The Folly of Scientism

[Simple Minded]

Zack, I'm way too old and too tired to rehash such nonsense. You're welcome to your religion.

Marcus,

You also forgot to mention too wise....

"If we fail to speak to a man who can be spoken to, we lose a man.
If we speak to a man who cannot be spoken to, our words are nothing.
Wise men lose neither men nor words."

[Marcus]

Marcus, do you think it is possible to drink coffee, taste it, experience the process, give your opinion about that cupacoffee to the friend sitting next to you... without needing presuppositions, beliefs of any sort?

Rhap, no, I don't . . not even close.

We are who or what we are as people relationally/perichoretically . . to the past, to our family, to our time/culture, to our beliefs and much more. Presuppositions are always there . . though we're usually epistemologically unconscious of their presence.

[Zack Morris]

Zack, just like me, you're a believer too . . we both believe . . you have your religion, I have mine. Surely you have better things to do than try to rehash something that has never been settled and never will be in this age.

Is it possible to believe in more than one religion at a time?

[Parodite]

Marcus, do you think it is possible to drink coffee, taste it, experience the process, give your opinion about that cupacoffee to the friend sitting next to you... without needing presuppositions, beliefs of any sort?

Rhap, no, I don't . . not even close.

We are who or what we are as people relationally/perichoretically . . to the past, to our family, to our time/culture, to our beliefs and much more. Presuppositions are always there . . though we're usually epistemologically unconscious of their presence.

Maybe this is the great divide between you and some others here. When even sensory experience like tasting coffee is impossible without presuppositions, beliefs... Personally I think it is a crazy idea.

[Marcus]

Zack, just like me, you're a believer too . . we both believe . . you have your religion, I have mine. Surely you have better things to do than try to rehash something that has never been settled and never will be in this age.

Is it possible to believe in more than one religion at a time?

No, but that said, our religions are not always 100% systematic.

[Marcus]

Marcus, do you think it is possible to drink coffee, taste it, experience the process, give your opinion about that cupacoffee to the friend sitting next to you... without needing presuppositions, beliefs of any sort?

Rhap, no, I don't . . not even close.

We are who or what we are as people relationally/perichoretically . . to the past, to our family, to our time/culture, to our beliefs and much more. Presuppositions are always there . . though we're usually epistemologically unconscious of their presence.

Maybe this is the great divide between you and some others here. When even sensory experience like tasting coffee is impossible without presuppositions, beliefs... Personally I think it is a crazy idea.

Could be, Rhap, but it's how I believe . . my religion as it were . .

[Parodite]

Zack, I'm way too old and too tired to rehash such nonsense. You're welcome to your religion.

Marcus,

You also forgot to mention too wise....

"If we fail to speak to a man who can be spoken to, we lose a man.
If we speak to a man who cannot be spoken to, our words are nothing.
Wise men lose neither men nor words."

Sometimes "wise men" simply have nothing interesting to say

[Marcus]

Sometimes "wise men" simply have nothing interesting to say

Rhap, I rather doubt you can define what is "interesting" to you without consulting your presuppositions.

Think about it . . .

[Parodite]

Marcus, do you think it is possible to drink coffee, taste it, experience the process, give your opinion about that cupacoffee to the friend sitting next to you... without needing presuppositions, beliefs of any sort?

Rhap, no, I don't . . not even close.

We are who or what we are as people relationally/perichoretically . . to the past, to our family, to our time/culture, to our beliefs and much more. Presuppositions are always there . . though we're usually epistemologically unconscious of their presence.

Maybe this is the great divide between you and some others here. When even sensory experience like tasting coffee is impossible without presuppositions, beliefs... Personally I think it is a crazy idea.

Could be, Rhap, but it's how I believe . . my religion as it were . .

Scary... all those invisible, unconscious presuppositions creating my sensory experiences. Kinda ghosts hiding under my bed.

Maybe it is how God gets consciousness into/out of matter, by breathing presuppositions into it? In the beginning was the word.. maybe there is something to that. I'll presuppose there is.. for now.

