Re: [Biofuel] Evolution - was Re: The Lutec over unity device
You said: Evolution is not science, it's a worldview that fits a set of religious beliefs and as such is really only a religious precursor. Certainly not science. I think you're the one who's religious about it. You say a lot of things that you expect us to accept sight-unseen, but there some rather visible holes in it. I've seen quite a few purportedly scientific articles trying to debunk evolution, they raise a chickle - when you approach them as an editor would, asking questions, you'd soon have to spike them as unpublishable. Quite a lot of what you say seems rather similar. A few snippets... What we're looking at is interpretation of objects through the lens of personal beliefs. But you're not? No, what I'm saying is that we explain the objective evidences of fosselized skeletons through the lens of our presuppositions. And you don't? How was this date determined? That's easily ascertained, but I think you'd reject it anyway and whatever, just as you've been doing, and also without offering any basis for your own presuppositions in the doing. As with this, for instance: Question: When someone wants to date an object, why must they tell the selected lab a date range you expect the answer to fall within? Question: Why do none of the dating methods used to date rock agree within 1 to 2 orders of magnitude (if they can be applied at all to your specific sample)? If I dated you, and told you that by three methods of measurement you are 7.5, 75 or 750 years old, how much credibility would you give my 'scientific' methods? My first question about your 'results' would be why not 7.5 days, or 7500 centuries? What happened to your pig's tooth skull and the Piltdown scam? You kind of evaded the question, didn't you? This: As far as human development is concerned, we're talking of at least six million years, not a few hundred. Again, how did you arrive at this dating? If we select to breed a hairless dog, can we take only that stock and select for a long hair? No, we must actually re-introduce other genes to allow us to reselect on the information that was eliminated by our previous breeding. Probably not so - I think the gene will be repressed, not removed. Do you know much about domestic animals that have gone feral? So my original comment that the environmental pressure that creates a new trait actually arguably better represents de-evolution still stands. Again, the first part is easily ascertained. As for the second part, for one thing, your hairless dog example is shorn of the entire context of evolution and environment, leaving nothing but a kennel and a few mutts - a bit like the early (Victorian) studies of ape behaviour, confined to captives in European zoos, and almost entirely wrong as a result. You think breeding is the same thing? I don't. I think you're getting confused by a modernist idea - evolution doesn't necessarily mean Progress, or not with a capital P anyway. A common result is an ever-better adaptation to an ever smaller ecological niche; increased efficiency notwithstanding, whether this specialisation is Progress or not depends on how secure the niche might be, and it often isn't: when conditions change, as they will, these species are often unable to back out of it and fail. But this outcome is external to the process of evolution itself, not a relevant argument in the current context. Ever-adaptible human generalists with their big brains (which they hardly use) are perhaps an exception, a sport. (Or an experiment, some argue, very attractively, Eugene Marais for instance.) Anyway, your horizons are too narrow: For example: A current leading evolutionist, Jeffrey Schwartz, professor of anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh, has recently acknowledged that: . . . it was and still is the case that, with the exception of Dobzhansky's claim about a new species of fruit fly, the formation of a new species, by any mechanism, has never been observed. Jeffrey H. Schwartz, Sudden Origins (New York. John Wiley, 1999), p. 300. And of course, we still have a fruit fly, not something else. Over what, the immense time-span of 150 years? What a surprise! Quite aside from the fact that a very large number of species, probably the majority, have not yet been studied, many not even identified, which doesn't leave us in any position to pontificate about it. So, Tim, where do all these different species come from then? And how have we evolved, or whatever it is you think it is that's brought us thus far if you don't think we evolved? As we look for solutions to sustainable energy production and use, incorrect presuppositions may very well prevent us from finding the answer. As with life, so what's new? We're rigorous here, we make good progress. Over the last five years the group as a whole seems to have steered itself rather unerringly between the Scylla and Charybdis of unimaginative
