Religion is notorious for requiring and valorizing faith. Consider the story of Doubting Thomas, or this bit of “infallible” dogma that every Roman Catholic is required to believe:
Wherefore, in humility and fasting, we unceasingly offered our private prayers as well as the public prayers of the Church to God the Father through his Son, that he would deign to direct and strengthen our mind by the power of the Holy Spirit. In like manner did we implore the help of the entire heavenly host as we ardently invoked the Paraclete. Accordingly, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, for the honor of the Holy and undivided Trinity, for the glory and adornment of the Virgin Mother of God, for the exaltation of the Catholic Faith, and for the furtherance of the Catholic religion, by the authority of Jesus Christ our Lord, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own: “We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.”
Hence, if anyone shall dare — which God forbid! — to think otherwise than as has been defined by us, let him know and understand that he is condemned by his own judgment; that he has suffered shipwreck in the faith; that he has separated from the unity of the Church; and that, furthermore, by his own action he incurs the penalties established by law if he should dare to express in words or writing or by any other outward means the errors he think in his heart.
As a skeptic, I can only roll my eyes at this kind of obligatory, blind faith.
But is science itself free of such faith claims? Many theists argue that it isn’t, and that science therefore has no reason to look down its nose at religion. Even physicist Paul Davies argues that science relies on faith:
The problem with this neat separation into “non-overlapping magisteria,” as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified…
Therefore, to be a scientist, you had to have faith that the universe is governed by dependable, immutable, absolute, universal, mathematical laws of an unspecified origin. You’ve got to believe that these laws won’t fail, that we won’t wake up tomorrow to find heat flowing from cold to hot, or the speed of light changing by the hour…
.Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith — namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too…
But until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus.
I think Davies gets it completely wrong. Science does not require faith that nature is intelligible; that is a conclusion, not an assumption. Science does not require faith in absolute and immutable laws, for the same reason.
Is there any way in which science requires faith? Not as far as I can see. Not even the most fundamental of our beliefs – such as a belief in the correctness of the rules of logic, or our belief that the external world exists – need to be taken on faith. They can be taken provisionally, subject to possible later disconfirmation.
What say the readers? Does science require faith?
Assuming that we’d still be alive and we observed the “laws” to fail, what would we do? We’d note that the “laws” do fail at times, and consider that to be the proper scientific inference
Science presumably could be done with changing basic physics, so long as the changes were reasonably regular. If nothing could be found but randomness and chance science likely would be impossible, but then life would likely also be impossible (probably the best reason we have to assume something close to constancy of physics, at least in the current regime).
The closest science comes to “faith” is that it treats inductive knowledge as if it were near-absolute. We might not consider Newton’s second law to be be absolute truth, but we really don’t mind trusting our lives to calculations that don’t treat it as probabilistic, rather, as certain.
But that’s what everyone does, even those who berate “scientism” for alleged crimes against humanity. People rarely treat Christianity as certain unless they’re Christian, or at least want to be. It’s the same with Islam, Hinduism, animism, etc. Some of science’s inductions, though, have a truth value to which humans nearly have to accede, even when they’re denying parts of science.
Faith is where observations–and, arguably, inferences from them–fail. Science is about observation and then mental conclusions from these, including the sense that we can count on certain observed regularities. Even if it’s hardly certain that the second law of motion will hold true an hour from now, we’d be stupid to act in any way other than as if it will. After all, it’s been a reliable “assumption” thus far, and if it fails we’re at an utter loss to know how it may fail, or when it may do so.
Glen Davidson
Glen,
Yes, and in fact we already know that the second law doesn’t hold at high velocities. That discovery was hardly the downfall of science; rather, it was one of physics’ greatest triumphs, being an implication of relativity theory.
Physical laws are hypotheses, albeit very well-supported ones. Like everything else in science, they are provisional. No faith required.
Science should NOT require faith. Science ONLY exists as a methodology.
A great methodology is science meant to be.
Why should a methodology need faith??
Only while doing some investigation IF a part of the facts are based on faith DOES the the methodology allow faith.
Its possible many ideas (rather conclusions) CALLED science are based on faith in certain principals. Like the example in this thread.
however creationism needs and demands that science ONLY be allowed as a real thing if its a methodology. A verb. not a noun like too many use it.
Evolutionism has never come under the methodology of science.
Only now is it by its critics.
