46
Upright BiPed
08/04/2011
10:15 pm
David Gibson,
This is an excellent recommendation in principle
I notice here that you start your response with the implicit suggestion that there are times when it’s not a good idea to understand for yourself, or apparently even to attempt to. You (no doubt) are about to tell me I need to hand it off to experts. Quite frankly, I am a little repulsed by that kind of position. I think history is full of factions, and individuals, and governments, and gurus who just love people like you. But I’ll tell you right now that I think you are lying about that in your own life, and that you only say it now to serve your current purposes. At least, that is my hope.
Of course, don’t get me wrong; I respect experts for the same reasons as anyone else. They’ve earned their position, and I gain from their journey. If I was sitting in a Doctor’s office being diagnosed with a condition, I would certainly rely on that physician’s expertise. But if that same physician tells me that I’m being punished for something I’ve done – I would have a problem with that. I would not feel the slightest bit obligated by his physician’s license to think he had one wit of sense. By that same token, if that physician tells me that “I” am just an inner delusion amongst the matter and the death, then don’t ask me to turn it over to him, because he is full of shit (for the same reason as the first). I’m not so stupid as to think that his practice of biological science requires him to choose between either idea (they have nothing whatsoever to do with it) and it certainly doesn’t give him any authority over questions I already know he has no answers for. If I find a practitioner who is an expert on everything, I’ll adopt a different position.
You are like the convention of mice deciding that the cat needs to wear a bell. Now, how does one implement this policy?
My ‘o my. In the space of one sentence you’ve gone from suggesting I give up thinking for myself, and before I can step in line with the other cattle, I’ve become a mouse who needs to fear the cat. I am sure you are a very fine propagandist, with an inexhaustible supply of things to say, but honestly, I am not so certain this is your forum. The people around here actually read the data.
Perhaps you are subject to a little propaganda yourself. The position espoused by your opening remark would certainly provide that opportunity.
Certainly I am not a biologist, not even close. So I see the vast majority of the world’s biologists largely in agreement. Should I agree with them? If not, on what basis?
Who is it that you are kidding here? You didn’t come to UD to find out if anything valid was going on here; you came here for one reason and one reason only. You came here to fight. You have culture battle dripping from every post you make.
I’m not qualified to judge the merits.
The only thing you’re disqualified from is knowing what the merits are to begin with, so don’t fool yourself otherwise. And that disqualification is something you’ve done to yourself. If you take the stance you’re promoting here, then it just goes with the territory.
I admit I find it difficult to accept that many thousands or tens of thousands of highly intelligent and educated people have devoted their life to real-world experimental research, producing a cumulative body of knowledge for well over a century, and nearly ALL of them have missed the boat.
You ‘admit’ this huh? It’s good that you can talk about it. It might help you to know that every time the consensus was wrong about something, they were first right about it, and usually for a long time. History says it only takes one person to be right. That’s the way science works, so don’t feel bad. There is something else you might want to realize, given that it is of profound importance within empirical pursuits such as science: 1) ID breaks no physical law, and 2) ID has never been refuted on the merits.
For me, this is beyond my suspension of disbelief.
I suggest a history book, or two.
Now, let’s take this a step further and note that those who disagree, besides being a very tiny minority, do almost no research at all.
A tiny minority? Over what scale shall we measure this? Quality of the science? The ability to demonstrate answers? The sheer numbers within the human enterprise of study?
Why not just spit in Newton’s face, David? Spit in Maxwell’s. Spit in Pasteur’s. Spit in Galileo’s while you at it. Put on your cape and park a lugie right on Faraday’s forehead; one for the team.
Or, are all those old fogies past their prime in your eyes? Did they not live in your time of enlightenment, so they cannot be held accountable for their tired old beliefs? Is that your rationale? And your contemporaries like Behe or Denton, or Abel, and the others? What about someone like Polanyi? You ignore them anyway, so what’s the point. One group you disregard, while you ignore the others. You’ve stuck the perfect balance to be exactly who it is you suggest you are.
And the one or two who DO research, seem to be trying to demonstrate that claims nobody has made are without merit.
Claims that nobody has made? Do you need medication? That’s just hilarious.
This doesn’t mean they’re wrong, of course. But to me it means one must look at the usefulness of the research results, to see if applications based on it work.
Tell me, what is the scientific applicability of the biologist’s claim that the universe is a place of pitiless indifference? What was the test that confirmed this result with such profound conclusion, that forevermore it should be taken as an unassailable fact, unassailable regardless of the evidence against it? Unassailable to the point that we shall redefine the science of Newton and Maxwell and Faraday and Galileo around it?
If I had the research money, I could shoot a bullet into the air, discover where it came down, and calculate the odds of it coming down in that precise location and nowhere else. And I could show that the odds were unacceptably low to the point of near-impossibility, without even breathing hard.
