Classification and dichotomous keys

[lucaspa]

Many share this skepticism, and indeed "falsification" has come to be replaced by "testability".

Again, there are 2 things at work here:
1. How do we tell science from non-science.
2. How does science work.

Popper showed that science works by falsification. He then tried to use falsifiability to tell science from non-science. That doesn't work. Neither does "testability". As I noted, there are scientific theories that are not testable and non-science theories that are.

So you are taking a nominative position, that there ARE avenues to knowledge other than science, even if right now nobody knows what they might be.

We do know what they are: personal experience. Science limits itself to only a subset of personal experience.

It's been suggested that religious experiences of various sorts (visions, epiphanies, etc.) might be tapping into a "spiritual reality" inaccessible to any human senses or instrumentation, and this might be correct, but there's no way right now to distinguish between such experiences and purely subjective glitches in the wetware. Humans are notoriously poor witnesses.

They are not that poor. If they were, then science would stop, because, after all, science is nothing more than eyewitness. Also, I would argue that we can, to some extent, distinguish some religious experience from "subjective glitches in the wetware."

Special creation or common design can NEVER be ruled out by science. The proposition that special creation produced all that science is investigating is not a testable proposition.

I argue otherwise. Of course, the main arguments against special creation and common design are religious. Christianity can rule out both. But really, so can science. In fact, Darwin did a lot of that in Origin of Species. He pointed out that, in islands that have nearly identical environments, you don't have the same species, or even the same families.

This is true. Science is much more limited than you imply. It can never rule in anything (science cannot deal in "proof"), it can only find more and more consistent support for some idea.

It can do more than that. Science can conclusively disprove. The certain statements in science are the negative ones:
1. The earth is not flat.
2. The earth is not the center of the solar system with the sun and planets orbiting the earth.
3. Proteins are not the hereditary material.
4. Each species was not specially created.

What happens is that we disprove, or falsify, all the competing theories we can think of. So yes, the theories we think are valid are not, strictly speaking, proved. But the theories that get rejected is absolutely disproved.

Common descent is an implication from what has been learned - it is consistent with all known relevant observations, it makes numerous predictions, these predictions are checked all the time and are always correct. This is extremely strong support for the idea,

This gets into theory formulation. Are theories digests of observations -- "an implication from what has been learned" -- or are they imaginative ideas put forth for testing? Most of the time it is the latter, including with common ancestry. When Darwin and others mooted common ancestry, there wasn't much evidence. Instead, people went out to get the evidence. NOW you can say that common ancestry is "conistent with all known relevant observations", but you must remember that most of those "relevant observations" were deliberately done to try to falsify common ancestry!

What happens is that, when a theory is strongly supported, we consider it to be true and factual. Technically, that the earth is round is a theory and technically not proved. But it has so much supporting evidence that we regard it as "fact".

And of course, common design or special creation MIGHT have used common descent as part of the design process. There's no way to show otherwise.

Common descent is not a design process. Natural selection is a design process. You can have common descent with the modifications being by genetic drift.

But common design and natural selection are are 2 different processes. Common design is direct manufacture of individuals. Natural selection is a two-step process of variation and selection that works on populations.

[lucaspa]

"Does special creation leave any clues? Would a universe that came into being by accident be any different from a universe where God created the universe, the earth, and the animals?"

I don't know if it lays any testable clues.

What would not look different is a universe where God sustains the natural processes and the natural processes don''t work without God and one where the natural processes work on their own (without God).

Special creation is a very particular how of creation. It involves direct manufacture of things in their present form. And yes, special creation would leave clues.

There are some things I do believe indicate a universe created by a intelligent being. But for the purposes of this thread I am not making that claim. But if I believe in God on account of philosophical arguments for his existence, or divine revelation or religious experience or historical arguments for the resurrection of Christ then is there anything in the natural science in general or or biology in particular that compels to give up that belief? As far as I can tell no.

