The opportunity is open and it is time to seize the day. So, I think a comment in a discussion with GP and Dionisio should be headlined:
>>My observation is those who are closed minded, indoctrinated and hostile will simply flare up in anger at anything that threatens their favoured evolutionary materialistic scientism or their comfortable fellow-traveller views calibrated not to get them in hot water with the domineering atheists.
The issue then is, how well cultured they are. The cultured play at subtle rhetorical games pivoting on evasions and how could you concern trolling which provide more or less respectable “good cop” cover. Then come the “bad cops” who try to run riot, bully, intimidate, slander and stalk.
I say, toss over the whole rotten rhetorical game-board.
The whole lot are corrupt, at minimum as enablers.
Science seeks to accurately observe, describe, explain, predict and enable us to act effectively in our world. So truth-seeking is critical to science. Therefore we have to respect findings of related disciplines that support that work. Therefore, we must anchor on empirical observations and recognise that theories are inferences to the best current explanation and are inherently provisional. They remain [live] theories so long as it is credible that they may be substantially true and no further. They are inherently provisional; subject to empirical testing and the requirement of well-tested empirical reliability.
This holds for experimental sciences. It holds doubly for observational sciences and doubly again for scientific investigations of origins, where that deep past cannot itself be observed; we see traces and try to reconstruct and date past circumstances back to origins. All of this successively degrades strength of epistemic stance of relevant theories.
All of this, the a priori materialist activists and their enablers will not acknowledge and have repeatedly tried to turn into accusations of stealth Creationism, “religion” inserting itself into the temple of science and the like.
Such have media power and influence in governance up to a lot of state power.
But that is different from having a good case, or being credible on the merits.
If you cannot acknowledge the patent truth about the epistemological status of science i/l/o the pessimistic induction, you have no genuine credibility, period.
That is settled.
Going further, evolutionary materialistic scientism is self-referentially incoherent, it is amoral and open to nihilism. Indeed, by implying grand delusion of mind, it is profoundly anti-rational. Those who are its agit prop street or Internet cannon fodder are dupes of the ruthless and nihilistic. For them, some measure of sympathy is in order. Those who are ruthless manipulators and deceivers who wish to impose a crooked yardstick as the standard to assess what is straight/true, accurate and upright must now be named as enemies of sound civilisation and treated with stern resolve.
So, I don’t give 50c for their opinions once exposed.
Yes, the fact that for nigh on 70 years we have known that ALPHABETIC TEXT IN CODE lies in the heart of cell based life is utterly blatant. The fact that these still want to argue that extensive text wrote itself out of lucky noise incrementally filtered for performance, over sixty years past 1953 now goes to character.
Crick’s March 19, 1953 letterProtein Synthesis (HT: Wiki Media)DNA is a string digital data structure which stores coded information in the specific sequence of bases, G/C/A/T, both for protein coding and for regulation/controlYockey’s analysis of protein synthesis as a code-based communication processThe Genetic code uses three-letter codons to specify the sequence of AA’s in proteins and specifying start/stop, and using six bits per AAThe Smithsonian’s tree of life model, note the root in OOL
But design of life from OOL up to us is not the whole story.
The Big Bang timeline — a world with a beginning
We also find that on evidence of the sol system and the wider cosmos, the observed universe was set up for that life.
Barnes: “What if we tweaked just two of the fundamental constants? This figure shows what the universe would look like if the strength of the strong nuclear force (which holds atoms together) and the value of the fine-structure constant (which represents the strength of the electromagnetic force between elementary particles) were higher or lower than they are in this universe. The small, white sliver represents where life can use all the complexity of chemistry and the energy of stars. Within that region, the small “x” marks the spot where those constants are set in our own universe.” (HT: New Atlantis)
Design, design not of life that could be effected in a molecular nanotech lab.
Design and construction of a universe.
Involving vast power, super-intellect and capability.
Design beyond and antecedent to cosmos.
Where, logic of being points to a finitely remote necessary being world-root capable of being the causal source of our world.
A world that happens to contain reasoning, knowing, responsibly and rationally free, morally governed creatures.
Time, to provide real leadership in rethinking origins across the board.
