At Evolution News: There Is No Settled “Theory of Evolution”

Bornagain77 @104, The challenge is knowing just how far we can take logic and where we admit to faith. No, I don't think faith is a giant leap (Kierkegaard), nor do I believe that leaps of logic (Spinoza) are sufficient apart of experiment, experience, or revelation. FWIW, I prefer the word, TRUST, over the word, FAITH. To me, "faith" evokes my imaginations of monks in processions, chants echoing off stone walls, candles in the darkness, incense, and beautiful glowing stained-glass windows. To me, "trust" is simply when I come to the end of my own resources, and fully rely on the kind purposes, and assurances of my loving creator, YHVH God, and His plan through His son, Yeshua (Jesus), with the encouragement and comforting of the Ruach HaKodesh (Holy Spirit). What else do I have when my resources, body, and mind inevitably begin to fail? -Q Querius

In post 83, PMI does a lot of hand-waving, furiously trying to protect his worldview of Atheistic Naturalism from any criticism. Specifically, in post 81, I showed that since both Feynman and Einstein held falsification to be a foundational 'key to science', and since PMI, in his attempt to distance Darwinian evolution from the criteria of empirical falsification, was championing Lakatos and other philosophers of science who shunned Popper's criteria of falsification, , in post 81 I asked PMI,,,,

So tell me PMI, who should I listen to when it comes to the successful practice of modern science? Einstein and Feynman who have actually brought forth two of our most precisely tested theories ever in the history of science?, Or to some ‘armchair academic philosophers’ who are only theorizing about what it might take to make a good scientific theory?

To which PMI responded,

Being good at doing something is different from being good at understanding what it is that you are doing. A point that was first made, I believe, by Plato. Feynman is famous for having quipped, “philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds”. This overlooks the possibility that ornithology could indeed be quite useful to birds, if they could understand it.

Leaving aside the little fact that talking about doing something, and actually doing something are not even in the same ballpark as far as reality itself is concerned, what is interesting in all this is that Lakatos himself based much of his 'philosophy' for shunning the importance of empirical falsification on the Copernican revolution. In fact, Lakatos specifically stated that, "I thought that the Copernican revolution might in particular serve as an important test case between some contemporary philosophies of science."

Why did Copernicus’s research programme supersede Ptolemy’s? By Elie Zahar and Imre Lakatos – Excerpt of Introduction: I first should like to offer an apology for imposing a philosophical talk upon you on the occasion of the quincentenary of Copernicus’s birth. My excuse is that a few years ago I suggested a specific method for using history of science as an arbiter of some authority when it comes to debates in philosophy of science and I thought that the Copernican revolution might in particular serve as an important test case between some contemporary philosophies of science. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/the-methodology-of-scientific-research-programmes/why-did-copernicuss-research-programme-supersede-ptolemys/CBBBCA4E3CD03277CB460AE91C3D3320

Lakatos was not alone in using the Copernican revolution as a model for developing a philosophy of science above and beyond Popper's falsification criteria. Thomas Kuhn, of 'paradigm shift' fame, was also heavily influenced by the Copernican revolution,,,

The Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought – Thomas S. Kuhn – Excerpt of description: Mr. Kuhn displays the full scope of the Copernican Revolution as simultaneously an episode in the internal development of astronomy, a critical turning point in the evolution of scientific thought, and a crisis in Western man’s concept of his relation to the universe and to God. https://www.amazon.com/Copernican-Revolution-Planetary-Astronomy-Development/dp/0674171039

In short, the Copernican revolution removed the earth from the center of the solar system, (and supposedly from the center of the universe), and replaced it with the sun being at the center of the solar system. This removal of earth from centrality in the universe, as the Kuhn reference made clear, had dramatic negative consequences for "Western man’s concept of his relation to the universe and to God." Yet, (surprisingly), advances in science have now empirically falsified the Copernican revolution and have restored man, the earth, and the solar system itself, to centrality in the universe. Thus Lakatos's, (and Kuhn's) critique of Popper's falsification criteria collapses in on itself since empirical falsification itself undermined the Copernican revolution model that they had based their scientific philosophies on to try to supersede Popper.

And of final note to Lakatos and Kuhn’s apparently heavy reliance on the ‘Copernican revolution’, (in order for them to develop their philosophical critiques of Popper’s ‘naive’ falsification model), since the Copernican principle is now, itself, shown to be empirically false, then, obviously, in so far as Lakatos and Kuhn have both relied on the Copernican revolution in order for them to develop their specific (philosophical) arguments against Popper’s falsification criteria, their arguments collapse in on themselves. (Which is not to say that their philosophical standards for science don’t have some merit, but it is just to say that their specific arguments against Popper's falsification criteria in particular collapse in on themselves in so far as they relied on the Copernican model to do critique Popper's falsification criteria) https://uncommondescent.com/darwinism/richard-lewontin-1929-2021/#comment-733949

In post 81 I further noted that "all of science is dependent on essential Theistic, even Judeo-Christian, presuppositions, not on ‘naturalistic’ presuppositions." To which PMI responds,

As a matter of historical fact, sure, the scientific revolution in the West was shaped by Christianized Greco-Roman metaphysics. (Amos Funkenstein’s Theology and the Scientific Imagination is very insightful text about this process.) But does it follow that therefore science could not have developed independent of those background assumptions? It seems plausible that something like modern science would have developed in China, even if it never had contact with Western scholars.

That is a standard reply from atheists. And yet the fact remains that science never did developed in China, or in any other ancient cultures. It was only when Christianity gained prominence in Medieval Christian Europe that science finally found fertile ground to sprout, grow, and flourish.

The Christian Origins of Science - Jack Kerwick - Apr 15, 2017 Excerpt: Though it will doubtless come as an enormous shock to such Christophobic atheists as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and their ilk, it is nonetheless true that one especially significant contribution that Christianity made to the world is that of science.,,, Stark is blunt: “Real science arose only once: in Europe”—in Christian Europe. “China, Islam, India, and ancient Greece and Rome each had a highly developed alchemy. But only in Europe did alchemy develop into chemistry. By the same token, many societies developed elaborate systems of astrology, but only in Europe did astrology develop into astronomy.”,,, In summation, Stark writes: “The rise of science was not an extension of classical learning. It was the natural outgrowth of Christian doctrine: nature exists because it was created by God. In order to love and honor God, it is necessary to fully appreciate the wonders of his handiwork. Because God is perfect, his handiwork functions in accord with immutable principles. By the full use of our God-given powers of reason and observation, it ought to be possible to discover these principles.” He concludes: “These were the crucial ideas that explain why science arose in Christian Europe and nowhere else.” https://townhall.com/columnists/jackkerwick/2017/04/15/the-christian-origins-of-science-n2313593

In post 81 I further noted that,

assuming ‘methodological naturalism’ to be true as the supposed ‘ground rule’ for doing science, as atheists insist we do, (R. Lewontin, etc..), instead of providing a fruitful heuristic for doing science, actually drives science itself into catastrophic epistemological failure

To which PMI responds,

This appears to rely on the assumption that a naturalistic philosophy of science is impossible. In fact, a naturalistic philosophy of science was worked out in great detail almost a hundred years ago, by a philosopher named John Dewey.

Naturalism is simply a non-starter as to providing the necessary presuppositions for doing science. As Paul Davies noted, "even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is a rational basis to physical existence manifested as law-like order in nature that is at least partly comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.”

Physics and the Mind of God: The Templeton Prize Address – by Paul Davies – August 1995 Excerpt: “People take it for granted that the physical world is both ordered and intelligible. The underlying order in nature-the laws of physics-are simply accepted as given, as brute facts. Nobody asks where they came from; at least they do not do so in polite company. However, even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is a rational basis to physical existence manifested as law-like order in nature that is at least partly comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.” https://www.firstthings.com/article/1995/08/003-physics-and-the-mind-of-god-the-templeton-prize-address-24

To further undermine PMI's claim that naturalism and science are amendable, I simply note that there is a stunning lack of atheists behind the founding of any major branch of modern science