[Parodite]

Sometimes "wise men" simply have nothing interesting to say

Rhap, I rather doubt you can define what is "interesting" to you without consulting your presuppositions.

Think about it . . .

I just did. It wasn't me making claims about "wise men", but SM. You should maybe ask him?

[Zack Morris]

Zack, just like me, you're a believer too . . we both believe . . you have your religion, I have mine. Surely you have better things to do than try to rehash something that has never been settled and never will be in this age.

Is it possible to believe in more than one religion at a time?

No, but that said, our religions are not always 100% systematic.

Then doesn't this establish an unavoidable conflict between the modern secular state and theists?

[Zack Morris]

Sometimes "wise men" simply have nothing interesting to say

Rhap, I rather doubt you can define what is "interesting" to you without consulting your presuppositions.

Think about it . . .

I should point out that his presuppositions can be fully explained as the effect of material processes culminating in the formation of his brain and its current state. You'll say I'm ignoring alternative, immaterial explanations, but nobody seems to be able to explain what those might be.

[kmich]

Parodite,

The problem with your 'in-here-out-there' idèe fixe is that it is impossible to account for intention. It only works if you accept it as an a priori assertion, one where the outside-ness and inside-ness leads to thinking about yourself thinking about thinking. Sounds like the laziest and most exhausting exercise.

Nah, the problem is you don't even know what this is all about. It's more like you guys here already don't get the simple things right. Even Kmich flunked the sophomore level and dropped out before he learned to walk and now plays with Marcus in the sand box.

Whatever, Parodite.

I refuse to discuss matters of science with people when it would be crystal clear to a novice undergraduate science educator that they lack the most basic education and understanding of how scientific methodology is designed, how scientific findings are reported, reviewed, etc. Or those who rationalize their basic laziness to do the work of elementary study of a subject matter by completely convincing themselves that they really know what they are talking about so they see little use to listening to anyone else.

I have spent too many years working too hard in studying, reviewing, and publishing to have any patience with the intellectually lazy and self inflated. I have taught enough students to know an “educated” fool when I see one since they are so very common. Welcome to the faceless crowd of the fatuous, bored, pseudo educated, Parodite. You have plenty of company here.

Carry on. Perhaps NapLajoieonSteroids can make some progress directing this thread into some useful coherence, but I doubt it. Best of luck to him. I have better things to do with my time.

[noddy]

im atheist (well, strictly agnostic, buts thats semantics) and a materialist but parodites arguments make no sense to me at all.

we are so limited, our individual understandings and capabilities so feeble that science (tm) (patent pending) is about as relevant to our day to day lives and decision making as it is to an ants.

[Mr. Perfect]

Secularism's reliance on science ensures that incorrect beliefs are purged over time. Secularists held many discredited beliefs at the turn of the 20th century. The flexibility of secularism has made it a force more conducive to human advancement than any religion.

Except seculars no longer reproduce which is the opposite of human advancement.

Think about some of these things before you post them.

Religion, Christianity being no exception, leads to irrational discrimination against non-believers, which produces a statistically significant level of harm. The history of Christianity demonstrates this beautifully. Given power to do so, Christians interfere with the rights of others to engage in relationships, commerce, and even scientific thinking freely.

Discrimination is a human trait found in all groups of people, nothing uniquely religious or Christian about it.

Today, Christianity has been overpowered by secularism.

Just in the media, not in reality. The media is not reality.

Everyone believes something came from nothing,

Not really.

but not everyone has a coherent theory, deduced from experimental and mathematical reasoning that produces testable hypotheses about the nature of reality.

Nobody has a coherent theory, at all.

Yes it has. You've been shown the evidence on numerous occasions and simply move the goalposts each time.

No I haven't on both counts.

By your incomplete understanding of the scientific method, it is not even scientific to claim that humans gave live birth more than a century ago.

How so.

It is no more scientific to claim this than to claim that humans were created and delivered by storks until ca. 1900. Nobody can prove otherwise, right?