And that is why I do not shun to put the whole picture on the table, including as above:
The situation is, that we have inferred on evidence and reasoning a system of analysis termed cosmology. This contains a considerable mathematical apparatus.
In that apparatus we find many specific values and no indication that there are such as they must be as say pi is an exact value tied to the nature of circles.
What is not fixed is at least potentially contingent per the logic of being and the concept of possible worlds, so it is worth exploring on that contingency. And yes, here we are looking at possible worlds and the logic of structure and quantity as connected to such.
A reasonable exercise at the triple-point border between Science, Philosophy and Mathematics.
What emerged was astonishing: the values we see as a cluster are astonishingly fine tuned in ways that set our observed world at a fine-tuned operating point in parameter and structure of laws space.
This is remarkable already.
John Leslie observed a further matter that is also just as interesting:
“One striking thing about the fine tuning is that a force strength or a particle mass often appears to require accurate tuning for several reasons at once. Look at electromagnetism. Electromagnetism seems to require tuning for there to be any clear-cut distinction between matter and radiation; for stars to burn neither too fast nor too slowly for life’s requirements; for protons to be stable; for complex chemistry to be possible; for chemical changes not to be extremely sluggish; and for carbon synthesis inside stars (carbon being quite probably crucial to life). Universes all obeying the same fundamental laws could still differ in the strengths of their physical forces, as was explained earlier, and random variations in electromagnetism from universe to universe might then ensure that it took on any particular strength sooner or later. Yet how could they possibly account for the fact that the same one strength satisfied many potentially conflicting requirements, each of them a requirement for impressively accurate tuning?” [Our Place in the Cosmos, The Royal Institute of Philosophy, 1998 (courtesy Wayback Machine) Emphases added.]
AND:
“. . . the need for such explanations does not depend on any estimate of how many universes would be observer-permitting, out of the entire field of possible universes. Claiming that our universe is ‘fine tuned for observers’, we base our claim on how life’s evolution would apparently have been rendered utterly impossible by comparatively minor alterations in physical force strengths, elementary particle masses and so forth. There is no need for us to ask whether very great alterations in these affairs would have rendered it fully possible once more, let alone whether physical worlds conforming to very different laws could have been observer-permitting without being in any way fine tuned. Here it can be useful to think of a fly on a wall, surrounded by an empty region. A bullet hits the fly Two explanations suggest themselves. Perhaps many bullets are hitting the wall or perhaps a marksman fired the bullet. There is no need to ask whether distant areas of the wall, or other quite different walls, are covered with flies so that more or less any bullet striking there would have hit one. The important point is that the local area contains just the one fly.”
Such is of course amenable to computer sims.
And now we see something that is confronting us with a well-known characteristic of design: multiple components synthesised into a coherent whole that requires the mutual adaptation of the parts to work.
Where, the alternative, oh we are just one bit out of a vast, quasi-infinite multiverse has many, many peculiarities and challenges. Not least, if you are doing that while wearing a lab coat you need to provide empirical observational data on the multiverse. That seems to be missing in fact and on many ways of thought in principle too.
If you slip across the border into highly mathematical philosophy [and much of this stuff is actually clearly across that border], you are looking at the point that in phil you cannot rule out any serious worldview option without a legitimate comparative difficulties process and something like fatal incoherence.
So, which is it:
A: in science we see per obvious contingency of the mathematics, fine tuning and cannot find credible evidence of a multiverse
OR
B: we look at the issues freely, and cannot rule out all that phil would bring to the table, including much broader worldviews issues . . . .
PS: If one suggests that the parameters we see are locked by higher order laws, so that our cosmos is explained on necessity, that simply postpones the contingency one level. And a fine tuning super-law is itself at least as fine tuned as what it specifies . . . .
[M]y view is we need to look at both together, especially on the significance of a cosmos set up to produce H, He, O and C as first four elements in abundance, with N close by: stars, periodic table, water, organic chem, proteins. Bring in terrestrial planets in circumstellar and spiral arm galactic habitable zones with privileged planet fine tuning, and we are looking at setting the table for biological life based on C-chemistry, aqueous medium cells
It is time for grand synthesis and a challenge to a dying civilisation: stop, turn back from the unstable, crumbling brink of the precipice. Before it collapses, precipitating us into a dark age of horrors worse than anything seen before.
