Re: AC fails to turn the non sequitur, "anti-darwin skepticism necessitates

T Pagano wrote:
On 30 Jul 2008 15:41:42 GMT, AC <mojo214@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:58:27 -0400, T Pagano <not.valid@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Can any Darwinist in the forum produce an argument showing/concluding
that anti-darwinistic positions require one to also be anti-science?
That's an awfully good question. Surely there must be shades of grey here. Stalin rejected genetics, but accepted subatomic physics. You reject
evolution, but I'll wager you probably have no problems with General
Relativity.

1. In broad general terms "evolution" means that "some" change occurs
over time. No one (as near as I can tell) including myself doubts that
some change occurs. What is rejected by creationists and a growing
number of non-creationist anti-darwinists is the extent of change
possible and how existing characteristics in the living and fossil
world came to be in the first place.

Name a non-creationist who rejects whatever it is you meant to say. And could you clarify just what they're rejecting, because that was so vague as to be useless?

2. Atheists in this forum (and elsewhere) have for at least the last
10 years attempted to marginalize the skepticism of anti-darwinists
through a logically indefensible argument. They assert the non
sequitur that skepticism/rejection of the provisional theory of
neoDarwinism necessarily requires the rejection of "Science."

Please back up this claim by citing a single atheist who claims that skepticism about neoDarwinism requires the rejection of science. (Is science similar to "Science"?)

3. My request of the atheists in this thread was for someone to fill
in the missing premises to convert what is simply a "non sequitur"
into both a valid and true argument. So far NO ONE has been able to
do so and others have admitted that no such valid and true argument
exists.

So far no one has admitted that any such argument has ever been made. It's your own strawman invention, in other words. Of course nobody can convert your strawman into a valid and true argument.

4. General Relativity is also a provisional theory not dogma.
Einstein in his later years came to see many of its shortfalls and he
did not believe it was true. Just as there are a growing number of
anti-darwinists there are also a growing number of physicists who
believe that General Relativity theory is mistaken. I agree with this
position.

This is nonsense. Nobody thinks general relativity is mistaken except a few cranks, some of them creationists. What physicists think is that general relativity is incomplete. Newtonian gravity isn't wrong either, just a bit more incomplete, and it works well enough for most purposes. All scientific theories are provisional, of course; that's the nature of science. But if you want an analogy to the way physicists view general relativity, it wouldn't be rejection of evolution, but an idea that our current theories don't explain everything. Just as no future theory of gravity is going to make planetary orbits into octagons, no future theory of evolution/creation is going to make humans and monkeys unrelated by descent.

In short, you're not so much anti-science as you are adept and
compartmentalizing things. Evolution destroys your world view, so it must
be false.

1. This is a contradictory claim. How can I both "compartmentalize"
my views in relation to evolutionism and at the same time connect my
world view to my analysis of evolutionism?

What he means is that you reject the scientific method as applied to evolution, but not (or so we imagine) as applied to bits of science that don't conflict with your world view. That's the compartmentalization: you carefully ignore the implications of your attacks on evolution, which would be that all science -- in fact most of what we do in everyday life -- is invalid.

2. Darwinian evolutionism could only destroy my worldview if it were
true rather than what it is: a provisional, speculative theory with
significant shortfalls in its ability to connect its transformational
claims to real world biology, discordant facts, and significant
difficulties in conducting any meaningful empirical tests of its
transformational claims.

Right. And that's why you have to maintain this position. You don't want your world to crumble, so you ignore evidence, distort your opponents statements, and otherwise behave dishonorably.

3. Hume (who was an anti-christian) showed that level of
corroborative evidence is not logically connected to whether a theory
is true or even probably true. Every theory sent to the scrap heap of
history had corroborative evidence. Every false theory has some true
consequences so that corroborative evidence can be had by all false
theories. On the other hand, a SINGLE discordant fact can logically
falsify a theory.

This is what's called "naive falsificationism". Bad position to take.

4. As such the anti-darwinist skeptic who leans towards believing
darwinism is false based upon discordant facts is on much firmer
logical grounds than is the verificationist (that is, the atheists)
who asserts the theory is true based upon corroborative facts.

This is a sort of pseudo-Popperian rant, I suppose. Part of your basic misunderstanding of how science works. This seems as good a place as any for the pro forma (because you never listen) note that the equation of evolution with atheism is specious.

5. However, this is all a diversion from the atheists (like AC)
producing the premises which turn their favorite non sequitur (that
is, "anti-darwinists are also by necessity anti-science") into a valid
and true argument.

Again, please provide documentation that this claim has actually been made, and is in fact frequent.

Physics is more benign, so it can be accepted.

1. While I accept the handful of the laws of nature these are
insufficient alone to explain the origin and existence of anything.
Physics includes a large number of speculative theories about the
components and properties of nature and the origin of the universe
that have no fewer shortfalls than does neoDarwinism in biology.

True, except for the canard about being "speculative". Physics isn't so benign after all, nor are chemistry, geology, or any other science. Tony's anti-science views are not so much a rejection of all scientific knowledge, which he picks and chooses on the basis of whether it fits his prejudices, but a rejection of the philosophical foundations of science (and of everyday behavior, for that matter).

The real irony is that it's likely from physics that the death blow to a
good many things religions hold dear will come.

1. As usual the atheist endows man with a great deal more knowledge
and omnisience than he actually possesses. Physics still has no clue
what gravity is: force, curvature of space, a combination, or
something else. And this is only the beginning of what physicists
don't know.

2. I suspect that AC couldn't produce a single fact of physics which
logically dethroned a single dogma of christian faith if his life
depended on it. Care to try?

Got me. Would you care to list all the dogmas as a first step?

Evolution simply falsifies
a rather absurd form of Biblical interpretation.

1. Apparently AC didn't attend those classes in the Philosophy of
Logic 101. How exactly can a provisional theory whose proximity to
the truth is unknown, with significant shortfalls in its ability to
connect its transformational claims to real world biology, and
discordant facts falsify anything. Sheesh....

Indeed. How can anything falsify anything? Since all scientific knowledge is provisional, we can't know its proximity to the truth, and therefore we know nothing. But Tony's not anti-science. Got it?

.

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