[Silencer]

Look at it this way, Bent. In your scenario of 6000 years, nothing could have evolved to the state it has, even at the present 'rate'. Besides which, being able to run faster is not a large evolutionary change. Plus, drugs are involved, speeding the process of muscle development.

The reason we have not developed webbed feet is because not enough people do it. You would need ten consecutive generations of professional swimmers, breeding appropriately, for signs of webbing to begin to appear. Once again you are thinking on too fast a scale. If the world flooded tomorrow, we would evolve water-based physical attributes faster (those of us who survived), but once again, only after a LONG time. If there was not a lot of land to move on, we would lose the ability of endurance running, as it would no longer be necessary - to a large extent it no longer is anyway, but that is why people of African descent are naturally better at running short distances. If you look at the "Western" world, most people there haven't had to chase after food for a while. Not long enough for running to be fading out, people still do it recreationally, too, and war helps with that, but if you had another couple of thousand years it might go away.

[Illuyankas]

They are fractionally small changes in things like DNA and genes and whatnot occurring during reproduction, those small changes being passed down from parent to children for each generation. The changes are ridiculously tiny, but the vast number of generations that pass is easily enough to account for them. Some are beneficial, some are not, but the ones that either help or at the least don't hinder stay, and those may come in handy later on. Life, now, as we experience it, is like a snapshot, or incredibly slowed footage. Evolution's happening, just far, far, far too slow for us to perceive it. It's only the fact that bacteria breed to quickly that allowed us to prove it in a human lifetime.

As for the new records? That's more a case of superior nutrition and training than anything else.

EDIT: And we'd evolve webbed fingers ONLY if the people who had the beginnings of them from a chance mutation were benefited/not screwed over enough to be more successful at getting laid - king pimp swimmer, etc. They'd have more kids than Feather Boy over there, so the webbed finger mutation would be passed on to more and more people. Then the same thing happens with the 'better webbed finger mutation. And then suddenly it's a natural feature.

This post has been edited by Illuyankas: 04 September 2009 - 02:04 AM

[stone monkey]

Bent, on Sep 4 2009, 02:11 AM, said:

stone monkey, on Sep 3 2009, 09:00 PM, said:

And given the presumably short generational times of the organisms involved, there's a lot of mutation and selection (that is, sex [more accurately, reproduction] and death) that's gone on.

I get this, however, why did all evolving species suddenly stop evolving, no fish bacteria...no frog fish....no lizard monkeys....no monkey men...its as if, it stopped for everything, and now we say that because we learn things quickly we are still evolving, however, I have not noticed any humans walking around with super human atributes...such as thicker skin, or any other genetically physical changes that means we are still evolving. I am not being difficult, well, maybe a little, however, in the example above....was the bacteria tested introduced to a food source A? you know, the regular food source. Sounds like they were put in a dish with food B, and told eat that or die...eventually one of the buggers will try it, survive, and the colony will follow its example in order to survive, this again is adaptation, not evolution....evolution would be if one of the bacteria, turned into a duck and then flew away, to go eat food C.

Okay, answers:

The easiest being that nothing actually has stopped evolving. It's that simple. Evolution is an exceedingly slow process and the selection pressures are still there, but apart from organisms with very short generational times; viruses, bacteria, insects and the like, it can't really be observed happening on human timescales. Were we to hang around recording stuff for a few million years, we'd see big changes then.

Well a] human beings haven't been around all that long so not all that many gross physical changes have appeared and b] we actually have been evolving (see above).There are actually some interestingly well documented occurances of evolution that would seem to have happened in humans to deal with certain selection pressures. I'll give a couple that are of personal significance to me.

