You would certainly have an impossible task before you if you insisted on defining cosmogony purely in terms of logic and reason
:shrug:
Now that is real faith
- Thread starter Syzygys
- Start date
:shrug:
Only a fool would believe that dawkins doesn't lean heavily on his scientific credentials when going on a tirade about god and religion eg -
An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: "I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one." I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist
... so once again, care to peer review the case for these claims
:shrug:
Which claims? For all your talk about eugenics, it could not stand under the weight of scientific scrutiny even then, no matter how many people wanted to believe in it. A scientist in 1900 could have shown you the folly of the ideology--and indeed anyone could have easily identified it as an ideology, as we only today have scientists beginning to argue that science can turn "is" into "aught"--so what scientific claims made by Dawkins today could not stand up to scrutiny?
You can't find any scientific claims in that quote?
No more than Dawkins tirades about science and rational thinking nullifying religion and god ... but hey don't let that bother you
:shrug:
which then begs the question, why didn't a majority of scientists at the time do just that ...
:shrug:
as for dawkins claims, do you think its possible to talk about Darwin rendering the entire atheist argument sustainable without breaching issues of cosmogony?
Last edited:
I guess that's because cosmogony is defined as a scientific theory of the origin of the universe. But atheism doesn't depend on knowing the origin of the universe, and Dawkins doesn't claim that he knows anything about it other than the Big Bang, which came somewhat afterward (albeit milliseconds after).
JDawg said:
So you can't answer the question?
Well, wait, what tirades are you talking about? Dawkins has never claimed to "disprove" a god. You're making another vague assertion here. Which claims are you talking about? I know you haven't read Dawkins, but certainly you've got some examples at least from those anti-evolution websites you parrot?
Which tirades are you talking about?
Shrug indeed. But the answer to that question is ideological rather than scientific.
Yes. It has to, because he makes no claims as to where the universe ultimately came from, or how reality came into being. Atheism doesn't rely on that. It doesn't even address it. Atheism addresses the lack of evidence for a creator. Without that evidence, atheism stands. Presented with that evidence, atheism falls. But at no point does one rely on a claim for the ultimate origin of the universe. Atheism does not need to know that there is no god, it simply needs there to be an absence of evidence for one (and of course it helps that every instance in history of a god can and has been debunked through science, which leads one to believe that godhood itself may be just another creation of the human imagination.)
I'm curious: where did you get the idea that these two things overlap? And don't say "How don't they?" because that's a cop-out. I want to know what makes you think so.
... which is irrelevant. But nice straw man.
Whether he does or not is irrespective of whether his claims are scientific or not, of whether he is being scientific or not.
Whether he relies on his scientific background to give credence to his non-scientific claims, and whether people fall into the fallacy of appealing to his authority as a scientist, whether he markets himself and all he does as scientific is irrelevant to whether his claims are scientific or not.
You also seem to be confusing something being logical/rational with claims that it is therefore scientific. :shrug:
If you are ruling out something in lieu of certain ideas (to be specific, scientific ideas that are not falsifiable) then there's not any scope for peer reviewing surmounting issues of cultural bias.
Its as if you are pretending theoretical scientific ideas have no precedent for shaping how such individuals conceive of reality.
:shrug:
Last edited:
actually at the moment I am questioning your literacy and comprehension skills ...
wait, I never used the word "prove"
errr ... I did just gave you a quote where dawkins talks explicitly about scientific ideas that nullify god
guess this is your memory condition in action again
:shrug:
You don't say ...
hence :
"While it is true that persecution of the Jews has a very long history in Europe, it is also true that science in the twentieth century revived and absolutized persecution by giving it a fresh rationale — Jewishness was not religious or cultural, but genetic. Therefore no appeal could be made against the brute fact of a Jewish grandparent.
Dawkins deals with all this in one sentence. Hitler did his evil "in the name of. . . an insane and unscientific eugenics theory." But eugenics is science as surely as totemism is religion. That either is in error is beside the point. Science quite appropriately acknowledges that error should be assumed, and at best it proceeds by a continuous process of criticism meant to isolate and identify error. So bad science is still science in more or less the same sense that bad religion is still religion. That both of them can do damage on a huge scale is clear. The prestige of both is a great part of the problem, and in the modern period the credibility of anything called science is enormous. As the history of eugenics proves, science at the highest levels is no reliable corrective to the influence of cultural prejudice but is in fact profoundly vulnerable to it.