Founders of Modern Science Who Believe in GOD - Tihomir Dimitrov - (pg. 235) Scientific Disciplines – Bible-believing Scientists 1. Analytical Geometry – Rene Descartes – (1596-1650) 2. Anesthesiology – James Simpson – (1811-1870) 3. Antiseptic Surgery – Joseph Lister – (1827-1912) 4. Astronautics – Hermann Oberth – (1894-1989) – Wernher Von Braun – (1912-1977) 5. Atomic Physics – Joseph J. Thomson – (1856-1940) 6. Bacteriology – Louis Pasteur – (1822-1895) 7. Biology – John Ray – (1627-1705) 8. Calculus – Isaac Newton – (1642-1727) – Gottfried Leibniz – (1646-1716) 9. Cardiology – William Harvey – (1578-1657) 10. Celestial Mechanics – Johannes Kepler – (1571-1630) 11. Chemistry – Robert Boyle – (1627-1691) 12. Comparative Anatomy – Georges Cuvier – (1769-1832) 13. Computer Science – Charles Babbage – (1791-1871) 14. Cryology – Lord Kelvin – (1824-1907) 15. Differential Geometry – Carl Friedrich Gauss – (1777-1855) 16. Dimensional Analysis – Lord Rayleigh – (1842-1919) 17. Dynamics – Isaac Newton – (1642-1727) 18. Electrodynamics – James Clerk Maxwell – (1831-1879) Andre-marie Ampere – (1775-1836) 19. Electro-magnetics – Michael Faraday – (1791-1867) 20. Electronics – John Ambrose Fleming – (1849-1945) Michael Faraday – (1791-1867) 21. Electrophysiology – John Eccles – (1903-1997) 22. Embriology – William Harvey – (1578-1657) 23. Energetics – Lord Kelvin – (1824-1907) 24. Entomology Of Living Insects – Henri Fabre – (1823-1915) 25. Experimental Physics – Galileo Galilei – (1564-1642) 26. Field Theory – Michael Faraday – (1791-1867) 27. Fluid Mechanics – George Stokes – (1819-1903) 28. Galactic Astronomy – William Herschel – (1738-1822) 29. Gas Dynamics – Robert Boyle – (1627-1691) 30. Genetics – Gregor Mendel – (1822-1884) 31. Geology – Nicolaus Steno – (1638-1686) 32. Glacial Geology – Louis Agassiz – (1807-1873) 33. Gynecology – James Simpson – (1811-1870) 34. Heliocentric Cosmology – Nicolaus Copernicus – (1473-1543) 35. Hydraulics – Leonardo Da Vinci – (1452-1519) 36. Hydrodynamics – Blaise Pascal – (1623-1662) 37. Hydrography – Matthew Maury – (1806-1873) 38. Hydrostatics – Blaise Pascal – (1623-1662) 39. Ichthyology – Louis Agassiz -(1807-1873) 40. Immunology – Louis Pasteur – (1822-1895) 41. Isotopic Chemistry – William Ramsay – (1852-1916) 42. Laser Science – Charles Townes – (1915-2015) – Arthur Schawlow – (1921-1999) 43. Mathematical Analysis – Leonhard Euler – (1707-1783) 44. Microbiology – Louis Pasteur – (1822-1895) 45. Mineralogy – Georgius Agricola – (1494-1555) 46. Model Analysis – Lord Rayleigh – (1842-1919) 47. Modern Medicine – William Harvey – (1578-1657) 48. Nanotechnology – Richard Smalley – (1943-2005) 49. Natural History – John Ray – (1627-1705) 50. Non-euclidean Geometry – Bernhard Riemann – (1826-1866) 51. Number Theory – Carl Friedrich Gauss – (1777-1855) 52. Oceanography – Matthew Maury – (1806-1873) 53. Optical Mineralogy – David Brewster – (1781-1868) 54. Optics – Johannes Kepler – (1571-1630) 55. Paleontology – John Woodward – (1665-1728) – Georges Cuvier – (1769-1832) 56. Pathology – Rudolph Virchow – (1821-1902) 57. Physical Astronomy – Johannes Kepler – (1571-1630) 58. Physical Chemistry – Mikhail Lomonosov – (1711-1765) 59. Physiology – William Harvey – (1578-1657) 60. Quantum Mechanics – Max Planck – (1858-1947) – Werner Heisenberg – (1901-1976) 61. Reversible Thermodynamics – James Joule – (1818-1889) 62. Statistical Thermodynamics – James Clerk Maxwell – (1831-1879) 63. Stratigraphy – Nicolaus Steno – (1638-1686) 64. Systematic Biology – Carolus Linnaeus – (1707-1778) 65. Taxonomy – John Ray – (1627-1705) 66. Thermodynamics – Lord Kelvin – (1824-1907) 67. Thermokinetics – Humphry Davy – (1778-1829) 68. Transplantology – Alexis Carrel – (1873-1944) – Joseph E. Murray – (1919-2012) 69. Vertebrate Paleontology – Georges Cuvier – (1769-1832) 70. Wave Mechanics – Erwin Schroedinger – (1887-1961) https://www.academia.edu/2739607/Scientific_GOD_Journal

In post 81 I further noted to PMI,,,

atheistic materialist (who believes Darwinian evolution to be true) is forced to claim that he is merely a ‘neuronal illusion’ (Coyne, Dennett, etc..), who has the illusion of free will (Harris, Coyne), who has unreliable, (i.e. illusory), beliefs about reality (Plantinga), who has illusory perceptions of reality (Hoffman), who, since he has no real time empirical evidence substantiating his grandiose claims, must make up illusory “just so stories” with the illusory, and impotent, ‘designer substitute’ of natural selection (Behe, Gould, Sternberg), so as to ‘explain away’ the appearance (i.e. the illusion) of design (Crick, Dawkins), and who also must make up illusory meanings and purposes for his life since the hopelessness of the nihilism inherent in his atheistic worldview is simply too much for him to bear (Weikart), and who must also hold morality to be subjective and illusory since he has rejected God (Craig, Kreeft). Who, since beauty cannot be grounded within his materialistic worldview, must also hold beauty itself to be illusory (Darwin). Bottom line, nothing is truly real in the atheist’s worldview, least of all, beauty, morality, meaning and purposes for life.,,,

To which PMI furiously waves his hands and responds thusly,

All of those criticisms are spurious. They rely on outrageously bad misreadings of what the philosophers and scientists are saying. Sorry, but you’ve been duped. I’d explain how and why each of these claims is false, but since you’d dismiss anything else I say as “incoherent nonsense,” I’d rather not waste my energy.

I guess it takes a lot of energy to wave your hands trying to defend such incoherent nonsense, but anyways, here is a defense of each claim that I made,

April 18, 2021 – Naturalism undermines reality itself, - Defense of each claim https://uncommondescent.com/philosophy/philosopher-mary-midgeley-1919-2018-on-scientism/#comment-728595

Verse:

2 Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

bornagain77

Thank you, Bornagain77, Silver Asiatic, and Kairosfocus for your great observations! Asauber @93

My 2 Cents: I think Truth is the thing that’s fundamental and any description of it is just the attempted description of it.

I agree and let me add that ALL knowledge consists of abstractions. This is not trivial. It also explains why engineers, physicists, and other experts in a conversation will often engage in something like this: A: (Makes a truth statement about some aspect of their domain of expertise.) B: Replies with "Well, actually the way it works is . . . " (makes a truth statement that drills down one level of detail). C: Replies to B with, "Yes, that's true to a point, but you also need to consider . . . (makes a truth statement that drills down yet another level of detail). What fun! -Q Querius

PyrrhoManiac1 @84, Are you familiar at all with the “grue” paradox in logic? https://www3.nd.edu/~jspeaks/courses/2007-8/20229/_HANDOUTS/grue.pdf What if the claim is that the sky is not blue, but actually grue? Out of curiosity, were you able to visualize the solution to the question of whether a unique sphere is determined by all sets of non-coplanar points without resorting to language? A truth can consist of dynamic relationships as well as static ones. Are there truths beyond the reach of a logical system (Gödel) or even language (as in sentences)? Let me remind you that a fundamental assumption in science is that people can even understand all scientific truths. It's not a given. -Q Querius

SA stated

The conversation began in response to the idea that truth has its origin in an immaterial mind (it is not a particular thing originating with various material entities) In that context, to say that truth is a property of sentences is to say that truth is a property of descriptions, narratives, arguments, dictionaries, crossword puzzles, lie-detectors, game shows. court cases … the list goes on, and that misses the point that was proposed about the origin or source of truth.

Bingo!, In post 75 PMI directly denied that truth is a property of the immaterial mind and claimed that "Truth is a property of sentences".,,,

BA77: Darwinists hold that Darwin’s theory is true. Yet ‘Truth’ itself is an abstract property of an immaterial mind that is irreducible to the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinian evolution. i.e. Assuming reductive materialism and/or Naturalism as the starting philosophical position of science actually precludes ‘the truth’ from ever being reached by science! PMI: Nonsense. Truth is a property of sentences: a sentence is true if it corresponds to reality. Sentence are concrete particulars that get their sense from their inferential relationships with each other. Hence truth-as-correspondence is a relation between two systems of concrete particulars: the inferential network of sentences on the one hand, and the causal network of events and processes in the world.

PMI, in his claim that 'truth is a property of sentences', is claiming that truth does not find its primary basis in an immaterial mind but that truth finds its primary basis in sentences.

noun: property 1. a thing or things belonging to someone; possessions collectively. 2. an attribute, quality, or characteristic of something.

To repeat, PMI's claim that 'truth is a property of sentences' is absurd. For instance, as Asauber observed, sentences can be either true or false.

Asauber: "On the other hand, can we say that a lie is the property of sentences? If so, that makes PM1’s claim not only wrong, but maybe malicious."

Thus, since sentences can either be true or false, then truth can't possibly find its ultimate basis in sentences, and/or be a basic 'property' of sentences. As I pointed out at post 77 to PMI

BA77: it is ALWAYS an immaterial mind that judges whether a ‘abstract’ sentence written on a piece of paper may correspond to reality or not, i.e. whether it is true or not.

To which PMI doubled down on his claim that truth does not find its ultimate basis in an immaterial mind, and stated,

PMI: Immaterial minds have nothing to do with it. I mean, you can insist on it all you want, but insisting on it doesn’t make it true.

So to further illustrate that truth cannot possibly find its ultimate basis in sentences, and/or be a 'property' of sentences, but must ALWAYS find its ultimate basis in an immaterial mind, I will now reference Gödel's incompleteness theorem.

