Kantian Naturalist: You simply have not provided any account of truth, reason, and logic. Until you do, there is no reason for me to believe that a correct understanding of these concepts has anything at all to do with God.
Some initial first thoughts.
What would it mean to provide an account of truth, reason, and logic? Don’t all of us take all three of these for granted?
Can science settle the question of what would it take to provide an account of truth, reason, and logic?
If science cannot settle the question of what would it take to provide an account of truth, reason, and logic, what does that tell us about the question?
If science cannot settle the question of what would it take to provide an account of truth, reason, and logic, what does that tell us about science?
Who were the first scientists to ask and attempt to answer these questions and what answers did they offer?
Who were the first philosophers to ask and attempt to answer these questions and what answers did they offer?
Is the argument that because someone has not provided an account of truth, reason, and logic there is therefore no reason to believe that a correct understanding of these concepts has nothing at all to do with God a non-sequitur?
What is true. What is logical. What is reasonable. Are these not all inter-twined? Which of these can we dispense with while retaining the others?
Well, for one thing, I don’t even think it would be necessary to identify the exact specie, I think any land vertebrate in the Cambrian would do, but seriously Mung, if you think it would be a great challenge to identify a rabbit through the bones I don’t know what to say
dazz,
He’s completely missed the point in his rush to pick at the details.
Well, yes, but I think one could hazard a hypothesis of “shared design” to try to explain similarities between wolves and bears, quite independently of God or of aliens whose purposes may be indecipherable (maybe a complex prank, who knows?). Maybe it’s a cost-saving measure. The trouble with that is, barring any real knowledge of who or what might want to make wolves and bears using a common design, it’s pretty ad hoc and meaningless (IOW, why should it be a cost-saving measure, or anything else?).
Worse, however, is that it doesn’t seem to hold beyond bears and wolves in any obviously intelligently-produced pattern, rather, there are also homologies with cats, with fish, with amoebas, all in patterns of derivation as necessitated by reproductive processes and having nothing discernible to do with intelligence, design, or economics. That is, common design might work if you’re just looking at bears and wolves, but not if you’re looking at bears and wolves in the context of cats, fish, and amoebas.
So it’s a pretty sucky hypothesis on any level, and it fails completely in context. If, however, you’re talking about God or inscrutable aliens being responsible for “common design,” of course the real question there is, “why would such extensive minds merely co-opt designs from one set of organism to another set anyhow? (and fail to do so when lineages have diverged)” The ID “answer” is that such questions get into theology, which is only true of them–they think in terms of theology, so to ask why the designer would do this or that is a theological question. We’re asking non-theologically, why would you expect a supremely intelligent mind to constrain itself to the limits of evolution, particularly in cases where the results are far from the universal optimum? They’re such religious “thinkers,” though, that they just think that you’re being theological, because it’s all theology to them.
Glen Davidson
Actually, I should have noted that if all living forms were unique, clearly shared or common design would indeed be falsified.
The problem is that this wouldn’t falsify the Designer, because their Designer lacks any entailments. “Common design” is merely used in a warding-off measure that is used against any meaningful objections.
Glen Davidson
GlenDavidson,
I think the most damning peace of evidence for common design, if there can be one, is convergent evolution. Why redesign a wing when you already have one? More ad-hoc rationalizations needed there
Yeah, I don’t know, they find a skeleton of “a human” in a shallow grave, and convict people based on the supposition that it is “human.”
What bozos!
But I guess the possibility of knowing anything at all becomes a problem for IDists, since that just leads to the possibility of knowing what is forbidden to know.
Glen Davidson
Alan Fox,
Just because you couldn’t explain WHY there was a rabbit fossil in the Cambrian, that wouldn’t mean that evolution is not true. As evolutionist always like to remind us after all, just because we don’t have all the answers, doesn’t mean God did it right?
So in actual fact, NOTHING can disprove evolution, because you can always say, well, we will find the explanation later…Isn’t that just what evolutionists are doing with epigenetics now? You have the faintest notion how random mutations could have created epigenetic genes, but hey, that’s Ok. Just because we can’t explain some things…yadda, yadda
That proves that evolution theory can’t be disproven. It can certainly be wrong however.