Re: [Biofuel] Evolution - was Re: The Lutec over unity device
Keith Addison wrote: You said: Evolution is not science, it's a worldview that fits a set of religious beliefs and as such is really only a religious precursor. Certainly not science. I think you're the one who's religious about it. You say a lot of things that you expect us to accept sight-unseen, but there some rather visible holes in it. I've seen quite a few purportedly scientific articles trying to debunk evolution, they raise a chickle - when you approach them as an editor would, asking questions, you'd soon have to spike them as unpublishable. Quite a lot of what you say seems rather similar. Please don't put words in my mouth. One of the most interesting things about challenging dogma is trying to deal with the emotional reaction that follows. Most of the rhetoric dealing with evolution expects the great 'unwashed' masses to accept it's tenants sight unseen. They make their appeals to the seasoned and baptised practitioners of science. By the way, attack of the person and guilt by association are two arguing techniques that attempt to disarm the opponent without dealing with the arguments. A few snippets... What we're looking at is interpretation of objects through the lens of personal beliefs. But you're not? Of course I do; so does everyone... even those that retreat to call their views 'scientific' when they are actually more a religious view. All we must do is repeat the word 'science' enough... a different kind of mantra I suppose. [snip] How was this date determined? That's easily ascertained, but I think you'd reject it anyway and whatever, just as you've been doing, and also without offering any basis for your own presuppositions in the doing. As with this, for instance: Question: When someone wants to date an object, why must they tell the selected lab a date range you expect the answer to fall within? Answer: Because the lab crafts its tests and their results to the expected age of the sample. If we don't do that, we won't get repeat business. The primary presupposition(s) of the tests are incorrect. For example, one primary presupposition of Carbon-14 dating is that the ratio of c-12 to c-14 has remained unchange for millenia. There is no way to actually prove this presupposition. Yet c-14 dating is used to 'prove' the age of materials far beyond its ability to do so. Trying to date anything older than 5-10,000 years with c-14 is completely unreliable. The tests have only been calibrated with artifacts dated by recorded history, prior to that we must rely on extrapolation which depends on the truth of our presuppositions. Question: Why do none of the dating methods used to date rock agree within 1 to 2 orders of magnitude (if they can be applied at all to your specific sample)? If I dated you, and told you that by three methods of measurement you are 7.5, 75 or 750 years old, how much credibility would you give my 'scientific' methods? My first question about your 'results' would be why not 7.5 days, or 7500 centuries? Answer: Because there are no reliable methods to date rock that cooberate one another. For example, one test gauges the age by determining the decay of radioactive isotopes. However, if your sample has no isotopes, then this test cannot be used to cooberate any other test. The primary presupposition of the test is that the sample did not contain any decayed isotope when it formed. Unprovable assertion. The age of your sample could be anything from 0 to millenia unless you know for certain the original ratio. Are these presuppositions presented to the public? Not a chance. Evolution is a fact, don't you know. What happened to your pig's tooth skull and the Piltdown scam? You kind of evaded the question, didn't you? What was the question I supposedly 'evaded'? Was it: Are you saying that people like the Leakeys and their findings at Olduvai and elsewhere are frauds like Piltdown? I can't answer for the motivations of other people. Is it possible for me to become an acceptably educated expert like the Leakeys without adopting the current evolutionary dogma? If one argues against it, one is immediately branded as 'religious' at best, or at worst 'an unstudied idiot'. If I try to truthfully answer the questions, I fail the tests. Doesn't it bother you that a relatively few (but growing number) in the scientific establishment will address the intellectual dishonesty of this (evolutionary hypothesis) question? What about avoiding the issue of interdisciplinary circular reasoning? Any comments on that? This: As far as human development is concerned, we're talking of at least six million years, not a few hundred. Again, how did you arrive at this dating? If we select to breed a hairless dog, can we take only that stock and select for a long hair? No, we must actually re-introduce other genes to allow us to reselect on the information that was eliminated by our previous breeding. Probably not so - I