Yet evolutionists failed to see they didn’t practice science before their loud conclusions of evolution.
This forum exists because these days evolutionism and company are coming under too much successful attack by too many scholarly thinkers.
This is the beginning of the end but it could be already the end of that beginning.
i think it still might take 15 years.
Robert,
Get in line:
The Longest Running Failed Prediction in Creationism
Science is pragmatic and bayesian. One does not have to believe in regularity, but it’s the way to bet.
Possibly off topic and a bit weird, but in the Harry Potter universe, magic is regular, and you go to school to learn the rules governing magic. Magic is indistinguishable from advanced science. There is even forensic magic.
At a minimum, science is also an institution. So, no, it isn’t only a methodology.
I’d say that it is an assumption, but it is a working assumption, and not held inviolable. An assumption need be no more than a starting position for a line of reasoning. It does not take faith to start from this position in order to be able to follow that line. Although if the assumption were ever to be proven wrong, one would have to let go of the idea that one can learn anything about reality anyway, so it’s not much use speculating along those lines.
Hm? I’m not following your comment. There’s some stuff in there that sounds like it’s jargon from the philosophy of science, mixed in with some other stuff, but I’m no expert on those subjects. Would you care to elaborate on some of the statements you made in your comment? Like the following:
How can a fact be based on faith? Can you provide an example?
Whatever science is, it’s obvious that it exists, and is therefore a realthing. How do you propose to deny existence to something that demonstrably exists, in whatever form?
Could you explain in what way evolutionism has not “come under the methodology of science“?
The actual figures regarding publishing scientists favouring some view compatible with mainstream religious beliefs professionally are very different (as of April 2013, there were some 64 papers that could plausibly be called scientific publications, by a very few authors, as opposed to the many thousands of papers appearing in mainstream scientific literature each year). Could you elaborate on the grounds for your estimate?
Apologies and welcome, Gralgrathor. Just noticed your comments held for approval. All future comments from you should appear without delay.
Then you make the case its all about human presumtions of foundations of the universe. SO science is hostage to this. So science is not a independent methodology that corrects error always.
Your making a case that science is just humans imp[ressions and not the science that people demand is about proven things.
Whose side are you on?
I don’t see its a institution WHATSOEVER. How?
It is just a methodology. Any human herding around it is just based on other matters.
Its not a noun. Its only a verb.
I’m asserting evolutionism has never come under scientific investigation.
Its up to evolutionists to show otherwise!
I mean there is no independent biological fact, carefully examined by the scientific method, that is evidence for the important claims of evolutionary biology.
This is why science , for creationists, must only be accepted as a methodology and not based on voting. However its been instead about degree authority and head counting of same.
The 15 years is based on estimating between wrong ideas , now/past, and the strength of the emergent opposition.
keiths:
Gralgrathor:
Welcome to TSZ, Gralgrathor.
Some people (including Davies, apparently) assume it. My point is that it’s an unnecessary assumption. We can do science without it, and when we do, science leads us to the conclusion that nature is (at least partially) intelligible. Why assume this on faith, as Davies says he does, when we can reach it as a conclusion?
Isn’t that because most of us have no choice but to take a great deal of what we call knowledge on faith? I am fascinated, for example, by quantum phenomena like wave/particle duality, quantum entanglement and quantum teleportation. accept these are genuine phenomena rather than fictions because I trust – I have faith in – the accuracy of the published research and what is reported in the major journals. But I have nothing like the knowledge and skills necessary to replicate the experiments and that would be the only way for me to actually verify the reports. I have to take them on faith. There is simply no practical alternative.
While we laygumbies take almost all scientific results “on faith” (naturally I would prefer the term “by sceptically informed consent”), the same is not true for actual scientists, except in the very limited sense that not all assumptions are examined in every hypothesis or experiment. The presence of “faith” in any scientific activity is, as mentioned above, limited to “this underlying assumption has not yet been broken by any evidence, so I will continue to assume its truth”. In other words, the same kind of working hypothesis we all use when walking down the street.
Alan Fox,
Thanks!
It can certainly be regarded as a conclusion. I assume it, I take it as a given starting point for any line of reasoning, simply for the sake of convenience. You gotta have your axioms, that might as well be one, since most scientific lines of reasoning are rooted in it.