I have dark skin, that's primarily because my recent ancestors came from Africa (like within the past 200 years; which is no time at all, given the human generation period, evolutionarily speaking). For them dark skin has an advantage, the melanin that makes my skin dark serves to protect against u/v damage to my cells, so I'm less likely to die of skin cancer. If you have light skin it's because your ancestors left Africa (presumably those that did originally had dark skin i.e. everyones' distant ancestors were black ) and moved to places, like Europe, where the angle of incidence to the earth's surface means that sunlight passes through more of the atmosphere and hence less u/v gets to ground level. This becomes a problem for humans as we make vitamin D using u/v. So in order to allow that smaller amount of u/v to be used for vitamin D production there had to be a tradeoff against protection from skin cancer. Hence a selection pressure for lighter skin.
Secondly; I have approximately a 1 in 8 chance of having one allelle for sickle cell anemia. I've never been tested for it, but should I ever want to have children both I and the unlucky woman who is their prospective mother will need testing; I had an uncle who had 2 and he died of it, and it doesn't run in the other side of my family, hence the odds. This is actually a mutation that protects against malaria (the parasite doesn't like oddly shaped red blood cells apparently) and only occurs in humans that live in (or whose recent ancestors originated from) areas where malaria is rife and therefore quite likely to kill you if you haven't got some form of resistance to it. So there was a selection pressure for malaria resistance which certain populations of humans have evolved to meet.

A small factoid, that I actually learned quite recently, on average every human being alive has about 175 changes, due to transcription errors, to their DNA from the 3 billion or so base pairs that they inherit from their parents. None of us is an exact 50:50 mix of our parents. We're all mutants.

Right, the bacteria; the experiment didn't give them a food source they didn't "want" to eat (it's a bit of a loaded word because one would wonder how bacteria have desires... but I digress) it gave them a food source they were completely unable to metabolise, they just didn't have the biochemical pathways to do so. They couldn't eat it even though they "wanted" to. What the scientists actually did was increase the proportion of the inedible chemical in the colony's petri dish until eventually it reached 100%. This made sure that the environment was changing; this is a selection pressure. Eventually a single mutant cell did develop a pathway to metabolise this chemical, allowing it to exploit what for the species was a new and uncolonised environmental niche, and its descendants are quite happy doing so. The other non-mutated bacteria died out because they and their descendants still couldn't consume the inedible chemical and hence eventually starved to death (the cells in bacterial colonies don't copy one another's behaviour) As simulations of natural selection go, it's a very elegant and straightforward experiment.

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 04 September 2009 - 02:52 AM

[Morgoth]

do you ever sleep?

[MTS]

Bent, on Sep 4 2009, 06:52 AM, said:

You know, its kinda funny to me that everyone gets annoyed with my faith based explanations, yet the THEORY of evolution is pretty much the same thing. You take on faith, that the scientific explanation is the correct one. Wheres proof? Im not being facetious here, I have sincerly never heard of documented evidence, proving, beyond a shadow of the doubt, that evolution happened.

You know Bent, there's a difference between having 'faith-based' claims than having belief in a proposition. Your claims are based on a reworking of an outdated understanding of the world, which you justify with your faith in God. Scientists, however, have belief in their claim, just like you do, but the substantive evidence gathered qualifies it as a justified belief. Faith-based explanations do not qualify as justified beliefs, as the arguments seem to fly in the face of some logical truths.

Besides, creationism is just a theory too, so emphasising the word 'theory' does nothing to help your argument. Epistemically, there isn't that much difference between creationism and evolution, but in terms of validity, evolution is far more justifiable than creationism, simply based on the evidence provided.

[Cougar]

Quote

Ok fair enough if you miss the metaphors all through the NT, lots of people do, but you're citing the Torah as an argument? I'm not sure if I understand, you surely would not be so insistent on an argument if you truly have as little knowledge as you seem to be displaying here. No metaphor in the Torah? Nothing but the absolute unassailable truth? I don't know what to say.

Ignoring the tone of your response, I think it is you who might be missing the point, which I'll put down to me having explained my position inadequately.

