News you won't see in controlled mainstream media.

afds

Ok...I'll accept "kinds" as a classification for the organisms in the biosphere.

How many kinds are there now?


What is the method used to determine what "kind" a particular organism belongs to?

Since no new kinds can come about unless created by God, how many kinds have become extinct since the Flood?

Is man part of the Ape Kind? Or is it the Primate Kind? Maybe it is the Human Kind.

It is good to know that different species can be quickly "evolved" from the kinds. Now we don't really have to bother trying to prevent the extinction of particular species because that kind will quickly replace the missing species....probably withing mere decades. All we have to worry about is the extinction of an entire kind.

You know, I'm not really informed on this aspect of things other than through logic and beliefs, but it makes sense that evolution could happen fast. Our body's hormones cause all kinds of reactions pretty danged fast. I'm watching it happen in my body right now! In AK your blood grows thicker as just a small example. Not a hormone example but you do adapt to survive conditions. The more I've thought about this and studied it out, even though I did leave room for the possibility of the creation taking longer than the 1000 years per "day" (God's time) because I do think the earth itself is much older (eternal matter) these debates have made me more sure than ever in the quite literal creation exactly as laid out. Some time if you're all good I'll share some facts with you.... Thanks guys...evolutionists and creationists. I hadn't thought it through or seriously studied it to this degree before. My own reasoning has helped me put it together for myself more clear than ever!

Hi Russ

You have just totally demolished CTD’s arguments that mutation does not drive evolution. If what you say is true then all dog kinds (wolves, fox’s, coyotes, dingo’s etc) evolved in just four thousand years from two or was it seven of their kind on the ark. Without mutation this entire cohort can only have 4 or 14 alleles at any locus given that they have just 2 or 7 ancestors. But among them today there are many hundreds of known alleles at some loci. So which is false, is mutation and natural selection inventive and CTD is wrong when he states that this is not the case or is the ark story impossible as there must be far more than just seven ancestors of modern dog kind?

To observe ‘invention’ in nature is difficult as it requires many generations for evolution to produce significant changes though some examples are known, bacteria able to digest nylon oligomers or 2-4 dinitrotolulene as just two examples. Neither of these chemicals existed on earth before we invented them last century yet bacteria exist today which can metabolize both.

The most unambiguous examples of ‘invention’ by evolutionary means are seen in lab experiments on bacteria. A classic example starts with a single individual bacteria which is bread up into a colony then exposed to challenges such as toxins over many thousands of generations. In these experiments scientists can take samples of the bacteria and do a DNA analysis at any point, they can also freeze samples at any point to compare how they perform against their descendants of later generations. Given that these experiments start with one individual there is no variability on which selection can work so what is observed is not selection among god invented alleles within a population but among mutation produced variability. All variation observed in these experiments is created by evolutionary means unless god is getting inside the reactors and tinkering in the lab. These experiments have shown some remarkable invention including the creation of new metabolic pathways allowing the bacteria to metabolize novel substances and to thrive on energy sources that their ancestors would be killed by.

This sort of evidence does not prove that god did not create the world six to ten thousand years ago but it does show that evolution is inventive without him (unless he tinkers in real time with all of these organisms). It also clearly shows that anyone who suggests that mutation does not play an inventive role in evolution is wrong.

In Reason

Russell

Wow!

3 vast assumptions, 2 setup questions, and 1 redefinition in a single post.

CONTEST: Can anyone spot the mole?

You seem to forget that we're the stupid/deluded ones. I have told you time and again that I cannot keep up with your dizzying leaps from evidence to conclusion.

Please spell out the 3 assumptions, 2 setup questions, and 1 redefinition for me and my fellow evolutionists. It would be even more helpful if you would explain why each item is what you have concluded it is.

Thanks in advance.

Care to show us your math? I'd hate to buy into something only to find out it was the result of faulty arithmetic.

Hi CTD

Sure, it’s pretty simple maths, you won’t need your calculator.