I should note that I thought it would be impossible to invalidate the assumption of consistency if the universe were inconsistent. After all, ones invalidation of it would depend on logic and reason, and there’s no guarantee – in an inconsistent universe – that any line of reasoning, even one that seems valid, would hold. Or am I being too simplistic about this?
I’m sure philosophers have some profound sounding bit of jargon to label it, but most of us go through life assuming that we and our memories and the past are not being manipulated invisibly. I can’t think how we could test that. it’s a variation of Last Thursdayism.
I’d assumed you were at least familiar with the existence of trade literature in the field of biology, in which the scientific community has been subjecting numerous data and hypotheses to continued scientific scrutiny for over a century now… But I may be wrong: perhaps your knowledge of the existence biology literature is limited to popular works.
Well, except for the data that are, of course. Such as the many independently confirmed and mutually matching instances of the nested hierarchies of biology, found throughout biology, on all levels of observations; the way the diverging progressions in the fossil record neatly match the hierarchies of modernity; the morphological intermediates that have been found exactly where they were predicted to be, with the exact morphological features that were predicted; dito for genetic sequences predicted on the basis of common descent, with as one of the more popular examples human chromosome #2; and so on, and so forth. You cannot argue that these are not evidence for the central theses of evolutionary theory, because they are predicted by it, and they confirm that prediction – which is the definition of ‘evidence’.
So what’s the alternative to accepting it as a methodology? Wait – what – voting!? I’m afraid you’re not making much sense to me. Can you perhaps paraphrase, or elaborate using examples?
Right, right. But where did you get the actual numbers for your estimate? Can you give me figures for the number of creationists (assume, for convenience, that this number includes ID-proponents) who publish in the trade literature for the life sciences – in the years 1960, 1970… 2000, 2010, now? Can you show me their citation rates in the scientific literature for those years? I’m more than willing to consider your claims regarding the “growing strength of the opposition”, but without data I cannot but wonder how accurate those claims are.
Well, if by science you mean any attempt to learn something about the world by observing it and inferring knowledge from those observations, then, yes: any attempt to learn about the world is rooted in the assumption that the world is fundamentally intelligible by the human intellect, that we can learn and know about it.
Assuming otherwise wouldn’t be very useful, now would it?
Gralgrathor,
I don’t see the point of taking it as an axiom when it is so easily validated as a (provisional) conclusion. It would be like taking the Pythagorean theorem as an axiom. Why do that when it can be derived from the axioms you already hold?
It isn’t a question of invalidating the assumption of consistency. I’m just pointing out that the assumption isn’t necessary.
Also, I don’t think we can assume that our reasoning is valid in either a consistent or an inconsistent universe. Even logical truths are provisional in that sense.
petrushka,
Even that assumption is unnecessary.
SeverskyP35,
As timothya points out, the question of what scientists have to take on faith in order to do science is quite different from the question you’re asking.
Also, the kind of faith you’re talking about is distinct from the kind of religious faith required to believe in absurdities like the Immaculate Conception (see the OP). As laypersons, we can justifiably accept quantum mechanics despite not understanding it completely (and I’ve been thinking of doing an OP on this very subject). There is no equivalent justification for accepting the Immaculate Conception.
Gralgrathor,
you make my case.
you list what you SINCERELY think are scientific biological evidences but ALL are not at ALL.
Not one. All are mere lines of reasoning from minor data points.
There is no bio sci evidence for any of the evolution between your fossils, morphology,and so on.
Why do think this is bio sci evidence?
Its easy to be decieved but science demands a higher standard of investigation.
I am confident there is no bio sci backing up evolution.
There was a thread on this once on this forum.
If you understand what the word evidence means then you’ll have to admit that they are, along with the vast quantities of supporting data listed elsewhere (eg. talkorigins.org provides a few fairly comprehensive though somewhat dated lists). I explained that in my previous comment. Further more, I’d hesitate calling all the instances of features, ranging from the molecular to the morphological to the behavioural, matching the nested hierarchies minor data points. No offense, but I feel countering unreasoned general denial isn’t really something I want to bother with right now. If you have specific questions or comments, I’ll be more than willing to look at them.
Gralgrathor,
Gralgrathor,
I don’t admit they are biological scientific evidences.
Just saying they are AIN’t proving it.
SO.
Pick your favourite one , or two, and demonstrate HOW they are biological scientific evidences for evolution.
i’m not asking you to even prove they are but ONLY show they merit the title as bio sci evidence.
