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Debunking of Modern Evolutionary and Cosmological Theories
#11
RE: Debunking of Modern Evolutionary and Cosmological Theories
Let's just take your first paragraph.

"The most pressing and controversial topic of all are the questions concerning where we came from and how we got here."

- Quite possibly true. Very important, of course, most would agree.

"One side insists that we came from a being or deity, while another advocates evolution and the Big Bang theory."

- This 1) is a false dichotomy (there are people who believe in both a deity and evolution, and people who believe neither in a deity nor in evolution), 2) assumes that belief in evolution and belief in the big bang theory go hand in hand (which they certainly don't), and 3) frames the issue as a dispute between two entities (sides). This last one isn't of itself a bad thing if you're discussing things like demographics and historical belief in science/religion, but in the context of a comparison of validity between two viewpoints, the things that should be compared are "Belief 1" and "Belief 2", not "the people who believe Belief 1" and "the people who believe Belief 2."

"Throughout history we have assigned various deities to our existence; however, it wasn’t until roughly two centuries ago that it was even questioned."

- The first clause here is certainly true. There have been a whole friggin' lot of gods. I don't believe that the second clause is correct, and without in-text citation I don't know if this is an unsourced opinion or is based on one of the sources given. I see what you're getting at and don't disagree 100%, but I think it could be far more precisely phrased as "until about 200 (or however many) years ago, the 'West' was socially and politically almost uniformly theistic..." or the like.

"Many scientists claim that the belief of a creator can be discarded based on the overwhelming scientific evidence."

- Again, this simply does not seem correct, or at least, useful. What is "many"? There are a whole lot of theistic scientists. I think that relatively few people state that there is tremendous scientific evidence against a deity; rather, the far more common assertion among both scientists and laypeople is that there is no evidence in favor of a deity, and that naturalism is far less extraordinary, inasmuch as, regardless of the number of things we can't explain, among those things we can affirmatively explain, 100% of them have confirmed natural explanations and exactly 0 of them have confirmed supernatural explanations.

"Although, there are many problems with the second argument, including: corruption of the publicized scientific community, the inability to explain the fundamental living blocks of life, humans’ tendency to change and/or omit scientific theories, the obvious inconsistent and desperate theories of modern science, and finally, the complexity of biological systems that science is unable to explain."

- Ah, here it is: the sort of laundry list of PRATTs/screed of irrelevancies that the slant of your paper suggested would appear eventually. We'll take these in order: 1) What evidence is there for "corruption of the publicized scientific community?" Do you mean, by this, a "conspiracy" or other unwillingness to publish "non-established viewpoints?" These viewpoints are not generally established because they are false and the evidence is not there. Scientific publications desperately want to print a novel viewpoint if there's even some good evidence for it; when things aren't punished, it's generally because the evidence is bad, or that they're really pieces of theology or philosophy cloaked in pseudoscientific language. Such things aren't appropriate for science magazines. 2) The inability to explain the building blocks of life is something we're working on. Everything is unexplained until it is explained. The scientific process is geared not to provide an answer but to provide the correct answer. 3) The tendency to omit or change theories is why science works. It's a process. That's the beauty of science: People argue that "science is a religion" or that "evolution requires a huge amount of faith," but that's just pure weapons-grade balognium, because EVERY THEORY IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE IF IT IS LATER SHOWN TO BE INCORRECT. 4) What are the "inconsistent" or "desperate" theories you speak of? 5) See #2.
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#12
RE: Debunking of Modern Evolutionary and Cosmological Theories
I'm going to offer a few ideas and I hope they help.

i) accusing science of being corrupt

you haven't offered any proof of this. if you could, you've have to demonstrate that it is not just one person who is corrupt, but the whole profession which would be very difficult as it is. That would make a really entertaining conspiracy theory video on Youtube, but it's not going to be a good argument.

ii) attacking inconsistency in scientific theories

Science is not primarily measured by logical consistency (it definitely helps) but how far they correspond to the evidence. Logical consistency is very much based on an idea that our ideas perfectly reflects reality, and whilst this is helpful amongst people- it is again a requirement peculiar in that it is attributed to the omniscience of god.

iii) thinking that because scientists change their ideas it means they're ideas are wrong


For reasons I will explain, you are on more solid ground from winning a debate because this plays into popular misconceptions of the scientific method and debates on the philosophy of science, but it generally doesn't help your argument.