Remember, nukes, bio weapons EMP and other weapons of mass devastation are now in play.>>
So, now, it is time. Time to think again. END
Comments
Why is it that Darwinists and atheists act as if science belongs to them and only to them by some unspoken right?FourFaces
January 24, 2018
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What do you mean "leadership"?
Since not observable, the origins are scientifically unknowable. Like it or not, the only possible perspective is through Religion, and that's why Darwinism/materialism are themselves religions. This is the fact that needs to be clarified to materialists.
The other thing is that Darwinism is demonstrably fake science: http://nonlin.org/evolution/
1. “Natura non facit saltum” (gradualism) is illogical and contrary to everything we know about the absolute discreteness of organisms.
2. “Randomness” is unknowable and never a source of creativity
3. “Natural Selection” – everything is natural and all selection is done exclusively by living organisms (Intelligent Selectors)
4. “Blind, mindless, unguided and purposeless” qualifiers are utterly unsupported by evidence
5. Selection and Survival are one and the same – the selected survive and the surviving have been selected
6. “Fit” as in “survival of the fittest” cannot be measured except as “survival” (circular logic)
7. “Four or five”…or LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor) is illogical as, in a generic “primordial soup” scenario, if one happens then many happen but “spontaneous generation” has failed up to now
8. There are no examples whatsoever of “Arising” as in “Arising of Everything” and “Life vs. Entropy”
9. “Benefit” and “optimization” are anthropic concepts incompatible with the mechanistic universe envisioned by Darwin and his followers
10. One must presume evolution to see evolutionary links in the fossil record – this “proof” is circular logic. Conversely, organisms’ resemblance is typical for common designed entities.
11. "Species/speciation" is a failed concept.
Keep it simple!Nonlin.org
January 24, 2018
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Seversky:
For example, if we take what astronomy and cosmology have revealed about this Universe, such as its unimaginable size and almost unfathomable time, to argue that it has all been fine-tuned for one animal species out of millions occupying a tiny speck of a planet orbiting an unremarkable star out of billions in one galaxy out of billions looks faintly absurd.
No, it's fine tuned for all of the organisms and I doubt very much that we are alone in the universe. Also it isn't that it is fine tuned for us. It's that it's fine tuned to allow for our existence.ET
January 24, 2018
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KF @17
I'm not sure what you really mean by this comment but if I were you, I'd make absolutely certain that the manipulation and corruption wouldn't affect me even in the slightest way...J-Mac
January 24, 2018
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It is time for ID to provide real leadership in rethinking origins across the board
By all means, go right ahead. Nobody's stopping you.
I have to say, though, a lot of this reads like complaining because science isn't coming up with observations and theories that you like or, more specifically, that are consonant with your religious presuppositions.
For example, if we take what astronomy and cosmology have revealed about this Universe, such as its unimaginable size and almost unfathomable time, to argue that it has all been fine-tuned for one animal species out of millions occupying a tiny speck of a planet orbiting an unremarkable star out of billions in one galaxy out of billions looks faintly absurd. Good luck reconciling that with Man as the pinnacle of God's creation.Seversky
January 24, 2018
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OldAndrew,
I don’t believe in demons interfering with our experiments. That’s X-Files stuff, like UFOs and chemicals that spontaneously begin creating complex machines and codes to reproduce and increase their own complexity.
I don't believe in it either, because I don't believe demons exist (although I can't be sure).
However, some do believe they exist, and even claim to have witnessed demonic activity.
Fortunately it seems to occur infrequently to never, so it's not a serious concern for scientists.daveS
January 24, 2018
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KF,
DS, do you not see that such a view undermines rationality itself, becoming self-referentially incoherent?
No, I don't see that it's incoherent.daveS
January 24, 2018
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J-Mac, do you realise that the problem starts with willfully corrupting our understanding of what science is and achieves? Do you realise where else that sort of manipulation can lead? KFkairosfocus
January 24, 2018
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DS, do you not see that such a view undermines rationality itself, becoming self-referentially incoherent? Is this the best you can do in the teeth of the challenge of alphabetic text in the heart of life and that of the challenge of the evident fine tuning of our observed cosmos? That is in itself inadvertently revealing. KFkairosfocus
January 24, 2018
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daveS
Would you agree that we have to assume that we actually are able to obtain information about the real world by conducting experiments?
