I would like to think that we could hope for rather more than “gets his point across” in this context. The gentleman is in the education business, after all. Furthermore, the sentence is atrocious: one doesn’t say “the most than.” One says either “more than” or “the most.” It's the difference between a comparative and superlative, and Mr. Superintendent doesn’t appear to know the difference.
The individual to whom I was replying claimed that the economy was in lousy shape. He cited as evidence two claims that were manifestly false. I corrected him.
If you want to make another argument about the economy, fine. Personally, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm making more now than ever before in my career...and I got this job during the dreaded Bush administration when (if what you say was true) I should have got 1/2 of my last job's pay. Perhaps you would persuade more people if you toned down the hyperbole a notch or two:-)
I happen to agree with you, though, that it's obscene for wealth to be as heavily concentrated in as few hands now as it is, and I happen to think that Bush's presidency has been a disaster in many ways.
Dude. The stock market is nearly at 13,000. Unemployment rate was 4.4% in March - just.2% more than the lowest ever in 1999. These are not marks of a failing economy.
Nice rip from context, given the fact that I addressed that in the very same paragraph! Here, I'll quote it for you since you seem to be integrity-challenged yourself:
I wrote, concerning laboratory experiments that might provide that reproducibility: And even if they did exist, that would only demonstrate a *possible* explanation of our existence, since none of us was there to see exactly how it actually happened.
But very interesting reactions indeed, as far as humans are concerned.
Of course, if the naturalist is right, things like "interest" are really non-existent. Chemical reactions don't display interest. They just occur.;-)
So if I find a piece of paper with "1+1=2" printed on it, it must have come from a human? Or could it have been printed by a computer? Is it any less true when an unintelligent machine makes the "truth claim" than when a human does? Or is it not a "truth claim" when a machine makes it?
Imagine that you lived 3000 years ago, spoke some Eskimo language, and/or could not read. If you find a piece of paper with those marks on it, those marks would be 100% unintelligible. Which only goes to demonstrate that such a thing is subject to interpretation by humans. But if the naturalistic scientist is correct, then there is no "person" to do the interpretation. "True" and "False" are not meaningful categories in such a world. Imagine how silly it would be to suggest that chicken soup "believes" something or "interprets" something. But if the naturalistic scientist is correct, there is nothing fundamentally different between a bowl of chicken soup and a human being; the only difference would be something like degree of complexity of the chemical reactions. But chemical reactions don't interpret; they just exist.
Surely if natural evolution can make flies able to do amazing flight maneuvers with only a few hundred neurons it can make symbolic reasoning happen given a few billion.
This doesn't follow at all. You might as well hope that a tornado spinning for a billion years in a junkyard will somehow put together a brand new Dell computer: it's completely nonsensical even to suggest. Even setting aside the odds it makes no sense. There is no scientific formula for sentience ("mix two parts dirt with three parts water, shake well, and get ready for an argument").
Oh, and by the way: a fly has a few more neurons than a "few hundred": see here. It's more like 250,000.:-)
Scientists may have presuppositions, but science does not.
Science is a human enterprise. It is silly to speak of science as though it tells us anything independent of human interpretation. Scientists have presuppositions; ergo the results they produce are inescapably colored by those presuppositions. The only question is whether those presuppositions are valid.
It is foolish to carry around (as naturalistic scientists do) the untestable presupposition that only natural causes may produce natural effects.
You overlook the second half of what I said about reproducibility: namely, that even if it could be done in the lab, it would say nothing whatsoever about what actually happened other than that evolution would be a possibility. That is a long way from conclusive demonstration.
Furthermore, if the naturalistic explanation of human origins was actually correct, the inevitable consequence is that human beings are nothing more than sacks of interesting electro-chemical reactions. And if that is the case, the inevitable consequence is that we are incapable of making truth claims, because electro-chemical reactions are incapable of making truth claims: boiling water, for example, doesn't make truth claims. It just boils. Lightning doesn't make truth claims. And if we are incapable of making truth claims, then it is impossible for you to say anything about human origins whatsoever. Ergo the naturalistic scientist has already defeated himself: he can't really say anything to anybody, and if he does, it's no more signicant for purposes of speaking truth than a bubbling swamp.
So you see that among other things, the naturalist has foolishly assumed he can speak truth - but on his own terms, he can do no such thing at all.
