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Author Topic:   Crop circles and intelligent design
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 119 of 150 (621010)
06-22-2011 11:41 AM
Reply to: Message 117 by Peter
06-22-2011 11:26 AM


Re: ALL Conceivable Causes
None of that is a falsification of the claim.
To falsify the claim we, surely, need to make predictions about the nature of human-made crop circles, then look for crop circles that do NOT match those predictions.
No, any evidence of a singular non-human made crop circles is enough to falsify the theory that ALL crop circles are human made. That would include finding an alien space craft landing on some crops, creating a crop circle. Or encountering an alien Picasso at work in a field.
Even if I saw an alien drawing (?) a crop circle I can only conclude that THAT crop circle was made by the alien ... but that is sufficient when the claim is 'some are made by ...'
But the falsifiable claim we are making is that ALL are made by humans. The unfalsifiable claim from the other side is that SOME crop circles are made by aliens.
Therefore, since in your example you now know there is at least one crop circle not made by humans this means that not ALL crop circles are made by humans.
If I was postulating that 'some crop circles are created by humans' you would never have bothered disputing that would you?
If we cannot make predictions about the nature of human-made-crop-circles then the claim is, by definition, unfalsifiable.
Except in the case where we have evidence of non-human made crop circles such as evidence that rodents, aliens or weather creates some crop circles.
To falsify 'all x are y' all that is needed is to show an x that is not y. Therefore all that is required is evidence that shows at least one x that is not y. This is basic fundamentals of science, surely?
The prediction that stems from the theory 'all crop circles are made by humans' would be that for any crop circle where we can identify the maker, it will turn out to be human. This can be shown to be in error if we were to able identify a non-human maker.
On the other hand, the only way to falsify 'some crop circles are made by aliens' is to identify the maker of ALL crop circles as being not-alien, which is of course an unreasonable demand in all areas of scientific and any other rational discourse.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 117 by Peter, posted 06-22-2011 11:26 AM Peter has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 123 by Peter, posted 07-08-2011 9:26 AM Modulous has replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 121 of 150 (621016)
06-22-2011 12:47 PM
Reply to: Message 115 by Peter
06-22-2011 11:21 AM


Re: tentative nature of stated conclusions
My question at the end is perhaps the most on topic I've been for a bit. Is the reason that we discount some possibilities more to do with fear that they have merit or is it purely on th evidence?
I fail to see what is frightening about aliens making crop circles.
And, of course, you cannot refute something which is unfalsifiable
And my point is that one shouldn't need to in order to be able to say something with confidence. You seem to be implying that we should. How dare we say crop circles are human creations, what about all those unfalsifiable theories that postulate non-human creation, you ask.
My respsonse? What about them? I am not obliged to give them any credence in everyday speech or writing acts. I don't have to do it for any other piece of art, after all.
Acceptance of human-only-crop-circles (HOCC) with the anecdotal and very weak evidence that we have is akin to accepting the statements made by IDists.
For consistency you must also apply this reasoning to all forms of art (and indeed everything), since all forms of art have examples of anonymous or uncertain (from a scientific perspective) origins. This would lead you to spending twenty minutes to say anything at all, since you must necessarily fill up your time explaining how every statement you make is tentative because of the huge amount of unfalsifiable notions that you can't rule out.
All the evidence that exists is consistent with human creation. All the evidence that is conclusive points to human creation. No evidence suggests that aliens that make crop circles that look the same as human created crop circles.
With biology all the evidence that exists is consistent with natural origin. None of the evidence points to a tinkering unfalsifiable designer designing things that look exactly as if they have natural origins.
Therefore - rejecting ID is done on the same grounds as rejecting alien made crop circles. There's no evidence for ID and it is unfalsifiable (since it postulates that SOME biological functions are the result of design, and that wherever science has no conclusive answer they try to squeeze in their designer - just as aliens are squeezed in when there is any degree of uncertainty with crop circles).
The evidence in either case does not stand up well to scrutiny.
Except that the evidence has stood up to scrutiny, which is why we don't think that aliens are responsible. Since the theory 'humans did it' is always more supported (since we know humans can and do do it, and that humans exist, have the opportunity and the motive).
This would be like a defence lawyer saying that aliens might have committed a murder so since this unfalsifiable notion hasn't been rebutted - the case against his client does not stand up to scrutiny. He would be laughed at as much as your ridiculous objections are.
Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.
Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 115 by Peter, posted 06-22-2011 11:21 AM Peter has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 125 by Peter, posted 07-08-2011 9:34 AM Modulous has replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 128 of 150 (623183)
07-08-2011 1:54 PM
Reply to: Message 125 by Peter
07-08-2011 9:34 AM


