incorygible
Posts: 374
Joined: Feb. 2006
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| Quote (afdave @ June 14 2006,10:59) | Incorygible... | Quote | | If you can't defend your ideas on these grounds, or if you want to hold discourse beyond observable nature, go find a church group or a bong hit. |
That's ridiculous. There are many fields of science which depend upon indirect evidence of phenomena which we cannot measure or count. Meyer and others have pointed out many of these fields. |
Wouldn't it be great for you if evolution, geology, and all the other sciences you seek to overturn were among them? Then maybe your abstract concepts and lack of supportive data would be on an equal footing?
| Quote | | When I talk about non-biological differences, I am not even getting to spirits, souls, revealed destinies, etc. I am talking about advanced linguistic skills, abstract thinking ability, scientific inquiry ability, the capacity for religious thinking, the ability to create civilization, etc. etc. |
Funny you mention advanced linguistic skills. I'm working on a paper on behavioral laterality in fish. Just did a comprehensive lit. review of cognitive lateralization. Read a ton of papers on hemispheric cognition in the human brain, specifically as it pertains to language and communication. Does it surprise you that the authors of these papers measured and counted lots of stuff (I can't remember a single analogy)? Didn't see any of it overturning evolutionary theory (quite the contrary, in fact).
And did you really just use human "scientific inquiry ability" as "non-biological" evidence to overturn the fruits of that inquiry? You're blowin' my mind, Dave.
Finally, please show me any scientific field, as theoretical as you want, where an argument by analogy and vague gut feelings (it's obvious! were used to deny the validity of measurements and other empirical data that were readily available. My work is actually predominantly theoretical, Dave (despite your implication that I'm a close-minded impiricist), and I'll tell ya something: when you're staring at over a century of work, entire libraries of accumulated data, a vast number of different scientific disciplines agreeing on the same thing, and the very DNA of every living thing on this planet, you better have something better than Ford analogies, appeals to abstract thoughts, and a trip to the zoo.
| Quote | | Quote | | Beyond that, go do your own homework, Dave. |
I've read your books and I don't buy the millions of years. My question is "On what basis do YOU buy them?" |
Fine. You've read what I have (sure you have), critically analyzed what I have (sure you have), and you don't buy it. Largely on "non-biological" grounds, based on who you'd do in the zoo (maybe AIG can add that to their "goo to you" slogan?). Me, I do buy it, Dave, and your question is answered. I generally trust the books, the thousands of papers I've read, the data they present, the stats they use to determine what constitutes relevant findings, the methodology they use, the cohesion of independent lines of inquiry, the scientific method in general, and peer review. When it comes to ape divergence, I trust the history (ever-changing with the data) of findings in paleontology, morphology, allozyme analysis, molecular clocks, and most recently, sequencing of entire genomes. I trust hard-working, self-critical, peer-review surviving researchers like myself, who are actually working in the relevant field (I'm not). But of course, while I'm reading as much as I can of what they've written, I always keep a careful eye out for something I don't trust and that they can't defend. Easiest way to get famous in science is to overturn a long-standing idea. Of course, bad analogies and my own mating preferences don't work in this regard. That's especially true for anything that has survived the inherent scientific cannibalism (and non-scientific objection) as long as evolution has.
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