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MythBusters: Scientific Dissent From Darwinism

Posted 7 months ago|45 comments|693 views
FIAT "Science"
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Over 700 Eminent Scientists Sign "A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism" "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural
selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the
evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."
This was last publicly updated January 2010. Scientists listed by doctoral degree or current position."
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/...

I can see it now Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, try as they may, cannot produce life spontaneously let alone produce a human from a chimp... regardless of what the hosts of MythBusters look like! That is in fact what many accredited scientists are finding out when they run the math of macro-evolution. Every day we see the erosion of Darwinism... it's decay progresses as technology increases, we will see the final nails in it's coffin as all scientist abandon it for logic.

Now evolutionists are left to defend it's merit with philosophical arguments like Dawkins, while exposing it's true origins of faith. Like any good theory it requires faith, but even that is at an all time low as scientist leave this stinking ship! I have heard it said that the number of "scientists" in the government subsidised camp, out-number those in the dissenters camp... as if to substantiate claims based merely on membership. That is like saying all those who voted for Obama would do so again after seeing his true colour!

I am pleased to see that there are those who still question FIAT "money"
FIAT "media" and FIAT "science" ...just say it ain't so!
UPDATE - 2 months ago
John Piper - "Don't waste your life"
http://dwynrhh6bluza.cloudfront.net/reso...
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COMMENTS
7 months ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Steve
7 months ago: So Stan,

Would you say the evolution myth is not busted then... and life spontaneously generates from nothing, or you have found a human offspring of a chimp???
7 months ago: BTW,

It is great to see you again!
7 months ago: Thank you, Truthbrary.

If you think human offspring of a chimp has anything to do with it, you could be excused for saying something deceptive.
7 months ago: ...my bad, offspring of an "ape" !:]
7 months ago: Ok. Got me there.
Out Of The Box
Out Of The Box
 Moderator
7 months ago: Some scientists say we are descendants of the same ancestors as lemurs, too.
Raoul Duke
Raoul Duke
Fresno, CA
1 month ago: We ARE apes. There are five great ape species: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, and human beings.
1 month ago: RD,

Well then... thanks for clearing that up, we can all sleep a little sounder knowing that you have that kind of faith... believing something you nor anyone else has ever observed !:] Some say "ape" another says the special creation of God... it all boils down to faith... but that is religion, and not observable science... wouldn't you agree?
1 month ago: Some people are not just apes, they are C.H.U.M.P.S.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i45Y_cwRf...

http://www.nwcreation.net/evolutionfraud...

Attempting to prop up the un-propable.
7 months ago: Stan,

you pointed out "project Steve" is sufficient to rebut a list of scientists that have support for intelligent design or are sceptical of Darwin's theory... unfortunately your response is typical of many in that camp... "project Steve" was originally created by the National Center for Science Education as a "tongue-in-cheek parody" ...and there you have it... mockery. That is all the "greatest minds in science can come back with" mockery! No facts, figures or logic... just mockery. I think that is very weak.
Altruist
Altruist
Eugene, OR
7 months ago: This is a lot like the bogus scientists that signed the dissent of Global Warming list. For Global Warming there are a lot of people dependent on the fossil fuel industry and they sign up to brown nose their bosses or are out right paid to do so.

For the Christians there is a lot of money to push Creationism and they are using the same tactics that the tobacco industry used to spread doubt about the cancer causing side effects of tobacco. (The fossil fuel industry hired the same PR firms to spread doubt about global warming)

I don't think it at all surprising that given the number of evangelicals in the country, that a good number of them get a degree in science and then use their degree to bash science.

The Science Resources Statistics Division of the National Science Foundation estimated that in 1999, there were 955,300 biological scientists in the US (about 1/3 of who hold graduate degrees). There were also 152,800 earth scientists in the US as well.[133]

Therefore, the 600 Darwin Dissenters represent about 0.054% of the estimated 1,108,100 biological and geological scientists in the US in 1999. In addition, a large fraction of the Darwin Dissenters have specialties unrelated to research on evolution; of the dissenters, three-quarters are not biologists.[134] Therefore, the roughly 150 biologist Darwin Dissenters represent about 0.0157% of the US biologists that existed in 1999. As of 2006, the list was expanded to include non-US scientists, overestimating the number of US scientists that do not accept evolution.[135] , according to the Discovery Institute, a known creationist lobby institution. Despite the increase in absolute number of scientists willing to sign the dissent form, proportionately the figures indicates the support from scientists for creationism and intelligent design is steadily decreasing, despite an increase in public support."