A locus is a location on a DNA strand, there can only be one DNA sequence at a given location on a given strand of DNA. Different individuals sometimes carry different sequences, called alleles, at a given locus though some sequences are very common and may be carried by most if not all of a given species. In diploid species, such as us and dogs, we carry two parallel DNA strands, one from our father and one from our mother in each chromosome so for each locus an individual can carry two allele’s, one on each strand, though again they are often identical so in effect many individuals only carry one variant or allele at many loci.

On the ark there were, according to the bible, either two or seven of any kind of animal so among dog kind there were either two (allele’s per individual) times two or seven individuals giving us 2x2=4 alleles or 7x2=14 alleles. That is true for any given kind on the ark. Today we find, in humans who are supposed to have started from just two individuals (max of four alleles per loci) that there are, on average, 13-14 alleles for every single locus in our genome while quite a number of Loci have more than 50 alleles. The numbers in dogs are similar with the highest known number of alleles at a given locus being 72 last time I checked. This figure leaps dramatically when you add fox’s etc into the mix as these carry a very different set of alleles and even a number of different loci that don’t match up at all to dogs. These variations are easily enough explained through ToE but don’t fit with the idea both that evolution can’t invent new things (CTD’s suggestion) and the idea that all of these organisms are descendants of just two or seven individuals who were carried on the ark (Russ’s suggestion).

P.S. Russ you are wrong when you state that "they believe that in only a few million years, every plant and animal alive on the planet today was produced out of primordial mud." The evidence suggests that life has existed on this planet for over 3.5 billion years or 800000 times longer than the claimed period between the ark and the present.

In Reason

Russell

So where's the math which demonstrates this?

No, actually you are wrong.

You are again forgetting fundamentals while believing lies that are being presented as "evidence".

If you forget again, just try to remember:

(1) How safe amalgam fillings are (the scientific evidence says so!)

(2) How safe vaccines are (the scientific evidence says so!)

(3) How safe Aspartame is (the scientific evidence says so!)

(4) How good fluoride is for you (the scientific evidence says so!)

(5) How Vioxx is safe too! (the scientific evidence says so!)


The truth is...

Rocks and water simply do not conspire together to become highly-complex, self-aware, self-reproducing, symmetrical machines.

Evolution is a myth being used as a social control.

If you are an evolutionist, you are the controlled.

I should mention this as well; And I do this because I care for people and do not want to them suffer as a result of their induced ignorance.

If, one day, you happen to be asked to put a mark on your right hand or forehead, and if that mark happens to be required to buy or sell things, then you may be glad that you've taken the time to read this:

The Bar Code and the Mark of the Beast

Learn the Bible In 24 Hours - An intelligent, in-depth introduction to scripture

"...for by your drugs and poisons were all the nations deceived." -BIBLE

No you're wrong. No you are. No you. You. You. Nuh uh! My Daddy can beat your Daddy at chess! While this may seem wildly sarcastic and rude of me, I'm sure you see from a debating standpoint how illogical it is to just say someone is wrong and end the statement like that without any supporting evidence. What's that? You have supporting evidence below, you say? Let's have a look.



"They" say diet cola is OK for you too but it sure as heck ain't! That in no way falsifies evolution -- nor do I even so much as see a parallel here (other than your own imaginary parallel). For that matter, even if some people were using evolution to exploit this or that, it does not invalidate evolution, it simply means some people are using it for illicit purposes.



Could you point me towards one individual or school of thought which makes this claim? Repeating it over and over like a mantra won't make it any more true. It's a clever tactic though. On a semi-unrelated note I'm rather fond of music played on the hammered dulcimer. Perhaps if I run around and routinely say that hammered dulcimer music is so incredibly popular today people will begin to follow suit and thereby make it popular.

Listing a bunch of conspiracy theories and then saying how everyone has been fooled by them is not invalidating proof for evolution. If you want to disprove evolution, I'd suggest you stay on the subject of evolution itself.

Hi CTD

So where's the math which demonstrates this?