absurdum
Heresay and eye-witness accounts are ruled out when they are eye-witness accounts of alines or strange lights, but accepted when it's 'doug n' dave' (well Ok maybe not now since I think at least one of them is deceased).
They aren't eye-witnesses, they are culprits. If aliens came forward and claimed that they did some crop circles and explained how, I would accept that as sufficient evidence that aliens make crop circles. Especially if they video recorded how they did it, and invited a journalist along to observe them doing one.
That people CAN is not evidence of anything to do with the origin. It simply shows that there are ways of replicating the result.
The same could be said of all experimental science. But that leads us to absurdities. Can you imagine this defense being used in a court of law?
"Your honour, we know that having my clients fingers touch the murder weapon is one way to leave fingerprint shaped oil deposits, but that is not evidence of anything to do with the origin of the fingerprints at the crime scene."
It's a ridiculous position, surely? It would undermine all scientific results.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 125 by Peter, posted 07-08-2011 9:34 AM Peter has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 131 by Peter, posted 06-28-2013 10:14 AM Modulous has replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 129 of 150 (623369)
07-09-2011 7:27 PM
Reply to: Message 123 by Peter
07-08-2011 9:26 AM


Re: Falsifications...
But that's insufficient, surely?
Insufficient for what?
Since you have reduced your demand for evidence to a sub-set of the phenomena, you may as well have said 'All crop circles which we can identify as made by humans, are made by humans'.
Right, we could say that. That would be tautologous. Science is taking known specific examples and applying the rules that apply to those to all examples generally. It is called inductive reasoning. Newton and Galileo did not examine all pendulums before writing down the laws that govern all of them. You take what you know, and attempt to infer how that knowledge may apply to the as yet unknown cases.
That is, the above 'prediction' is insufficient for scientific investigation.
Nonsense. If you say it isn't, explain what this sentence is supposed to mean.
If we do NOT have a set of features in crop circles by which we can identify them as human made, without a confession (which we have no way of verifying) then the theory is unfalsifiable.
Of course it isn't unfalsifiable. If we have evidence that aliens made even a single crop circle the theory is obviously false and thus falsified.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 123 by Peter, posted 07-08-2011 9:26 AM Peter has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 133 by Peter, posted 06-28-2013 10:29 AM Modulous has seen this message but not replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


(4)
Message 137 of 150 (702032)
06-29-2013 8:52 AM
Reply to: Message 131 by Peter
06-28-2013 10:14 AM


Re: absurdum
Not as ridiculous as all that.
Just because I can demonstrate A way of doing something, does not mean that all instances of that 'something' were created in that way.
I never claimed otherwise. Really - after like a two year absence the best you could do was repeat this trope that has been refuted numerous times on this thread already?
Here is the debate as it stands:
I have:
Provided evidence that humans exist
Provided evidence they are capable of creating crop circles
Provided evidence they have the resources to go to crops and make crop circles.
Provided evidence that some humans have the psychological motivation to create crop circles
Provided evidence that some humans have created crop circles.
And shown that in every single instance where the crop circle creator's identity has been established - it was a human.
On the other hand you have
Provided ZERO evidence that aliens exist
ZERO evidence that they have the technological capacity to travel interstellar distances to other planets.
ZERO evidence they have the resources to spare to travel interstellar distances to other planets.
ZERO evidence (or any reasoning whatsoever) that these unevidenced beings would be sufficiently motivated to expend all those resources in order to make patterns in alien (to them) food crops.
ZERO evidence than any alien has ever created any crop circle on any planet.
Just to let you know in a debate that looks this one sided....it means that one person lost, and the other won. And in this case, you lost. And after two years of studying reasoning, thinking about crop circles and so on has lead you to the stunning idea that
YOU CAN'T RULE OUT THAT SOME CROP CIRCLES WEREN'T CREATED BY SUBTERRANEAN MUSHROOM PIRATES CONTROLLED BY THE JEWS THEREFORE YOU SHOULDN'T SAY IT'S BORED PRANKSTERS!!!!11
I couldn't have thought of a concession speech with more denial in it than that
The fingerprint thing is quite telling, since it IS possible to plant fingerprints in order to incriminate. So by themselves the fingerprints on the murder weapon are not sufficient evidence (in all cases).
I notice you provide no evidence that it is possible to 'plant' fingerprints in order to incriminate. Let's pretend it was.
Can you see the difference in saying 'it's possible that some crop circles were not created by humans' and 'aliens created some crop circles'?
Let's use fingerprints:
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury - those fingerprints weren't created when oils from my client's fingers left a print upon the murder weapon as a result of direct hand contact. They were created by gelpite: a microrganism that lived a billion years ago in salt water at high pressures. No-one credible has ever seen one, but we can't rule out that these hypothetical entities might be responsible for creating the perfect copy of my client's fingerprints. I believe this is grounds for reasonable doubt. Thank you.
I'm guessing such a lawyer would be dismissed and mocked.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 131 by Peter, posted 06-28-2013 10:14 AM Peter has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 138 by Peter, posted 07-01-2013 5:42 AM Modulous has replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


