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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
 Posted - 09/28/2005 : 10:01:46 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by markie
If a conjecture that is based on the supernatural fails in a material prediction, then it is reasonable to say it is false. However I'm not sure that *all* conjectures having a supernatural basis have thus failed.
The conjecture that a deity of some sort has had something to do with the origin of life has been with us for thousands of years, and has never been verified. If you're willing to say that the scientific quest for the origin of life should be abandoned after a mere 100 years or so, the supernatural version surely failed long ago. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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markie
Skeptic Friend
Canada
356 Posts |
Posted - 09/28/2005 : 10:54:59 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.Okay, let's run with this. Let's back up a few centuries and say we've become interested in the cause of lightning. Since we shouldn't, according to you, assume that supernatural agents aren't required for creating lightning, where do you suggest we begin looking for its cause? The Christian God? Odin? Zeus? The Giant Invisible Flintbangers? The possible starting points are endless.
Of course, science can't detect God so it's useless to look for such. Science can detect material mechanism, so it should do that and try to explain lightening to the best it can. If it turned out it couldn't entirely explain it, even *then* all science should say is that it has unknown aspects, materially. It isn't for science per se to suggest supernatural agency.
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Science, with its practical assumption of naturalism, suggests that we don't start with any of those, and instead look closer to home, first. If it so happens that we come across evidence of Zeus along our travels, we can run with that. But without evidence we shouldn't.
I largely agree, but the assumption of *all* naturalism impinges on philosophic naturalism. Yet practical naturalism can rightly imo assume the particulars of its investigation are naturalistic.
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(This regards phenomeon for which we don't yet have a rigourous and coherent explanations for, like life.)quote:
Why? That's an illogical dividing line, obviously subject to change. 101 years ago, Brownian motion would have been included amongst phenomena "for which we don't yet have a rigorous and coherent explanations," but a year later, that was no longer true.
I well see your point, perhaps it is an illogical dividing line. But I propose that it isn't, because I believe that "aliveness" involves qualitatively different phenomena (substantially impinging on the superphysical) than, say, the mechanical physics of brownian motion. Now, if a scientist wanted to somehow investigate the mechanics of aliveness, he must of course assume certain mechanical propositions to 'do the work.' But it is my predicution that he will not, unlike Einstein with brownian motion, arrive at a comprehensive and coherent explation.
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You're clearly describing a "god of the gaps," which will be forced to hide in smaller and smaller places as science provides more and more answers.
In many areas of study that is indeed true. Still I maintain that science will run up against unexplainables - phenomena that defy rigourous naturalistic explanation.
And here's the thing: Brownian motion is based on the vibration of molecules, which is based on energy quanta striking atoms, which is based on ... etc. There comes a point where one simple has to accept some fundamental axioms as 'the way things are'. It may be that in the far distant future science will come to the conclusion that 'it's just the way it is', when it comes to the aliveness attribute.
So the mystery at the basis of physical reality itself, tucked away from our ability to investigate, may actually be more 'in our face' in the aliveness attribute of biological cells.
Religiously, I believe that the universe is profoundly 'alive' but not in the biological way of course.
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The only person asserting that science asserts any such thing is you, right now. You may believe that your professors also asserted it, but I doubt you actually questioned them.
That is true. All I can say for sure is that I left with the *impression* of strict naturalism.
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For one, it appears that man has not significantly changed morphologically in the last 30,000 years or so.quote:
What would you consider "significant?" The fact that a whole bunch of people have pale skin and blond hair (when 30,000 years ago, nobody like that existed) isn't significant? Plus, is the 30,000-year figure somehow significant, or was it just chosen arbitrarily?
Actually scientists have recently found caucasians with fair hair in 'mummy form' in a desert area of China, which if I recall correctly was dated to around 30K ago. A tentative belief of mine based on certain religious texts was that this type of human was 'introduced' from off planet to the already diverse human evolutionary genepool around 35K ago, and the one of the resultant mixed strains (cro magnon) very deliberately and systematically wiped out the neanderthalers. Long story.
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Yeah, why would you bring non-scientific arguments to a discussion about science? Why would you even consider them to be worthwhile in making up your own mind about something scientific?
Simply because I believe the *truth* is more than what is scientifically discerned.
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GeeMack
SFN Regular
USA
1093 Posts |
Posted - 09/28/2005 : 12:36:27 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by markie...
Actually scientists have recently found caucasians with fair hair in 'mummy form' in a desert area of China, which if I recall correctly was dated to around 30K ago. A tentative belief of mine based on certain religious texts was that this type of human was 'introduced' from off planet to the already diverse human evolutionary genepool around 35K ago, and the one of the resultant mixed strains (cro magnon) very deliberately and systematically wiped out the neanderthalers. Long story.