It’s all in that post. We are diploid species, that’s an observation, two DNA strands in parallel one from our fathers and one from our mothers form each of our chromosomes. Each DNA strand carries just one Allele at any given locus, that’s simple logic and observation. DNA is like a sting of beads, you can’t have two beads in the same place on the string. A Locus is a point on a DNA strand and the code there is sometimes called a gene. We observe that the strands must line up precisely meaning that the positions are fixed or the strand from our mother would not work with the strand from our father. So given that locations on strands are strictly fixed and that we each carry just two strands each individual carries often just one or at most two Allele’s for any locus. Adam and Eve were two people (Well that’s what the bible says at least) meaning that between them they could carry at most four alleles.

Here’s the maths, 2 (number of people in the population, Adam and Eve) times 2 number of Allele’s at any given locus that a human can carry thus the maths is this. Calculators at the ready.

2x2=4

So for humans, if genesis is true and evolution is not inventive, there can be at most 4 different alleles at any locus in our entire population. We obseve that this is not the case by the way with some Loci having over 50 Allele’s.

Now for the ark it is claimed that there were seven of some kinds so the sum becomes simply this. Seven individuals times two allele’s per loci (which is the max).

7x2=14

So for any given kind there could be at most 14 allele’s for any locus carried by the individuals on the ark. Again this is not what we observe when we actually look at the DNA of the species around us.

What other maths do you want?
Do you need to borrow my calculator?

In Reason

Russell

Hi Russ

P.S. Russ you are wrong when you state that "they believe that in only a few million years, every plant and animal alive on the planet today was produced out of primordial mud." The evidence suggests that life has existed on this planet for over 3.5 billion years or 800000 times longer than the claimed period between the ark and the present.
No, actually you are wrong.

Which part of that statement was wrong? You can say that science has been wrong before, it obviously has, but it was good science that worked that out in almost all cases but the statement above is the current best information we have. It is supported by all sorts of evidence, evidence that you have not yet been able to fault. Can you show me were anything I said was wrong or is it all smoke and mirrors with you? Do you apply the same rigor to all areas of research you undertake? Scary!!

Rocks and water simply do not conspire together to become highly-complex, self-aware, self-reproducing, symmetrical machines.

Again can you prove this? I like, most here probably, understand that you passionately believe this just as you passionately believe many things but I don’t want to know what you are passionate about I’d rather know what you can demonstrate to be true. Can you prove that abiogenesis is impossible especially in light of the many recent successes in demonstrating very simple self replication in chemical systems?

Historically it has been religions that are tools of social control, what better control than to convince people that there is an all knowing being watching over them every minute of every day with a maniacal interest in their sex lives (et al). ToE on the other hand says, this is how we got here, the rest is up to you. Control? I don’t see it.

ROTFLMAO I love the bar code piece, that’s too funny. Mega conspiracy theories always tickle my fancy especially such transparently loopy ones.

I hope you weren’t serious about that!

All the best Russ.

In Reason

Russell

My bad. I thought you had something in mind that might at some point give the illusion of making sense.

Nevermind.

If by 'science' you refer to empirical science, you are mixing apples and oranges. The issues are historical in nature. If you mean 'science' in a broad and proper sense, this includes historical investigative methods. Proper historical methods will not give the results you support.

An attempt to misplace the burden of proof.

Jeanie, if you're watching, I hope you'll note the large number of logical fallacies.

Given your past performance as an historian, I'd have to see some evidence, proper evidence.

Hi CTD

Sorry I know that genetics is a complex subject. Can you tell me which bit of that you did and did not understand and I’ll try to explain the hard bits better.

Russell

Hi CTD


If by 'science' you refer to empirical science, you are mixing apples and oranges. The issues are historical in nature. If you mean 'science' in a broad and proper sense, this includes historical investigative methods. Proper historical methods will not give the results you support.

Yes I am referring to empirical science. You’ll have to show me the apples and oranges here; it’s all apples as far as I can see. The age of the earth is determined by empirical observations from many different fields of research all of which give consistent answers. The only field which disagrees is human historical records. Humans are fallible beings, subject to flights of fancy and imagination, subject to the whims of deceptions purposeful and pious, is there any real mystery that Chinese whispers from so long ago don’t carry with them accurate historical information? Is there any real wonder that we find historical records written by ancient and ignorant peoples from thousands of years ago to be wanting in accuracy when compared with information that predates them by billions of years, a span of time they could not even imagine in their wildest dreams?