Judaism has an established tradition of interpreting the holy book, questioning the relationship with god etc which is far more subtle and advanced (temporaraly and intellectually) than where Christianity is now. That's just a function of the age of the religion, this I think is a generally inarguable point.The manner in which they now arrive at their understanding is essentially similar to what your saying; a constant revision and evolution of the relationship of the religion to it's holy text. As you correctly state literal interpretation is utterly redundant to us now, (although you wouldn't argue that there aren't actual codified rules that are followed I assume since you'd be wrong) but that is not to say that this was the case when the various sections of the diffuse texts that now make up the holy books were drafted. What I am driving at is that if religions constantly insist on revising their opinion of the aims of their holy books, at what point do you say "this is a farce, it's either the word of god/the prophet etc or it's not, he either said it and meant it or he didn't. Did everybody who misinterpreted it in the past fail, end up in hell or limbo or Dagenham for eternity?" You can't simply get to a certain point in history and move the goal posts (metophorical or otherwise) because science or philosophy or just the basic human intellect has dispensed with the need for a certain type of god. Once again your just moving the interpretation of the book in an attempt to remain relevant effectively saying all that went before was incorrect.

If you think about it's a position that assumes that somehow of all the humans in history you (not CI personally) have arrived at a point of unassailable insight, that you and your cronies alone, finally have the insight into the book that nobody except the one(s) who created it had. Which isn't very logical to me.

I'd be interested in CI positing how he deals with that inherent contradiction than him questioning the depth of my knowledge of the Torah, answering the question rather than trying to discredit my opinon would be far more interesting.

This post has been edited by Cougar: 06 September 2009 - 10:50 PM

[Cougar]

We'll all be off to the new forum soon so a reminder to us all, as fascinating as this discussion is and as heated as it gets, lets stay civil. It's enjoyable stuff at the moment. Best level of discussion I've seen in here for a while.

[Cold Iron]

Apologies for the tone old chap but I have to fight for attention with all these goons actually staying on topic. Glad you responded.

If interpretation of texts is a function of time it's a convoluted one. There is also no reason that I can see that whatever time dependant function would reset to zero simply due to the alleged fulfilment of a specific prophecy and the rise of a new sect, regardless of how popular it becomes. You could argue that the adoption of christianity by Rome is a more accurate starting point of modern christianity, but I still don't see why it follows that a literal interpretation of a text is the necessary antecedent to a metaphoric one and actually I would argue that the vast majority of metaphors would be far easier to interpret contemporary to their composition. Indeed by arguing the opposite you would seem to be suggesting that the metaphors we (or they) now see in the pentateuch or similar are actually invented - fabricated if you will, or illusory.

If you are correct in this assessment then I would agree with all your subsequent arguments, but I believe you are not. Instead of throwing around accusations of lack of knowledge again, however (apologies), I will try as you have to further clarify my position.

Creation myths are a special kind of metaphor. They are believed not because of evidence but reverence - they are how we define our cultural groups, they shape our societies on a deep level and they arise out of a conglomeration of stories from the distant past, intermingling with tribal bloodlines, surviving conflict and hardship. This distant past characteristic is important, as it is this quality that enables these stories to be treated as a special case - to allow one to suspend disbelief, to trust in the absolute truth of something as grounding and defining as a cultural history whilst allowing for the magical, the fantastic, the obviously allegorical and morally instructive. The transition of these myths from word of mouth to text was not a single event, with individual scholars writing their own versions and envisioning their own instructive metaphors, it was an evolution of generation upon generation of relics and symbols from the earliest arrangements of sticks and stones. It is this weight of generations that gives it the status of "word of god", not it's unquestionable literalism. The development of skepticism of these myths is modern and is born out of scientific advancement, but this alone by no means implies that previous generations were unable to differentiate between that which is evident and verifiable and that which is not. The birth of science was not the birth of reason.

In short your argument, as I understand it, is completely non sequitur. Science disproves creation myth - thus before science, creation myth was believed to be fact.

In short my argument is that there is nothing new about metaphorical interpretation of scripture, and nothing to do with the results of science. People are not idiots for believing a literal interpretation of scripture because it conflicts with science, but because the dept of scripture, it's beauty, purpose and reason for it's longevity are all due to it's allegorical imagery - it's metaphor. These metaphors are far older than science, and were not fabricated or invented to explain away the contradictions brought about by science.

