When the real expert doesn’t really know. Here’s an interesting approach to the question from a political scientist and a business prof:
To better understand the problem of communicating scientific knowledge to the policymakers and the public, it helps to divide the difficulty of questions into three levels. Level-one questions are those that anyone with even modest expertise or access to a search engine can answer. Some political economy questions in this category include, for example, ‘Will price controls cause shortages?’ or ‘Are incumbent governments likely to do better in elections when the economy is performing well?’
Level-two questions are those where only the most qualified experts have something to say. Some political and economic questions that we believe fall into this category are ‘Can we design algorithms to assign medical residents to programmes in an effective way?’ (yes) and ‘Do term limits improve governing performance?’ (no). These are questions for which substantial peer-reviewed scientific literature provides answers, and they can be addressed by what the American philosopher Thomas Kuhn in 1962 called ‘normal science’: that is, within existing paradigms of scholarly knowledge.
Level-three questions are those where even the best experts don’t know the answers, such as whether the death penalty lowers violent crime, or what interest rates will be in two years. Such questions are either not answerable given current research paradigms, or just more fundamentally unanswerable. Much of the scientific enterprise itself consists of distinguishing between when further research or information will make questions answerable or not.
Andrew Little and Matthew Backus, “Confidence tricks” at Aeon
In the last six month, thinking in particular about COVID-19, most of us have heard just about all the contradictory certainty we can stand.
The Voice of Science increasingly sounds like crows squabbling over a biscuit.
So all those theologians who are so certain of God’s existence and that they know His will, they aren’t really experts?
Seversky
Focus on what is known. Has speciation ever been observed and replicated, which is the requirement for any theory to exist. Much like the multiverse, it has never been witnessed, which means there is no evidence to support the hypothesis.
Remove the humanization of God and think of God as something with greater intellect than humans can ever hope to understand. Something put the laws of physics into place, since they could not come around by chance.
The article asks if we can do better. Well, we DID do better in earlier decades. In the 1930s, media and government publications treated expertise with appropriate skepticism, and government-paid experts were generally humble and self-calibrating.
The official cult of expertise started sharply and observably in 1946 after FDR died, when Deepstate began reclaiming the territory it had lost. Physicists and doctors and psychiatrists were elevated to official positions, giving legally enforceable orders to all aspects of culture and economy and industry and science. Entertainment became lectures by official psychiatrists.
Seversky, the blind faith of a Darwinists, (i.e. certainty), in the power of unguided processes to produce the unfathomable complexity of life, far exceeds the blind faith of even the most radical suicide bomber.
For instance, Darwinists, without any evidence to support their belief, are absolutely certain that this evolved by accident:
BobRyan @ 2
Observing speciation depends on how species are defined. This has been a problem in biology for some time as has been pointed out here. There is a project to try and construct a comprehensive definition but that has yet to report. The fact remains that the evolution of new species in large animals may take hundreds of thousands of years, longer than human beings have been civilized, certainly far longer than the average human lifetime, so we cannot expect to observe such an event in real time. It has been observed in smaller creatures and plants, however.
As for hypotheses, remember that the existence of the neutrino wasn’t even suspected until discrepancies were observed between the results of certain tests and what was predicted by the standard model. Wolfgang Pauli proposed a particle called the neutrino that would account for the discrepancies but it took decades before the means to detect them were developed
Science is in part an interplay between theory and observation. A theory is still speculative until it is supported by observation but without a theory you don’t know what to look for in the way of evidence.
Personally, I’m not averse to the concept of some vast alien intellect but I think you will meet a lot of opposition from Christians to the idea of dehumanizing their God.
Sevresky @ 5
You state, “The fact remains that the evolution of new species in large animals may take hundreds of thousands of years, longer than human beings have been civilized, certainly far longer than the average human lifetime, so we cannot expect to observe such an event in real time. It has been observed in smaller creatures and plants, however.”