“Gödel’s incompleteness theorem (1931), proves that there are limits to what can be ascertained by mathematics. Kurt Gödel halted the achievement of a unifying all-encompassing theory of everything in his theorem that: “Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle—something you have to assume but cannot prove”. – Stephen Hawking & Leonard Miodinow, The Grand Design (2010)

Godel proved that mathematical statements, i.e. 'mathematical sentences', are 'incomplete'. Which is to say that the 'whole truth' of any mathematical statement, any 'mathematical sentence', is not contained within the mathematical statement/sentence itself. As the following article states, "(Godel's incompleteness) showed that no matter how we formulate the axiomatic-deductive machinery, there will always exist true statements about numbers which this machinery cannot prove. This means that the ‘whole’ truth about numbers will forever remain outside the grasp of logical reasoning",,,

Godel’s theorems & the limits of reason Dr Asad Zaman - April 12, 2015 Excerpt: German logician Kurt Godel finally achieved spectacular and entirely unexpected results in this area. His first result was the Incompleteness Theorem. This showed that no matter how we formulate the axiomatic-deductive machinery, there will always exist true statements about numbers which this machinery cannot prove. This means that the ‘whole’ truth about numbers will forever remain outside the grasp of logical reasoning. The second was the Undecidability Theorem, which proves that logic cannot be used to decide the truth or falsity of certain statements. One famous example is Euclid’s Parallel Postulate. Whether it is true or false is a matter of choice, not logic. If we choose to deny this postulate, we create a non-Euclidean geometry which has its own valid and useful insights, quite different from the Euclidean world we studied in school. The Enlightenment hopes that man could reach truth purely by observations and logic, cannot be fulfilled even in the limited domain of mathematics. Godel proved what poets have always known, that transcendental truths are beyond the reach of reason: https://tribune.com.pk/story/868779/godels-theorems-the-limits-of-reason/

And since a sentence can be either true or false, (and since that, in and of itself, refutes PMI's claim), it is also very interesting to note exactly how Godel achieved his incompleteness proof that "the ‘whole’ truth about numbers will forever remain outside the grasp of logical reasoning". Godel derived his incompleteness proof via a variation of the liar paradox, (which is a sentence that, if true, is false, and that if false, is true.)

Liar paradox Excerpt: In philosophy and logic, the classical liar paradox or liar's paradox or antinomy of the liar is the statement of a liar that they are lying: for instance, declaring that "I am lying". If the liar is indeed lying, then the liar is telling the truth, which means the liar just lied. In "this sentence is a lie" the paradox is strengthened in order to make it amenable to more rigorous logical analysis.,,, If "this sentence is false" is true, then it is false, but the sentence states that it is false, and if it is false, then it must be true, and so on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar_paradox Roughly speaking, in proving the first incompleteness theorem, Gödel used a modified version of the liar paradox, replacing "this sentence is false" with "this sentence is not provable", called the "Gödel sentence G". His proof showed that for any sufficiently powerful theory T, G is true, but not provable in T. The analysis of the truth and provability of G is a formalized version of the analysis of the truth of the liar sentence.[19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar_paradox#Gödel's_first_incompleteness_theorem

Thus Godel derived his proof for mathematical incompleteness precisely from a (logical) sentence that inherently lacked the ability to have the 'truth' based within itself. All of which , obviously, completely destroys PMI's claim that 'truth is a property of sentences', and not a property of immaterial minds. Of supplemental and related note: the Christian founders of modern science held that any 'mathematical statements' that might describe this universe were "God's thoughts".

KEEP IT SIMPLE by Edward Feser – April 2020 Excerpt: Mathematics appears to describe a realm of entities with quasi-­divine attributes. The series of natural numbers is infinite. That one and one equal two and two and two equal four could not have been otherwise. Such mathematical truths never begin being true or cease being true; they hold eternally and immutably. The lines, planes, and figures studied by the geometer have a kind of perfection that the objects of our ­experience lack. Mathematical objects seem immaterial and known by pure reason rather than through the senses. Given the centrality of mathematics to scientific explanation, it seems in some way to be a cause of the natural world and its order. How can the mathematical realm be so apparently godlike? The traditional answer, originating in Neoplatonic philosophy and Augustinian theology, is that our knowledge of the mathematical realm is precisely knowledge, albeit inchoate, of the divine mind. Mathematical truths exhibit infinity, necessity, eternity, immutability, perfection, and immateriality because they are God’s thoughts, and they have such explanatory power in scientific theorizing because they are part of the blueprint implemented by God in creating the world. For some thinkers in this tradition, mathematics thus provides the starting point for an argument for the existence of God qua supreme intellect. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/04/keep-it-simple

And although modern day theoretical physicists are seemingly loathe to ever allow a ‘Divine foot in the door’, it is interesting to note that the belief that any mathematical truths that might describe this universe are “God’s thoughts” has not yet completely died out for modern theoretical physicists. In fact, Eugene Wigner, (who’s insights into quantum mechanics continue to drive breakthroughs in quantum mechanics; per A. Zeilinger), and Albert Einstein, who needs no introduction, are both on record as to regarding it as a miracle that math should even be applicable to the universe. Moreover, Wigner questioned Darwinism in the process of calling it a miracle, and Einstein even went so far as to chastise ‘professional atheists’ in his process of calling it a miracle.

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences – Eugene Wigner – 1960 Excerpt: ,,certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin’s process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.,,, It is difficult to avoid the impression that a miracle confronts us here, quite comparable in its striking nature to the miracle that the human mind can string a thousand arguments together without getting itself into contradictions, or to the two miracles of the existence of laws of nature and of the human mind’s capacity to divine them.,,, The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning. https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/wigner.pdf On the Rational Order of the World: a Letter to Maurice Solovine – Albert Einstein – March 30, 1952 Excerpt: “You find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world (to the extent that we are authorized to speak of such a comprehensibility) as a miracle or as an eternal mystery. Well, a priori, one should expect a chaotic world, which cannot be grasped by the mind in any way .. the kind of order created by Newton’s theory of gravitation, for example, is wholly different. Even if a man proposes the axioms of the theory, the success of such a project presupposes a high degree of ordering of the objective world, and this could not be expected a priori. That is the ‘miracle’ which is constantly reinforced as our knowledge expands. There lies the weakness of positivists and professional atheists who are elated because they feel that they have not only successfully rid the world of gods but “bared the miracles.” -Albert Einstein http://inters.org/Einstein-Letter-Solovine

Moreover, when we rightly allow the Agent Causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned, and when we rightly allow the Agent Causality of God back into physics as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company,

Cosmic Bell Test Using Random Measurement Settings from High-Redshift Quasars – Anton Zeilinger – 14 June 2018 Excerpt: This experiment pushes back to at least 7.8 Gyr ago the most recent time by which any local-realist influences could have exploited the “freedom-of-choice” loophole to engineer the observed Bell violation, excluding any such mechanism from 96% of the space-time volume of the past light cone of our experiment, extending from the big bang to today. – per journals

,,, then that very reasonable concession on our part to rightly allow the Agent causality of God 'back' into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”. https://uncommondescent.com/philosophy/is-there-a-hole-at-the-bottom-of-math/#comment-731652 Verses:

Matthew 24:35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Colossians 1:15-20 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

bornagain77

AS

On the other hand, can we say that a lie is the property of sentences?

Yes so sentences would be both true and false. So that is irrational nonsense. A lie is not always evil. But it's always less perfect than the truth. But a lie can be more beneficial than the truth because some people's minds would not be able to understand the truth (like little children) and a lie can be best for them at a certain time. But that's because their mind is undeveloped or troubled by something - so a lie can be better in that case. But the truth is always more perfect in itself for what it is, and a lie is a defect and doesn't have permanent value. Silver Asiatic

On the other hand, can we say that a lie is the property of sentences? If so, that makes PM1's claim not only wrong, but maybe malicious. Me and my circle were watching a podcast discussion the other day concerning the question is lying always evil, but that's a digression. Andrew asauber

Andrew Yes, I took a break. I had to work on in-person relationships and get off-line for a while. I'm very glad you're still here! Silver Asiatic

Seversky

The first refers to what we assume to be an objective reality that exists beyond our subjective awareness and is not dependent on our perception of it for its continued existence. The nature of that reality is what we call truth.

Yes

Truth here refers to the extent to which those claims are observed to correspond to what they purport to describe and/or explain. In this context truth can clearly be a property of sentences.

The conversation began in response to the idea that truth has its origin in an immaterial mind (it is not a particular thing originating with various material entities) In that context, to say that truth is a property of sentences is to say that truth is a property of descriptions, narratives, arguments, dictionaries, crossword puzzles, lie-detectors, game shows. court cases ... the list goes on, and that misses the point that was proposed about the origin or source of truth. Silver Asiatic

SA, Welcome back from what I had perceived as you taking a break. Andrew asauber

Andrew - that's the way I see it also. You can't start with the description. You have to start with the recognition of the reality and that is what we call the truth. There are four things on the table. Not five, not zero. We know that truth before the sentences. Those things could be apples or coffee cups or something else, but the description doesn't change the reality. Silver Asiatic

KF

SA, it is reality that is antecedent to truth, which describes or indicates it accurately. KF

Yes, reality is antecedent and truth is an affirmation of reality, or what exists. That's the foundation. Sentences or descriptors come afterwards. Truth cannot be a property of sentences. Truth = Reality = Being = The Good (what is false is a defect, what is true tends towards perfection and goodness) This is inbuilt in human nature and in the universe. It can't be a product of material entities. It's the necessary starting point for all human reason. It's not created by human minds, but human minds depend upon it. So, there is something more than materialism at work, and truth is evidence of design. Silver Asiatic

My 2 Cents: I think Truth is the thing that's fundamental and any description of it is just the attempted description of it. Andrew asauber

Sev, reality is antecedent to our contingent existence and is not an assumption. As propositions are eternal [when duly fleshed out] true propositions are also antecedent to our existence. Truth is not an assumption. KF PS, on objective truth in general, for convenient reference and record, I call attention to:

The truth claim, “there are no [generally knowable] objective truths regarding any matter (so, on any particular matter),” roughly equivalent to, “knowledge is inescapably only subjective or relative,” is an error. Which, happily, can be recognised and corrected. Often, such error is presented and made to seem plausible through the diversity of opinions assertion, with implication that none have or are in a position to have a generally warranted, objective conclusion. This, in extreme form, is a key thesis of the nihilism that haunts our civilisation, which we must detect, expose to the light of day, correct and dispel, in defence of civilisation and human dignity. (NB: Sometimes the blind men and the elephant fable is used to make it seem plausible, overlooking the narrator's implicit claim to objectivity. Oops!) Now, to set things aright, let’s symbolise: ~[O*G] with * as AND. This claims, it is false that there is an objective knowable truth, on the set of general definable topics, G. Ironically, it intends to describe not mere opinion but warranted, credible truth about knowledge in general. So, ~[O*G] is self referential as it is clearly about subject matter G, and is intended to be a well warranted objectively true claim. But it is itself therefore a truth claim about knowledge in general intended to be taken as objectively true, which is what it tries to deny as a possibility. So, it is self contradictory and necessarily false. In steps:

PHASE I: Let a proposition be represented by x G = x is a proposition asserting that some state of affairs regarding some identifiable matter in general including e.g. history, science, the secrets of our hearts, morality etc, is the case O = x is objective and knowable, being adequately warranted as credibly true} PHASE II: It is claimed, S= ~[O*G] = 1, 1 meaning true However, the subject of S is G, it therefore claims to be objectively true, O and is about G where it forbids O-status to any claim of type G so, ~[O*G] cannot be true per self referential incoherence ============= PHASE III: The Algebra, translating from S: ~[O*G] = 0 [as self referential and incoherent cf above] ~[~[O*G]] = 1 [the negation is therefore true] __________ O*G = 1 [condensing not of not] where, G [general truth claim including moral ones of course] So too, O [if an AND is true, each sub proposition is separately true] ================ CONCLUSION: That is, there are objective general, particular and -- as a key case -- moral truths; and a first, self evident one is that ~[O*G] is false, ~[O*G] = 0. Therefore, the set of knowable objective truths in general -- and embracing those that happen to be about states of affairs in regard to right conduct etc -- is non empty, it is not vacuous and we cannot play empty set square of opposition games with it.

That’s important. Also, there are many particular objective general and moral truths that are adequately warranted to be regarded as reliable. Try, Napoleon was once a European monarch and would be conqueror. Try, Jesus of Nazareth is a figure of history. Try, it is wrong to torture babies for fun, and more. Ours is a needlessly confused age, heading for trouble.

kairosfocus

SA, it is reality that is antecedent to truth, which describes or indicates it accurately. KF kairosfocus

PM1:

Truth is a property of sentences: a sentence is true if it corresponds to reality. Sentence are concrete particulars that get their sense from their inferential relationships with each other. Hence truth-as-correspondence is a relation between two systems of concrete particulars: the inferential network of sentences on the one hand, and the causal network of events and processes in the world.

1: I would refer to propositions that may be expressed in sentences or other similar representations, ponder say a hurricane warning flag. 2: I suggest, that we can have accurate perceptions and non verbal thoughts or even feelings and dispositions but such can be generally reduced to description languages at least in key part . . . say someone encounters God and experiences his glorious holiness, purity, redemptive love and radiant power. 3: So, bearing that in mind [BA77 et al, kindly note],discussion on propositions is, though not all of what truth is, WLOG. 4: I would simply state, per Ari Metaphysics 1011b, truth expressed in propositions says of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not. A proposition, strictly being what is asserted to exist or be the case or be a relevant state of affairs. 5: Embracing possible worlds as substantially sufficiently complete descriptions of how this world or another is or may be or might have been etc, truth would be accurate description of such states as would obtain were the circumstances actualised. 6: Our world is full of cause effect bonds but causality relates to the contingent, necessary beings are the case but as framework to any world being possible are acausal, eternal, etc. KF kairosfocus

It seems to be that there is confusion here between two different usages of "truth". The first refers to what we assume to be an objective reality that exists beyond our subjective awareness and is not dependent on our perception of it for its continued existence. The nature of that reality is what we call truth. The second usage refers to the verbal theories, hypotheses, accounts, narratives, etc, we construct to describe and explain what we perceive of that reality. Truth here refers to the extent to which those claims are observed to correspond to what they purport to describe and/or explain. In this context truth can clearly be a property of sentences. Seversky

"truth is a property of sentences" No truth for young kids? PM1, I submit you aren't as smart as you think you are. Andrew asauber

BA77 and Querius explained it well.

And I would add that subjective conscious experience of a ‘truth’ ALWAYS precedes articulation in words, and/or the writing of sentences, of that truth.

Yes - the truth exists first. It cannot be the property of sentences. The truth is one of the "universals" - an immaterial concept. Material things are always specified and individualized. They are particular things. This coffee cup. This electron. This dolphin. This solar system. But universals are not limited to particular things. Like "a triangle". It's any three sided geometric shape.

Clearly, there is something about the color blue, i.e. the ‘truth of blue’, the ‘qualia’ of blue, that simply refuses to ever be reduced to mere words, no matter how many words we may use to describe the color blue to someone else.

We can see it with great works of art. The painting shows the love between mother and child. We know it is "true to life" but we cannot explain it by words.

“Truth” can be represented, and/or spoken, in sentences, but “Truth” can never be completely reduced to sentences. There is something about our ability to perceive, and appreciate, the ‘truth’ of something that forever escapes being completely articulated in words.

That's where we get our spiritual intuition also. Silver Asiatic

PM1

I guess I’m just baffled by the sheer dismissal at the idea that truth is a property of sentences.

I didn't give just a dismissal of that idea, but rather I explained very briefly that truth is at the foundation of reality. Truth is an indicator of "what is". Truth indicates what is real. So, truth is aligned with being. To say that truth is a property of sentences is to say that truth follows after the existence of sentences. A sentence exists, like "we're out of milk" and a component (property) of that sentence would be (in that view) that it is true or false. In this view, somehow, truth as a concept would exist only if we have sentences. But we have to take our understanding to a higher level. A sentence cannot exist without the concept of truth. One does not need language to recognize that something exists. We make many immediate choices all day long without using any language. The light is green, we can go. We just see the truth of that while driving. Is that a pothole or just a patch of black on the road? - we see (not speak or verbally think) the truth and move accordingly. Children who cannot form sentences recognize the truth of things against what is false. So, the reason it is absurd to think that truth follows upon the existence of sentences is that we need the concept of truth in order to even know what a sentence is. Truth is the concept by which we distinguish sentences from non-sentences - it cannot be a property of that which it defines. The truth must exist before any sentences exist. The first truth is that something exists. Then we are aware of truth by the statement "error exists". These are transcendent values. They are not products of material entities. Truth is the foundation of reason - it's at the basis of our rational mind. It starts with the Law of Identity. "Something exists. That is real." From that first statement we know (without the use of any sentences) "all else is not that thing". "We are out of milk". We know that because the refrigerator is empty. In one glance, we can see there is no milk there. We can see other things "we have eggs, we have salad dressing ..." We need not create sentences to understand the truth of what we see in the fridge. We see and understand.

When someone asserts “we’re out of milk” and in fact we’re not out of milk, haven’t they said something false? Isn’t it the sentence “we’re out of milk” that’s false, if in fact we’re not out of milk?

Yes, that's right. But the sentence follows after the reality that we observed. We saw the truth and then put it into a sentence. The truth is not a property of the sentence. We knew the truth before we had any sentence at all. From that, we already knew that the idea (even without stating it by a sentence) that we could drink some milk would be false.

It seems odd to me how someone would say that it is “absurd and irrational” to say that the sentence “we’re out of milk” is false, if it’s the case that we’re not out of milk, and that if we were indeed out of milk, then the sentence “we’re out of milk” would be true. This just seems like mere common sense to me, a far cry from “absurd and irrational”.

First of all, the use of common sense in this case is a good example of the rational intuition we have built into us (thus we are evidence of Design) - so yes, you're right. What you said is clear. We observe the reality. There's no milk. That's the truth. Then, anything that would deny that reality would be false. But putting these concepts into sentences would be a secondary condition. We already knew the truth before we needed the sentence. Silver Asiatic

Among many other false claims, PMI made this false claim, “Truth is a property of sentences”. Querius replied, "What we typically consider “truth” is by nature a multidimensional abstraction dependent on definition and context." And I would add that subjective conscious experience of a 'truth' ALWAYS precedes articulation in words, and/or the writing of sentences, of that truth. Querius used the example of the color blue to illustrate the fact that the 'truth of blue' cannot be reduced to mere words, and/or sentences, that describe blue.,, Specifically Querius asked, "Can you imagine blue without thinking of the word, “blue”. That question leads directly into 'hard problem of consciousness'. (i.e. qualia) Specifically, as Frank Jackson made clear in his philosophical argument ‘Mary’s Room’, no amount of scientific and physical examination on Mary’s part, (i.e. no amount of articulation of words on Mary's part), will ever reveal to Mary exactly what the inner subjective conscious experience, i.e. qualia, of the color blue actually is until Mary actually experiences what the color blue is for herself. (i.e. Mary will never know the 'truth of blue' from words alone, but only from experiencing the color blue first hand.)