[Cougar]

In the light of the debate about purely creation myths I find your argument quite compelling, it does seem unlikely that in any way Adam and Eve were meant to be taken literally, I still feel to a certain degree you are bringing too much of a modern slant on it, but historical analysis of anything will always be polluted by the present, I of all people should know that. It's also quite compelling to think that in some way the problems we have with (at least the Abrahamic religions) in the larger sense (you know: Crusades, Jihad, sectarianism, pogroms etc) owe not to the fact that they are baseless and increasingly irrelevant, but that the holy texts, have been mis-interpeted and used inncorrectly either through innocent stupidity or malicious intent.

I still have some issues though with the wider meanings of the Torah, OT etc:

Using Leviticus as an example; we have here a set of rules designed to cover the covenant between god and the jews, these rules are what they are,rules, not metaphors but a codified set of rules concerning cleanliness, the activities of priess etc. Numbers could be seen as essentially a historical text (with a lot of spin) and Deuteronomy consists of a combination of review and the code by which the Jews should live in the promised land (as with anything you can't be sure, but there is a good chance this has been rewritten to suit the purposes of later rulers) Whilst I can understand how some of this can be interpreted metaphorically and I've seen Rabbis present varioust arguments for the interpretation of the covenant etc, a lot of this shit is rules. If your going against this it's against the rules of god and that can't be reconciled. If your going to say: well actually we ignore these bits cos we think they have been hijacked by humans then fine, but it's pretty clear that in all the interpretations of the bible nowhere does it say: "mix and match, find out what works, ignore the rules that don't suit you" although Jesus was all for finding different paths to God, I'm sure he didn't mean for us to simply ignore stuff we don't like.

I'm still rather puzzled as to you particular attention on the Torah as being particularly metaphorical, in thesense of the Pentuatech (SP?) I fail to see how it is much more metaphorical than the OT?

I think ultimately out of all this I simply can't believe what you do, it seems to me that through reading the scripture you have found a path which you manage to reconcile with an interpretation of history, which I don't believe is true. I on the other hand find too many contradictions, too much evidence of sticky human fingerprints, and more questions raised by scripture than are answered. The path of treating them as a kind of metaphorical prod seems (to my mind at least) to be too selective and contradictory to what is on the page. If anyone could at least point me to a bible or any holy text that could be proven to exist unmolested then I would at least have a chance of having a bash at understanding what you seem to draw from it.

I'm not trying to disuade CI here, in fact I find it somewhat enviable that he has something he's so certain is right.

[Silencer]

I would suggest that, even if the various holy texts were written initially as metaphorical, you underestimate the level of intelligence of your average citizen in an ancient civilisation. If you present a pre-schooler with a text about Humpty Dumpty, and fail to explain that it is not real, they may actually believe it. The theories and beliefs of Socrates, for example, were too advanced for the population of Athens, and so he was tried and executed by those people.
Just food for thought...

[Tarcanus]

Bent, on 04 September 2009 - 01:11 AM, said:

<!--quoteo(post=671803:date=Sep 3 2009, 09:00 PM:name=stone monkey)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (stone monkey @ Sep 3 2009, 09:00 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=671803"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->And given the presumably short generational times of the organisms involved, there's a lot of mutation and selection (that is, sex [more accurately, reproduction] and death) that's gone on.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

I get this, however, why did all evolving species suddenly stop evolving, no fish bacteria...no frog fish....no lizard monkeys....no monkey men...its as if, it stopped for everything, and now we say that because we learn things quickly we are still evolving, however, I have not noticed any humans walking around with super human atributes...such as thicker skin, or any other genetically physical changes that means we are still evolving. I am not being difficult, well, maybe a little, however, in the example above....was the bacteria tested introduced to a food source A? you know, the regular food source. Sounds like they were put in a dish with food B, and told eat that or die...eventually one of the buggers will try it, survive, and the colony will follow its example in order to survive, this again is adaptation, not evolution....evolution would be if one of the bacteria, turned into a duck and then flew away, to go eat food C.

I'm beginning to think that you have some hard and fast thoughts when it comes to the difference between adaptation and evolution. As far as I understand it, adaptation is used to describe the behavior that many animals (including us) exhibit when faced with a new problem or issue to overcome in the short term. For instance, you lock your keys in your apartment and don't have a spare on you. You don't evolve the thought that you need to call your friend who has a spare key, you adapt to the situation and call your friend to come unlock the door for you. This scenario is one that is unlikely to occur every day, multiple times a day, for years and years.