You are correct. There's nothing in science that will tell you God does not exist. The evidence you have for that belief comes from outside science but nothing in science contradicts it. What science does for you is tell you how God created. Science gives you the material processes, or secondary causes, God used to create.

If I do believe in the God of the Bible, I already do believe in a common designer and given that belief I have an explanation for the similarities we find between all living things. Which is why I wonder about lucaspa's argument concerning bad design since that is just as much(or little really) of a problem for him as a theistic evolutionist.[/quote]
When you say "common designer" you are specifying a particular how that God creates: direct manufacture. So this is not a belief in "God of the Bible" but a particular way that you are saying God created that you perhaps get from the Bible.

Evolution by natural selection saves God from problems that are made for Him by special creation and "common designer". You see, now God does [B]not directly[/] make all those designs. Natural selection] makes them. So God is no longer responsible for rabbits having to eat their own feces, or grasshoppers being eaten alive from the inside out by the larva of ichneud wasps, or the stupidity of wiring the human eye backwards, or not remembering to free up the thumb on pandas, etc. Instead, natural selection and common ancestry are responsible as the direct designers.

So all those bad designs are only a problem for God if you insist on common design and God designing all living things. Theistic evololution removes the problem.

[phank]

Again, there are 2 things at work here:
1. How do we tell science from non-science.
2. How does science work.

Popper showed that science works by falsification. He then tried to use falsifiability to tell science from non-science. That doesn't work. Neither does "testability". As I noted, there are scientific theories that are not testable and non-science theories that are.

They maybe we can agree to disagree. If it's not testable, it's not science. This includes string theory, for example.

We do know what they are: personal experience. Science limits itself to only a subset of personal experience.

OK, I'll go with that. If I'm drunk and see pink elephants, I have "personal experience" of pink elephants, which we can call "knowledge" if we stretch a little.

They are not that poor.

They are terrible. Abysmal. Half the people do not even SEE the gorilla.

If they were, then science would stop, because, after all, science is nothing more than eyewitness.

And without a complexly orchestrated effort at intersubjective verification, that's all it would be.

Also, I would argue that we can, to some extent, distinguish some religious experience from "subjective glitches in the wetware."

Of course you would make that assertion (not an argument, a policy position). You NEED to make it, else your faith rests on imaginary spun sugar.

I argue otherwise. Of course, the main arguments against special creation and common design are religious. Christianity can rule out both. But really, so can science. In fact, Darwin did a lot of that in Origin of Species. He pointed out that, in islands that have nearly identical environments, you don't have the same species, or even the same families.

We are saying different things here. I was agreeing that IF there is a magical Designer, and IF that Designer created reality precisely as science learns, this can't be proved wrong. It's pointless, but not erroneous.

It can do more than that. Science can conclusively disprove.

Provided we accept the validity of intersubjective verification, you are right. But I was clearly talking about science's ability to support rather than prove some testable claim.

This gets into theory formulation. Are theories digests of observations -- "an implication from what has been learned" -- or are they imaginative ideas put forth for testing? Most of the time it is the latter, including with common ancestry.

This is misleading. Clearly theories are both. The "imaginative ideas put forth for testing", as you JUST WROTE, are subject to disproof. Science doesn't take disproved ideas and keep putting them forth. What has been learned means what has been supported rather than disproved.

When Darwin and others mooted common ancestry, there wasn't much evidence. Instead, people went out to get the evidence.

Clearly not the case. Darwin's theory was based on all the evidence he had. It was quite a bit, and it was consistent. Science is NOT a proces of dreaming up harebrained notions and going out to find support for them. That's what creationism is for. All scientific hypotheses are based on SOME prior observation.

NOW you can say that common ancestry is "conistent with all known relevant observations", but you must remember that most of those "relevant observations" were deliberately done to try to falsify common ancestry!

??? So what? Many if not most hypotheses fail the tests seeking support for them, but those tests nonetheless lead to other questions worth answering. Colllecting evidence is something distinct from the motivation to collect evidence. The Mormons have been doing excellent archaeology in search of any even remotely plausible support for the Book of Mormon. They have learned a lot, and contributed a lot of knowledge to the human store. Even if they're slowly concluding that Joseph Smith told pure fiction.