Re: [Biofuel] Evolution - was Re: The Lutec over unity device
Hello again: Keith Addison wrote: You said: Evolution is not science, it's a worldview that fits a set of religious beliefs and as such is really only a religious precursor. Certainly not science. I think you're the one who's religious about it. You say a lot of things that you expect us to accept sight-unseen, but there some rather visible holes in it. I've seen quite a few purportedly scientific articles trying to debunk evolution, they raise a chickle - when you approach them as an editor would, asking questions, you'd soon have to spike them as unpublishable. Quite a lot of what you say seems rather similar. Please don't put words in my mouth. I didn't, I quoted you. One of the most interesting things about challenging dogma is trying to deal with the emotional reaction that follows. Yes indeed. But I'm not emotionally wed to evolutionary theory, nor to anything else, much, my emotional life lies elsewhere, and I don't have an emotional reaction to people challenging evolution. It's fairly clear however that you're emotionally wed to anti-evolutionary dogma though. Most of the rhetoric Rhetoric? dealing with evolution expects the great 'unwashed' masses to accept it's tenants Its tenets. (Yes, I am an editor, and a science editor to boot, and when I say it gets spiked I'm talking from experience, and I know why.) sight unseen. They make their appeals to the seasoned and baptised practitioners of science. By the way, attack of the person and guilt by association are two arguing techniques that attempt to disarm the opponent without dealing with the arguments. Your use of words like rhetoric, baptised, dogma, and many others is an attempt to slant the discussion your way. There's an article about how to do that at the www.infinite-energy.com site that D. Mindock referred to earlier in this thread, and other such articles at various sceptic sites and true believer sites both. Your upping the ante to an accusation of attack of the person, where there wasn't one, and dubbing an apt comparison as guilt by association is more of the same. So is your rather selective snipping and the way you keep evading questions, some of them several times now. However, once it descends to that level of accusation it's seldom worth continuing, it won't yield any further substance. So after this I'll probably leave you to it. As for alleged guilt by association, I can see all the usual telltales and giveaways, I could prove it if I wanted to but there's little point. It would take time and effort, and then you'd just ignore that too and change your ground to a different line of defence. You're guilty, if you like, of all the things you accuse your opponents of doing, including circular reasoning. Your assertions over dating techniques wouldn't stand up to a real scrutiny, neither would any of the others. Changing your ground? Two statements from you, the second after the first was challenged, one of several such examples: As we look for solutions to sustainable energy production and use, incorrect presuppositions may very well prevent us from finding the answer. And: My point is that there is a huge difference between the science of fuel development, and guesses about origins. In fact that's a different point altogether. Case rests. As with your reinternalising an external outcome to prove another point, ignoring the distinction, and confirming your modernist view of Progress in the doing. As with your response to the Leakey question, not a response at all, just an evasion. And so on. A few snippets... What we're looking at is interpretation of objects through the lens of personal beliefs. But you're not? Of course I do; so does everyone... even those that retreat to call their views 'scientific' when they are actually more a religious view. And yours? Look at this: What was the question I supposedly 'evaded'? Was it: Are you saying that people like the Leakeys and their findings at Olduvai and elsewhere are frauds like Piltdown? I can't answer for the motivations of other people. Is it possible for me to become an acceptably educated expert like the Leakeys without adopting the current evolutionary dogma? If one argues against it, one is immediately branded as 'religious' at best, or at worst 'an unstudied idiot'. If I try to truthfully answer the questions, I fail the tests. You said this previously: Look, an unobserved series of historical events happened. No transitional species have ever been found (notwithstanding several publications' attempts to present them from time to time) that has stood up to scrutiny. Remember whole hominid skulls fashioned from one pig's tooth? No? That's because it isn't of general interest to the evolutionary *scientists*, and thus we still find Piltdown stories being published in children's 'science' textbooks. Does that apply to the Leakeys' findings or not? But you're not
[Biofuel] Evolution - was Re: The Lutec over unity device