Level of support for evolution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Altruist
Altruist
Eugene, OR
7 months ago: Scientific information and also Biological information doubles every 5 years. Useful genetic information doubles every 18-24 months. The amount of scientific information out there is so huge that no one can understand all of the latest research in even very specific narrow areas.

Part of the problem with humans is that we are very subjective and biased. We tend to believe what we want to believe, and since there is so much information out there, people can zero in on just that information that supports their belief system.

In the future it will be possible to obtain purely objective (not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased) information because computers with artificial intelligence can comb through the tons of research and data and come to purely factual conclusions.

Recently the Watson computer beat Jeopardy experts. http://www.pcworld.com/article/220056/wa...

When computers become smarter than humans (between 20 and 30 years from now) and when computers design other computers, than the acquisition of factual data will grow exponentially. http://www.positivefuturist.com/archive/...

At some point you just gotta ask: At what point will biblical literalists begin believing the vast mountain of scientific facts? There are probably a few out there that still believe the world is flat (4%). Something like 18% believe the sun rotates around the earth, about a third think evolution is bogus and half the Republicans don't think humans cases global warming. Bill Maher thinks Americans are just stupid. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher...

I tend to think it is just ignorance from a lack of good education and the result of a lot of brainwashing from the pulpit and from the right wing propaganda machine.

Is there any wonder that our students rank at or near the bottom of all of the developed nations in math and science, when most of the nations text books are chosen by the Texas textbook committee which has been packed by Christian evangelicals? http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpa...
7 months ago: Information and codes only come from a mind. Abiogensis has been proven to be a false supposition over and over again. Only life gives birth to life. There is not a shred of scientific evidence to prove otherwise. Not a shred. It is a preconceived idea that they cling to because they simply don't want to deal with the ramifications of the alternative. Period. End of story.

Talk about brainwashing and fairy tales, that nonsense takes the cake.

Most folks just swallow this stuff because they have been told that they have to or they are retarded, ignorant and stupid. Personally, I never was one to bow to peer pressure, especially when I know I'm right.

I am glad that there are plenty of good scientists left that are not swayed by the pressure of the secular naturalist establishment. These folks are trying to turn scientific inquiry into a cult rather than a legitimate discipline. Well, I like a good fight and those hucksters are in for one.

I love science. REAL science. I even love science fiction. I, however, unlike some apparently, have enough common sense and discernment to know the difference between the two.

When the so-called evolutionary scientists can surmount the tremendous hurdles of information and codes originating without a mind, a universe being created from nothing and without a cause, life spontaneously springing into existence from non life, closure to the humongous gaps in the transitional fossil record, then I will begin to consider what they have to say with regard to their bizarre and unproven theory.

Don't be numbered among the suckers.
7 months ago: "Only life gives birth to life." - That sounds like evolution.

No. Each and every species was magically created by God.
Content Removed by Huey Newton
7 months ago: Abiogeneis is a close to magic as one can get.

Evolution, as is taught in our schools today has to do with the theory of life arising from NON-LIVING particles. Where do we find the evidence of this? Nowhere, that's where.

This "theory" is not only far-fetched and completely untenable, it makes no sense at all. On top of that, it's ridiculous to mandate that people have to believe this tripe or THEY are ignorant.

The reason it is believed and taught as THE ONLY solution or viable theory for the creation of life in many classrooms is not because it is even the best theory or hypothesis. No. Not at all.

It is taught because of the preconceived notions and insecurities of far too many in science and education. It is also taught because of pure peer pressure and/or the lack of desire to deal with ramifications of dealing with or teaching the alternative to that. PERIOD. End of story.

Bow down or get cut off now seems to reign in the halls of academia. It really doesn't matter what the truth is, get with the program or get blacklisted or fired or both.

Every creature on this planet re-produces after it's kind. That's a FACT.

