EvC Forum: On The Limits of Human Talent

marc9000 writes:

One of the mistakes you're making is that you're reading through this huge onslaught against me, and using it the best you can to distort what I'm saying so that you can mock it like the others.

Nobody's mocking you. You're doing that yourself. All we're doing is calling attention to your ridiculous statements, like this one where you claim that when you said one thing you actually meant quite another:

When I say there are other ways of gaining knowledge besides science, I'm saying that other sources can be involved on how to best use science, to best apply it to benefit the society that funds it.

And when I say that what you said is not what you meant, what I really mean is, "How do you manage to make it through a normal day? How is it possible that you have made it to this point in your life without receiving a Darwin Award (posthumously, of course)?"

My God, are you ever confused! First you say science should avoid seeking information that might test God's word,

Not what I said. I said that science should avoid seeking information about testing God only when that science is acting in the public interest.

Yes, Marc, that science should avoid testing God's word is exactly what you said, and we know this because we can read your own words in your topic proposal where there is nary a mention of the public interest, public funding, or government funding. What you said was:

marc9000 in Message 1 writes:

By "lean not on our own understanding", I don't think that means to stop short of attempts to learn all we can about the natural world. It means to stop short of using what we learn to put God (or God's word) to the test. To acknowledge that there are some things that humans will never be able to figure out, to the extent to be able to challenge anything the 66 book Bible says.

These transparent attempts at misrepresentation are why you're drawing the kinds of responses that you're somehow interpreting as atheistic rage and anger (by the way, I'm not an atheist). Why don't you try an experiment. Don't say anything wildly wrong or contradictory for a week and see if the tenor of the responses changes.

Your problem is that you've got an incredible case of foot-in-mouth disease, one so severe that you can hardly get through a single paragraph without being fantastically wrong or contradictory. Is this the way you conduct your business? "When I said the package would be there tomorrow, what I really meant was next week." In social groups, after you speak do you often find that conversation comes to a halt with people staring uncomfortably off into space.

You italicized the word "useful", implying that I made that word up.

No, I italicized the word "useful" for emphasis. Had I thought you "made that word up" I would have said so, unlike yourself who can never seem to express what you really mean.

What I said, which unlike you happens to also be what I meant, was that you're confusing two different ways in which "useful" is being used. ID was being criticized as not being useful science because it cannot contribute to our knowledge of the natural world. You misinterpreted this as a criticism that ID is not of practical use, which is probably true but is not a claim anyone made or is making.

And you're still making this misinterpretation, despite the many times the distinction has been explained.

You'd have to understand what a test is. You don't test something by just doing the same thing over and over again. Something is tested when it's looked at from a different perspective, and results compared with those of the first perspective. If we subtract 71 from 99 and get 28, we don't subtract 71 from 99 again, get 28 again, and say "hey my test PROVED that my first result was correct". We ADD 28 to 71 and see if we get 99. That's a simple summary of the way testing is done in science, that type of testing was/is demanded of Intelligent Design. It's not possible to test in any meaningful way concerning deep space exploration, because we're only using on one human sense (sight) and we're only looking through telescopes, that all work the same way. Nothing is actually being tested in deep space exploration. Stronger telescopes mean little, concerning testing.

Very well said (and I'm properly impressed and amazed). Yes, multiple lines of converging evidence are what can eventually produce a scientific consensus. You do have the little problem of an apparent ignorance of the multiple lines of evidence being gathered by deep space exploration, but that's okay, we're used to expressions of your insatiable ignorance.

Marc, a couple questions for you:

Assuming, just for the sake of discussion, that a scientific consensus developed at some point in the past that we should have run out of oil by now, and that this consensus developed out of scientific research that relied upon forming hypotheses, gathering evidence, performing experiments, analyzing the results, and repeating and replicating the work, and that therefore the results represented the best thinking available at the time, what alternative method are you proposing that would be an improvement?

To not take liberty destroying actions until it's clear to almost everybody that they're right. It's not complicated.

Why didn't you just say straight out that you didn't understand the question, or that you weren't going to answer the question.

Limits on its research?? NONE. Limits on restricting its research? Don't let the scientific community and liberal politicians be the only ones who decide to limit it.

You're the one who brought up petroleum reserves, so I tried to make it relevant to the thread's topic where you claim that we shouldn't research things that might test God's Word. So do you really believe that the petroleum community should be free to conduct whatever research they like, even though it might test God's Word, such as about the age of the Earth?

We do have irony! What do you think about all the people here who are sputtering with rage about MY worldview?

Your worldview? Since when is "wrong" a worldview? Here's yet another example of you being wrong:

In the same way, evolution can be used to "explain anything", because there is an unknown process (the origin of life) that as of yet, isn't constrained by anything understood in science.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Of course, in the Marc9000 world of "What I Really Meant," this probably means, "Merry Christmas."

Anyway, "Happy Thanksgiving" to you, too, and when you come back please try to realize that no one's out to get you, and that whether one is right or wrong that at least making sense goes a long way.

--Percy

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