Evolution vs Science page 3

MD
For being Jewish. :DDD

Science can’t say a zilch for/against spiritual concepts – it’s a totally separate branch of knowledge.

Religion is not a branch of knowledge.

Sure, there can be a clash, when it comes to Creation, but still, even if science thinks that it discredited creation, it can never “discredit” G-d as a concept.

It shouldn’t have to. If it is impossible to determine using science, it is a religious belief.

And to argue on THIS, you must first study enough “religion” to be able to “have an opinion”.

It’s a bit silly to ask people to “know more about religion” before they can discuss the concept. Why don’t you argue what’s wrong?

DR
1. And how would YOU know it?
There we go – “the all-encompassing omniscient god of science”, in the action…
2. “Beliefs” are also a type of knowledge, just of a different type than YOU want/like/accept.
“Personal experience” is still experience, as in knowledge.
We’re not discussing truthfulness here, only terminology.
(And there’s a different “truth” for everyone, usually different in some point.)
3. Ahem, I missed your point here.
All I say is, don’t label something as stupid, until you actually get to know it.
I’m under a very strong impression, that each time someone says “religion”, it means “Christianity”.
Well, DUH…
(I’m Jewish, and until one actually KNOWS what Judaism is about, one has no right to label it as stupid.)

And how would YOU know it?
There we go – “the all-encompassing omniscient god of science”, in the action…

Because if knowledge is not objective, it cannot be verified. If knowledge cannot be verified, it can be claimed without the capability of (dis)proving it, and there is no way of telling the difference between false claims and truthful claims. In the light of following truth, it is better to dismiss such claims as unverifiable. Your life is equally affected whether they’re true or not (apparently), so you can believe in it if you want, but it’s not a fact.

If you can prove it, then do so.

“Beliefs” are also a type of knowledge, just of a different type than YOU want/like/accept.
“Personal experience” is still experience, as in knowledge.
We’re not discussing truthfulness here, only terminology.
(And there’s a different “truth” for everyone, usually different in some point.)

Experience is different from knowledge, and I hope we won’t go into semantics here. As one person, you can see something wrongly, interpret something wrongly, or simply conclude wrongly. As a team, you can work on each other’s faults and enhance each one’s senses. As a team that would like to discredit the original team, you can criticise every of their actions to see if it truly holds up. As a random citizen, you can verify these claims if you take the time. Personal experience does not go beyond what you currently believe you observe, how you interpret it, and what you conclude from it. We’ve gone over this, and no, this is not a difference in opinion.

This is not solid knowledge, because it is too much affected by other factors and is too much possible to be wrong. I know you are still somewhat ignorant towards science, so you’ll claim the same about it, but I’ll just state beforehand every of such complaints are removed through certain procedures.

All I say is, don’t label something as stupid, until you actually get to know it.

They question the beliefs within. Most of us require beliefs to be objective before they can be scientifically believed in. Beyond that, they are religious. I don’t think they actually question the religious beliefs, but whether or not they are scientific.

What does this mean? That you have every right to religiously believe in something, as long as we agree it is not objective, and cannot be verified (if it could, it would be scientific).

DR
1. You confuse knowledge (as in information; which includes guesses and ideas, and doesn’t have to be provable for others, eg. DREAMS and THOUGHTS) and facts (as in reality; which can be proved “for others”).
Not exactly, but very close.
2. We already went in…
Well, YOU did.
There IS wrong knowledge, any SPY can tell you that.
You again misuse (abuse?) the idea of “knowing”, to “prove me wrong on the basis of unscientific methods I use”.
Which is totally IRRELEVANT to the concept of “knowledge”.
Do you KNOW your last night’s DREAM? (YES, you can even retell it – so the info is in your head already.)
Can you scientifically PROVE it? (NO, cause you’re the only one that saw it – in your head.)
AHA!
3. “THEY”?
What your sentence has to do with the concept of knowledge AT ALL?
My point was, before claiming that the JEWISH religion is also unscientific or WHATEVER, first you have to be familiar with it – which is 99% NOT SO.
People generalize “religion”, while thinking “Christianity”.
Well, I can generalize “science”, while thinking “alchemy”… :DDDDD
(It was “scientific” back then, so I can draw conclusions from it on the ENTIRE science, RIGHT?)

