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mattyrm wrote:

generalgrog wrote: Well I think the OP is true to a point. Humans aren't unique in that God has given us certain traits when he created us. Just like he did when he created the animal kingdom.

GG

Allegedly.

We have a very full understanding of the tree of life and the animal kingdom due to a truly overwhelming amount of scientific evidence.

We arent unique because "God" made us similar to other things that "he" created. I have logical empirical evidence on my side and you have a questionably translated book of desert fables. Why not trust the science that cures cancer and makes planes fly and cars move and antibiotics work.

Just thought id point that out. Your free to believe in anything you like. Toothfairy, leprecauns, whatever. I just want to add a counterpoint. Im aware that many of you arent happy with people disagreeing with your religious beliefs though so ill shut up from now on in.

I don't mind you disagreeing, the problem with you matty is that you routinely cross the line from disagreeing to just being insulting. And that's being naughty

Of course I would counter that your "full understanding" of the tree of life is based on a truly overwhelming biased scientific communities presupposed and I might add incredibly faith based system of scientific uniformitarianism.

GG

Mate, look at what you wrote!

You guys love to make out like people like me are just being insulting, but you make ridiculous polarizing statements and then get pissed off when i am (forced) into making a counterpoint. And i make them because im presuming young and impressionable people will read this forum and i dont want them going to school and saying

" Humans aren't unique in that God has given us certain traits when he created us. Just like he did when he created the animal kingdom"

I dont WANT to argue about religion every chance i get, but as long as there is a chance that kids read lines like that i will of course do my civic duty and point it out! I love the way you say it so matter of factly as well

" Humans aren't unique in that God has given us certain traits when he created us. Just like he did when he created the animal kingdom"

You dont even say "Christians believe" or "I personally think" its basically God did this and thats the way it is.

I dont even think religion as a whole is a bad thing, it makes people do many charitable things, but you love to make out like this stuff is fact.

And it isnt. And the scientific community and the education system is on my side, not yours. You represent a belief in the "supernatural" just as outlandish as spirits and ghosts, and i will never ever accept it as an "explanation" for anything. You should point that out before you post and then i would be able to keep my mouth shut!

Sorry if you think im insulting mate, but thats the way of it. Its your opinion and nothing else.

mattyrm wrote:Mate, look at what you wrote!

You guys love to make out like people like me are just being insulting, but you make ridiculous polarizing statements and then get pissed off when i am (forced) into making a counterpoint. And i make them because im presuming young and impressionable people will read this forum and i dont want them going to school and saying

" Humans aren't unique in that God has given us certain traits when he created us. Just like he did when he created the animal kingdom"

I dont WANT to argue about religion every chance i get, but as long as there is a chance that kids read lines like that i will of course do my civic duty and point it out! I love the way you say it so matter of factly as well

" Humans aren't unique in that God has given us certain traits when he created us. Just like he did when he created the animal kingdom"

You dont even say "Christians believe" or "I personally think" its basically God did this and thats the way it is.

I dont even think religion as a whole is a bad thing, it makes people do many charitable things, but you love to make out like this stuff is fact.

And it isnt. And the scientific community and the education system is on my side, not yours. You represent a belief in the "supernatural" just as outlandish as spirits and ghosts, and i will never ever accept it as an "explanation" for anything. You should point that out before you post and then i would be able to keep my mouth shut!

Sorry if you think im insulting mate, but thats the way of it. Its your opinion and nothing else.

This post wasn't insulting, because you stated an opinion that wasn't followed up with "you an idiot" or some such thing. Bravo

And I'm sorry if you think that me stating my belief that God created human beings and animals is insulting. It's not an insult to state my belief, however it would be an insult if I followed my belief with something like "God created humans and your an idiot if you don't believe this." Of course that is kind of like what you used to do all the time with your "Creationists are idiots" lines. I applaud you for toning things down and participating in rational discourse. Maybe we can make some progress now?

GG

I dont think its insulting at all mate, your more than entitled to your opinion, and several billion people agree with you. I was just saying, opinion is the operative word here.

Anyway, ive had ten pints and im off to bed. Night!

Da Boss wrote:The definition I was using is the one used by behavioural ecologists to distinguish the important step of tool creation from the simple utilisation of objects in the environment. It's got a slightly more specific definition than the general definition.

I agree, that in normal everyday language these things might be tools, but I do think the line between adapted and discovered tools is important when discussing animal intelligence.

In that case, the behavioural ecologists have it wrong

I was going to say, it isn't simply a question of semantics. The problem is how the behaviouralists are defining the perameters of study.
It is making assumptions based on a given world view. So maybe it is semantic.

There is obviously a qualitative difference between a simple learned use of a twig, and the relatively simple shaping to suit as per the Chimpanzee.
Again, by that definition the found/selected rock (an object in the environment) used for producing flint tools is not a tool. This is a ridiculous judgement, as the skill level involved is very high. There is no adaptation afaik of an elk or deer antler, yet thet have been used to dig the pits for mining the flint.