Yes, we obtain information about the real world by conducting experiments. But this may or may not help us draw conclusions when it comes to past events.
In some cases it does. For example, one might experiment and determine that starting a fire with one substance leaves one sort of pattern, while using another substance leaves a different pattern. We can't go back and watch the fire start in a building, but through experimentation we can determine what is or is not consistent with a given output.
When it comes to the origin of life the origin of anything new in any living thing, no experimentation has really shed light in favor of spontaneous organization, Darwinian evolution, or intelligent design. We can experiment all day long to understand how things function and reproduce, but it hasn't revealed why there is life instead of no life or birds instead of never any birds.
What we have accomplished through experimentation tells us that some factors tend to break down complex molecules which is inconsistent with speculation that they may have formed unassisted and begun looking for ways to encode and transcode themselves before the next drop of water hit the puddle and destroyed them.
I don't believe in demons interfering with our experiments. That's X-Files stuff, like UFOs and chemicals that spontaneously begin creating complex machines and codes to reproduce and increase their own complexity.
Is that why OOL experiments reveal nothing but implausibility, because demons are interfering with them?OldAndrew
January 24, 2018
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KF,
And so to infinite regress of general hyperskepticism and self-referential undermining of rationality.
Well, you've parsed it out in self-referential manner, but you haven't shown that it is unlikely. Clearly it would have undesirable consequences, and in fact you and I both believe we are not being continually tricked by demons.
But you do believe that demons capable of deceiving us exist, right? And that hopefully they will leave us alone at critical junctures.
Suppose you are performing a cold fusion experiment using a benchtop apparatus such as this one.
You must believe that no demon will 'stick his foot in your laboratory door' and disturb your experiment, thereby producing a string of spectacular positive results which will only lead to your embarrassment when the device fails to work in front of a large audience at the Royal Society.daveS
January 24, 2018
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It is time for ID to provide real leadership in rethinking origins across the board
How do you see ID doing it exactly?
The vast majority don't want to hear anything about it...
I once asked a relative of mine why he produces crappy movies... He told me that the great majority want to watch crappy movies...
Could ID fall a victim of the same trends in our society today?J-Mac
January 24, 2018
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DS,
are we really going down this line?
Okay, here's what I am saying: any Plato's cave like world is a level-one grand delusion.
Instantly, our senses and reasoning are suspect, so is our suspicion of a Plato's cave like world of shadow shows a level two delusion?
Oop, is this now the level three?
And so to infinite regress of general hyperskepticism and self-referential undermining of rationality.
No, any grand delusion game is absurd.
Instead, we start with, we cannot be deluded on the bare fact of consciousness.
Similarly, for other key self-evident truths as we have gone over for weeks and as we saw all sorts of noise, fuss and row over.
We have good reason to know we access a world to moral certainty and that ordinary and extended facts of observation are credible. Where of course SET's help keep us on an even keel.
All of this is utterly distinct from observing traces of the remote past. We are not in a position to directly inspect that past and must be extra cautious on the strength of our conclusions.
Now, kindly explain to us, do we or do we not observe textual coded information in the living cell? Does or does that not come as a trace of origins of the cell?
Next, do we or do we not have a body of cosmological observations that have led to cosmological theories with laws, parameters etc? Is or is it not possible to explore as an analysis a perturbation exercise on the values etc? what do they suggest?
And more?
KFkairosfocus
January 24, 2018
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daveS:
I don’t know how you would determine experimentally whether some process is guided or not.
So what does that tell you about evolutionism? Revised question:
Does anyone know what experiments to conduct to determine if any bacterial flagellum evolved starting from populations that never had one?
I would think that if said starting populations were under some environmental pressure and the formation of the adaptation was a straight-away process*, that would be an indication the populations had it within them to produce such an adaptation. It was guided/ directed to happen.
On the other hand I would expect unguided processes to be hit or miss with way more misses than hits. A hit being a "beneficial" mutation that may or may not have anything to do with flagella.