As I said, we’ll go into semantics without actually discussing anything. It is useless, and doesn’t help us towards a better goal. I think this is the most important:

My point was, before claiming that the JEWISH religion is also unscientific or WHATEVER, first you have to be familiar with it – which is 99% NOT SO.

If it was scientific, it would not be religious. If it was scientific, no good scientist would have a problem with it. You’re right in that you can worship science as a religion (if that is what the Jews do, fine by me), but you seem to be more into this personal experience stuff, so that by definition is not scientific (which isn’t even meant in a negative way).

DR
Your last sentence is not what impression I get from your typical comments on something “not being scientific = thus not true = thus false”, usually regarding “religious” stuff.
As of semantics, there might be a small problem in me not being a native English speaker, though I think it’s much more in the attitude we so differ.
One last point, cause you’re quite right about pointless discussion (also not in a negative way, but it is pointless).
When you say something is scientific, you usually add “cause true scientists always look for a way to disprove the other, for the sake of truth”.
This is OK in itself, but…
This actually means that YOU rely on what person B thinks about what person A said.
Thus, you’re not relying on person A’s idea itself, but rather on person B’s attitude towards person A’s idea.
This implies, that you believe that ALL “person B”s are 100% HONEST.
But you can’t know it.
Also, there’s a very typical (looks to me so, kinda justifiably) notion, that any person C will take person B’s resulting “OK” for a fact, mostly since he’s not working directly on person A’s topic, but rather relies on some of his conclusions.
And when you extend it till person Z, you get a huge baggage of relying on something half of the persons in that chain never even looked into.
And you also ignore the simple possibility, that the conclusions of A that were used by F, are right, but the rest is NOT.
But F isn’t even interested in the rest, he’s OK with what is HIS field, which actually works.
This is how “theories” that work PARTIALLY are very easy to encroach into actual science.
And this is pretty similar to what I say about micro vs macro – since macro can’t be observed (due to time shortness), it gets dragged along with the WORKING micro.
A very clear example of how micro doesn’t prove macro, is that you can’t use files of >4GB on FAT32 – it won’t FIT.
But until that moment, you aren’t even AWARE of this restriction (as an end-user, not a developer).
So, you can see HUGE changes in current experimental beings, but you’ll never see the 4GB limit, if you only reached 3.999GB.
Does it mean, that the limit isn’t there?
Oh, and the lab experiment DOESN’T have a “disk space left” info. :D
(Please, think through it, don’t just shrug it off immediately, cause it’s ME who wrote it.)

What do you think of this article?

“not being scientific = thus not true = thus false”

I have never said that, and if I did, it was a mistake. Not being scientific means we can’t objectively claim it to be true. That doesn’t mean it’s false. It means no conclusions can be drawn.

When you say something is scientific, you usually add “cause true scientists always look for a way to disprove the other, for the sake of truth”.
This is OK in itself, but…
This actually means that YOU rely on what person B thinks about what person A said.
Thus, you’re not relying on person A’s idea itself, but rather on person B’s attitude towards person A’s idea.
This implies, that you believe that ALL “person B”s are 100% HONEST.
But you can’t know it.

You have a lot to learn grasshopper. The fact that you believe the verification process is person A personally experiencing something and then drunk B coming in and saying “heyyy whatsuppp I totally think he’s right” right before he falls on the floor.

The verification process is people working in groups to find out something, then other, independent people working in different groups trying to criticise the former group, then the entire world being capable of verifying the claims and making counter-arguments. Your argument “against science” is actually an argument against the personal experience method. How can we know person A isn’t lying if we can only choose between believing it or not? We can’t. That’s why we verify, and not through one person.

In short, your problems with science are invalid, since they aren’t true.

Also, there’s a very typical (looks to me so, kinda justifiably) notion, that any person C will take person B’s resulting “OK” for a fact, mostly since he’s not working directly on person A’s topic, but rather relies on some of his conclusions.
And when you extend it till person Z, you get a huge baggage of relying on something half of the persons in that chain never even looked into.

And you also ignore the simple possibility, that the conclusions of A that were used by F, are right, but the rest is NOT.

All of your accusations are simply theoretical “possibilities”. They are the extreme of the extreme. What you do is “let’s assume every person on Earth wants to create as much confusion as possible for me, how can I justify this conclusion with theoretical observations?”. It doesn’t make sense, since that’s not how it goes. And even if you do find some examples, then they aren’t considered scientific theories by the majority of scientists.