An attempt to misplace the burden of proof.

Jeanie, if you're watching, I hope you'll note the large number of logical fallacies.

If you read back you’ll see that it was Russ who made the positive claim when he said that “Rocks and water simply do not conspire together to become highly-complex, self-aware, self-reproducing, symmetrical machines.” Now I have to say that that passage was vaguely worded and misleading but I assumed that he meant abiogenesis did not happen and I asked him to support that statement because we have some evidence that suggests he’s wrong. I never said that abiogenesis was true, I don’t know whether it is or not. In short Russ made the positive claim I simply asked him to show us his evidence. That is not shifting the burden of proof that is asking him to put up or …

In Reason

Russell

I thought about responding to this in the thread devoted to history, but it's not worth making the transfer.

A couple moments' reflection is all that's required to understand that empirical science isn't the right tool for investigating history. Whether you want to know what happened 10 minutes ago or 10 centuries, the most effective way to find out is to ask someone. It's the fastest and the most accurate way to investigate the past. Empirical methods, on the relatively few occasions they are employed, serve a secondary, supplemental role.

Intuitively everyone learns this as a small child. I don't think most folks bother to analyze the hows & whys of learning processes - they just use them. Anyone who cares can analyze the methods and figure it out. Not hard at all.

Too erroneous to bother with just now. Conclusions based upon numerous empty assumptions and flawed methods cannot be verified. Verification is an important part of investigating history.

We have had an abiogenesis thread around for a while, and it still lacks evidence that any such thing ever happened. Russ' conclusion appears very safe.

Your actual question:
is in keeping with Darwinist tradition. "Whatever is possible must've happened, no matter how improbable..." etc. But even if you convince a person something is possible, that doesn't even imply it actually happened. There are two burdens of proof involved, and no hope in sight for evolutionism on either issue.

I take it you mean this in all seriousness? Have you ever played Chinese whispers? Do you automatically assume that every person you ask is being completely honest with you and with themselves, and that they have the capacity to accurately recall every fact you are asking about? You're confident that they are an authority -- that they can correctly interpret the events and relate them without error?

So witnesses in court are always completely reliable are they? And their stories never contradict each other?

We can also ask someone about something that happened centuries ago, can we? And this is more reliable than trying to find empirical evidence?

I'm still waiting myself for an explanation of what are the apples and what are the oranges. Looks more like a fruit salad to me.

CTD:Whether you want to know what happened 10 minutes ago or 10 centuries, the most effective way to find out is to ask someone.

Depends on "who" you ask.... : )

Slow down....I might need a calculator....Having some serious brain fog and math was never my subject : ) Speak in lay terms unless your point is to show us lay folk your superior intellect.

What is your point, Russell about the alleles?? You talking about traits by our one set of parents and the seeming contradictions with races, etc.??

I wouldn't want to "go there" with some of it, but personally I use to wonder about the idea that brothers and sisters literally married in the beginning. But....when you take into account that they were alive much longer those relationships were more diluted genetically. Probably not your point... Then of course you have conditions like lots of sun and not so much sun... We were positively glowing and opaque when we moved back down to the lower 48 after 6 years in Alaska!!!

You know - in thinking about creating worlds and all that...when you think about how infinite the universes are....our little finite minds just can't comprehend such vast endeavors. It is all completely organized and scientific. You're looking at a tiny little piece of the puzzle Russell. We all are, really, if we are using it to try and prove the existence of God (or lack thereof). He won't be found that way.

Asking someone is the primary method everyone employs. Just monitor yourself, or check out a little history. The reason this method is so commonly employed is because it is the best, and often the only method available.

You can't find an historian who doesn't look first to what's written about a given event. You couldn't function in your day-to-day life without this method, unless you're some sort of independent hermit.

Further discussion shouldn't be needed, but anyone who wants me to waste further time explaining the obvious should post in the appropriate thread.

LOL, you just ignored most of what I said.

So you really do believe that all witness statements are the absolute truth, and they never contradict each other?