That is, of course until Dr. Frankenstein goes into his lab and genetically mutates it. Most often that mutation not only creates a freak, but said freak dies in the process. Chicken with teeth, anyone?

Also, it's self-evident to any honest, thinking person that the universe cannot be self-caused. Nothing can create itself. For anything to create itself it would need to exist before it came into existence. A logical absurdity, yet one we are supposed to take seriously.

What makes it worse it that when folks disagree with that so-called theory, they are often immediately disparaged and summarily dismissed. That speaks volumes to the tremendous scientific weakness of the position as well as the mental and intellectual weakness of the adherents promulgating condescension.

There is no more free and continuing honest scientific inquiry in many, many circles.

Thankfully not all scientists are that prejudiced, ignorant and blind.
Out Of The Box
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7 months ago: According to some scientists, and the general consensus, life began about 2 billion years ago with the simplest of single cell organisms. We're talking bacteria, archaea, maybe even viruses. .................BUT..................

Viruses can only reproduce inside a living cell. They are much simpler than bacteria and prokaryotic cells so it would seem they would come first in the evolution fairy tale, but of course, not necessarily. They might have spontaneously self-created separately from bacteria, and managed somehow to survive long enough to begin infecting the bacteria. That shoots the "common ancestor" theory in the foot though.

Look at the smallest and simplest cell we know of currently, the φX174 virus. It contains 5169 nucleotides (base pairs), encoding (theoretically) 1723 amino acids. These hundreds upon hundreds of amino acids combine in different ways to form 11 separate and distinct genes, which work together and separately to form the virus, instruct it on its purpose, and tell it how to invade another cell and set up a reproduction factory.

5196 nucleotides have to be assembled in the virus factory. Or, on the other hand, are new life forms being spontaneously created even now? What are the odds that 5196 different molecules would just randomly link up together, randomly find a host cell , and begin reproducing automatically? I would love to see the stats.

Then you figure that the human genome has 6 billion base pairs in just the 23,000 coding genes we have discovered so far. As for the other 2.5 million genes that we are made of, we have no clue as to their purpose. What's my point? Random mutation supposedly brought 5196 base pairs up to over 6 billion, in less than 2 billion years. 11 different genes to billions of unique genes in a relatively short time. Why are we not seeing rampant mutations and emerging life forms now? All the ingredients are the same.
Out Of The Box
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7 months ago: And if you think life came from another planet, or just from outer space, you're dodging the issue. How did it get there? Same question, same problem.
7 months ago: Yep.
Altruist
Altruist
Eugene, OR
7 months ago: Scientists have created the first self replicating artificial life. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/0...

While we are still a long way off from creating new life forms from scratch, our scientists are expanding their understanding of how life is created.

It is pretty arrogant of people to say what future scientists and their artificial intelligent computer allies are going to be capable of in the next century or so?

Scientists are always open to new theories of how life developed if there is any evidence that backs up the new theory. There is mountains of evidence for the theory that life developed spontaneously from very basic chemical reactions to self replicating forms to simple life to more complex life.

But scientists are also open to the theory that life was seeded on the planet from extraterrestrial meteorites or comets.

If the little gray guys show up, and tell us they helped the process along scientists would be delighted with the new evidence.

So far though there isn't any evidence that some cosmic guy with a beard made everything as it is today, or that he created people from mud.
Out Of The Box
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7 months ago: Scientists didn't create the life form. They inserted the DNA sequence that they copied from a cell into an already living cell. They mapped an existing cell, decoded the molecular structure, synthesized it, and squirted it into the living container that they had evacuated the genetic material from. The information is all they had , not the life.

If meteorites brought life here, where did it originate? That would really suck if it was the case, because then it will be a forever unanswerable question. I'm sure the little gray guy has no more proof of his origin than we do here on Earth.Let's not conflate "origin of life on Earth" with "origin of Life".

"In the 1970's British astronomer Sir Frederick Hoyle set out to calculate the mathematical probability of the spontaneous origin of life from a primordial soup environment. Applying the laws of chemistry, mathematical probability and thermodynamics, he calculated the odds of the spontaneous generation of the simplest known free-living life form on earth – a bacterium.