Why? That would only be the case if common design meant that all species must share at least one designed feature with another specie. If there were only crocodiles and ducks, and later a crocoduck appeared out of the blue because the designer decided to mix designs, that would be consistent with “common design”, so when there were only crocodiles and ducks “common design” could not be ruled out yet
Well you stipulated that the designer didn’t re-use anything:
So I was going with that.
If the designer did re-use some parts, then you’d have an argument about what “unique” means in that context. A unique combination of parts, or unique in all parts?
However, if nothing is re-used, as stated, common design seems to be out of the picture.
Glen Davidson
This is so fucking stupid. No need to know why it’s there, rabbits in the Cambrian would falsify evolution. Without evolution we wouldn’t know why any fossil is where it is
What I meant is that a designer using common design could spend any amount of time and produce any amount of unique designs until she decided to re-use something, or everything
Quite possible as well.
Such a wonderful “theory,” it can accommodate any logically possible finding at all.
Glen Davidson
Oh, now you are just using a God of the Gaps Dazz. Just because something can’t be explained, suddenly you want to say the whole theory is wrong. Science takes time. We will find the explanation one day. Its not a problem for evolution. In fact we have know about this for a long time. We are working on the solution right as we speak. You agree that mutations happen right? So what makes you believe that its not possible?
Let me remind you that evolution is not random.
Just because we discover new things about the theory, that is no reason to overturn it. This is what science does.
Haven’t you ever heard of the New Synthesis? No one believes in your outdated, caricature of evolution, as being unable to explain small problems like rabbits in the Cambrian. Science doesn’t have all the answers, but eventually we will find them…
That sounds so familiar….
phoodoo,
Most definitely home-schooled
phoodoo,
Pontificating on science, using ‘we’. Needle and thread for my sides, STAT!
We are
notamused.Glen Davidson
No presuppositionism for you,mung
Hey, I never said common design was a good explanation! 🙂
So true.
Glen Davidson
Kantian Naturalist,
I agree. But I think the thing about rabbits is that they have hair.
But still, at what point in the process do you know you are dealing with the fossil of a land vertebrate?
🙁
How do you know that?
Is that a serious question? Because if it is, you’re essentially suggesting that paleontology and morphology are tantamount to astrology
dazz,
Does Theobald make the claim in his paper that universal common descent is a fact?
Per wiki:
How would you demonstrate and verify that all life came from a common ancestor? How do you rule out multiple origin events? Can you show me that the prokaryotic transition to eukaryotic cells happened. How would you verify this and convince everyone that this is a fact?
All EXTANT life came from a common ancestor.
Multiple origin events is NOT incompatible with UCA. Think about it.
I don’t see why you can’t google it, but even if there was no evidence for the transition (and there is), we don’t need to know every step of the process with millimetric level of detail to be confident that the process took place.
Yes. The standard creationist move is to say that we can’t have any reliable knowledge of the distant past because no one was there to observe it, so it’s all a matter of conjecture and interpretation.
dazz,
Your right, you don’t need to know every step of the process to make an inference argument.
You are claiming this is a fact so having missing links does not support your claim.
Interesting claim, but I think you are modifying the theory.
1) That would only be the case if truth does not exist.
2) I’m not sure what you mean by absolute truth. For knowledge to exist it’s only necessary that truth be true.
3) How could you possibly know that?
1) Is it true that truth is not absolute truth
2) is it true that truth is not necessary for knowledge
3) How could you possibly know these things if truth does not exist?
Is it true that there is a distinction between these these two truths and if so which one of them is in play in this question? and why?
You are going to have to unpack that one.
What exactly is the “conceptual framework that is fully adequate to the structure of reality” and how would you know?
peace
It’s ok to say you don’t know.
Just trying to highlight the difference between knowledge and opinion, which is far closer to being on topic than Cambrian rabbits, imo.