There is indeed historical precedent in the Spanish Inquisition for the notion of hereditary Judaism. But the fact that the worst religious thought of the sixteenth century can be likened to the worst scientific thought of the twentieth century hardly redounds to the credit of science.""
If that was the case he would keep his big gob shut about issues of religion
I just gave you a quote where he talking about ideas that establish atheism (as is the tendency of the new atheists) as opposed to what it lacks. FYI the atheism dawkins champions certainly does rely on such things
I'm guessing you are not really familiar with dawkins work. He is actually quite critical of implicit atheism
I'm not sure how you can talk of discrediting the notion of god without breaching issues of cosmogony (even though you seem to be trying to say that he never said it)
I don't see how a biologist talking about darwin and modern scientific advancement lending cohesiveness to the atheist argument is any less scientific than a geneticist talking about eugenics circa 1900
:shrug:
Of course you are. It's easier than answering the question.
No, you said "nullify," but you often misuse words, so I assumed you were trying to make the typical "he's trying to disprove God" argument. But okay, you really did mean that is trying to "deprive religion of value or effectiveness?"
Fine. Let's talk about that quote.
What's wrong with it? Where does it fail scientifically?
But science was the corrective power in that case. Yes, the movement was popular, but it was never good science. You're taking an instance of society being swayed temporarily by a pseudoscience and claiming that this means science at fault. That's not true. Good science was what got us past eugenics, and what continues to fight it off today.
And again, it wasn't "scientific thought," it was pseudoscience. The point you seem incapable of understanding is that it doesn't matter who believed it, it was never good science. There were opponents to it from the first, and major, credible opponents not long after. It's never been sound scientifically, despite what some idealistic people may have wanted to believe about it. So no, the Crusades are not likened to "the worst scientific thought," it can be likened to the worst ideological thought. Because that's all eugenics ever was.
Well, it is the case, so there's goes your qualifier. As to the qualifier itself, it's bogus. Not having to make a final statement about the ultimate origins of the universe does not mean one cannot make a statement about the various religions which do make those claims. For example, I can't disprove that a god created the universe, but I can show that the mythology you believe in was cobbled together from earlier sources which even you would call mythology. I can also show that your holy book's very constitution is of political origin rather than divine origin. The translations are seemingly arbitrary, as well. There's no historical evidence for Jesus, whose existence is the very foundation of an entire faith.
In other words, I can tear your religion apart, and expose it as the ancient mythology of an ancient and ignorant people, and I don't have to go anywhere near the ultimate origin of the universe to do so.
Well, first of all, he wasn't talking about requisites for atheism, he was talking about information which now makes atheism intellectually fulfilling, such as our knowledge of evolutionary biology, and the heaps and mounds of evidence we have for it. In other words, we now know that evolution happened, and the story of man being planted on Earth as-is, and the Earth itself being only so many thousands of years old, have been washed away by scientific discovery. Nowhere in that does cosmogony come into play.
He's critical of the classification, not of the intellectual position. He regards that kind of atheism as agnosticism. And he also says that he cannot say with certainty that a god does not exist.
And believe me, it is hysterical that someone who has literally never read a page of Dawkins would say something like "I'm guessing you're not familiar with his work."
I'm not surprised you're not sure. This whole discussion seems to go over your head. Dawkins does not breach issues of cosmogony, and atheism is not reliant on it. What you need to realize is that our conception of godhood comes from written traditions, usually ancient, based on much older traditions. These traditions make many scientific claims, and all of them belie their ancient, ignorant roots.
It's not as if we sent the Space Shuttle to the moon and ran into a door marked "God" and remained atheists in spite of it. How can we be asked to refute religion's cosmogony when it can't even make a case for its terrestrial legitimacy? "Okay, you've invalidated everything else, but you can't say that God didn't create the universe with certainty, therefore atheism fails and religion wins" is an absurd proposition.