The learned clam cracking behaviour of the otter is still using a tool whether regardless of a specific restriction imposed by scientists. The use of one object to break another object, is no different in action and outcome, from a convict breaking stones with a hammer. The difference may be the ability of our species to imagine the cause and effect and put it into practice. Probably the chimpanzee has some similar cognitive ability also.

Great post BTW, Chibi.

CBB wrote:The learned clam cracking behaviour of the otter is still using a tool whether regardless of a specific restriction imposed by scientists. The use of one object to break another object, is no different in action and outcome, from a convict breaking stones with a hammer. The difference may be the ability of our species to imagine the cause and effect and put it into practice. Probably the chimpanzee has some similar cognitive ability also.

My experience picking up rocks and using them to drive stakes into the ground, after breaking every single hammer I had, will attest to this. The rocks did a fine job of helping me complete the task. A rock attached to a stick doesn't really make it a 'true tool'... It's action and use makes it the tool.

It's not about whether it can be used to complete the task, it's about whether the animal can conceptualise it as other than it is, and work towards making it different in a focused way.
That is a very different way of thinking to simply using something you found.

The individual animal or the group?

As I suggested before, the difference between the abilities of a single human, and many humans, can be considered quite vast. The difference between a single human, and a single chimp, can be great, but no so great as to conclude we are on a completely different level of intelligence.

Perhaps we are on the cusp of being so (in terms of tool making and conceptual thinking) much more intelligent than one of our closest relatives, but I still don't consider it to be a massive difference, on the scale of individuals. Our social constructs appear to be one of the main reasons we are so successful; advanced language, varied roles within a group (which is something that is present in most animals, though not in such a complex way), and the list goes on.

Comparing what types of tools the chimps are able to make on their own, to what we are able to make on our own, shows a very basic similarity. I consider this evidence that we are no where near as smart as we think we are.

I don't like posting links a bunch of times, but this is one of my favorite 'science' clips.

can conceptualise it as other than it is,

Bingo

KingCracker wrote:Yea, I guess the fact that you posted this using a computer, that was made in a factory that was built by humans, that was inturn replied on this internet forum, again made by humans, by other humans, doesnt matter. We arnt unique compared to a monkey that uses a twig to get food.

Factory workers are trained to do one simplistic step of a long, complicated process. You could train a chimp to do that. Of course, they have more dignity and self respect than Humans, so they would most likely rather throw poop at you, because throwing poop at people rules!!!

Wrexasaur wrote:The individual animal or the group?

As I suggested before, the difference between the abilities of a single human, and many humans, can be considered quite vast. The difference between a single human, and a single chimp, can be great, but no so great as to conclude we are on a completely different level of intelligence.

Perhaps we are on the cusp of being so (in terms of tool making and conceptual thinking) much more intelligent than one of our closest relatives, but I still don't consider it to be a massive difference, on the scale of individuals. Our social constructs appear to be one of the main reasons we are so successful; advanced language, varied roles within a group (which is something that is present in most animals, though not in such a complex way), and the list goes on.

Comparing what types of tools the chimps are able to make on their own, to what we are able to make on our own, shows a very basic similarity. I consider this evidence that we are no where near as smart as we think we are.

I don't like posting links a bunch of times, but this is one of my favorite 'science' clips.

Aw man I love Dr. Tyson, the man is awesome. I love how he explains insanely smart things to normal dumb people like myself, and I get it.


But yea I was making a point along the lines of what GG was getting at. Sure if you scale our successes to a chimps success, they might seem comparable. And sure you can train a factory worker to build this junk we hold in such high esteem, how to build it assembly line style. But the fact still remains we built this stuff. We can chew up the earth and pull ruble from it, melt it down, and build automobiles from it. We can clear entire forests and build buildings and homes from what was once there. We send people into incredibly complex rockets, and shoot them into space to do sciencey space stuff.

You really want to compare that to chimps? Really? The closest chimps came to space flight on their own was when the alpha male chased something up a tree and then fell from it.

I did not suggest that comparison, and provided many statements to make my own comparison clear.

As a species we have accomplished a great deal, but as individuals we for the most part, just haven't. We are not a species chock a block with geniuses IMO, and even in their case, they are not producing much besides ideas. Ideas have value, but practical implementation is simply MORE valuable.

It doesn't matter if I know how to turn farts into ice cream, if there is not a construct there to bring that idea to life. Maybe chimps dream things that would completely astound us in their complexity, but their social constructs are not developed enough to even begin to express their abilities. This doesn't mean that we are no more intelligent than chimps, but for me at least, I don't see us being all that further along on whatever track we are talking about right now.

I think the comparison of interstellar travel compared to our technology at the moment, begins to give some sort of reason to the limitations we face, and the very obvious obstacles that we may simply never overcome.

We are still stuck living on the same planet as those dumb-ass chimps... just sayin.'. Our survival strategy may turn out to be a bit of a short lived concept, after all, we haven't been poking this planet for that long as it is, certainly not within what we consider the 10k years or so of civilization. We may be within the very first steps of actually being sentient and capable of advanced thought, where chimps simply reside within the first two steps... out of 100 steps or so.

