Okay JAC3510, its Friday, its raining, and I am bored. I think I will finaly attack your attempts at the filibuster. First off, lets get your tactics out of the way. As I said, I once spent weeks debating with you and wasting a lot of time moving the obstacles out of the way that you like to throw out there. You haven't changed. You:
1: Write very lengthy responses that take a lot of time to wade through.
2: Rarely directly address the point the poster you responded to made but rather derail the conversation onto whatever tangent you think will best make your point.
3: Use big flowery words in an attempt either scare or confuse the person you are arguing with, or at a minimum, confuse the other readers into thinking you must know what you are talking about.
4: Despite never answering questions asked of you, you claim that your own questions must be answered to your level of satification, otherwise your opponent must concede defeat.
Awfuly disengenuous. I dare say its awfuly close to breaking one of the commandments as well......but technically its not a lie, so you'll probably get off scott free.
So now that that is out of the way, lets walk through the events here:
Tuesday, 10:09 am Jlay wrote:
In regards to the dog(more specifically, canine). We have millions of case studies (mounds of evidence) that prove that dogs produce dogs, and not one case study that a dog has ever produced anything else. you might get big dogs, small dogs, brown dogs, black dogs. But you will always get dog (canine). Even when a virus mutates, guess what it mutates into. Drum roll.......A virus!
I directly responded by calling that an unreasonable standard. In otherwords, expecting Evolution to do in a couple of generations what the theory specifically claims (and is supported) takes 1000s of generations.
Wednesday, 7:28 am Jlay responded:
testable and observable is now unreasonable.
I directly responded:
Do you believe in God?
.................Oh......and we have to be able to observe something actually happen in order to reasonably believe it, yet we all believe in God.
This is where you jumped in.
Can you give me a mathematical proof that Abraham Lincoln uttered the words of the Gettysburg address? Can you give me a scientific proof 2+2=4? Can you give me a historical proof that the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second?
There are different kinds of facts, which is the reason that there are different disciplines, i.e., history, math, the sciences, and philosophy. (That is, a scientific fact is not a historical fact is not a mathematical fact is not a philosophical fact.) All evidences are testable, but to test something presupposes a tool to test it with, and not all tools must be laboratory tools. Historians have a very well defined set of tools. Mathematicians have a very well defined set of tools. Philosophers have a very well defined set of tools. So do scientists.
Because scientists deal with the physical universe that exists now, their tools must necessarily be physical tools that measure the universe as it is now. So "tests" deal with that which is now. The belief in God is not, ultimately, a scientific question. It is a philosophical question. Some may think that devalues the validity of the question, but in claiming as much, they only demonstrate their own ignorance of the nature of knowledge and proof............
Okay, so you start off by stating that different bits of knowledge can be attained through different methods. Your first paragraph makes a good and correct point........but missed the point I was making. It appears as though you cherry picked which part of the discussion you wanted to read to make your point.
The very last sentece is classic JAC3510, in which you attempt to belittle those who disagree with you as being inferior....in this case demonstrating ignorance. God cannot be prooven....not through science, not through history, not through philosophy. I don't wish to debate this with you. I've been there, done that, and have a project due in 10 days.
Continuing.......
Just because something does not fit under the heading of science does not mean it is not real knowledge. Again, I know George Washington was the first President of the United States, and that has nothing to do with chemistry, biology, or physics. It has everything to do with history. Likewise, I know God exists, and while some (not all, but some) of my evidence comes from the physical realm tested and discussed by chemists, biologists, and physicists, all arguments are, in the end, philosophical and use the tools of logic and philosophy (i.e., validity and soundness) to come to firm and accurate conclusions.
If you choose to devalue philosophy only, let me ask you one question:
Give me a scientific, historical, or mathematical proof that the scientific method is the best way to "do science?" Or, again, give me a scientific, historical, or mathematical proof as to the definition of science.
You can't, for those are not scientific, historical, or mathematical questions. They are philosophical questions. Yet surely you believe the scientific method is the best way to do science. And surely you yourself have a defintion of science. And surely if I were to disagree with you, you would have arguments as to why I was wrong in my disagreement (whether you chose to express them or not). If, then, philosophy cannot be a valid marker of knowledge, then your entire reliance on science is itself undermined, for it itself is based on philosophical commitments.
Though your grasp of the english language and ability to write are competent, I fail to see what point you are trying to make. What I got out of this was a few paragraphs of your support for philosophy, an argument against a case I never made, and an attempt to belittle opposing points of view. I'm starting to remember why I pretty much ignored this post.
jlay's point, then, stands vindicated.
Translation: "I rambled on for several paragraphs not really saying much and certainly not supporting my position. I'm pretty sure no one really understood what I was talking about, so I should add this little tag at the end."
Just sticking QED on the end of a proof doesn't make it valid.
....If anything claims to be scientific, it must be testable and observable, for that is the nature of the scientific method.....
Okay, now we are back on topic. *shew* all that and finaly we get to discuss what the issue was to begin with. If you have forgotten after reading through your version of War and Peace, Jlay made the claim that we needed to directly observe a dog create something that is not a dog in order to validate Evolution. (I'll go under the assumption that he'd accept any organism creat a different species in a single generation). When I responded that this was an "unreasonable standard" he then responded "being testable and observable is unreasonable?"
If you haven't been able to follow, he clearly misunderstands the nature of science and what they consider to be "testable and observable." ID, for example is not testable or observable. Neither is the existence of God, which is why neither are considered science. As far as scientists are concerned, Evolution IS. Jlay (and potentialy you) are confusing the concept with "directly witnessing the event." Most people on this forum agree that the Earth is billions of years old. Is that testable and obervable? According to Jlay's standard, it is not.