John Hayes wrote: Evolution is not science, it's a worldview that fits a set of religious beliefs and as such is really only a religious precursor. Certainly not science. And what of the fact that I can place selective pressure on bacteria in a culture and get them to evolve a new trait, like, oh say, antibotic resistance? And then I can publish how I did it, and then Bob, who is 1000 miles away, can replicate it exactly, without us ever having met or spoken? Adaptation represents a loss of genetic information, not a gain. Evolution represents a systemic gain of information, since we move from lower completity to higher complexity over great spans of time. From virus to single cells to multi-cells, etc. We can breed out sensitivity to a particular antibiotic, but we aren't creating a new organism. We still have the same kind of bacterium, although it's adaptation may look like a different 'color'. We've been breeding dogs for centuries and selecting for various traits. We still only have dogs. Best regards... Tim So it seems you deny that evolution is capable of creating new species, and therefore there's no need to believe that we humans are descended from mere monkeys, would that be about right? This is then the brunt of your argument: Look, an unobserved series of historical events happened. No transitional species have ever been found (notwithstanding several publications' attempts to present them from time to time) that has stood up to scrutiny. Remember whole hominid skulls fashioned from one pig's tooth? No? That's because it isn't of general interest to the evolutionary *scientists*, and thus we still find Piltdown stories being published in children's 'science' textbooks. Hm. Parts of an Australopithecene africanus were found in the back garden of a place I lived at once, at Sterkfontein, though that was before I arrived there. I've visited the digs in the caves there several times, where many remains of these little pre-men were found (and are still being found), where they'd been dragged by the dinofelis false sabre-tooth tigers that preyed on them (until we learnt to use fire, more than a million years ago, and now it's dinefelis that's extinct, not us). http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1544717.stm BBC News | SCI/TECH | Major hominid find in southern Africa (Poor explanation of how they got there though.) Many hominid species have been found and identified. They're not human, and they're not monkeys either. Are you saying that people like the Leakeys and their findings at Olduvai and elsewhere are frauds like Piltdown? You'd be facing a mountain of science to debunk if you want to claim that. Have you ever argued about it with a real palaeontologist? Try telling it to someone like C.K Brain (Bob) for instance - there's something about him here (The Hunters or the Hunted? is excellent): http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/shakespeare-chatwin.html?oref=login We've been breeding dogs for centuries and selecting for various traits. We still only have dogs. As far as human development is concerned, we're talking of at least six million years, not a few hundred. Or was the world only created 4,000 years ago? So what's your alternative theory of our genesis, Tim? Intelligent Design or something? Best wishes Keith Intelligently Designed Scam First, Galileo challenged the geocentric teachings of the Catholic Church, then Newton figured out classical physics, then Darwin noodled through evolution. As science has pushed back the borders of the unexplainable, it has also reduced the operating parameters of the biblical conception of God. Intelligent design is a desperate attempt of conservatives to hold the line on science once again. Michael Shermer explains the ID movement's strategy-and its failed logic. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-shermer30mar30,0, 6816062.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions March 30, 2005 E-mail story Print Most E-Mailed COMMENTARY Not Intelligent, and Surely Not Science By Michael Shermer, Michael Shermer is founding publisher of Skeptic magazine and the author of Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown (Times Books, 2005). According to intelligent-design theory, life is too complex to have evolved by natural forces. Therefore life must have been created by a supernatural force - an intelligent designer. ID theorists argue that because such design can be inferred through the methods of science, IDT should be given equal time alongside evolutionary theory in public school science classes. Nine states have recently proposed legislation that would require just that. The evolution-creation legal battle began in 1925 with the Scopes monkey trial, over the banning of the teaching of evolution in Tennessee. The controversy caused textbook publishers and state boards of education to cease teaching evolution - until the Soviets launched Sputnik in