Why not?

We can clear entire forests and build buildings and homes from what was once there

This is proof of intelligence?

generalgrog wrote:Of course I would counter that your "full understanding" of the tree of life is based on a truly overwhelming biased scientific communities presupposed and I might add incredibly faith based system of scientific uniformitarianism.

GG

There is no image macro that can express what I am feeling right now.

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:

generalgrog wrote:Of course I would counter that your "full understanding" of the tree of life is based on a truly overwhelming biased scientific communities presupposed and I might add incredibly faith based system of scientific uniformitarianism.

GG

There is no image macro that can express what I am feeling right now.

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:

We can clear entire forests and build buildings and homes from what was once there

This is proof of intelligence?

Teach some monkies to do that, and we will talk

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:
There is no image macro that can express what I am feeling right now.

Its ok, we've had this conversation many times before. The conclusion has always been that Grog doesn't understand the distinction between faith and belief; ie. the presence or absence of empirical evidence.

dogma wrote:

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:
There is no image macro that can express what I am feeling right now.

Its ok, we've had this conversation many times before. The conclusion has always been that Grog doesn't understand the distinction between faith and belief; ie. the presence or absence of empirical evidence.

Yes we have been here many times and I never cease to be amazed at the level of word twisting that my friend Dogma loves to engage in.

The fact is... there is really only a semantic distinction between faith and belief, and Dogma should know better than to try and create a false dichotomy between them.


And he also should know that one persons empirical evidence is another persons empirical fallacy.
GG

generalgrog wrote:The fact is... there is really only a semantic distinction between faith and belief, and Dogma should know better than to try and create a false dichotomy between them.

If by "semantic distinction" you mean that they're two different words, then I guess you're right, they're two different words! Faith has several meanings and belief, often prefaced with "reasonable" or some other word to distinguish it from belief without evidence, has several others, though faith is usually meant in the way that religious folk use it in dialogue, in that their faith excuses them from having to find evidence for their beliefs and/or statements, which is the primary difference between the two. Faith supplants evidence, while (scientific) belief is used to show that the scientist in question thinks that there is a causal connection between two or more things. eg I believe that the tau lepton is affected negatively by the etc because the thetans and so on, as opposed to goddidit.

But otherwise holy crap where do I get the brain bleach.

generalgrog wrote:
Yes we have been here many times and I never cease to be amazed at the level of word twisting that my friend Dogma loves to engage in.

The only reason that you believe I twist words is that you are largely ignorant with respect to the meanings of much of the technical language you utilize.

generalgrog wrote:
The fact is... there is really only a semantic distinction between faith and belief, and Dogma should know better than to try and create a false dichotomy between them.

No, that's entirely false. Belief is based on evidence, faith is belief despite the absence of evidence, or in the face of countermanding evidence. This is not a semantic distinction as it is a matter of kind, rather than a matter of connotation.

Moreover, to state that two things are distinct from one another is not a false dichotomy. A false dichotomy is a situation in which only two options are presented as possible, despite the presence of other logically possible solutions. For example, people who claim that holes in the fossil record are proof of creationism are operating under a false dichotomy; ie. if evolution fails to explain something, then there must be a God.

generalgrog wrote:
And he also should know that one persons empirical evidence is another persons empirical fallacy.
GG

There is no such thing as an empirical fallacy. There are fallacious arguments. Again, you don't seem to understand the terminology surrounding logical argument, and I think that goes a long way to explaining your confusion regarding things like fact, belief, knowledge, and faith.

Empirical evidence is what it is because it cannot be fallacious. The arguments which are constructed on, or supported by, empirical evidence can be fallacious, but that merely indicates that the argument is flawed.

Yeah, there are animals that use tools, and that's pretty cool, and it's an indication of the types of early tool use our ancestors might have first been capable of. And there are several orders of magnitude between that and the levels of sophistication we take for granted every day.

Which really just leads us to consider what evolutionary pressures might cause a speices capable of simple tool use to become increasingly smarter, even when increasingly large brains (and the skulls to fit them in) make birth much harder, even requiring the mother to give birth relatively early in the child's development.

Wrexasaur wrote:We as a species have accomplished a great deal of things, using a great deal of tools. When you begin to look at the average person, and what they can create on a daily basis, you are no longer talking about spaceships and nuclear power plants. On the whole we can accomplish things that require a great deal more intelligence, but individually we are usually not creating any tools, ever. I would go so far as to say that we have become less creative in terms of specific tools, unless you want to start talking about specific guy Bob, who is a toolmaker.

You don't make your car, you don't make your oven, you don't make your toilet, and you don't make your house... among practically every other tool that we use, we make next to none of them through an individuals means, and would be without those advanced tools if not for factors beyond tool making, and well into social organizing. Bob makes the tools and we use them.

