> Who was talking about creationists? I wasn't. I was talking about 
> scientists.
> 
>> What do you think happens when a tenant of the first attitude tries
>>  to discuss the matter with a tenant of the second attitude? No 
>> discussion is possible, that's what happens.
> 
> That's why it's impossible to discuss with some scientists (or, more 
> usually, scientist wannabes).
> 

Oh, so you are just saying that some scientists are not as open minded
as they should be. Who would have thought, really ;-)

As far as I can judge, it is not the case of the one that wrote the blog
post...

>> Debunking has been done and redone and re-re-done, at some stage it
>>  needs to stop.
> 
> So the next logical step is to start mocking and ridiculing? Yes, 
> that makes a whole lot of sense.
> 

Well what would be your next step then? I'm not saying it's the only
thing that can be done...

>> Ridiculing a religious nutcase is in my opinion a valid weapon to 
>> use.
> 
> Valid for what purpose? It certainly isn't constructive and can only 
> make things worse.
> 

For a purpose that I tried to make clear in the rest of my post that you
didn't quote. In order to cause a shift of mentality in a part of the
population that unfortunately would not understand a scientific
debunking. It is possible that the slight shock, or comical effect, make
people think about it...

So of course it's lost on the strongest proponents of the "alternative
theory", but everything is lost on them. There is nothing constructive
you can do about it. It's not a reason not to do something.

>> I'm all for doubting a theory as long as something else, new 
>> experiments or a new interpretation of the old ones at least, is 
>> offered that makes some sense. Doubting for the sake of doubting is
>>  not really interesting,
> 
> That's exactly the flawed logic. "Since there's no alternative 
> plausible theory, this theory must be true."
> 

It is true as far as we can check. If really you want to talk about
absolutes, define truth, then.

If you bring something different or new to the table, it's another story...

>> because then you doubt, and then what?
> 
> I don't even understand what you mean by that. Are you talking 
> philosophically now? Do you get some kind of existentialist crisis if
>  you doubt something and have no plausible alternative theory?
> 

Existentialist crisis is a bit over the top ;-) , but yes, it's a problem...

As Phil put it earlier:
> (unless you're saying that you don't like a theory as it doesn't 
> explain everything, in which case welcome to a permanent state of not
>  liking things)

If you doubt everything without doing anything to make something better,
well, from the general point of view it's exactly as if you were
agreeing with the current theories... Except that it makes you look
angry ;-)

-- 
Vincent

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>   Take any unsolved question in science, which science has yet not an
> answer to, and present the theory "it happens because invisible gnomes
> do it from inside the Earth". Even if the scientist doesn't have any
> alternative theory to that, it's still completely valid for him to doubt
> that presented theory.
> 

The doubt in this case is for a completely valid reason. A key point 
with any scientific theory is that you have to be able to challenge it. 
Your little gnomes are hard to test for empirically...

So the scientist still does not have a scientific theory, in that case.

-- 
Vincent

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Warp wrote:
>   There's nothing wrong with science, but IMO many scientists seem to be
> way too arrogant and lack humility, even to the point of being unscientific.
> The attitude of many scientists seems to be "since I can't think of any
> other rational explanation, then this explanation must be the Truth, the
> only Truth, and nothing but the Truth, and anyone who doubts that is nuts".

Baloney.  I don't know of anyone who has studied relativity or quantum 
physics that thinks they know the truth of which one is "right", seeing 
as how they're contradictory.

>   Scientists don't seem to learn from past mistakes. For example in the
> late 1800's the general attitude among scientists was that physics was
> more or less complete, 

 From wikipedia, Borh model:

In atomic physics, the Bohr model depicts the atom as a small, 
positively charged nucleus surrounded by electrons that travel in 

system, but with electrostatic forces providing attraction, rather than 
gravity. This was an improvement on the earlier cubic model (1902), the 
plum-pudding model (1904), the Saturnian model (1904), and the 
Rutherford model (1911). Since the Bohr model is a quantum-physics based 
modification of the Rutherford model, many sources combine the two, 
referring to the Rutherford-Bohr model.

Sure looks like they figured everything was known, with only four other 
competing theories of the shape of the model at the time.


You're beginning to sound rather fanatical, making up easily refuted 
statements about scientists being just as religious as those who argue 
from lack of evidence.

> how the universe works than newtonian mechanics, then newtonian mechanics
> must be the Truth, 

Even *newton* knew he was wrong, dude.


