True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing

It is surprising that so many people seem to be so sure of their views and opinions when neither evolutionists or creationists have very convincing stories.
The creationists are relying on ancient texts some of which is so absurd they cannot be taken literally. These texts are not written by God but by man.

Evolutionists on the other hand seem to have just created this theory without conclusive evidence. Their only objective seems to be to discredit religion. I find this extremely frustrating. Religion should not factor into any scientific field. When you see Richard Dawkins admitting that intelligent design is possible then you have to ask yourself. Why did you go on such a hate campaign against all religions when you cannot even explain the begining of life and you actually admit that intelligent design is possible

A wise man once said "True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing"
This still applies today

Edited by Porkncheese, : No reason given.

Greetings, and welcome to EvC. I looked up some of your earlier posts and participation and see that you have already met Percy, our Director, and RAZD.

Before I promote your topic, I am curious as to your chosen field of study and direction that you want this topic to go. If I get a better idea, I will know which forum to put it in. Communication can be a useful tool to broaden one's wisdom.

Are you in school? What do you study? Do you want your topic to go more towards science and evidence-based conclusions or do you want this to be more philosophical and abstract?

Thread copied here from the True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

I was quite impressed with your response,message#160 in the A good summary of so called human evolution Forum. Lets start here.

Edited by AdminPhat, : added explanation of promotion

Edited by AdminPhat, : No reason given.

Pnc writes: A wise man once said "True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing"

Only a fool would say such a thing. I know I just wrote "Only a fool would say such a thing".

Pnc writes: Evolutionists on the other hand seem to have just created this theory without conclusive evidence.

Again, while there is not conclusive evidence there certainly is overwhelming evidence and Science, unlike Math, does not deal in absolutes. Conclusions are held tentatively until there is overwhelming evidence that the conclusions are false.

Pnc writes: Their only objective seems to be to discredit religion.

That of course is also simply false. In fact most major religions acknowledge the fact of evolution and that the Theory of Evolution is currently the only explanation for the variety of life seen today and in the past.

Pnc writes: When you see Richard Dawkins admitting that intelligent design is possible then you have to ask yourself. Why did you go on such a hate campaign against all religions when you cannot even explain the begining of life and you actually admit that intelligent design is possible

Again, that is simply an absurd post is about a Brazillion different ways.

There is no hate campaign related to evolutionists against religion. I and many others here are religious and in fact Christians.

There is no evidence of design in living things; particularly of intelligent design.

There is no evidence of the existence of any designer.

Science should not support positions for which there is absolutely no evidence.

While certain things may be possible, unless and until there is some evidence that such things even exist they cannot actually be included or considered to be science.

I know that I know nothing. Attributed to Socrates,although I he is not recorded as saying that.

Correct. And another example of what people can know. We can know that there is no record of Socrates ever claiming that the one thing he did know was that he knew nothing.

But it was another fun thing for Middle Schoolers to argue over on cold fall evenings.

Evidence is not conclusive nor is it absolute.
I agree but then why do people take issue with questions being raised.

Evidence is not conclusive nor is it absolute.

No one is claiming that, but the evidence does lead to more accurate conclusions than wild ass guesses. And over time collecting more and more evidence leads to more and more accurate conclusions.

I agree but then why do people take issue with questions being raised.

Well, if you mean here at EvC, it is a debate forum, so people come here specifically to argue. Regular members here don't take issues with legitimate questions, but they do get short with people who ask silly questions that we refer to as PRATTs, that is "Points Refutted A Thousand Times".

Your thread title "True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing". is a silly generalization. Some people know lots of things and they also realize they will never know everything. Knowledge is cumulative and that is the crowning achievement of humanity, discovering ways to compile and store knowledge in ways that make it available to all. Bless the librarians.

I agree the title may be a touch overboard but it get peoples attention first. But you are a seemingly logical person to point out the 2 things that im just making a point of.
1. No one knows eveything which some people seem to deny
2. The evidence used is inconclusive and not absolute which most people have a really hard time accepting. And something being taught as fact in public schools should be absolute and conclusive like F=ma.

As for silly questions, are you saying I've asked silly questions. If so is there no tolerance for someone who admittedly is ignorant in biology and confused?
And if my questions are so outrageous than why has no one been able answer them.
They are questions not made up by myself. I am mearly parroting the ideas and points made by many others.