No, and no individual ant could ever conceive of building something as complex as an ant's nest, but they all complete their individual pieces and between them they build something incredible. I would argue though that this makes ants more fascinating and more brilliant than if one ant had built the whole thing himself. I'd argue the same for humanity, we've built a society which contains more sophistication than anyone one of us could ever come to fully understand, even if he dedicated his life to it.

KingCracker wrote:

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:

We can clear entire forests and build buildings and homes from what was once there

This is proof of intelligence?

Teach some monkies to do that, and we will talk

They ain't that stoopid- the forest already IS their home!
Why would they destroy their own habitat?


Oh...
Monkey see, monkey do!

generalgrog wrote:Yes we have been here many times and I never cease to be amazed at the level of word twisting that my friend Dogma loves to engage in.

The fact is... there is really only a semantic distinction between faith and belief, and Dogma should know better than to try and create a false dichotomy between them.

No, seriously, there is a difference between the scientific method and religion. There is. They answer different questions in wholly different ways, and it is a really bad idea to mix them up. It is bad for science and it is bad for religion.

Faith takes truth before evidence, which is fine and a very good way of answering some big questions. A belief (or whatever term you use to define it) takes the evidence and forms the most logical view, then looks to challenge that view by gathering more evidence.

Now, you can argue (and almost certainly will ) that science has some level of dogmatism that restricts the scientific method (and in specific instances in more or less I would agree to a limited extent) but you can't claim that the two processes are the same. They just aren't.

And this is the point in the thread where dogma starts throwing words like "your ignorant" and "you don't seem to understand" around, as a way to try and undermine is debate opponent. It happens in every thread where someone doesn't buy into his psycho babble double talk and an ad hominem attack is needed to cover his tracks.

Anyway...to continue


be·lief
   /bɪˈlif/ Show Spelled[bih-leef] Show IPA
–noun
1.
something believed; an opinion or conviction: a belief that the earth is flat.
2.
confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof: a statement unworthy of belief.
3.
confidence; faith; trust: a child's belief in his parents.
4.
a religious tenet or tenets; religious creed or faith: the Christian belief.

faith
–noun
1.
confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.
2.
belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
3.
belief in god or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
4.
belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
5.
a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.
6.
the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.: Failure to appear would be breaking faith.
7.
the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one's promise, oath, allegiance, etc.: He was the only one who proved his faith during our recent troubles.
8.
Christian Theology . the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved.


Those are from dictionary online..You can argue with the writers of the dictionary if you want to, but they certainly are close enough to be interchangeable..


Also from the Bible.

Heb 11:1(KJV) Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Now to empirical


em·pir·i·cal
   /ɛmˈpɪrɪkəl/ Show Spelled[em-pir-i-kuhl] Show IPA
–adjective
1.
derived from or guided by experience or experiment.
2.
depending upon experience or observation alone, without using scientific method or theory, esp. as in medicine.
3.
provable or verifiable by experience or experiment.

The problem of course which is what I repeatably remind Dogma is that just because some scientist performs an empirical experiment doesn't mean his results haven't been skewed by some of his internal scientific bias...thus creating an empirical fallacy.

You can support an empirical evidence with biased skewed data all day long it doesn't make your empirical evidence true. And you know that is what I meant but you prefer to go ad hominem.

We can play the semantic game all you want Dogma....but please try and keep your emotions out of this.


GG



Automatically Appended Next Post:

WARBOSS TZOO wrote:

generalgrog wrote:The fact is... there is really only a semantic distinction between faith and belief, and Dogma should know better than to try and create a false dichotomy between them.

If by "semantic distinction" you mean that they're two different words, then I guess you're right, they're two different words! Faith has several meanings and belief, often prefaced with "reasonable" or some other word to distinguish it from belief without evidence, has several others, though faith is usually meant in the way that religious folk use it in dialogue, in that their faith excuses them from having to find evidence for their beliefs and/or statements, which is the primary difference between the two. Faith supplants evidence, while (scientific) belief is used to show that the scientist in question thinks that there is a causal connection between two or more things. eg I believe that the tau lepton is affected negatively by the etc because the thetans and so on, as opposed to goddidit.

But otherwise holy crap where do I get the brain bleach.

warboss ---What you are talking about is "blind faith"...if you think there is no evidence for a creator I suggest you walk outside your door, look up at the night sky, look at some of the stuff the hubble telescope has seen, and even taking this back to the beginning of the thread, the very fact that man has an intelligent spark to be able to think creatively is evidence. That's just the simple basic stuff, not to mention the gene code which points to a designer or creator, or even the concept of irreducible complexity. And of course the millons of people that claim to have a relationship with the crator is even more evidence. But go on believing that there is no evidence for God.