Hoyle and his associates knew that the smallest conceivable free-living life form needed at least 2,000 independent functional proteins in order to accomplish cellular metabolism and reproduction. Starting with the hypothetical primordial soup he calculated the probability of the spontaneous generation of just the proteins of a single amoebae. He determined that the probability of such an event is one chance in ten to the 40 thousandth power, i.e., 1 in 1040,000. Prior to this project, Hoyle was a believer in the spontaneous generation of life. This project, however, changed his opinion 180 degrees. Hoyle stated: "The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40 thousand naughts [zeros] after it. It is enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution."

"say there is a bucket with 27 wooden squares inside. Each square has one letter of the alphabet on it and one square is blank. How many attempts would it take to randomly pull letters out one at a time in order to spell the phrase 'the theory of evolution?'

Each letter of the alphabet plus one space has 1 chance in 27 of being selected. There are 20 letters plus 3 spaces in the phrase 'the theory of evolution'. Therefore chance will, on the average, spell the given phrase correctly only once in 2723 outcomes.

This computes to only one success in a mind-boggling 8.3 hundred quadrillion, quadrillion attempts (8.3 x 1032). Suppose 'chance' uses a machine which removes, records and replaces all the letters randomly at the fantastic speed of one billion per microsecond (one quadrillion per second)! On average the phrase would happen once in 25 billion years. If, as evolutionists would have us believe, the earth has been in existence for approximately 5 billion years, then nature could not even have created even this simple sentence, much less any protein, even at this phenomenal rate of experimentation. "

http://www.truenews.org/Creation_vs_Evol...
7 months ago: Box,

Thanks for your research, I appreciate the work and the time that it takes to bring this kind of info to the table of this discussion
7 months ago: "But scientists are also open to the theory that life was seeded on the planet from extraterrestrial meteorites or comets."

They are open to that? Okay.

But, don't you think or see how that is stopping short or are YOU just unwilling to go there too Altruist?
7 months ago: Al, it's on now. Unless you bail out.
Altruist
Altruist
Eugene, OR
7 months ago: If you are going to talk about probability of life forming spontaneously you need to know what happens to the gazillions of interactions in the primordial soup over 3.5 billion years. What is something just less than infinity times anything more than zero?

They are finding signs of life on mars from meteorites. If some microbes encased in the rock survived entry through the environment they could have contaminated the entire earth. http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n1001/09m...

It is more likely that the material could have come from comets. http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0908/p04s0...

The "left handed Amino acids" necessary to spark life might have come from far flung stars. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-enviro...

The point is that there are a lot of possibilities and as our knowledge evolves we will understand more and more.

When I went to Catholic school the religious experts said it was OK to believe that there might be life elsewhere. All you had to believe is that God created it.

That fiat allows rational people to believe in God. To believe the literal biblical version of creation is irrational because it pits all of science against folk tales from back when superstition explained everything.

The question to those true believers is, once a mars probe proves that there is or was life on mars, do you believe that God created the martian life in his image also? What about the life on billions of other earth like planets?

If there are billions of other civilizations out there many more developed and evolved than we, would God have chosen a cruel and violent obscure tribe from the desert as his/her chosen people?

Your God is too small.
7 months ago: Al - You may believe our God is too small, but yours is so small he's non-existent.

To look at this universe and discount even the possibility of an intelligent Creator bringing all of this into existence is beyond ignorant. All due respect, that is just stupid.

Also Al, you like to generalize, so I will be quite specific here.

You, like so many other prejudice and bigoted folks, make assumptions and attempt to put folks into nice tidy little boxes. Unfortunately, I don't fit in your particular box Al.

Some questions for you: Am I a "young earther" or an "old earther.' Is Genesis an allegory or history? Am I a legalist or WSAS? Am I a Baptist or a Methodist or Presbyterian. Calvinist or Lutheran? You don't know, do you? Yet you have in the past and even to this day make sweeping generalizations like you know. But you don't.

Here is the bottom line. There may be life elsewhere. But so what? Said life still did not spontaneously generate on it own.

You claim there are "mountains of evidence." That's either a straight up lie or you are profoundly blind and ignorant to the facts.