Unfortunately, this mental exercise has nothing to do with anything in ID. It’s just that, a mental exercise, and it’s meaningless. Would you like to know why? Well there are many reasons, but one in particular jumps out at me. The act of shooting a bullet in the air (to have it return to the earth) has physical principles in operation that explain what is taking place. Yet, within the evidence for biological design, there is no such physical principle in operation. Quite to the contrary, all the physical principles in operation work diametrically opposed to what is observed. One must simply take the biological phenomena as a given, then explain how it staves off the entropy which all other systems are subject to. Or, did you not know that?
Perhaps you wouldn’t breathe too hard by reading a book or two.
So have I proved that bullets fired into the air DO NOT fall to earth? Have I proved that the research bullet performed a miracle?
This, again, is utterly meaningless. In fact, it’s quite silly. I get what you were going for, but you missed it. I suggest to you again, this is not the forum for such baseless analogies.
Most cogently, if I started out to ‘prove’ that bullets don’t land, would my experimental methodology reflect confirmation bias?
If you only knew how utterly disconnected this line of thinking is from the issues, you would be ashamed to have made this remark.
If I shouldn’t be looking at the probability of landing exactly there, what SHOULD I be looking at?.
Gawd. You should be looking in the mirror. After that, you should be looking at a book that argues the evidence on their actual merits. I promise it won’t hurt. Your airy, swirling, mystical smoke analogies just aren’t cutting it.
Might you suspect that my entire research program was created from the ground up to grind an Axe
Ba-dump-bump! All that for a cheap shot that missed so badly that you made yourself a fool?
But you can always learn something, then decide. You certainly wouldn’t be the first.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Wow, uptight, that's an awful lot of sanctimonious tard, even for you. Besides quoting David Gibson out of context, you also tried to PROJECT your own stupidity and lack of education onto him. If there's one thing you IDiots are consistent at it's accusing others of exactly the things that you are guilty of.
Hey, uptightbitard, no matter how much bullshit you and your fellow IDiots spew, you still don't have any evidence for your claims. You can't, don't, and won't define or demonstrate your claims, and you can't, don't, and won't even calculate the "CSI" in a banana (or anything else). You're a bigmouthed loser who hides on UD with the rest of your cowardly ilk. You've got nothing but bluff and bluster, arrogance, and IDiotic fairy tales.
The so-called ID 'theory/inference/hypothesis' is just a mentally retarded exercise, and it’s meaningless.
Upright BiPed
08/04/2011
10:15 pm
David Gibson,
This is an excellent recommendation in principle
I notice here that you start your response with the implicit suggestion that there are times when it’s not a good idea to understand for yourself, or apparently even to attempt to. You (no doubt) are about to tell me I need to hand it off to experts. Quite frankly, I am a little repulsed by that kind of position. I think history is full of factions, and individuals, and governments, and gurus who just love people like you. But I’ll tell you right now that I think you are lying about that in your own life, and that you only say it now to serve your current purposes. At least, that is my hope.
Of course, don’t get me wrong; I respect experts for the same reasons as anyone else. They’ve earned their position, and I gain from their journey. If I was sitting in a Doctor’s office being diagnosed with a condition, I would certainly rely on that physician’s expertise. But if that same physician tells me that I’m being punished for something I’ve done – I would have a problem with that. I would not feel the slightest bit obligated by his physician’s license to think he had one wit of sense. By that same token, if that physician tells me that “I” am just an inner delusion amongst the matter and the death, then don’t ask me to turn it over to him, because he is full of shit (for the same reason as the first). I’m not so stupid as to think that his practice of biological science requires him to choose between either idea (they have nothing whatsoever to do with it) and it certainly doesn’t give him any authority over questions I already know he has no answers for. If I find a practitioner who is an expert on everything, I’ll adopt a different position.
You are like the convention of mice deciding that the cat needs to wear a bell. Now, how does one implement this policy?
My ‘o my. In the space of one sentence you’ve gone from suggesting I give up thinking for myself, and before I can step in line with the other cattle, I’ve become a mouse who needs to fear the cat. I am sure you are a very fine propagandist, with an inexhaustible supply of things to say, but honestly, I am not so certain this is your forum. The people around here actually read the data.
Perhaps you are subject to a little propaganda yourself. The position espoused by your opening remark would certainly provide that opportunity.
Certainly I am not a biologist, not even close. So I see the vast majority of the world’s biologists largely in agreement. Should I agree with them? If not, on what basis?
Who is it that you are kidding here? You didn’t come to UD to find out if anything valid was going on here; you came here for one reason and one reason only. You came here to fight. You have culture battle dripping from every post you make.
I’m not qualified to judge the merits.
The only thing you’re disqualified from is knowing what the merits are to begin with, so don’t fool yourself otherwise. And that disqualification is something you’ve done to yourself. If you take the stance you’re promoting here, then it just goes with the territory.