Sure, talking to people is one way of gathering information. It can be a very flawed way though, which is why we do other things as well like look at empirical evidence.

If this is part of your own personal system for discovering truth, so be it I guess . . .

Hi Jeanie

I’m sorry but it does all get a bit confusing. I’m going to use books as an analogy which isn’t totally accurate but it will hopefully give you an idea of what I’m going on about.

In short we each carry two sets of genes, one from our father and one from our mother. They are broken into chromosomes and let’s say for argument that number 7 is the instructions for making a leg. For this analogy we’ll say that the chromosomes are like books so to find out how to make a leg you’d look up book 7. They aren’t actually broken up that way, not even close but the analogy is accurate as far as it goes and so should still be accurate enough to show you the problem I was trying to explain.

So you have one book from your mother and one book from your father telling you how to build a leg. They are different because they come from two different people though both are probably workable legs with just minor details being different. Your mother may have shorter legs than your father with finer toes and flatter nails for example. You’re body was built using some pages from each so you are a composite of features from your father and your mother.

We have observed that the letters in the books can be changed and that most of the time that will make no difference to the books because it happens in bits you don’t read or the changes are so subtle that they don’t change the meaning of the book such as making an O a little bit shorter but still an O. There are some changes however which do change the meanings of the book, in these cases the letters actually change to something completely different. Both of these are called mutations. In most cases they will simply lead that part of the book to make no sense but occasionally, very occasionally, one of those changes makes the book better. That’s called a beneficial mutation. These changes are mostly random and they are what makes evolution inventive.

OK so don’t stress too much about that bit if it doesn’t make sense to you. The upshot of it is that Adam and Eve, if they were human, could have just two of each book so they could have between them just four toe nail chapters. If evolution is not inventive today we must be the products of mixing and matching the chapters of those same four books so there can be at most four different toenail chapters out there. For the animals on the ark there were either two of seven of them. That makes, at two books each, either four or fourteen different versions of each chapter.

Each different version of a chapter is called an Allele and, as you can see, there are a very limited number of them if the bible story is true and evolution is not capable of inventing new ones. We have only sampled a very small number of humans yet we already know of many more than four different versions of some of these chapters. Over fifty versions in a number of cases so either the bible is wrong and we did not start from just two individuals (and animals did not start from just two or seven individuals) or evolution is capable of creating new, successful, functional chapters in our books.

That’s the gist of what I was saying.

Does that make sense Jeanie?

You are right we are far too limited to ‘get it all’ but we can look at pieces and work out some amazing things. Can we find god or prove he does not exist this way? No I don’t believe we can but we have found nothing so far in all of the areas we have explored that makes a god necessary to anything at all in this universe. People are still free to believe in him/her/it/them but for me I see no reason to, if he’s real we may work that out one day, if not we’ll probably never know for sure, but for the moment there is no good reason to accept any of the thousands of gods we’ve invented so far as more than fantasy or wishful thinking IMHO.

Russell

I do understand the basics, at least, of what you are talking about but thanks for the refresher...seriously. You were talking about what I thought you were. But with mutations...why couldn't things have changed? Over the ages especially? And with how spread out our first parent's children would have been considering how many Eve must've had. (A lot more than we do now....) People lived to be hundreds of years old originally and were stronger - sometimes much bigger. Until the flood. Then you have conditions....I do believe in the basic fact that we evolve and adapt...obviously we do. I just don't think we originated that way mate! : )

(That I don't think we originated by evolution....I think Adam was a complete person and the first human on earth).

CTD: I was just being facicious (sp?) if you're referring to me. I'm just saying we can and should ultimately get our answers from our maker. He has never let me down in asking for direction to find truth.. in its many different forms. I don't accept everything people say obviously and doubt you do either. The Holy Ghost has before been called the teacher....

Hi again CTD

Observation in all its forms, Empiricism in other words, is the source of knowledge. Word of mouth, written words on paper etc are methods of passing on what has been discovered empirically. How does the man down the street know what he knows about the world? Either he observed it or he was told about it. If he was told he was told by someone who either observed it or who was told. Except for imaginative inventions, fairytales, fictional stories, gods etc the buck stops with observation other wise its turtles all the way down.

