You know Dawkins and Hawking. Do you know Hawkins?

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I have no idea how not to mix them up if, like me, you are pretty good with words but not so hot with names. But they are very different. Perhaps the only thing that links them - here is a link, by the way, which will tell you more that I ever wanted to know about Hawkins -

http://www.loveorabove.com/lp

Arguably the only factor linking them is they are all problematic for me - in totally different ways.

Evidence.

As in "there is not a shred of evidence". As in "You ignore the incontrovertible evidence"

On my shelves is a book, Rules of Evidence, used to belong to one of my lawyer grandfathers. There are lots of kinds of evidence. Hearsay evidence, illegally obtained evidence, circumstantial evidence. Grampa needs a book to clarify which kind is which and why - and where to use it. Certain evidence is crucial in THIS instance but irrelevant or inadmissible in another.

So it is with evidence in daily life. "I saw an oriole today." "No way. It is only March. Must have been a goldfinch or a robin" Versus "I saw an oriole today." "No way! They are late this year, should have made it a week ago. Where did you see it?" Or "Bobby threw a grape at me" "Did not! "Did so - there it is on the floor." Or "Going to be a hard winter, look at that wooly bear." In daily life we operate with a constant flow of evidence of various kinds. Some we take as valid and fit into our deliberations, some we reject ior ignore.

Now this perhaps should belong to the science board, but they have their own problems and the PPRite sprites are always lauding their evidence and dissing others' evidence.

Take a bathroom break.

That helped, didn't it? Okay, pencils out.

You do not have to be around academia as ,long as I have been to know that the rules of evidence and standards of proof in Sociology are not commensurate with those of Chemistry which differ from what applies in History. In fact, under one disciplinary umbrella you will find different evidentiary practice in, say, Physical and Cultural Anthropology.

Normally, unless two groups or individuals are working in the same field with different theoretical models they will not reject or even comment on one anothers rules of evidence. My paleontologist brother will not correct his English Lit colleague's use ov evidence.

For lamentable historical reasons, a large segment of the mainline scientific community and a far too large component of the theological community have taken it upon themselves to throw rocks, mud, sticks and dung at one another. sneering at one another's evidence and - evidently - each considering the other evil. Most in the physical and biological sciences have decreed only material evidence - and not all of that - is admissible. The self-styled Creation Scientists and some others have decreed that the JudaeoChristian scriptures, interpreted literally EXCEPT where they are NOT supposed to be interpreted literally, shall outweigh any other evidence.

This of course precludes any useful collaboration or meaningful debate [the college campus show debates are just entertainment, think TV wrestling. You root for your home team].

Court will rise for a brief recess.

We all know I tend to be longwinded [you should hear my wife on the subject] so I break it up. This will be the last segment of my input, though.

One tells me I have not a shred of evidence. Which means no evidence he is swilling to admit into the discussion. It is not I have no evidence, he defines it out of existence.

One tells me I am clearly deluded or misrepresenting what happened to me. She was not there and has no evidence but my report as to what happened. But - like the oriole in March, which for all I know might have been there, mid sized perching birds not being famous for their intelligence - the datum does not fit her theory, and so must be false. Has anybody been around the U more than a year and not seen people trashing any alleged facts which did not match up with theoretical predictions? It is called in parts of Linguistics "testing the theory." If you find one datuym that fits, and in the process discard a thousand counterindications, you have proven the theory. I do not - having no evidence - claim that is the practice of other fields.

The Galileo Myth and the Gore Protocol [it does NOT matter which side you look at] are famous examples [whatever REALLY happened] of one group condemning without discussion the evidence adduced by another. We rightly condemn - whichever side we are on in a particular case - such wrongheaded behavior.

So tell me how you can reject my evidence and analysis out of hand?

It occurs to me some of the unalert unastute may think my mention of Hawkins means I endorse that stuff.

He is only there to say, if you want to knock someone's use of evidence, start there.

Yet some people swear by it.

This was a long-winded rant without constructive value, wasn't it?

Look, you can say "evidence is complicated", but until you start developing an epistemological structure, all that talk is empty. If another person says "You don't have evidence", then your job is to either meet his standards, or beat the crap out of his basic epistemological framework by showing it inferior to another framework that *does* accept your evidence as valid. Until you learn to also *construct*, there is really no point to what you say.

Yes, I am longwinded.

We knew that. Too late to fix.

As I have said before in similar contexts, I despaired somewhere in my teens of convincing people of ANYTHING.

I am NOT pushing any epistemology. Pointless.

I simply have may years of refusing to be shut up.

I will keep pointing to the truth and reason.

If anybody gets fixed, it will be [you should excuse it] the Holy Ghost [I prefer the plain AngloSaxon] has to do it.

Hey, that is why I am here.

You can't point to truth and reason without epistemology. Your point on evidence is pointless without an epistemological framework. You don't seem to be aware of how everything clicks together if you don't know about how the use of evidence isn't arbitrary but constructive, thus meaning that there are overarching framings for finding truth.

I agree that there are different forms of evidence, and some fields/claims require a lower burden of proof, or even anecdotal evidence. Claims about the nature of reality require a Scientific level of evidence, unless you don't mind being horribly misled.