How so.

There are also fundamental limits on what we can directly observe. Scientists as far back as the 19th century had to grapple with this.

Right. This is one the major limits of science itself.

You have a severely limited understanding of the scientific method. Inductive reasoning is an acceptable part of science.

Only if borne by experiment. Experiment is the decider of science, not reasoning. Many experiments have turned what people thought were reasonable on it's head.

Larger theories are inferred from smaller observations. This is why theories cannot be proven true but can be demonstrated to be false. The theory of evolution is not only a valid scientific theory but an enormously successful one. Thus far, nothing has been discovered that is inconsistent with the theory.

Other than the fact it has never been established using DNA.

You should look up tautologies. They are fallacies.

False. Given the appropriate initial conditions, there is nothing precluding the formation of proteins and amino acids. If you understand the physics of how something is created, you can work out the conditions under which it could have been formed. That's a fundamentally scientific approach.

Do it in a lab. Until then you have nothing.

Before you do it in a lab, you should look into people who have tried and failed every time to abiotically produce life and look into why they failed every single time.

I think you really don't understand the scientific method. Also you don't understand biology, proteins and amino acids are orders of magnitude from being life. I have some protein sitting in the fridge and I will never be able to make it come to life, and neither will you or anybody else.

You can't believe everything you hear. You have to subject it to the rigors of scientific reasoning first. And creationism fails every time.

But you wouldn't know one way or the other. By just what I remember from your past statements I don't think you know anything about creationism, and so wouldn't be qualified to comment on it one way or the other. To do so would be anti-intellectual.

You should maybe look into some creationists, you may very well find them very compelling.

I don't believe in God, and that hasn't stopped me from, well, anything!

Who said it would (strawman argument).

If there is an afterlife however, boy will it cause you some problems. Big problems.

Nikola Tesla refused to believe in electrons and Albert Einstein refused to accept the probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics, and they remained relatively productive. So what? Should we stop teaching chemistry?

Have fun with the windmills, or perhaps this is a reading comprehension thing or a strawman.

I know plenty of EE and CS folks who not only believe in evolution but were inspired enough by its mechanics to adapt them to solving difficult engineering problems.

No you don't.

Well it is in effect a rejection of science.

No it's not. I use science everyday, and I even appear to know more about it than you do.

It is perfectly possible for someone to reject science and build functioning electrical circuits.

Nope.

That does not mean such viewpoints need to be treated with equal consideration. Few scientific theories have led state authorities to persecute their proponents, and evolution happens to be one of them (in both the United States in the early 20th century, and the Soviet Union).

Evolution was a primary driver of racism, from Darwin's favored races through Huxley and Sanger.

The other famous example is the theory of the heliocentric universe. Both challenged Christianity's notions of the nature of the universe and of man's place in it,

I think you mean Catholicism's notions.

demonstrating that religion will tolerate science only until it is applied to the most interesting and important question of all: who are we? And what good is science if it cannot be applied freely to such important matters? Therefore, to be anti-evolution is typically to be anti-science.

Red clowns skate sideways through astroturf, therefore hamburger farts are purple.

Surely you have a dizzying intellect.

To be anti-science is to reject experimental results, just so you know. Because you obviously do not know.

For those concerned with actual science, evolution is the foundation of modern biology:

Evolution is not biology. It isn't even science.

Darwin’s methodology revolutionized the life sciences, setting the stage for major advances in twentieth-century biology. Prior to Origin, natural historians primarily engaged in describing and naming organisms, along with studying their anatomy and physiology. To establish his claim that organisms evolved over time by means of natural selection, Darwin had to lay out a vast array of empirical evidence drawn from many different areas of natural history and then formulate “one long argument” to explain these observations (Origin, p. 459). Darwin relied on the use of analogy and inductive reasoning to support his theory of natural selection. Invoking the philosopher William Whewell’s notion of “consilience of inductions,” Darwin argued that any theory that was able to explain so many different classes of facts was not likely to be false. After 1859, Darwin’s hypothesis-driven research program, now called the “hypothetico-deductive” method, in addition to his particular theory of evolution, became the foundation for future work in biology.