I have asked many evolutionists this and they always flunk.
If you got the guts think carefully about what you pick. And make it a important thing worthy of the great evolutionary conclusions. Your list probably can’t be improved on by other evolutionists.
The prediction of the location of Tiktaalik.
There’s nothing to admit here, Robert. They are evidence per the definition of the term evidence! A thing follows logically from an explanatory model: we expect to find it in nature. If we then find it in nature as predicted (or retrodicted), then the finding is evidence for the accuracy of the explanatory model. A model does not rely on any one piece of evidence: any one piece can still be explained by many other hypotheses – but taken together, the pieces will sometimes match only one model, and confirm the likelihood that this model is, to some degree at least, true. Sorry, Robert, but you’re just going to have to live with that fact.
Creationists often use the word ‘prove’ in a different way than science does. In science, to prove usually means something like to confirm to a high degree of likelihood. Only in mathematics does the word ‘proof’ have the sense of absolute certitude that the creationist seeks to attribute to it. All of the natural sciences work with the non-absolute sense, since there are no absolutes to be found in the natural sciences.
So evidence does not prove claims in the mathematical sense. It proves them in the scientific sense: it supports the position that a claim accurately reflects some aspect of reality.
I’m going to cheat: I’m going to name a general line of evidence, one that actually consists of thousands upon thousands of individual observations confirming common descent: the nested hierarchies of biology.
The nested hierarchies of biology were actually one of the first clues for common descent, and prompted the creationist taxonomist Karl Linnaeus, whose classification scheme is still in use today, to group Man with the other Primates. The observation is that combinations of biological features form a pattern of sets within sets within sets, wherein each subset has all the defining characteristics of the superset, plus a few unique of its own, that aren’t shared with any of the sibling subsets that also share the defining traits of the superset. The only known phenomenon that can produce such a pattern is descent. These features can be molecular – sequences in proteins or genomes – or they can be morphological – the angle of the hallux or pelvis, the number of fenestra, the shape of the skull – or they can be behavioural. And you’ll already have noticed that the morphological part means that these hierarchies extend across the fossil record as well.
Now we can use this to predict new occurrences that, if common descent is true, should match that pattern in particular ways. Human chromosome #2 is an example of this. The fact that there should be evidence of a recent fusion site in human chromosome #2 was predicted, and the prediction confirmed, based on common descent. The above-mentioned Tiktaalik is another example: not only was its morphology predicted in detail, right down to the number and shape of hand-bones, using common descent, but they even figured out the timeframe and general geographic region where it should have lived, and so knew where to start digging to find it.
Now any single one of these finds could perhaps be explained by other means – but what are the odds that we should find these things, and all the thousands of other things in this category, exactly as they follow from the model if that model is somehow fundamentally false?
I doubt they have, Robert. I am somewhat familiar with a particular type of creationist – let’s call him the TL:DR-creationist. And that may be a bit too generous, because frankly I suspect that the size of the documentation offered in support of scientific explanations is only a small part of the tendency of these creationist to simply refuse to familiarize oneself with it. I’ll bet that many ‘evolutionists’ have given you something like what I wrote above, and that you’ll have rejected all of it without (I’m not going to be too generous) even thinking about the most important question, and I repeat:
What are the odds that we should find these things, and all the thousands of other things in this category, exactly as they follow from the model if that model is somehow fundamentally false?
Nothing to do with biology. Its a prediction of geology using biological data points.
A creationist could make the same prediction but with a biblical timeline.
This fossil creature is not evidence for evolving. The evolving was not fossilized. its just a variety of something. its just guessing about what things would have in common if they did evolved.
Yet this is not biological scientific evidence as a intermediate.
if so where is it?
Gralgrathor,
NOPE. I asked many and got zilch proof!
First IF ONE had a video of biology evolving, from a space alien, THIS WOULD NOT BE biological scientific evidence for evolution. Even though it was proof positive.
the operative words here are BIOLOGICAL and SCIENCE.
Evidence has its species name too in these matters.
OKAY your nest thing.
You provided NO biological scientific evidence for these sets coming from sets by evolution.!! where is it?
As you said, repeating ancient people, its all about observing traits and concluding the oNLY OPTION for likeness and its graduations is from a common descent .
therefore you admit to me that merely another option nullify’s your ONLY OPTION and so your evidence. Your evidence is based only on like traits and exclusivity of option.
heres the other option.
