On The Limits of Human Talent

Yes I remember, the reason for starting a new thread is to distinguish it from the old one, to leave the old one where it was, and start one with a fresh beginning. If you want to refer to that other one, post it there. I might respond, or maybe not. Read through this thread, and you'll find that multiple participants brought up multiple topics. Message 6 referred to ICR, message 21 to "far-right pseudo-Christianity", and the "dogmas of my sect", message 23, "kilograms, thermometers, Episcopalian scientists", etc. the next message, "4.5 billion years, it all goes on and on. I can't discuss those things without referring to politics and business. But science isn't the only source of knowledge. Someone with a 6th grade education could look at the model I referenced and get an ideal of how far away a light year is, and wonder how precise scientific proclamations could possibly be concerning black holes in galaxies that are 250 million light years from earth. If he's a taxpayer in a free society, he has a right to question it. That's right, that's why religion must be programed out of science students at the perfect age, usually the early teen years. Depends on how far you expect me to change my viewpoint. If you expect me to reject the book of Genesis, you'd better stop at this point. What evidence are you talking about, scientific evidence only, or evidence of the scientific community's political motives? I've examined a lot of evidence concerning the latter.

Scientifically, could be. But science isn't the only source of knowledge. Well that's your opinion, but let's keep exploring. I never said they weren't, it's the explorations done at the public's expense by a special interest that I'm questioning. If you'll remember, 8 years ago science WASN'T ABOUT WHAT SOMEONE LIKES. It was about something being testable, repeatable, observable, falsifiable, and USEFUL. I don't know if the word "useful" came up at the Dover trial, but I know it comes up quite often on forums such as these when the subject of Intelligent Design comes up. This criteria should be applied evenly, not forgotten about after its job is done to suit people of one special interest worldview. Multiple posters always refer to my position and questions as being mine alone, or my "cult", my "sect", that keeps them from having to actually address what I'm saying. I don't post from a deeply religious point of view, mine is just a more conservative, traditional point of view than most in the scientific community, which is obviously far left. I do represent the views of a lot of people, proof of that is in the many very conservative elected officials currently serving in the U.S. - Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, many others. On other, non-scientific message boards, I see many agnostic, 'unchurched' people who agree with me on conservative issues like this, what humans are capable of knowing, etc. There you go again, I'm not focusing on complex details about my personal beliefs. I'll be done soon in this thread, and some individual poster will get the credit for finally shouting me off. You and others obviously thought it was going to be Dr. Adequate's message 44, because of all the green dots it got (one from you also) - sorry that didn't work out. Have you ever heard of the many "collegiate fallacy lists"? They arose in several different forms over the years, in universities, by and for liberals of course, but they did make some good points. "Argument by emotive language", using sarcasm etc. to "sway the audience’s sentiments instead of their minds", message 44 was saturated with it. It was funny and clever, but fallacious never the less.Wouldn't you say this forum does a pretty good job of representing the scientific community? I do, considering the similar emotion and sarcasm I see at countless other scientific sites, like talkorigins, Panda's Thumb, etc. and a couple of books I've glanced through by secular, scientific authors. It's not impressive, when people other than scientists are looking for educated, adult people with manners to give them unbiased answers to their questions.Am I perfect? No. But gangs who build straw men tend to bring out my imperfections.

History is one, and I'm not just referring to Biblical history, recent history of the past 200 to 300 years is very relevant, because it's closely associated with another source of knowledge, and that's how humans react to all of the differing situations history show that they've been involved with. Like how they behave when they're free, or when they're under the rule of a tyranny. Concerning recent history and human behavior, it's relatively easy. That's true for here-and-now, nuts-and-bolts science. But it's not true for controversial "sciences", like thousands-of-lightyears astronomy, or global-warming-is-man-made sciences. The purpose of this paragraph from my O/P;

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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.

