Starboy

Vander are you asking that all questions regarding science not be decided exclusively by experiment?

Starboy

[ September 16, 2002: Message edited by: Starboy ]</p>

Stephen T-B

So, Deep Thinker Vanderzyden who had thought Evolution an all-right idea changed his mind because it made less sense to him than the Genesis creation story.
The merits of that progression might seem dubious to those of us who think the Genesis Creation story makes about as much sense as a bucket of water without sides and a bottom, but Vander is happy with it.

In the Creationist’s world, the natural and supernatural coincide: God is a Supernatural being with a physical presence which allowed him to walk through the Garden of Eden in the cool of the day, and make such a noise that Adam and Eve were able to hear him.
Later, he wrote the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone with his finger.
Creationists are able, no doubt, to provide reasons why this so-solid god of the early Old Testament drifted off, somewhat, and is these days so amorphous that if he were to be discovered stomping through the Everglades or somewhere it would be regarded as an even bigger event than a Michael Jackson concert. But they’ve signally failed to convince the rest of us that a Being which no-one can see “formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.”
Deducing his existence from the fact that we exist doesn’t overcome this difficulty.
I am entitled to say: “I have a table, therefore someone made my table,” but that is not the same as saying “The world exists, therefore God made it.”
The first statement draws on our experience of the world: we know there are cabinet makers; we know there are saws, planes, lathes, screws, glues, doweling, sandpaper etc. We know tables are being made all the time. It is a reasonable conclusion to draw.
The second statement relies for its force on an assumption derived from an assertion: the assertion is “God exists.” The assumption is that it is correct.
But since the assertion is tenuous, so is the assumption. And we know the assertion is tenuous or it would be as uncontroversial as the statement “Cabinet makers exist.”

Vanderzyden, we must assume from what he has told us, at one point in his life decided that a natural explanation for all the forms of life on Earth is not as good as a supernatural one; he has substituted a reasonable deduction, based on a large and rapidly-growing body of knowledge, for a tenuous assertion. And he would have everyone here do the same.

K

What amazes me is that he works so hard to pull the wool over his own eyes. Deciding which posts to selectively ignore, coming up with comical explanations for observations that point conclusively toward evolution, and denying evidence that is right in front of his face must be tough work. I don't understand why he sticks around here. He certainly isn't going to win any converts with his clearly illogical arguments. In fact, if anyone reading this thread was on the fence, I'm sure by now they've come down solidly in the evolution camp. Maybe he's secretly a "darwinist".

Vanderzyden

If you don't care, then why do you get so upset and frame your responses with insults?

Well, I have my answer to my question. Instead of making your replies attractive and engaging, you choose to sling mud. This is usually the approach of those who don't care to think carefully and find the truth. Perhaps you're not that way, but that's how it appears.


Vanderzyden

Vanderzyden

I must say, Stephen, that I do appreciate some of what you post.

Let me clarify further: I reject Darwinism, even without the content of Genesis. Genesis gives a broad account, and provides some of the answer to the question WHY. We have been given minds to figure out the HOW. Much, much good has been done under the name of science. Many reasonable conclusions have been drawn. However, scientists are often utterly wrong. But, of course, you don't hear much about that. The difficulty in accepting evolutionary theories as plausible is that the methodology and the explanation are faulty and rest upon data that doesn't support either very well.

The "29 evidences for evolution" amount to assertions. Scientific and philosophic critics of evolution insist upon an examination of supposed evidence with as few presuppositional filters as possible. Sure, we may begin assuming a natural explanation, but it is certainly possible that a natural explanation will be wholly unsatisfying. This must be kept in mind. Many things are inexplicable on naturalistic terms.

Vanderzyden

Vanderzyden

[ September 16, 2002: Message edited by: Vanderzyden ]</p>

Vanderzyden

It is a mistake to presume that this is my intention. Do you think that I have a "cause" to which I am attempting to gather disciples?

I will say that it does seem that many have "bought the whole farm" when it comes to evolution.

Perhaps.

Vanderzyden

[ September 16, 2002: Message edited by: Vanderzyden ]</p>

wade-w

Vanderzyden has yet to respond to any requests for support or references for such assertions in any thread that I have seen. This includes other forums on this board. He completely ignores such requests, as if the posts were not there.