If you can't find any scientific claims in that quote it certainly is easier
plying darwin as an effective means to nullify issues of god of course
actually it was nazi germany that put the nail in the coffin of eugenics because they did such a dreadfully bad job of it
actually it was popular due to the concerted efforts of many "good" scientists
labeling it a pseudoscience in hindsight doesn't rewrite the history of its application by scientists
if science was inherently good at the onset we wouldn't be having this discussion about it being vulnerable to cultural/ideological bias
and again, circa 1900 that clearly wasn't the case
On the contrary, if something is believed to be scientific by mainstream scientists it most definitely does matter.
and if they were deemed valid the world wouldn't have to wait for the nazis to do such a dreadful job before the scientific community got fully on board with it
then how on earth did it find its way into mainstream science - like say every single text book about genetics from the era?
If it was purely a case of ideology it would never have crossed the threshold of mainstream science
:shrug:
perhaps that would be relevant if dawkins never talked about RNA coding and other models of abiogenesis
on the contrary you can't.
All you can do is talk about various suppositions and models for theories ... which is all you need to let rip with a cultural bias (aka religion is nothing but a cultural phenomena ... despite the obvious point that even if one is willing to entertain theism as valid, one would expect rich and varied cultural expressions)
so its precisely when he interprets this information to exclude ideas of divinity that he is simply going along with his cultural ideological bias ... on the authority of science
:shrug:
hence the problems with you classifying atheism as such
Its more that when you get hot headed you tend to fold into a definition of atheism for which dawkins stands opposed to
this is nonsense.
Atheists, including dawkins, are full of apparently "good scientific ideas" about how the universe and life came to be ... none of which are falsifiable .... serving the purpose of intellectually padding out their atheist views if nothing else.
actually the argument is that the authority of science extends well beyond what is capable of being falsified.
And you seem to speak as if the terrestrial legitimacy of science is some how validated when something so essential as the development of life from lifeless matter is conspicuous in its absence (despite the numerous wonderful forays about life being nothing but a culmination of natural processes with matter).
In the chasm between claims of knowledge and what can actually be done you have all the room you need to drive an ideological/cultural bias home.
:shrug:
So you can't, then. Just as I thought. :shrug:
Care to expand on that?
There is no way to do a good job of it. It's not scientific. Nazi Germany helped demonstrate that. But as a scientific idea, it was refuted long before that.
It was popular due to the concerted efforts of many people who let ideology get in the way of science. It was never good science. You won't admit that, but it's true nonetheless.
Nor is it intended to. It's simply meant to correct your assertion that "scientists believed in eugenics, thus science is not dependable." There were people--scientists--who knew that eugenics was not scientifically sound at the time. It was never good science. That's the point. Evolutionary biology, however, has mounds of empirical evidence. Eugenics never had that.
I didn't say anything about science's inherent goodness (how can a method have "goodness?"). I was talking about good as in proper, or correct. Proper science fishes out broken ideas and replaces them with working ones. If the proponents of eugenics had done good science, they would have known that--and there's every probability that they did. Just as the IDer knows he's full of shit when he cooks the results of an experiment to make the odds of random mutation resulting in complex life appear more staggering than they already are, I'm sure many proponents of eugenics knew they were full of it, but pressing on because their position was ideological in the first place, rather than scientific.
To say that scientists can't also be batshit morons is to say nothing at all. Thankfully, as opposed to religion, which cannot question its authorities without bloody conflict and the suffering of millions, if a loon presents an idea that is loony, there's an unbiased process by which to expose the idea in all of its wrongness.
It was always the case. Just because people believed in it doesn't mean it isn't pseudoscience. For example, you believe in Intelligent Design. There are even some scientists who believe in Intelligent Design (though not many biologists, obviously). But it is demonstrably a pseudoscience. That doesn't stop people from touring the country spreading the lies, does it?
No, it doesn't matter. You keep confusing science for religion. In religion, if something is believed by the orthodoxy, then that thing just is. But in science, it doesn't matter how many people believe in something. If the science isn't there to support it, it's just a broken theory. Something isn't scientific just because a scientist says it is, in other words. This is why science is superior to religion. Well, one of the many reasons why, anyway.