*ORFans being formed and expressed; genes being duplicated and re-purposedET
January 24, 2018
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As I understand it, most Christians (not that it would be limited to them, but in the reference to demons they would be the first group to come to mind) would not argue that every or even most things observed in the natural world are a result of demonic or paranormal activity.
If you think of the natural laws of the universe as basically being similar (just for sake of analogy) to how a computer program works(which is not totally unreasonable given the generally binary properties of subatomic particles), then if you were God, it does seem a more logical way of setting things up than having to rely billions and billions of angels to keep everything working every second.
Quite frankly, even if you do believe in angels and/or demons, it does not do away with the fact that the natural laws of the universe are established by God to be basically consistent and reliable, and therefore testable (Jer 5:22, Job 38:1-14, Prov 8:22-30).
Even so, from a biblical standpoint of angels/demons, although from time to time there may be manifestations that may not seem to agree with the laws of nature, at least as we understand them, they seem to be generally more interested in influencing human agents to do good/bad than in sadistically altering the natural laws of the universe "just for kicks."outside_observer
January 24, 2018
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KF,
First, any scheme of thought that implies grand, general delusion or that invokes possibility of such delusion at pleasure is patently absurd.
So, there is no need for “assumptions” to the contrary; that is self-evident.
Do you mean it's self-evident that supernatural entities, such as demons, generally do not interfere with our experiments? And that it's patently absurd to propose so?daveS
January 24, 2018
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DS,
First, any scheme of thought that implies grand, general delusion or that invokes possibility of such delusion at pleasure is patently absurd.
So, there is no need for "assumptions" to the contrary; that is self-evident.
Linked, that error exists is also self-evident so we must be aware that empirical investigations are inherently not in the realm of absolute undeniable truth. However we can often have objective warrant to the point of moral certainty. The car veering out of line and heading your way is not the subject of debates on veridicality of sense-experiences, you JUMP, pronto. (And, unfortunately, there was an incident here today, looks like heart attack at the wheel.)
Such holds whether we contrive the circumstances (experimental studies) or we observe what happens by itself (observational studies). The advantage of the former is a better ability to test ranges of variables, leading to more intensive and thorough testing.
As for detecting intelligently driven contrivance or configuration, we all know that such is routinely done. For instance archaeologists distinguish "archaeology" from "natural," quite matter of factly. Likewise, forensic science routinely detects signs of design in detecting crimes.
Similarly, we have massively documented and highly reliable signs of cause by intelligently directed configuration on a trillion-member evidence base of directly observed cause. That base tells us that functionally specific complex organisation and associated information is a sign of design as cause.
The problem is not the tested reliability of such FSCO/I, but that it points to cases in the world of life. Where, in the heart of the living cell we have copious quantities of alphabetic, meaningful, coded information, i.e. TEXT. That text is being used in molecular scale execution machinery that carries out the work of the living cell.
Indeed, so much is this so that in recent years we have had genetic engineering emerge as a field of practice. Even more recently, experimenters have added two more bases to the natural four.
After nigh on seventy years, it is time we faced the messages in the cell and acknowledged their implications.
KFkairosfocus
January 24, 2018
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ET,
I don't know how you would determine experimentally whether some process is guided or not.daveS
January 24, 2018
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daveS:
Would you agree that we have to assume that we actually are able to obtain information about the real world by conducting experiments? And therefore we must assume that, at least some of the time, demons are not interfering with our lab equipment (not to mention our minds)?
Of course. Does anyone know what experiments to conduct to determine if evolution by means of blind and mindless processes produced any bacterial flagellum? And if no one knows what information have we obtained about evolutionism?ET
January 24, 2018
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KF,
Can we therefore agree that:
Sounds reasonable.
Would you agree that we have to assume that we actually are able to obtain information about the real world by conducting experiments? And therefore we must assume that, at least some of the time, demons are not interfering with our lab equipment (not to mention our minds)?daveS
January 24, 2018
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DS & RodW:
Pardon, but a stance that starts from setting the scientific house in order in the teeth of notoriously deeply entrenched ideological manipulation and imposition is -- regrettably -- fully justified.