Speciation, meaning macro-evolution, one species becoming a distinct species with distinct genetics to separate it completely from the origin. That is how it is defined. Without pointing to adaptation, which is micro-evolution and the species remains genetically the same. When has macro, not micro, evolution been observed? Everything from e coli to the fruit fly remains genetically the same, no matter how long it has been watched. There was a 30 year study of e coli that came to an end not to long ago and all they found was e coli adapts and remains e coli. 30 years is the equivalent of 1,000,000 years.
Seversky @ 5
When you say, “Personally, I’m not averse to the concept of some vast alien intellect but I think you will meet a lot of opposition from Christians to the idea of dehumanizing their God.”
That is acceptance of ID.
Seversky comments,
Actually, it is impossible for Darwinian materialists to ever provide a comprehensive definition for the term species. And thus, by Seversky’s very own criteria of being able to accurately define what a species actually is before you can truly say that you have ‘observed’ speciation, then, by Seversky’s very own criteria, it necessarily follows that no Darwinist, nor anyone else, has ever truly observed speciation.
In fact, Charles Darwin himself admitted that he did not have a rigid definition for what the term ‘species’ actually meant when he stated that, “I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience.,,,”
That Darwinists have no realistic clue what the term species actually means should not surprising since the term ‘species’ itself is a immaterial categorization and/or definition that arises from the immaterial mind. That is to say, the definition of species itself cannot reduced to any possible reductive materialistic explanation of Darwinian evolution.
Darwinists ultimately seek to ‘scientifically’ explain everything in materialistic terms. i.e. Reductive materialism. And yet, if something is not composed of particles or does not have physical properties (e.g., length, mass, energy, momentum, orientation, position, etc), it is abstract, even ‘spiritual’.
Numbers, mathematics, logic, truth, distance, time, beauty, ugliness, species, person, information, etc.. etc.. all fall into that category of being an abstract property of the immaterial mind. It is amazing how many things fall into that ‘abstract’ category even though most everyone, including atheists, (“atheists” also happens to be an abstract term itself), swear that they exist physically.
Take for instance the abstract concept of species, The term species is an abstract property and/or definition of the immaterial mind that cannot possibly be reduced to any possible materialistic explanations. i.e. How much does the concept of species weigh? Does the concept ‘species’ weigh more in English or in Chinese? How long is the concept of species in millimeters? How fast does the concept go? Is the concept of species faster or slower than the speed of light? Is the concept of species positively or negatively charged? Or etc.. etc.. ?..
The concept of species simply has no physical properties that we can measure, and therefore the concept of species itself is forever beyond the scope of any possible reductive materialistic explanation.
As should be needless to say, the inability for the supposedly scientific theory of Darwinian materialism, (a supposedly scientific theory that seeks to explain the “Origin of Species” in the first place), to clearly define what a species actually is is a clear indication that that supposedly scientific theory cannot possibly be the proper ‘scientific’ explanation for the “Origin of Species” in the first place!
Whereas Darwinists cannot even provide a rigid ‘scientific’ definition of what a species actually is, on the other hand, normal people in general, and Christians in particular, have no problem whatsoever recognizing what a species actually is:
Thus since Darwinists have no hope, within their reductive materialistic framework, of ever providing a proper definition of what a species actually is, then, to repeat, it necessarily follows that Darwinian evolution cannot possibly be the proper scientific explanation that purportedly explains the “Origin of Species” in the first place.
Of related note, it should not be surprising to learn that the first classification scheme was develop by a Christian, Carolus Linnaeus. ,,, Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic foundation, simply lack any coherent basis from which to develop a proper classification scheme.
So again, since Darwinists have no hope, within their reductive materialistic framework, of ever providing a proper definition of what a species actually is, then it necessarily follows that Darwinian evolution cannot possibly be the proper scientific explanation that purportedly explains the “Origin of Species” in the first place.