What happens is that, when a theory is strongly supported, we consider it to be true and factual. Technically, that the earth is round is a theory and technically not proved. But it has so much supporting evidence that we regard it as "fact".

I think I know what you mean. Human knowledge, given the advances of science, is asymtotic to full and correct understanding. As Asimov wrote, when people thought the world was flat, they were wrong. When people thought it was a sphere, they were STILL wrong, but not nearly as wrong as they were before.

(And incidentally, the shape of the earth is not a theory, it is a direct immediate observation. Check the pictures from space.)

Common descent is not a design process. Natural selection is a design process. You can have common descent with the modifications being by genetic drift.

But common design and natural selection are are 2 different processes. Common design is direct manufacture of individuals. Natural selection is a two-step process of variation and selection that works on populations.

Yes, my phrasing was poor. The position being presented is that IF there is a Designer, that what we regard as natural processes are the Designers tools. There is no way to show that some Designer isn't using natural selection for purposes unknowable. Again, it's a pointless notion, but not erroneous.

[pancreasman]

I don't know for sure but I would tend to rule out the latter and go with the former. But the cat kind could for all I know be even broader than that.



I don't know.



I think we can safely rule that out.



This assumes that there is or has to be some kind of 1 to 1 mapping between the biblical kinds and the Linnaean system of classification. I see no reason to think that the "kind" has to represent ANY "level of classification".



Just about everyone on this planet accepts some kind of evolution. There is no problem with that.



Just because we can't provide a definite list of all kinds or a way to distinguish between all the different kinds doesn't mean that they don't exist. It just means we haven't developed such a method yet. Although there have been some suggestions that you are no doubt aware of. But I don't have to endorse anyone in particular. So long as I don't put forth a scientific hypothesis of my own or endorse those put forth by others I don't see the problem. So to your mention of "theory" I say: I don't endorse any such theory in particular.

Thanks for your answers. I am sincerely trying to understand your position. I think I might have a handle on it. Would you mind telling me whether you agree or disagree with these statements?

1. First and foremost my understanding and reading of Genesis as historical informs my beliefs about origins.

2. Physical evidence and its interpretation is subordinate to my acceptance of Genesis as literal history.

If that's true for you, it's a position I can understand. I disagree with it. I think it's mistaken but I think it's a position that can be held with consistency and integrity.

Let me ask you this: If a person had not read or accepted Genesis but simply examined the physical evidence, would you agree that the most likely conclusion they would come to was that the Earth was ancient and that Evolution was the most likely explanation for the diversity of species?

[magellan004]

And without a complexly orchestrated effort at intersubjective verification, that's all it would be.

Ouch! I think you mean 'without agreement ...'

Magellan

[lucaspa]

They maybe we can agree to disagree. If it's not testable, it's not science. This includes string theory, for example.

String theory is considered part of science. Scientists work on it. No Boundary is considered part of science (no one is going to kick Hawking out of science). You can't just say it is not science because it doesn't fit your rule. Instead, you have to test the rule against what is generally considered science. So there are theories that all scientists consider science but are untestable.

OTOH, consider the following statements:
1. "Onside kicks are not usually fumbled." Very testable and has been tested. But no one is going to have football be a science.
2. "The books of the Pentateuch were written by several authors." Again, testable But even you are not going to say that religion and Biblical studies are science.

OK, I'll go with that. If I'm drunk and see pink elephants, I have "personal experience" of pink elephants, which we can call "knowledge" if we stretch a little.

Trust you to pick a ridiculous example. ALL knowledge is personal experience. For the experience to be valid, our senses have to be working normally. In your example, since you say "If I'm drunk", then the senses are not working normally.

Let's consider something else: the taste of Brussels sprouts. What does your personal experience say they taste like? For me, the taste is so vile that I involuntarily vomit. Yet that can't be everyone's experience, since grocery stores sell Brussels sprouts. So who is "wrong"?