If we had the same respect for faith and non-experimental evidence in the Sciences, we would be stuck in tedious debate between accepting one baseless idea, and another, on the aesthetics of the things. Meanwhile, fields would be blighted, cholera would be rampant and, mercifully, the fruitless pontifications of the pontificators would soon be cut short by cholera.

I do find it very distasteful when one person says "I have evidence", and another says "you don't", without attempting to examine the evidence. One of the problems is that the Sciences are difficult. I could never personally verify the existence of a neutrino, so I trust that men who know more than me in that area would demand a level of evidence of the person who proposed the particle, and tear his paper to shreds if it failed. Unless a paper is verified through peer review, and time, I tend to distrust it.

Epistemology is a bit empty in itself; it's impossible to root our knowledge to certainty without making a lot of assumptions. It's better to look at reality, and see how claims relate to it, because getting bogged down in a priori's and Cartesian demons (and other undetectable demons...) will not reveal a single thing of use to us.



The mention of Galileo brings to mind a discussion I had with you that's relevant to this thread. I mentioned something, quite dogmatically, about Galileo being persecuted by the Church, and you replied that it was the Aristotelean "pontificators" who put pressure on the Church to "deal with him". I find it virtually impossible to verifiy Historical claims, so since then I've made my best attempts to avoid citing any "knowledge" I have of history. It felt profoundly "wrong" to me that I could make a claim, without having any evidence for it, or and certainty in the methodology by which the claim was forged. I like to think most other people would react in a similar way (or, perhaps, just study History intently), but I'm not sure; there are a lot of dogma spewers about.

AG, you know Job.

" I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you: yea, who knoweth not such things as these? I am as one mocked of his neighbour, who calleth upon God, and he answereth him: the just upright man is laughed to scorn."

I am, frankly, not without some experience in the hunt for understanding. If I have hunted somewhat different game in different preserves and with different tools - and I mean in my atheist days - what is that to you, or yours to me? It is the same elephant.

I fear you are slipping - I see in your posts to people more dissing and less reason. Even to me, you only have "but you can't do that." Which is what Proessor K said to me in Ling 101.

"Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding."

I read this in the context of a number of theological debates we've been having. In this case, the "You don'ts" have been justified.


I never said anything about certainty. If you want, you can substitute my statement for "methodology". The point remains that a blanket criticism without a reconstruction is pointless.

One of the many reasons I do not try to persuade anybody is that - as with that important paper I can NOT publish even though I remain convinced on the point - the evidence that I have is not evidence that can be used to convince others.

I have evidence - but I have no way of demonstrating that it is not of the type of Joseph Smith's gold tables. Not having Smith's whatever it was - chutzpah and blarney spring into my mind - nor his circle of associates - I do not bother telling you to believe because I have evidence I can neitrher produce nor explain.

I do keep hoping - and campaigning - that those who say "you have no evidence" would acknowledge that one - even they themselves - may perhaps have good evidence for something they cannot provde to another.

It's either good method or not very good method. I see no reason to let bad method slip.


I do worry that I am more irritable than I used to be. I don't see a failure in reasoning though in my posts, if anything, I am just less generous towards the ideas I consider stupid and long past false. Even further.... I don't really see what you are talking about in reference to you. What you are promoting ought to be taken as a reductio ad absurdum, as once we start going down that rabbit-hole, we have committed intellectual suicide. Nothing else will exist if we cannot practice reasonable criticism.


Yes, book of Job, God attacking the idea of knowledge. I am so impressed. I don't think I need to point to GE Moore again, do I? The conflict between this idea and the most basic of our common sense is easily recognized, and no further justification is given.

I know the phases of reduced tolerance. Too well. Occasionally I have been able to spot causality, but not so much to control. It does pass.

I do NOT know what you mean by "what I am promoting". I say again - I am not promoting anything except perhaps straight discussion. I am occasionally fighting illogic and misrepresentation and bad definitions.

If you see something else I am promoting, maybe you could let me know.

But hey - you read the end of Job as God putting downb knowledge? How can you see that in it?

Way back - my father tells me something. Irrelevant what noiw. I says, what a crock. About twenty years later, I catch myself telling someone the same thing. At the end of Job, God is NOT saying knowledge is useless. He is saying he knows more than our incomplete data set.

It isn't explicit, but the implicit message is "You can't apply critical thinking to this. I'm beyond it."


Well, no, he's saying that our data set is forever useless. His criticism to Job's data set will apply to all future data sets, and as such, it is an injunction against our efforts, and it is intended as such. God isn't saying "Wait until you are older before you examine." He's saying "You know so little, that you can never examine".

Actually, not so.

If Job is just tribal poetry [thou I know of no parallel that IS merely tribal poetry] then you can take that view and say pooh.

But if there is God - which I have been brought to accept as I did my father's hint - then "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know
even as also I am known." becomes relevant "

You are quite right that the knowledge available IN the universe is inadequate and always will be, and God IS saying that in Job.

But you see - or at least I see - the universe is NOT eternal, and we are not doomed to dissolution with it, and we - or at least God willing I - WILL grow up and see and understand.

God is not talking to his pet, but to - in a sense your grasp of theology will include - his child.