just a question

If you get on a discussion board like this, and you're talking to evolutionists, and it appears that we're acting dogmatically, I propose to you that what's actually happening is this:We've already done the questioning, a lot of it, and found the answers. Therefore there's no need for us to devote a lot of time to thinking about your questions, since we've thought about them already.That all changes if you ask a new question, of course. If you manage to do that then you'll see a lot of questioning from us, a scramble of research, and endless speculation. But when you ask a question like "if humans evolved from apes, why are there still apes" (not that you have asked that, but suppose you did) then we're not inclined to devote much time or effort to discussing it, because we've done so a hundred times already, and so we just skip to the end of the debate.I realize that looks like a dogmatic acceptance of science. It's really not. It's just that you weren't there when we did our own personal questioning and arrived at our own conclusions. There's no reason for us to throw out our conclusions and start from scratch just because you told us to. We did that already.Now, holding to a conclusion in the face of contradictory data, that's dogmatic.[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 11-15-2003]

Thinker,Thanks for coming to this forum - I'm glad to see you here. Here is what I would recommend to you if you want to make major headway here:Propose an alternative hypothesis.If you can propose an alternative hypothesis to explain why everything is migrating away from a central location, at a speed consistant with the big bang, how microwave echoes confirm the theory of the big bang but would also be consistant with your theory, why there are no stars whose life cycles would indicate that they're older than 14 billion years even though such stars are quite easily possible to create, etc, then you'll have a hypothesis, and we can debate it.Are you game?Scientists are actually quite flexible: we choose the simplest hypothesis that fits all of the available data within the bounds of knowledge. Some are reluctant to change (expressing doubts, and trying to raise the weak points of the new theory, etc), but they always migrate over in the long run. For a case study, look at the history of "phlogiston" - the previous theory of why fire occurred before the discovery of oxygen. You may also want to check out geocentrism, the sun's energy as due to gravitational collapse, and other overridden but once near universal scientific theories in the past. Look at what happened when data that didn't fit into the model was introduced in each case.------------------
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