Sleep
1. They discovered things that are anyways “historical” – you could take the entire account of the Judges/Kings/etc as a history book, and it won’t be “religious”.
I first hoped for something more “spiritual”, though I’m sure we would hear about it, worldwide, IF…
2. He drifts into the CHRISTIAN terms and ideas, totally void in the JEWISH “history” account.
This is OK for him, but makes it look funny for ME. :D
But I’ll look for anything more interesting, there might be…

DR
1. OK, but I kept understanding you to say it the “false” way…
Cause I wasn’t “pushing it onto anyone”, what you seem to speak against with your “can’t be proven” stuff.
Anyways…
2. “A” can be a dozen people, and “B” a hundred – still, they form those “chain links” the way I said, where “B” isn’t a part of “A” and their experiment.
Your error lies in this sentence:
“The entire world being capable of verifying the claims and making counter-arguments”.
It implies that the entire world is an “A”, or at least a “B”.
But like I said, it’s very far from being so.
You and me, as “end-users”, get info from some “T”, who got it in the chain of “I study this particular experiment on this part of that theory”, the length of a dozen steps, each only interested in HIS field.
Example (with computers):
A is good with microchips,
B is good with faster processors (and uses the aspect of the microchips that deals with their working speed, but only that),
C is good with computer languages (and uses the complexity side of the chips, he’s already “parallel” to B),
…
T is good with end-user graphics (so he cares about fast processors, but not computer languages, and certainly not about hardware),
…
Z is good with game making (he’s so far from A, that he doesn’t even think about him).
Now, ALL of them are a single chain of “computer industry”, but Z is practically separate from A and doesn’t care about his DIRECT work (chips).
This is very typical in science – a doctor won’t be interested in gun making, though BOTH are interested in anatomy, but from the opposite points, to heal and to hurt.
So, the part of anatomy that is researched by the doctor, isn’t the same that is researched by the killer.
(Maybe a too weak example, but you should get my point by now.)
3. As of “possibilities” – SURE, only SCIENCE “knows” everything, just like I said above.
(Aha, they NEVER guess things, even if it ends up being right, SOMETIMES… Hint: You can win the lottery exactly the same way – SOMETIMES SOMEONE makes the right GUESS.)
And I was far from “accusing”, but rather stating the obvious way how things work in REAL LIFE.

You have an incredibly shallow misunderstanding of what science is and isn’t. If your religion contradicts science, it’s because your religion is what’s made up or fantastical, not the years of scientific method and research that you couldn’t even begin to criticize adequately.

BSG
Be my guest to ELABORATE, like DR usually does – we might be of opposite opinions, but I respect his way of EXPLAINING stuff.
I’m awaiting the same from you this time.
Or will you rather resort to baseless insults and conclusions?
As in, what do you even know about my religion, to begin with?
Or are you simply “allergic” to the word religion, like some others here are?

The problem is that you’re really making science look far too weak for what it really is. The process of verification is far more detailed and far more complex than you make it out to be. So, we do have a group called “A” that performed a certain experiment. Within that group, each member can correct and help the others, and they’re all directly related to the experiment. Then we have a second group, called B, that reperforms the same experiment, to verify whether everything happened as they said it did. Then we have a third group, called C, with the same knowledge and background as A and B, that simply read over the report and facts, and interpret whether there are any false premises/conclusions. Group D, with less knowledge of the same area, takes a more global look at the logic used in the experiment. There are far more groups involved, and far more verification, than you initially think. Once again, you are making up theoretical possibilities with the mindset and conclusion of everyone wishing to form a conspiracy to make you think evolution is true. You then seek for theoretical observations that could explain this made-up conclusion. But it simply does not work like that. In the end, yes, a “dumb” user basically has to assume the knowledge and experiments of half the so-called chain, but questioning it is basically calling for a conspiracy. If it is assumed false, then you’re basically claiming that every single group, every single member, is involved in a conspiracy that deliberately creates data out of thin air, falsely interprets it, and collaborates with all the now-dependent other groups that were supposed to check for validity to pretend to the end user that it really is a solid scientific theory.