> arrogant attitude they don't only extrapolated that, but they stated that
> it must be the only Truth, and that physics is complete. We know everything
> there is to know.

Show me where they stated that? Or are you just making up crap or 
repeating what ignorant friends have told you?

>   Then technology advanced, measurement instruments got better, and science
> got a lesson in humility. Our knowledge of physics was far from complete.

They knew that. There were dozens of measured experimental results that 
couldn't be explained in terms of newtonian physics. That's why Einstein 
got a Nobel prize for figuring out the answer to one that had been 
bothering people for a while.  Damn, I'm not even a physicist and *I* 
know this much about it.

I probably know more about the Bible too, is the sad part.

>   Many arrogant scientists struggled for decades, fighting against the new
> evidence. They couldn't admit being wrong. 

You're so full of crap. Bohr came up with the first workable(*) model of 
how an atom is arranged internally in 1911. Einstein won a Nobel prize 
ten years later for explaining that Bohr was wrong and quantum physics 
was right.

How many arrogant scientists had to fight against Einstein to keep him 
from getting a Nobel prize within 10 years?

>   Finally they had to submit and admit that perhaps physics was not complete
> and that there might be something else to it than what they thought.

Unlike religious people, who never admit that.

>   Have scientists learnt anything from this episode? It doesn't seem so.
> They are still arrogant, they still think they know the Truth, the only
> Truth and nothing but the Truth, and simply because they can't think of
> any other explanation. 

They can think of many other explanations. Then they discard those 
explanations because they don't match all the facts.

> anyone who doubts it is nuts and deserves ridicule.

Not at all. Anyone who doubts it *and* claims they have a better 
explanation *and* presents said better explanation that contradicts all 
the facts that the current theories accomidate *and* continue to insist 
they're right in spite of that, those people deserve ridicule.


> Over a hundred years
> ago scientists assumed that they could simply deduce what happens at
> atomic levels, extremely high speeds, etc, without actually "going there".

No, they didn't. They just didn't have any way of testing it, and 
nothing they knew contradicted it. What they didn't accept is angels 
holding up the moon.

> They were wrong. Nowadays scientists assume that they can simply deduce what
> happened millions of years ago, without actually going there. But this must
> be the Truth.

So you propose, instead, that dinosaurs were around 6000 years ago, 
living with man, and Adam eating the tree of knowledge led to the 
creation of weeds and the changing of dinosaurs and lions into carnivores?

There's a saying that goes something like this:
The world is not flat.
The world is not spherical either.
But it's a lot less wrong to say the world is spherical than
   to say the world is flat.

There are differences in degree of wrongness. I ridicule those who can't 
see those differences.

>   History tends to repeat itself. People never learn from past mistakes.
> People are arrogant and think they are omniscient and that they know the
> Truth. Anyone who doubts that deserves ridicule.

Yes, the infamous "Et tu" logic. My religious beliefs are arrogant and 
make me think I am omniscient. My religious beliefs tell me what 
happened back when the world was young. However, scientists also are 
arrogant and think they're right, so they can't be any righter than I am.

Like I said, illogical.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     Remember the good old days, when we
     used to complain about cryptography
     being export-restricted?

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> and atheists aren't anti-christian, they're anti-theist. :-)
> 
>   In my experience the majority of self-proclaimed atheists vehemently
> oppose christianity, usually much more than any other religions. Usually
> they have a more or less indifferent attitude towards other religions,
> while loudly opposing anything related to christianity.

Warp, Have you ever had the pleasure of meeting a (or at least 
interacting with online) one of the so-called born again southern 
baptists. They usually tend to take the bible literally, and will 
proselytize everyone they come in contact with. Maybe this is why some 
atheists appear to be vehemently anti-Christian.

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   There's a difference between an attitude like "I think this is a very
> plausible theory, and I'm going to try to find even more evidence to
> support it", and "this theory is the truth, and anyone who doubts it
> is nuts and deserves ridicule".

Scientists don't say that second thing. They say "you're theory is nuts 
and deserves ridicule, as does anyone who believes it."

The first step of trying to put forward a scientific theory is to 
explain at least one actual fact.

I don't know of *any* actual fact that creationism explains.

>   However, debunking and ridicule are two different things. The former
> shows scientifical thinking, the latter shows arrogance.

