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Author | Topic: Exactly 'HOW' intelligent must a Designer be ? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: OK, it seems that there are no readers who wish to comment on our discussion, Philip, so maybe you can just reply to my message? ------------------"We will still have perfect freedom to hold contrary views of our own, but to simply close our minds to the knowledge painstakingly accumulated by hundreds of thousands of scientists over long centuries is to deliberately decide to be ignorant and narrow- minded." -Steve Allen, from "Dumbth"
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Bumbety-bump. Philip!!!! Where aaaaaare you?????
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
bump bump bump
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Philip Member (Idle past 4751 days) Posts: 656 From: Albertville, AL, USA Joined: |
Sorry for delays in responding (I might not get through all this countering).
Shraf: Nope, sorry. Creation science isn't science.Phil: You mean not naturalistic science; a problem you and I keep butting heads about. Psychology is both an art and a science, yet hardly naturalistic science. The same with Creation science. Phil: it (The science of Christ-crucified-risen-for-sin-restoring/etc.) never fails to rebut the non-naturalistic problems of stating that men evolved as zombifications (soul-less, mindless, heartless, powerless, etc), which is erroneous. Shraf: Philip, what the heck are you talking about? Phil: The science of Christ-crucified-risen-for-sin-restoring/etc. hypothetically accounts for our souls’ higher faculties being enabled (by Christ) while we continue to decay due to natural depravity. Or hypothetically call it an anti-zombification principle. Christians call this the grace of God. Phil: To state music is mere pattern recognition, with some races more attuned than others, is a mere oversimplified naturalistic physical perspective. It does not explain the apperceptive rapturous joy we detect (or did detect at one time) that transcends the patterns of recognition. Shraf: First of all, I did NOT say that music was "mere pattern recognition" I said that our appreciation of music was probably based in our ability to recognize patterns.You inserted a great deal of nonexistent value judgement into my statement. Phil: Appreciation of music(Shraf) vs.music(Phil) as mere pattern recognition (Phil)/our ability to recognize patterns (Shraf). Shraf, music is a mystery, as is our appreciation of it. Music involves appreciation by a human being, don’t you conclude. Other beings don’t appreciate music. Albeit, parrots and other creatures may dance to music. But they don’t seem to appreciate music: They don’t sing, compose, or contemplate music. Shraf:So, I take it this means that you have no argument to counter my claim that music appreciation has a biological basis as evidenced by certain cultures having a greater number of people being born with perfect pitch due to the language being based upon intonation? Phil: Certain cultures having a greater number of people being born with perfect pitch due to the language being based upon intonation. Who is making what claim here, Shraf? Blacks have their music, Whites their music, Orientals their music? Christians theirs? Voodoos theirs? Etc., etc. Some, like the French, have, peradventure, romantic intonations. Some, like the Greek, perhaps more rhythmic? Can music with its extremely broad harmony be reduced to biological paradigms of logic? (I will try to continue later, Shraf) Meagerly yours, Philip
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Peter Member (Idle past 1507 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
I think scharfinator was pointing to the Japanese
and Chinese langauges. As an indication at the university where I studied for myfirst degree the language depratment held aptitude tests before allowing anyone to take Japanese as a language option. The reason for this is that, due to the nature of the language,where the same symbols can mean very different things if pronounced subltley differently, some poeple cannot learn Japanese to a desirable level of conversational of fluency. That's not my opinion, that's the opinion of the language department'sJapanese experts. I believe then, that perfect pitch being more prevalent in thosesocieties with the most complex phonetic structure suggests that music appreciation developed as an aid to communication, rather than some 'higher' ideal. My opinion is that there is a strong correlation between ANYhuman behaviour and survival (in the past more so that now perhaps).