Biology has like traits because of like design.
A creator has no reason not to have a like design and thenb a twist for segregation of kinds.
Me having eyeballs is not PROOF I share a common origin with all creatures with eyeballs.
Even if true its just a line of reasoning. not bio sci evidence.
It could be that a creator made creatures all with eyeballs and no descent common evolution.!!
Therefore with these eyeballs the evolutionist has provided no bio sci evidence whatsoever. No scientific methodology examining eyeballs has shown common descent. its just a hunch and then a deception, innocent, that one has done science.
In all this I am showing your nest is ONLY not bio sci evidence for evolution. i’m not showing its not a accurate nest showing how creatures have indeed evolved.
This is about methodology and me demonstrating your example shows no bio sci status.
Whew.
Meaning: “as pertaining to life” and “the methodical endeavour of collecting verifiable understanding and/or the collection of verifiable understanding that is the result thereof”. Okay.
You’re still confusing scientific evidence and mathematical proof. I did explain to you in my previous reaction what the difference is. To summarize: proof dictates, evidence suggests. Proof cannot be denied, evidence all to often – unfortunately – is. You may not accept the theory I listed the evidence for – but there can be no denying that the observations I listed are evidence for it. So yes, I did give you evidence, and any further repetition on your part that I didn’t will, now that I have explained why, mean that you’ll be telling lies.
I know that the rules of this site say that I must assume that you spoke in good faith up to now – but nothing prevents me from warning you against future mishaps.
The reason why the things I listed are evidence for common descent but not for common design, is that without any testable mechanism of design and manufacture, there is no hypothesis to test, and thus there can be no evidence for it. Until you come up with a testable hypothesis, something that could be studied in labs for instance, talking about evidence for design is equivalent to talking about the wheels of a banana.
Which is the point: as far as we know, an omnipotent creator has no reason to choose or avoid any particular pattern. And thus no pattern found can be a test of the notion of creation. No evidence.
Indeed not. But, taken together with all the other morphological and genetic data, it is evidence for common descent – although for just the eye possibly not universal common descent: the fossil record indicates that eyes have developed separately in a number of diverged lineages.
We seem to keep getting back to the difference between proof (mathematics) and evidence (science). I suggest you really study the matter before your next reaction.
And you’ve lost me. What?
Anyway, I see you’re still not thinking about the question I asked:
What are the odds that we should find these things, and all the thousands of other things in this category, exactly as they follow from the model if that model is somehow fundamentally false?
No, he couldn’t. There’s no way that creationists could guess at not only the exact location, but the exact morphology as well, without a good understanding of how common descent constrains morphologies.
Common descent long ago became so strongly supported that it scarcely needed any more evidence to be a good theory, but Tiktaalik is nevertheless a very powerful test and confirmation of it.
WOW.
“to do with biology… using biological data points”. FSTDT worthy.
“A creationist could make the same prediction but with a biblical timeline”
1. Have they? please show me
2. How would they, please describe the method, per creationism.
Thanks in advance.
Gralgrathor,
Well i gave you a chance and you didn’t do it.
I addressed your nest thing. I said you were ONLY looking at like traits and concluding common descent. Thats it . Thats all your evidence.
i said this is not science and is not biology. Its not a scientific examination of biology THAT determines common descent.
its just EYEBALL comparing. As with the eyeballs so with with all the morphology!
THEREFORE i gave a OTHER option for why things look alike. Common design at fundamental levels.
i’m only demonstrating that your ‘evidence” is just a line of reasoning and unrelated to scientific investigation.
Thats why your confused by my comment i’m not saying the nest idea is not true for showing common descent. (Its not but this is about methodology).
Scientific evidence is meant to be as close to proof as can be. This has nothing to do with math.
In no way did you demonstrate your nest thing was a sci bio conclusion.
You are not seeing, sincerely, that mere lines of reasoning is not science. Even if true. Another line of reasoning reveals this as common design option i showed.
As i said evolutionists always fail to show bio sci evidence for evolution and this is because there is not any.
however I’m willing to try this again.
biological data points are in this case the fossil.
its just a snapshot of a moment.
There is no snapshot of its evolving from a-b.
They only PRESUME evolution between the two fossils etc.
Yet another option would reveal this is only a line of reasoning and not scientific investigation.