Also as I reminded dogma, scientific belief or faith is based on a set of principles called uniformitarianism which says that the basic laws of the universe have always been the same.. never changing... always constant. That's a pretty amazing faith system if you ask me..especially seeing that modern science is really only a few 100 years old. They weren't around when the earth was created, yet we are expected to believe their 4 billlion year old earth doctrines because it "makes more sense" than a Divine Creator? The whole radioisotope dating system is one HUGE faith system. How do they know that the decay rates have always been the same? Could they have been altered in some way? just because they jump to the conclusion of a 4billion year old earth based on an assumption that radioisotope dating is accurate doesn't mean I have to.

For example why do we find radiocarbons in diamonds which are supposed to be some of the oldest materials on earth,. much older than the 60,000 or so years radiocarbon is good for dating to.



GG

generalgrog, how do you reconcile your idea that science is influenced by some bias towards a worldview that doesn't match a literal view of the Bible, with the fact that many, many accepted and estabslished scientists are Christians. Likely more are self-identified, committed Christians than are self-identified, committed atheists.

Science finds what science finds, and conclusions are drawn from that. There is bad science and there is bias, but part of the process is constantly re-examine and question assumptions. The bias you're claiming would only be possible if the scientific community was overwhelmingly atheist, and it isn't.

generalgrog wrote:And this is the point in the thread where dogma starts throwing words like "your ignorant" and "you don't seem to understand" around, as a way to try and undermine is debate opponent. It happens in every thread where someone doesn't buy into his psycho babble double talk and an ad hominem attack is needed to cover his tracks.

I have no tracks to cover, everything I stated was clear, precise, and easily referenced. I call them as I see them, and you misused 4 different terms in your post. Had you not misused those words, it would not have appeared as though you did not understand them, or that were ignorant of their meaning. You say that I engage in 'psycho babble', but that seems rather ridiculous given that I only used language taken directly from your post. If you consider that terminology to be 'psycho babble' then I must ask why you would bother to use it, as 'psycho babble' generally denotes terminology used in the course of argument to lend an air of authority without substantive contribution; implying that the speaker is either fabricating terminology, or ignorant of the meaning of the terminology.

Additionally, it bears mentioning that ad hominem is not necessarily fallacious. If the characteristics being referenced, in this case understanding and knowledge, are relevant to the matter at hand, then the argument is not fallacious.

generalgrog wrote:
Those are from dictionary online..You can argue with the writers of the dictionary if you want to, but they certainly are close enough to be interchangeable..

Actually, they aren't, not outside of colloquial exchange. Notably your definition of faith posits that it is explicitly related both religion, and the absence of proof. While your definition of belief explicitly notes that it is related to the acceptance of that which isn't susceptible to rigorous proof; a good example of this being formal logic.

generalgrog wrote:
The problem of course which is what I repeatably remind Dogma is that just because some scientist performs an empirical experiment doesn't mean his results haven't been skewed by some of his internal scientific bias...thus creating an empirical fallacy.

Again, there's no such thing as an empirical fallacy. Empirical evidence can be corrupted, inaccurate, skewed, or non-representative, but it cannot be fallacious.

Of course, that's why peer review and repeatability are so important to the scientific method. Its not as if one experiment is done, and the results are then taken to be representative of general fact. Sure, that happens sometimes, but that's simply bad science.

generalgrog wrote:
You can support an empirical evidence with biased skewed data all day long it doesn't make your empirical evidence true. And you know that is what I meant but you prefer to go ad hominem.

No, I had no idea what you meant, because you misused the word fallacy.

Also, data is a form of empirical evidence, not something which supports it.

generalgrog wrote:
We can play the semantic game all you want Dogma....but please try and keep your emotions out of this.

I'm not emotional, you're reading emotion into my posts. Most likely because I'm using strong language, however that's only related to the simplicity of the errors you're making.

generalgrog wrote:
Also as I reminded dogma, scientific belief or faith is based on a set of principles called uniformitarianism which says that the basic laws of the universe have always been the same.. never changing... always constant. That's a pretty amazing faith system if you ask me..especially seeing that modern science is really only a few 100 years old.

Science isn't based on uniformitarianism. Science is based on the scientific method, which is itself based on the idea that mechanical laws can be discovered through rigorous, extended observation. Not all scientists are uniformitarians (you'll find a lot of non-uniformitarians in theoretical physics), and that doctrine is dominant only because it has far and away the most practical applications.

generalgrog wrote:
What you are talking about is "blind faith"...if you think there is no evidence for a creator I suggest you walk outside your door, look up at the night sky, look at some of the stuff the hubble telescope has seen, and even taking this back to the beginning of the thread, the very fact that man has an intelligent spark to be able to think creatively is evidence. That's just the simple basic stuff, not to mention the gene code which points to a designer or creator, or even the concept of irreducible complexity. And of course the millons of people that claim to have a relationship with the crator is even more evidence. But go on believing that there is no evidence for God.

Even if you accept those things as evidence of God, they are not evidence of a young Earth.

generalgrog wrote:
They weren't around when the earth was created, yet we are expected to believe their 4 billlion year old earth doctrines because it "makes more sense" than a Divine Creator?