How can I gave the audacity to say that? Because there is not a shred of evidence that points in the direction of life spontaneous coming about on its own. Not a shred. Have you ever witnessed a self-replicating molecule? Nope.

There is not a shred of evidence that shows where information and codes occur naturally without any intelligence behind its formation. The most logical assumption and hypothesis is that there is a mind behind it. PERIOD.

However blind and prejudiced folks can't go there because of the potential ramifications. So instead of continue inquiry they lobotomize themselves.

We can disagree on the details, but you really have no idea what you are talking about.

You seem to think that you have the God of the Bible all figured out, yet every time you post you show your astounding lack of knowledge in even beginning to understand Who He is or what He doing. Your past pain has short circuited your reasoning faculties with regard to God to the point of irrationality. That's very obvious.

You really need to get over the trauma you received via Catholic school and start to think rather than just react and broad stroke based upon your own prejudices, presuppositions and lack of real information and biblical exegesis. It's better to attempt to really understand how we really got here rather than dodge the issues that may save your life.

That being said. I have no animosity toward you or your position. You have a right to believe whatever fairy tale you want. However you embarrass yourself when you continue to peddle abiogenesis as if it is a unquestionable fact or that aliens may be the intelligence behind us being here but certainly not God.

That makes you look just as ignorant, arrogant, bigoted and short-sighted as as Richard Dawkins of this world. I believe you have better intentions and are smarter than that.

Atheism is the most irrational outlook for a person to have with regard to the universe and this life. Why? Because the atheist has stopped thinking. His mind has been short-circuited and can no longer go beyond its own set limitations because the individual that is directing that mind has intentionally retarded his/her own thinking.

That's just sad.
7 months ago: Al,

Firstly thank you for the dialogue you are continuing on this topic. Here is a question, some scientists say that meteorites are from Mars and show that they have life on them............. what if........... the meteors and asteroids were from EARTH??????????

"The fountains of the great deep launched rocks as well as muddy water. As rocks moved farther from Earth, Earth's gravity became less significant to them, and the gravity of nearby rocks became increasingly significant. Consequently, many rocks, assisted by their mutual gravity and surrounding clouds of water vapor, merged to become asteroids. Isolated rocks in space are meteoroids. Drag forces caused by water vapor and thrust forces produced by the radiometer effect concentrated asteroids in what is now the asteroid belt. All the so-called "mavericks of the solar system" (asteroids, meteoroids, and comets) resulted from the explosive events at the beginning of the flood."
http://www.creationscience.com/onlineboo...
7 months ago: The reason that scientists may reject and mock the idea of God is because He cannot be reproduced or manifested in a lab (however many times He is reproduced and manifested in the "lab technician")... for the same reason I am mocking and rejecting the Darwinian Myth carried on by failed philosophers like Dawikins. Anyone can see it takes FAITH to believe either way.

The God of Darwin and Dawkins is nowhere and in complete nothingness (sounds like Nirvana)... The God of the Christian is everywhere in complete absoluteness! Pick your God and pick your destiny... people chose either way based solely on their morals, because they want their deeds exposed to judgement or they want to avoid that messy finality....
but sticking ones head in the sand only passifys the willingly ignorant.
7 months ago: I reiterate -

"When the so-called evolutionary scientists can surmount the tremendous hurdles of information and codes originating without a mind, a universe being created from nothing and without a cause, life spontaneously springing into existence from non life, closure to the humongous gaps in the transitional fossil record, then I will begin to consider what they have to say with regard to their bizarre and unproven theory."

And on top of that, some absolutely want to discount even the possibility of a supreme intelligence behind the universe. They want to play us for suckers.

Some folks are just willfully ignorant or blind enough to swallow that without question.

Why you ask? Because some simply cannot deal with the possibility of having been specially created. That realization brings with it the further realization that they can no longer honestly be their own gods and continue worship their own ideas and notions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgJmsK2s0...

Don't be numbered among the suckers.
7 months ago: Well put Huey!
7 months ago: "When anyone can surmount the tremendous hurdles a God being created from nothing and without a cause, life spontaneously springing into existence from non life."
Out Of The Box
Out Of The Box
 Moderator
7 months ago: That's the greatest thing. God didn't spring into life from non-life. He always was, no matter how our puny intellects try to rebel against that. We need a beginning and an end, that's the way we are; transient.

