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Forums - General - The fight over Darwin - Teaching evolution in schools

Final-Fan on 19 September 2009
Khuutra said:
appolose said:
Khuutra said:
appolose said:
Khuutra said:

I don't need to. What you're talking about is revelation - you believe God spoke to you?

EDIT:

@final-fan

JESUS HELLNATION JEHOSEPHAT

Not so much spoke, but more of undeniably forced it into me.

And, lol, what's the surprise about?

That is primarily where we diffr, I suppose: I would question God to His face, and believe I was right for doing so.

Most of the surprise is that you two went on for several hundred posts with that stuff.

Actually, I'm referring to a slightly different type of revelation: I cannot question it.  I have absolutely no ability to.  If it were one that I could, I would probably at least the very least sympathize with your response to it.

Yeah, that debate was a pretty good size :p

That's.... difficult for me to imagine, I admit. A very interesting thing you're describing.

I will share my reason, then: I question because I have to. It's because of how I interpret the story of Jacob, and also how I intrpret the story of Abraham.

It's also why I cannot believe that you are literally unable to question it.

I'm pretty sure that after scads and scads of missteps, wrong turns, and dead ends, we got down to two basic problems:  

He says that one's being incapable of doubting something means that it is epistemological knowledge, and I disagree.  (I wasn't clear on whether the no-doubt was a symptom or cause of it being knowledge.)   

I have a problem with how to tell the difference (even to oneself) conclusively whether you can't doubt it (in his proposed way) or you just aren't  doubting it for whatever reason (which he agrees isn't knowledge).  

^ Or rather, I have a problem with the fact that you can't.   

And that's not even going into his criticisms (of my own side).   



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ManusJustus on 19 September 2009
appolose said:

Cause the Bible says.

Let me get this straight.  The main reason you dismiss Evolution is because the Bible says so, but you also dismiss Evolution because you cannot directly observe its theory.

To use your same argument, how do you obvserve and verify the events and teachings in the Bible?  You are calling us unscientific for believing a 'historical' theory that, even though it has heaps of evidence, cannot be directly obvserved while you see no problem believing a 'historical' document that is on a whole new scale of unobservable and unverifiable.



Rath on 19 September 2009
appolose said:
Rath said:

The fossil record would be considered historical evidence, yes?  In that notion, yes, I would naturally agree that the fossil record exists.  What does not, however is any hypothesis I come up with that includes it.  That is the unobservable part

Evolutionary theory does not predict that more advanced organisms are found in newer layers; rather, it is observed that they are (no contesting there from me).  The theory does say that they are desendents of the lower life forms, and that is the untestability.

This is the same case of the first two; there are things we find in the fossil record, yes, but those things are not the evolutionary theory.  Rather, the explanation of them is.

No, evolution does predict which fossils will be found in which layers and where. These predictions are made before the fossils are found and the fossils are used to confirm the hypothesis. That is testability. Evolution has passed this particular test many times.

I disagree; random mutation is a proposed mechanism of evolutionary theory.  Disproving it would not disprove the explanation of the fossil record.

Wrong, the modern theory of evolution relies on genetic mutation. You are saying it would not disprove the fact of evolution, this is why it is a fact. Science only requires the explanation to be able to be falsified - not the observation itself.

By continuing to work out why they contradict, I suppose that would imply that it is believed one set of of observations must be false, which would contradict the basic principles of science (which is, it is assumed that, given enough observation, repetition etc, the theory is true).  As for God not being falsifiable; while that may be true, it is irrelevant as science must conclude it anyways.

So you're saying that if something violates the laws of logic then we must assume god exists? That would require further study of logic then. Science can never come to the conclusion god exists by the very nature of science, science makes observations, tries to explain them and then tries to prove those explanations wrong. If you cannot complete that last and very important step it stops being science.

Sorry I didn't reply earlier. Didn't realise your reply was still in the post, just not bolded. I honestly don't think you understand the basics of how the scientific method works at all if you believe that evolution (and all other sciences of historical events) are not science yet the supernatural could be.



Khuutra on 19 September 2009

Now, Rath

I think science could account for God if God actually showed up (just say)



appolose on 19 September 2009
ManusJustus said:
appolose said:

Cause the Bible says.

Let me get this straight.  The main reason you dismiss Evolution is because the Bible says so, but you also dismiss Evolution because you cannot directly observe its theory.

To use your same argument, how do you obvserve and verify the events and teachings in the Bible?  You are calling us unscientific for believing a 'historical' theory that, even though it has heaps of evidence, cannot be directly obvserved while you see no problem believing a 'historical' document that is on a whole new scale of unobservable and unverifiable.

I don't dismiss evolution because I think it's not science; I only place it in that catagory.  However, I think it to be extremely absurd in a lot of areas (not that that disproves it, mind you).