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is to propose some sort of distinction between useful science, and wasteful science, or science that is philosophical. (intent on weakening the hold of religion.) The scientific community alone is never going to do it, it will continue to try to seamlessly blend them. Communications being what they are, politics being what it is the world over, science is conducted under a unified leadership. Scientific community leaders the world over have developed a unified belief that religion is a distinct hindrance to many things it want to involve itself with. I got my first computer 12 years ago, and was immediately captivated by political forums. I remember seeing a sub-forum on another site entitled "creation versus evolution", and remember thinking "I sure don't want to get involved with that." But after a very short time discussing politics, right away I discovered that science and its associated atheism is by far the biggest breeding ground for political liberalism. Nothing else comes close.I don't hate science, I just have a really justified mistrust for its leadership. Spending most of the last 12 years watching its incredible dishonesty concerning Intelligent Design. I don't have a problem with most scientific data concerning useful science. When the scientific community says "The globe is warming" - that part I'm okay with. When they say "unrestricted free markets are causing it" and "we must do something about it", that's when I'd like to see these declarations disconnected, not all blended together as the scientific community is masterful at doing. A knowledge of history, and a knowledge of human reaction to tyrannies of the past can be demonstrated. In the 1930's, some in the scientific community were warning us that we'd be all out of oil by...1950 or so. Or in the 1960's, when a huge percentage of the scientific community were warning us that there'd be mass starvation all over the planet by the year 2000, if we didn't do something about these crazy Catholics opposition to birth control. These were situations where the public didn't give in scientific scares in any meaningful way. Then there were other situations where big government (though not associated with science as far as I know) was more forceful, the prohibition era of the 1920's. Another source of knowledge is knowing how that was reacted to, how much bootlegging and law breaking was going on as a reaction to it. If we give the scientific community more political power to combat their perception of global warming, no one can predict just how free people and free markets will react. But it wouldn't be pretty. And it all would probably be irreversible. I think U.S. society STILL feels the damage from prohibition today. Same with the (again, non scientific) 55 mph speed limit that was thought to be so wonderful, and rammed through, even though the public didn't agree. No question the damage from that lingers. Lack of respect for police, routine speed limit breaking, etc. They've been verified in many ways. No matter how much the scientific community hates to admit it, it's a fact that the U.S. founders referred to the Bible as they were forming the constitution. Concerning funding, and its desire to play God, with its embryonic stem cell research, cloning, and almost countless other things that are morally troublesome to many, it's a fact that the scientific community is a special interest. My particular religious belief, Missouri Synod Lutheranism, a basic conservative protestant denomination, may not be the norm. But a belief in the Judeo Christian God is pretty normal, in the western world. If it is in fact based on evidence and theory, yes. But not when it includes, and is seamlessly blended with, unlimited naturalistic philosophy. In the U.S. all those differing religions around the world mean little. None of them are permitted to control the government. The scientific community does have at least some control of the U.S. government. The activities of the EPA for example, are often based on far more than just data. This is just an unevidenced, emotional cry from the scientific community with no data to back it up. Most religions aren't interested in science, unless science tries some intrusive things to weaken it's hold. I've seen it on forums such as these many times in ID debates, "What USE is Intelligent Design?". When I find the time, maybe I'll look through the ID forums here and see if I can find some examples. True, in any area of science EXCEPT INTELLIGENT DESIGN. One of its entrance requirements was that it had to be proven useful. Maybe not formally, like at the Dover trial, but in forums like this, the claim was made, and no ID opponent questioned it. Appears to be unproductive to whom? Who judges it? Can you name me a couple of basic avenues of science have been dismissed? I don't consider the scientific community to be the perfect arbiter of what's useful.