Exactly such problems are reduced to a minimum by the vast amount of independent check-ups for verification, reproducibility, it being valid, its logic, etc. You can assume they are right, exactly because of the vast amount of work put into credibility. And the end user should always be scientifically learned with basics such as credibility. Check up on sources, criticise logic, and reproduce simple statements. Science isn’t an on/off button. You don’t go from “complete nonsense” to “absolutely true”. You go from “very unlikely to be true” through “possible to be true” to “very likely to be true”. You’ll never reach 100%, but you’ll get pretty damn close. It’s always a gray area, but if there’s a scientific theory, you can be pretty sure it’s nearing that 100%.

Originally posted by somebody613:

BSG
Be my guest to ELABORATE, like DR usually does – we might be of opposite opinions, but I respect his way of EXPLAINING stuff.
I’m awaiting the same from you this time.
Or will you rather resort to baseless insults and conclusions?
As in, what do you even know about my religion, to begin with?
Or are you simply “allergic” to the word religion, like some others here are?

You glazed over all of my other posts, and your responses to similar posts show what I have said, plain as day. You completely disregard the process either out of ignorance or arrogance, but you’re misrepresenting how a theory is developed. Science is the boys club of extremely logical one-upsmanship, and the more casual the science the more that field has few unknown variables. Thankfully, the more esoteric and hypothetical concepts in science are handled by the most hardcore math and logicians that can easily win grant money disproving another person’s argument using hard, cold math. We’re not talking about guessing games or people wanting to validate a pre-determined outcome. There are no “negative” or “bad” results in science that you try to avoid, finding something opposite of your expectations is just as valuable in a scientific paper as confirming your data. No one wants their data to be anything in true, non-drug-market science. You’re talking about things you clearly have zero exposure to.

EDIT!
If you see the ERROR, instead of posting your message, go back and click “Reply”.
You should see your post, untouched.
Don’t panic, like I did – and nearly lost this huge post…

DR
Thanks for this reply, it was a bit explanatory about YOUR thinking.
Yes, you’re totally right in the case of REPEATABLE SCIENCE – and I admire humans for reaching THAT much.
BUT!
Evolution is NOT a REPEATABLE science, nor is Big Bang or any other “millions-of-years related” theories.
The problem there, you don’t even have a REAL “A” – who can ACTUALLY experiment on the theory.
You see, evolution goes like this:
1. Scientists truthfully prove that micro works (and every sane person agrees to this, me included).
Macro here, isn’t purely taxonomical, cause species is an ambiguous term, like I proved from hybridization.
It rather means significant changes OR new features, that can’t be attributed to phenotype’s fluctuations, AND which don’t return to the original state after any number of straight-breeding generations.
An example of such a return would be trees growing in deserts vs forests.
They look very much differently, but they switch phenotypes, if planted in the opposite zone.
Also, we have no clue about how wide is that “variety” barrier, especially in such primitives like bacteria.
I really would like to see an experiment that made a bacteria species change significantly after forced into different conditions – and don’t change back at all, when put in the “standart” environment.
Cause all those “macro” experiments on bacteria is basically forcing them to change, one way.
But to prove it as a FIX, there must be a check for NOT switching back under usual conditions.
Though even that isn’t a FULL proof of a new species, but without it, it’s worthless.
2. Now, goes the extrapolation ERROR – if “small changes” work, why not “big ones”?
Let’s just assume, that they accumulate over time (or ANY other way, it’s not making any difference, the WAY they assume it works).
3. Then, assuming that evolution must’ve taken very long time to happen, scientists again EXTRAPOLATE “age measures” of geological bodies from CHECKABLE into UNCHECKABLE.
This is a pure guess, cause we have no TRUE knowledge of the conditions millions years ago.
There’s a huge reasonable doubt, that the processes that TODAY appear to work one way, might’ve worked totally differently long ago.
We don’t know that, we just assume the “easiest way”, aka Occam’s LIE.
4. Now, with a strong unprovable but “fancy” theory about “timelines”, we can start drawing charts on the “tree of life”.
And we will adjust the geological results according to our PRECALCULATED scale, even though it already is based on a guess that nothing changed.
Surely, this ends up as a very strong, self-supporting theory – the moment you ignore all the guessing and assuming done…
5. To be short, the A (scientific method) applies only to step 1.
From step 2 on, it’s uncheckable guesses about uncheckable facts of the past.
Therefore, everything that WORKS in the lab, has little-to-nothing to do with the reality back then – and still fits into step 1.
This doesn’t make evolution FALSE, but it doesn’t make it RIGHT either.
People should be more critical on such unproved theories, unlike SOME people we know. :D
…
I do hope, you won’t hurl “ignorance” accusations BEFORE thinking through the above.
OR, you can debunk it, but with CLEAR and SURE facts, not just “you don’t know about science, science knows everything, cause they triple-check it”.