11.2.1 Qualia - Perception (“The Hard Problem” ) Philosopher of the mind Frank Jackson imagined a thought experiment —Mary’s Room— to explain qualia and why it is such an intractable problem for science. The problem identified is referred to as the knowledge argument. Here is the description of the thought experiment: “Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like 'red', 'blue', and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence 'The sky is blue'. (...) What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?" Jackson believed that Mary did learn something new: she learned what it was like to experience color. "It seems just obvious that she will learn something about the world and our visual experience of it. But then is it inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had all the physical information. Ergo there is more to have than that, and Physicalism [materialism] is false.” https://www.urantia.org/study/seminar-presentations/is-there-design-in-nature#Emergence

Clearly, there is something about the color blue, i.e. the 'truth of blue', the 'qualia' of blue, that simply refuses to ever be reduced to mere words, no matter how many words we may use to describe the color blue to someone else. In short, the 'truth of blue' must be based, first and foremost, in consciousness, in 'qualia', and therefore PMI's claim that “Truth is a property of sentences" is a false claim. "Truth" must be, first and foremost, a property of an immaterial mind, i.e. of 'qualia'.

The Mind and Materialist Superstition – Michael Egnor – 2008 Six “conditions of mind” that are irreconcilable with materialism: – Excerpt: Intentionality,,, Qualia,,, Persistence of Self-Identity,,, Restricted Access,,, Incorrigibility,,, Free Will,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/11/the_mind_and_materialist_super013961.html Qualia Excerpt: Examples of qualia include the perceived sensation of pain of a headache, the taste of wine, as well as the redness of an evening sky. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

Although Darwinian materialists will often claim that consciousness is merely a 'neuronal illusion' (Coyne, Harris, Pinker, Dennett, etc.. etc..), Immaterial mind and/or consciousness, must be primary in any definition of reality we put forth. i.e. In any 'truth' that we may wish to articulate in words about reality. As Eugene Wigner explained, "The principal argument (against materialism) is that thought processes and consciousness are the primary concepts, that our knowledge of the external world is the content of our consciousness and that the consciousness, therefore, cannot be denied."

“The principal argument against materialism is not that illustrated in the last two sections: that it is incompatible with quantum theory. The principal argument is that thought processes and consciousness are the primary concepts, that our knowledge of the external world is the content of our consciousness and that the consciousness, therefore, cannot be denied. On the contrary, logically, the external world could be denied—though it is not very practical to do so. In the words of Niels Bohr, “The word consciousness, applied to ourselves as well as to others, is indispensable when dealing with the human situation.” In view of all this, one may well wonder how materialism, the doctrine that “life could be explained by sophisticated combinations of physical and chemical laws,” could so long be accepted by the majority of scientists." – Eugene Wigner, Remarks on the Mind-Body Question, pp 167-177

And as J.P. Moreland explained, “It is because we, (as souls), have a faculty of (immaterial) mind that we are capable of having concepts, thoughts, beliefs,,, things like that.”,,,

“It is because we, (as souls), have a faculty of (immaterial) mind that we are capable of having concepts, thoughts, beliefs,,, things like that.”,,, – J.P. Moreland – Is the Soul Immortal? https://youtu.be/QzbdT0GxAdk?t=209

So thus again, 'truth' must be, first and foremost, a property of consciousness, i.e. of the immaterial mind, and cannot be a primary 'property of sentences' as PMI tried to claim. "Truth" can be represented, and/or spoken, in sentences, but "Truth" can never be completely reduced to sentences. There is something about our ability to perceive, and appreciate, the 'truth' of something that forever escapes being completely articulated in words.

Dec. 2021 – Twenty Arguments For The Existence Of God – Peter Kreeft 11. The Argument from Truth This argument is closely related to the argument from consciousness. It comes mainly from Augustine. 1. Our limited minds can discover eternal truths about being. 2. Truth properly resides in a mind. 3. But the human mind is not eternal. 4. Therefore there must exist an eternal mind in which these truths reside. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/maori-creationism-is-okay-in-new-zealand-schools-objectors-could-be-booted-from-nzs-royal-society/#comment-741814

Verse:

John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

bornagain77

@82 I can imagine the color blue without mentally adding the linguistic tag, "and that's blue" -- but would I see it as blue if I didn't also the concept of blue? And would I have the concept of blue if I didn't know how to use the word "blue" (in English), "blau" (in German), etc? If I were a native speaker of Russian and had learned two different words for blue, would that affect my mental imagery? I guess I'm just baffled by the sheer dismissal at the idea that truth is a property of sentences. When someone asserts "we're out of milk" and in fact we're not out of milk, haven't they said something false? Isn't it the sentence "we're out of milk" that's false, if in fact we're not out of milk? It seems odd to me how someone would say that it is "absurd and irrational" to say that the sentence "we're out of milk" is false, if it's the case that we're not out of milk, and that if we were indeed out of milk, then the sentence "we're out of milk" would be true. This just seems like mere common sense to me, a far cry from "absurd and irrational". PyrrhoManiac1

@81

So tell me PMI, who should I listen to when it comes to the successful practice of modern science? Einstein and Feynman who have actually brought forth two of our most precisely tested theories ever in the history of science?, Or to some ‘armchair academic philosophers’ who are only theorizing about what it might take to make a good scientific theory?

Being good at doing something is different from being good at understanding what it is that you are doing. A point that was first made, I believe, by Plato. Feynman is famous for having quipped, "philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds". This overlooks the possibility that ornithology could indeed be quite useful to birds, if they could understand it.

all of science is dependent on essential Theistic, even Judeo-Christian, presuppositions, not on ‘naturalistic’ presuppositions.

As a matter of historical fact, sure, the scientific revolution in the West was shaped by Christianized Greco-Roman metaphysics. (Amos Funkenstein's Theology and the Scientific Imagination is very insightful text about this process.) But does it follow that therefore science could not have developed independent of those background assumptions? It seems plausible that something like modern science would have developed in China, even if it never had contact with Western scholars. In any event, it doesn't seem at all plausible to me that the intelligibility of a social practice necessarily depends on the cultural background assumptions at the time that social practice was developed. That's like saying that since capitalism took shape in Protestant societies (as per Max Weber's thesis), that no Protestant society could ever adopt capitalism. Clearly that's daft.

assuming ‘methodological naturalism’ to be true as the supposed ‘ground rule’ for doing science, as atheists insist we do, (R. Lewontin, etc..), instead of providing a fruitful heuristic for doing science, actually drives science itself into catastrophic epistemological failure

This appears to rely on the assumption that a naturalistic philosophy of science is impossible. In fact, a naturalistic philosophy of science was worked out in great detail almost a hundred years ago, by a philosopher named John Dewey.

atheistic materialist (who believes Darwinian evolution to be true) is forced to claim that he is merely a ‘neuronal illusion’ (Coyne, Dennett, etc..), who has the illusion of free will (Harris, Coyne), who has unreliable, (i.e. illusory), beliefs about reality (Plantinga), who has illusory perceptions of reality (Hoffman), who, since he has no real time empirical evidence substantiating his grandiose claims, must make up illusory “just so stories” with the illusory, and impotent, ‘designer substitute’ of natural selection (Behe, Gould, Sternberg), so as to ‘explain away’ the appearance (i.e. the illusion) of design (Crick, Dawkins), and who also must make up illusory meanings and purposes for his life since the hopelessness of the nihilism inherent in his atheistic worldview is simply too much for him to bear (Weikart), and who must also hold morality to be subjective and illusory since he has rejected God (Craig, Kreeft). Who, since beauty cannot be grounded within his materialistic worldview, must also hold beauty itself to be illusory (Darwin). Bottom line, nothing is truly real in the atheist’s worldview, least of all, beauty, morality, meaning and purposes for life.,,,

All of those criticisms are spurious. They rely on outrageously bad misreadings of what the philosophers and scientists are saying. Sorry, but you've been duped. I'd explain how and why each of these claims is false, but since you'd dismiss anything else I say as "incoherent nonsense," I'd rather not waste my energy. PyrrhoManiac1

PyrrhoManiac1 @80,

So here’s the question — and it by no means a simple one! — do we think in language? Or do we think in some other medium which we then translate into language when we express our thoughts?

That’s easy. I generally think in concepts and images that I later have to articulate. Here’s a simple example from a conversation with a mathematician. “Do four non-colinear, non-coplanar points always define a unique sphere?” I quickly answered “yes,” based on my imagining three non-colinear points (defining a plane), and a single point off that plane. I imagined the three points forming a unique circle on which rested a soap bubble with a point located on the soap bubble. By moving the point in space, I “saw” the soap bubble changing size regardless of where the point went off the plane. I did this immediately and wordlessly. Can you do this, too? I believe that musicians, artists, athletes, and chess masters also practice their arts wordlessly. I agree with Silver Asiatic @78 when he states

The idea “Truth is a property of sentences” is absurd and irrational.

Philosophically, I’d quote the Wisdom of Lao Tzu that “A dao that may be spoken is not the enduring Dao.” Along the lines of Bornagain77, Yeshua of Nazareth was quoted as saying “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” He was also described as the incarnation of the Logos (word, message, reason, plan, concept) that was with God and was God from the beginning, which is very deep. What we typically consider “truth” is by nature a multidimensional abstraction dependent on definition and context. “Is the sky blue?” - No, it ranges from black gray to multiple shades of blue to white. - No, it’s always black on the moon. - No, it depends on where the observer is located. - No, it depends on what day in history. - No, it depends on the color of my sunglasses. - No, it usually varies depending on where one is looking (horizon, mottled with clouds, etc.) - It depends on the whether the measured wavelength of the light on a spectrometer is between 450 and 495 nm. And so on. Can you imagine blue without thinking of the word, “blue”? -Q Querius

PMI, trying to blow smoke for his preferred, ahem, 'theory', once again flails about and states, "That’s because Lakatos was skeptical that there was any demarcation criterion for ever being able to determine whether a theory counted as “scientific” or not." It is interesting to note that many 'academic atheists', and particularly Darwinists, (as PMI is doing now), will often scoff at Popper’s criteria of falsification (since Darwin's theory has been experimentally falsified time and time again, see post 73), yet Richard Feynman himself, primary founder of Quantum Electrodynamics (QED), thought that falsifiability was the ‘key to science’. i.e. “If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.”