The notion that the Earth is 4 billion years old does not contradict the notion that there is a God, it only contradicts the notion that the Earth is less, or more, than 4 billion years old.

generalgrog wrote:
The whole radioisotope dating system is one HUGE faith system. How do they know that the decay rates have always been the same? Could they have been altered in some way? just because they jump to the conclusion of a 4billion year old earth based on an assumption that radioisotope dating is accurate doesn't mean I have to.

The vast majority of empirical evidence (notably the decay of compounds with short half-lives) points to it being accurate. Now, if in fact radiometric dating is inaccurate, and the Earth is either much older or younger, that fact still would not be evidence of God's existence.

generalgrog wrote:
For example why do we find radiocarbons in diamonds which are supposed to be some of the oldest materials on earth,. much older than the 60,000 or so years radiocarbon is good for dating to.

The 60,000 isn't based on the total disappearance of C-14 from a sample, but an approximation of the period during which C-14 production in the upper atmosphere has remained largely constant. Its a standard of accuracy, not a statement regarding the presence of C-14 in any sample of any age.

sebster wrote:

Wrexasaur wrote:We as a species have accomplished a great deal of things, using a great deal of tools. When you begin to look at the average person, and what they can create on a daily basis, you are no longer talking about spaceships and nuclear power plants. On the whole we can accomplish things that require a great deal more intelligence, but individually we are usually not creating any tools, ever. I would go so far as to say that we have become less creative in terms of specific tools, unless you want to start talking about specific guy Bob, who is a toolmaker.

You don't make your car, you don't make your oven, you don't make your toilet, and you don't make your house... among practically every other tool that we use, we make next to none of them through an individuals means, and would be without those advanced tools if not for factors beyond tool making, and well into social organizing. Bob makes the tools and we use them.

No, and no individual ant could ever conceive of building something as complex as an ant's nest, but they all complete their individual pieces and between them they build something incredible. I would argue though that this makes ants more fascinating and more brilliant than if one ant had built the whole thing himself. I'd argue the same for humanity, we've built a society which contains more sophistication than anyone one of us could ever come to fully understand, even if he dedicated his life to it.

Sometimes I just feel that we don't solve many problems, simply because we don't have the ability to do so.

Over the course of human civilization, more and more advancements have been made, and no single person can lay claim to that progress. I have no problem with 'human pride', or whatever you want to call it, I just feel that in general our future may not be long-lived. My opinion is bound to change to some degree over the course of my lifetime, and seeing progress being made is likely to be the cause of that.

I know that we are quite a unique species (at least on some level, there are some pretty amazing things besides us on this planet), but as individuals we just aren't particularly amazing in general. I've known amazing people, but in groups a lot of that is obscured by the way we interact on a larger scale than person to person. It's nice to have computers, clothing, houses, and modern medicine; no doubt about that.

A lot of this comes down to how you think about people in general, and I tend to think a bit more about the bad stuff, TBH. Maybe that makes me negative, but seeing the amount of problems left to solve leaves me with a bit of a cold feeling. I may be living a pretty comfortable life all things considered, but I know of more than enough situations in which people are barely living, let alone living comfortably. This, like I said, leaves me with less admiration of the human species, than it does a lack of understanding of human societies. I hope to learn more so that I may balance that out a bit.

We appear to be quite vicious creatures on the whole of it, even if we have the ability to create complex societies that are quite beyond the realm of complete understanding. I dunno, I feel like I may be ranting at this point. Carry on.

sebster wrote:generalgrog, how do you reconcile your idea that science is influenced by some bias towards a worldview that doesn't match a literal view of the Bible, with the fact that many, many accepted and estabslished scientists are Christians. Likely more are self-identified, committed Christians than are self-identified, committed atheists.

I want to answer this...

Science finds what science finds, and conclusions are drawn from that. There is bad science and there is bias, but part of the process is constantly re-examine and question assumptions. The bias you're claiming would only be possible if the scientific community was overwhelmingly atheist, and it isn't.

It seems like GG is referring to the foundation of many fields of science, though he may be directly referencing the very concept of science itself; It is kind of hard to tell. There is a great deal of science that is simply not re-evaluated anymore, though much anything that would be essential to the validity of an entire field of study, is automatically adjusted for IMHO. If 2 becomes three then you are going to have to an awful lot of rethinking, but I don't know of many instances where entire scientific fields are thrown upside-down. That seems more a fantasy than anything else, although it is true that some things do change, but not in such drastic ways as GG is suggesting... or seems to be suggesting.

Given the fact that I usually ignore threads in which GG is accusing people of 'psycho-babble', at least for my part it is safe to assume that I don't agree with most of what he says in those situations. More than that, I have a hard time following why the conversations are necessary, as they generally have a pattern consistent with having no resolution whatsoever.

Wrexasaur wrote:Sometimes I just feel that we don't solve many problems, simply because we don't have the ability to do so.

Is that possibly, to some extent, a product of where we tend to focus instead on the problems we haven’t solved, instead of the ones we have. We don’t talk about achievements like overcoming polio anymore, because, well, we’ve achieved it and now we’re looking at the next problem.