This is all false.

Thus, Darwin’s legacy to posterity lies as much in revolutionizing the methodology of the life sciences as in offering particular views about evolution. Wallace and others likely would have introduced evolutionary views describing lawful change in organic life. Yet it is hard to envision any work that would have been able to match the persuasive power of “On the Origin of Species,” not simply in explaining the diversity of life but also in instructing naturalists about how to investigate complex relationships. Indeed, “On the Origin of Species” continues to serve as a striking exemplar of how to do good science. Historians generally shy away from engaging in “what if” stories, but most would agree that had “On the Origin of Species” not been published, we would still believe in evolution, but the development of modern biology would have unfolded much differently, and with less striking success.

Evolution is a fairy tale. You haven't offered a single scientific support for it in all this typing despite saying how easy it is to support. This is typical in my experience with evolutionary fundamentalists.

[Zack Morris]

Except seculars no longer reproduce which is the opposite of human advancement.

Think about some of these things before you post them.

No evidence for that claim. The world is becoming more, not less, secular.

By your incomplete understanding of the scientific method, it is not even scientific to claim that humans gave live birth more than a century ago.

How so.

You can't experimentally verify what humans did more than a century ago, so how can you possible claim that people today are descended from people 100 years ago?

It is no more scientific to claim this than to claim that humans were created and delivered by storks until ca. 1900. Nobody can prove otherwise, right?

How so.

Prove it, then. Where is the testable evidence?

There are also fundamental limits on what we can directly observe. Scientists as far back as the 19th century had to grapple with this.

Right. This is one the major limits of science itself.

That is why we speak of scientific theories and not scientific proofs. Even the term law has a meaning far less absolute than the word implies. A theory cannot be proven but is still well within the realm of science if it best explains the evidence and until contradictory evidence is found. The theory of evolution requires a large number of things to be true, many of which are observable directly, and others which are observable within the expected limits (e.g., the fossil record, which has not yet yielded anything that contradicts evolutionary theory).

Only if borne by experiment. Experiment is the decider of science, not reasoning. Many experiments have turned what people thought were reasonable on it's head.

There is lots of experimental evidence for the mechanisms of evolution and evolution (the acquisition of new characteristics and speciation) has been observed in the laboratory. There has never been an experiment that has yielded results inconsistent with evolutionary theory.

Other than the fact it has never been established using DNA.

Not only was the discovery of DNA consistent with the requirements of evolutionary theory (i.e., there had to be a physical mechanism for the transmission of traits that could also produce entirely new ones), DNA has illuminated precisely how evolution takes place. DNA is the blueprint for virtually all of a living organism's functionality and it is susceptible to modification. It explains beautifully how organisms change over time and eventually diverge into separate species that can no longer interbreed. We know a great deal about how genetic information changes with each successive generation and we know that animals share common genetic information, as predicted by evolutionary theory.

It goes beyond DNA, too. Living organisms share common proteins and other fundamental structures required for life, some of which evolved billions of years ago, corroborated by both their physical structure (e.g., Rubisco) and what is known about prehistoric atmospheric conditions.

Do it in a lab. Until then you have nothing.

Before you do it in a lab, you should look into people who have tried and failed every time to abiotically produce life and look into why they failed every single time.

Don't fret. This is a field of very intensive study. Many things once only rooted in scientific theory once seemed impossible to produce. And then it happened. At any rate, abiogenesis, while closely related to evolution, is a problem quite distinct from evolutionary theory itself. For now. The fossil record indicates that life was extremely primitive for billions of years prior to the Cambrian explosion. The geological record indicates that conditions on the Earth were quite extreme in its early, formative years. No one is under any illusion that discovering precisely what conditions and reactive pathways led to proteins and then to RNA, DNA, etc. will be simple.

But once it is demonstrated once, under any conditions, the debate on abiogenesis will be over. It's a risky position you've staked out, given the history of religious predictions about the nature of the universe.