I'd be interested in hearing more of that long story, provided there's any sort of corroborating evidence.
As to the notion of 30,000 year old mummies discovered in China, I could only find information on mummies going back as far as 3,000 to 4,000 years from that part of the world. I did find articles about mummies discovered in other places that are believed to be as old as 9,500 years.
From the PBS.org website description of an episode of the science program Nova, entitled Mysterious Mummies of China...quote:
The Takla Makan Mummies...
In the late 1980's, perfectly preserved 3000-year-old mummies began appearing in a remote Chinese desert. They had long reddish-blond hair, European features and didn't appear to be the ancestors of modern-day Chinese people. Archaeologists now think they may have been the citizens of an ancient civilization that existed at the crossroads between China and Europe.
The Egyptian mummies we usually think of were intentionally mummified through specific processes. The oldest of these seem to come from about 5,000 years ago. Some of the oldest mummies preserved through natural processes, rather than by specific intent, seem to be in the neighborhood of 5,000 to 10,000 years old.
Otzi the Iceman is generally claimed to be the oldest mummy ever found. He was discovered in the early 1990s in the frozen Alps near the border of Italy and Austria...quote:
Iceman Murdered!...
In 1991, two German mountaineers found a frozen body in a glacier - high in the Alps on the Italian-Austrian border. The body was that of a Bronze Age hunter and it is about 5,300 years old - the oldest mummy ever discovered!
But... a naturally preserved mummy found in a cave in Nevada, USA, appears to be older than 9,000 years...quote:
Oldest North American Mummy...
A mummy excavated in 1940 and stored at the Nevada State Museum in Carson City was recently dated to ca. 7420 B.C., making it the oldest mummy ever discovered in North America.
quote:
Originally posted by markie...
Simply because I believe the *truth* is more than what is scientifically discerned.
Although that may be essentially accurate, thousands of years of human experience show we're much more likely to discover the truth by requiring evidence and applying science than we are by guessing or believing in fantasies and delusions.
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Subjectmatter
Skeptic Friend
173 Posts |
Posted - 09/28/2005 : 13:16:58 [Permalink]
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How can you claim to make know anything about 'life', Markie, unless you can at least characterise it?
You must know something about what life is if you are to claim that science cannot account for it.
Science can't account for 'fhqwgads' either, this is a major failing. |
Sibling Atom Bomb of Couteous Debate |
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R.Wreck
SFN Regular
USA
1191 Posts |
Posted - 09/28/2005 : 16:15:55 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by markie:
quote:
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Originally posted by R.Wreck
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Originally posted by markie:
Hmmm, I'm saying that a Purely Unintelligent Mechanism theory cannot, by it's very nature, be falsified. Perhaps for that very reason it is not strictly scientific. The failure of PUM to 'explain' life, even after thousands of years of effort, would not falsify PUM but should (one would think) give one ample reason to doubt it.
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So what would the failure of supernatural conjectures to accurately explain one single solitary thing since the dawn of time give one reason to think?
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If a conjecture that is based on the supernatural fails in a material prediction, then it is reasonable to say it is false. However I'm not sure that *all* conjectures having a supernatural basis have thus failed.
Can you cite one supernatural conecture which has been shown to be the correct explanation for something? |
The foundation of morality is to . . . give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibliities of knowledge.
T. H. Huxley
The Cattle Prod of Enlightened Compassion
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markie
Skeptic Friend
Canada
356 Posts |
Posted - 09/28/2005 : 17:36:29 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.Besides which, given the rising number of anti-ID articles being written in newspapers and non-scientific magazines, the backlash against ID is already beginning. People are fed up with the obvious lies, and are reclaiming science due to all the good it's done, regardless of what you feel about its basic assumptions.
Well then, personally I'm glad for the recent backlash. I much prefer an elightened and ethical secular state education than a religious fundamentalist one.
Mark
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markie
Skeptic Friend
Canada
356 Posts |
Posted - 09/28/2005 : 18:25:06 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by GeeMack I'd be interested in hearing more of that long story, provided there's any sort of corroborating evidence.
I don't know off hand how much corroborating evidence there is. Suffice it to say that according to the story the progenitors of the new human race were 'Adam' and 'Eve', whose descendents mingled to various degrees with races from europe and asia. It would be interesting if genetic analysis bore this out.
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As to the notion of 30,000 year old mummies discovered in China, I could only find information on mummies going back as far as 3,000 to 4,000 years from that part of the world.
My memory has failed me then, yikes.
quote:
Although that may be essentially accurate, thousands of years of human experience show we're much more likely to discover the truth by requiring evidence and applying science than we are by guessing or believing in fantasies and delusions.