The evidence of how far we’ve come can be found in how much more we expect. A miscarriage or an infant death is seen now as horrible, horrible tragedy, something that shouldn’t happen. We are a few generations from a time when it was almost more common than not.

Over the course of human civilization, more and more advancements have been made, and no single person can lay claim to that progress. I have no problem with 'human pride', or whatever you want to call it, I just feel that in general our future may not be long-lived. My opinion is bound to change to some degree over the course of my lifetime, and seeing progress being made is likely to be the cause of that.

See, I’d say the opposite, I’d be more worried about our ability to survive if we were dependant on individual geniuses to save us from problems. As it is, we’re dependant on every person adapting to his own circumstances, and society being a reflection of each individual doing just that.

I know that we are quite a unique species (at least on some level, there are some pretty amazing things besides us on this planet), but as individuals we just aren't particularly amazing in general. I've known amazing people, but in groups a lot of that is obscured by the way we interact on a larger scale than person to person. It's nice to have computers, clothing, houses, and modern medicine; no doubt about that.

See, that’s the thing, no person is smart enough to understand everything we’ve accomplished. They way some individuals have created ideas, and come together with other people with other ideas, and then with other people with unique skills, and built all the things we take for granted is a kind of genius that’s miles beyond anyone one person.

Seriously, ant’s nests are incredibly intricate, and full of all kinds of pieces that are put exactly where they need to be, but individual ants are incredibly stupid. Well, we’re many orders of magnitude smarter than ants, and our combined creation is even more incredible.

I may be living a pretty comfortable life all things considered, but I know of more than enough situations in which people are barely living, let alone living comfortably. This, like I said, leaves me with less admiration of the human species, than it does a lack of understanding of human societies. I hope to learn more so that I may balance that out a bit.

Sure, life is cruel and arbitrary, hunger and malnutrition are common among all manner of species. That we’ve built such wealth without completely conquering hunger among our own species isn’t something to be proud of, but it shouldn’t discount how much of the normal state of hunger we have overcome.

We appear to be quite vicious creatures on the whole of it, even if we have the ability to create complex societies that are quite beyond the realm of complete understanding. I dunno, I feel like I may be ranting at this point. Carry on.

There is plenty of viciousness in our species, but also a great deal of empathy and kindness. It is a strange thing that we focus so much on the cruelty of others, and not the kindness, though.

It seems like GG is referring to the foundation of many fields of science, though he may be directly referencing the very concept of science itself; It is kind of hard to tell. There is a great deal of science that is simply not re-evaluated anymore, though much anything that would be essential to the validity of an entire field of study, is automatically adjusted for IMHO. If 2 becomes three then you are going to have to an awful lot of rethinking, but I don't know of many instances where entire scientific fields are thrown upside-down.

We do throw whole fields of science up in the air, we’ve done so quite a few times in the last century. The people who win Nobel prizes are generally the people who’ve changed the thinking of the scientific community on an issue. More often than not the new ideas will face some resistance,

The challenges creationism gives to science aren’t ignored because science is stuck with some kind of atheist conviction, it’s because the challenges creationism gives to science have no scientific basis. There’s no hypothesis, and certainly no testing of that hypothesis. Instead there’s a collection of misunderstood scientific concepts (often times deliberately mangled) that exist as talking points. It works well enough for rhetoric, hence the large numbers of people believing there really is a controversy, but it isn’t science.

dogma wrote:

generalgrog wrote:And this is the point in the thread where dogma starts throwing words like "your ignorant" and "you don't seem to understand" around, as a way to try and undermine is debate opponent. It happens in every thread where someone doesn't buy into his psycho babble double talk and an ad hominem attack is needed to cover his tracks.

I have no tracks to cover, everything I stated was clear, precise, and easily referenced. I call them as I see them, and you misused 4 different terms in your post. Had you not misused those words, it would not have appeared as though you did not understand them, or that were ignorant of their meaning. You say that I engage in 'psycho babble', but that seems rather ridiculous given that I only used language taken directly from your post. If you consider that terminology to be 'psycho babble' then I must ask why you would bother to use it, as 'psycho babble' generally denotes terminology used in the course of argument to lend an air of authority without substantive contribution; implying that the speaker is either fabricating terminology, or ignorant of the meaning of the terminology.

Additionally, it bears mentioning that ad hominem is not necessarily fallacious. If the characteristics being referenced, in this case understanding and knowledge, are relevant to the matter at hand, then the argument is not fallacious.

generalgrog wrote:
Those are from dictionary online..You can argue with the writers of the dictionary if you want to, but they certainly are close enough to be interchangeable..

Actually, they aren't, not outside of colloquial exchange. Notably your definition of faith posits that it is explicitly related both religion, and the absence of proof. While your definition of belief explicitly notes that it is related to the acceptance of that which isn't susceptible to rigorous proof; a good example of this being formal logic.

generalgrog wrote:
The problem of course which is what I repeatably remind Dogma is that just because some scientist performs an empirical experiment doesn't mean his results haven't been skewed by some of his internal scientific bias...thus creating an empirical fallacy.

