RustySites offers an interesting post which demonstrates critical areas where atheists are seriously mistaken

On Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:44:19 -0700, Rusty Sites
<SpameYouToo@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

T Pagano wrote:
On Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:03:25 -0700 (PDT), Switch89
<Ryansarcade@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Science is about following the evidence wherever it leads.

1. This is highly misleading. The label "evidence" is a conclusion.
It is applied to raw observations which can be interpreted in the
light of some theory. If the theory cannot interpret the raw
observations then they are labeled "discordant."

Please list observations concerning evolution that are labeled
discordant. Of course you won't.

1. The most glaring discordant observation is the complete absence of
genuine transitional fossil forms in the fossil record. Darwinism and
neoDarwinism predict transitional forms to be the norm in prehistory
not the exception. However, the norm of the fossil record is
"stasis" and not the obiquitous transformism explained by darwinism.

2. The next discordant set of observations are the conservative
mechanisms (genome copying mechanisms and the conservative effects of
natural selection, for example) which highly attenuate any biological
change. Not only do these conservative mechanisms attenuate change
from parents to offspring but they result collectively in Haldane's
Dilemma. This is an unsolved road block which Darwin did not
anticipate since he was ignorant of the complexity of the cell and the
conservative genomic copying mechanisms.

3. Darwin honestly reported in his magnum opus that any biological
system or structure which could not be built by successive, gradaul
linear steps would be a road block to his theory----that is, the
existence of such systems would be falsifiers of his theory. Behe
identified two such biological systems which are irreducibly complex
and cannot be built in linear fashion. Over the last 10 years
atheists have not been able to show that these two systems are not IC
or produced empirically testable darwinian processes of how they could
be built in linear fashion.

4. e coli breeding over 30,000 generations have shown the limits of
biological change. Such observations have shown that change is
limited to at best one or two substitutions leading to some positive
effect. However, even this limited change oscillates over time within
limits and does NOT proceed coherently and progressively towards novel
structures and systems as would be required if darwinism were true.


2. So in the absence of a theory it is impossible to determine
whether some raw observation is "evidence" or "discordant." To go one
step further without the guidance from a theory the investigator has
no guidance what to even look for.

Gibberish.

1. Another idiot who is under the delusion that scientists go out
into the wild with no theory in mind making indiscriminate
observations which are then used to deduce the true theory.

2. Does no one else ever read the history of science?




3. In other words "evidence" doesn't lead anything or anywhere.

You should speak for yourself. I think most of us here can agree that
evidence leads *you* nowhere, but this your own personal defect and has
nothing to do with evidence as is true of everything else you say.

Rusty sites produces no examples where "evidence" can even exist in
the absence of a theory. This will be the next myth to be busted in
the forum.



It
is the theory which leads and points the correct way or the false way.
Without the theory there is no "evidence."

Now that's a rather stupid statement. I know it is beyond your
comprehension, but there is no theory without evidence. Before there is
evidence, the "theory" is a conjecture.

1. Since all theories, regardless of their level of evidence, are
provisional labeling them "conjectural" prior to the discovery of any
evidence is a distinction without a difference.

2. Next, investigators generate all sorts of theories often on the
basis of only a single observation. Theories often exist long before
observations are even possible. Some examples: As far as I know
there is not a single empirical test or observation in support of
STRING THEORY and none are in the offing any time soon. Einstein
proposed the beginnings of his General Theory in 1911 several years
before Eddington conducted his eclipse experiment (in 1919).

3. Two examples which flat refute Rusty Sites.



4. Finally since "evidence" is a conclusion in the light of some
theory, the "evidence" is only of value if the theory is objectively
true. All false theories in the history of science have garnered some
"evidence."

By your twisted logic, evidence is of no value if it disproves a theory.
Anybody with a passing knowledge of how the world works knows that is
hogwash.

1. Evidence certainly has value just not the value attached to it by
atheists.

2. My point in (4) is that "evidence" tells us almost nothing about
whether the theory under review is true. However, observations which
falsify the theory under review tell us deductively that the theory is
logically false. This information is extremely valuable.


The level of evidence, in and of itself, cannot tell us
whether the theory is true AND it cannot even tell us whether the
theory is probably true.


In other words, nobody can know anything. It doesn't seem to work that
way, does it.

1. Where do I assert or imply such a thing?

2. However, no where does Rusty Sites remediate the long standing
"problem of induction" which says that observations we can make are in
no way connected to those we cannot make. The observations we can
make are not even connected to the probability of occurrence of those
we cannot make. In theories about Origins where most observations
concerning PREhistory can't be made places serious limitations of the
efficacy of the scientific method.