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frank Inactive Member |
quote: Very clever ploy Phil, but wrong. Psychology is very much naturalistic. Pschologists theorize, experiment, record, analyze and conclude like any other branch of science. What would make you think otherwise? The same can not be said of "Creation science". Shraf has it right, creation science isn't science. Clear Skies ! Frank
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Philip:
[B]Sorry for delays in responding (I might not get through all this countering).[/QUOTE] S'allright.
quote: Are you talking about medical, therapy-type psychology or research psychology? My husband is a Cognitive Psychology Graduate Student. He does research where he studies working memory, face recognition, and visual agnosia. HE designes experiments. He has people push buttons while doing memory tasks in front of a computer to measure response times. He has people do memory tasks while inside an MRI scanner. He takes this raw data, analyzes it, and sees if there are significant effects in the brain or with response times which correlate to his predictions. He then writes up the results and submits it to scientific journals for publication. He most certainly does basic scientific research. Therapists have more medical training than science training, and they don't generally do much research. It is a completely different field, and is much more akin to the humanities than to science. If they diod do research, however, they would have to follow the scientific method just like any other science, if they wanted to publish in science journals. Tell me exactly how Creation science adheres to the scientific method, again?
quote: THat's a nice theology, but I have no special reason to think your theology is any more right than any other.
quote: No, I just told you that music appreciation is probably related to our ability to recognize patterns, so it isn't a mystery. IT isn't completely figured out, but it isn't a "mysical" mystery. There are certainly some biological pointers which can explain it.
quote: Um, so what? We have the most complex brains of any creature on the planet. We appreciate a lot of things that other creatuires don't, but that doesn't mean anything beyond a greater capacity for complex thought. Computers can compose music. Do computers have a soul?
quote: I think this has been dealt with already. I will try to explain it more plainly. Perfect pitch is something you are born with or not. You can't learn it. It is a genetic variation. There is a greater incidence of people being born with perfect pitch in cultures in which the language requires the ability to differentiate between very subtle differences in intonation, such as Chinese. This is expected as per evolutionary theory, because it is a proliferation of a favorable trait throuout a population. Perfect pitch is something usually thought of as important in music appreciation, yet clearly it is important for basic communication in those cultures which have languages in which subtle variations in intonation can change the meaning of a word. This would indicate that music, and therefore music appreciation, grew out of basic communication, and basic language is strongly correlated with pattern recognition.
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Philip Member (Idle past 4751 days) Posts: 656 From: Albertville, AL, USA Joined: |
Shraf, Frank, Peter,
PHILIP: My time is short at present; I’ll touch on some of the more dissonant rebuttals if that’s OK Frank, I have a B.A. in Psychology! Not a B.S.! Much of psychology, Freud, Adler, Horney, Jung, etc., is metaphysical. Freud, for example, gives us concepts of the psyche, the sea of the subconscious, libido, and hosts of other metaphysical concepts. Psychology is essentially another conglomeration of humanistic and naturalistic cults (if you will), bent on demeaning humanity via quantitization and other naturalistic ploys. Yet, Shraf speaks of her husband doing research psychology that seems perhaps to fit naturalistic behavioral psychologic science: a more focused and disciplined endeavor. Consider that science is defined differently by naturalists/biologists, by chemists (much more strict against theory), psychologists, physicians, and so on. The talk-archives definition (a rigorously biased ToE forum) is honest when it implies that science essentially may search for truth by any means using the scientific method (not restricted to naturalistic cults). PETER states: I believe then, that perfect pitch being more prevalent in thosesocieties with the most complex phonetic structure suggests that music appreciation developed as an aid to communication, rather than some 'higher' ideal. PHILIP: Respectfully, I don’t see the biological basis of higher communication any more than music. Word and music appreciation I grant seem related. Perhaps, Peter, we might look at Shraf’s contention (below). SHRAF elaborates: Perfect pitch is something you are born with or not. You can't learn it. It is a genetic variation. PHILIP: This seems somewhat oversimplified so far. Let’s analyze your example (below). SHRAF: There is a greater incidence of people being born with perfect pitch in cultures in which the language requires the ability to differentiate between very subtle differences in intonation, such as Chinese. This is expected as per evolutionary theory, because it is a proliferation of a favorable trait throuout a population. PHILIP: My Chinese, though not as fluent as my (native) Taiwanese wife’s, shows extreme differences in intonations than all Western language(s). I have taught Chinese Gospel songs now for about a year or so. The BPMF (pronounced BaPaMaFa) cites about 37 alphabet-like pronunciations with 4 distinct accents (pitch fluctuations) for each. Japanese has 50 such sounds. The subtle intonation I believe you might be referring to actually occurs at the beginning of their mono-syllable utterances. However, they pitch their questions, exclamations, etc. much like we do. This phenomenon is interesting in that the Eastern population(s) are so radically different in language structure, suggesting perhaps that:1) They did not evolve from a common prototype, but rather were independent languages per se (eg., created originally, then divided as per the Tower of Babel event). 