Re: views of academic scientists
- From: wf3h <wf3h@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 5 Apr 2009 12:47:17 -0700 (PDT)
On Apr 5, 1:58 pm, Damaeus <no-m...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Reading from news:talk.origins,
wf3h <w...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> posted:
No. You just don't want to take the time to explain it in your own words
because you've just accepted someone else's word since it suits your
beliefs.\\
a cliche you've learned from some post modernist screed.
That is not a cliche. It's an observation I made on my own.
no post modernist new age bubble headed cliche is an observation you
made on your own. it's 2nd hand half baked stuff you picked up that
you think is sophisticated when actually it's just rewarmed porridge
But I see
that in one statement you've made a whole assload of incorrect assumptions
that go against every aspect of critical thinking. For you to make that
statement would require you to actually /see/ me learning that from
someone else, such as seeing me read or hear someone else say that before
me. I'm not sure what you see in there that's a cliche, but I didn't
learn it from anyone else.
anyone who thinks that DNA 'learns to repair' the body has no clue as
to how DNA works or how chemistry works.
it's just more santa claus thinking....
the language of science has precision.
But apparently you're selective about what you want to be precise about.
meaningless.
that's why we use it.
A lot of good it does you, if you won't think as precisely as you try to
communicate. And I said think, not make wild assumptions then believe
them to the point of calling the other person a liar for denying your
conclusions.
unfortunately you fuzzy thinkers...creationists included...tend to
think romantically. you think your emotions, your views of god, can
somehow affect cnatural processes because whatever god you happen to
worship...including yourself....adtually will listen to you and modify
nature according to the instructions you give him. good luck both on
instructing god and on getting nature modified.
I can't help it if you want to talk in vague, fuzzy, warm feeling
type words
What words have I used do you find warm and fuzzy?
all this crap about how the desire for immortality will cause DNA to
make you immortal because you're a god...or whatever mishmash happens
to suit your fancy right now
about ideas that have a sharp, scientific meaning.
And I've said I'm not a trained scientist, but I have a general
understanding of Biology. Hell, I even scored a 98 for the first semester
of biology in high school.
it looks like no one explained what DNA is to you.
that's your problem, not mine.
From my perspective, that's like you telling me that I should think for
you and adjust your perceptions to read my messages properly.
for thousands of years people tried it your way.....
What is it that you think I'm trying, and what is it that you think is "my
way"?
i dont necessarily think you're lying. i just think you're uneducated
about what science is and how ti investigates nature. i am a
scientist and it's hard for me to know how people think of nature
since i dont routinely talk to people about their ideas on how nature
works. given the presence of creationism in the US i think many, i
fnot most people, think of nature as something that exists to be
modfied by the purpose god wants for their lives. and that's not how
nature works.
and it failed. sorry
What failed? For someone claiming to be so precise with language, you're
not doing a very good job of explaining yourself. All you can do is
provide search terms for Google. You can't really explain anything,
apparently, in the way a genius would. You can only explain it to another
scientist, not to an average person.
that happens. as science advances, the language barrier between
scientists and non scientists does get higher. you're not the first
person to notice
but it's a poor excuse to make up some notion of how you think science
works
result: none.
That's the past. The past is not indicative of the future. The past is
lessons to make the future better than the past.
meaningless
Nice accuracy with language there. You just say it means nothing to you.
Which is basically saying that you don't understand.
science has no use for the concept of 'better'.
I'll break it down for you a little. Just because the past was a certain
way doesn't mean the future will be. People expect the future to repeat
the past. But it doesn't have to. That you couldn't understand that from
the above statement says to me that you might understand the language of
science, but you don't understand the language of english.
fine. you go get me a 'better' meter and tell me how to measure
'better'.
same with prayer. no effect.
You can't say "no" effect, because not all effects were even gauged. Did
you monitor her status at the cellular level?
what was monitored was the prediction of the people who thought prayer
worked.
For that kind of test to work, you'd have to have the expectation that
prayer causes some miraculous, 100% immediate healing of all ails.
uh, no. ever hear of minitab? or JMP? these are statistical analysis
packages that analyxe data from an experiment and determine if the
difference is significant vs a control that's how an experiment is
done. no one says 100% is needed at all. all you have to do is show a
difference at a statistically significant level. and prayer has never
done this.