I disagree. Debunking only works on the rational. Ridicule stirs up the 
emotions enough that the misled feel a need to interact.

>   Another typical attitude is that anyone who presents even the slightest
> opposition to the idea that evolution is the whole Truth, that the evolution
> theory presents exactly and accurately what happened, must be a creationist.

I've noticed that. I'm told it's something the creationists brought on 
themselves. Since creationism isn't an actual theory that explains any 
actual facts, the "theory" of creationism is "evolution isn't the right 
theory." So if you doubt evolution, you're likely a creationist, at 
least in the eyes of people who know what's going on.

> The attitude seems to be "if you can't present any counter-arguments or
> scientifically plausible alternative theories, then you simply must believe
> in the theory of evolution as presented". It's as if it was completely
> unscientifical and illogical to doubt a theory if there exists no plausible
> alternative. 

If there's no plausible alternative and nothing difficult to explain 
with the theory in hand, then it is pretty illogical and unscientific to 
doubt it.  On what scientific or logical grounds do you doubt that 
evolution is significantly correct, given that it's actually used 
regularly all around the world to create important products? It's not 
hard to understand in broad outline. It's not hard to understand 
detailed evidence when presented well. The only reason to doubt it's 
right is "I don't like what it implies", which is illogical and 
unscientific.

That doesn't mean it's *wrong* to do so. Just ... illogical and 
unscientific. :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     Remember the good old days, when we
     used to complain about cryptography
     being export-restricted?

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In article <473dd597$1@news.povray.org>, dne### [at] sanrrcom says...
> Tim Attwood wrote:
> > vehemence of anti-Christian rhetoric lately
> 
> This wasn't anti-Christian rhetoric, tho. It is clear the author is 
> indeed Christian. This is anti-Stupidity rhetoric.
> 
> Don't confuse "bashing stupid Christian's stupidity" with "bashing 
> stupid Christian's Christianity".
> 
Exactly. Though, some people seem to confuse them a lot. Case in point, 
the constant whining we get around now about the "war on Christmas", 
from idiots that don't get that "X" is "Chi" and has been used as short 
hand for Christ since back in the Roman empire. If you want to read 
anti-religious (I don't think only targeting Christians is worth much, 
even if there are so many where I am that if you fired a shotgun at a 
group of people the odds are you would miss all the non-Christians), 
then you read this womans fall from live and let live agnosticism to 
hardline atheism:

http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2007/11/evolut
ionblog.html

Some of us are just starting to get real fed up at being told to shut up 
and play nice all the time, when the other side not only doesn't have to 
play by that rule, but has threatened to put us in internment camps or 
deport us for not being American enough (something we, despite some 
people's true rhetorical complaints, I haven't heard many of us saying, 
and fewer still standing around in huge crowds to cheer at).

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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In article <473dda5c$1@news.povray.org>, dne### [at] sanrrcom says...
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
> > Wouldn't that be, "Why it doesn't make sense to doubt it?"
> 
> Yah. Forgive me. I've been ill. :-)
> 
> > this guy makes some common mistakes. First one is suggesting that their
 
> > are some huge number of *possible* combinations that would work. Really
? 
> > How does he determine this? 
> 
> Actually, I read somewhere that someone had figured out (well after that
 
> article was written) that there are something like 12 different 
> isomorphic ways you can arrange the codons to do the same job. So 
> instead of 41^22! or whatever it was, there were at least 12. :-)
> 
> > do anything at all, such as INC X followed immediately by DEC X. 
> 
> That's a completely different point. That just means there are genes 
> that don't code for anything. He's assuming that there's no good reason
 
> for the bit patterns in the instruction set to be arranged in any given
 
> pattern for a particular instruction.
> 
> > But none of that really matters, since the article says *nothing* about
 
> > the likelihood of macro vs. micro,
> 
> So here's the question: What is "macro vs micro"?  How do you know when
 
> you have "macro" evolution? What makes something of two "kinds"?
> 
> I suspect you'll wind up coming up with a tautologically false answer, 
> if you want to invent something that hasn't been observed.
> 
Well, strictly speaking "kind" is a word the Creationists came up with, 
which is entirely meaningless. They place species that **can't** breed 
at all in the same "kinds", including the donkey/mule/horse version, 
which can breed, but produce the third on in that list as a sterile 
result. The correct term "Species" means it cannot breed at all. This 
has recently gotten a bit fuzzier, since you obviously can breed most 
cats, even though they are recognized as different species. Likely we 
need a subcategory for those, instead of using species. But, even with 
cats you do also get things like Ligers, which are sterile about 50% of 
the time, so Tigers and Lions have diverged enough to *almost* be two 
distinct "kinds" in the parlance of these nitwits.

