For Christians (or anyone else) who deny Darwinian evolution.

[SteveII]

That and the whole scientific method thing.

I'm guessing you don't know what inference means:

in·fer·ence
ˈinf(ə)rəns/Submit
noun
a conclusion reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning.

Or I was just pointing out that an inference based on an assumption of naturalism is different than an inference based on the scientific methods (as I have been doing for many pages). Do try to keep up if you are going to make peanut gallery comments.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

What contains more disorder:

The Old Man and the Sea

-or-

Merriam Webster Dictionary


?????????

I was thinking the DSM.

ZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm guessing you don't know what inference means:

in·fer·ence
ˈinf(ə)rəns/Submit
noun
a conclusion reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning.

Or I was just pointing out that an inference based on an assumption of naturalism is different than an inference based on the scientific methods (as I have been doing for many pages). Do try to keep up if you are going to make peanut gallery comments.

The scientific method has a -requirement- of methodological naturalism, Steve. It's axiomatic to the whole process.

Do you understand why you're being mocked..yet? You talk shit from a position of abject ignorance.

[Jehanne]

...
Naturalistic evolution is like gravity; where there is life, there is evolution, just as where there is matter (or, energy), there is gravity.  Neither are completely understood, but they have both been modeled exceptionally well.

Have you noticed that natural selection has primacy over gravity?

Throw something up in the air and it will fall back down.. Why?

Because all the things that wouldn't come back down were naturally selected against millions of years ago.

QED.

You are absolutely correct, which is why the atmosphere has so little molecular hydrogen in its atmosphere!

[SteveII]

---

Regardless as to your position on evolution, this statement just isn't true unless you equivocate on the definition of 'evolution'. The word can be used in three senses: 

1. Evolution (defined as "decent with modification") 
2. Evolution (defined as "the mechanism that accounts for evolutionary change") 
3. Evolution (defined as "reconstructing evolutionary history") 

The second and third definitions are not testable and there are significant gaps in our knowledge about them. You think they are correct because #1 is correct and then through inferred by a naturalistic worldview, the other two must be correct--but that is a far cry from fact. 

That's not what the equivocation fallacy is. The equivocation fallacy would be if she was equivocating back and forth from one of those meanings to the other without letting it be known that she is doing that. Whereas here Mathilda is simply using the definitions of "evolution" that are actually relevant to science. (I.e. the theory of evolution as opposed to a layman definition of the word "evolve").

You can equivocate without making a formal argument. If you know #1 is a fact and then use that to claim #2 and #3 are facts in the same sense, you are equivocating. 

---

We should have a list, "The 73 stages of Evolution Denial".

I think it's more like a 3 stage loop repeated over and over

---

That's funny, because from your own link, the very first sentence starts with..."While the mechanisms of evolution are still under investigation..." Why do you think they start the entire description of their paper off with that phrase? It's not even like it was buried on page 47, it's the very first sentence.

The very fact you take the scientific method itself, as it continues to investigate things as opposed to pretend to know stuff absolutely, as a criticism of it just demonstrates that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

If you have a theory meant to explain something yet you don't understand the mechanisms--that is what you have--a theory that you don't understand. In no way is this a scientific fact. 

---

That wasn't my point. I was giving the reason why #2 and #3 are inferred. An inference fueled by an observable fact and a philosophical worldview does not a fact make. 

I have no problem with methodological naturalism and the related principles as part of a philosophy of science. But we need to be more precise when we throw around the word 'fact' and ridicule people who object.

They're scientific facts. Not absolute facts.

Philosophical naturalism need not be absolutely true for the sensible conclusion of philosophical naturalism probably being true after the tons of evidence gathered by methological naturalism to support its strong likelihood of being true. [1]

But I would say that philosophical naturalism is absolutely true if the only alternative is supernaturalism and supernaturalism fails to have even a coherent definition. Is there any difference between something supernatural and something non-existent? That's the question. [2]

I mean, if you take the whole of noumena/thing-in-itself to be "supernatural" then that just waters down the whole concept of supernatural. I assume supernatural is supposedly more than that. Noumenological + specialness, maybe?

I believe that the noumenological world is fully natural but it's the parts of the natural world that are by definition unexperiencable  and undetectable by science. It need not be supernatural at all. We can never know objective reality we can only know and experience subjective reality (science studies our perceptions of the observable world not our non-perceptions of the unobservable world) but objective reality may not be much different to subjective reality at all, provided that our perceptions and scientific evidence is accurate .  . . why bring God into the picture? [3]

1. I don't disagree with any of that.
2. If the supernatural has affected the natural world, then there is no in incoherency.
3. You are just replacing God with "we don't know" and ignoring the possibility of God having a causal effect on the natural world. You are defining reality to exclude God and then saying why bring God into the picture. You are question begging.