In opther words these researchers just only imagine oNE possible option for these fossils having some like trait.
Creationists could predict easily that these creatures all lived at the samev time and were fossilized at the same time.
The like trait easily predicted to exist as simply a usefull trait that might be in many creatures. Not evidence of descent but design. Other options also being possible.
I did. You just don’t accept what the term ‘evidence’ means or how science works. But that’s okay; we’ll keep working at it.
Nested hierarchies, yes.
Let me explain it again:
Common descent constrains the morphologies we expect to find in particular ways. The morphologies we subsequently do find match those expectations in detail. Again and again and again and again. And again. And again. That in itself would be more than enough to conclude that common descent must be true.
Tell me now, Robert. Is that coincidence? Do you believe in chance that much?
Well, no, my dear Robert. You asked for one piece of evidence, and I gave you one line of evidence. One of the many. There’s the diverging progressions of traits in palaeontology; there’s morphological intermediates linking diverged lineages; there’s atavisms and pseudo-genes; there’s observed speciation, diverging morphologies, diverging behavioural patterns, divergerving gene pools and associated decline in interbreeding frequencies; and so forth, and so on, and so on, and so on. And each of these lines of evidence consists of many thousands or thousands of thousands of individual matches between expectation and observation.
All chance, Robert? Really?
And I addressed that option, in this comment, Robert.
No, Robert. I explained what scientific evidence is, in this comment.
Good, Robert. But I suggest that you continue your attempts, not by denying what science is, or how science works, but by addressing this question: what are the odds that we should find these things, and all the thousands of other things in this category and all the other categories of evidence, exactly as they follow from the model if that model is somehow fundamentally false?
Robert:
but it is a connection from a to b, having features of both.
but that’s not what evolution predicted, did it. It predicted where to look, what age of rocks would be required. Could creationists do this? If don’t, evolutionary thought is demonstrably better.
No, Robert, they couldn’t. They couldn’t even predict that this particular form should have existed. Based on common descent, palaeontologists were able to predict not just its location, but its precise morphology, Robert, from the shape of its skull to the number and shape of the bones in its paws. What chapter in the Bible would have allowed creationists to do the same, Robert?
Gralgrathor,
Science must not be about odds.
Your still only saying like traits COULD ONLY BE from common descent.
Yet thats all just a line of reasoning. You and and rest are are not showing biological scientific evidence for common descent. your just showing a reasoning and as you say WHAT are the ODDS?!
Yet the odds are fine with common design. From this also would like traits bein creatures.
Even if evolution and your nest idea REALLY did show evolution in action it STILL would not be sci bio evidence. It still would be just lumping traits and saying HOW ELSE!
This ios the flaw with evolutionary biology in claiming its a result of science.
You truly are just connecting biology, unobserved to be connected of coarse, by comparing this to that.
Its truly based on only believing there is one option AND THEN believing science has been done.
We have had a good discussion here.
However I still insist you have not shown bio sci evidence for why you see a nest.
You can’t say you expect this and that to be in this order.
It would be that way with common design we say.
Anyways its still just a line of reasoning about what to expect and then find it.
Its not the high standard of science investigating actual biology.
Its just biological data points but the inbetween , the evolving, has not demonstrated.
I still see this as someone seeing eyeballs in everything and concluding common descent when common design fits fine HOWEVER because of another option it reveals your common descent by the nest idea as not based in science but in mere armchair deduction or reasoning.
Where is the science and the biology???
Looking alike equals like descent is just a hunch! even if true its just a hunch.
Its like a optical illusion investigation and the opposite of careful scientific study.
AHA. AMEN. You agree its not fossilizing the evolving BUT its only the features data that leads to your conclusion.
tHats what I’m saying. The only reason you connect creatures is because of features. YET since this is ALL there is THEN finding ANOTHER option for why they have like features NULLIFY’s completely that any science on biology is going on here behind these conclusions of common descent.
What is your bio sci evidence these features are shared because of evolution ??
You have none!! You JUST have the features! Then you conclude the ONLY option for like features is common descent.
Thats just reasoning! not science. Another option of common design exists. However I only suggest this to emphasize your conclusion was JUST based on mere reasoning.
Incorrect, Robert. All natural science is necessarily probabilistic. Yes: science must, of necessity, be about odds.
No, Robert. I’ve been trying to explain to you that any single piece of evidence, in itself, might be explained by an alternative hypothesis, but that taken together, a single matching theory remains: common descent.
