The fight over Darwin - Teaching evolution in schools

[Final-Fan]

appolose said:

Final-Fan said:

4. 
Well, I don't think that something being "non-physical" allows it to ignore the rules of the universe.  Why would it?  Since we agree that the thing is in our universe, and that the act it is perpetrating is physical or at least produces a physical result, why wouldn't that result have to follow the rules? 

7. 
But ... why doesn't it?  I think we might be hitting up against 1b at this point.  Maybe not, but I think we're shooting past each other on something. 

8. 
You said, "We have detected no physical cause: if it were exported from another universe, and we found no trace of a physical transportation." 
If the point of origin is another universe, then of course there is no trace of transportation prior to its sudden and seemingly spontaneous appearance in our universe (within our ability to detect it which is limited to this universe).  It's not so much a "non-physical" cause, in that case, as it is a physical cause from outside this universe (duh, but still).  (I guess this runs into 8.2; see below.)

8.2.  Regarding
"Another universe is not supernatural, as I'm defining the supernatural to be the "non-physical", and another universe is definitively physical."
and
"We have detected no physical cause: if it were exported from another universe, and we found no trace of a physical transportation.  Then, science does what it always does; assumes that there is no means of physical transportation.  That doesn't rule out another universe, mind you, but it does mean that there was a means of non-physical transportation, so the supernatural as an explanation is present either way"
So let me get this straight.  You're saying that our universe is physical, and their universe is physical -- but that the means of transportation is necessarily supernatural? 

9. 
Right, I was misunderstanding; I was thinking you were saying that science could ACTUALLY come to a supernatural conclusion (as opposed to "...if the math I assumed is right etc.").  So I think we're probably going to run into 1b now.  Or I'm tired and missing something, but frankly it's a pretty important objection anyway, as I said. 

4.  Because the rule, as science has observed it, is that there is no physical means of creation, not that things can't at all be created in the universe.  This nonphysical thing would be using nonphysical means to create, so the rule here is unviolated.

7. Hmm.  I'll try to clarify what I mean, but perhaps you.re right in saying were not on the same page here.  In the case of science observing that there are no physical means of creation, and observing something being created in this universe, science does not, here, say to itself "Well, guess I was wrong about the first part, or the second" because they don't have two contradicting observations (they observed the object being created, but not physically created).  Notice that they haven't eliminated all means of creation, just physical, so there's no reason to suspect one of the observations is wrong.

8. Yeah, this runs into 8.2

8.2 That's correct: no wormholes, no rips ins space/time, no physical means of transportation are detected; it just appeared from, apparently, nowhere.  And on  that apparancy science assumes no physicality had a hand in putting this object here, whether by creation or transportation.

9 I see: I think you're correct in where this is headed (since we agree on this point, it renders point 8 irrelevant).

4.  
Is it?  The rule as I understood it was "you can't create matter without using energy in X proportion".  That says nothing about the agent creating the matter, or the method used.  

7.  
How do you "observe" that there is no physical means of creation?  You can observe that this didn't happen, and this didn't happen, etc., and you can suppose that you haven't missed anything and therefore there is no physical cause -- but that's not an observation.  (Similar to 1b)

8. (reunified)
"no physicality had a hand in putting this object here, whether by creation or transportation"
WHAT?!  You agreed that the other universe was physical!  How, then, could you conclude that the matter's creation in that other universe prior to transportation was definitely non-physical?  
.... oh.  You meant that either it was created here non-physically, or it was created elsewhere (perhaps physically) and transported here non-physically?