They are terrible. Abysmal. And without a complexly orchestrated effort at intersubjective verification, that's all it would be.

I have been pointing out to Kristian that creationists do not consider the consequences of their statements for Christianity. Atheists do not consider the consequences of their arguments on science. Let's start with this paper:
Lucas, P.A. Chemotactic response of osteoblast-like cells to TGF-beta. Bone, 10: 459-463, 1990.

When it comes down to it, that is my eyewitness testimony. Under the conditions I state in the Methods, I am testify I saw what I put in the Results. You say that eyewitness testimony is inherently wrong. So say someone repeats the experiment. What person B will have is their eyewitness testimony. If eyewitness testimony is wrong, then B's testimony is also wrong. And C's, and D's and so on. "intersubjective verification" cannot work if eyewitness testimony is inherently wrong nearly all the time. All you will get is a string of people that are equally wrong. And thus, there goes all the reliability you attribute to science.

The subset can't be reliable if the entire set is inherently unreliable.

Of course you would make that assertion (not an argument, a policy position). You NEED to make it, else your faith rests on imaginary spun sugar.f

I don't "need" to make it. If it were not true, I simply would be agnostic. :) IOW, my faith would be different. What happens is that people test their experiences of deity. They try to find alternative explanations for them. For example, at one point CS Lewis called a friend over because he thought his personal experiences of deity were instead manifestations of insanity. IOW, he doubted his own sanity before he accepted that the experience was real. Other theists have done the same thing. Basically, they have behaved as scientists: they have falsified the alternative hypotheses before they tentatively accepted that they were experiencing deity.

We are saying different things here. I was agreeing that IF there is a magical Designer, and IF that Designer created reality precisely as science learns, this can't be proved wrong. It's pointless, but not erroneous.

1. It's not pointless. As a scientist, I would like to know I have the complete answer. I would like to know the ultimate nature of reality and how and why the universe is the way it is. Wouldn't you? However, by science I can't know the answer to a very big question about the universe and reality. Now, scientists learn to live with unanswered questions, and this is one of them. But pointless? Nope.
2. There is also the matter of whether deity does sustain all the processes we discover thru science. Again, this gets back to having a complete answer. As it stands, as a scientist, I may be missing one of the components of causes.

Provided we accept the validity of intersubjective verification, you are right. But I was clearly talking about science's ability to support rather than prove some testable claim.

It wasn't that clear. You were saying that all statements science made could not be proved. That undervalues the knowledge we get from science. Some things (quite a bit) we are certain about.

This is misleading. Clearly theories are both. The "imaginative ideas put forth for testing", as you JUST WROTE, are subject to disproof.

When you say "theories are both", you mean they are 1) digests of data and 2) products of imagination. No, theories are only very rarely digests of data. That is an old idea about science (dating back to Aristotle) that turns out to be wrong.

Science doesn't take disproved ideas and keep putting them forth. What has been learned means what has been supported rather than disproved

"What has been learned" includes everything that has been disproved. Of course science doesn't keep talking about disproved ideas as tho they are valid. In fact, that creationism does take a disproved theory and pretend that it is valid would be a way to keep it out of science class. However, you are saying that common design is not a disproved theory. You are allowing Kristian to keep putting it forth. Ironically I, the theist, am the one saying it is disproved and we shouldn't keep puting it forth.

Clearly not the case. Darwin's theory was based on all the evidence he had. It was quite a bit, and it was consistent. Science is NOT a proces of dreaming up harebrained notions and going out to find support for them. ... All scientific hypotheses are based on SOME prior observation.

Sorry, but science is a process of dreaming up harebrained notions. However, the next step is going out to refute them.
"When Günter Blobel and David Sabatini first proposed the signal hypothesis in 1971, the whole thing was simply ignored. There was not a shred of evidence to support it. " Volume 13, #22 The Scientist November 8, 1999
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/18750/

When Darwin proposed natural selection, it was a leap of imagination and he had NO supporting evidence. It was after he proposed the idea (as can be seen from his notebooks) that he began pigeon breeding and other tests of the theory. Now, what happened is that all the future data did support the theory.