If I put fourth my personal beliefs in my own words, we saw earlier in the thread that I'm accused of only parroting the beliefs of my "sect", if I try to counter that by pointing out that I'm not alone in my beliefs, I see that I'm accused of just parroting many other people. Guess I just can't win. One of the regular claims of "scientific fact" by several scientific posters here is often based on the opinion of the majority of scientists. You're just angry, and that causes your reading comprehension to go down. Dr. Adequate often has that problem as well.Try to recognize the distinction between the terms "should not" and "not free to'. The "should not" part applies to decisions made by a society, who may not have unlimited funds to satisfy the desires of a special interest who may want to do wasteful things to satisfy its own private interests. The "not free to" part concerns the desires of a special interest who wants to do wasteful things, but does it with it's own funding. Clear? I was hoping you'd recognize 8 years ago as being the time of the Dover trial. The concept of Intelligent Design was being shouted down from every possible angle at that time, I'm not sure if the term "useful" was included during the Dover trial, but it was in some atheist forum I was posting at, at that time. The term was combined with everything else imaginable to get atheism the victory over Intelligent Design. I was just repeating something that an atheist said on some Intelligent Design discussion. Again, when I get time I'll see if I can find it. One thing is for sure, his fellow atheists didn't go ballistic over HIM saying it. Hahahaha, I can tell. All I was doing was trying to counter the accusation that my beliefs are my own crazy beliefs, or those of my "sect". I don't think it's a big deal - why that sends you into a rage I don't know. The scientific community constantly claims something as fact just because many scientists (or much of the brainwashed public) believes something, like man-made global warming, for instance. That's it! Man-made global warming IS true!!! research proves it. So the scientific action to take is to create another government bureaucracy, put Al Gore in charge, and watch all the sheepy little U.S. citizens bow down to it's mandates. It's proven to work, remember how successful the 55 mph speed limit was? All the 70's movies and series made to show how stupid the police were? Wonderful stuff for children to watch. You have political correctness on your side, not much I can do about it. Political correctness is established usually just by repeating something over and over and over again, with plenty of help from the liberal news media. The topic of the thread is my response to this accusation;(from the O/P)

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to elaborate on the merits of refusing to use our minds to think

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Atheists clearly believe that humans know, or can know, everything there is about reality, and often know no bounds in spending public money to try to prove it. By questioning (in another thread) the wisdom of allowing unlimited, untestable, unfalsifiable, exploration to go on just so a special interest can feel good about itself, I was accused of promoting a refusal of "using our minds to think". That's what the topic of the thread is. It's been fun. (for me, anyway )

Here's the only link I have, I've had it bookmarked for a long time, it still works.http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1678276/postsThis link is about lost pictures, I think there are others about lost film footage, etc. I saw an article in the local newspaper about 15 years ago that said if we were to return to the moon, everything would have to be done again from scratch. The two guys who designed the rocket boosters retired and took their designs with them, all drawings and documentation was lost, everything.

There are other ways of gaining knowledge concerning science in two ways; 1) in contributing to determinations about what science is, and 2) contributing to determinations of how society should react to scientific findings. The scientific community should have a minor contribution to both of those things, but not a major one, because it is a special interest. Concerning number 1 above, it would be a public consensus on just what science is, what society can afford concerning its study, and opinion on how it measures up as a science, with ALL the criteria that Intelligent Design has failed to meet in the past decade or two as part of the consideration. Considered by political processes, not by the scientific community. Same with number 2 above, political processes. The fact that I was outside for a while today and about froze my ass off, just as I have every November for the past half century. Then I combine that with the recent political events, like the fact that "global warming" is largely an outdated term. The more hip term today is "climate change", that doubles the pleasure for scientists and Democrats. They can call for political restrictions no matter if they show evidence for warming, or if new evidence is found for global cooling.

Yes, I'm still going to defend it. Not necessarily God's word as I understand it, but any (western world) god. Secular science is masterful at not necessarily confronting, but driving by and ignoring the possibility of any god, thereby eventually arriving at atheistic explanations for some things, explanations which have no practical value, other than promote the atheist worldview. Well, I did a little sleuthing around the internet as you suggested, and here's the summary of the uselessness of Intelligent Design at a link that I quickly found, which goes along perfectly with what I remember seeing in discussions many times before in the past 8 or 9 years;

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That is what it means to make real predictions; if a "theory" predicts that anything can happen, it is not a scientific theory at all. Imagine if someone promoted a theory of rocketry by saying that no matter whether the rocket goes forward, backward, or nowhere, his theory will predict it. You would be quite justified in asking what on Earth his theory is good for, right?

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When you think about it, a theory which can predict anything is actually a theory which predicts nothing. An open-ended "prediction" which is incapable of ever saying "no, we won't see that" is absolutely, utterly, completely useless. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is "intelligent design" theory in a nutshell: completely useless.

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Other Essays - Why Intelligent Design Theory is Completely UselessSo concerning something like deep space "exploration", would the general public have a different opinion than the scientific community on just how useless it is? Common sense suggests they just might.What we see at the above link is put in a similar way at another site;

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A fair critique of the theory of Intelligent Design involves asking the question of practicality. What possible contribution can ID theory make to the world of scientific research? If it can't make any testable, repeatable, practical strides in producing data, then it will forever remain in the realm of philosophy rather than actual science.

