The Ghost of Paley
Posts: 1703
Joined: Oct. 2005
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I would like to spend a few minutes demonstrating how Louis is precisely what he accuses me of being. For example:
| Quote | | You love to make grandiose claims but lack both the wit and wisdom to support them, or even make, understand, or follow anything approaching a coherent point. |
Let's see how Louis demonstrates his abilities in this matter:
| Quote | I found this comment of yours in another thread telling:
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Auster's attempt at Reductio ad absurdum isn't the best example out there, but his main point is pretty solid: science, being predicated on methodological naturalism, is often used to support metaphysical naturalism, and this is even more true for branches of science that deal with the origin and evolution of life. This conflation harms people because it delegitimises the intangible cultural and moral values holding society together. I don't believe all of this, but many people do assume that because science is the best strategy in its domain it should be the null strategy in all domains, including the realm of moral guidance. People then replace one religion with another while rejecting the accumulated wisdom of societal selection. That’s why utopian ideas almost always fail –- they haven’t “proven” themselves over time like most traditional ideas have. The Law of Unintended Consequences ensues. |
Bolding mine.
You are, as I have said many many times before, an enemy of reason. Your whole motivation is clearly not to "reclaim science for conservatives" or some such rot, but to destroy reason, the products of reason you don't like, and to assert your underlying subjective, unsupported claims as fact. Evolutionary biology does not in any way undermine or delegitimise any social, ethical or moral philosophy or system. You've made these sort of stupid comments before. Is does not equal ought. By the way, morals, ethics, social systems are products of reason and systems open to explanation and understanding by the process of reason and observation
And another repetition, just to remind everyone and your loathesome self of just how dishonest you are:
Oooh oohh while I remember.
What are these "other ways of knowing", from where, when and how are they coming to "a country near me"? If you think that lit crit/art appreciation/emotion are "other ways of knowing" please explain how these things are not already in "a country near me" and where they are coming from.
YOU propose "other ways of knowing" Gimpy, the burden of proof rests on YOU to demonstrate them. As well as the fact that you have yet to address one single point of my argument, except of course to repeat your original unsupported claims and make up silly strawmen to bash about.
Are you going to get honest any time soon or are you content with trolling and making yourself look like a total moron?
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What's funny is that Louis criticises me for agreeing with him: the point of the bolded bit was that many advocates of evolution conflate methodological naturalism with metaphysical naturalism, and this causes them to improperly derive moral lessons from evolutionary biology. Not only was I not defending the statement "is = ought", I was specifically criticising some scientists for engaging in this fallacy, while decrying conservatives who present this "false dilemma" to their readers. So his tirade about me being an "enemy of reason", having been based on this gross misreading of my position, collapses. And yet this is the very type of tainted evidence that "supports" Louis's right to behave like a jackass! Let's examine another misreading. First, here's my statement:
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My point is that reason and observation underlie the arts and emotions, and that, whilst there are differences in the accuracy and conscious use of these tools, they are the same tools as those used in science. You've done nothing to demonstrate this is false except continually reassert your original claim.
Ok, then, what disqualifies theological debate? God may not be able to be observed directly (assuming he exists), but both reason and observation are applied in this domain as well. People observe the structure of the universe, and use these observations to derive a theological conclusion. Circumstantial evidence is still evidence (no human observed the evolution of whales from artiodactyls, but by interpreting genes and fossils we can infer the event). See, by casting your net so wide you've captured everything, which means your argument goes hungry.
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The bolded part is pretty straightforward: many events of evolution are not directly observable, but can be inferred by recourse to fossil and genetic evidence. Likewise, theological arguments can be built on circumstantial evidence such as anthropic coincidences, etc. Now many people might disagree with my conclusion, but certainly most would agree with my characterisation of whale evolution. Now let's see how Louis handles this:
| Quote | Lastly, your strawvolution example. No Gimpy, that's a bad Gimpy. As usual you have it all backwards. We don't infer the evolution of whales from artiodactyls by interpreting the results in light of the idea that whales evolved from artiodactyls, which is how your claim is structured. We observe certain similarities between artiodactyls and whales and have developed a parsimonious explanation for the phenomenon we currently observe (for all knowledge is provisional, you keep "forgetting" this, read dishonestly ignoring in order to attempt ludicrous point scoring. And failing as usual I might add). That explanation is perfectly capable of being wrong, new data might well refute it. However, therein lies the crux of the differences between science and other fields: honest and unbiased (in terms of developing a coherent explanation) appraisal and acquisition of the data. As usual Gimpy your missing the key point that nobody cares what IS the case, they just care HOW we claim to have some knowledge of what is the case. Evidence could come in tomorrow which overturns the entire state of evolutionary biology as we understand it today. In fact right now thousands of scientists are working their respective gonads off to do just this. Not out of prior commitment to any worldview, ideology or interpretation, but out of the sheer desire to find out what actually IS there, and to test every hypothesis, theory and model to destruction if at all possible.
I'll enjoy watching you distort this section of the argument as you have every other.
[my bolding]
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Notice that Louis doesn't bother to quote the offending passage, a sure sign that the game is afoot. Once again, you can say that my analogy missed the mark, but there is nothing in the passage to support Louis's wild tirade. I wasn't accusing scientists of circular reasoning, but only saying that scientists can use indirect observations (and by necessity, their interpretative abilities) to derive models even when the direct evidence is unavailable. Unless the whales have been keeping records....
See? Louis is what he accuses others of being. And he's one of this board's heavy hitters.
Wow.
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Dey can't 'andle my riddim.
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