Again, there was no way to do a "good job" at eugenics. It was a pseudoscientific ideology from the beginning, and as such would crumble when put to use as a science. The Nazis simply shined the biggest spotlight on its failings. Of course, you're wrong that the Nazis would not have used it if popular opinion of eugenics had been correct, rather than that of its biggest proponents. It had already been debunked, and the arguments against it were there for all to see, and it would have been known to German scientists just as it was to American scientists.
The Nazis saw it as a vehicle to promote what they already believed, which is that they were a superior race, and the Jews an inferior one. It wouldn't have mattered what the prevailing popular opinion was on eugenics at the time, Hitler was going to employ it. I mean, look around you today: there are still plenty of groups who believe in it, and plenty who would, if given the power, do it all over again. We're seeing some frightening shades of that in Greece today with the Golden Dawn, which is a neo-Nazi party promoting racial purity and the enslavement of lesser ethnic and racial minorities.
The same way that creationism has found its way into biology textbooks today.
Of course it would have, if it had enough powerful and loud proponents. But you know what, why don't you tell me what was so scientific about it? You claim it was a perfectly sound scientific theory, so let's hear it.
Neither RNA coding or abiogenesis rely on cosmogony.
I think you're mistaking me for a proponent of ID, which is someone who is simply seeking to support their preconception and dismiss any evidence against it. To the contrary, one requires no preconceptions about religion to reach the conclusion that it is a human construct. All one has to do is look. In fact, the only preconception held here is your own, in that you believe that what we're looking at here is the "rich and varied" cultural expressions of a shared experience.
This theory, while cute, ignores the fact that the basis for a religion in any given region is simply an amalgamation of earlier faiths, rather than alternative accounts to contemporary events. The flood story in the Bible, for example, is taken directly from the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is probably something like two thousand years older than the Biblical flood story. It is upon this borrowed foundation that a religion builds contemporary ties. Christianity's foundation, for example, is Judaism, which is based on earlier Babylonian myths, but Christianity also incorporates many traditions of contemporary Pagan faiths, such as the Christmas celebration during the winter solstice, and even many of the traits of Jesus Christ, all of which are shared by one or more of the other gods worshiped at the time. So here you have a crystalline example of how a religion is not simply one culture's retelling of a single experience or event, but rather the cobbled together pieces of various myths across the region and through the ages.
[/QUOTE]
so its precisely when he interprets this information to exclude ideas of divinity that he is simply going along with his cultural ideological bias ... on the authority of science
:shrug:[/quote]
Well, what that information does is exclude all presented ideas of divinity. I mean, your Bible says that God created man from the earth and then women from his rib. Our current understanding of evolutionary biology refutes this. Of course, this doesn't refute the concept of divinity, but Dawkins never said it did. It only refutes the divinity we've been presented with. If you have another version, let's hear it. Consequently, I believe Catholicism is working on such a thing as we speak. They've adopted astronomy as a pet project, and they've stopped denying evolution. I believe this is self-preservation on their part, but it's also what will probably keep Catholicism alive into the next few centuries. They will adopt a scientific viewpoint into their doctrine, so as not to be so vulnerable. In my opinion, anyway.
Classifying it how? You lost me.
Example?
Bullshit, of course. You know nothing of physics, you know nothing of cosmology, you wouldn't even know what Dawkins' opinion on the universe if I quoted it right here and now. But most importantly, even if I told you he believes in the Big Bang (which is a falsifiable theory, and does have evidence to support it), that's not cosmogony, because it doesn't address where the Bang came from, or how the singularity got there. Laurence Krauss had done a great deal of research in theoretical physics, and there are plenty of videos on Youtube in which he explains in plain English how the universe may have come from "nothing" because there really is no such thing as "nothing," but this still does not answer the cosmogony question, which requires an answer to "Where did it all come from?"
I have seen no evidence of that. I do see work being done in theoretical physics--things like string theory, and M theory--but to be honest not a lot of people take those kinds of things seriously, simply because there's so much guesswork and speculation. In other words, I'm not seeing very much authority here.