We have, Robert. You seem intent on redefining what evidence means though.
Robert, there is no testable ‘thesis of common design’, so the odds for it being true cannot be determined. ‘Common design’ cannot make predictions like Tiktaalik, or human chromosome #2, because there is no mechanism that such observations should logically follow from.
Nested hierarchies, Robert, nested hierarchies. Look it up. See what it’s about. No doubt there are web pages that can explain it in far clearer terms that I ever could, including nice colourful pictures and everything.
And what it does is suggest that any two clades we care to look at in the animal kingdom have a common origin, a common ancestor. And when a million and one lines of evidence all suggest the same thing, the odds are that that thing is true. Which is why every scientist in biology-related branches of science accepts common descent, Robert.
No, Robert. There is one known mechanism that is 1) observable and 2) produces nested hierarchies: it’s descent. We know of no other mechanism that does this and can be tested and verified. Creationists are of course welcome to offer alternative hypotheses for review. But simply yelling ‘common design!‘ isn’t going to achieve anything, since you’re not actually offering anything falsifiable, anything testable, anything that can be used to make distinguishing predictions.
Robert, listen carefully: common descent constrains the morphologies we’re likely to find. What constrains the morphologies ‘common design’ is likely to produce? We know the limits of common descent. What limits your designer?
Indeed we are, Robert. Evolutionary theory is the unifying theory of biology: it connects all the separate observations of biology and palaeontology together into one explanatory framework.
No, Robert, not really. What we’ve had here is you trying to redefine science and evidence to suit your own beliefs, and me trying to explain to you how science works, and what evidence is. That’s not actually a ‘discussion’, Robert. I am more than willing to keep trying to teach you how science works, and what biology shows us, but I have little hope of actually engaging you in a discussion as long as you keep rejecting the most basic principles of science. And I’m not at all certain that I’m actually up to the task of making you understand and accept those scientific principles.
Robert, you’ve managed to evade addressing the question again:
What are the odds that all the observations in biology and palaeontology should match expectations logically following from a particular explanatory model if that model is somehow fundamentally flawed?
What are the odds, Robert? What are they?
@keiths
I realize that this back-and-forth between me and Robert is all old hat, and not exactly the kind of stuff that this blog was built for. Is that the reason that these reactions of mine require moderation whilst other reactions are immediately published? I don’t mind the moderation, by the way; just curious.
No.
I think you hit a link counter. A post with too many urls is put into moderation (automatically by the software), mostly because spammers do that.
May I suggest that when quoting Robert (or anyone else), you use the Reply button to quote only the first part. And then manually quote other parts with
<blockquote> … paste in quoted text … </blockquote>
That way you won’t add lots of links back to the same original post.
In the meantime, your recent post is now approved.
Neil Rickert,
Thanks!
Gralgrathor,
Don’t worry, no-one is!
I don’t know whether I should be relieved or depressed about that. I wish I could say I just didn’t care, but that would sound so – uncaring.
Gralgrathor,
Yes, we think that rationality will eventually win through, that there is an appropriate exposition that will turn on the mental light-bulb. Robert is an extreme example of the mindset that places a couple of paragraphs in a book above all empirical and rational counter-argument.
I have had discussions about marsupials and their fossil and genetic relationships, and tree-ring data, among others, that have convinced me that there is absolutely nothing that will trump those paragraphs. Facts are made up to order. Marsupials are concentrated in one place because of environmental factors. They are genetically alike because of Common Design. You get lots of tree rings in a year when growth conditions are favourable. And so on.
I guess I respect Robert. He has all sorts of weird creationist ideas, and doesn’t hesitate to tell us about them. But he is not confrontational about it.
I occasionally reply to him, but with no expectation that he will change his view.
Allan Miller,
He must have some kind of inner dialogue though, a mental process that could conceivably be expressed in words, when he is formulating answers to comments here. I wonder what Captain Subtext’s Truth Helmet would show when aimed at Robert.
Ah, I see. You don’t understand evolution. Let me help. Evolution works at the species level, through individuals. Individuals accumulate differences from each other and their ancestors and that is how evolution is powered. We don’t see an individual organism evolving over time, that’s just silly.
And now back to this:
You’ve not really answered this, I think. How would creationists know where to find Tiktaalik? Why would they even think there was such an organism?
Thanks