You're right, though.  I cannot observe or verify anything in the Bible (apart from some other historical documents, but I don't consider history science, either).  I take the Bible because of a philisophical reason (which I put to Khuutra up there).  When you get down to it, nothing can really be verified empirically without making several assumptions or holding presuppostions.  Same with the Bible.



Okami

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ManusJustus on 19 September 2009
appolose said:

I think Evolution to be extremely absurd in a lot of areas.

If you think parts of evolution are obsurd, maybe you should read the Bible :)



WessleWoggle on 19 September 2009

@ManusJustus

The original scripture of the bible really isn't that absurb, it's how christians interpret the mistraslated versions they have(example: KJV bible) that is absurb.



ManusJustus on 19 September 2009
WessleWoggle said:
@ManusJustus

The original scripture of the bible really isn't that absurb, it's how christians interpret the mistraslated versions they have(example: KJV bible) that is absurb.

I'm thinking of things like Noah's Flood.  If the story of Noah's Flood was true, there would be evidence for a global flood and it would make sense that one man could build a boat and put two of every animal in it, and that somehow fresh or salt water fish could survive such an event and be saved from whatever composition the flood water had.  I'm assuming since the flood came with rain that it was mostly fresh water so all sea life would have died.



Khuutra on 19 September 2009
ManusJustus said:
WessleWoggle said:
@ManusJustus

The original scripture of the bible really isn't that absurb, it's how christians interpret the mistraslated versions they have(example: KJV bible) that is absurb.

I'm thinking of things like Noah's Flood.  If the story of Noah's Flood was true, there would be evidence for a global flood and it would make sense that one man could build a boat and put two of every animal in it, and that somehow fresh or salt water fish could survive such an event and be saved from whatever composition the flood water had.  I'm assuming since the flood came with rain that it was mostly fresh water so all sea life would have died.

I really wish that the story of the Flood was as simple as "it rained for forty days and forty nights and guess what guys the world flooded"

If it were that simple, it'd be one thing. What the story means to imply is several steps beyond that in terms of implausibility.



appolose on 19 September 2009
Rath said:
appolose said:
Rath said:
 

The fossil record would be considered historical evidence, yes?  In that notion, yes, I would naturally agree that the fossil record exists.  What does not, however is any hypothesis I come up with that includes it.  That is the unobservable part

Evolutionary theory does not predict that more advanced organisms are found in newer layers; rather, it is observed that they are (no contesting there from me).  The theory does say that they are desendents of the lower life forms, and that is the untestability.

This is the same case of the first two; there are things we find in the fossil record, yes, but those things are not the evolutionary theory.  Rather, the explanation of them is.

No, evolution does predict which fossils will be found in which layers and where. These predictions are made before the fossils are found and the fossils are used to confirm the hypothesis. That is testability. Evolution has passed this particular test many times.

The theory of evolution was derived form the general observations of the fossil record.  It wasn't conceived of first, then tested by fossils.  The predictions you refer to are more specific cases of who-evolved-into-who, such as the evolutionary path of horses.  I'm talking about the idea that all life forms are of common descent.

I disagree; random mutation is a proposed mechanism of evolutionary theory.  Disproving it would not disprove the explanation of the fossil record.

Wrong, the modern theory of evolution relies on genetic mutation. You are saying it would not disprove the fact of evolution, this is why it is a fact. Science only requires the explanation to be able to be falsified - not the observation itself.

The theory in question is the theory of common descent of all life forms on Earth. This is the theory made from our observations of the fossil record.  Genetic mutation is not apart of it, as disproving it does not disprove the idea that all life forms of common descent.  Random mutation merely attempts to answer how that could be.  Take natural selection for example; if that were proved wrong, then the theory of punctuated equilibrium could easily take it's place.

By continuing to work out why they contradict, I suppose that would imply that it is believed one set of of observations must be false, which would contradict the basic principles of science (which is, it is assumed that, given enough observation, repetition etc, the theory is true).  As for God not being falsifiable; while that may be true, it is irrelevant as science must conclude it anyways.

So you're saying that if something violates the laws of logic then we must assume god exists? That would require further study of logic then. Science can never come to the conclusion god exists by the very nature of science, science makes observations, tries to explain them and then tries to prove those explanations wrong. If you cannot complete that last and very important step it stops being science.

Logic trumps science (indeed, logic is essential to science).  In the event that science comes to two conflictory observations, in order to nto violate science's own assumptions about empiricism, then it must follow the logical outcome.

 

Sorry I didn't reply earlier. Didn't realise your reply was still in the post, just not bolded. I honestly don't think you understand the basics of how the scientific method works at all if you believe that evolution (and all other sciences of historical events) are not science yet the supernatural could be.

Sorry about that, I don't know why all of it wasn't bolded.



Okami

To lavish praise upon this title, the assumption of a common plateau between player and game must be made.  I won't open my unworthy mouth.

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