(2)
Message 145 of 150 (702106)
07-01-2013 1:29 PM
Reply to: Message 138 by Peter
07-01-2013 5:42 AM


motivations and reasoning
The above, does indeed, provide a body of evidence to show that some CC's are created by humans.
It cannot be used to project that ALL CC's are, no matter how reasonable that proposition may sound.
I'm not making that claim, you realize that, right? I'm claiming that in any given case, given what we know about crop circles and humans - humans are probably the responsible party for said crop circle. Of course, as with any epistemological claim - there is a degree of tentativity about the conclusion.
I will also add that it is my position that it is much more likely that it was unicorns than aliens. At least we have evidence for terrestrial equiforms and we don't need to postulate technology beyond our ken to get to unicorns near earth crops.
If I see an oil painting, despite the fact that I can't know that all oil paintings are human creations - I think it is perfectly reasonable to hold the belief that it is a human creation until compelling evidence to believe otherwise comes about. It's basically Bayesian reasoning. The hypothesis that aliens did it is so vanishingly unlikely so as to be unworthy of any serious consideration. That is not the same as saying 'aliens definitely have never created a crop circle', the position you seem to be trying to argue against.
We could postulate unknown entities from unknown places with unknown technology and unknown motivations are responsible for the Mona Lisa or the Woman of Willendorf etc., if we wanted. But why would we?
So far as the known H-made CC's go there is significant suggestion that the known H-made CC's differ in many observable ways from the unknown-made CC's.
I want more than an unspecified and unsourced 'significant suggestion'. I want sourced evidence, please. Debates don't advance on innuendo, after all.
You confirm that there is no evidence for aliens (just arguments), you provide no evidence that interstellar travel is (practically) possible only that if it is possible it must have been discovered (though no evidence is provided, only an appeal to infinity), and no evidence that suggests that interstellar travel has been discovered by any species close enough to us to bother making the journey, AND that by sheer coincidence it happened at an opportune time for their to be civilisation here when they arrive (for the vast majority of earth's history there was no such thing).
You also acknowledge that you can think of no motivation for expending the resources to travel however many light years in order to make patterns in alien crops. You say this isn't a problem, but obviously it is.
You might as well say that Julius Caesar might have assassinated JFK. He could have developed a method of travelling forwards in time, after all. And why wonder why he might have used this technology to kill a President of a country that had not been formed on a continent that his peers were all ignorant of? Maybe the gods told him to, and who can know the motivations of the gods? If gods are possible, and the universe is infinite...
Evidence of any Alien CCMing:
Cyclic reasoning if that's the proposal being investigated, surely?
No. Providing evidence for the claim that aliens make crop circles is not circular reasoning in a debate about whether aliens make crop circles.
There are several methods of planting fingerprints, from creating fingertip moulds to extracting them from rubber gloves. The point of mentioning it was to refute the analogy being made.
I see you didn't discuss my refutation of your refutation which followed what you are responding to here so there doesn't seem any point in me responding further.
Have you heard some of the arguments that come out with?
And you think I'm erratic and non-sensical
I deal with arguments made by solicitors every day in civil cases. Though the burden of evidence is considerably lower than in criminal cases. None of them have ever claimed that their client isn't to blame on the grounds of some unevidenced entity performing feats beyond human technology on matters of utter insignificance with no postulated motivation.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 138 by Peter, posted 07-01-2013 5:42 AM Peter has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 146 by AZPaul3, posted 07-02-2013 1:51 AM Modulous has seen this message but not replied

  
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