Can you make assumptions in science?

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30 Jan 2015, 1:06 am

Conversation with you chaps is every bit as stimulating and interesting as trying to discuss the integrity of L Ron Hubbard with a coven of Scientologists.

Your ideology has nothing more to do with science than Scientology does... which you know but are desperately trying to avoid by steering the argument to a criticism of your version of a religion you know even less about than science.

You will, doubtless, also simply ignore the fact that the "geologic column" doesn't exist anywhere on Earth... it's just another fanciful invention of circular reasoning to support the assumed ideology. It goes like this: Assumption; nothing turned itself into simple organisms which turned themselves into more complex ones. So; rocks containing the fossilised remains of simpler organisms are older than rocks containing remains of more complex ones... which "proves" that simpler organisms are precursors of the more complex ones.

Completely ignoring the innumerable examples of where the different types of fossils are mixed up or even upside down the clever salesmen get to work creating idealised "geologic columns" to stick in children's school books, on cereal packets... everywhere they have a captive audience, in fact. It's a clever marketing trick that's even more pervasive and successful than the "things go better with Coke" slogan that has people all over the world paying lots of money to fill themselves up with that poisonous concoction.

"Evolutionary biology" has never been tested, can never be tested, in any practical way (as in observing it happening) because it is defined in a way that precludes any possible test... "billions of years", for example. Any real test of the supposed mechanism have invariably showed up as impossible conjecture. You need "worm holes" and "black holes" to detach the ideology even further from observable reality than even billions of years can provide.

Darwinism remains a philosophically, physically, chemically, biologically, mathematically impossible ideological presumption.

That, which I quoted above, is only the introduction to a short book. I hope that someone with a functional mind will read the rest of it.

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30 Jan 2015, 1:36 am

Ahhh now I see. You would rather plumb new depths of the discussion rather than answer criticism of your previous posts. And if you think pejoratives are an answer then think again.

So David, it seems all you are here to do is preach at us. You are all pompous bluster and no substance if that's all you wish to do - no better than that Muslim chap who comes here and preaches at us, just as certain of his beliefs.

Why pose an argument if you're not going to respond to any criticism of it? Why should we respond at all, if all you plan to do is throw pejoratives at any reply?

Your method reminds me of a strange version of Monty Python's room for an argument or room for abuse sketch.
Yes it is... No it's not.. 'tis.. isn't.. that's not an argument.. yes it is..

Perhaps kraftie was right all along. You're just pulling our leg.

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30 Jan 2015, 3:44 am

I think this post by AngelRho explains the issue well

AngelRho wrote:

To the Christian, God is easily explained as transcendent, thus there is no need to prove that God exists. That God exists is axiomatic to our faith. So if we are able to reasonably conclude that there IS a God, there's no point in trying to prove what we already know.

These people are so used to just making statements and believing in things without any supporting evidence they think they can do the same in debates about well founded scientific theories.

Essentially they are saying there is a massive world wide conspiracy spanning just about every scientific discipline and the vast majority of scientists possibly numbering in tens of millions to lie and cover up the truth regarding creation. The reason for their gargantuan claim is a book, written over 2 millennia ago. It would be funny if the consequences were not so dire. Brainwashing children to believe their nonsense is child abuse and detracts greatly from the worthy goal of having a scientifically literate population.

Time and again I have asked David to provide evidence for his claims and invariably he either ignores the request, belittle my understanding (without giving the necessary evidence) or simply refuses on spurious grounds. Its all the more pathetic considering his early threat to destroy our arguments with logic and evidence.

David the difference between yourself and those you have been trying to preach to (describing your behaviour as an attempt at debate is too far a stretch) is we are all prepared to be proven wrong, and given the evidence will happily change ideas and understandings. You on the other hand are so obstinate, so delusional, so wrapped up in your warped ideas of the natural world that nothing will ever change your mind.

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30 Jan 2015, 8:02 am

Oldavid wrote:

You will, doubtless, also simply ignore the fact that the "geologic column" doesn't exist anywhere on Earth... it's just another fanciful invention of circular reasoning to support the assumed ideology. It goes like this: Assumption; nothing turned itself into simple organisms which turned themselves into more complex ones. So; rocks containing the fossilised remains of simpler organisms are older than rocks containing remains of more complex ones... which "proves" that simpler organisms are precursors of the more complex ones.

Completely ignoring the innumerable examples of where the different types of fossils are mixed up or even upside down the clever salesmen get to work creating idealised "geologic columns" to stick in children's school books, on cereal packets... everywhere they have a captive audience, in fact. It's a clever marketing trick that's even more pervasive and successful than the "things go better with Coke" slogan that has people all over the world paying lots of money to fill themselves up with that poisonous concoction.