Evolution(again, as I understand it) is when genetic changes occur(almost always through beneficial mutation) that allows a creature to overcome one of these 'selective pressures' in the long term. With the lion example: If all of a sudden all prey animals died off on the African continent and the only food left for the lions was the Savannah grass and tree leaves eventually(hopefully before all of the lions died themselves) some cubs would evolve the ability to digest grasses and leaves. At this point, only the grass-eating lions would survive and those that stay strictly meat-eaters would all die - leaving the continent in the hands of the 'fittest' lions for the environment. The grass-eating lions exhibited a genetic change to allow them to survive in a new environment.

In short, adaptation = short term changes to meet an immediate goal of some sort
evolution = genetic mutation that occurs due to long term changes in environment.

[Cause]

I jus want to point out that evolution does not occur in the face of pressures. Rather the mutation to cope with a new stress is already present in a small percentage of the populaton and the new stress just selects for it. Since it is advantagous to have the mutation more mutants survive as a % of populatin and have more babies untill the mutation becomes the norm.

Thats what fittest means. Having the most sex. Nothing else

[Cold Iron]

Cougar, on 08 September 2009 - 09:04 AM, said:

Using Leviticus as an example; we have here a set of rules designed to cover the covenant between god and the jews, these rules are what they are,rules, not metaphors but a codified set of rules concerning cleanliness, the activities of priess etc. Numbers could be seen as essentially a historical text (with a lot of spin) and Deuteronomy consists of a combination of review and the code by which the Jews should live in the promised land (as with anything you can't be sure, but there is a good chance this has been rewritten to suit the purposes of later rulers) Whilst I can understand how some of this can be interpreted metaphorically and I've seen Rabbis present varioust arguments for the interpretation of the covenant etc, a lot of this shit is rules. If your going against this it's against the rules of god and that can't be reconciled. If your going to say: well actually we ignore these bits cos we think they have been hijacked by humans then fine, but it's pretty clear that in all the interpretations of the bible nowhere does it say: "mix and match, find out what works, ignore the rules that don't suit you" although Jesus was all for finding different paths to God, I'm sure he didn't mean for us to simply ignore stuff we don't like.

I'm still rather puzzled as to you particular attention on the Torah as being particularly metaphorical, in thesense of the Pentuatech (SP?) I fail to see how it is much more metaphorical than the OT?

I took the opportunity to jump on the torah simply because of the long traditions and wealth of literature on jewish hermeneutics and exegesis focused on the torah specifically. Obviously any collection of works that contains genesis is going to offer adequate evidence for my argument, but outside of that I have no reason to consider the torah any more metaphorical than the rest of the tanakh.

Obviously scriptures have purposes beyond the metaphorical elucidation of god, and you would be right in accusing me of cherry picking my way around many of these if they seem to be directly related only to the culture of that time. You could then argue that in doing so I remove myself from the religion, and cannot be considered a true adherent. To an extent I would agree. I would have no problem with differentiating between believers in the biblical god and adherers of biblical law. However there are so very few true adherers of religious law outside the middle east that this distinction becomes virtually meaningless for western christians, who should be free to defeat literalism through hermeneutics and epistemology - through a scientific analysis of religious belief rather than a scientific rejection of it. Inside the middle east I have no suggestions beyond education, I would not begin to attempt to convince a fanatic that their god is a metaphor, regardless of how much more powerful, meaningful or beautiful I believe this to be.

Cougar, on 08 September 2009 - 09:04 AM, said:

I think ultimately out of all this I simply can't believe what you do, it seems to me that through reading the scripture you have found a path which you manage to reconcile with an interpretation of history, which I don't believe is true. I on the other hand find too many contradictions, too much evidence of sticky human fingerprints, and more questions raised by scripture than are answered. The path of treating them as a kind of metaphorical prod seems (to my mind at least) to be too selective and contradictory to what is on the page. If anyone could at least point me to a bible or any holy text that could be proven to exist unmolested then I would at least have a chance of having a bash at understanding what you seem to draw from it.