[Jehanne]

1. I don't disagree with any of that.
2. If the supernatural has affected the natural world, then there is no in incoherency.
3. You are just replacing God with "we don't know" and ignoring the possibility of God having a causal effect on the natural world. You are defining reality to exclude God and then saying why bring God into the picture. You are question begging.

1)  Theism is not well defined -- people of good will disagree on who or what is "god" or what his/her/its attributes and/or characteristics are; 2)  Theism is, according to many people of good will, incoherent and self-contradictory ("Can God make a rock so big that he cannot lift it"?); 3) Theism makes no strong predictions about the natural world; there is no dispassionate, disinterested observation that anyone can make in support of theism; 4)  Theism is not falsifiable -- there is no observation that one could ever make that could ever disprove theism; 5)  Theism is constantly changing -- religions change and contradict each other and themselves over time; it is impossible for any neutral observer to determine which one is "correct," if any.

[SteveII]

Or I was just pointing out that an inference based on an assumption of naturalism is different than an inference based on the scientific methods (as I have been doing for many pages). Do try to keep up if you are going to make peanut gallery comments.

The scientific method has a -requirement- of methodological naturalism, Steve.  It's axiomatic to the whole process.

Do you understand why you're being mocked..yet?  You talk shit from a position of abject ignorance.

You are intentionally twisting my meaning.. "an inference based on an assumption of naturalism" is not the same as "methodological naturalism". I have been very very very clear that I am arguing that an inference on naturalism alone--without the scientific method support--is not a scientific fact.

[The Grand Nudger]

The scientific method has a -requirement- of methodological naturalism, Steve.  It's axiomatic to the whole process.

Do you understand why you're being mocked..yet?  You talk shit from a position of abject ignorance.

You are intentionally twisting my meaning.. "an inference based on an assumption of naturalism" is not the same as "methodological naturalism". I have been very very very clear that I am arguing that an inference on naturalism alone--without the scientific method support--is not a scientific fact.

The definition of methodological naturalism is a working assumption of naturalism, Steve.  Your attempt to peel away and bicker about something else after saying something stupid is another reason that you're being mocked.  Even worse, the thing you've run to......

None of the inferences which you take issue with are lacking in "scientific method support", and nested within that is an "inference based on an assumption of naturalism" by requirement.  If thats what makes something a "science fact"..then you take issue with scientific facts. I'll suggest here, again, that you owe it to yourself (if not your god) to make peace with reality. If some god exists in it, then it exists alongside those scientific facts, not in contradiction to them. This is what taking god seriously looks like. Objecting to evolutionary biology because it doesn't square with magic book is most emphatically -not- taking god seriously.

Your call, always has been.

[SteveII]

1. I don't disagree with any of that.
2. If the supernatural has affected the natural world, then there is no in incoherency.
3. You are just replacing God with "we don't know" and ignoring the possibility of God having a causal effect on the natural world. You are defining reality to exclude God and then saying why bring God into the picture. You are question begging.

1)  Theism is not well defined -- people of good will disagree on who or what is "god" or what his/her/its attributes and/or characteristics are; 2)  Theism is, according to many people of good will, incoherent and self-contradictory ("Can God make a rock so big that he cannot lift it"?); 3) Theism makes no strong predictions about the natural world; there is no dispassionate, disinterested observation that anyone can make in support of theism; 4)  Theism is not falsifiable -- there is no observation that one could ever make that could ever disprove theism; 5)  Theism is constantly changing -- religions change and contradict each other and themselves over time; it is impossible for any neutral observer to determine which one is "correct," if any.

1. That does not mean there is no truth in the matter.
2. That's because "people of good will" have a very poor understanding of what it means to be omnipotent. It isn't that hard and to stop at "Can God make a rock..." just shows that the person considering the proposition is just wants the idea to be incoherent.
3. Why would it? 
4. Falsification is a principle applied to science. Most metaphysical claims are not falsifiable--including the principle of falsification (itself being a metaphysical concept).
5. see 1.

[Jehanne]

1)  Theism is not well defined -- people of good will disagree on who or what is "god" or what his/her/its attributes and/or characteristics are; 2)  Theism is, according to many people of good will, incoherent and self-contradictory ("Can God make a rock so big that he cannot lift it"?); 3) Theism makes no strong predictions about the natural world; there is no dispassionate, disinterested observation that anyone can make in support of theism; 4)  Theism is not falsifiable -- there is no observation that one could ever make that could ever disprove theism; 5)  Theism is constantly changing -- religions change and contradict each other and themselves over time; it is impossible for any neutral observer to determine which one is "correct," if any.

1. That does not mean there is no truth in the matter.
2. That's because "people of good will" have a very poor understanding of what it means to be omniscient. It isn't that hard and to stop at "Can God make a rock..." just shows that the person considering the proposition is just wants the idea to be incoherent.
3. Why would it? 
4. Falsification is a principle applied to science. Most metaphysical claims are not falsifiable--including the principle of falsification (itself being a metaphysical concept).
5. see 1.

I see no reason to give theism serious consideration, which is why I am an atheist.