I beg your pardon. if you say, Just came into existence, without a creator or a creative act, then what was its source. If its not saying, created itself or came from nowhere, what are the other possibilites. It isnt an answer to say we just dont know. But keep trying it is interesting to watch. It is an axiom of the highest order.Ever forwardD Bertot

I said NosyNed said I say no because I'm not a biologist.NosyNed saysI say I don't have any idea what a random process is!Edited by LucyTheApe, : clarification

crashfrog Natural Scientists will

never

hijack science.Science was here thousands of years before LayMan Darwin ever entered the scene.

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crashfrog says:

Whether or not Euclid's postulates are true about the world we actually inhabit is not actually relevant to geometry. They're defined as true, assumed to be true; that's what it means to be an "axiom." They're taken as true without actually having to be true. The conclusions that are drawn from them (say, that the sum of the angles of a triangle will equal 180 degrees) are only true insofar as you've already accepted the axioms.

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Once a postulate or an axiom is shown to be wrong we have a paradigm shift. All previous notions go out the window.Edited by LucyTheApe, : clarification

Self-creating? I certainly don't remember having an active role in my conception or birth. As for being created, I arrived by biological accident.I think we're having linguistic problems here, which happens in debates.But more important to the subject of the thread, in an earlier post (one you didn't reply to) I said this:

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bluegenes:

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But it's you who's just licked yourself. The common conclusion that dead men don't talk is arrived at by evidence, the result of observation. It has nothing to do with reaching conclusions by sheer logic alone.

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From accumulated human experience and observation, we know that one of the symptoms of being dead is that corpses can no longer hold conversations. Another such symptom is that they start to smell after a while.

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I think that you want to say something about intelligent design like:

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"Either life on earth was designed, or it wasn't."

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That's a kind of truism, and it in no way makes the case for I.D. scientific.

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Now, concentrate on the bit that I've put in bold. I think that what I've said is the kind of truism/axiom that you want to put forward. You want intelligent design of life on earth recognized as a possibility.The funny thing here is that if you'd stated that clearly, then you'll find no problems. It's certainly a possibility.So try phrasing it that way, and see who disagrees with you.When I.D. is debated here, all sides accept that kind of proposition.What "evolutionist" types will say is certainly not that I.D. is impossible, but that there's no evidence for it at this point in time. In order to become a scientific theory, one of the I.D. "hypotheses" (and there are many) has to have some evidence. That's why people like Behe attempt to show evidence.The same thing about "possibility" goes on the "how the universe came into existence" question. Take it from me, even atheists do not think that the involvement of a creator or creators is impossible.A better starting point for I.D. would be the truism:"Either life on earth involves interventionist intelligent design, or it doesn't."That's because I.D. isn't about a designer who created the universe and then just let nature roll. It claims that there are features in biology that cannot be produced by nature, and require intelligent intervention.Now, to your point about being able to arrive at conclusions, or what you call facts, by logic alone. I disagree. If you look at the above statement, it requires observations and knowledge, not just logic. We observe and know that there's life on earth. Then, we observe that, unlike some things, we cannot conclusively know from our observations and current knowledge whether or not it is intelligently designed.Only after these observations can we come up with the truism, and it's far from being an eternal one. If, for example, the intelligent designers manifest themselves, and tell us the whole story of life on earth, then the statement is no longer valid.So, it relies on the current state of our knowledge, and is not logic in a vacuum.

What was there before. We don't know what came before, so we can't really say one way or the other. What was there before. We don't know what came before, so we can't really say one way or the other. But the fact is that we do not know. We don't know what came before, so we can't really say one way or the other. To claim we know is a falsehood. Any postulations about what came before are just that - postulations, not fact. The fact is we don't know. Only if you assume it is true and then only if you assume that some truths are a different quality of truth from others. Is there more than one kind of truth?Have you figured out that repetition is not substantiating your argument with additional information yet?Have you figured out that all axioms and self-evident truths are statements that assumed to be true for the sake of the argument yet?Have you figured out that there are not any well known truths that are not assumed at some level to be true - or else we would all know about them?Have you figured out that your personal incredulity is not an argument yet?Have you figured out that you don't know what logic is yet?Keep trying. It's amusing to watch your one-horse show try to measure up to the circus that is reality.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : added clarityEdited by RAZD, : circus

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Scientific method - Wikipedia

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Introduction to scientific method

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From Ibn al-Haytham (Alhacen, 965-1039, a pioneer of scientific method) to the present day, the emphasis has been on seeking truth:

"Truth is sought for its own sake. And those who are engaged upon the quest for anything for its own sake are not interested in other things. Finding the truth is difficult, and the road to it is rough. ..."[3]

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"How does light travel through transparent bodies? Light travels through transparent bodies in straight lines only. ... We have explained this exhaustively in our Book of Optics. But let us now mention something to prove this convincingly: the fact that light travels in straight lines is clearly observed in the lights which enter into dark rooms through holes. ... the entering light will be clearly observable in the dust which fills the air."[4]

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The conjecture that "Light travels through transparent bodies in straight lines only", was corroborated by Alhacen only after years of effort. His demonstration of the conjecture was to place a straight stick or a taut thread next to the light beam,[5] to prove that light travels in a straight line.

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Thus scientific method has been practiced by some for at least one thousand years. There are difficulties in a formulaic statement of method, however. As William Whewell (1794-1866) noted in his History of Inductive Science (1837) and in Philosophy of Inductive Science (1840), "invention, sagacity, genius" are required at every step in scientific method. It is not enough to base scientific method on experience alone[6]; multiple steps are needed in scientific method, ranging from our experience to our imagination, back and forth.