You won't listen to me but maybe you will listen to a fellow Christian. The following website is written by a Christian for Christians. The author calls himself an "old earth creationist" and he has geology knowledge.

http://geochristian.com/tag/stratigraphic-column/
He debunks your above statement (because it is also used by other young earth creationists) . His concluding nremarks:

Quote:

The discovery of grass in dinosaur dung isn’t that big of a change. Paleobotanists had been saying that grass appeared sometime in the Paleocene or early Eocene (perhaps around 55 million years ago), and now we know that there was at least some grass around in the very late Cretaceous (a little over 65 million years ago). In any case, it appears that grasses were probably a minor constituent of the Mesozoic fauna. Perhaps I’m wrong on this. I don’t think any actual fossils of Cretaceous grass leaves have been found. In regards to the Coelacanth, which was once thought to have gone extinct in the Cretaceous but then discovered alive in the Indian Ocean, I think we should expect this sort of thing from time to time. There are fossils that, as far as we know, only lived in the Tithonian age of the Jurassic. Do we know everything? We should expect that for at least some of our index fossils (those fossils that are supposed to tell us the age of the rock in a very narrow range) that some survived somewhere and could even still be alive today.

These are little things. Grass appeared a bit earlier than we knew. Coelacanths survived throughout the Tertiary without leaving any fossils, but they are alive today. The plain and simple fact is that the geologic column exists. What the young-Earth creationists would need to find in order to overturn the well-established and well-justified concept of the geologic column is something like a mastodon in Devonian sediments, or an ostrich in the Ordovician. Until then, I’ll accept Cambrian-Ordovician-Silurian-Devonian… as an observation that is in need of an explanation.

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30 Jan 2015, 8:52 am

It's simple! Either nothing turns itself into everything or it doesn't!

Look, Janissey, I don't give a stuff if someone who claims to be Christian says that the Moon is made of cheese. I'm only talking about observable reality... science.

"Well-founded "scientific" theories" are only well founded because the establishment media plugs them incessantly. It does not mean that there is any realistic basis for the superstition.

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30 Jan 2015, 9:17 am

THE FAILURE OF DARWINISM AND ITS FULLER IMPLICATIONS

Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis
(Adler and Adler: Bethesda, Maryland, 3rd ed. 1986) 368 pages, hardback $19.95.

reviewed by John F. McCarthy
Click here to buy Evolution: A Theory in Crisis from Amazon Books The central thesis of this book is that Darwin's theory of evolution has not been validated by one single empirical discovery or scientific advance since its publication in 1859. Denton succeeds in refuting Darwinian evolution in terms of the empirical facts as they are known to natural scientists today, yet, for emotional reasons, he cannot entirely give up the theory. Because of the irrational element of this attachment, some of the historical judgments that he expresses are unsubstantiated and contradictory.
http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt26.html

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30 Jan 2015, 9:32 am

Oldavid wrote:

Completely ignoring the innumerable examples of where the different types of fossils are mixed up or even upside down
...
.

Here is a highly specific claim which you should back up with research links. What are the innumerable examples of fossils found in the wrong strata for current geologic knowledge?

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30 Jan 2015, 9:40 am

Oldavid wrote:

yea... about that:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/denton.html

Quote:

Evolutionary pattern and process stands vindicated from Denton's assault. It does not win out by default, being implausible but socially established and lacking a superior alternative - rather, it is a plausible process with no contenders, and is backed up strongly by empirical evidence. There is debate within evolutionist circles about systematics, tempo, and the roles of genetic drift and preadaptation, and still plenty of work to be done fleshing out stories about the development of certain structures, but none of this in any way puts macroevolution and the pattern of non-teleological common descent in a crisis situation. Rather, they are indicators that evolutionary biology is still a field which offers work to be done, just like any other field.

Rejecting science is not a mandatory part of being a Christian, as shown in my other link from a Christian geologist. You are rejecting science even while making the claim that I am the one doing so. It's not all tabletop experiments. (Although the Miller-Urey flask was an outstanding one). There must also be observation. Fossils are a key observation and they are not mixed about randomly in the strata.

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30 Jan 2015, 11:39 pm

I am not rejecting science. In fact, we Christians claim that unless the Universe is governed by intelligible and consistent Natural Laws any attempt at science is completely futile. It is your ideology that requires inconsistent or non-existent natural laws to make your impossible daydream appear to be workable. Your system is propagated with a plethora of vague and gratuitous assertions in defiance of observable nature.

Anyhow, regards the lethal inconsistencies in the supposed "geologic column", here is a short excerpt from a rather exhaustive book on the matter:
http://www.detectingdesign.com/geologic ... nformities

I think you can be pretty confident that I know a fair bit more about the excuses for the supposed "theory of evolution" than you do.

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31 Jan 2015, 12:50 am

Oldavid wrote:

"Observable reality" would tell an unschooled person that there is no way on earth to fit a dozen or more encyclopedias onto a pinhead.