But I doubt you're talking about that. Instead, you're referring to your misunderstanding of atheist arguments against your skydaddy. In that event, I suggest you educate yourself to the real arguments, as opposed to simply copy-pasting what you get from theistic crank websites and blogs. I mean, actually read Dawkins, instead of just offering up a quote you lifted from his Wikipedia page. (Googling that quote, by the way, brings up over 90,000 results, so it's not as if you mined "The Selfish Gene" or "The Blind Watchmaker" for morsels. Your scholarship of him is limited to crank blogs and wikipedia. You should remedy that if you're going to expend this much energy arguing against his ideas.)
Science is validated because it works. We're having this conversation now because of science. You have electricity because of science. You're probably alive today because of science. Do you have a favorite TV show? Science. Do you like to take long rides in your car? Science. Air conditioning? Science.
Science has a proven track record. Its legitimacy is not in question. As a method, it works. Religion, on the other hand, has prolonged no one's life, has cured no illness. This is not to say that religion has not claimed to do these things and more, but at every opportunity it has failed.
Citing gaps in our understanding will get you nowhere. It has tried before, only to blow up in the face of the critic.
There are no claims of knowledge for things we do not know. Not from scientists, anyway, This tends to be the realm of the theist, especially in modern times.
Last edited:
And this lack of sight of such matters is presumably why you raise straw men.
I.e. It rather depends on what they are saying, the individual claims they make and the conclusions they draw: not everything a scientist does is necessarily scientific.
If what they are saying is repeated in practically every (in the case of eugenics)or many (in the case of atheist spin on science) science text book on the subject its clearly something more than their opinions on the end of year football finals or something.
:shrug:
which then goes back to questioning on your literacy skills
So you can or can't find this in the quote?
If there is no "good" way to perform applied science then you would have ceased your arguments a long time ago
And that is precisely what we are discussing - how ideology gets in the way of science.
circa 1900 they were a handful compared to the majority who disagreed with such criticisms
you just said earlier there is no such thing as "good" science -
problems with cultural/ideological bias occur at the point of interpreting what the evidence signifies.
ffs dude quit with the grammar nazi routine - it doesn't score you any brownie points. You have already revealed you not only understand the context of the word but are also guilty of the same apparent misdemeanor of usage
:shrug:
.
given the cerebral nature of ideas, the only thing a working one requires is a majority affirmation by professionals in the field
given that there are no working models for developing complex life anyway, the whole issue is simply about ideas - IOW there is no working model so the authority of the subject is shrouded in "perhaps" and "maybe" ... which is all one needs for a cultural bias to take root
Its more the issue when such batshit moronism gets institutionalized
If that was the case you wouldn't see a long history of batshit moronism finding its way into the academic circles of science .. along with many many more dying and suffering at the hands of such foolishness.
Hence :
There is indeed historical precedent in the Spanish Inquisition for the notion of hereditary Judaism. But the fact that the worst religious thought of the sixteenth century can be likened to the worst scientific thought of the twentieth century hardly redounds to the credit of science.
we are not talking about "people" - we are talking about a majority of accredited scientists vouching for it on the strength of their professional career.
I'm not sure how that is a valid comparison since ID has never had the support and backing that eugenics did circa 1900. And for the record, the main problem with ID is that naturalism has severe epistemological difficulties coming to grips with any sort of issue dealing with divine intelligence so its no really valid at the onset.
There are many things that are said to be science simply because a majority of scientists say so (in the language of science of course) - thats the reason we have disciplines like cosmogony .. or even why guys like dawkins slip the leash and goon about atheism and religion. For something to be said to be science it simply has to meet theoretical criteria with falsifiability being but one of them. This is all the slack one needs to house a bias.
If that was the case eugenics would have bit the bullet long before hitler came on the scene with his remarkable version of it ...
