firm belief in evolution.
I said several pages ago that this was an epistemological question, and that people have tenuous beliefs based on the available evidence. This is still true. It was never my position that arguments I haven’t seen are false, or that I know them to be false, but that you do not need to assume they are false to have a belief in something. This whole notion of “knowing” seems to evade you, although any minor slip-up over wildly off-topic points are mentioned over and over and fondled like golum with his precious ring. I can’t tell you how irritating it is to see your unsporting claims that I’ve “proved” something because – gasp! – I tried to make sense of a proof based on the evidence at hand (yes, even the cite, which didn’t explain the proof at all, and did not have an exact resemblence to yours anyway). You try to make an example of this mistake of mine through gross exaggeration, generalization, and repitition. If only you spent as much time on the myriad of examples, metaphors, and statements that I and others have posted.
You may be startled to learn that I know exactly where you are coming from, what you are trying to demonstrate, and what you mistakenly think you have demonstrated. I have not created a caricature of you, looking merely to expose your flaws and crow, nor have I made any assumptions or generalizations about you based on your posts here. We would probably be largely in agreement on just about everything if we merely had a clearly stated question and a working vocabulary.
And your calculus cut and paste was a complete non-sequitur and a waste of everyone’s time. It doesn’t matter if your equation was right or wrong, it was irrelevant. Your smug gloating because someone else hasn’t studied calculus (which I doubt you have either) is nothing but a distraction from the fact that your original non-point has been so thoroughly refuted.
Yes, he says that, and then turns around and says that scientists and creationists are both taking things on faith. I guess it depends on which posts one focuses on-- the ones where he claims that creationism isn’t on par with science, or the ones where he says that creationists and scientists both take things on faith. Frankly, I find those statements contradictory. I’ve accpeted that our OP is not a closet creationist, but I still think he doesn’t understand what science is.
You won’t believe me, but I did. It clicked why people were equating what I was posting to saying “I’ve never personally verified my car isn’t made out of cheese, so how do I really know?”. But subtle as it is, my argument was never intended to be about the fact that you can’t know everything. It is the fact that we don’t know everything, and yet insist we are right, that can sometimes make us no better than the people we disagree with and hold an opposing viewpoint to. We can be right, but it doesn’t matter if we don’t hold to a standard.
I didn’t mean to attack Diogenes, but I was trying to drive home the fact that despite his claims, he really can’t verify everything about evolution. And yes, I’m well aware that parsing that sentence will well depend on the definition of “can’t” and “verify”. And that is where the discussion sidetracked. And that is where the accusations started flying.
If the page had said the exact same thing I had said, it wouldn’t help. It would simply be repeating what I said. I was hoping a different perspective would help.
Check again. You said I probably don’t know anything about calculus. If that isn’t an assumption about me I don’t know what is. You questioned just how well read I must be on evolution based on what? That I dared admit I was stumped by something and started to research it?
Probably. You seem like an intelligent guy and your posts have certainly been insightful beyond what I first read them to be. Amazing how different things look when you view them at a different time. (By that I mean the insightfulness of he posts, not the intelligence of the poster).
Actually, the original 2=1 calculus proof was written from memory. It was meant to serve as a different vehicle for demonstrating that there are two viewpoints and sometimes one viewpoint can present something which appears to be logical, but at its heart isn’t. I was trying to demonstrate that my pointless point, or as you refer to it completely pointless, wasn’t about evolution/creation. Was it a complete non-sequitur? I dunno. I viewed it as an attempt make my point in a different way. However, I will refute the notion that it was irrelevant.
I fully recant the use of the word “faith”. I was merely trying to succinctly state that scientists can and do make assumptions about things they have not verified. My very poor choice of the word “faith” led people to believe that I think evolution is based on things which cannot be verified. This is very far from the truth.