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http://www.examiner.com/...ractical-use-might-it-have-part-1So when I say that the topic of this thread is to question the wisdom of allowing unlimited, untestable, unfalsifiable, useless and impractical exploration to go on just to satisfy a special interest, can't some areas of exploration that are going on today be held up to the same standards that ID clearly is/was? I don't think deep space exploration tells us anything about this natural world, because it's not testable, and not falsifiable, and is not part of this world. I think global warming is like a lot of things in science, a conclusion is first reached, then evidence is worked through backwards to come to that conclusion. The motivation is there, power and money. It only makes sense that, in a free society, a source of knowledge other than science should contribute to determinations of just what IS science, what should be explored using public funds. If only the scientific community is answering the question of what should be researched, the political process needs to answer some questions if free people are asking them, regardless of their education. This goes along with U.S. foundings, the intent of the framers. Scientific research leads to political decisions, which involve other sources of knowledge. As in questions like, how will the public and free markets react to those political decisions that scientific research led to, research that wasn't necessarily requested by anyone other than the scientific community (and their friends in one certain political party.) Ignore the scientific community would be more accurate. To pay attention to constituents who have the ability to look at the sky, feel the temperature with their bodies, and concern themselves with their society's finances. How people describe themselves isn't a very sure method to learn accurate percentages. Traditionally, it's still not in style to be an atheist. But that doesn't necessarily mean that atheism isn't drastically on the rise.

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Religiosity is on the decline in the U.S. and atheism is on the rise, according to a new worldwide poll.

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The poll, called The Global Index of Religiosity and Atheism, found that the number of Americans who say they are religious dropped from 73 percent in 2005 (the last time the poll was conducted) to 60 percent.

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At the same time, the number of Americans who say they are atheists rose, from 1 percent to 5 percent.

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http://articles.washingtonpost.com/...st-groups-new-atheistsSo non-religious Americans is 40%, with only 5% of them admitting atheism. It only makes sense if 35% would rather not face the stigma of a label, even though the label fits them well. The way they vote, the way they behave suggests who they are. My Pastor recently claimed that football stadiums have more people in them on a Sunday in the U.S. than do churches. I don't think that was true only a decade or two ago. All the countless atheist websites all over the net are getting their funding from somewhere. Best selling books by Sam Harris and Dawkins and dozens of others like them are being sold to somebody. And they want to be the sole arbiters of what knowledge is, and what will be politically done concerning their findings.

That's debatable, but it's also too far off topic here IMO. It can make comparable, if not better, predictions than can deep space telescope gazing. "Practical", applicable to astronomy just as much as it is to ID. Yes. I've seen the claim in this thread that we couldn't do all of our oil exploration etc. without the knowledge that the earth is billions of years old. I don't know why not. We don't need to be atheists to be able to dig.

But it still goes to the same place, the same distance away, and it has to support human life, a very complex undertaking. I just can't believe there's not at least some of the information from the Apollo program that could save some new design/redesign time and expense.

I'm beginning to see a pattern form, we'll see if it continues. If those who post here in any way represent the scientific community, it seems that actual history, whether it be from 2000 years ago, or 10 years ago, means nothing to them. I could tell you more about how science predicted we'd run out of oil by [about] 1950, or how science predicted we'd have mass starvation by the year 2000 if we didn't take drastic measures to curb population growth, but it would be from memory of printed information that I've seen in the past, some of it before there was a such thing as the www. It's factual, but if I can't document it for you, you don't believe it, or think that it can be revised to suit science's needs. It is what it is, it can't be undone from history, no matter how much the scientific community tries to kid itself, or school children, that it can.