It was put to use as a science for at lest 50 years - thats why it was described as an "applied science" and "mainstream science" back in its day.
hence "done badly"
different story circa 1900 - which certainly explains why you cannot talk about there being a dominant academic criticism of it at that time
In the same fashion Dawkins is using science to promote what he believes - there is no difference
The detail is however that there was a prevailing scientific opinion about the valifdity eugenics at the time
yet you can't see the new atheists plying the same schtick - much like there were no doubt others who had a vested interest in eugenics who were similarly blind and deaf to the contrary
not really since eugenics was actually dominating fields like genetics and anthropology when it was in vogue ... thats why it was labelled "mainstream science" and found expression in what we term "applied science" - creationism is nothing like that
hence the suggestion science is subject to cultural/ideological bias.
:shrug:
There's a wiki page giving an overview whenever you are ready to investigate the scientific basis
actually I was talking about the historical evidence for abiogenesis since that is apparently so dear to your value of science
more nonsense.
Establishing something as a human construct in no way renders whatever they are constructing as flawed, invalid or imagination.
To suggest otherwise is a clear indication of personal bias.
By the same token one could argue that trees don't exist because they are historically/ culturally varied in their depiction.
Given that any cultural expression (like the depiction of trees for example) is subject to a bit of local colour, it seems you are failing to understand how these things work
hence modern scholars agree that the bible had numerous authors - not sure how this somehow under-rides the essential claims of the bible. For instance how does the biblical flood story being sourced in gilgamesh nullify/render obsolete/invalid the teachings of Jesus?
thanks for proving my point.
If the catholics can take on board such subjects of evolution then its clear what you are really talking about is the refinement of secondary details as opposed anything integral to the claim of theism.
IOW there is no scope for using the authority of science as a departure point for atheism ... unless of course one bridges the gap with ideological/cultural bias
as a mere absence of belief - dawkins is going for something more than that
citing apparent evidence for discrediting god/religion.
You've already done that with gilgamesh/the flood ... even though you admitted later that not even current ideas of evolution can really stand opposed to it
Obviously you missed "and the like" in my post
take a look at the criticism of the ID wiki page for the evidence
and there's your problem - not all scientific claims have working models to call upon ... and instead rely upon interpretation and guess work
and perhaps that would make sense if biology and computer science were interchangeable disciplines
This is precisely the type of authority science borrows from in order to lend credibility to its claims when it meanders into ideological bias
just pointing out how even very basic assumptions about science (which practically all atheists in the field adhere to religiously) simply fail by the standard you hold as integral to "real" science
Its liek you pretend that theoretical ideas about science play no part in how such people (and others who respect their authority) view the world
I'll accept both of these failures to answer direct questions as admissions that you can't answer them. Moving on.
Oops! Twisting words again. I never said there was no good way to apply science, I said there was no good way to apply bad science. Eugenics is not science, remember? Or are you still contending that it's a scientifically-sound theory?
No it's not. What you're trying to do--and you've stated it explicitly--is that because people have tried to portray pseudoscience as legitimate science, that therefore science is invalid.
To say that ideology can obstruct the proliferation of science and science education is to say nothing, and you don't have to go back as far as the eugenics movement to see an example of that. There are school districts in the world's only secular republic that current teach creationism as a biological science.
That's not true. It's just that it got a foothold in some major publications and had prominent supporters.
I'll just quote myself, since you apparently missed it in my latest post:
Moi said:
It begins long before that. This does not mean, of course, that every cultural bias or ideology should carry the same value. A scientists' bias, for example, is a bias for theories supported by evidence. The IDer's, on the other hand, is a bias for evidences that can be twisted and construed to promote their preconception (God did it), and the dismissal of evidence that goes against it. Clearly, one of these biases is superior.
So because you don't know the different definitions of the word "good," I'm a grammar Nazi? I know clarification usually kills your arguments, but come on.
So the more people that believe something, the more correct it is?
Evolution is a testable theory supported by empirical evidence. Creationism is a superstition based on a series of ancient texts which are based on a series of older texts (which in turn were based on older oral traditions).
Except that we're talking about a field that requires peer review to become a standard model. There are a bunch of competing theories, and maybe even some leading ones, but certainly nothing is considered definitive. So where is this cultural bias?
Is it? When's the last time something like that happened? Let me guess: Circa 1900?