Bornagain77: “In Aristotelian and Thomistic thought, each particular organism belongs to a certain universal class of things. Each individual shares a particular nature—or essence—and acts according to its nature. Squirrels act squirrelly and cats catty. We know with certainty that a squirrel is a squirrel because a crucial feature of human reason is its ability to abstract the universal nature from our sense experience of particular organisms.
Denial of True Species”
So . . . let me get this straight . . . are all non-swimming snakes the same species? By your criteria? How many species of trees are there? Flies? Butterflies? How about humans? I think if you compared yourself to a native of Papua New Guinea you would probably find many, many behavioural differences.
Sev, DV, later today, I will set up a separate thread on your challenge. Meanwhile, we need to clarify here that first, arguments gain persuasive power from appeals to emotion, credibility (esp of authorities), actual fact and logic producing warrant (if successful). Emotions are no stronger than accuracy of underlying perceptions, expectations [rights are not arbitrary impositions], judgements; no source or presenter is better than underlying facts, logic, warrant from these. So too, truth is accurate description of reality, which becomes knowledge through becoming warranted, credibly true, reliable belief. The personal involvement of actual belief does not relativise reasonable warrant, hence objective truth. Credibly true and so reliable is not a guarantee of absolute incorrigible truth in general, this is a soft, common use sense of knowledge. In that context, there are bodies of sound knowledge, partly easily accessible, partly highly technical though there needs to be public accountability on webs of warrant. Ideological impositions such as Lewontin’s and Sagan’s a priori materialism are not good grounds for warrant, a major issue in sciences. Where, the question of issues, risk and uncertainty come up thus prudence in decision, including that of warrant. In that context, there are many topics where fools rush in whilst actual experts fear to tread. And, treating the public like children in the face of high uncertainty with possibility of black swans and their relatives over the past several months was a case in point. In this context, ideologically driven selective hyperskepticism towards responsible, cumulative evidence has done incalculable damage. KF
PS: Linked:
And of course, Epictetus:
(This pulled a you must be logged in, logging in in another tab then doing back helped.)
JVL, strawman, genus-differentia leads to categorisation, snakes are vetebrates as opposed to acorn worms, or oak trees. At the same time various pythons, anacondas, boas, J’can Yellow snakes and J’can Red snakes (which last two IIRC are constrictors) are all different particular species. KF
PS: News https://iamajamaican.net/news/2015/07/massive-snake-found-in-montego-bay/
Kairosfocus: JVL, strawman
I was just asking questions so I could understand the criteria better.
At the same time various pythons, anacondas, boas, J’can Yellow snakes and J’can Red snakes (which last two IIRC are constrictors) are all different particular species.
But many of them have similar ‘snakey’ behaviours.
Well, could someone please give me a reference to the species definition that Bornagain77 was referring to with a lot of examples please?
Unguided evolution has nothing to account for the existence of snakes. So perhaps evos should start there.
ET:
Perhaps you can explain Bornagain77‘s idea of species with a bunch of examples. Is it the same as Baraminology?
Perhaps you should focus on your own position. It is incoherent and untestable. It needs your help.
ET: Perhaps you should focus on your own position. It is incoherent and untestable. It needs your help.
So you can’t or won’t help me to understand Bornagain77‘s position. You’re not required to.
Perhaps you should focus on your own position. It is incoherent and untestable. It needs your help.
What part of that don’t you understand? Worry about your own lame position. It still has nothing.
ET: Perhaps you should focus on your own position. It is incoherent and untestable. It needs your help.
You don’t have to go on and on if you can’t help explain what Bornagain77 was talking about. It’s cool.
What part of that don’t you understand? Worry about your own lame position. It still has nothing.
I would like to understand what Bornagain77‘s standard of a species is. I’d like to see it defined and spelled out with lots of examples. Is it that hard to provide those things?
That figures. Even JVL understands that his position is useless anti-science trope.
ET: That figures. Even JVL understands that his position is useless anti-science trope.
Trying to understand someone’s view is an admission your own is faulty? Really?
Seriously, you are not making sense today. I know you’re capable of better argumentation than that.