Like why don't we see thousands of intermadiate fossils of humans?
What kind of predictions have been made to support the theory?
What are the best forms of evidence supporting the theory?

Have I been rude at all? Haven't I stuck to the subject?
But my points are never addressed. And no one can produce anything for me to consider. Furthermore i keep being accused of being a heritic which makes my blood boil. Yet I haved kept my cool and stayed on track.

Edited by Porkncheese, : No reason given.

NewKid writes: 1. No one knows eveything which some people seem to deny

No one here is making such a claim.

NewKid writes: 2. The evidence used is inconclusive and not absolute which most people have a really hard time accepting. And something being taught as fact in public schools should be absolute and conclusive like F=ma.

Again, what is being taught as fact is the fact that evolution happened and the fact that the Theory of Evolution is so far the only explanation that has been presented.

F=ma is not absolute or conclusive. Velocity is limited by the speed of light. But it's good enough for almost every situation.

The evidence for evolution or old Earth is as close to conclusive as Man can get.

Fossilization is extremely rare. Nonetheless we do see thousands of fossil hominems. Did you look before you asked? https://medium.com/...found-for-human-evolution-355801dfd35c, http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/fossils.

A very impressive prediction is the prediction that a fossil like Tiktaalik would be found in Devonian rocks. http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu/#, http://www.pbs.org/your-inner-fish/home/.

There's so much evidence it's difficult to pick out the best. The best forms of evidence supporting the theory are, IMHO, the consilience between independent methods of measuring the same thing. For example the twin nested hierarchy and the agreement between many independent dating methods, particularly for the last 50,000 years or so:

No creationist has ever made a credible attempt to explain the obvious pattern.

None of these are suitable for discussion in this topic, and there may be topics already that are still open.

Porkcheese writes: A wise man once said "True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing" This still applies today

The mining and exploration companies, whether they are Chinese or American or German or British, do think that I know more than other people such as student Engineers playing on the NY stock market.

I do know a lot more about about the shale gas in the Karoo than someone claiming to be studying Engineering in America. I've been working on it for years. You haven't.

I don't know much about anything else.

Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.

Porkandcheese writes: agree the title may be a touch overboard but it get peoples attention first

You seem to have come here will quite an attitude. You're also asking dozens of questions that show you know very little about the subject that you're telling us is inconclusive and unsupported. The one thing guaranteed here is that if you come in swinging your fists around you will get into a fight - but it diesn't have to be that way. Have a bit of humility for a while and you'll get a lot of information and help.

1. No one knows eveything which some people seem to deny

No one here has said that anyone knows everything. Nor would they, it's a stupid thing to say

2. The evidence used is inconclusive and not absolute which most people have a really hard time accepting.

The evidence for the ToE is conclusive.

But the ToE is not an absolute, it's scientific theory which is the best explanation for the facts that we have. Should the facts change, the theory will change.

And something being taught as fact in public schools should be absolute and conclusive like F=ma.

No history? No literature? No Geology? This a silly thing to say - you'll understand why, when you learn what the ToE actually is, instead of what you imagine it is.

As for silly questions, are you saying I've asked silly questions. If so is there no tolerance for someone who admittedly is ignorant in biology and confused?

You'll find loads of tolerance so long as you don't go around like a bull in a china shop.

And if my questions are so outrageous than why has no one been able answer them. They are questions not made up by myself. I am mearly parroting the ideas and points made by many others.

We know what they are, they're the pig-ignorant claims of creationists - you think we haven't heard them a million times before?

Like why don't we see thousands of intermadiate fossils of humans? What kind of predictions have been made to support the theory? What are the best forms of evidence supporting the theory?

Biology is a huge subject and these questions need a lot of our time and effort to explain. They've been coverered a million time before here - they're very easy to find and all the answers are out there on science sites - note SCIENCE site, not religious sites. But we're happy to go over them all again. Just pick one - don't go galloping all over the shop. Pick one question and we'll have a go at it for you.

Have I been rude at all? Haven't I stuck to the subject? But my points are never addressed. And no one can produce anything for me to consider. Furthermore i keep being accused of being a heritic which makes my blood boil. Yet I haved kept my cool and stayed on track.