I'm not trying to disuade CI here, in fact I find it somewhat enviable that he has something he's so certain is right.

I'm not sure I understand fully what you mean by unmolested, the parts of the bible that attempt to illustrate the nature of god and the heavenly aspects, so to speak, are equally as modified throughout time as those parts that discuss the more earthly aspects. When looking for spiritual truth the politicking only serves to better illuminate the setting and prevailing cultural biases of the day. The bottom line is relevance but the big kicker is that it may not be immediately, or ever, apparent what this relevance is. But I'm telling you this is as true as anything else I've experienced: if you study god, you will come to know yourself, if you love god, you will come to love yourself, if you follow god, you will come to take pride in your every action. God is not omniscient and omnipresent because he is an all powerful superbeing, but because he resides in us. God does not reward and punish us because he is jealous and controlling, but because he represents our own sense of justice. God is everything you were taught he is, just not what you reasoned that to be. The church is built on a long history of knowing that not everyone will comprehend this, especially not children, so it's better to leave the people their image of god, indeed, encourage it, as the end result will be the same. This truth is so evident that it is as hard to argue for as it is to argue against. I've come across people who already see it the same way but I've never managed to convince someone who saw it differently. I still love trying though

[Agraba]

If I'm reading this right, there seems to be a small misconception with evolution.

Most of you seem to think that when an environment changes, some members of the species in question suddenly develop a trait which allows them to survive the environmental change. That is not the case. Changes in genetic traits may only occur during the birthing process, and animals can't just go "quick! We gotta make babies and hope one of them can survive this before it kills us all!" No, they'd be fucked.

The thing is, those traits to survive already exist before the environmental change occurs. Here's a hypothetical example: Let's say in ten years from now, in 2019, some epidemic virus will be unleashed that kills 99% of the human population, and from then on, humans will never really worry about viral infections again. Humans will be said to have "evolved" in order to fight that infection, and that incident will be said to have brought rapid evolution amongst mankind. The truth is, the microscopic mechanism that would fight that infection has already been developed hundreds of thousands of years ago, but never really came in use, but never really hindered us either, so it just drifted about amongst a small fraction of lineages, and would still exist among 1% of humans today. So in fact, when an environmental change comes about, resistance to that change has already been developed long before via mutations or genetic crossing, it just served no useful purpose at the time, yet did not hinder the species, so it remained among some fraction of the population. The same can be said for locusts in your crops. Once they begin to come about, 0.1% of them are already immune to the fertilizer that you're about to hit them with, even though they've never seen it before. Then months later, all of them will be immune (because they're all descendants of those 0.1% survivors).

This is probably what causes the misconception that evolution can be quick. Yes, when an environmental change occurs and rapidly changes the tolerance level of a species, the culling process IS quick, however, the evolutionary process that built the tolerance for the environmental change was extremely slow and likely happened a looooong time before the actual change. Therefore the noticeable effects of evolution are always slow processes. Of course we can still notice their effects. I think all domestic dogs today are descendants of the Asian white wolf, and domestication is less than 10 thousand years old. If we can go from Asian white wolf to something like a poodle in less than ten thousand years, imagine what transformations could occur in billions!

[Cold Iron]

Pedantic but i think it was a little more than 10 thousand years.

[stone monkey]

Actually, a rather interesting experiment has been done on that. Over a period of 50 or so years Soviet biologists (and it was Soviet back then...) managed to breed "domesticated" foxes. All they did was breed from the ones that seemed friendliest to humans. The results were quite astonishing. The domesticated breed look substantially different to their wild forebears and, like dogs, they retain features into adulthood that are generally the province of the young of their wild compatriots. And their innate behaviours are quite substantially different too.

So, domestication would seem not to take all that long after all. Barely 3 human generations, it would appear...

Anyway, here's a cool article on the fallacies about evolution that quite a few people may hold.

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 17 September 2009 - 08:41 PM

[Gem Windcaster]

I have many loooong posts to red if I'm gonna catch up, and there's too much interesting stuff to even comment on in one post, so I am gonna skip that for now, and just jump right in. If I missed anything that is relevant, you're welcome to point at that particular post.