Re: [Biofuel] Evolution - was Re: The Lutec over unity device
Please see my comments below. Keith Addison wrote: John Hayes wrote: Evolution is not science, it's a worldview that fits a set of religious beliefs and as such is really only a religious precursor. Certainly not science. And what of the fact that I can place selective pressure on bacteria in a culture and get them to evolve a new trait, like, oh say, antibotic resistance? And then I can publish how I did it, and then Bob, who is 1000 miles away, can replicate it exactly, without us ever having met or spoken? Adaptation represents a loss of genetic information, not a gain. Evolution represents a systemic gain of information, since we move from lower completity to higher complexity over great spans of time. From virus to single cells to multi-cells, etc. We can breed out sensitivity to a particular antibiotic, but we aren't creating a new organism. We still have the same kind of bacterium, although it's adaptation may look like a different 'color'. We've been breeding dogs for centuries and selecting for various traits. We still only have dogs. So it seems you deny that evolution is capable of creating new species, and therefore there's no need to believe that we humans are descended from mere monkeys, would that be about right? I'm saying that the process put forward by the evolutionary hypothesis doesn't exist in reality. So anything that uses it as a foundational presupposition is ultimately in error. In any way that the hypothesis resonates with reality, it will seem to 'work'. So when you look at processes that are based in proper genetics your explanations work. Where you depart from this, your explanations are broken. This is then the brunt of your argument: Look, an unobserved series of historical events happened. No transitional species have ever been found (notwithstanding several publications' attempts to present them from time to time) that has stood up to scrutiny. Remember whole hominid skulls fashioned from one pig's tooth? No? That's because it isn't of general interest to the evolutionary *scientists*, and thus we still find Piltdown stories being published in children's 'science' textbooks. Hm. Parts of an Australopithecene africanus were found in the back garden of a place I lived at once, at Sterkfontein, though that was before I arrived there. I've visited the digs in the caves there several times, where many remains of these little pre-men were found (and are still being found), where they'd been dragged by the dinofelis false sabre-tooth tigers that preyed on them (until we learnt to use fire, more than a million years ago, and now it's dinefelis that's extinct, not us). http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1544717.stm BBC News | SCI/TECH | Major hominid find in southern Africa Thanks for the link. What we're looking at is interpretation of objects through the lens of personal beliefs. There are skeletons, no doubt. Of what, we can only attempt to make 'educated' guesses. However, they really are only guesses, since we have no true observation point to see the living thing that used to be carried by the skeleton. (Poor explanation of how they got there though.) Many hominid species have been found and identified. They're not human, and they're not monkeys either. Are you saying that people like the Leakeys and their findings at Olduvai and elsewhere are frauds like Piltdown? You'd be facing a mountain of science to debunk if you want to claim that. Have you ever argued about it with a real palaeontologist? Try telling it to someone like C.K Brain (Bob) for instance - there's something about him here (The Hunters or the Hunted? is excellent): http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/shakespeare-chatwin.html?oref=login No, what I'm saying is that we explain the objective evidences of fosselized skeletons through the lens of our presuppositions. For example, the article claims an age of 3.5 million years. Really? How was this date determined? Question: When someone wants to date an object, why must they tell the selected lab a date range you expect the answer to fall within? Question: Why do none of the dating methods used to date rock agree within 1 to 2 orders of magnitude (if they can be applied at all to your specific sample)? If I dated you, and told you that by three methods of measurement you are 7.5, 75 or 750 years old, how much credibility would you give my 'scientific' methods? My first question about your 'results' would be why not 7.5 days, or 7500 centuries? We've been breeding dogs for centuries and selecting for various traits. We still only have dogs. As far as human development is concerned, we're talking of at least six million years, not a few hundred. Again, how did you arrive at this dating? If we select to breed a hairless dog, can we take only that stock and select for a long hair? No, we must actually re-introduce other genes to allow us to reselect on the information that was