So what? Many if not most hypotheses fail the tests seeking support for them, but those tests nonetheless lead to other questions worth answering. Colllecting evidence is something distinct from the motivation to collect evidence.

In science, evidence is collected to test a hypothesis. Even the Mormons are testing the hypothesis that the Book of Mormon is accurate history. So even in your example you are supporting what I claimed. Thank you.

I think I know what you mean. Human knowledge, given the advances of science, is asymtotic to full and correct understanding. As Asimov wrote, when people thought the world was flat, they were wrong. When people thought it was a sphere, they were STILL wrong, but not nearly as wrong as they were before.

That isn't exactly what I meant. That is a conclusion many people have reached about science, but I have my doubts as to the validity of the conclusion. First, I see knowing what is wrong is knowledge. This idea presumes that knowledge is only what is correct. Second, some things we have gotten as absolutely right.

(And incidentally, the shape of the earth is not a theory, it is a direct immediate observation. Check the pictures from space.)

Sorry, but the pictures from space only show a circle, not a 3 D structure. A prediction from the theory is that the earth should look like a circle from space. So the observation is a circle from space. The theory is that the earth is round. See Niles Eldredge's discussion of this very thing in The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at Creationism.

Yes, my phrasing was poor. The position being presented is that IF there is a Designer, that what we regard as natural processes are the Designers tools. There is no way to show that some Designer isn't using natural selection for purposes unknowable. Again, it's a pointless notion, but not erroneous.[/QUOTE]
For the reasons given above, it's not pointless. Nor are the purposes necessarily unknowable.

But the underlying position is different from the one stated. The underlying position is that deity is necessary for every process discovered by science to work. Mix hydrogen and oxygen and add a spark. The result is combustion and the chemical combination of the hydrogen and oxygen to water. The underlying hypothesis is that deity wills each and every atom to react.

No, we can't disprove that. But it's not "pointless", either. Again, as a scientist I would like to know that I have all the causes for the formation of water. But I may not have one. Therefore, my work is incomplete.

[phank]

String theory is considered part of science. Scientists work on it. No Boundary is considered part of science (no one is going to kick Hawking out of science). You can't just say it is not science because it doesn't fit your rule. Instead, you have to test the rule against what is generally considered science. So there are theories that all scientists consider science but are untestable.

Even string theorists admit that their efforts do not quite qualify as science. It's math. At best, they say it's "at the borderline of science". And the reason they say this is, it can't be tested in practice, and may not be testable even in principle.

OTOH, consider the following statements:
1. "Onside kicks are not usually fumbled." Very testable and has been tested. But no one is going to have football be a science.

Because scientists don't play football? I think you are confused. That's a scientific statement - or would be if "usually" were specified so that a measurement could be made. Botanists study trees. Is their study not science because trees are just trees, and not science itself? THINK, man!

2. "The books of the Pentateuch were written by several authors." Again, testable But even you are not going to say that religion and Biblical studies are science.

You must be kidding. The statement concerns the authorship, NOT the contents. If I write that there are invisible flying pigs, you can scientifically establish that I wrote it independent of whether there ARE flying pigs. Your thinking is muddled.

Trust you to pick a ridiculous example. ALL knowledge is personal experience. For the experience to be valid, our senses have to be working normally. In your example, since you say "If I'm drunk", then the senses are not working normally.

Ah, suddenly the special pleading. Yet prophets quite commonly went into the desert where the effects of heat, starvation and dehydration combined to give them visions. Some religious ceremonies involve consuming mind-altering drugs. All in the name of "religious knowledge". So you are flat wrong, once again.

Let's consider something else: the taste of Brussels sprouts. What does your personal experience say they taste like? For me, the taste is so vile that I involuntarily vomit. Yet that can't be everyone's experience, since grocery stores sell Brussels sprouts. So who is "wrong"?