2) Music is a common denominator, harmoniously shared, with different cultures having different musical qualities about them. 3) Music is an enormously complex universe which cannot be explained by linguistics. 4) Languages and music do evolve, but by non-biological mechanisms completely unrelated to the mega-ToE. 5) Language and music both are complex universes which seem to have no biological basis whatsoever, but a supernatural, metaphysical, divine, and/or glorious beginning 6) Language as such (fitting my YEC scheme and those of others) evolved/devolved into the various Creoles, SANS biological evolution. More probable was a biological devolution since groups in isolation seem to show genetic deterioration. 7) The complexity of music(s) and its appreciation is so massive (and subjective for that matter) that it’s difficult to comprehend how the depth, height, width, and breadth of it’s complexity could have evolved biologically, let alone fit into our puny brains. Stellar evolution must be appealed to under the ToE, seeing that music (and language) exist outside the neuro-synaptic configurations. 8) The complexity of language(s), which continue SANS human appreciation might easily (parsimoniously) change the paradigm against naturalism and the ToE, in favor of metaphysical/religious paradigms. Be not surprised that many eastern cultures like China reject the ToE in favor of Buddhist and Confucius paradigms. Biblically, most Christians accept that: In the beginning was the word and the word was with God, and the word was God. (John 1.1). SHRAF: Perfect pitch is something usually thought of as important in music appreciation, yet clearly it is important for basic communication in those cultures which have languages in which subtle variations in intonation can change the meaning of a word. This would indicate that music, and therefore music appreciation, grew out of basic communication, and basic language is strongly correlated with pattern recognition. PHILIP: Perfect pitch, if there be such a thing, does seem to have its minute variations (if you will) that still allow it to sound perfect and undetected by most hearers. Yet, in the general sense of perfection as such, it seems important as you state, especially for intonation (despite the language). Perhaps I partially follow you in your hypothesis: that music and its appreciation sprung out of communication and pattern recognition, but not in the way you think. Your sentence is loaded semantically. I know your naturalistic perspective; so, I will address it as such. 1) Music growing out of communication (via the naturalistic ToE) is difficult for me to imagine: Survival/selection pressures seem too fantastical to me, even with a god-of-the-gaps theistic-ToE accounting for such an enormous melodious universe within ourselves. I don’t have time for jokes here and I know you don’t care for them. 2) But, yes, music seems a heightened form of communication, detectable via pattern recognition, perhaps some cultures slightly more or less than others, because of developmental influences and possibly genetic devolvement(s). 3) Genetic devolvement of language and music appreciation seems evident enough: The days of Mozart(s) making symphonies at 3 years old are gone. The astounding KJV biblical and Shakespearian languages of the last century have devolved into naturalistic nuances and gutter-talk (see Talk-Archives forums). The Haitian Creole has slandered Napoleon’s romantic French into Voodoo chants and the minimalist of languages imaginable. 4) Computers may compose music, Shraf, but who would buy them? I’d sooner buy a recorded whale’s sirening, a wolf’s howling, a cow’s moo-ing, a bird’s singing, or possibly even the random clashing orchestrations of waves at the seashore. 5) Are not computers merely like our brains, worthless without the precious psyche(s) that they (the brains) enable? Brains seem to merely allow us to interact with this peculiar space-time continuum and other organisms and human beings? For our brains merely enable, in my less-than-meager opinion, our souls. Metaphysically, like a woman enables a man like a friend enables another in mourning or rejoicing like research science enables physicians etc. 6) Finally, the conclusion you’d expect from me: The ultimate music/communication might perhaps be the Song of the Lamb that was slain in Revelation 13. Here, the redeemed ones of earth are all envisioned with the harps of God, singing this new song. What is it if I’ve already started harping and singing? For the Gospel hypothesis beckons me with naturalistic proofs against naturalism:--Biochemical devolution, despite feeble selection pressures, will continue as expected under the 2nd Law. --Real significant mutations (the only raw mechanism of a mega-ToE) are about as believable as the signs and wonders mockers who’d call fire from heaven and raise the dead, cause Carl Sagan or Oral Roberts done it. --Music and original human language(s) (vs evolved Creoles) exist outside organismic parameters and may be believed/hypothesized to exist SANS the cosmos, forever.