Basically, science's distinction is that, sure, you can get 5 million 
different sorts of birds from one proto bird, but 99.9% of them can't 
breed with each other, so they have become different species. The ID 
version of this would be, there are 5 million different kinds of birds, 
all from some proto bird, but they are all the same "kind". They gloss 
over the fact that you can't breed them, so they don't have to admit 
that they are different species. Point it out to them and they back 
peddle and claim it all happened in a few hundred years after the flood 
(since all those different birds(not to mention other animal) would have 
had to exist **immediately** after the flood ended to explain how many 
people saw them over 5,000 years ago.) It just doesn't work at all. And 
that is the main problem here. They **literally** want evolution to mean 
that tomarrow your dog will give birth to an elephant, never mind the 
fact that it doesn't work that way, and if it did, it **would** imply 
intervention.

> > There is nothing in there that would suggest denial of common descent o
f 
> > macro evolution.
> 
> Sorry. I meant it as an explanation of evidence in favor of common 
> descent, regardless of how I misworded the original statement.
> 
Ah, ok. Kind of confusing there.

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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In article <473ddb21$1@news.povray.org>, dne### [at] sanrrcom says...
> Warp wrote:
> > Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >> Warp wrote:
> >>>   The article and the photo series was nothing more than mocking for 
the
> >>> sake of mocking. "Have a look at these photos and have a good laugh."
> >>> There was no other point.
> > 
> >> Yes. And I feel it's entirely appropriate to mock people who are tryin
g 
> >> to get others to act in self-destructive ways.
> > 
> >   Mocking for the sake of mocking is not constructive nor helpful. It o
nly
> > increases aversion between different groups.
> 
> Yes. I want to mock the stupid dangerous group in order that people who
 
> hear my mocking might avoid them, or recognise how silly they are.
> 
> > Is that really the correct way of doing things?
> 
> If I could figure out how to make the stupid dangerous group less stupid
 
> or less dangerous, that would obviously be the right way to go. In my 
> experience, religion is illogical (in the mathematical sense of the 
> word), so it's almost impossible to convince someone to change their 
> religion with mere evidence. You have to get to the unreasoning 
> emotional underpinning. Of the various ways to do that, mocking would 
> seem to be the least damaging and easiest to control.
> 
Not specific about mocking, but it cuts to the heart of the issue 
anyway:

"So when you tell an atheist (or for that matter, a woman or a queer or 
a person of color or whatever) not to be so angry, you are, in essence, 
telling us to disempower ourselves. You're telling us to lay down one of 
the single most powerful tools we have at our disposal. You're telling 
us to lay down a tool that no social change movement has ever been able 
to do without. You're telling us to be polite and diplomatic, when 
history shows that polite diplomacy in a social change movement works 
far, far better when it's coupled with passionate anger. In a battle 
between David and Goliath, you're telling David to put down his 
slingshot and just... I don't know. Gnaw Goliath on the ankles or 
something.", Greta Christina - Oct. 15, 2007

Playing nice gets you no place at all, and when someone is impervious to 
evidence, facts or logic, you don't have much left, without being 
Machiavellian, but to laugh at them, in the hopes that embarrassment 
will open a crack in the wall of ignorance where everything else failed.

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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In article <473cde43@news.povray.org>, war### [at] tagpovrayorg says...
> Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] rraznet> wrote:
> > Why the #@$@$@ is it flawed.
> 
>   You sound like a religious fanatic.
> 
Why? Because I got a bit annoyed and dared to ask a question? Seriously, 
claiming there is a problem and not giving one good explanation for what 
that is, or how it undermines the whole concept is what religious 
fanatics do. They don't ask people to explain themselves, they just 
spout assertions, then ignore any request for clarification.

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> The correct term "Species" means it cannot breed at all. 

So, two human women are obviously not the same species, because they 
can't breed, right? :-)

> had to exist **immediately** after the flood ended to explain how many 
> people saw them over 5,000 years ago.)

Not to mention the written records in China of dynasties more than 5000 
years old, yah.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     Remember the good old days, when we
     used to complain about cryptography
     being export-restricted?

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