Long history? We're talking about one phenomenon gaining traction primarily in one country--the US. It wasn't popular in Europe, and it certainly wasn't institutionalized there until the Nazis came to power.
If you're going to debate these things, avoid the hyperbole. I know your arguments are so weak that they require it, but again, come on.
I've already explained to you why this paragraph is nonsense. Eugenics was never scientific. It never had a scientific basis, and thus cannot be called "scientific thought."
Like all corrosive forces, eugenics was an ideology.
Here we go again with the lies. Majority of accredited scientists? No. And again, there was never any scientific basis to it. You've even conceded as much, so don't backtrack now.
No, the problem with ID is that it's pseudoscience. There is no scientific merit to any of their arguments, which is why their articles are vanity published or "peer reviewed" by fellow IDers in magazines created by fellow IDers, and why their tactics are so dishonest.
Secondly, by your own logic, a theory's correctness entirely depends on its popularity, and ID is far more popular worldwide than eugenics ever was.
No one expects you to believe in something just because a bunch of scientists say so, not even the scientists themselves. This is why they don't say "Evolution happened, trust me," but rather, "Evolution happened, and here's the evidence."
And you have it backwards about criteria. My claim of being a frog prince is a falsifiable theory, but it's not a scientific one. But a theory that isn't falsifiable by default isn't a scientific one.
Again, then why is ID creeping its way into our biology textbooks?
It was never put to use as a science. It was always a social movement dressed up in scientific jargon. It didn't truly gain prominence in the US until around 1910, and was in decline by the early part of the 1930s. In the meantime, there were plenty of popular criticisms against the movement (whether it was the low quality of the research done, the inherent racism it implied, the propagandist nature of its proponents, or the arguments against the influence of heredity) from all over the globe.
No, just "done the most."
It wasn't institutionalized in 1900.
Dawkins is promoting science, so I don't know what you think you're talking about.
Not scientific, there wasn't.
What is the contrary? What's the science that shows they're wrong? It's one thing to make the claim, but where is the evidence? Show me that evolution is wrong, or that it's lacking empirical evidence to support it. I can show you scientific arguments against eugenics from the 1910s, so if these things are equal, where are the scientific arguments against evolutionary biology today?
Again, eugenics is not an applied science. It's a pseudoscience. In order for something to be called an applied science, it must apply scientific knowledge to a problem. Eugenics did not do that. It applied an ideology to a perceived problem. If you want to call it an "applied ideology" have fun. But it's not an applied science.
As for creationism, the difference between it and eugenics is that the scientific community today is much more sophisticated than it was a century ago.
:roflmao:
In other words, you you have no idea what you're talking about.
There's evidence for abiogenesis. Were you under the impression that there wasn't?
So you're arguing semantics again? This is like the height of your debating technique. Obviously by "human construct" I meant "an invention of the human imagination."
Please try to keep up.
Except that we have direct evidence of trees. Like, right outside the window.
A palm tree isn't different than a sentinel because of how people describe them--they're different because they're not the same kind of tree. And what exactly are they expressing? You have various cultures telling entirely different tales featuring wildly different kinds and numbers of gods, and all happening at different times. Are you saying that your God appeared as a thousand different to the Aztecs? Are you saying it all happened at once, or that God kept showing up at different times to different cultures? What is this local flavoring of?
They're not talking about the authors of Gilgamesh. They're talking about the authors of the various books of the Bible. Judaism--and therefore Christianity and Islam--depend on the historicity of the events depicted in the Bible. The flood must have happened at a certain time and to a certain person. If the stories told by Abraham are simply plagiarisms of what he found in Babylon, then Judaism and everything to come from it is a lie.
And at any rate, I never said physical evidence against the historicity of the Bible would invalidate Jesus' teachings. Those--barring the stuff about him being God, of course--don't rely on his existence. At least not the moral stuff. Of course, what the non-existence of Jesus would mean to Christianity is a different story, since they do rely on him existing. But just his teachings alone could survive without him.