If the universe is 15 billion years old, the universe has been here for a blink of an eye, when taken in the context of eternity. Humankind's existence is a blink in the eye of the universe. We are less than one frame in a three hour movie.

Carl Sagan said that man appeared on the cosmic calendar in the last seconds of December 31. Then, he had the unmitigated hubris to claim "What happens in the first second of the next cosmic year depends on what we do, here and now, with our intelligence and our knowledge of the cosmos."

A new cosmic year begins with the advent of man? Oh yeah, there's that "beginning and ending" problem again. How far back before the creation of the universe are we trying to go? Have we got that figured out yet? Time is nothing but a measurement of distance, when applied to physical terms. How to you describe the nothingness before?
7 months ago: Stan,

You still don't get it. Did you watch the video I posted in my last entry.

The universe has a beginning and did not create itself. FACT. The only thing/force that can create a universe is something that is eternal to it. FACT.

The reality of God is self-evident. We can argue the details but that is just plain reality.

Information and codes always come from intelligence. Without question and without exception.

One can always use the cop out: "Man has simply not discovered how information and codes can be naturally occurring, but we will."

Okay. Continue inquiry, but until that idea becomes tenable, the best idea and that which makes the most rational sense, is the existence of specific creation with intelligence behind it.

7 months ago: Maybe you are right. If you are, you don't have proof of it.

You will have noticed that writing "fact" in capital letters, sadly has failed to convince the people best informed or educated in the age of science.

It has however, convinced the least informed and least educated since the dawn of history.

Keep at it and see how you go.
7 months ago: Just because you don't agree those are facts doesn't change a thing. They are facts.

You can believe 4 + 4 = 11 if you want. I'm just not going fly in anything you might build.

If you want to try and explain the facts away, go for it.

As far as best informed and educated, that's me. I only go to the best. I do my homework and check things out. Life is too important to me to coast through and swallow everything folks put in front of me. I do my best to look at all sides regardless of bias and prejudice.

All just boils down to whose story or explanation is the most plausible, rational, and holds up under scrutiny.

As always Stan, best wishes on the journey.

Out Of The Box
Out Of The Box
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Content Removed by RantRave
Out Of The Box
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7 months ago: Why is it that when a theoretical astrophysicist proposes that "the universe sprang out of the nothingness all by itself", he is proclaimed a genius, a visionary, an advanced thinker? He then goes about manufacturing the mathematics needed to support his claims. But when a theist gives good, rational, and well constructed arguments as to why there is a necessity for a mind to responsible for creation, he is regarded as uneducated, gullible, a kook.

The funny thing is, well, at least funny to me, is that this guy here
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...
first proposed the Big Bang theory.
7 months ago: Stan,

It is easier to understand that all we see, are and will be... is as a result of cause and effect... therefore "our" understanding is limited to the realm that we exist in. That is why many scientists think that life may have been "seeded" here by some outside means.. ET etc... and thus we wouldn't have to know where ET came from nor if he/she were created or were always there. So God too if favoured by the thinking mind... based on the logical cause and effect we can observe... while it is unimportant for us to understand the realm God is in, as we can't even understand the realm that we are in.

I say again, the idea of God is not as repulsive as the idea of the Biblical God... Why? Because the God of the Bible (BTW is the only one who claims to have directed mankind) requires justice and obedience. The other gods are only limited to ones imagination... because in fact that is their origin. The claims of the God of the Bible's interactions with mankind are substantiated by all manner of science (geology, geography, biology...), and scientists themselves experiencing His personal interaction. Are we left to merely discount millions of personal testimonies be they on the paper of the Bible, or lived out before our contemporary eyes? No. A true sceptic will study the viability of every scenario... especially those of so-called "mass deception". Lab science is not the only means of discovery of truth... the sciences of human behaviour and social dynamics are also as viable. When a good portion of a population is changed by an unseen force never to be the same again... we don't call it imagined or stupid... we call it a tornado! IN the same fashion many lives are destroyed or restored merely by spiritual encounters... it begs investigation at least.
7 months ago: Box,

DANG, That's hilarious!
7 months ago: Come on Stan,

The facts are the FACTS anyway you emphasise them... ad hominem attacks the character of the writer... what should we call one who attacks the (upper or lower case) character of the characters one writes with? Ad scriptum??
Out Of The Box
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7 months ago: "...sadly has failed to convince the people best informed or educated in the age of science."