Who can tell us what the earth was like before man was here? Empiricism, correctly used can give us information.

Who can tell us about the great flood of Noah? There are stories from cultures all over the planet about great floods but the details don’t mesh. If there’s truth there it’s hidden by inaccurate copying over many generations. At face value it seems more likely that they are not talking about the same event so how can we know about it. We observe what floods do around us as they still happen today so we can go out and look for the evidence you would expect to find if this story was true. Empiricism applied to history. Of course you already know that the evidence just isn’t there, the great flood did not happen at least not as described in the bible.

Have you ever played Chinese whispers? Have you ever watched a court case in progress? Surely you are aware that humans lie, deceive, forget, confabulate, misunderstand etc etc. We are very prone to getting it wrong even when we think we have the story exactly right. Empirical evidence can’t lie, we may misunderstand it but it can’t lie or forget or confabulate no matter how many years after the event it is observed.

In short to write off empiricism is to build a turtles all the way down view of the world. Infinite regress is a logical fallacy as I’m sure you know yet here you are presenting it as the way we should explore history.

You are correct that we can’t prove abiogenesis occurred, that was not my point, I never claimed that we could but Russ said that it didn’t occur. He made a statement of knowledge that is not supported by the evidence which includes some very interesting simple chemical only self replicators. Not proof but there is no proof for what Russ said either.

Have you ever read “Climbing Mount Improbable” by Richard Dawkins? If you want to understand a bit about what is really claimed for ToE you could do worse than to read this book. The levels of probability that need to be scaled are far smaller than you suggest. Evolution works on relatively small levels of improbability. The effects only seem highly improbable when you don’t understand the ratcheting effect of evolution or the very large numbers of organisms involved. Both of these reduce the improbabilities to relatively low levels.

All the best till next time CTD.

In Reason

Russell

Hi Jeanie

If you believe that we evolve new characteristics as we go along then we are in agreement. That was my point. The views that evolution is not inventive and that we came from just two individuals are incompatible. One or the other must be false. According to their statements here CTD holds one view while Russ holds another so I was interested to find out how they reconciled these views.

Russell

What? You expect me to bother with the most obvious fallacies?

Because some sources are unreliable, all sources are unreliable. No-oh-OH! And your ad hom tactics wouldn't even appear if this were the case. Your actions shoot down your own arguments.

Oh I don't believe that at all. Anecdotal evidence can be very pertinent. It just isn't always reliable, and Russ has explained some good reasons why we need empirical evidence too when we are looking for the truth. The implication here was that, as you said, if you want to find something out you should just ask someone. Maybe you didn't mean this literally, in all cases?

While I wouldn't dispute that Russ holds different views than I do, I'm not aware of any clash, let alone incompatibility among the views we've stated on this forum.

What's incompatible is Russell2's evolutionism. It's totally incompatible with the views we share. This is hardly newsworthy.

The insightful will be expecting more attempts to redefine "evolution". RAZD has a thread devoted to that endeavour, and I have posted my best solution to the issue. If any would care to gainsay it, well, there it is.

How do you obtain your empirical evidence?

Another attempt to portray evolution as ill-defined, CTD.

Here is my answer: I welcome Russell2 to comment, correct and otherwise contribute to the thread in question.

Of course this doesn't mean that CTD and others will understand that various ways to define evolution can still all mean the same thing.

Enjoy.

By observation and testing.

We actually use the scientific method every day in some simple ways. Let's say your phone isn't working. What do you do? You try to find out why it isn't working. Is it plugged in? let's test that idea -- yes it is plugged in, so that isn't the fault. Is there a fault on this line? Let's plug in another phone which is working and see if it works here. It doesn't -- OK, so it's probably a fault on the line. Next step, contact the phone company.

You're making observations, formulating hypotheses, and testing them. What works better -- this, or asking someone if they think they know what's wrong with your phone? At some point, someone is going to have to investigate the physical evidence.