Observable reality is not the only reality - even deists believe this. So if you're going to argue "observable reality," you must be consistent. Miracles, virgin birth, parting the waters with a stick, pillars of salt, surviving for days in a whale stomach, raising the dead etc are not consistent with observable reality.

First cause is moot.
- If everything had to have a first cause, then so would any deity.
- If a non-eternal deity was first cause, then which deity?
- If a non-eternal deity was first cause, then why not multiple deities or even pan-dimensional beings?

Radioactive decay has an uncaused random quality.
Then there's the Hawking radiation and also the Casimir effect.

We also have Planck time, a boundary at which physics rules can no longer predict outcomes. Hence, all ideas prior to Planck time are the best guesses of theory, given the knowledge of those who best understand the nature of that boundary change.

Essentially what this means is, there is a point at which many things behave that is not intuitive to observable reality. This is all very similar to Clarke's third law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

The first cause fallacy neither proves nor disproves the need for a supernatural agent.

Having a non-eternal deity come first is very much like the idea that time came into existence with the universe, except that there is theoretical evidence for the latter.

Last edited by Narrator on 31 Jan 2015, 1:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

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31 Jan 2015, 1:01 am

Oldavid wrote:

I think you can be pretty confident that I know a fair bit more about the excuses for the supposed "theory of evolution" than you do.

I thought you would be above pissing contests, David.

Janissy has to be one of the more level headed, knowledgeable people here, who consistently ignores your pejorative baiting. Or is it your "runaway ego" that prompts such comments?

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31 Jan 2015, 10:59 am

Narrator wrote:

Oldavid wrote:

AND perhaps the first assumption per non-eternal deity comes true in the other metaphor of the existence of the universe with theoretical evidence.

It's all semantics in reality AS IS.

AND ALL PERHAPS

OR ASSUMPTION NOW.

IN OTHER WORDS, MOST of this is basically mental masturbation, per the HUMAN flesh AND blood really hitting the road OF reality of LIFE IN NOW.

BUT NEVER THE LESS, masturbation can be fun..

And I for one enjoy life, as is, WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WORRY and all bliss.

So what's more important in life, life or science (systemization)......

I choose life, and use science for mental masturbation, occasionally, here and there....

But truly, getting addicted to 'masturbation', CAN be a very limited way of life......

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31 Jan 2015, 7:49 pm

Oh well done David you are folowing the creationist syllabus wonderfully

SO far we have had

Entropy - Busted
Evolutionists - Busted
Parroting Assertions - Busted
Assumptions are not science - Busted
Real World Observations - Busted
Chance and Random Canard - Busted
Conflating Evolution with Abiogenisis - Busted
Evolutions is a beleif/dogma Busted
Evidence from non scientific websites, posted in full because you don't understand the subject matter enough to put it into your own words - About to be Busted
Without God my life is meaningless, or words to this effect - So what this is your issue not natures
No Such thing as the Geologic Column - About to be adressed

Likely still to Come

Pasteur
Probability Calculations
False Postulates
Monkeys
no transitional forms
Hatred of God
Evidence from Design
Teleological Argument
Information Canard
HIstorical Science and Observed science
Static Species
Organisms don't evolve. Populations do.

You are very predictable, and essentially useless at debate, but please do continue.

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31 Jan 2015, 7:57 pm

Narrator wrote:

You'd have to come around to this sooner or later... it's the second last defence of the indefensible.

It boils down to this: because we don't (or can't) know all about everything then we don't (or can't) know anything about anything; therefore, any convenient fanciful speculation is just as "valid" an expression of "truth" as any other carefully reasoned argument based on observation of reality (physical and metaphysical).

Secret and semi-secret organisations have been selling variations of this theme to gullible egotists for centuries.

I readily admit that Janissey presents himself as one who is honestly deceived and not as a dishonest deceiver. I will continue to respond to him as long as a semblance of reasonableness prevails.

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31 Jan 2015, 8:04 pm

DentArthurDent wrote:

Oh well done David you are folowing the creationist syllabus wonderfully

You are very predictable, and essentially useless at debate, but please do continue.

Arty, if vague, but dogmatic, assertions can "bust" an argument then we are not talking science.

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31 Jan 2015, 8:32 pm

Oldavid wrote:

Narrator wrote:

And a big laugh here.

I had a bet with myself that you'd respond with pejoratives and not address my arguments. Your "boils down to" defense is a dismissal that addresses nothing.
I guess I won the bet with myself and will have to pay up.

What was it you said a while back.. something about insults being the last resort of the indefensible? Yet that's how you respond, every time. ..."gullible," "egotist," "deceived"... and then you want us to be "reasonable".. LOL

I have to hand it to you... of all the pot-kettles you could find on a forum, you produce one almost every time you post. That deserves an award. Have a mug:

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