Re: OT: Religious kerfluffle, was Re: OT - Re: Tim Daneluk

Tim Daneliuk wrote:
Enoch Root wrote:

Tim Daneliuk wrote:


I could refute about 90% of what you wrote simply by explaining
point-by-point how you've subtly misrepresented what I said and/or
mean knowing full well the actual intention of what I wrote. Your
commentary is full of straw.



How could you ever prove that, given your metaphysical stance?


And the misdirection and intellectual prestidigitation begins.
I guess I can't avoid swatting flies tonight:

I never said I could "prove" anything, merely that I could
refute the previous post's dishonesty by disclosing it as such.
Your cavalier introduction of the notion of "proof" is not binding
upon me to defend because it is *your* idea, not mine.

You wriggle and squirm, but you can't escape your own words:

refute:
To disprove and overthrow by argument, evidence, or
countervailing proof; to prove to be false or erroneous; to
confute; as, to refute arguments; to refute testimony; to
refute opinions or theories; to refute a disputant.

A "disproof" is a proof of a negative. You're logic is slippery and
disingenuous. It's also untrue.

I said that as a joke about your attempting to "refute" something when
after all that blather you regurgitated about the futility of proofs.
You get it? It's a joke about your apparent inability to keep track of
your own arguments. It's an amusing geeky joke, at your argument's
expense. Get it? Hahah!

[stupid arrogant ad hominem, snipped]

Do you mean:

Your outdated notions of the state of philosophy? You were arguing
against an old school (The Vienna School) of thought, not Science as
methodology.


I was arguing *against* nothing. I was attempting to describe
why no system of knowledge can prove its premises. At no point did
I attack science or its methodology.

You did this (describe undecidability in a pomo populist
science/philosophy ignorant way) to explain your source of criticisms.
You assert ID's "views": "The assumption that the mechnical/material
view is sufficient is wrong." Who's argument is that? That went out
years ago, and in fact complexity theory is still in its infancy. So if
that isn't science (seems "utilitarian" enough to me, so I assume you're
asserting the inadequacy thereof) then is it philosophy? 'Cause it's
old and crusty in that field too, my little poseur. Are you going to
back away from that statement as well?

Look, if you *are* going to state an argument and back it up, you really
*must* make an effort to keep things clear, alright? If you aren't
making an argument against outdated notions of the state of philosophy,
don't include it in your response! A please remember to maintain a
distinction between philosophy and science as it's very important.

[another attempt to smear and annoy, snipped]


Your unreasonable expectation that Science adopt the doubts of
philosophy, rather than use it as a guide and warning, and inspiration?

I expressed none of my own expectations about science. I tried to
articulate the claims of the IDers as collateral to a larger question I
was asked. Moreover, philosophy is not expressing "doubt" (what a cute
way to trivialize thousands of years of thoughtful discourse).
Philosophy is naming very specific limitations about what we can even
know. It takes a religious person to ignore those limitations and
proceed anyway.

Oh, so you aren't saying anything real, or relevant? Is that why you
change the subject and natter on some more about my "cute
trivializations"? Again, if it's not a part of your argument, don't
include it! Sheesh.

[another childish name calling, snipped]

Science is a practical endeavor to understand the world. It's

I said this from the outset. Go back and look for the word "utility"
in my previous post. I'm glad you agree with me on this.

But it appeared to be completely irrelevant to your--gosh, you don't
really have an argument so far, do you?

limitations are well-known, but they don't distinguish it from, say ID.

Agreement again, surely there must be a God! The limitations in question
are common across *all* systems of knowledge ... which I said in
the first place.

Ahem. This is relevant to your explanation of critique of the Big Bang
Theory as it pertains to your disregard for evolution viz. ID, how?

[asinine wannabe childish arrogance, gone!]

It's actually the strengths of Science, its predictive value, that
distinguish it from flights of fancy like ID.

To the extent that it is predictive that's true.

So we have discovered something! ID has NO value or relevance.

However, not every part
of contemporary science is predictive. For instance, current
evolutionary theory is no such thing - at least not at any fine grained
level of detail. Todays "science" embraces far more than just those
portions of disciplines that are predictive. There is lots of induction
and deduction taking place far beyond the boundaries of being able to be
predictive. Oh, and by the way ... "predictive" is nothing more than
science demonstrating utility value. It does not make the premises of
science inherently more valid than the premises of other systems of
thought.

Here my little poseur friend, I can say that you are clearly out of your
depth and foundering in your own ideology.

Billions of dollars are invested each year in the predictive value of
the mechanics of evolution and natural selection. Trillions of dollars
a year are made using the predictive value of the mechanics behind
evolution and natural selection. Trillions.

I'm the one that used practice to demonstrate Science's value, not you.

You try to validate ID putting it above Science, by saying that because
positivism has been debunked that anything goes. Well that works in
philosophy, Buttercup, but science isn't philosophy. Science is
influenced by philosophy, but ID isn't philosophy, and it aint science.
It's a mental exercise.

Also predictive is *considerably* more than a demonstration of utility
value. You measure your ideas against the world my little poseur, and
if they match, you have a healthy world view.

[stupid little non-sequitur ad hominem (and a falsehood), snipped]

Your implication that ID might be, somehow, immune to the same
limitations of the theory of evolution? Even while lacking its
strengths?

"Thou shalt not bear false witness." Where in my original post
did I even _hint_ that "ID might be, somehow, immune to the same
limitations"? I realize it was a long post, but after all, I did
start out by describing at some length how all epistemologies
have *common* limitations and boundaries.