I admit I find it difficult to accept that many thousands or tens of thousands of highly intelligent and educated people have devoted their life to real-world experimental research, producing a cumulative body of knowledge for well over a century, and nearly ALL of them have missed the boat.
You ‘admit’ this huh? It’s good that you can talk about it. It might help you to know that every time the consensus was wrong about something, they were first right about it, and usually for a long time. History says it only takes one person to be right. That’s the way science works, so don’t feel bad. There is something else you might want to realize, given that it is of profound importance within empirical pursuits such as science: 1) ID breaks no physical law, and 2) ID has never been refuted on the merits.
For me, this is beyond my suspension of disbelief.
I suggest a history book, or two.
Now, let’s take this a step further and note that those who disagree, besides being a very tiny minority, do almost no research at all.
A tiny minority? Over what scale shall we measure this? Quality of the science? The ability to demonstrate answers? The sheer numbers within the human enterprise of study?
Why not just spit in Newton’s face, David? Spit in Maxwell’s. Spit in Pasteur’s. Spit in Galileo’s while you at it. Put on your cape and park a lugie right on Faraday’s forehead; one for the team.
Or, are all those old fogies past their prime in your eyes? Did they not live in your time of enlightenment, so they cannot be held accountable for their tired old beliefs? Is that your rationale? And your contemporaries like Behe or Denton, or Abel, and the others? What about someone like Polanyi? You ignore them anyway, so what’s the point. One group you disregard, while you ignore the others. You’ve stuck the perfect balance to be exactly who it is you suggest you are.
And the one or two who DO research, seem to be trying to demonstrate that claims nobody has made are without merit.
Claims that nobody has made? Do you need medication? That’s just hilarious.
This doesn’t mean they’re wrong, of course. But to me it means one must look at the usefulness of the research results, to see if applications based on it work.
Tell me, what is the scientific applicability of the biologist’s claim that the universe is a place of pitiless indifference? What was the test that confirmed this result with such profound conclusion, that forevermore it should be taken as an unassailable fact, unassailable regardless of the evidence against it? Unassailable to the point that we shall redefine the science of Newton and Maxwell and Faraday and Galileo around it?
If I had the research money, I could shoot a bullet into the air, discover where it came down, and calculate the odds of it coming down in that precise location and nowhere else. And I could show that the odds were unacceptably low to the point of near-impossibility, without even breathing hard.
Unfortunately, this mental exercise has nothing to do with anything in ID. It’s just that, a mental exercise, and it’s meaningless. Would you like to know why? Well there are many reasons, but one in particular jumps out at me. The act of shooting a bullet in the air (to have it return to the earth) has physical principles in operation that explain what is taking place. Yet, within the evidence for biological design, there is no such physical principle in operation. Quite to the contrary, all the physical principles in operation work diametrically opposed to what is observed. One must simply take the biological phenomena as a given, then explain how it staves off the entropy which all other systems are subject to. Or, did you not know that?
Perhaps you wouldn’t breathe too hard by reading a book or two.
So have I proved that bullets fired into the air DO NOT fall to earth? Have I proved that the research bullet performed a miracle?
This, again, is utterly meaningless. In fact, it’s quite silly. I get what you were going for, but you missed it. I suggest to you again, this is not the forum for such baseless analogies.
Most cogently, if I started out to ‘prove’ that bullets don’t land, would my experimental methodology reflect confirmation bias?
If you only knew how utterly disconnected this line of thinking is from the issues, you would be ashamed to have made this remark.
If I shouldn’t be looking at the probability of landing exactly there, what SHOULD I be looking at?.
Gawd. You should be looking in the mirror. After that, you should be looking at a book that argues the evidence on their actual merits. I promise it won’t hurt. Your airy, swirling, mystical smoke analogies just aren’t cutting it.
Might you suspect that my entire research program was created from the ground up to grind an Axe
Ba-dump-bump! All that for a cheap shot that missed so badly that you made yourself a fool?
But you can always learn something, then decide. You certainly wouldn’t be the first.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Wow, uptight, that's an awful lot of sanctimonious tard, even for you. Besides quoting David Gibson out of context, you also tried to PROJECT your own stupidity and lack of education onto him. If there's one thing you IDiots are consistent at it's accusing others of exactly the things that you are guilty of.
Hey, uptightbitard, no matter how much bullshit you and your fellow IDiots spew, you still don't have any evidence for your claims. You can't, don't, and won't define or demonstrate your claims, and you can't, don't, and won't even calculate the "CSI" in a banana (or anything else). You're a bigmouthed loser who hides on UD with the rest of your cowardly ilk. You've got nothing but bluff and bluster, arrogance, and IDiotic fairy tales.
The so-called ID 'theory/inference/hypothesis' is just a mentally retarded exercise, and it’s meaningless.