For starters I just wanna say that I know I've been pulling some people's strings, and I'm sorry if anyone has taken it personal - it wasn't mean to be.

Silencer, on 30 August 2009 - 06:25 AM, said:

Gem is correct, evolution is not observable in it's full scale to anyone who is not at least something approximating immortal. However, SM's comparison to plate tectonics is true. By virtue of the small changes one sees, one can surely extrapolate that over time these add up to a large change. If you disagree on this, Gem, I'd like to know why (note, if you've already answered this, a link to that post would be sufficient), rather than the simple fact that you do.

And claiming that SM is lumping you in with a certain group/mindset and that he doesn't really know your views begs the question that, if he cannot take anything you have said in this thread to be representative of your views and opinions, then why are you bothering? It's an evasive, silly attempt to refute arguments without actually doing any refutation. Don't take this the wrong way, I just view it as somewhat indicative of SM's points about your argument strategy...

Extrapolation is not an observable fact, which was my point. I have never meant to disagree that one, with the facts that are observable, one can build beautiful theories. In science facts are not absolute truths. You know that, I know that, we all know that. So I what continually baffles me is this outright denial that a theory is a theory is a theory...
Silencer, I'm not sure what you are trying to say with the secon paragraph, mind elaborating?

jitsukerr, on 01 September 2009 - 01:25 PM, said:

Having started to read <i>_Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science_</i>, I am starting to wonder if Gem's position arises from a post-modern, deconstructionist view of science as as culturally relative artifact of society: the notion that, without an objective reality against which to make claims, science itself can only claim 'local' truth, rather than objective truth. Her claims of scientific understanding, and the demonstrable falseness of those claims, would seem to be typical of the post-modern attitude to science that seems to be common in American academia (and, lamentably, increasingly common on this side of the Pond): to whit, one need not possess a deep understanding of any particular science in order to subject it to critique from whatever perspective one chooses.

I apologise if this seems to be a personal attack -- such was not my intent. If anything, I am attacking the _character_ of the position held by Gem as typical of a larger phenomenon in scientific criticism, and Gem's happens to be the most convenient example.

No offense taken, it's an interesting observation. I think I actually agree on a certain level that an 'understanding' of something is so relative to what is considered 'truth' by the certain individual you are having the debate with, that proper critique might never be possible. However, I was never actually critiquing science, or scientific data, but what individuals make of science and certain scientific data. I separate science as an idea/method and science as a construct of the mind. Mostly I am critiquing the mind, and not so much the method - because the method is very straight forward.

The idea of science, science as a philosophic phenomenon, and my view of it, is central to what I am trying to say. It seems to me I have an understanding of the construct on which it is built that most scientists don't really think about - maybe because they're part of that construct, I'm not sure. Clearly I have a different view here.

I think I need to deconstruct my own views on science in order to continue this conversation, and I have no clue where to go from here.

[Silencer]

Gem Windcaster, on 18 September 2009 - 02:26 AM, said:

Silencer, on 30 August 2009 - 06:25 AM, said:

Gem is correct, evolution is not observable in it's full scale to anyone who is not at least something approximating immortal. However, SM's comparison to plate tectonics is true. By virtue of the small changes one sees, one can surely extrapolate that over time these add up to a large change. If you disagree on this, Gem, I'd like to know why (note, if you've already answered this, a link to that post would be sufficient), rather than the simple fact that you do.

And claiming that SM is lumping you in with a certain group/mindset and that he doesn't really know your views begs the question that, if he cannot take anything you have said in this thread to be representative of your views and opinions, then why are you bothering? It's an evasive, silly attempt to refute arguments without actually doing any refutation. Don't take this the wrong way, I just view it as somewhat indicative of SM's points about your argument strategy...

Extrapolation is not an observable fact, which was my point. I have never meant to disagree that one, with the facts that are observable, one can build beautiful theories. In science facts are not absolute truths. You know that, I know that, we all know that. So I what continually baffles me is this outright denial that a theory is a theory is a theory...
Silencer, I'm not sure what you are trying to say with the secon paragraph, mind elaborating?