Based
on that, /you/ would say that there was no effect at all. What I'm saying
is that the power of prayer could be cumulative. Pray for it over time,
and you may see your cancer mysteriously go into remission. Certainly not
an instant cure, but the effect of prayer over time has an effect on the
body that can be measured.
it has been tested. and measured. no effect at all. so unless you can
define some test or measurement that has not been done, it seems
prayer doesn't work
that's how science works.
But it wasn't a very good experiment because science unfairly expected
Samantha's magic of Bewitched to suddenly heal people.
given the fact you've never run an experiment, don't know how to set
one up, how to measure the results or analyze the data, you're in a
poor position to say what science did or didn't measure. you simply
don't know.
Biology doesn't
work that way, so that science set the experiment up that way says to me
that the people setting it up were either not doing it fairly, or were not
expecting the right things.
it tests predictions of theories.
When done correctly, yes.
and your crap about the 'cellular level' wouldn't even exist if you
hadn't learned about cells from scientists
I learned about cells in school. What's crap about monitoring something
at the cellular level? You, a scientist calls this crap? What is your
specific field?
MS chemical physics, lehigh university. and where did you get the
idea of cause and effect in science? your view of cells seems to be
out of hiaght ashbury.
do the contradictions in your position even begin to penetrate your
thinking?
There are no contradictions. You're just trying to stuff what I really am
into some kind of convenient perception package so you can insult me and
my posts. Why you're doing this... I can only assume you're tired of
dealing with idiots, so you're trying to turn me into one so you can make
fun of me. I know what I'm talking about. I just can't say it in a way
that satisifies you. So the contradictions you're seeing are not
contradictions, but assumptions that I don't really know what the words
mean that I'm using. You've got to pretend that I have some perception
you've dreamed up in order to have the view that my posts are
self-contradictory. From my perspective, they are not.
Did you monitor her blood sugar, heart rate, body temperature,
facial expressions, etc... during prayer? I'd say that the body is
having the experience of prayer and the satisfaction of hoping for
more life has a positive effect that extends life a bit more than it
would have been given otherwise. But since there's no way to know
how things turn out except how they turn out, then to say prayer has
no effect is false. Prayer, itself, is the effect. Hope is the
cause of prayer.
fine. then tossing salt over one's shoulder works just as well.
If one believes it does, there's no harm in it.
which is not the same as saying it does extend life or provide a cure.
IOW you're just saying your view of science is that anything goes.
sorry, that's not science.
It's a learning
experience. If someone tosses salt over their shoulder, for whatever
effect that's supposed to have (I'm not familiar with superstitions since
I don't believe in them), if the effect they were expecting did not
manifest after several times, they would soon learn that tossing salt over
their shoulder has no effect, so it's safe to give up the superstition and
guard against similar ones in the future until exploring them more
thoroughly.
you're as superstitious as anyone who throws salt over his shoulder.
you simply substitute prayer for salt. no difference. there's no
difference between your view of prayer and the effects of tossing salt
over your shoulder.
no difference.
Throwing salt over your should, if you believe it will make you feel
better, will make you feel better, whether it has its intended effect. I
had to look it up and found this on Wiki:
Throwing salt over your shoulder is akin to blessing someone after
they've sneezed -- it's a way of keeping the devil at bay while
you're in an especially vulnerable moment.
See, that's just silly.
and why do you think that's different than your view of the results of
prayer? there is no difference.
One quick action of throwing salt over the
shoulder. But prayer is more involved, more emotional for people, so it
has a greater effect than just a quick flick of the wrist.
OK. tell me about the effect. because there is no measureable
difference at all.
Since they're
truly more into prayer, the inner experience of it is what causes
"comforting chemicals" to be released in the brain.
fine, it makes people feel good. so can any superstition they believe
in. and it does not extend life nor cure cancer.
It is these chemicals
which affect how the body reads and responds to itself with
self-diagnosing, self-repairing information for the immune system.
now you've confused yourself. you're trying to say that feeling good
has a result on the immune system. AND you're saying this is the
result of prayer....you've again confused yourself.
first, every study has shown that feeling good has no effect on the
outcome of terminal illness....
2nd, if 'feeling good' has an effect, then this can be produced by any
means...drugs, prayer, psychotherapy, etc. prayer is not the cause of
someone feeling good
.
- References:
- Re: views of academic scientists
- From: Damaeus
- Re: views of academic scientists
- From: wf3h
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