“Now I’m going to discuss how we would look for a new law. In general, we look for a new law by the following process. First, we guess it (audience laughter), no, don’t laugh, that’s the truth. Then we compute the consequences of the guess, to see what, if this is right, if this law we guess is right, to see what it would imply and then we compare the computation results to nature or we say compare to experiment or experience, compare it directly with observations to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are who made the guess, or what his name is … If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.” – Richard Feynman – Richard Feynman Teaches you the Scientific Method https://fs.blog/2009/12/mental-model-scientific-method/

Shoot, even Einstein himself also held falsification in great esteem

“The scientific theorist is not to be envied. For Nature, or more precisely experiment, is an inexorable and not very friendly judge of his work. It never says “Yes” to a theory. In the most favorable cases it says “Maybe,” and in the great majority of cases simply “No.” If an experiment agrees with a theory it means for the latter “Maybe,” and if it does not agree it means “No.” – Einstein

Moreover, if any theories have ever survived repeated attempts at empirical falsification, and came out the other end with flying colors, Feynman’s theory of Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) and Einstein’s theories of relativity are those theories.

“On the other hand, I disagree that Darwin’s theory is as `solid as any explanation in science.; Disagree? I regard the claim as preposterous. Quantum electrodynamics is accurate to thirteen or so decimal places; so, too, general relativity. A leaf trembling in the wrong way would suffice to shatter either theory. What can Darwinian theory offer in comparison?” – Berlinski, D., “A Scientific Scandal?: David Berlinski & Critics,” Commentary, July 8, 2003 The Most Precisely Tested Theory in the History of Science – May 5, 2011 Excerpt: So, which of the two (general relativity or QED) is The Most Precisely Tested Theory in the History of Science? It’s a little tough to quantify a title like that, but I think relativity can claim to have tested the smallest effects. Things like the aluminum ion clock experiments showing shifts in the rate of a clock set moving at a few m/s, or raised by a foot, measure relativistic shifts of a few parts in 10^16. That is, if one clock ticks 10,000,000,000,000,000 times, the other ticks 9,999,999,999,999,999 times. That’s an impressively tiny effect, but the measured value is in good agreement with the predictions of relativity. In the end, though, I have to give the nod to QED, because while the absolute effects in relativity may be smaller, the precision of the measurements in QED is more impressive. Experimental tests of relativity measure tiny shifts, but to only a few decimal places. Experimental tests of QED measure small shifts, but to an absurd number of decimal places. The most impressive of these is the “anomalous magnetic moment of the electron,” expressed is terms of a number g whose best measured value is: g/2 = 1.001 159 652 180 73 (28) Depending on how you want to count it, that’s either 11 or 14 digits of precision (the value you would expect without QED is exactly 1, so in some sense, the shift really starts with the first non-zero decimal place), which is just incredible. And QED correctly predicts all those decimal places (at least to within the measurement uncertainty, given by the two digits in parentheses at the end of that). http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2011/05/05/the-most-precisely-tested-theo/

So tell me PMI, who should I listen to when it comes to the successful practice of modern science? Einstein and Feynman who have actually brought forth two of our most precisely tested theories ever in the history of science?, Or to some 'armchair academic philosophers' who are only theorizing about what it might take to make a good scientific theory? For me, the answer is not even close. For you, well, that is another matter entirely. Moreover, in regards to having a coherent overarching philosophy/worldview for 'doing science' in the first place, atheistic naturalism, i.e. 'methodological naturalism', is simply a non-starter as a coherent overarching philosophy/worldview in which to base the practice of modern science.,,, In fact, all of science is dependent on essential Theistic, even Judeo-Christian, presuppositions, not on 'naturalistic' presuppositions.

“Science in its modern form arose in the Western civilization alone, among all the cultures of the world”, because only the Christian West possessed the necessary “intellectual presuppositions”. – Ian Barbour Presupposition 1: The contingency of nature “In 1277, the Etienne Tempier, the bishop of Paris, writing with support of Pope John XXI, condemned “necessarian theology” and 219 separate theses influenced by Greek philosophy about what God could and couldn’t do.”,, “The order in nature could have been otherwise (therefore) the job of the natural philosopher, (i.e. scientist), was not to ask what God must have done but (to ask) what God actually did.” Presupposition 2: The intelligibility of nature “Modern science was inspired by the conviction that the universe is the product of a rational mind who designed it to be understood and who (also) designed the human mind to understand it.” (i.e. human exceptionalism), “God created us in his own image so that we could share in his own thoughts” – Johannes Kepler Presupposition 3: Human Fallibility “Humans are vulnerable to self-deception, flights of fancy, and jumping to conclusions.”, (i.e. original sin), Scientists must therefore employ “systematic experimental methods.” (Francis Bacon’s championing of inductive reasoning over and above the deductive reasoning of the ancient Greeks) – Stephen Meyer on Intelligent Design and The Return of the God Hypothesis – Hoover Institution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_8PPO-cAlA

Moreover, casting aside those Judeo-Christian presuppositions, and assuming 'methodological naturalism' to be true as the supposed 'ground rule' for doing science, as atheists insist we do, (R. Lewontin, etc..), instead of providing a fruitful heuristic for doing science, actually drives science itself into catastrophic epistemological failure,

Basically, because of reductive materialism (and/or methodological naturalism), the atheistic materialist (who believes Darwinian evolution to be true) is forced to claim that he is merely a ‘neuronal illusion’ (Coyne, Dennett, etc..), who has the illusion of free will (Harris, Coyne), who has unreliable, (i.e. illusory), beliefs about reality (Plantinga), who has illusory perceptions of reality (Hoffman), who, since he has no real time empirical evidence substantiating his grandiose claims, must make up illusory “just so stories” with the illusory, and impotent, ‘designer substitute’ of natural selection (Behe, Gould, Sternberg), so as to ‘explain away’ the appearance (i.e. the illusion) of design (Crick, Dawkins), and who also must make up illusory meanings and purposes for his life since the hopelessness of the nihilism inherent in his atheistic worldview is simply too much for him to bear (Weikart), and who must also hold morality to be subjective and illusory since he has rejected God (Craig, Kreeft). Who, since beauty cannot be grounded within his materialistic worldview, must also hold beauty itself to be illusory (Darwin). Bottom line, nothing is truly real in the atheist’s worldview, least of all, beauty, morality, meaning and purposes for life.,,, April 18, 2021 - Defense of each claim https://uncommondescent.com/philosophy/philosopher-mary-midgeley-1919-2018-on-scientism/#comment-728595

Thus, although the Darwinian Atheist and/or Methodological Naturalist may firmly, and falsely, believe that he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for naturalistic explanations over and above God as a viable explanation), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists themselves are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to. It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science, indeed more antagonistic to reality itself, than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.

2 Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

There was a bunch more incoherent nonsense that PMI rambled on about trying to protect his evolutionary worldview, but alas, I only have so much time in the day to deal with such stubborn insanity from evolutionists. bornagain77

@76

You do also realize that Lakatos himself, one of your quote-unquote “favorite philosopher(s) of science”, stated that “nobody to date has yet found a demarcation criterion according to which Darwin can be described as scientific” do you not?

That's because Lakatos was skeptical that there was any demarcation criterion for ever being able to determine whether a theory counted as "scientific" or not. Nothing to do with Darwinism per se. If you want to argue that evolutionary theory is a degenerating research program, then make your own argument, but to the best of my knowledge, Lakatos did not think that evolutionary theory was an example of a degenerating research program.

As Ernst Mayr himself conceded, “In biology, as several other people have shown, and I totally agree with them, there are no natural laws in biology corresponding to the natural laws of the physical sciences.”

So what? Lots of sciences don't have laws. What are the laws of psychology, or sociology? Heck, I'm suspicious of laws even in physics -- have you read Cartwright's How the Laws of Physics Lie. She argues that laws are just simplifying descriptions of causal regularities. I don't know enough philosophy of physics to evaluate it, but it doesn't seem bonkers to me. More to the point, laws do not explain anything. You need a model of the causal regularities that explains why the laws hold, to the extent that they do. The Boyle-Charles law tells you how to predict the pressure of a gas if you know the volume and temperature, but it doesn't tell you why those variables are precisely correlated. To do that, you need the kinetic theory of gases. Likewise, the inverse-square law tells you how to calculate the gravitational attraction between two masses, but it doesn't tell you why that happens -- to do that, you need a theory of how mass distorts the geometry of space-time. So the absence of laws in biology doesn't bother me -- what we need, and what we have, is a causal model of what tends to happen to populations of organisms over time as environmental conditions change.

But alas PMI, it is ALWAYS an immaterial mind that judges whether a ‘abstract’ sentence written on a piece of paper may correspond to reality or not, i.e. whether it is true or not.

Immaterial minds have nothing to do with it. I mean, you can insist on it all you want, but insisting on it doesn't make it true. @78

Truth is the means of recognizing “what is”. Something exists. Sentences are a by-product of that.

I defer to Aquinas: veritas est adaequatio intellect et res. Truth is the correspondence of intellect and reality. To grasp that something exists involves the intellect's awareness of that existence. So here's the question -- and it by no means a simple one! -- do we think in language? Or do we think in some other medium which we then translate into language when we express our thoughts? If we always think in language, then our true thoughts are true sentences -- even if only said to oneself. Or consider an example of a nonlinguistic animal. My cats can recognize the sound of the door being opened, or the food can being opened. But would it make sense to say "my cat believed that I wasn't home, and then realized that I was, and then realized that it had had a false belief?" I'm not sure that cats can have beliefs -- let alone false ones -- in the absence of a language that allows them to represent themselves as standing or as failing to stand in relation to the world. So while they can have knowledge, it's not a "justified true belief" kind of knowledge. PyrrhoManiac1

Yes Silver Asiatic it is, besides being absurd, the height of irony that an evolutionist, of all people, would try to claim that, "Truth is a property of sentences”. For crying out loud, the entire debate between ID and evolution boils down to the fact that unguided Darwinian processes can't account for the origin of information, i.e. can't even account for the origin of a simple sentence. In fact, this short sentence, "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" is calculated by Winston Ewert, in this following video at the 10 minute mark, to contain 1000 bits of algorithmic specified complexity, (i.e. functional information), and thus to exceed the Universal Probability Bound (UPB) of 500 bits set by Dr. William Dembski

Proposed Information Metric: Conditional Kolmogorov Complexity - Winston Ewert - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm3mm3ofAYU?

Of further note:

Answering an Objection: “You Can’t Measure Intelligent Design” Casey Luskin - July 16, 2021 Excerpt: Of course 10^150 represents the “probability bound” for the entire universe, but when we consider the number of elementary particles and time available for different zones of the universe, we obtain the following probability bounds, as well as the information content they represent, measured in bits: Universal probability bound: 10^-150 (or 498 bits) Galactic probability bound: 10^-96 (or 319 bits) Solar System probability bound: 10^-85 (or 282 bits) Earth probability bound: 10^-70 (or 232 bits) https://evolutionnews.org/2021/07/answering-an-objection-you-cant-measure-intelligent-design/ Dilbert - infinite monkeys - cartoon http://dilbert.com/fast/2013-12-12/ That Time Someone Actually Tested The Infinite Monkey Theorem (And Who Came Up With It) February 8, 2020 Excerpt: Regardless of who first put monkeys and typewriters together, the idea has captured the imaginations of many. And in recent times, a few brave researchers have attempted to test the hypothesis and see if they could get monkeys to produce Shakespearean works. For instance, in 2003, lecturers and students with the University of Plymouth’s Institute of Digital Arts and Technology (i-DAT) finagled a £2,000 (roughly $3,665 today) grant from the school’s Arts Council to place a single computer and keyboard in the Sulawesi crested macaques enclosure at the Paignton Zoo. After a month of monkeying around with the computer, Gum, Heather, Mistletoe, Elmo, Holly and Rowan (the macaques) had produced five pages of nonsense text, but otherwise seemed to limit their screen time to urinating and/or defecating on the computer until such time as it stopped working. According to i-DAT’s director, the project was successful though since, being live-streamed on the internet, it “provided very stimulating and fascinating viewing.” Moving on from there to the digital space, a program simulating such a random monkey, this time who could not poop and pee on the computer, was successfully able to create the first 19 letters of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, “VALENTINE. Cease to…” It only took 42,162,500,000 billion billion monkey-years for the virtual monkey to do it. In a similar experiment, The Monkey Shakespeare Simulator, after a mere 2,737,850 million billion billion billion monkey-years the virtual monkey produced part of a line from Henry IV: “RUMOUR. Open your ears…” Another attempt was made beginning on August 21, 2011. These virtual “monkeys” were actually millions of instances of a computer program running on Amazon’s SC2 cloud, with the program set up to spew out random sequences of nine characters. After only one month, they had (sort of) produced A Lover’s Complaint and were just shy of completing the entirety of Shakespeare’s other works. There was a catch, however. Once a “monkey” spewed out a nine-letter sequence that appeared in one of the works, that sequence was considered complete. According to mathematics professor, Dr Ian Steward, this was the only practical way to do the experiment since, “to type up the complete works in the correct order without mistakes would take much longer than the age of the universe.” http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2020/02/time-someone-actually-tested-infinite-monkey-theorem/

As Stephen Meyer has repeatedly noted, every time we find meaningful information, and trace that information to its source, we invariably come to an intelligent mind, an 'author', who created that information, not to some unguided material process,,, (or to infinite monkeys banging away on infinite typewriters :) )

Information Enigma (Where did the information in life come from?) - - Stephen Meyer - Doug Axe - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA-FcnLsF1g

Verses and quote

Acts 3:15 You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. "The most fundamental definition of reality is not matter or energy, but information–and it is the processing of information that lies at the root of all physical, biological, economic, and social phenomena." - Vlatko Vedral - Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and CQT (Centre for Quantum Technologies) at the National University of Singapore, and a Fellow of Wolfson College

bornagain77

BA77 @ 76 & 77 - brilliant. Its amazing to see the detailed references and citations you have at your fingertips. The idea “Truth is a property of sentences” is absurd and irrational. You can't have sentences without truth. Truth is not a property - it is foundational. Truth is the means of recognizing "what is". Something exists. Sentences are a by-product of that. Anyway, great response. Silver Asiatic

,,, Despite Darwinists constantly speaking as if their theory is on par with, say, general relativity and quantum electrodynamics, there simply is no physical and/or natural ‘law’ within the known universe that we can possibly measure in laboratory, (and thus provide a foundation for Darwinists to ever build a realistic mathematical model upon),,, As Brian Miller recently noted, “To fully comprehend the critique, one simply needs to imagine attempting to craft an evolutionary barometer that measures the selection pressure driving one organism to transform into something different (e.g., fish into an amphibian). The fact that no such instrument could be constructed highlights the fictitious nature of such mystical forces”

Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection Has Left a Legacy of Confusion over Biological Adaptation Brian Miller – September 20, 2021 Excerpt: Evolutionary biologist Robert Reid stated: “Indeed the language of neo-Darwinism is so careless that the words ‘divine plan’ can be substituted for ‘selection pressure’ in any popular work in the biological literature without the slightest disruption in the logical flow of argument.” Robert Reid, Biological Emergences: Evolution by Natural Experiment, PP. 37-38 To fully comprehend the critique, one simply needs to imagine attempting to craft an evolutionary barometer that measures the selection pressure driving one organism to transform into something different (e.g., fish into an amphibian). The fact that no such instrument could be constructed highlights the fictitious nature of such mystical forces. https://evolutionnews.org/2021/09/darwins-theory-of-natural-selection-has-left-a-legacy-of-confusion-over-biological-adaptation/

Moreover, the second law of thermodynamics, entropy, a law with great mathematical explanatory power in science directly, or almost directly, contradicts the primary Darwinian claim that greater and greater levels of functional complexity can easily be had and/or ‘naturally selected’ for over long periods of time. Indeed, entropy’s main claim is that, over long periods of time, everything in the universe will eventually decay into simpler and simpler states until what is termed thermodynamic equilibrium is finally reached.

Why Tornados Running Backward do not Violate the Second Law – Granville Sewell Professor of Mathematics at University of Texas – El Paso – May 2012 – article with video Excerpt: So, how does the spontaneous rearrangement of matter on a rocky, barren, planet into human brains and spaceships and jet airplanes and nuclear power plants and libraries full of science texts and novels, and supercomputers running partial differential equation solving software , represent a less obvious or less spectacular violation of the second law—or at least of the fundamental natural principle behind this law—than tornados turning rubble into houses and cars? Can anyone even imagine a more spectacular violation? – per uncommon decent

This, (despite their angry denial to the contrary), is NOT a minor problem for Darwinists. As Eddington himself explained, “if your theory is found to be against the Second Law of Thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it to collapse in deepest humiliation.”

“The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the Second Law of Thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it to collapse in deepest humiliation.” – Arthur Eddington, New Pathways in Science

And whereas Darwinian evolution has no known 'law' to appeal to so as to build a realistic mathematical model, and to establish itself as a proper, testable, ‘hard’ science, Intelligent Design does not suffer from such an embarrassing disconnect from physical reality. In other words, Intelligent Design can appeal directly to ‘the laws of conservation of information’ (Dembski, Marks, etc..) in order to establish itself as a proper, testable, and rigorous ‘hard’ science.

Conservation of information, evolution, etc – Sept. 30, 2014 Excerpt: Kurt Gödel’s logical objection to Darwinian evolution: “The formation in geological time of the human body by the laws of physics (or any other laws of similar nature), starting from a random distribution of elementary particles and the field is as unlikely as the separation of the atmosphere into its components. The complexity of the living things has to be present within the material [from which they are derived] or in the laws [governing their formation].” Gödel – As quoted in H. Wang. “On `computabilism’ and physicalism: Some Problems.” in Nature’s Imagination, J. Cornwall, Ed, pp.161-189, Oxford University Press (1995). Gödel’s argument is that if evolution is unfolding from an initial state by mathematical laws of physics, it cannot generate any information not inherent from the start – and in his view, neither the primaeval environment nor the laws are information-rich enough.,,, More recently this led him (Dembski) to postulate a Law of Conservation of Information, or actually to consolidate the idea, first put forward by Nobel-prizewinner Peter Medawar in the 1980s. Medawar had shown, as others before him, that in mathematical and computational operations, no new information can be created, but new findings are always implicit in the original starting points – laws and axioms.,,, http://potiphar.jongarvey.co.uk/2014/09/30/conservation-of-information-evolution-etc/ Evolutionary Computing: The Invisible Hand of Intelligence – June 17, 2015 Excerpt: William Dembski and Robert Marks have shown that no evolutionary algorithm is superior to blind search — unless information is added from an intelligent cause, which means it is not, in the Darwinian sense, an evolutionary algorithm after all. This mathematically proven law, based on the accepted No Free Lunch Theorems, seems to be lost on the champions of evolutionary computing. Researchers keep confusing an evolutionary algorithm (a form of artificial selection) with “natural evolution.” ,,, ,, Any internally generated information is conserved or degraded by the law of Conservation of Information.,,, What Marks and Dembski (mathematically) prove is as scientifically valid and relevant as Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem in mathematics. You can’t prove a system of mathematics from within the system, and you can’t derive an information-rich pattern from within the pattern.,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/06/evolutionary_co_1096931.html