Agreed.
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markie
Skeptic Friend
Canada
356 Posts |
Posted - 09/28/2005 : 18:45:50 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by R.WreckCan you cite one supernatural conecture which has been shown to be the correct explanation for something?
One that comes to mind is the biblical assertion about God creating life and then 'resting'. One might take this to imply that no more life is being created from the 'dust'. Although it was commonly believed not too long ago that spontaneous generation of living things routinely occured, that theory was debunked (by Louis Pasteur?). So the biblical assertion/conjecture, that a higher power created life and is no longer doing so, remains to be falsified to this day. But hey given enough conjectures one of them's bound to be correct!
Mark
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 09/28/2005 : 18:54:50 [Permalink]
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| If Carl Sagan was right about how many inhabited planets there are in just this galaxy, and one of the current theories of abiogenesis is correct, then it's likely that new life is created every day in this huge universe. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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markie
Skeptic Friend
Canada
356 Posts |
Posted - 09/28/2005 : 19:05:35 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Subjectmatter
How can you claim to make know anything about 'life', Markie, unless you can at least characterise it?
You must know something about what life is if you are to claim that science cannot account for it.
Science can't account for 'fhqwgads' either, this is a major failing.
I'm still mulling it over. It's a hard one. How about this as a first draft:
Life is that dynamic characteristic of an entity which seeks its own maintainence, perpetuation, and perfection of adaption to its inner and outer environment.
Mark
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 09/28/2005 : 19:15:48 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by markie
I'm still mulling it over. It's a hard one. How about this as a first draft:
Life is that dynamic characteristic of an entity which seeks its own maintainence, perpetuation, and perfection of adaption to its inner and outer environment.
So either mushrooms aren't alive, or they somehow strive for abstract ideals?
That definition would also mean that there exist many human beings who aren't alive. For examples, those with serious brain injuries, or those who attempt suicide. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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markie
Skeptic Friend
Canada
356 Posts |
Posted - 09/28/2005 : 21:19:44 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.
quote:
Originally posted by markie
I'm still mulling it over. It's a hard one. How about this as a first draft:
Life is that dynamic characteristic of an entity which seeks its own maintainence, perpetuation, and perfection of adaption to its inner and outer environment.
So either mushrooms aren't alive, or they somehow strive for abstract ideals?
Hehe! You've never seen a mushroom rise, in the dark, up above of all the shit it was in? That's pretty ideal.
And besides, I had our cat in mind when I composed it ....:)
quote:
That definition would also mean that there exist many human beings who aren't alive. For examples, those with serious brain injuries, or those who attempt suicide.
Life tries, but it doesn't always succeed. It's dynamic (in biological forms anyways) is always challenged by, for lack of a better term, the forces of chaos-disintegration. The forces of disintegration can diminish the life dynamic, until it is snuffed out. Someone who is near death has his life dynamic seriously compromised.
Speaking of compromised, I need to go to bed.
Mark
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moakley
SFN Regular
USA
1888 Posts |
Posted - 09/29/2005 : 08:57:35 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by markie
quote:
And if you also understand mythical beings, if you take them to be real, please define them and describe your theory to support their existence.
Really, God consciousness is not too different than self consciousness, which we all experience I hope. I would roughly approximate God consciousness to be recognition of your highest thinking and an inner realization of and allignment with your most ideal thoughts.
So your evidence is your personal testimony and faith.
Sorry, but since I consider your God to be a baseless assertion how is your God's consciousness supposed to be compelling evidence. |
Life is good
Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned. -Anonymous |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 09/29/2005 : 10:16:46 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by markie
Life tries, but it doesn't always succeed. It's dynamic (in biological forms anyways) is always challenged by, for lack of a better term, the forces of chaos-disintegration. The forces of disintegration can diminish the life dynamic, until it is snuffed out. Someone who is near death has his life dynamic seriously compromised.
Someone who is massively despressed, and simply not caring for themselves and having suicidal thoughts is clearly still alive, but your definition of "life" would categorize them as non-living. Or are there various "levels" of "aliveness" in your eyes? |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 09/29/2005 : 10:25:26 [Permalink]
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quote:
So the biblical assertion/conjecture, that a higher power created life and is no longer doing so, remains to be falsified to this day.
markie, while I find your posts to be generally entertaining, your continued lack of any comprehension of scientific method is starting to bother me (not as in irritate, but as in cause me worry).
This willfully ignorant behavior, sadly, is typical of many true believers.
In the above statement of yours is becomes obvious that you truly have no grasp of the basics of science. What you meant to say, if you were thinking rationally, is that your invisible sky wizard theory "remains without evidence", rather than "remains to be falsified".
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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