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: I would agree... So are you going to explain to me how Creation Science adheres to the scientific method?
quote: ...or, as per a simpler, no-need-for-magic-explanation, geographic and cultural isolation made for very different languages. Wasn't the East isolated from all other cultures for thousands upon thousands of years, and weren't they more civilized for several thpousand years before western europe dug out from the mud?
quote: It bears a great resemblance to mathematics, actually.
quote: So, the people who compose music are not using their brains to do so? [/QUOTEW]5) Language and music both are complex universes which seem to have no biological basis whatsoever, but a supernatural, metaphysical, divine, and/or glorious beginning ?[/QUOTE] Wow, you know nothing of linguistics or language aquisition, do you?? Language is VERY biologically-based! Why do people lose the ability to speak if they have damage to a certain part of the brain if it isn't biologically-based? Why do people learn language in one part of their brain before the age of 12 or so, and learn it in a completely different part after that age?
quote: Argument from incredulity and God of the Gaps. Just because you can't imagine it doesn't mean Godidit.
quote: So says you. Evidence, please. Just because science does not have all answers to all questions does not = Godidit. It just means that, at this moment, we don't know. You invoke magical, fantastical explanations for things you don't understand, just like ancient people did when they decisded that Apollo must be moving the sun around the Earth in his firey Chariot. Computers can compose music. Do they have souls?
quote: Again, Argument from Incredulity.
quote: My sentence is reflective of the observed evidence and is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis. Your "hypothesis", rife with magic and fantasy, is not reasonable. IT requires belief, not evidence, and relies heavily upon the fallacy of Argument from Incredulity."
quote: Argument from Incredulity.
quote: Glad you can see the reason and logic and evidence behind the idea.
quote: Maybe, maybe not. There are certainly plenty of musical prodigies around.
quote: Ooooh, this sounds like strong ethnocentric cultural value-judgements to me. Remember, Shakespeare's plays were written for the "gutter"-living masses; the common people. Also, I love listening to the Hatian language; it's very sing-song and pretty.
quote: Irrelevant. You made the point that the ability to compose music was evidence of a soul. I am just following your claim through to it's logical conclusion when you add in the fact that computers can compose music.
quote: Computers are not really like our brains. Brains are much more complex.
quote: Maybe. Except there's no evidence to suggest this, and there is lots of evidence to suggest that emotions are based in the brain.
quote: Ick. That's sexist.
quote: Definition of deevolution, please. This is a creationist term, not a scientific one. Evidence of deevolution, please.
quote: Define "real significant mutations".
quote: Believe if you like, but there is no reason at all for me to share this belief, because you have only "I, Philip, can't believe X". Again, it is important to keep the supernatural out of science, because people like you would never allow the questions to be asked.
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John Inactive Member |
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Philip:
[B]Frank, I have a B.A. in Psychology! Not a B.S.! Much of psychology, Freud, Adler, Horney, Jung, etc., is metaphysical. Freud, for example, gives us concepts of the psyche, the sea of the subconscious, libido, and hosts of other metaphysical concepts.[/quote] [/b] Metaphors for the sometimes bizarre way we think, but hardly proof of anything extra-physical.
quote: Wow!!! We agree, at least on the demeaning humanity part.