And no, frank statement of necessary truth after long exchanges is not argument by insult, that is out of order.
We have an ideology blocking reasonable progress and that needs to be plainly stated. Then, corrected; and, frankly, apologised for.
If you doubt me, let me bring to the table first Richard Lewontin, yes the same:
. . . to put a correct view of the universe into people's heads [==> as in, "we" have cornered the market on truth, warrant and knowledge, making "our" "consensus" the yardstick of truth . . . ] we must first get an incorrect view out [--> as in, if you disagree with "us" of the secularist elite you are wrong, irrational and so dangerous you must be stopped, even at the price of manipulative indoctrination of hoi polloi] . . . the problem is to get them [= hoi polloi] to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations,
[ --> as in, to think in terms of ethical theism is to be delusional, justifying "our" elitist and establishment-controlling interventions of power to "fix" the widespread mental disease]
and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, Science, as the only begetter of truth
[--> NB: this is a knowledge claim about knowledge and its possible sources, i.e. it is a claim in philosophy not science; it is thus self-refuting]
. . . . To Sagan, as to all but a few other scientists [--> "we" are the dominant elites], it is self-evident
[--> actually, science and its knowledge claims are plainly not immediately and necessarily true on pain of absurdity, to one who understands them; this is another logical error, begging the question , confused for real self-evidence; whereby a claim shows itself not just true but true on pain of patent absurdity if one tries to deny it . . . and in fact it is evolutionary materialism that is readily shown to be self-refuting]
that the practices of science provide the surest method of putting us in contact with physical reality [--> = all of reality to the evolutionary materialist], and that, in contrast, the demon-haunted world rests on a set of beliefs and behaviors that fail every reasonable test [--> i.e. an assertion that tellingly reveals a hostile mindset, not a warranted claim] . . . .
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us [= the evo-mat establishment] to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes [--> another major begging of the question . . . ] to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute [--> i.e. here we see the fallacious, indoctrinated, ideological, closed mind . . . ], for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door . . . [--> irreconcilable hostility to ethical theism, already caricatured as believing delusionally in imaginary demons]. [Lewontin, Billions and billions of Demons, NYRB Jan 1997,cf. here. And, if you imagine this is "quote-mined" I invite you to read the fuller annotated citation here.]
Is that idiosyncratic, never mind he is speaking for an elite?
No, here is the US Science Teacher's Board in July 2000, on much the same grounds, speaking to education but with direct implications for how science is to be carried forward in our time:
PREAMBLE: All those involved with science teaching and learning should have a common, accurate view of the nature of science. Science is characterized by the systematic gathering of information through various forms of direct and indirect observations and the testing of this information by methods including, but not limited to, experimentation. The principal product of science is knowledge in the form of naturalistic concepts and the laws and theories related to those concepts [--> ideological imposition of a priori evolutionary materialistic scientism, aka natural-ISM; this is of course self-falsifying at the outset] . . . .
[S]cience, along with its methods, explanations and generalizations, must be the sole focus of instruction in science classes to the exclusion of all non-scientific or pseudoscientific [--> loaded word that cannot be properly backed up due to failure of demarcation arguments] methods, explanations [--> declaration of intent to censor instructional content], generalizations and products [--> declaration of intent to ideologically censor education materials] . . . .
Although no single universal step-by-step scientific method captures the complexity of doing science, a number of shared values and perspectives characterize a scientific approach to understanding nature. Among these are a demand for naturalistic explanations supported by empirical evidence that are, at least in principle, testable against the natural world. Other shared elements include observations, rational argument, inference, skepticism, peer review and replicability of work [--> undermined by the question-begging ideological imposition and associated censorship] . . . .
Science, by definition, is limited to naturalistic methods and explanations [--> ideological imposition of a loaded definition] and, as such, is precluded from using supernatural elements [--> question-begging false dichotomy, the proper contrast for empirical investigations is the natural (chance and/or necessity) vs the ART-ificial, through design . . . cf UD's weak argument correctives 17 - 19, here] in the production of scientific knowledge.
Them's fighting words, I am sorry. Teachers have a particular duty to truth, and so ideological imposition like this is an outright betrayal of the trust of the educator.