What an ironic id you have, given your apparently naturalistic perspective;-)
But really, it appears that you would have us believe that scientists operate without presuppositions. That, of course, is absurd, and it is doubly so when it comes to questions of cosmology and human origins.
Claims that humans descended from apes are *not* scientific, strictly speaking, because they are not reproducible. Where are our lab experiments demonstrating human evolution from gorillas or whatever? They do not exist. And even if they did exist, that would only demonstrate a *possible* explanation of our existence, since none of us was there to see exactly how it actually happened.
Much more important, however, is the fact that naturalistic scientists cannot reasonably be said to be objective or unbiased, because they have an a priori commitment to explaining things in purely naturalistic terms. Any suggestion of a supernatural explanation is even on the table for discussion with them, because they have rejected it out of hand at the outset. This may or may not be valid, but it is manifestly *not* objective or unbiased. A genuinely unbiased observer would allow for *either* possibility, but this simply cannot be said for the majority of scientists.
So... do other MSM websites have specific locations for all retractions and corrections?
But that was hardly my point - which is that Fox's behavior (not announcing corrections with the same fanfare that erroneous stories receive) cannot reasonably be described as a conservative or liberal behavior. They all do it. Hence it is not "fair and balanced" to complain that they do not do loudly trumpet their mistakes on page one unless we complain about the same behavior on the part of the leftwing media as well.
Yes, Republican State Funerals (which Falwell would not get anyway, since he's never held political office) are so very much worse than Democratic political rallies disguised as memorialservices.
Then science is not really about finding truth, because science rejects unobservable causation without any basis for doing so. And since it's not about finding truth, then we should ignore it when it claims to be presenting the truth. All it's presenting are observations, which may or may not be correct.
Science is not only about explaining things. Often predicting things is more important.
Fine. But I don't understand what bearing this has on my point. It doesn't have to have any bearing, of course;-) but since you posted in reply to me, I'm guessing that I'm missing something;-)
BTW, how interesting that this thread is two days old and still picking up a new poster or two;-)
If you could make a prediction involving demons, that would be great.
But I think this misses my point. In the first place, of course, I'm not arguing that diseases are caused by demons. But in the second place, the obvious assumption here is that unless someone can make such a prediction, or unless someone can testably prove that a demon was involved, then we're not going to consider that as a possibility. And that assumption is precisely what I'm challenging.
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but the fact that scientists base their naturalistic conclusions upon inductive logic is part of the problem: they say they've never seen a miracle, and so they conclude that miracles don't occur. That's a fallacious argument. It's like digging a thousand holes in the Yukon, failing to find gold, and then concluding that there isn't any gold there, and that there was never any gold there just because I didn't find any gold myself.
Now, if scientists wanted to draw provisional conclusions, maybe things wouldn't be so bad. But they seem to find it difficult to do so.
When scientists attempt to explain phenomenon X, what do they do? They attempt to explain it in naturalistic terms.
To borrow again an example someone else used in this thread: when someone gets sick, the scientist never considers the possibility that a demon may have made that person sick.
The scientist thus a priori excludes non-naturalistic explanations, and like I said, this is intellectually dishonest. It is particularly so because the scientist has absolutely no basis for the exclusion. He has simply decided beforehand that he will attempt to explain things naturalistically. He exacerbates his error by pretending that he has no other choice.
Read my earlier posts in this thread. Overview: Scientists a priori discard non-naturalistic explanations of phenonemena, which is intellectually dishonest.
So when scientists decide that they are going to give us "guidance" on how to respond to the global warming "crisis", are they acting as priests, or as scientists?
And when religions make declarations about the nature of man, or about the origins of the cosmos, exactly how are they giving us "guidance"? To wit: when the Bible says that man is created in the image of God, is that a truth claim, or is that guidance?
And when scientists ignore an entire class of possible explanations because of nothing more than an ideological predisposition against those explanations, exactly how can it reasonably be said that they are on a quest for "truth"?
Stop mixing them.
Ideas have consequences. Actions are grounded upon beliefs. We neither believe things in a vacuum, nor act in a vacuum. The two are related. We are flawed, so the relation does not consistently display itself, but it is there nonetheless.
Slashdot Mirror
I would like to think that we could hope for rather more than “gets his point across” in this context. The gentleman is in the education business, after all. Furthermore, the sentence is atrocious: one doesn’t say “the most than.” One says either “more than” or “the most.” It's the difference between a comparative and superlative, and Mr. Superintendent doesn’t appear to know the difference.