[quote][b]Yet, Shraf speaks of her husband doing research psychology that seems perhaps to fit naturalistic behavioral psychologic science: a more focused and disciplined endeavor.[/quote] [/b] Not sure what your point is here. I do follow Schraf's distinction between research and applied psychology, though.
quote: But the scientific method demands evidence and reprocucibility of results. This rules out meta-physical phenomena. This doesn't seem to fit what you've argued in the past.
quote: There doesn't have to be a biological basis for 'higher' communication which I take to mean such things as the debate we are now having. What there has to be is a basis for communication which allows for higher communication. See the difference? Our hyper-braininess may be a developement that will eventually get lost by the wayside-- an experiment gone wrong.
quote: I am betting this discontinuity isn't as dramatic as you percieve it to be.
quote: Don't know what you mean here.
quote: Maybe, but I wonder if linguistics even addresses this at all.
quote: Depends on where you draw the line. I think that any adaptation, language included, fits into the grand scheme of evolution. I think we've been over my feeling on this.
quote: Statement, not argument.
quote: Sans biological evolution? OK. Languages change but it is weird to attribute it to devolution. Kinda implies that the hypothetical original language was somehow better.
quote: Arguement from incredulity.
quote: huh?
quote: I'm not surprised. Those are the native religions. You are what your mommie and daddie tell you.
quote: I think this betrays a metaphysical/religious belief that most Christians today would reject if they actually thought about it.
quote: I think that was Schraf's point.
quote: Interesting but still an argument from incredulity.
quote: Oh come on.... you can find analogous things today if you look for them, but not within an art form that doesn't have the pervalence it once did.
quote: The languages of Shakespear and the KJV are themselves 'devolved' from other languages. English is bad middle english. Middle English is bad old english. Old english is bad old german. ... and so on and so on.[/b][/quote] quote: And french is bad latin....
quote: Yikes.... I like whales but whale music makes me want to shoot myself. Now you know what to get me for Christmas.
quote: Interesting that brains, for which we have evidence, enable souls, for which we have no evidence at all.
quote: Boy would I love to hear that lamb squeal!!
quote: Ah yes, the second law again. It is not applicable to open systems.
quote: Believable or not, such mutations are there and are as significant as they need to be-- which is actually quite insignificant on a mutation by mutation basis.
quote: Nope, sorry.... ------------------http://www.hells-handmaiden.com
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Philip Member (Idle past 4751 days) Posts: 656 From: Albertville, AL, USA Joined: |
John and Shraf:
Much of what you two rebut me on is based on my incredulity. Of course its incredulity: a sin-hating God sending his Son to die for miserable wretches and offering total redemption for free, based on the IC of eternal love. Anyone caught under this God-Spell would see redemption going on instead of significant mutations. Mutations creating novel taxonomic structures seem (to me) even more incredible to believe under the delusional and feeble mega-ToE. I hope you two don’t fully perpetrate this mega-ToE, and realize you don’t have all the answers. Incredulity sounds out against you and I both, no? You’ve learned the delusional lingo well, John. For when it comes to your psyche, which you don’t even seem to acknowledge exists (correct me if I’m wrong), you appeal to the mega-ToE and demean the psyche into total arbitrary naturalistic phenomenon. John, can’t you (and I) stop the mean humor, the parroting of Shraf against me, and save the spiritual mockeries for the other forums (i.e., Talk-Origins). No YEC in his right mind wants to discuss scientific truth with cruddy ToE professors (or ToE professors with mean YECs). I withdrew from joking (in advance) against Shraf because it’s a turn-off for both of us. Besides, my jokes are stupid. You are both naturalists in your perspectives, seeking to strengthen your resolve, and for what? To eradicate the world from a few remaining honest and hopeful YECs? Did it ever occur to you that the mega-ToE may be mere speculation only and is easily disproven by, and, is outside the realm of naturalistic science? Then what? Currently you disagree. But if you are so sure of your hypotheses, why debate them here? What (redemptive) good could come of it? Your time is expensive, in my opinion. Shraf, you repeatedly bump on my door to debate. And for what? To prove what a scientific bigot I am? I already know my scientific bigotries and hypocrisies, which far exceed others, but my sin is primarily against God, Truth, Redemption, etc., and not against you or any person. Can I help it if I deduct the mega-ToE as a gross perversion of science, an insult to science, a naturalistic cult, a cruel demeaning lie against: a human soul’s worth, against the excellencies of language, music, art and by inference, against faith in God, faith in His Redemption, and faith that love of God and neighbor is an IC that you and I cannot touch via naturalistic means? Wait til the curse catches up with you and I (and it will) and you’re suddenly devastated: one of your children dies, your loved one abandons you, this or that mishap completely ruins you or I, etc. Peradventure then our naturalistic jestings will stop long enough to seek a real redemptive science that is truer and unpolluted by cruddy professors. The mourning pain, for example, you or I receive may strengthen your resolve to see the non-naturalistic redemptive component(s) restoring us within our present distress. What do either of you two think? Shraf, I gave you Creation Science already. You disagreed already. The data I gave you was naturalistic redemptive data, the conclusion was a Christ-crucified-risen-from-the-dead redemptive designer model, based on the data. What part of the naturalistic redemptive data I gave you hinders you from seeing the supernaturalistic ID. Did I not perpetrate my Gospel scheme crudely but using the scientific method, here earlier, remember? [This message has been edited by Philip, 08-01-2002]
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Peter Member (Idle past 1507 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
The human kind is pitifully weak (physically) compared to
pretty much any other mammal on the planet. Proportionally speaking even a mouse is more robust and better able to survive than humans are. Look at how long it takes a human to recover from a minoroperation, when a neutered bitch (female dog) is up and about as soon as she's awake (feeling sorry for herself sure, but recovered enough to continue). Much more resilient physically. Humans don't have slashing claws, or strong teeth ... and so on. So what advantages do humans have that have allowed them tosurvive? Basically it comes down to the ability to co-operate in extremelycomplex ways. And that requires a sophistication of language that is not required by any other animal on earth. ... and the subtle intonation I've referred to (as with arabic)makes the same letter sequence mean different things depending on the accents ... which only slightly affects the sound of the word. An arabic speaking friend once showed me (and its was many yearsago so I forget the examples I'm afraid) a few words which only differed by an accent or two, and when pronounced were almost indistinguishable to my western ears ... yet they meant very different things. Most western languages do not have this feature, English certainly doesn't. But I think we are all agreed that middle- and far-easternlanguages require a more acute sense of pitch/tonal recognition than western languages. So the prevalence of 'perfect pitch' in eastern cultures may beindicative of a connection between language and music in a physiological sense. The dissimilarity in western and eastern language is, perhaps,a result of the Romans never conquering that part of the world ... which is also why native american langauges are completely unlike either of those language bases mentioned so far (and highly intoned, stemming from a very musical culture). To one extent or another pretty much all european languagesstem from Latin. The Roman world domination eradicated most traces of original languages, as the many invasions prior upto 1066AD added a mish-mash of other languages into English (english has far too many words according to my German language teacher). Oh, and computers are absolutely nothing like our brains, evenon a conceptual level. They are very simple electronic machines with FIXED processing pathways, no pattern recognition circuitry, and no automatic pattern database to aid learning.
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frank Inactive Member |
quote: Phil, I have a B.S. in Psychology, perhaps this is why we differ in opinion. Interesting that you pick the names you do but avoid Pavlov or Skinner. I would not define psychology as you do but prefer to simply say it is the study of behavior. I see you will grant that "research" psychology is a naturalistic and disciplined endevour, and this is the context I meant in my earlier post. Trying to elevate the status of creation science by comparing it to modern psychology is still a ploy and it is wrong. Creation science aint science. Clear Skies ! Frank
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nator Member (Idle past 2198 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Philip:
[B]John and Shraf: Much of what you two rebut me on is based on my incredulity. Of course its incredulity: a sin-hating God sending his Son to die for miserable wretches and offering total redemption for free, based on the IC of eternal love. Anyone caught under this God-Spell would see redemption going on instead of significant mutations. Mutations creating novel taxonomic structures seem (to me) even more incredible to believe under the delusional and feeble mega-ToE. I hope you two don?t fully perpetrate this mega-ToE, and realize you don?t have all the answers. Incredulity sounds out against you and I both, no?[/QUOTE] What you still don't seem to be able to grasp is that what you, Philip, is able to accept makes absolutely no difference to the validity of the science you reject. The fact that you reject millions of hours of painstaking work by thousands of scientists over hundreds of years not on the basis of more or better scientific work, but on the basis of a particular religious feeling that you have decided to embrace, seems to me to be an extreme willful ignorance. Religious belief I can understand. Intellectual dishonesty and lazy thinking I cannot.