What level of doubt would be required to justify overturning universal common descent?
Why must ancient rabbits look like current rabbits? Why can’t species change over time?
Are you assuming stasis in species? Why?
peace
That’s a spectacular missing-of-the-point.
You don’t understand. It’s a scientific fact, which is as close to fact as it gets considering what we know (something you refuse to address and rather focus on what -you think- we don’t know)
Let me try once again the gravity example. Does gravity claim that all apples fall downwards from trees? How many of the fallen apples have we observed? If you have a theory that explains something, and this theory places a significant restriction on the data so that only a very precise set of observations are consistent with the theory, how many pieces of evidence that conform to the theory do we need before considering it a (scientific) fact?
The question is, what exactly do we know and how do we know it?
I think you are assuming knowledge with out taking the time to justify it.
peace
Of course they can… if evolution is true, but then they would not be rabbits. Finding a rabbit very much like the ones we see today in the Cambrian would be incompatible with an explanation that posits that rabbits evolved hundreds of millions of years after the Cambrian, based on other pieces of evidence. IOW, the evidence as a whole would not be consistent with common descent
Wait a minute, are you saying an ancient rabbit would not be a rabbit if evolution is true? What would it be, a horse maybe?
So if evolution is true a species can evolve and can’t evolve at the same time? Sounds pretty complicated
peace
How does one not know any better?
Revelation.
Glen Davidson
Well, no. That’s not what I’m saying, obviously. But my statement was wrong anyway, because for example, sharks can evolve for hundreds of millions of years and there are still sharks
dazz,
Since it is based on a collection of facts would inference be a better way to describe it unless you are trying to spin the story?
I know that Richard Dawkins originally spun this story and you are assuming he is correct. This was done to counter Ronald Reagan’s line its only a theory. Dazz, calling UCD a fact is a PR trick.
UCD is a competing inference and thats exactly how the paper you cited describes it.
Apparently Dazz is working on the assumption that we all know this. Not sure how he could justify that opinion though.
peace
How would a rabbit–or anything at all like a rabbit–appear in the Cambrian (sometimes it’s the Precambrian) alongside mostly marine organisms, no amphibians, no reptiles, and no other mammals? Would that accord with evolutionary theory–or not?
Try to get the actual point, rather than bothering with a bunch of irrelevancies.
Glen Davidson
dazz,
What causes them to remain Sharks for so long?
The point is that Cambrian rabbits have nothing to do with the topic of this thread
How could you possibly define what it means to be “rabbit like” when species can evolve?
peace
UCD is an EXPLANATION that we infer from the data, and confirm without exception time and again. “Design” is no explanation at all, so can’t compete with UCD.
Wow, you sure went with it. I’m just not sure how you supposedly were addressing the point that Cambrian rabbits have nothing to do with the topic of this thread (not obviously true, but let it go with that caveat).
How could you possibly suppose that this has anything to do with Cambrian rabbits as potential falsifications of non-magical evolution?
Glen Davidson
Maybe they didn’t remain sharks for so long. Maybe some sharks diversified into something else and that branch went extinct. It’s of course pure speculation on my part, but just so that you get the point.
dazz,
If you are stating that your opinion based on the facts is that UCD has a stronger fit for the evidence then the design argument, I think you have made a statement that can be argued successfully. I would be interested in this debate on a more appropriate OP.
I will be interested in the future how you will defend this claim.
colewd,
Bottom line, Bill, is that there’s no reason why we should observe what we do if UCD was false. And when new data becomes available, it’s still consistent with UCD. UCD is easily falsifiable, yet it passes every test. What are the odds Bill?
ID doesn’t meet the standard of scientific explanation. Not even close. Even the argument from complexity fails, because if we were simple blobs of goo with minds, an omnipotent designer should be able to produce that
Agreed, we’re derailing the thread.
A rabbit in waiting. A potential rabbit. If it does not look like a rabbit it might still be a rabbit. If it does look like a rabbit it might still not be a rabbit. Potential knowledge is an oxymoron.