Scientists change their ideas to suit the evidence and are therefore not fixed in stone. Scientific knowledge is man-made and therefore constitutes a 'best guess' as to how things work. The idea that knowledge can be absolute and eternal is peculiar to religious beliefs rather than to scientific ones.

For example; Issac Newton developed the theory of Mechanics which explained the orbit of the planets according to mathematical laws. His theories were accepted even though they didn't explain the orbit of Mercury; Albert Einstein came along and then explained that this discrepancy in terms of the curvature of space-time in the theory of relativity. Einsteins theory did not falsify Newtonian Mechanics, but were a superior explanation as they could explain more. Newton's theory are still true, but have were superseded by Einstein.

However, in terms of the philosophy of science this is debatable if you include ideas about scientific theories being "unfalsifiable" (as this came from Karl Popper's attacks on History and Psychology as being considered 'scientific' disciplines). His ideas, whilst popular because they fit into our common sense understanding of 'true and false' are generally not applicable in the scientific method.


Using the ideas regarding the origin of life and the universe, you are on more solid ground for a convincing argument and these things are commonly employed in debates by theologians to make their case. You could build a really good essay by discussing these points but this is however a "god of the gaps" argument by saying that "what we don't know must be god". Saying that these things are inherently unknowable by the scientific method makes it harder to refute from a Scientific point of view, but it can still be challenged philosophically.

I think you may need to refine your argument a bit, as Science and Religion are not inherently opposed. The prevalence of atheism amongst scientists remains something historically very recent in the last two centuries. Many Scientists were religious and sought to use science to understand the mind of god. This god is not however the god of genesis, but is a god as the source or origin for the universe and it's laws.
What are inherently opposed are two schools of thought, idealism and materialism; idealism seeks to attribute the cause of ideas to the mind, consciousness and ideas and therefore seeks to find an ultimate explanation for existence in god, whereas materialism seeks to find explanations that originate from matter (or natural sources) which exist objectively and therefore is strongly disposed towards atheism. Science tends to favor the latter because in trying to find objectively true knowledge it seeks to find expalantions that can be replicated and so favours naturalistic explanations. science is a free inquiry and is not inherently hostile towards religious belief, but does for this reason have an atheist bias.
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#13
RE: Debunking of Modern Evolutionary and Cosmological Theories
I wrote a big, long, detailed rebuttal for the other thread, which I completely lost when the thread merger happened and I tried to post it to a thread that had stopped existing while I was writing, and I'm not going to do that again, but here's the cliffs notes version:

OP, you make an enormous leap in your second paragraph between "astrophysics is corrupt," to "the entire scientific community is corrupt," and you make that leap with absolutely no justification at all. Even if you were right, your end result is still wrong, and you've tipped your hand something awful by making such an unjustified leap; it's very clear this is about shoring up your beliefs, rather than the truth.

In any case, when you say that astrophysics isn't based on empirical evidence... what the hell would you call the observations of the universe that led to those models being created?

You then move on to evolution, immediately conflating it with a second area of study called abiogenesis and committing a huge argument from ignorance by saying "evolution can't explain the origins of life, therefore it's wrong." This is not only bad science, but it's also bad research, if you submitted this for an assignment.

In fact, "argument from ignorance" is a good characterization of the rest of your essay, since you never really do more than poke holes in the current science, as though that makes your idea of an intelligent creator any more valid or rational, and it doesn't. The icing on the cake is that you referenced Michael Behe, a complete joke in the scientific community who took his irreducible complexity ideas to court, in front of a christian conservative judge, and came away with a ruling that intelligent design and everything he had to say was not legitimate science and deserved not to be taught in schools. He was rebutted on every point; you even bring up the bacterial flagellum as an example, as though Behe's opposition didn't drop a huge stack of papers showing how the flagellum had evolved and was hence reducibly complex in front of him, only to be told that Behe hadn't read them, but knew that they didn't count anyway, somehow. You can look up the court transcripts for that (Kitzmiller vs Dover) to see just how much of an embarrassment Behe is, and you an also look up the type 3 secretory system so see where the flagellum evolved from; acting as though none of that exists is an unforgivable failure of research, for a formal essay.

Ultimately, I give this essay an F, and any self respecting teacher would do the same. I also note with interest that you submitted this to an English class, which is probably for the best.