You don’t have to understand anyone else’s position if your position has the science and evidentiary support. You just present it and be done with it.
As I said, clearly you are daft.
ET: You don’t have to understand anyone else’s position if your position has the science and evidentiary support. You just present it and be done with it.
I like having conversations with people, even people I disagree with. Sometimes those are the most interesting. And they help you to re-examine your own views which is a very valuable thing. Anyway, why are you criticising that? What’s wrong with understanding another point of view?
As I said, clearly you are daft.
Whatever. I’ll just ignore you from now on and wait for Bornagain77 to respond for himself without your strange attempts to hijack the conversation.
You should come to a discussion PREPARED.
JVL at post 9, and as is typical of Darwinists, instead of addressing the irresolvable dilemma for Darwinian materialists for defining what a species actually is, as I laid out in post 8,
,,,, instead of addressing that irresolvable dilemma for Darwinian materialists, JVL instead, and again as is characteristic of Darwinists, decided to respond with, as Kf termed it, a ‘strawman’
Yet I, and I suppose JVL, immediately recognizes that not all non-swimming snakes are the same species. Nor do I, and I suppose JVL, have any trouble recognizing that not all tree, flies, and butterflies, are the same species. Nor do I, and I suppose JVL, have any trouble recognizing that a native of Papua New Guinea is clearly a member of the human species.
And again the reason that, and I suppose JVL, have no trouble immediately recognizing such clear distinctions for species is that the term species is an abstract property and/or definition of the immaterial mind that cannot possibly be reduced to any possible materialistic explanations. That is to say, that I, and I suppose JVL, have immaterial minds that can readily distinguish between different species.
The irresolvable dilemma, which JVL ignored, arises precisely when we try to force fit the immaterial concept of species into the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinists.
As I stated previously, “The concept of species simply has no physical properties that we can measure, and therefore the concept of species itself is forever beyond the scope of any possible reductive materialistic explanation.”
And as Logan Paul Gage stated in the reference I cited in post 8,
The insurmountable problems for the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinists do not stop just with their inability to define what the abstract concept of species might actually be in materialistic terms.
Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework, simply have no clue how any particular organism might achieve its particular form in the first place.
As Michael Denton noted, “despite the attraction of the (genetic) blueprint model there are no “simple linear chains of causal events that link genes to phenotypes” and “to date the form of no individual cell has been shown to be specified in detail in a genomic blueprint.”
And as Stephen Meyer noted, ‘you can mutate DNA indefinitely. 80 million years, 100 million years, til the cows come home. It doesn’t matter, because in the best case you are just going to find a new protein some place out there in that vast combinatorial sequence space. You are not, by mutating DNA alone, going to generate higher order structures that are necessary to building a body plan.’
Moreover, the failure of the reductive materialism of Darwinian evolution to be able to explain the basic form of any particular organism occurs at a very low level. Much lower than DNA itself.
In the following article entitled ‘Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics’, which studied the derivation of macroscopic properties from a complete microscopic description, the researchers remark that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, The researchers further commented that their findings challenge the reductionists’ point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.”
In fact, in order to explain how any organism might be able to achieve its basic form we are forced to appeal to a cause that is ‘outside of time and space. At about the 41:00 minute mark of the following video, Dr. Wells, using a branch of mathematics called category theory, demonstrates that, during embryological development, information must somehow be added to the developing embryo, ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method.
And indeed, advances in quantum biology which show quantum information to be ubiquitous within biological life ,,,
,,, And indeed, advances in quantum biology which show quantum information to be ubiquitous within biological life, now force us to appeal to a beyond space and time cause in order to an adequate causal account for how any organism might achieve its basic form.
As the following paper entitled “Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory” stated, “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”
Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework, simply have no beyond space and time cause that they can appeal so as to be able to explain the non-local quantum coherence and/or entanglement of the cell. Whereas Christians readily do have a beyond space and time cause that they can appeal to. As Colossians 1:17 states, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
And as John 1:4 states
One final note, it is also important to realize that quantum information is conserved. As the following article states, In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed.