I think you really don't understand the scientific method. Also you don't understand biology, proteins and amino acids are orders of magnitude from being life. I have some protein sitting in the fridge and I will never be able to make it come to life, and neither will you or anybody else.

That you reference your refrigerator shows you have no understanding of thermodynamics. Reactions rates have an exponential dependence on temperature. exp(-delta_E/kBT), sucka!

But you wouldn't know one way or the other. By just what I remember from your past statements I don't think you know anything about creationism, and so wouldn't be qualified to comment on it one way or the other. To do so would be anti-intellectual.

Creationism isn't a scientific theory. There isn't anything worth knowing about it until it crosses that basic threshold.

You should maybe look into some creationists, you may very well find them very compelling.

The last time I read about creationists, there was a group of them excavating a 150 million year old Allosaurus that they believe once co-existed with humans. Compelling isn't quite the word I'm looking for...

If there is an afterlife however, boy will it cause you some problems. Big problems.

Pascal's Wager?

I know plenty of EE and CS folks who not only believe in evolution but were inspired enough by its mechanics to adapt them to solving difficult engineering problems.

No you don't.

You really should look into genetic algorithms, simulated annealing, and the like. Mind-expanding stuff.

No it's not. I use science everyday, and I even appear to know more about it than you do.

I highly doubt that.

It is perfectly possible for someone to reject science and build functioning electrical circuits.

Nope.

Like I said, Tesla rejected the notion of electrons, which means his understanding of the physics behind electrical circuits was very flawed. That didn't impede his genius.
Children can build functioning circuits knowing little more than KCL and KVL. Most electrical engineers cannot explain the physical principles behind conductivity. In fact, the vast majority of electrical engineers could not explain the Fermi level if their life depended on it.

Evolution was a primary driver of racism, from Darwin's favored races through Huxley and Sanger.

Racism existed long before. Evolutionary theories of racism lasted for only a few decades and were controversial from their very inception, unlike religiously-inspired theories of racism.

The other famous example is the theory of the heliocentric universe. Both challenged Christianity's notions of the nature of the universe and of man's place in it,

I think you mean Catholicism's notions.

Po-tay-to po-tah-to.

To be anti-science is to reject experimental results, just so you know. Because you obviously do not know.

Okay, well then you're still anti-science.

Evolution is a fairy tale. You haven't offered a single scientific support for it in all this typing despite saying how easy it is to support. This is typical in my experience with evolutionary fundamentalists.

[/quote]

Mmm hmm.

[Zack Morris]

I think you really don't understand the scientific method. Also you don't understand biology, proteins and amino acids are orders of magnitude from being life. I have some protein sitting in the fridge and I will never be able to make it come to life, and neither will you or anybody else.

That you reference your refrigerator shows you have no understanding of thermodynamics. Reactions rates have an exponential dependence on temperature. exp(-delta_E/kBT), sucka!

An apology here is in order. My own ignorance of chemistry precluded me from understanding the brilliance of your experiments. Some cursory investigation indicates that very cold temperatures can actually be conducive to the formation of complex molecules necessary for life. It wasn't long ago that creationists were fond of claiming that molecules like RNA and DNA, and the enzymes that make them work, were simply too complex not to be the result of design. Maybe it won't be long before the goal posts are moved again. "Well, yeah, RNA and DNA are no big deal, but I've had DNA in my fridge for weeks and I've never seen it turn into a cell, let alone a dog!"

You might want to turn the temperature down on your proteins even further, and maybe throw them into a container filled with water, rocks, and some basic chemicals that would likely have been present in the Earth's atmosphere 4 billion years ago. Let us know what you find!

[Mr. Perfect]

An apology here is in order.

Yes it is. While you're at it go ahead and apologize for your lies and false charges.

My own ignorance of chemistry precluded me from understanding the brilliance of your experiments. Some cursory investigation indicates that very cold temperatures can actually be conducive to the formation of complex molecules necessary for life.

And you still have no life. Back to the drawing board.