Calm down.....

What so many of the anti-science cult seem not able or willing to understand is that science advances by learning what it knows is wrong. It is those "I certainly didn't think that would happen" moments when science makes a great leap forward in its body of knowledge.

You can be wrong in science but you cannot be a heretic in science. Heresy is a condition found only in religion.

Porkncheese writes: A wise man once said "True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing"

I wouldn't say anything about "true" knowledge, what does that mean, anyway?
But I would agree that such a statement is a basic step in maturing your thinking process.

Try not to take it literally, though. The statement isn't meant to be taken literally, and that leads to being silly.

A wrong, but pervasive definition for the word "know" is that it means "being absolutely true about reality."
This is the issue that the statement is attempting to correct.

Knowing that anything is "absolutely true about reality" is currently impossible.
It's impossible because reality doesn't come with answers at the back of the textbook.
There's no "ruler of reality" where we get to check our measurements and verify them.

All we can do is look at the information around us, make a logical inference based off that information, and then test that guess against more reality to see if it works or not.

This brings us to the mature definition for "knowing" something.
When people say they "know" something... they mean to imply that they've tested it.

This doesn't mean it's absolutely true, it simply means it worked for the test they did.
It's quite possible that their test doesn't cover all situations.
It's quite possible that they thought they tested it, but they actually didn't.
It's quite possible that they didn't test anything at all, and they're just saying "I know that!" in order to try to persuade/impress someone else.

However, once we understand that "knowing" something is a placeholder for "passing a test against reality," then we can understand that we certainly do "know things." And a lot more than nothing.

Otherwise, we would have no use for the word "know" and need some other word that means "I've tested this..." as opposed to "I just think this..."
It's easier to just use the existing word "know" to represent such tested-things and to simply understand it's limitations.

Math is an absolute idea.
But that's because math didn't come from reality.
Math is made up. It comes from definitions.
That's why there's only 1 answer to math issues... because there's it's based on axioms. Axiom is just a special math-word for "I made this up, and that's the way it is!"

However, Science understands that the word "know" has to do with testing-against-reality and that everything-we-know is only tentatively held based on the information we have... therefore it is all subject to change if that information-we-have is ever expanded into new things.

All Science understands this.

Physics - if you don't have error-bars on your graph, if you don't understand what a 5-sigma-error-rate is... then you're not doing physics.
These error-ranges exist because we understand that any and all measurements we take have some sort of error associated with them.
If the numbers you're putting into your perfect-math-equation have error ranges.. then the number you get out of your perfect-math-equation will have error ranges.

Engineering - if you don't have a SF (Safety Factor) included in your calculations, then you're not doing engineering.
This error-range exists because we understand that any and all equations we use are based on the information-we-have-available. If they were absolute, we wouldn't need an SF. The math procedures that the equations use are indeed absolute (because math is made up and defined by us). However, Science understands that the equation itself as a representation of reality is not absolute (it's based on the information-we-have-available). Therefore we require SFs to give us the comfort we require.

Just like Newton's equations for describing motion.
Newton's equations are not absolute. They're not even accurate.
They're only accurate enough for things that are big.

The existence of Einstein's relativity equations prove this.
Einstein's equations prove that Newton's equations are not absolute and not accurate.
Einstein's equations are simply more precise. They are more accurate.

Science understands this.
Science understands that Einstein's equations, although they are the most accurate we've been able to figure out so far, are likely also not absolute and not accurate.

Because they, as well as everything else in Science, are all based on the information-we-have-available.
And we know that the information-we-have-available to us is not complete.
We know that there is no answer-section for reality that will simply tell us how things "absolutely" are.

Science is very well aware, and is specifically designed to account for the idea that "true knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing."

But Science just matured their definition of the word "know" from meaning "absolutely correct" to meaning "correct as far as our tests can show us, based on the information we have."

With this mature definition of the word "know," Science is quite capable of knowing many, many things.

TL/DR: It's a great idea, but you're late to the party. Science already figured out that we know nothing and they accounted for it a few hundred years ago. In fact, all the technological progress we've made since then is based on this very idea of knowing-that-we-don't-know. From there, Science tests-what-it-can, learns-what-it-can... and continually builds from there.