quote: That's it, when you have no argument, resort to calling your opponent "delusional".
quote: I don't seek to strengthen my resolve. I just want to keep religious fanatics from hijacking science to promote their particlar beliefs.
quote: Well, no, because there is a great deal of evidence to support it.
quote: I enjoy debate.
quote: I enjoy debate. It is good for practicing logic and analytical skills. Besides, most of the time I am only responding to something someone else bring up in the first place. I rarely start topics myself. I also am aware that there are probably many lurkers, some of whom might be wondering what evolution is all about. So much misinformation and poor thinking and purposeful misleading is contained in the Creationist sites that I hope to counteract it a little bit here for the fence sitters.
quote: Yes, you can help it.
quote: Whatever. Science says none of this. There is no reason, save an extreme, radical reading of a particular version of a particular religious book, to think this. It is truly abominable and truly sad that some Christians have been forced to sacrifice their reason and intellect on the altar of the so-called inerrant Bible.
quote: You know, my husband is studying to be a professor of science. I would appreciate you not calling professors "cruddy". It is easy to forget and discount all that horrible, empty, worthless, naturalistic science has given you in this life, isn't it Philip? You also assume that we haven't gone through any devastating life crisis. It is a common thing for believers to assume of non-believers.
quote: Um, you didn't use the scientific method, no. That is, unless you can provide physical evidence that Christ existed, and then provide physical evidence that he rose from the dead, and then describe how we can tell the difference between a ID system and one that arose naturally which we haven't figured out yet. Your "data" is just religious philosophy, not science. See the following for a good definition and description of what science is and what it isn't; science - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com Really, Philip, making up your own terms and scenarios and then calling it science doesn't really do much for me. Also, it is clear that you really don't have much to say about the points we raised adn evidence we provide to support thos points, so now you are focussing on "why debate at all"?. Sorry, but this is what someone who is losing, and losing badly, does. (Nothing personal) [This message has been edited by schrafinator, 08-01-2002]
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John Inactive Member |
quote: I know we don't have all the answers. That is different from making up the answers when need be.
quote: If you mean that I do not believe in that for which I can find no evidence, then I suppose you are right. I don't believe in dragons either, or Ming the Merciless. Should I?
quote: 'cept this is only demeaning from your point of view, not from mine.
quote: hmmm.... well there was that bit about the squealing lamb... but most of my post was dead serious.
quote: I am not aware that I parrot Shraf.
quote: I am not naturalistic in perspective really, more like empirical, and yes, there is a difference. I am also not trying to strengthen my resolve. My resolve, what I have of it, comes from my thinking; not the other way around. Give me evidence, I'll change my mind. Simple. I don't want to eradicate anyone. But search for truth I will. Hence, the debate. If this forum wasn't serving the purpose of stimulating my thoughts, I wouldn't be here. [qutoe]Did it ever occur to you that the mega-ToE may be mere speculation only and is easily disproven by, and, is outside the realm of naturalistic science? Then what? Currently you disagree. But if you are so sure of your hypotheses, why debate them here? What (redemptive) good could come of it? Your time is expensive, in my opinion.[/quote] The moment I stop learning I start to die. Simple and direct. Time is an expense I have always paid for such things, and I wish I had more time to spend.
quote: Peradventure, we turn to God.
quote: What do you think prodded a 14 year old kid to bury himself in books instead of girlfriends? What do you think led this kid to quit high school and go to college at 17 instead of waiting bored in class for another year? Why do you think I majored in Philosophy and Anthrology instead of something that actually earns money? Why do you think I own more books than most people would read in fifty lifetimes? And on top of that go through one or two audio book per week (Audio.com... brainiac heaven). Why do I spend all my time surfing the web and writing? Why do I rate movies by how much they make me think thoughts I wouldn't otherwise have thought? I can give you a nutshell version of every major mythology on the planet, more than a nutshell version of most. Ask me something I don't know, I'll look it up, often to the point of neglecting my job. ( Luckily, I am self-employed )Why? Eh? You don't know me Phillip. My jesting stopped long ago.
quote: I remember. What I don't remember are reasons why I should accept what you postulate rather that any of a thousand other options. ------------------http://www.hells-handmaiden.com
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