The implication of finding ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, and ‘conserved’, quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every important biomolecule in our bodies, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious.
That pleasant implication, of course, being the fact that we now have very strong empirical evidence suggesting that we do indeed have an eternal soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies. As Stuart Hameroff states in the following article, “the quantum information,,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”
Verse:
Bornagain77:
I am very much aware of your arguments against unguided evolution. You’ve said nothing new here. I was hoping you’d tell me more about the other notion of species you referenced in a previous reply. But I guess you don’t want to for some reason. I was guessing you were referring to something akin to essentialism or baraminology but that’ll just have to be my assumption without further clarification from you.
Never mind. I guess.
JVL states,
Sorry I could not be more entertaining for you. But then again, I could care less if my posts entertain. you.
My point all along has been to show that the reductive materialistic foundation of Darwinian evolution simply has no place for the immaterial concept of species. In fact, as Logan Paul Gage clearly explained in the article I referenced in post 8, Darwinian materialism entails a denial of true species,,
And as I further pointed out, if your theory denies the existence of ‘true species’ in the first place. then your theory cannot possibly be the scientific explanation for the “Origin of Species”.
It is similar to a crazy man running around the street and flapping his arms and claiming that he can fly.
He simply can’t fly because, as everyone can see, he simply doesn’t have the equipment necessary to fly. Likewise, Darwinists lack the necessary equipment to even begin defining what a species truly is.
Moreover, it is also interesting to note that the fossil record is ‘upside down’ from what Charles Darwin himself predicted. That is to say, the fossil record is the complete opposite from what Darwin predicted.
As Dr. Wells pointed out in the preceding video, Darwin predicted that minor differences (diversity) between species would gradually appear first and then the differences would grow larger (disparity) between species as time went on. (i.e. universal common descent as depicted in Darwin’s tree of life). What Darwin predicted in his book ‘Origin of Species’ should be familiar to everyone and is easily represented in the following ‘tree of life’ graph.,,,
But that ‘tree pattern’ that Darwin predicted is not what is found in the fossil record. The fossil record reveals that disparity (the greatest differences) precedes diversity (the smaller differences), which is the exact opposite pattern for what Darwin’s theory predicted.
As Erwin stated, “The fossil record suggests that the major pulse of diversification of phyla occurs before that of classes, classes before that of orders, orders before that of families. The higher taxa do not seem to have diverged through an accumulation of lower taxa.”
And as Valentine stated,
And as Goldschmidt and Lewin remarked
And as Chen stated,
Moreover, as Stephen Meyer pointed out, there are ‘yawning chasms’ in the ‘morphological space’ between the phyla which suddenly appeared alongside one another in the Cambrian Explosion,,,
Moreover, this top down pattern in the fossil record, which is the complete opposite pattern as Darwin predicted for the fossil record, is not only found in the Cambrian Explosion, but this ‘top down’, disparity preceding diversity, pattern is found throughout the fossil record subsequent to the Cambrian explosion as well.
Thus, regardless of the fact that Darwin’s theory can’t even define what a species is in the first place, and regardless of however someone might want to ‘arbitrarily’ classify which species are in and which species are out in any particular classification scheme, the fact of the matter is that Darwin’s theory is falsified as being the correct theory as to explaining what order the various levels of classification should appear. In fact, Darwin’s ‘bottom up’ theory gets the order of appearance completely backwards from what it actually is, i.e. ‘Top Down’. Again, phyla appear first, and various species appear last!
Of supplemental note: “Top Dawn” causation is completely antithetical to the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinists:
To repeat,
i.e. the computer sitting right in the front of the faces of Darwinists on UD refutes their materialistic theory!
Verse,
Bornagain77: Sorry I could not be more entertaining for you. But then again, I could care less if my posts entertain. you.
Okay, I was just curious about something you said. I’ll see what I can find on my own about essentialism, baraminology and created kinds which is what I assume you were referring to.