It wasn't long ago that creationists were fond of claiming that molecules like RNA and DNA, and the enzymes that make them work, were simply too complex not to be the result of design.

And nothing close to RNA or DNA were found in the article you posted. RNA and DNA or anything close to them have ever been observed to form randomly, and so you are still back in the no science position.

Maybe it won't be long before the goal posts are moved again. "Well, yeah, RNA and DNA are no big deal, but I've had DNA in my fridge for weeks and I've never seen it turn into a cell, let alone a dog!"

And their arguments remain compelling.

No need to move the goalposts, you didn't kick anything through them.

You might want to turn the temperature down on your proteins even further, and maybe throw them into a container filled with water, rocks, and some basic chemicals that would likely have been present in the Earth's atmosphere 4 billion years ago. Let us know what you find!

I already did. Like every other experimenter, no life was formed.

Back to the drawing board for you.

[Zack Morris]

Admittedly, I haven't been keeping up with the scientific literature on abiogenesis (and neither have you, evidently). If I had to do it all over again, I might have majored in chemistry. Fascinating stuff.

I did find this interesting article from all the way back in 2009: Generation of Long RNA Chains in Water

3′,5′-cAMP is not a particularly complex molecule.



The walls are closing in on you.

[Mr. Perfect]

No evidence for that claim. The world is becoming more, not less, secular.

There is plenty of evidence that seculars don't reproduce. And I have no incentive to change that.

You can't experimentally verify what humans did more than a century ago, so how can you possible claim that people today are descended from people 100 years ago?

By DNA.

Prove it, then. Where is the testable evidence?

What's in it for me.

That is why we speak of scientific theories and not scientific proofs. Even the term law has a meaning far less absolute than the word implies. A theory cannot be proven but is still well within the realm of science if it best explains the evidence and until contradictory evidence is found. The theory of evolution requires a large number of things to be true, many of which are observable directly, and others which are observable within the expected limits (e.g., the fossil record, which has not yet yielded anything that contradicts evolutionary theory).

Sounds like science has some real limits.

There is lots of experimental evidence

No such thing. You have experiments, and you have evidence, 2 separate things.

Not only was the discovery of DNA consistent with the requirements of evolutionary theory (i.e., there had to be a physical mechanism for the transmission of traits that could also produce entirely new ones), DNA has illuminated precisely how evolution takes place. DNA is the blueprint for virtually all of a living organism's functionality and it is susceptible to modification. It explains beautifully how organisms change over time and eventually diverge into separate species that can no longer interbreed. We know a great deal about how genetic information changes with each successive generation and we know that animals share common genetic information, as predicted by evolutionary theory.

It goes beyond DNA, too. Living organisms share common proteins and other fundamental structures required for life, some of which evolved billions of years ago, corroborated by both their physical structure (e.g., Rubisco) and what is known about prehistoric atmospheric conditions.

None of this establishes that fish turned into cows. Like every evolutionary fundamentalist I've ever come across, instead of finding 2 different species and determing their descent via DNA, you make appeals to prose instead of posting hard scientific results.

And that's because after all this time you don't have any results.

Don't fret.

I'm not.

This is a field of very intensive study. Many things once only rooted in scientific theory once seemed impossible to produce. And then it happened. At any rate, abiogenesis, while closely related to evolution, is a problem quite distinct from evolutionary theory itself. For now. The fossil record indicates that life was extremely primitive for billions of years prior to the Cambrian explosion. The geological record indicates that conditions on the Earth were quite extreme in its early, formative years. No one is under any illusion that discovering precisely what conditions and reactive pathways led to proteins and then to RNA, DNA, etc. will be simple.

Bottom line, you cannot reproduce in a lab therefore it is not science. Your belief rests on something that is not science. No one has observed abiotic genesis ever, and have never been able to recreate it in a lab, ever. And they never will be able to. And there is a reason why. I wonder if you know that reason.

But once it is demonstrated once, under any conditions, the debate on abiogenesis will be over.

Once God comes again, the debate will be over.