It depends on the theism. If you're willing to accept that the stories of your fundational texts are divinely inspired moral fables rather than historical accounts of actual events (even though many Biblical stories, for example, do not really make any sense as anything other than literal historical accounts), then science won't really mess with your beliefs. It could when you start talking about Biblical genealogies, which is where the 6,000 year old earth business comes from, but you could always find a reason to chalk that up to something else. In other words, if you're willing to push God back far enough, then science doesn't have to be the enemy of faith.
But for many theists, science is the enemy, because it discredits the claims they believe to be factual. Like the flood, or the fact that the earth is 6,000 years old. Or the geocentric model as portrayed in the Abrahamic texts. Or the whole "earth in 6 days" business. Or the earth forming before the sun. Etc., etc..
Again, there absolutely is, depending on the theism. If your faith says the earth is younger than 4.5 billion years old, that man walked with dinosaurs, and that miracles were ever a common occurrence, then science is a plenty good departure point from religion.
What is Dawkins going for, exactly?
No, see, this is ridiculous. I specifically said that science refutes all presented versions of divinity. That includes the flood, and all the stories of the Bible or the Quran, or any other ancient myth. What I said about Catholicism was that they were willing to loosen their tradition to incorporate evolution and cosmology. In other words, they're no longer saying Adam and Eve were historical figures, or that the earth was really formed in six days. They've changed their faith, essentially, because modern science had rendered it obsolete as an explanation for how the world came to be.
Obviously you missed my reference to physics and cosmology, neither of which are disciplines to which Dawkins belongs. I even specifically mentioned Laurence Krauss, a physicist.
What are these so-called unfalsifiable claims made by Dawkins et al?
I'm not going fishing for an answer to an accusation you've made. You made the accusation, you give me an example to support it.
There are plenty of working models--especially for abiogenesis, which is the one you like to talk about the most (despite knowing nothing about it beyond the summary paragraph at the top of its Wiki page)--it's just that there's no standard model. We can show how it may have happened, just not how it definitely did happen.
So again, your assertions rely on ignorance and hyperbole.
...What?
What the hell are you talking about? You said that science is invalid because it doesn't have all the answers. I simply said that it works because it has plenty of them. I can demonstrate the effectiveness of science just by having this conversation with you, which would not be possible without the scientific method. How many long-distance conversations have you had through non-scientific means?
That's what I thought.
I've shown you that you're wrong. If you don't understand, what am I supposed to do? :shrug:
You're arguing two different things here. You first said that there are non-scientific claims of knowledge, now you're saying that people have non-scientific worldviews based on presumptions. Those are two very different statements.
Last edited:
whatever.
Obviously not the first time you stubbornly refuse to read a quote
caution - this link requires that you read stuff in order to understand things
labeling it pseudo science doesn't help you any after the horse has bolted the gate ... and certainly doesn't do justice (more reading involved I'm afraid) to the broadness of the issue
the publications being practically every text book on science from the time and the supporters being practically every professional, academic and researcher in the field (especially in the fields of genetics and anthropology)
never heard of type I and type II errors?
Not unless you think a good lawn mower is one that helps other lawn mowers keeps rust off its blades
depends entirely whether the people in question are professionals vouching their professional careers on the claim ... and its not so much that it becomes "more correct" but it becomes more likely to become appliedSo the more people that believe something, the more correct it is?
Its just when you call upon evolution to undermine essential theistic claims (like the existence of god for instance) that you take a detour into cerebral disneyworld
which then brings us back to the obvious disparity between standard peer reviewing and the follies common for atheists borrowing from the authority of science to lend credibility to their claims
Only in your imaginary and obviously biased world I'm afraid ....
Thats right - you're talking about it like that ... but then you don't read any links that suggest otherwise
If you're going to debate these things, avoid the hyperbole. I know your arguments are so weak that they require it, but again, come on.
I've already explained to you why this paragraph is nonsense. Eugenics was never scientific. It never had a scientific basis, and thus cannot be called "scientific thought."
Like all corrosive forces, eugenics was an ideology.
ditto above
Do you read anything anyone posts or do you simply imagine and make up what they say because its easier to form rebuttals that way?
ditto above
in fact this is over now
You don't read links
You don't read responses
All you do is pull fluff from your navel and congratulate yourself on your victories
:shrug: