Re: Pitt faculty answers Harshman's "were you there?" with "you MUSTbe there!" or be branded as unscientific

On Sun, 14 Aug 2005 20:15:05 GMT, John Harshman
<jharshman.diespamdie@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>T Pagano wrote:
>
>> On 14 Aug 2005 06:46:52 -0700, TomS <TomS_member@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

snip

>> Pure nonsense.
>>
>> First, the US government funds the lion's share of all scientific
>> research conducted in the US. I suspect it funds 80-100 percent of
>> research conducted in the US academic institutions. There is no
>> indication that any funding has been diverted to ID or that ID will be
>> funded at the expense of any other theory.
>
>Yet. I just hope nobody tells the President or congress that they've
>been funding Evilution all this time.

Cute, but this doesn't defend the Pitt faculty from the ridiculous
claim that "Science in the United States is under attack by our own
government." "Science" isn't being conducted at the K thru 12 level
previous background knowledge is still to be taught at those levels
and the government hasn't diverted or altered its funding of modern
secular science. Shame on them for such rhetorical nonsense.

snip

>> Second, how does the introduction of intelligent design as a possible
>> mode of causation to students K thru 12 attack science? It doesn't
>> even attack the reining pet theory of neoDarwinism since it is NOT a
>> historical theory of evolution or creation. But these faculty and
>> post docs are terrified that everything they've been taught and
>> believe could be brought down by some kindie-gardners who a few years
>> later (by the spark of ID) might bring down their atheistic "world
>> view" presupposition about nature NOT science crashing down.
>
>How could teaching nonsense in science classes fail to degrade the
>teaching of science?

Saying that ID theory is nonsense and demonstrating it is quite
another. Harshman certainly hasn't demonstrated anything of the kind
nor has he even presented anything resembling a rebuttal. Quite
probably because he's never cracked open Dembski's, "The Design
Inference," which passed Cambridge University Press peer review. He's
not denied that he's argued from complete ignorance either.


>> This is the talking point of the orthodox mob, but none of the
>> atheistic legions have shown that Dembski's theory is unscientific.
>
>It's up to Dembski to show that his theory is scientific. And in fact,
>if you've forgotten, the DI does not recommend that their theory be
>taught in schools, because they admit it's not yet ready for prime time.
>(I would agree, but would remove "yet".)

Dembski has already demonstrated that his theory is scientific; it is
no more or less scientific than is the methodology of SETI which is
considered so.

His theory connects with reality and it is falsifiable. It searches
for an observable characteristic "embedded" in objects, systems or
events----complex specified information (CSI). If CSI is found it can
be analyzed to determine whether or NOT intelligent design can be
inferred. Such a special case methodology is already accepted in SETI
and other investigative sciences. In SETI's methodology neither the
nature of the intelligent agent nor its producibility-observability is
relevent to the inference of intelligent design.

ID theory prohibits law and chance from generating CSI. All critics
must do to falsify ID is find an event whose causal history is known
to be law-chance and also observe CSI.

Lastly, since when has Harshman been taking advise and guidance from
the Discovery Institute? Luckily for atheists they didn't take DI's
guidance. Could you imagine if it was mandated to teach the
shortcomings of evolution and the frauds instead of ID. You'd have
so many doubters by the end of high school that neoDarwinism would
collapse even faster than it already is.

snip

>> In other words the letter is political rhetoric not scientific
>> criticism.
>
>Of course it's political rhetoric. That's all you can really do in a
>letter to the editor. Then again, ID itself is nothing but political
>rhetoric.

In the number of lines they took to introduce rhetorical nonsense
(which Harshman has yet to defend) they could have produced at least
one nail in the coffin showing ID to be unscientific or faulty. All
that scientific brain power at Pitt and they chose political rhetoric?
I wonder if even one of them has read Dembski's, "The Design
Inference?" I know Harshman hasn't.

>
>>>The discipline of science has established methods by which hypotheses about
>>>how the natural world works can be carefully tested against observable reality
>>>and refined if necessary.
>>
>> This is nonsense as well and they know it.
>>
>> First, historical modeling of unique non recurring events which were
>> neither observed nor susceptible to experimental
>> reconstruction-----like the emergence of life, the diversity of life
>> and the very emergence of the cosmos------have only limited
>> accessibility to the scientific method. At best investigators can
>> hope to determine what empirical consequences might be observable now
>> assuming the truth of the theory. But even this doesn't eliminate the
>> possibility of numerous other theories which might entail these same
>> consequences.
>
>Such as...?

I'm not a theorist, but I don't have to be. It is a well known fact
that observations regardless of their number always underdetermines
the true explanation. Logically speaking this means (1) that the true
theory cannot be deduced from the observations and (2) the
observations may well fit an infinite number of theories whether we
can produce them or not. But this misses the point.

The Pitt letter implies that theories can only be admitted to science
which can be "carefully" and by implication "directly" tested against
observable reality. But in historical investigations and modeling of
unique non recurring events of earth prehistory one often CANNOT test
against "observable reality." Those events have passed and cannot be
experimentally reproduced. Harshman seems to think this fact is a
shield used by IDers and creationists. It is nothing of the sort; see
below.



>At any rate, all you have here is a slightly polished
>version of the "Were you there?" taunt used by the most ignorant of
>creationists. You're quite wrong. We can do science to investigate
>historical events, including the history of life and the cosmos.
>Experimental science and observational science are not as different as
>you claim.

The "were you there?" argument of creationists is the "second" edge to
the secular "sword" that a failure to directly observe an intelligent
agent acting (in the case of ID theory) necessarily eliminates the
theory which introduces the agent as UNscientific. The Pitt faculty
argues that ID theorists fail to connect the theory directly with
"observable reality." In effect the Pitt faculty answers Harshman's
question with "you must be there."

Creationists have pointed out that if "we must be there" to directly
observe every force, initial condition. intelligent agent and
ancillary event in order for a theory introducing those elements to be
considered science then virtually all of the historical sciences
(evolutionary biology, abiogenesis, cosmology) would be non science.


>
>> Second, the "Chicken Little" faculty and post docs fall by their own
>> sword. The transformational claims of the neoDarwiniam theory have
>> never been observed or recontructed in the laboratory. The modern
>> secular orthodox claim is that such an historical transformational
>> process proceeds too slowly to be observed. That means that the
>> transformational claims of neoDarwinism can NOT "be carefully tested
>> against observable reality..." Where are the Pitt letters to the
>> editor about excluding the transformational claims of neoDarwinism?
>
>Nowhere, because your objection rests on false premises and on
>misunderstanding of what "observed" means. But we've been over this many
>times before.

Creationists cannot directly produce, observe or explain supernatural
forces therefore any theory which introduces such forces regardless of
whether there are empirical consequences which can be observed has
been deemed unscientific. In the case of ID I am left to presume that
because ID theorists can't produce the intelligent agent (the
sufficient cause) that therefore the theory is necessarily not
science. Such reasoning should cause similar "handicapped" secular
theories to be eliminated. For example:

The transformational explanations of neoDarwinism is admitted to be
unobservable and the mechanism is as mysterious. It has never been
observed and the fossil record shows stasis as the rule not
transformism.. Yet not only are the forces and mechanisms a mystery
but they are disconfirmed by the only historical evidence we
have---the fossil record. The forces holding some cosmic singularity
together and the forces causing them to rapidly expand are not even
proposed to obey the laws of nature as we know them yet Big Bang is
not considered unscientfic.


> Your usual response is to run away and pop up again,
>somewhere else and later, making the same claims. We know the
>"transformational claims of the neoDarwinian theory" are correct because
>(mostly) of the nested hierarchy of life that you keep trying to ignore,
>insist doesn't exist, or explain away as a "common designer", depending
>on your mood.

One would think that your weak defense of Isaak's nonsensical index
item of only a few weeks ago should have disabused you of this line of
defense. Never claimed that the hierarchical arrangement of
bioligical entities didn't exist. Harshman has such a short memory.

Nested hierarchy was a finding of Linnaeus not Darwin as he attempted
to study the relationships between biological entities through a
man-made (Linaeus's) classification scheme. Furthermore law and
chance tend to result in continuous linear arrangements not
discontinuous hierarchical ones. Finally neither Darwinism nor
neoDarwinism predict or require such arrangements. In fact due to the
explanation of the fine gradations between species over time as
explained by neoDarwinism one would NOT expect to find any
discontinuities. Yet discontinuity is the rule.


snip. more to follow if time permits.


Regards,
T Pagano

.

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