What about the glorious MEEPT!!!
The individual to whom I was replying claimed that the economy was in lousy shape. He cited as evidence two claims that were manifestly false. I corrected him.
:-)
If you want to make another argument about the economy, fine. Personally, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm making more now than ever before in my career...and I got this job during the dreaded Bush administration when (if what you say was true) I should have got 1/2 of my last job's pay. Perhaps you would persuade more people if you toned down the hyperbole a notch or two
I happen to agree with you, though, that it's obscene for wealth to be as heavily concentrated in as few hands now as it is, and I happen to think that Bush's presidency has been a disaster in many ways.
Dude. The stock market is nearly at 13,000. Unemployment rate was 4.4% in March - just .2% more than the lowest ever in 1999. These are not marks of a failing economy.
You've got me on the oil prices though.
"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
(Pinky ponders for a moment...)
"Yes I am!"
You misspelled pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
I wrote, concerning laboratory experiments that might provide that reproducibility: And even if they did exist, that would only demonstrate a *possible* explanation of our existence, since none of us was there to see exactly how it actually happened.
Of course, if the naturalist is right, things like "interest" are really non-existent. Chemical reactions don't display interest. They just occur. ;-)
So if I find a piece of paper with "1+1=2" printed on it, it must have come from a human? Or could it have been printed by a computer? Is it any less true when an unintelligent machine makes the "truth claim" than when a human does? Or is it not a "truth claim" when a machine makes it?
Imagine that you lived 3000 years ago, spoke some Eskimo language, and/or could not read. If you find a piece of paper with those marks on it, those marks would be 100% unintelligible. Which only goes to demonstrate that such a thing is subject to interpretation by humans. But if the naturalistic scientist is correct, then there is no "person" to do the interpretation. "True" and "False" are not meaningful categories in such a world. Imagine how silly it would be to suggest that chicken soup "believes" something or "interprets" something. But if the naturalistic scientist is correct, there is nothing fundamentally different between a bowl of chicken soup and a human being; the only difference would be something like degree of complexity of the chemical reactions. But chemical reactions don't interpret; they just exist.
Surely if natural evolution can make flies able to do amazing flight maneuvers with only a few hundred neurons it can make symbolic reasoning happen given a few billion.
This doesn't follow at all. You might as well hope that a tornado spinning for a billion years in a junkyard will somehow put together a brand new Dell computer: it's completely nonsensical even to suggest. Even setting aside the odds it makes no sense. There is no scientific formula for sentience ("mix two parts dirt with three parts water, shake well, and get ready for an argument").
Oh, and by the way: a fly has a few more neurons than a "few hundred": see here. It's more like 250,000. :-)
Science is a human enterprise. It is silly to speak of science as though it tells us anything independent of human interpretation. Scientists have presuppositions; ergo the results they produce are inescapably colored by those presuppositions. The only question is whether those presuppositions are valid.
It is foolish to carry around (as naturalistic scientists do) the untestable presupposition that only natural causes may produce natural effects.
You overlook the second half of what I said about reproducibility: namely, that even if it could be done in the lab, it would say nothing whatsoever about what actually happened other than that evolution would be a possibility. That is a long way from conclusive demonstration.
Furthermore, if the naturalistic explanation of human origins was actually correct, the inevitable consequence is that human beings are nothing more than sacks of interesting electro-chemical reactions. And if that is the case, the inevitable consequence is that we are incapable of making truth claims, because electro-chemical reactions are incapable of making truth claims: boiling water, for example, doesn't make truth claims. It just boils. Lightning doesn't make truth claims. And if we are incapable of making truth claims, then it is impossible for you to say anything about human origins whatsoever. Ergo the naturalistic scientist has already defeated himself: he can't really say anything to anybody, and if he does, it's no more signicant for purposes of speaking truth than a bubbling swamp.
So you see that among other things, the naturalist has foolishly assumed he can speak truth - but on his own terms, he can do no such thing at all.
What an ironic id you have, given your apparently naturalistic perspective ;-)
But really, it appears that you would have us believe that scientists operate without presuppositions. That, of course, is absurd, and it is doubly so when it comes to questions of cosmology and human origins.
Claims that humans descended from apes are *not* scientific, strictly speaking, because they are not reproducible. Where are our lab experiments demonstrating human evolution from gorillas or whatever? They do not exist. And even if they did exist, that would only demonstrate a *possible* explanation of our existence, since none of us was there to see exactly how it actually happened.