Because I inferred it from your inclusion of these limitations for
evolution, as a part of your (still upcoming... hopefully soon now)
expose of how the BBT is crap and why that shows ID > Evo as a theory?
Because you are using these arguments against evolution? Because it
doesn't leave you with an argument for ID if you disown it? Because
your apparent task was to show us why ID was valid, where evolution is a
big lie? Are you not arguing for ID? Am I to take it from this that
you are just making lots of noise and my "sound and fury" theory was right?

[stupid ad hominem, blah blah...]

Your use of our ignorance of the origin of life as an attack on our
(well-established) theories of the origin of species?

The theories are not "well established". Science has at least
a 2500 year tradition (and perhaps more) of which less than 150
have held some version on the origin of the species you espouse.
Moreover, the arguments for that theory are: a) All indirect - they
cannot be verified by direct experiment and b) Are missing key
supporting elements (like transition fossils). Since this is so,
that theory has to be logically seen as being *weaker* than one
that has experimental confirmation.

How much development has occurred in the last 150 years. Yup.

Somewhere is a proof that you CANNOT GO BACKWARDS IN TIME, involving
dT/dT as an impossibility. Sometimes the best you can do is make
inference. That isn't a weakness in Science, it's a limitation of our
own abilities that spans all our observation. Nobody has ever bounced a
perfectly elastic star off another. Does that mean stars don't follow
normal newtonian physics? No, we make inferences between them and
earthly objects.

Missing fossils is NOT a refutation either. That's very simple to
explain if you just look at the amount of change to the geography over
the years. And guess what, Buttercup: there have been many, many
instances where there *were* no transitional fossils, BUT THEN THEY
FOUND SOME. Isn't that amazing! In one instant they were an
intervention by an Invisible Diddler, and the next, just another entry
in the fossil record.

These are really weak arguments, poseur, that exploit exactly that
uncertainty of the Philosophy of science (and the honest appraisal of
that) against the endeavor. Philosophy of science acknowledges that,
and science tries to overcome it by the means available.

This is not to say the theory is wrong, merely not as strong ... and
therefore far from being "well-established". Unless, of course, you
choose to believe it absent those things. Such a position is fine with
me, but let's call it what it really is: Faith.

Ah, another find! It's not wrong because of that. I'm glad we agree
the theory is not wrong. At least, I think we do. You'll probably deny
that. When did we start talking about faith and belief? I was talking
about validity of theories. Evolution has validity and is
well-established as a theory. There is huge amounts of data to support
it: in the fossil record, in breeding of livestock, in biology, in
population studies.... ID on the other hand is spaghetti monsterism.
Whimsy. Wishful thinking. A philosophical puzzle. There's no way to
begin to establish it even as a theory. The best you can hope for is
that thing you seem so disdainful of: faith. There's nothing wrong
with it, but it has no place in the establishment of a theory of speciation.

[more pretending to be a grownup (with an argument), snipped]

Your flat-out wrong assertion that when I examine where "parts" come
from and why they "work" will drive me inexorably to the conclusion
there is a builder?

It was not "my" assertion. That sentence comes from an attempt on my
part to catalog the current position of IDers. They are, in fact, wrong
about this one. You are an existence proof that some people rebel at the
idea of a builder no matter how elegantly designed the building is
because your Faith precludes the possibility that you are not at the top
of the knowledge food chain.

You are the one right here making the argument. Take responsibility for
your own actions, young man. It was your task to demonstrate an
argument for why The Big Bang was nothing more than a lot of hot air as
far as theories go, and then explain why that would demonstrate that ID
was better'n evolution. Oh wait... we already established that you
don't have one. You've backed away from everything thus far.

I make no professions of faith. Quite the opposite. Actually, in my
own mind I do regarding how to treat people, community responsibilities,
and life choices like that. Those are irrelevant here, though.

There is no assertion in anything I said that I am at the top of the
"knowledge food chain". You're all alone, teetering up there, Buttercup.

[silly child prattling, snipped]

If you were a biochemist (I am) conversant in genetics (I am) and
population variation (I am) do you think that would be sufficient
*background* with which to make this examination? Do you think having
such a background would be helpful to such an examination?

Tsk, tsk. This sounds suspiciously like an argument from Authority - how
very Vatican of you. I was under the impression that the science
was a discipline in which this was never done.

You don't know what that is. An argument by authority is like saying
the Mayor says the space shuttle blew up because the stars weren't
right, so it must be true. Get a little reading done, and learn up on
your fallacies, Buttercup.

So now we've come full circle. Your fulminations demonstrate my very
first point in the earlier post: What you "know" depends entirely on
what you accept as being "true". You haven't refuted me even slighly -
you've served as an example of what I wrote. The only real difference
between you and the most devout Theist or one of the IDers, is that the
latter admit their Faith and their God. You have both and pretend they
don't exist.

I don't get an answer to my question, then. I don't get a clarification
of an argument? I just get spurious accusations of fallacious
arguments? I was expecting something demonstrable from you, some way to
legitimize ID as a theory that would somehow put it in contention with
evolution as a theory. And I was willing and ready to put up my
knowledge as a counterpoint. Instead I get this, this spin. I really
truly think you should change your name to SPIN DULIEALOT. Because
that's what you're doing. You're a spinmeister, nothing more. Pathetic.

You were going to provide us with an argument, but you back away from
everything when you get your nose rubbed in your fallacies.

And you are angry, strident, and defensive signifying self-doubt and
fear ...

Is it a habit of yours, to provoke people with your snide little
arrogant *** comments, and then turn it against their argument? You
are a pathetic little monster of a boy, Buttercup. And dishonest. You
have succeeded in annoying me. That was your intention precisely so
that you could pull this little dagger out, and turn my annoyance
against me. Slimey.

er
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