In fact, there is a 10 million dollar prize being offered for the first person who can empirically falsify the theory of Intelligent Design,

Evolution 2.0 Prize: Unprecedented $10 Million Offered To Replicate Cellular Evolution – Jan 2020 Excerpt: An incentive prize ten times the size of the Nobel – believed to be the largest single award ever in basic science – is being offered to the person or team solving the largest mystery in history: how genetic code inside cells got there, and how cells intentionally self-organize, communicate, then purposely adapt. This $10 million challenge, the Evolution 2.0 Prize can be found at http://www.evo2.org.,, The Evolution 2.0 Prize is designed by Chicago engineer-turned-marketer-turned-business consultant Perry Marshall and his A-list team of partners. They include top genetic experts from Harvard and Oxford, plus a diverse group of investors from private banking, healthcare and biotechnology, software, real estate, publishing and more. “A germ resisting antibiotics does more programming in 12 minutes than a team of Google engineers can do in 12 days,” said Marshall. “One blade of grass is 10,000 years ahead of any computer. If a single firm in Silicon Valley held a fraction of the secrets of this natural code inside a single cell, they’d set the NASDAQ on fire. Organisms self-edit and reprogram in real time in a way that dwarfs anything manmade. If we crack this, it will literally change the course of aging, disease, A.I. and humanity.” https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/evolution-2-0-prize-unprecedented-10-million-offered-to-replicate-cellular-evolution-875038146.html

Verse:

1 Thessalonians 5:21 but test all things. Hold fast to what is good.

The shallow 'hand waving' style of PMI's apologetics for Darwinism goes on when he claims, "Truth is a property of sentences".,,, But alas PMI, it is ALWAYS an immaterial mind that judges whether a 'abstract' sentence written on a piece of paper may correspond to reality or not, i.e. whether it is true or not. Thus, in reality, the ability to discern what is 'truth' is to be considered, first and foremost, a property of an immaterial mind that reads a 'abstract' sentence and decides whether that sentence is true or not, and not the property of the 'abstract' sentences themselves that are written on paper. (i.e. Moreover, why should mathematical 'scribbles' written on a piece of paper in front of me have the audacity to correspond to some truth that is on the other side of the universe? (i.e. the 'miracle' of the applicability of mathematics to the universe, Wigner)

Dec. 2021 - Twenty Arguments For The Existence Of God – Peter Kreeft 11. The Argument from Truth This argument is closely related to the argument from consciousness. It comes mainly from Augustine. 1. Our limited minds can discover eternal truths about being. 2. Truth properly resides in a mind. 3. But the human mind is not eternal. 4. Therefore there must exist an eternal mind in which these truths reside. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/maori-creationism-is-okay-in-new-zealand-schools-objectors-could-be-booted-from-nzs-royal-society/#comment-741814

Verse:

John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

bornagain77

So PMI, since you have, basically, entirely rejected Popper falsification criteria, (and since you have also failed to give me any falsification criteria by which Darwinism, and/or atheism, can be falsified by empirical observation (and have thus, in principle, rejected the entire scientific method itself), you are, in effect, saying that there is no empirical evidence that can falsify evolution? Well, golly geee whiz, thanks for agreeing with my overall point that Darwinism simply is not falsifiable by experimental evidence. :) As to epicycles being added to protect a theory from empirical falsification (Lakatos), you do also realize that describes Darwinian atheism to a tee do you not?

Here’s That Algae Study That Decouples Phylogeny and Competition – June 17, 2014 Excerpt: “With each new absurdity another new complicated just-so story is woven into evolutionary theory. As Lakatos explained, some theories simply are not falsifiable. But as a result they sacrifice realism and parsimony.” – Cornelius Hunter http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2014/06/heres-that-algae-study-that-decouples.html

You do also realize that Lakatos himself, one of your quote-unquote "favorite philosopher(s) of science", stated that “nobody to date has yet found a demarcation criterion according to which Darwin can be described as scientific” do you not?

In his 1973 LSE Scientific Method Lecture 1[12] he (Lakatos) also claimed that “nobody to date has yet found a demarcation criterion according to which Darwin can be described as scientific”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Lakatos#Darwin.27s_theory Does Evolution have a Hard Core ? Excerpt: “ people think that there are goodies and baddies among scientific theories, and once you have defined a demarcation criterion. you should divide all your theories between the two groups. You would end up. for example, with a goodies list including Copernicus’s (Theory1), Galileo’s (T2), Kepler’s (T3), Newton’s (T4) … and Einstein’s (T5), along with but this is just my supposition Darwin’s (T6). Let me just anticipate that nobody to date has yet found a demarcation criterion according to which Darwin can be described as scientific, but this is exactly what we are looking for.” – Imre Lakatos (November 9, 1922 – February 2, 1974) a philosopher of mathematics and science, quote was as stated in 1973 LSE Scientific Method Lecture So basically, the demarcation problem is a fun mind-game philosophers enjoy playing, but when they realize the implications regarding the theory of evolution, they quickly back off… http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/cosmos/philo/hardcore_pg.htm

So PMI, even Lakatos himself, one of your favorite philosophers of science, was apparently disenchanted with the endless, evidence free, 'just-so story' telling of Darwinists. Moreover, the main reason that Darwinian evolution does not have a scientific ‘hard core’, i.e. the reason that “nobody to date has yet found a demarcation criterion according to which Darwin can be described as scientific” (Lakatos), is simply because Darwinian evolution has no mathematical model to test against. As Dr. Robert Marks states “Hard sciences are built on foundations of mathematics or definitive simulations. ,,, there exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. According to our current understanding, there never will be.,,,”

“There exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. Hard sciences are built on foundations of mathematics or definitive simulations. Examples include electromagnetics, Newtonian mechanics, geophysics, relativity, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, optics, and many areas in biology. Those hoping to establish Darwinian evolution as a hard science with a model have either failed or inadvertently cheated. These models contain guidance mechanisms to land the airplane squarely on the target runway despite stochastic wind gusts. Not only can the guiding assistance be specifically identified in each proposed evolution model, its contribution to the success can be measured, in bits, as active information.,,,”,,, “there exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. According to our current understanding, there never will be.,,,” – Robert J. Marks II – Top Ten Questions and Objections to ‘Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics’ – June 12, 2017 https://evolutionnews.org/2017/06/top-ten-questions-and-objections-to-introduction-to-evolutionary-informatics/

And the primary reason why nobody has ever been able to build a realistic mathematical model of Darwinian evolution for us to test against is simply because there is no ‘law’ for mathematicians and physicists to ever build a realistic mathematical model upon: As Ernst Mayr himself conceded, “In biology, as several other people have shown, and I totally agree with them, there are no natural laws in biology corresponding to the natural laws of the physical sciences.”

The Evolution of Ernst: Interview with Ernst Mayr – 2004 (page 2 of 14) Excerpt: biology (Darwinian Evolution) differs from the physical sciences in that in the physical sciences, all theories, I don’t know exceptions so I think it’s probably a safe statement, all theories are based somehow or other on natural laws. In biology, as several other people have shown, and I totally agree with them, there are no natural laws in biology corresponding to the natural laws of the physical sciences. ,,, And so that’s what I do in this book. I show that the theoretical basis, you might call it, or I prefer to call it the philosophy of biology, has a totally different basis than the theories of physics. https://www.scientificamerican.com/media/pdf/0004D8E1-178C-10EB-978C83414B7F012C.pdf

In the following article, Roger Highfield makes much the same observation that Ernst Mayr did and states, ,,, “Whatever the case, those universal truths—’laws’—that physicists and chemists all rely upon appear relatively absent from biology.”

WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? Evolution is True – Roger Highfield – January 2014 Excerpt: If evolutionary biologists are really Seekers of the Truth, they need to focus more on finding the mathematical regularities of biology, following in the giant footsteps of Sewall Wright, JBS Haldane, Ronald Fisher and so on. ,,, Whatever the case, those universal truths—’laws’—that physicists and chemists all rely upon appear relatively absent from biology. Little seems to have changed from a decade ago when the late and great John Maynard Smith wrote a chapter on evolutionary game theory for a book on the most powerful equations of science: his contribution did not include a single equation. http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25468

Professor Murray Eden of MIT, in a paper entitled “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory” stated that “the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws—physical, physico-chemical, and biological.”

“It is our contention that if ‘random’ is given a serious and crucial interpretation from a probabilistic point of view, the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws—physical, physico-chemical, and biological.” Murray Eden, “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory,” Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, editors Paul S. Moorhead and Martin M. Kaplan, June 1967, p. 109. https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~christos/evol/compevol_files/Wistar-Eden-1.pdf

Despite Darwinists constantly speaking as if their theory is on par with, say, general relativity and quantum electrodynamics,,,

“On the other hand, I disagree that Darwin’s theory is as `solid as any explanation in science.; Disagree? I regard the claim as preposterous. Quantum electrodynamics is accurate to thirteen or so decimal places; so, too, general relativity. A leaf trembling in the wrong way would suffice to shatter either theory. What can Darwinian theory offer in comparison?” - Berlinski, D., “A Scientific Scandal?: David Berlinski & Critics,” Commentary, July 8, 2003

bornagain77