MESSAGE 101 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.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. You're right, it's only somewhat on-topic here. I think it could be discussed here, but all this atheist rage has wrecked this thread. I could propose a new thread, but it would just turn into a gang-banging like this one. I could propose a one-on-one with anyone who wanted to do it, but I've proposed about 5 one-on-one's here in my few years of membership, and seen nothing but asses and elbows each time. The latest proposal for a one-on-one with to "Pressie" just a few weeks ago, and I got a PM indicating her decline, complete with a dirty word she just had to use to describe me.A one-on-one would probably be possible now, each poster here has a lot of confidence considering all the support they would undoubtedly have, and there would surely be a "peanut gallery" thread along side any one-on-one that I'm involved in, with a raging hatred towards me, and nothing but praise and love for my opponent, no matter what they were saying. I'm just not interested, it's not the best use of my time.
_________________________________MESSAGE 102 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. If science wants to start its own private enterprise, like "The Atheist Research Institute, or "Answers in Atheism", then that privately funded organization can practice all the atheist searches it wants. I'm saying that publicly funded science should STOP when it leaves actual science and goes into non-testable, and non-falsifiable metaphysical searches for atheism, as determined by the political processes. Wrong AGAIN, you're on a roll. It was from MESSAGE 75, you were really riled, and you said this;

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So the next time you feel moved to claim something incredibly ignorant, such as that something has to be useful to be considered science, why don't you do a little sleuthing around the Internet first. Maybe scan through the first few paragraphs of the Wikipedia article on Science.

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You italicized the word "useful", implying that I made that word up. So I showed you where is was used as a weapon against Intelligent Design, used in such a way that claimed that Intelligent Design had to prove itself useful to be science. It helps show the double standard against Intelligent Design. Then we see this dance; I'm getting tired of atheist dances. Maybe that I'm getting REALLY tired of atheist dances. 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. And I would love to discuss how past tyrants like Hitler came to power by deceiving people, telling them that he knows what's best for them. He told them that he had the power to cool the planet, oh wait, I guess he didn't. But he would have if he'd have thought it.......maybe not. Even the German people of the 1930's weren't so simple minded that they'd believe that humans could control the temperature of the planet.Uh oh, Hitler, I'm sure most here have never heard that name. Hitler was the dictator of Germany through the 1930's leading from depression style misery in the early 30's, to the hellish misery of war and tyranny in the late 30's and early 40's because of his promises to do what he said and not question his wisdom. Don't believe me because I didn't show links to that? Too bad, I don't do demands for links anymore in this thread.
__________________________________MESSAGE 104 To not take liberty destroying actions until it's clear to almost everybody that they're right. It's not complicated. 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.
___________________________________MESSAGE 106 We do have irony! What do you think about all the people here who are sputtering with rage about MY worldview? They've obviously seldom if ever heard what I say before. If your youth leader read Harris and Dawkins etc. wouldn't that be the equivalent of someone on this thread watching Fox news (top in the news ratings in the U.S.) or listening to any of the many top rated conservative political commentators in the U.S.? They'd be shocked at what they saw, at how much it parallels what I've said in this thread. 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.
________________________________MESSAGE 111 I was in high school during Apollo. In 1973, a significant part of my vocational course in drafting involved slide rule use. I've forgotten how. They became obsolete by about 1976. Human bodies work exactly the same today as they did in 1969. Human life support is THE most important part in any human space exploration.It figures that my point would be mocked by comparing 1969 hardware to today's hardware. But my point in unfazed, if the scientific community can be so careless to lose information that cost taxpayers billions of dollars, maybe taxpayers should have some say in how their money is spent by a special interest like science. Unless it's evolution. It has no foundation, nothing for the origins of life. The time was not wasted at all. I've seen the amazing immaturity, the lack of knowledge of other subjects, the almost total link with political liberalism from scientific community leaders, and their followers. The rage, the emotion, from the atheists on this thread makes them look good, according to you? I think I've seen it all. How about if the atheists here took some high school coursework on history, past tyrannies of the world, how the U.S. government was formed, what the intent of the framers actually was?
_____________________________________It's been fun, most of the atheist rage on this thread has come from the perpetual nervousness about the clear double standards the scientific community has. It set up entrance requirements just out of the reach of Intelligent Design, then doesn't apply them to anything else it wants to study. It gets by with it to a large extent, but the questioning of it isn't going to go away, and as time goes by, it may become harder and harder for them to dance their way out of.If there's one thing this thread clearly shows, it's that science/atheism/liberalism DOES NOT CONCEDE POINTS. It is as closed minded as any religion it criticizes. Happy Thanksgiving!