I think SM's post that I was referring too, and perhaps your reply to that, got lost somewhere - probably due to the changeover.

My point was, basically; when you claim that SM should stop assuming he knows where you are coming from, and putting you in a stereotyped/generic group of perspectives, that you're basically saying he cannot argue with you at all, because what you are posting on thread gives no indication of what you believe.
"I think the world is round"
"You're clearly one of those who believes the world is round"
"Hey! Stop putting me in a box! You don't know what I believe!"
Is NOT a good argument.

As I said, however, the posts in question are too messed up with regards to quote formatting/getting lost that I can't find them any more.

[Gem Windcaster]

Silencer, on 18 September 2009 - 05:55 AM, said:

I think SM's post that I was referring too, and perhaps your reply to that, got lost somewhere - probably due to the changeover.

My point was, basically; when you claim that SM should stop assuming he knows where you are coming from, and putting you in a stereotyped/generic group of perspectives, that you're basically saying he cannot argue with you at all, because what you are posting on thread gives no indication of what you believe.
"I think the world is round"
"You're clearly one of those who believes the world is round"
"Hey! Stop putting me in a box! You don't know what I believe!"
Is NOT a good argument.

As I said, however, the posts in question are too messed up with regards to quote formatting/getting lost that I can't find them any more.

Ah ok, I see what you're saying, and the dialogue you wrote above I guess would correctly show SM's experience. However my experience is different, let me show you it, my dialogue would go something like this:
"There are no evidence that the world is flat, it could just as easily be round"
"Aha! You're one of those people that believes the world is round!"
"So if I am? That doesn't mean there are evidence the world is flat"
"But your view is compromised, you can't be trusted, because you don't believe as we do that the world is flat!"
"But...there's still no evidence that the world is flat..."

Okay, so I realize that it's futile to try to argue in a situation like this. I have already outed myself as being on the opposite side, which means that anything I say will always be seen in that light. That's not the core of the problem here though - the core of the problem is how my views are disregarded. All I have ever wanted is that people challenge my views with actual facts, that's all, not just blatant accusations of being stupid and stubborn. I already know the stubborn part, and sometimes I'm stupid on purpose, so what? The fact remains that very few posts actually answers my critique with real arguments.

I'm not saying that SM's experience isn't less real than mine, just that mine are real too. You see, people are welcome to put me in a box all they like, as long as they take into account what I am actually saying, and comment on that, as opposed to read into what I am saying, putting things in my mouth that I never meant or even said. It's easy to rectify, just ask what I mean, dagnammit.

Agraba's recent post is a brilliant example of what I've been after. Clear argumentation and to the point. I'm impressed. I will try to answer with similar high standards, try, soon if I can.

[Cause]

What I can’t understand is why after it has been explained a 100 times you still g on about a theory is a theory. The second law of thermodynamics is rightly the Second theory of thermodynamics. Philosophically speaking it’s impossible to prove anything. So it can’t be a law. That said in over a million observed experiments, reactions and tests it’s never been proved wrong. But it’s still just a theory. Evolution is the same thing with a list over evidence my arm long it’s still just a theory

-Fossil evidence
-Conservation of chirality
-DNA Homology
-DNA Similarity
-Vestigial organs
-Homologous structures
-geographical distribution
-Speciation (It happens!)

I could go on!
Also I know I have covered this observable fact thing before. Almost everything in science is based on models extrapolated from observations which themselves are questionable us (Questionable if I assume I understand what you appear to be suggesting, that what ou own senses can’t see is not observable). Because we rely on machines to observe them for us which only work if we trust the principle they are built on. The makeup of an atom is not observable but I assure you the electron neutron proton theory if not correct is damn close. Hundreds of theories are based on it and all experimental predictions based on it work. But as I said there is no way to observe it. We bombarded a an atom with charges and based on the refraction we worked out the nucleus electron cloud model. Its an extrapolation.

Also you don’t need a degree in science to see that the next number in the sequence 2-4-6-8...
Is 10! Extrapolation is a reasonable and often useful tool.