Again, there's no such thing as an empirical fallacy. Empirical evidence can be corrupted, inaccurate, skewed, or non-representative, but it cannot be fallacious.

Of course, that's why peer review and repeatability are so important to the scientific method. Its not as if one experiment is done, and the results are then taken to be representative of general fact. Sure, that happens sometimes, but that's simply bad science.

generalgrog wrote:
You can support an empirical evidence with biased skewed data all day long it doesn't make your empirical evidence true. And you know that is what I meant but you prefer to go ad hominem.

No, I had no idea what you meant, because you misused the word fallacy.

Also, data is a form of empirical evidence, not something which supports it.

generalgrog wrote:
We can play the semantic game all you want Dogma....but please try and keep your emotions out of this.

I'm not emotional, you're reading emotion into my posts. Most likely because I'm using strong language, however that's only related to the simplicity of the errors you're making.

generalgrog wrote:
Also as I reminded dogma, scientific belief or faith is based on a set of principles called uniformitarianism which says that the basic laws of the universe have always been the same.. never changing... always constant. That's a pretty amazing faith system if you ask me..especially seeing that modern science is really only a few 100 years old.

Science isn't based on uniformitarianism. Science is based on the scientific method, which is itself based on the idea that mechanical laws can be discovered through rigorous, extended observation. Not all scientists are uniformitarians (you'll find a lot of non-uniformitarians in theoretical physics), and that doctrine is dominant only because it has far and away the most practical applications.

generalgrog wrote:
What you are talking about is "blind faith"...if you think there is no evidence for a creator I suggest you walk outside your door, look up at the night sky, look at some of the stuff the hubble telescope has seen, and even taking this back to the beginning of the thread, the very fact that man has an intelligent spark to be able to think creatively is evidence. That's just the simple basic stuff, not to mention the gene code which points to a designer or creator, or even the concept of irreducible complexity. And of course the millons of people that claim to have a relationship with the crator is even more evidence. But go on believing that there is no evidence for God.

Even if you accept those things as evidence of God, they are not evidence of a young Earth.

generalgrog wrote:
They weren't around when the earth was created, yet we are expected to believe their 4 billlion year old earth doctrines because it "makes more sense" than a Divine Creator?

The notion that the Earth is 4 billion years old does not contradict the notion that there is a God, it only contradicts the notion that the Earth is less, or more, than 4 billion years old.

generalgrog wrote:
The whole radioisotope dating system is one HUGE faith system. How do they know that the decay rates have always been the same? Could they have been altered in some way? just because they jump to the conclusion of a 4billion year old earth based on an assumption that radioisotope dating is accurate doesn't mean I have to.

The vast majority of empirical evidence (notably the decay of compounds with short half-lives) points to it being accurate. Now, if in fact radiometric dating is inaccurate, and the Earth is either much older or younger, that fact still would not be evidence of God's existence.

generalgrog wrote:
For example why do we find radiocarbons in diamonds which are supposed to be some of the oldest materials on earth,. much older than the 60,000 or so years radiocarbon is good for dating to.

The 60,000 isn't based on the total disappearance of C-14 from a sample, but an approximation of the period during which C-14 production in the upper atmosphere has remained largely constant. Its a standard of accuracy, not a statement regarding the presence of C-14 in any sample of any age.

I find it terribly amusing when creationists start listing their evidence, it really is absurd stuff they come out with, and it is made all the more amusing to me because i have sat through several of disgraced "doctor" Kent Hovinds seminars and they just parrot all the exact same stuff he came out with. It has been debunked so many times it really isnt worth bothering to type rebuttals such as yours Dogma.

Its easier to simply say that most mono-theists know that evolution is so well supported that is has to be taken as a fact, and educated theologians from the Pope down are firm in their support of evolution and the modern Science that has backed it up so firmly for 200 years since. Creationism is just a fruity little club and they dont have any credibility whatsoever. They have been beaten in the courts and they are being beaten by plain old common sense.

What i really dont understand though, is why would a Scientist be "biased" anyway? What would he gain from it? Do they get any reward for lying to everyone?

Well, the theory goes that uniformitarian scientists set out to prove that there is no place for a certain sort of God in natural history, and so, somehow, massage the relevant data when determining the age of the Earth. How that data is massaged is never explained, its just sort of hand waved. Never mind that legitimate evidence supporting the idea that the Earth is much younger than it appears, or that God exists, would be so earth shattering as to make the scientist who discovered it one of the most famous and influential people on the planet.

And that's really the weakness of creationism, it doesn't have positive evidence for its position; that God created Earth according to the Biblical description. There is a lot of research done to poke holes in things like evolution, or the age of the Earth, but none of that actually works to prove the original hypothesis. And even then, a lot of the supposed 'proof' is based on poor understanding of the initially disputed claim. The diamond case is a good example of that.