Vanderzyden:

I find it disgusting that you berate scigirl for "arrogance" while giving an almost awe inspiring display of your own arrogance. You claim a scientific education, and then say that you live in Silicon Valley and are qualified for most jobs there. That implies an engineering or computer science background. Despite the word "science" in the name, that is a TECHNICAL background, not a scientific one. I know, because I have a mathematics/computer science background myself. And before you claim that I am making unwarranted assumptions, let me remind you that your refusal to explain your background leaves us little choice but to attempt to infer what we can from your little hints. And, by the way, that habit of yours doesn't help your credibility. What exactly are you afraid of?

I have presented a paper at a professional conference, and I have been on a peer review committee. Yes, we don't use "weasel words" in them. But that is because our results are not inferred using induction, as is the case with the scientific method. As I understand it, That wording reflects the idea that future research may find other reasons to explain the data, not a lack of confidence in the findings. This reflects the understanding that science, unlike religion, makes no claim to absolute knowledge. The scientist(s) presenting a paper are not speaking ex-cathedra.

Thinking that any level of expertise in a technical field gives you the ability to critic research in a completely unrelated scientific field is beyond arrogance.

[ September 16, 2002: Message edited by: wade-w ]</p>

Skeptical

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By "we" do you mean "we as a species" or "we as westerners raised in the judeo-christian traditions"? If the former, that's a pretty big question and I would defer any explanations I have to Joseph Campbells' works on myth making. If you mean the latter, I would say the particular mythical conceptions of a small group of desert nomads in the middle east played quite a role, but also later Christian interpreters modified the mythology accordingly.

I'm not really sure exactly what your asking so I'm not going to speculate and leave at at this for now.

Mostly mythology, some might also call them fairy tales which is just another name for myths. Again, I'm not sure what your asking, if you can be more precise I'll try to answer what your asking.

BTW, the reason I keep bringing up the God vs Satan question is that those seem to be the only non-empirical entities that you will accept as even possible. Others, in fact many others, would accept aliens as another possible non-empirical cause, in which case it would be God vs Satan vs Aliens. You seem to only accept as a potential non-empirical cause entities accepted by your religion, so I used those examples to illustrate a point, I wasn't trying to turn this into a religious discussion, it seemed those 2 alternatives were my only recourse to show the problem of attributing causes to non-empirical entities and I didn't want to get into a long probably pointless discussion about aliens.

Skeptical

Vander, you said:

"May I repeat, yet again, that I reject evolution on the lack of convincing evidence. It is not because of metaphysical or religious beliefs. Formerly, I accepted evolution, while maintaining the basic framework of other beliefs that I hold now. However, when I began to examine the support for the theories of evolution, I was amazed at the lack of persuasive evidence."

I am a little confused now based on some of your other posts, because I thought earlier you had basically accepted the descent with modification was correct, you were just arguing about the mechanism. (you said something about an ape being used as a body model or something to that effect). Two simple questions, that can more or less be answered with a yes or no.

1) Do you accept that it certainly _looks_ like descent with modification occured? (leaving out the mechansims for how this occured)

2) Does your "persuasive evidence" for evolution include answering questions from philosophy and other non-scientific disciplines as you have indicated in your past posts?

lpetrich

And what might that be?

Yes, descent with modification. So somewhere along the line, some immaterial substance was added from outside to make us have minds?

So what?

However, the development of technology does provide some interesting analogies with evolution; though it is all a product of design, the designers have finite capabilities and are sometimes very fallible.

Thus, locomotive designs have "evolved" over the years from that first locomotive, Stephenson's "Rocket". Many of the changes have been relatively small ones, like using different numbers of wheels and changing the overall size, but bigger jumps do happen, such as using diesel engines and electric motors instead of steam engines. Such innovations are the technology-development equivalent of Lateral Gene Transfer, since both diesel engines and electric motors had been invented and developed elsewhere.

And Mr. Stephenson himself had not thought of locomotives from scratch. He had been familiar with steam engines, and he got the idea of having one drive a vehicle. The engine would have to be mounted in the vehicle, but it would transmit its driving force to the vehicle's wheels. He was not the only one at the time to get the idea; he was simply the first to construct a practical implementation of it.

Which ones, O VZ? And had they been known for work on evolution? Especially work published in mainstream journals.