Much more important, however, is the fact that naturalistic scientists cannot reasonably be said to be objective or unbiased, because they have an a priori commitment to explaining things in purely naturalistic terms. Any suggestion of a supernatural explanation is even on the table for discussion with them, because they have rejected it out of hand at the outset. This may or may not be valid, but it is manifestly *not* objective or unbiased. A genuinely unbiased observer would allow for *either* possibility, but this simply cannot be said for the majority of scientists.
Fair enough.
So... do other MSM websites have specific locations for all retractions and corrections?
But that was hardly my point - which is that Fox's behavior (not announcing corrections with the same fanfare that erroneous stories receive) cannot reasonably be described as a conservative or liberal behavior. They all do it. Hence it is not "fair and balanced" to complain that they do not do loudly trumpet their mistakes on page one unless we complain about the same behavior on the part of the leftwing media as well.
And it's kooks like you that prove the AC's point.
As if this is any different from the behavior of virtually every mainstream media outlet in the world.
Didja ever notice how *all* newspapers print corrections to screaming front page headlines on page two or something?
Please, let us be fair and balanced ourselves in condemning Fox's behavior here.
...which proves that my life depends upon much more important things than television.
I heartily agree.
And this proves what? The meaning of "liberal" has changed over the years, too.
Ford cannot credibly be described as a conservative.
Or you can use lynx, where you can configure links to be numbered, and then just type the link number and hit enter. Now that's efficiency. ;-)
Yes, Republican State Funerals (which Falwell would not get anyway, since he's never held political office) are so very much worse than Democratic political rallies disguised as memorial services.
Either that, or you have a hobby horse of your own that you like to ride.
And so do I ;-)
Then science is not really about finding truth, because science rejects unobservable causation without any basis for doing so. And since it's not about finding truth, then we should ignore it when it claims to be presenting the truth. All it's presenting are observations, which may or may not be correct.
So: we agree? ;-)
(Yes, that's a joke)
Fine. But I don't understand what bearing this has on my point. It doesn't have to have any bearing, of course ;-) but since you posted in reply to me, I'm guessing that I'm missing something ;-)
BTW, how interesting that this thread is two days old and still picking up a new poster or two ;-)
If you could make a prediction involving demons, that would be great.
But I think this misses my point. In the first place, of course, I'm not arguing that diseases are caused by demons. But in the second place, the obvious assumption here is that unless someone can make such a prediction, or unless someone can testably prove that a demon was involved, then we're not going to consider that as a possibility. And that assumption is precisely what I'm challenging.
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but the fact that scientists base their naturalistic conclusions upon inductive logic is part of the problem: they say they've never seen a miracle, and so they conclude that miracles don't occur. That's a fallacious argument. It's like digging a thousand holes in the Yukon, failing to find gold, and then concluding that there isn't any gold there, and that there was never any gold there just because I didn't find any gold myself.
Now, if scientists wanted to draw provisional conclusions, maybe things wouldn't be so bad. But they seem to find it difficult to do so.
To borrow again an example someone else used in this thread: when someone gets sick, the scientist never considers the possibility that a demon may have made that person sick.
The scientist thus a priori excludes non-naturalistic explanations, and like I said, this is intellectually dishonest. It is particularly so because the scientist has absolutely no basis for the exclusion. He has simply decided beforehand that he will attempt to explain things naturalistically. He exacerbates his error by pretending that he has no other choice.
And, yes, that is intellectually dishonest.
Read my earlier posts in this thread. Overview: Scientists a priori discard non-naturalistic explanations of phenonemena, which is intellectually dishonest.
So when scientists decide that they are going to give us "guidance" on how to respond to the global warming "crisis", are they acting as priests, or as scientists?
And when religions make declarations about the nature of man, or about the origins of the cosmos, exactly how are they giving us "guidance"? To wit: when the Bible says that man is created in the image of God, is that a truth claim, or is that guidance?
And when scientists ignore an entire class of possible explanations because of nothing more than an ideological predisposition against those explanations, exactly how can it reasonably be said that they are on a quest for "truth"?
Stop mixing them.
Ideas have consequences. Actions are grounded upon beliefs. We neither believe things in a vacuum, nor act in a vacuum. The two are related. We are flawed, so the relation does not consistently display itself, but it is there nonetheless.