It's a risky position you've staked out, given the history of religious predictions about the nature of the universe.

Real religion (scripture) has made very few if any "predictions about the universe" and seculars have no better record than anyone else when it comes to predictions of any kind.

That you reference your refrigerator shows you have no understanding of thermodynamics. Reactions rates have an exponential dependence on temperature. exp(-delta_E/kBT), sucka!

It doesn't really matter. In maybe 100 years of trying seculars have been completely unable to make life in any natural process, or unnatural for that matter. And there is an interesting chemical reason why, I wonder if you know about it.

Creationism isn't a scientific theory. There isn't anything worth knowing about it until it crosses that basic threshold.

Same for your creation myths. You've built your whole worldview not on sand, but on air, as evolution relies on the completely non scientific concepts of abiotic genesis and the big bang relies on the "expansion of space", both are non-observable non science that can't even rise to the level of falsifiability testing, therefore are garbage.

The last time I read about creationists, there was a group of them excavating a 150 million year old Allosaurus that they believe once co-existed with humans. Compelling isn't quite the word I'm looking for...

Sounds like you know very little about it then. Probably should

Pascal's Wager?

Just reality. Eternity is a long time.

You really should look into genetic algorithms, simulated annealing, and the like. Mind-expanding stuff.

Emm, genetics operates perfectly well without evolution. Genetics don't need any evolution. Genes can be passed forever without a species turning from a frog into a butterfly. You simply don't know any people like you said did. You just made that up.

I highly doubt that.

I don't.

Like I said, Tesla rejected the notion of electrons, which means his understanding of the physics behind electrical circuits was very flawed. That didn't impede his genius.
Children can build functioning circuits knowing little more than KCL and KVL. Most electrical engineers cannot explain the physical principles behind conductivity. In fact, the vast majority of electrical engineers could not explain the Fermi level if their life depended on it.

That has nothing to do with rejecting science.

Racism existed long before. Evolutionary theories of racism lasted for only a few decades and were controversial from their very inception, unlike religiously-inspired theories of racism.

Trivializing racism isn't the first guess I would have had about your response, but given your moral history of misanthropy and eugenecism I guess I should not have been as surprised.

Po-tay-to po-tah-to.

Ayn Rand was an atheist just like you. Perhaps she reflects on atheists in some way. Like that Stalin guy and a bunch of other mass murderers. Maybe you are all just peas in a pod. Maybe there is no way to differentiate among you.

Okay, well then you're still anti-science.

Name an experiment I've rejected.

Mmm hmm.

And it looks like you won't.

[Mr. Perfect]

Admittedly, I haven't been keeping up with the scientific literature on abiogenesis (and neither have you, evidently). If I had to do it all over again, I might have majored in chemistry. Fascinating stuff.

I did find this interesting article from all the way back in 2009: Generation of Long RNA Chains in Water

3′,5′-cAMP is not a particularly complex molecule.

The walls are closing in on you.

Why didn't you read the article first.

[noddy]

the perfectly rational response to arguments about origins of time and space and the universe, be they religious, or be they science based ... is "WTF".

the floop snoops of ziggertysnark are furple.

[Mr. Perfect]

Pretty much. Zack Morris and the Pope have one thing in common, neither of them have any idea whatsoever about things happening 4 billion years ago.

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

I think this was what Simple Minded was getting at when he was talking about adult pissing contests.

The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown Part 1

The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown Part 2: Down For the Count

The Great Galileo-Scheiner Flame War of 1611-13

The Down 'n Dirty Mud Wrassle

Here's Mud in Yer Eye

Comet Chameleon



A Rough Guide to Galileo, The Church and Heliocentricity

Galileo's Great Bluff and Part of the Reason Why Kuhn is Wrong

[noddy]

with this argument i do get confused on the vague "milions of monkeys over hundreds of years" goodness of science vs the capabilities of any one of us at any point in time.

i cant quite pin down if marcus is fixating on the latter whilst rhap the former - my own sense of that is buried a few posts up.