It goes further, here now is the US national Academy of Science in the 2008 form of a pamphlet on teaching evolution:
In science, explanations must be based on naturally occurring phenomena [--> accurate and reliable, confirmed observation, description and sound analysis]. Natural [--> reliably empirically observed] causes [--> add: meet Newton's vera causa, actually observed cause test and so] are, in principle, reproducible and therefore can be checked independently by others. If explanations are based on purported forces that are outside of nature,
[--> the false choice, natural vs supernatural, when the real and readily empirically testable choice since Plato in the Laws Bk X c 360 BC has been natural ( = blind chance and/or mechanical necessity) vs the ART-ificial working by intelligently directed configuration, aka design. This is a case of irresponsible red herring distraction from the real issue to a convenient strawman creationism target set up to be soaked with the ad hominems of anti-scientific motivation and underlying between the lines insinuations of right wing theocratic "christofascist" impositions, etc]
scientists have no way of either confirming or disproving those explanations. Any scientific explanation has to be testable — there must be possible observational consequences that could support the idea but also ones that could refute it.
[--> observe a case of configuration-based specific functionality beyond 500 - 1,000 bits of complex organisation emerging by blind chance and/or mechanical necessity and the design inference principle would collapse. the strawman tactic is used in a context where it is easy to see that on a trillion observation base, such FSCO/I is an empirically reliable sign of intelligently directed configuration, AKA design, as key causal factor]
Unless a proposed explanation is framed in a way that some observational evidence could potentially count against it, that explanation cannot be subjected to scientific testing. [Science, Evolution and Creationism, 2008, p. 10. Emphases added.]
I trust my strike and correct makes the matter plain enough.
No, we are not dealing here with reasonable responsible discussion and that must first be corrected if we are to make ANY progress.
Can we therefore agree that:
Science seeks to accurately observe, describe, explain, predict and enable us to act effectively in our world. So truth-seeking is critical to science. Therefore we have to respect findings of related disciplines that support that work. Therefore, we must anchor on empirical observations and recognise that theories are inferences to the best current explanation and are inherently provisional. They remain [live] theories so long as it is credible that they may be substantially true and no further. They are inherently provisional; subject to empirical testing and the requirement of well-tested empirical reliability.
This holds for experimental sciences. It holds doubly for observational sciences and doubly again for scientific investigations of origins, where that deep past cannot itself be observed; we see traces and try to reconstruct and date past circumstances back to origins. All of this successively degrades strength of epistemic stance of relevant theories.
If we cannot, we are simply going to go through one more round of evasion tactics, selective hyperskepticism and frankly enabling for the sort of abusive behaviour we have routinely seen in the penumbra of animus sites and the cyber stalkers and with on the ground stalkers.
Enough is enough.
KFkairosfocus
January 24, 2018
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Darwinism is a perversion of science. It's not about the use of the scientific method to reveal truth but to use a claim to its authority to establish an ethos allowing those who hold it to "do as thy will" whether in government, business or one's sex life.
It's the establishment of a creation myth.
It's a bad thing.tribune7
January 24, 2018
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I say, toss over the whole rotten rhetorical game-board.
I'll say, and I've said this before here and in other places, that you need to have disciplined and methodically argued discussions about limited topics to move forward. You wont get anywhere with these drive-by-insult discussions. To their credit both GPuccio and Dionisio have initiated such discussions and tried to keep them going but they eventually fizzle out. Maybe its just the medium that doesn't permit it.
One thing I've thought about is having a referee who would make sure ideas and questions (within reason) from each side were addressed before moving on.RodW
January 24, 2018
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I read the title of the post and initially thought it was calling for ID proponents to take clear positions on issues such as common descent, young vs old Earth, where and when modern humans arose, &c. That would be a positive development, IMHO.
But I was wrong: "That challenges us to rethink worldviews, ideologies and cultural agendas."
sighdaveS
January 24, 2018
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It is time for ID to provide real leadership in rethinking origins across the boardkairosfocus
>>My observation is those who are closed minded, indoctrinated and hostile will simply flare up in anger at anything that threatens their favoured evolutionary materialistic scientism or their comfortable fellow-traveller views calibrated not to get them in hot water with the domineering atheists.