Science can’t say a zilch for/against spiritual concepts – it’s a totally separate branch of knowledge.

That’s simply not true. Where ever religion makes predictions about or describes reality, we can test those claims. You claim prayer works to heal people? We can test that (and turns out, it doesn’t help at all), some subgroup of those prayed for will necessarily and consistently have higher success rates if prayer actually works.

Redem
Well, I can say for sure, that one can’t FORCE G-d to do something, so praying is just raising the probability of better outcome.
But even 99% probability still has that random 1% chance of failing.
And since we don’t know, how sincere was the prayer (which is its “strength”, so to speak), we can’t measure the increase in the “success rate”.
Haven’t you ever played any random-hit-chance game, where you can hit with 20% and miss with 80%?
Regardless of how funny is the comparison, the problem lies in the inability to “measure” the prayer.
It’s not binary, it also includes personal “spiritual variables” that highly affect the outcome, which again are outside the scope of any measurement – only G-d knows it for sure.
To make another funny game example – you bought the best armor, but forgot to equip it – so, is it the armor’s fault that you got hit?

Redem
Well, I can say for sure, that one can’t FORCE G-d to do something, so praying is just raising the probability of better outcome.
But even 99% probability still has that random 1% chance of failing.
And since we don’t know, how sincere was the prayer (which is its “strength”, so to speak), we can’t measure the increase in the “success rate”.

Doesn’t matter. If there are any number of prayers answered, the signal can be picked out of the data. Randomness of the sort you imply only causes issues in small scales, once you increase the sample size, the randomness shrinks and the “signal” becomes apparent.

Redem
Only if you know those “variables” aka one’s spiritual state.
In a typical case, even the person oneself is unaware of “how good one is”.
This is exactly what makes the experiment impossible or pointless – we’re using statistics of unknown measures.
Same as making statistics of how many bacteria EXACTLY live in each one’s digestion system – it’s nearly impossible to count.
The APPROXIMATE answer, you can get, but if you need a 1% accuracy, when it comes to a 10% approximation…
You should get my point…
Actually, in spiritual self-evaluation it’s more like 0.01% vs 25%…
Let’s stop it, I think you don’t get my comparisons, due to misunderstanding what spirituality means…

Proving prayer works is really easy. You measure a billion prayers and measure healing rate between patients that get prayed for and those that don’t. Eventually, you should run into a case where a prayer remarkably heals a person over a person that did not get prayed for. You investigate possible other factors. If this happens, you’ve got your first case for prayer being a healing method. If it doesn’t happen, you don’t have a case.

Evolution is NOT a REPEATABLE science, nor is Big Bang or any other “millions-of-years related” theories.

The event of the big bang and certain types of evolution cannot be recreated in its current form, but the facts can be analysed and observed. These interpretations and conclusions can be verified. It is not entirely the same as repeating the same event, but it is similar. This is taken into account when creating a theory.

As for the rest, we’ve been over most of it. You act as if you have glorious commentary on scientists’ work and pretend this means they must all be lying. Many scientists would gladly prove that other scientists are lying. They want to promote truth, after all. And if macro-evolution is such a load of bull, then it’ll certainly not be a theory any more. Science is not a conspiracy. It only seems like that because part of it does not agree with your religion, or you do not understand certain theories.

Not necessary, even if only some of the people are in the right “spiritual state”, then that group will have better results. They only way for that not to happen is for prayer to have no effect at all.

Redem
Should I mention placebo? :D

DR
OK, let’s drop the case, we again started walking in circles. :DDD

Placebos only work when you know about it, tests can be designed to eradicate that from the results. You’re dodging the issue. If there is medical intervention from a deity on a specific subgroup of people praying we will be able to see that reflected in the data. If there is no signal, there is no phenomenon.

It’s also worth noting that a placebo is not medicine. Striving for a placebo effect is like trying to win fourth place at the Paralympics.

EVILution is fake because animals never change.

I mean, its not like us humans use selective breeding when it comes to livestock/pets to make better animals.

Nope, genetics have NO EFFECT on anything.