So I made the correlation to a belief in God, which is not testable or observable either. I think its only reasonable that if he holds scientists to an extreme standard that handicaps what science is capable of determining, in this case requiring *direct observation* as demonstrated in the bulk of what he has written, then shouldn't he hold his belief in God to the same stadard.
Or to simplify using your analogy......we know Lincoln gave the Gettysburg address through history (not science) but if Jlay was to apply teh same standard to the subject of history that he does to science, ie that it needs direct observation, then we could not reasonably state that Lincoln gave it because none of us saw it, historical evidence be damned.
......If it is not, then we are not obligated to believe it, any more than I am obligated to believe a historical claim with no historical proof, a mathematical claim with not mathematical proof, or a philosophical claim with no philosophical proof. Present testable and observed evidence, and you can begin to build a case. But each of your evidences, and the arguments that stem from them, must be valid and sound before you can continue. You cannot put together hundreds of bad arguments to produce one big good one. If you put together a progressive case for evolution that is based on scientific (read: testable and observable) arguments, and if each of those arguments are valid and sound (that is, the conclusion necessarily follows from the evidence and cannot be explained in other ways), then you will have gone a long way in your case. But if each of the arguments in your progressive case can be explained in other fashions, then you just have a collection of bad arguments. And bad arguments don't prove anything, my friend.
And here is where I can only assume that you are taking the side against Evolution which leads to the following exchange:
I wrote to Jlay:
Then how did evoultion get accepted as a scientific theory if it is so clearly not science?
Your response:
That's a dodge, thus the argument stands. If you can't refute it, you concede your error.
In classic JAC3510 fashion, you simply belittle points made that you have no case against. What we've had so far is a sad attempt by a theologian to refute the Theory of Evolution. You've given me no reason so far to believe that you are any kind of expert on the matter, nor have you made any convincing argument other than to pull out a definition from a dictionary and then claim that the Theory of Evolution doesn't fall under that definition.
Yet somehow it looks like science to me. Maybe I don't know what science is.......despite having a degree in it. Maybe my Ameircan University education has failed me. Perhaps had I received my degree in theology I would be better prepared to understand why the study of evolution fails under the rules of science. Maybe at the same time I would also understand why ID IS a viable field of study.
Oh won't deny that you are skilled in the art of debate. You and I can sit here and argue about whether or not teh study of Evolution is *real* science, but neither one of us is a scientist in that field. So I think it is a very peritinent question to ask you that if the theory is not scientific, then why is it that all of the academies of science on the planet accept it as one? C'mon, JAC3510.....from a guy as smart as you I would at the very least expect you to support your position. All you have managed to do so far is display your misunderstanding of the field. At least give me a baseless conspiracy theory....or *something.*
<watch this>
If you can't, then you'll have to conced the point.
BTW, where's the emoticon for "oh snap!"
edit: besides that, barabus, you do understand that even IF I didn't refute your argument to jlay, it is still invalid in the first place. You are committing a logical fallacy called tu quoque. Fallacies make an argument invalid. Fallacious argument are, then, irrational. Thus, even if I didn't bother answering your question, your entire argument here is irrational.
For the readers at home:
-Tu Quoque is a very common fallacy in which one attempts to defend oneself or another from criticism by turning the critique back against the accuser. This is a classic Red Herring since whether the accuser is guilty of the same, or a similar, wrong is irrelevant to the truth of the original charge. However, as a diversionary tactic, Tu Quoque can be very effective, since the accuser is put on the defensive, and frequently feels compelled to defend against the accusation. -
Did you just figure you'd throw this in there to score some points. Maybe you should elaborate exaclty where this happened. As far as I can tell, it never happend. My best guess is, especially since this was in the post where you wrote this, you think this is a Tu Quoque fallacy:
Again I ask, why one standard for one belief and an entirely different standard for the other?
You are going to have to explain yourself, because to the best of my knowledge, that is not remotely a Tu Quoque fallacy. A Tu Quoque would have been if my own line of reasoning was questioned, and I turned around and told Jlay that he did the same thing. ie, I would have written:
"How can you question MY standard for MY belief when you do the same thing"
But that's not what I asked. I asked him why his own belief system was inconsistent. It wasn't meant to prove that either belief system was correct or incorrect. I was merely questioning how he manage to pick and choose which beliefs require a high degree of scrutiny and skepticism and others a low degree. I'll admit that BOTH of his lines of reasoning may be faulty.
.....Fallacies make an argument invalid. Fallacious argument are, then, irrational. Thus, even if I didn't bother answering your question, your entire argument here is irrational.
And this is called the strawman argument. Perhaps you are familiar with that as well? Any other arguments I didn't make that you'd like to refute with some flowery language? Maybe a line of reasoning that I'm not using that you'd like to spend 4 or 5 paragraphs on why its invalid......only to cap it off with something like, "So, as it stands, your line of reasoning is invalid. You are irrational."
JAC3510, this is about all I really have time for. This is exactly why I didn't engage you in the first place. I have to spend pages and pages and pages refuting your bad arguments one at a time. You typically respond with more of the same. Its just not worth it. I don't have the time nor do I really care. You seem to get off on bumping around from forum to forum engaging people in this way. Have you not landed a preacher gig yet?
So amongst all of the babble, the ranting, the tactical gymnastics, the strawmen, the misaplication of logical fallacies, and the flowery language, I'll leave you with one simple point:
JAC3510, who has no formal training in the sciences, thinks that the academies of science don't know what science is.