But informed by who? If I have all the latest and greatest theories all down pat, and they turn out to be wrong, what have I got? A big hat full of useless conjecture. Now, the truly educated know that we still don't have a clue in any provable way what actually took place in the formation of the universe, or in the ascent of life.

The ignorant and uneducated will take whatever is spoon fed them, though. They will follow the pack, and if the pack says man sprang from amoebas, that's what they believe. If the pack says the universe sprang from nothing all on its own, well by jingy, that's what they believe. Irregardless of the fact that there are hundreds of competing theories,none proven, they use words like irregardless anyways.
7 months ago: "If I have all the latest and greatest theories all down pat, and they turn out to be wrong, what have I got? A big hat full of useless conjecture."

Well, I agree with you, except theory and conjecture informed by knowledge is what informs the development of further knowledge and the quest for truth.

However, asserting a biblical conjecture as a fact provided by God, does not develop knowledge or progress truth.

As you say "the truly educated know that we still don't have a clue in any provable way what actually took place in the formation of the universe, or in the ascent of life."

Well, we what we actually do have are clues, supported by the accumulation of knowledge.

The truly ignorant and arrogant however, say that the proof is that God allegedly said something to someone at some time, at that is what the truth is. Allah said this. Krishna said that.

"if the pack says man sprang from amoebas, that's what they believe. " Absolutely. If the pack says woman sprang from Adam's rib, that's what they believe, likewise.

However, there is a very important difference between absolute assertions made on the authority of what someone says God said, and what can be determined. Every bit of knowledge since God wrote the Bible, and you will appreciate there has been a lot of knowledge gained since then, has been won by human effort, conjecture, facts and clues.


Out Of The Box
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7 months ago: "...except theory and conjecture informed by knowledge is what informs the development of further knowledge and the quest for truth.

However, asserting a biblical conjecture as a fact provided by God, does not develop knowledge or progress truth."

What is the difference between asserting a conjecture by a man as a fact, and asserting a conjecture as a fact provided by God? They are both conjecture until irrefutably proven. Yet I hear all the time, "The Big Bang is a fact, you Bible thumping moron! Get over it already!!!" I know, as well as you, that they are displaying their ignorance.

I see all the time people in authoritative tone spouting the latest daydreams as though it was an entity that can stand on its own. The Science Channel's own Morgan Freeman is doing more to increase the ignorance of the English speaking world than Lady Gaga. I see him regurgitating the same information he has been scripted, (is that his scripture?), talking about dark matter and dark energy and theoretical particles and forces of the universe that so far exist only paper. But to hear him explain it, you would think that we have 8x10 glossies of WIMPs and big jars full of dark matter sitting on scientists' tables being used as paper weights.

Then we go to archeology educational shows, where the very neatly animated mama Alectrosaurus is portrayed as a loving parent, who has to fight to the death to protect her young, all the while being emotionalized so as to hypnotize the viewer into accepting the theories as fact.

I was watching an old science reel this morning from around 1940 or so, and the instructor was attempting to explain the M theory...well he wasn't really explaining it, as much as he was trying to sell it. He mainly said, and this is a quote: "Relativity is quite simple actually! If only you are willing to use your mind and THINK!"
So am I to believe that my mind is inferior if the Theory of Relativity doesn't do it for me? I have a few theories of my own, thank you very much.

Emperors New Clothes, anyone?
7 months ago: Agreed, mostly, about the big bang etc. With the proviso that I'm not sure off hand that anything is irefutable except perhaps cogito ergo sum. Most things are up for refutation, when new facts warrant it.

There are distinctions between whatever imaginative idea is the best available hypothesis (conjecture), and things that deserve to be called theories (things that are useful), and things that deserve to be called facts.
Content Removed by Huey Newton
7 months ago: Has Altruist bolted?
7 months ago: He is thinking !:]

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