One cannot
cling to the dogma of creationism and look at the evidence objectively
at the same time.


1. Here Switch89 is under the mistaken notion that some set of raw
observations uniquely points to or deductively leads to only one
theory. This is NOT the case. There is likely a very large number of
logically possible theories (possibly an infinite number) which can
interpret the same collection of raw observations as "evidence."

As before, I will ask you to name just one of the infinite number of
theories. As before, you will not.

It is not really necessary that we produce them. It is enough to
understand that every finite collection of relevent observations is
INSUFFICENT to allow an investigator to deduce the true theory. This
is a well known fact in the philosophy of science.

As
such "evidence," in and of itself, cannot even help up decide between
theories let alone tell us which theory is true.

Which would imply that no evidence could show a theory to be false. If
that is true, then there is no such thing as a theory. We all thought
the ether theory had been ruled out by experiment, but Tony tells us
this is not possible.

1. Unfortunately you demonstrate your ignorance of Science.

2. While the "problem of induction" prevents atheists from using
level of corroboration to justify the claim that a theory is true or
even probably true it is NOT a road block to falsificationism.
Falsification is a deductive process not inductive.



2. Furthermore Switch89 hasn't established that the creationist models
are unable to interpret the same observations as "evidence" in their
framework.

Of course it can't be shown that they can't work. They work in all
possible cases. That's why they are worthless.

1. Again ignorance of the creationism is Rusty Sites undoing.

2. Creationists for many years thought the Vapor Canopy model could
explain some of the preNoahic environment and provide the inital
conditions to explain the Noahic Flood. It was; however, discovered
to be untenable by relevant observations. This not the only model
that has been discarded or considered questionable by creationists.



Secondly, there are very few sciences that do not contradict young
earthism in some way. All biological, geological, astronomical, and
cosmological sciences contradict it. Even chemistry contradicts it,
since there is massive biochemical evidence for evolution.


1. I'm not even sure that much of this is true. Biology (as opposed
to evolutionary biology)

Except that evolutionary biology is interwoven into all aspect of biology.

1. Perhaps but it is not necessary for the study of biological
entities as they exist now.

2. It is the conjoining of evolutionary biology which may be leading
investigators in the wrong direction in solving the problems of
malaria and other infectious diseases.


generally studies living things as they exist
not how they came to be. As such biology does not contradict
creationism. Chemistry studies matter, its properties, and their
interactions as it exists not how matter and its properties came to be
so chemistry does not conflict with creationism. In fact the vast
majority of our background knowledge does not conflict with
creationism.

2. The hog wash that creationism is inherently anti science and that
it conflicts with all of our scientific background knowledge is little
more than the political theatre that atheists have been peddling.

3. Some conflicts do exist; however, they usually exist in areas of
investigation OUTSIDE the competence of the scientific method.
Evolutionary biology, paleontology, abiogenesis, cosmology all attempt
to reconstruct prehistoric events which were NEVER observed, are NOT
recurring, and are NOT experimentally reproducible. Such evidents are
NOT directly accessible to the scientific method.

They are, you just don't understand the scientific method. It does not
require that somebody be present and make observations at the time of
the event.

1. I understand the method only too well. I had to study it for
myself to understand its limitations. Atheists for 75 years have been
inappropriately conflating science and technology and misleading
millions about the efficiacy and limitations of Science. They have
embued Science and its atheist practioners with an authority that they
do not possess.

2.. How (pray tell) can the scientific method DIRECTLY access Origins
events in PREhistory that were NEVER observed, are NOT recurring,
canNOT now be observed, and are NOT experimentally reproducible.


3. As such to suggest that Science has some special insight to the
truth and that other ways of knowing are deficient is naive at best
and arrogant at worst.

Let's see. There's the science people who say we know the truth because
we went out and looked and those like you who claim to just know. Who
are the truly arrogant ones?

1. This is exactly the point. In Origins research we cannot go out
and observe what happened 900 million years ago. At best we can find
some fragments of what might be left after those events occurred.

2. This severly limits the efficacy of the scientific methods whose
strong suit is the investigation of those events which are directly
observable, recurring, or otherwise reproducible in the laboratory.

3. So who is more arrogant: Rusty Sites for endowing the scientific
method with power it clearly does not possess or me for pointing out
the limitations of that method so the investigator and those who might
rely on his conclusions are not misled.



Regards,
T Pagano

.

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