A science class would have destroyed you.
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#14
RE: Debunking of Modern Evolutionary and Cosmological Theories
I'll start taking OP seriously when can correctly explain what evolution is and how it works.
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#15
RE: Debunking of Modern Evolutionary and Cosmological Theories
Hi Goml, welcome to AF.
It's a good thing you wrote that for an English class rather than a science one.
The response you got here would probably replicate what you would get from the typical indoctrinated science teacher.
Great job.
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#16
RE: Debunking of Modern Evolutionary and Cosmological Theories
He's got a point. Science is totally wrong, obviously, so that means Allah did it.

Why didn't I think of that before. Which direction is Mecca?
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#17
RE: Debunking of Modern Evolutionary and Cosmological Theories
(April 24, 2015 at 4:59 pm)Surgenator Wrote: I'll start taking OP seriously when can correctly explain what evolution is and how it works.

Let's not be too strict,
@gomlbrobro doesn't need to understand the science to write such an essay - ordinarily. the problem is that gomlbrobro doesn't limit themselves to quoting the opinion of others, but makes definite statements such as "the scientific community is corrupt, all science is wrong", period. As soon as you do that, you better know the science or have really good sources to back that up. Otherwise, limit yourself to quoting opinions or you're making an ass of yourself. So far that's just the "avoiding a libel suit" part. If astrophysicists were like chiropracters, you'd be in trouble. Fortunately, they are professionals who don't have to silence their critics with law suits.
Good journalism though is still far away. For that, you'd at least have to get opinions from the other party. Regurgitating the conspiracy theories by some guy is an embarrassment for you.

(April 24, 2015 at 5:06 pm)robvalue Wrote: He's got a point. Science is totally wrong, obviously, so that means Allah did it.

Why didn't I think of that before. Which direction is Mecca?

From where you live, just pray to paris Tongue

(April 24, 2015 at 5:06 pm)professor Wrote: Hi Goml, welcome to AF.
It's a good thing you wrote that for an English class rather than a science one.
The response you got here would probably replicate what you would get from the typical indoctrinated science teacher.
Great job.

Oh prof, you were doing so well up until the fifth to last word Big Grin
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition

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#18
RE: Debunking of Modern Evolutionary and Cosmological Theories
(April 24, 2015 at 3:22 pm)gomlbrobro Wrote: It seems as though this is a desperate attempt to deny their utter uncertainty of how our universe started.  As they discover more and more, they have a harder time conceptualizing their preexisting theories.  To hold such a theory, which is certainly immeasurable (because it is out of this universe), requires an equal amount of faith as theism because there is no way to build up on it, or even prove.  Are we just supposed to blindly believe this?  If they believe this, among all things, how can we trust any alternate theory they propose?  It’s doubtful this will be the final consensus, though it truly unmasks their uncertainty and their capability to pull their evidence from unobservable data.
(Note that this is not a belief held by a small group of scientists; it is accepted by the finest of physicists today.  Professors from University of Columbia, University of California, Tufts University, and the University of Cambridge are just a few among the many who do–even the well known, Stephen Hawking.)

On the whole, I'd say it's a well written essay, with the exception of the above paragraph, which is atrocious and seems more like cheerleading for your own view than anything substantive.

I have two main criticism. First and foremost, you try to cover way too much ground for a single essay. Pick one or two examples and work them. You're likely to end with as many fallacies, but since this is English and not logic, that's not important. People in general will only take away three main points from an essay. You have one main point, but it's buried in about 6 examples. Way too much for anybody's attention span.

Second, avoid extraneous adjectives like 'desperate' and 'truly' -- let the facts do your describing for you. Throwing in adjectives that way raises a person's suspicions; they're too used to people trying to sell them 'new' and 'improved' soap ten times a day as it is. It just raises red flags in your reader.

Other than that, good job. Is this college level material? Seems a bit advanced for high school.
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#19
RE: Debunking of Modern Evolutionary and Cosmological Theories
Poorly written, poorly reasoned, and rife with errors.

If you'd like, I'll give you a detailed and blunt critique when I get home and have the time. Such a task is too much bother using a phone.

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#20
RE: Debunking of Modern Evolutionary and Cosmological Theories
Just one thing: I'm not impressed.

And what's more, what kind of school accepts something like that?
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