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Of course this was also when christianity was at its highest flowering in europe.We distinguish natural science from formal science by the application of the scientific method. You can think of it as a branch that evolved, and was selected for because formal science was inadequate at explaining the natural world.Enjoy.

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Dawn Bertot is also equivocating on the various definitions of creation\creating. Your parents "creating" you from sperm and egg and massive doses of nutrients does not make them supernatural beings.You just came from what was there before. Of course those are possibilities. Dawn Bertot thinks he can show only one possibility by logic, but he knows so little about logic that he doesn't understand when he employs logical fallacies, and he doesn't understand that logical fallacies make an invalid argument. He doesn't want to state it that way because that shows that non-design is an equally valid possibility. He wants to use his false dichotomy coupled with equivocation on "created" argument to eliminate that appearance.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : sp correction

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LucyTheApe Not at all. The only thing different is the axiom is found to be true only in a limited case.The sum of the angles of a triangle equaling 180 degrees is true in 2 dimensions.It simply fails as an axiom when applied to 3 or more dimensions.In that case the axiom undergoes a shift to adapt the model used to explain the new information.Edited by sidelined, : No reason given.

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"Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere."Albert Einstein

Agreed (although before might not be the best word to describe something outside space-time). And everyone who's seriously thought about it agrees. The physicists agree.But the important thing for DB to understand is that the conclusion "at this point in time we do not know" is based on our observations and knowledge (or lack thereof), not on logic alone.Also important in this area might be to point out that the laws, logic and maths of the universe wouldn't apply. So we would have to include the infinite amount of possibilities that the human mind might not even be capable of thinking of, let alone understanding.Alternatively, of course, we could always just stick a "God of the Gaps" in the gaps, which, I suspect, is what DB's posting here is really all about. Or even a Deity of the gaps.

Dawn, this statement is simply not true. Gravity is absolutely not the same all the time.

Apparently not enough said. Go read Razd's comment #65. Then read it again. Then read it a third time and come back to us with point by point comments.

But you don't use this definition you say you like. An "evident truth which does not need any explanation and is accepted without any demonstration or proof" requires no evidence or study or argumentation. What you're calling an axiom, that ID explains the diversity of life, is actually the end result of a process of logical thinking. Which is fine, it just isn't an axiom. The other problem with your logic is that it is not connected to the natural world through observation and experiment. I didn't like the Wiki definition as much as the Answers.com because it wasn't as clear, not because the definitions differ. Read the definitions again and you'll see they say the same thing, here they are: The definitions are the same, but I prefer the Answers.com definition because it is more clear. Answers.com manages to avoid awkward phrases like "natural sciences theories" and "application domain" that appear in the Wiki definition, and Wiki's qualifying sentence about applicability depending upon an arbitrary choice of axioms introduces confusion instead of clarity.But again, the definitions are the same. I provided the 3rd definition from Answers.com, and so you're asking about the first two. I guess you're browser isn't working? Anyway, here's the full Answers.com entry: Obviously definition 3 is the one most applicable to logic as it might be employed by science, and it's the one that corresponds to Wiki's definition of logic in the domain of science.What we see is that you do not use the definition you say that you "like very much", because you go on to say: If you're claiming that an axiom is actually the result of a process of deductive reasoning operating upon evidence from the real world, then you're wrong. That's not an axiom, it's a conclusion. I'm using science's definition of tentativity, the one set out by Popper years ago. It means that no scientific knowledge can ever be 100% certain, that it is always open to possible falsification. Nothing in science is ever "incontrovertibly true". If you're using a different definition of tentativity then you're not doing science. Once again this makes clear how much your declarations about ID are not axioms. If they're the result of a process of scientific investigation, then they couldn't possibly an axiom. Axioms are starting points, conclusions are ending points. This isn't the thread for a discussion about the definition of science, but while science does involve the gathering of evidence just as you say, more importantly it involves generalizing from the evidence to formulate theories from which predictions can be made that, if successful, provide increasing confidence that perhaps we are discovering something that is actually true about the real world. Whether or not axioms are part of the scientific process isn't what we're discussing. What we're discussing is your misunderstandings of axioms, logic and science.--PercyPS - Google toolbar provides a spellchecker for Internet Explorer, and Firefox has a built in spellchecker.

I have read it several times, and while the fella is very gifted with verbage, its no substitute for and answer to the simple proposition. Provide me with the evidence that dead men do indeed talk to people. You fellas always chastize the believer on this web site because you say they dont provide the evidence in these situations. I have. Now quit with the Sophistry BS and provide the evidence please. You cant have it both ways. You either believe the stories the people tell or you dont, choose a side and quit riding the fence. Quit using WHAT THEY SAY OR BELIEVE as a response or quit refering to them at all. All this talk about my inability to do this or that is an obvious fact that, you cannot provide the evidence to the contrary. I have been doing this long enough to recognize crap when I see it. Maybe RAZD needs to get with PurpleYoulo and figure out what actual evidence is in response to an argument. Now put that in your Smipe and Poke it.
D Bertot

There isn't any evidence, Dawn (this is "talking" in the strict sense, using vocal chords). We're not saying that there is (maybe you need to read Radz's comment yet again if you think this is his position). To my knowledge no dead person has ever manipulated air using their vocal chords to speak while dead. We're not asserting that they can. We're not even asserting that it has ever happened. I'm not even asserting that I personally think it's possible. What I am saying is that billions of dead people not talking DOES NOT BY ITSELF ENSURE that it's impossible. It does not PROVE it.What at least I have been hoping for is a very simple response from you to the specific point, either:A. Okay, I agree with you that billions of dead people not talking doesn't by itself PROVE that it can't happen.B. No, you're wrong. Billions of dead people not talking DOES prove that it cannot ever happen.So which is it? A or B? I fail to see how this little rant really relates to what you and I were talking about, but okay.