Some types of science lend themselves better to anecdotal evidence than others. Sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc are some of these. Other types are better studied by the methods above. I think it's only logical to keep in mind that people make mistakes and aren't always trustworthy. Ever read Herodotus? He's a cracking good read but he never intended to be completely accurate in his historical accounts. In those days, historians were expected to beef things up to be entertaining. Historians always have biases of some kind, just like journalists do, because this is the nature of the human being. Again, it would be illogical to discount this.

On a side note:

Let's put this to a test then. In the big bang theory. Is any part of it testable? And where did the matter come from that exploded? And if energy cannot be created or destroyed, where did the energy come from for such an explosion that created our universe?

So basically, the big bang has no empirical evidence. Only a conclusion that because the universe expands, there must have been an explosion. Sorry, not testable, not observable. therefore not empirical evidence.

Then we have the oil taking millions of years to form from decaying bio-mass. Let's see of the claim makes empirical evidence. Is there any proof of this besides that oil exists? No. Is there any observable process of the time that it takes to do this? No. Is it testable and repeatable? No. So what part of the claim was ever tested or observed as a process? None of it ever was. So this too fails to make empirical evidence.

There's a thread about oil in which you can place these comments.

If you want to talk astronomy, it's one of my favourite subjects. I think that needs to go in another thread as well.

What about placing your remarks about "kinds" here? If we could try to stick to the topics of each thread more closely, especially as this forum has grown in size, it might help people to know where to look for pertinent discussions.

Hi Ikester7579

Let's put this to a test then. In the big bang theory. Is any part of it testable?

Well yes it is in quite a few ways. The theory predicts the existence and character of the cosmic microwave background which is basically the afterglow of the big bang itself. Later observations have confirmed these predictions to a very high degree of precision. Big Bang theory makes predictions about the relative abundances of various elements in our universe and of the large scale structure of our inverse and again later observations have born out these predictions so it is well and truly empirically testable

The fine structure of the very early universe, in the first few microseconds, is not well undrerstood. In this realm we have limited evidence and a number of competing theoires which can’t yet be tested though some tests are upcoming when the LHC goes on line in the near future. This will give us insights into how matter behaves at the sorts of energy levels whih existed far closer to the initiating moment of the big bang that we currently have and may well rule out some of the competing theorys. Time will tell.

Likewise with oil we can’t reproduce the process given how long it takes but we can hypothesis about it. From those hypotheses we create predictions which are testable and that’s where empiricism comes into the picture and allows us to test our understanding of oil even though we can’t reproduce the process in it’s entirety in the lab. We can also reproduce many of the hypothesised steps in the lab to ensure that they do in fact operate as we expect so there are a number of ways that we can empiracly test our ideas of how Oil was formed.

If you want to go into this further I think we should take it out of this thread.

In Reason

Russell

That's why I said: As a side note. It's is not my intent to derail thread.

As I have said before, even animals employ empirical science. But, to restrict oneself to one's own personal practice of empirical methods is absurd. And in order to know what results others have obtained, one must ask somebody. This is what everyone does.

Shame to waste space explaining this, but it appears there's a demand.

Hi CTD

I know you will deny it but I think you have made a breakthrough here. You have realised that the source of all knowledge is, at its root, empirical. You may ask other people for their empirical knowledge or that of others they have heard from directly or otherwise, we have to do that as we can’t all reinvent the wheel as it were, but those peoples knowledge will lead us to an empirical source if we follow it back as far as you can go.

Now you just have to come to terms with the idea that non empirical sources can lie, cheat, screw up, misunderstand, deceive, suffer from delusions, fall for illusions, misinterpret, forget, confabulate etc while empirical sources can’t.

Obviously we must take into account the limitation of all sources when we chose to use them. Empirical data can be hard to find or interpret but if we wish to know what happened more than a few thousand years ago we have no choice, there is no other source. Even more recent history shows that human accounts are unreliable and the older they are the more unreliable they are likely to be. The real trick is to work out how to find the good data amongst the bad. We have a very effective system for doing so, its call the scientific method.

So why would you prefer word of mouth rather than going to the source, empirical observation, when it is available when there is doubt about some information?

I agree that that was all too obvious to need stating but it seems that it did need to be spelled out here.

In Reason

Russell