Why does someone need to be "wrong"?

I have been pointing out to Kristian that creationists do not consider the consequences of their statements for Christianity. Atheists do not consider the consequences of their arguments on science.

Do you run everything through religious filters? You have by now demonstrated repeatedly (I've lost count) that you have NO CLUE what an atheist is. You probably never will. Yet you speak all knowingly about something completely outside your grasp, and get it wrong every time. Give it up. You have no better idea what atheism is like than I have about what Christian faith is like.

Let's start with this paper:
Lucas, P.A. Chemotactic response of osteoblast-like cells to TGF-beta. Bone, 10: 459-463, 1990.

When it comes down to it, that is my eyewitness testimony. Under the conditions I state in the Methods, I am testify I saw what I put in the Results. You say that eyewitness testimony is inherently wrong.

I said no such thing. I said eyewitness testimony is extremely unreliable. That doesn't mean it's wrong, that means it's unreliable. Make an honest argument for a change.

So say someone repeats the experiment. What person B will have is their eyewitness testimony. If eyewitness testimony is wrong, then B's testimony is also wrong. And C's, and D's and so on. "intersubjective verification" cannot work if eyewitness testimony is inherently wrong nearly all the time. All you will get is a string of people that are equally wrong. And thus, there goes all the reliability you attribute to science.

Are you being stupid on purpose, or does it come naturally. Sorry if I'm running out of patience with you. If all of your people A through N all disagreed in different ways with one another, we could say that the methodology probably needs improvement. If they all agree, AND if their agreement leads to testable predictions which turn out to be correct, THEN we can tentatively conclude we are approaching intersubjective verification. But of course, your silly argument presupposes your misrepresentation of what I wrote. This is not honest. As usual.

I don't "need" to make it. If it were not true, I simply would be agnostic. :) IOW, my faith would be different. What happens is that people test their experiences of deity. They try to find alternative explanations for them. For example, at one point CS Lewis called a friend over because he thought his personal experiences of deity were instead manifestations of insanity. IOW, he doubted his own sanity before he accepted that the experience was real. Other theists have done the same thing. Basically, they have behaved as scientists: they have falsified the alternative hypotheses before they tentatively accepted that they were experiencing deity.

Yes, nothing is more reasonable than a shared prejudice. So if you have doubts, just ask someone who shares your prejudice, he ratifies it, and you're safe again. Don't consult any atheists, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. They might not rubber-stamp your emotional requirements. But I wil say you would be an agnostic if your emotional needs didn't make your illusions self-fulfilling.

1. It's not pointless. As a scientist, I would like to know I have the complete answer. I would like to know the ultimate nature of reality and how and why the universe is the way it is. Wouldn't you? However, by science I can't know the answer to a very big question about the universe and reality. Now, scientists learn to live with unanswered questions, and this is one of them. But pointless? Nope.
2. There is also the matter of whether deity does sustain all the processes we discover thru science. Again, this gets back to having a complete answer. As it stands, as a scientist, I may be missing one of the components of causes.

Apparently I wandered into a blind spot. Twice I have pointed out that IF a Designer set things up exactly as science finds them, there would be no way to tell. THINK about it, please. I'm tired of you changing the subject.

It wasn't that clear. You were saying that all statements science made could not be proved. That undervalues the knowledge we get from science. Some things (quite a bit) we are certain about.

So it WAS clear, and you got it perfectly. And it was correct. Science is inherently never certain. Science does of course reach the point where Gould said it would be "perverse to withhold provisional assent". That's why science works. Science does not deal in "proof". Science is empirical.

When you say "theories are both", you mean they are 1) digests of data and 2) products of imagination. No, theories are only very rarely digests of data. That is an old idea about science (dating back to Aristotle) that turns out to be wrong.

A scientific theory is the "berst-fit" explanation for all relevant observations. It implies a great many predictions, and some of the implications are quite indirect and might require some inspiration to create. But still, your position is without merit. As usual.

"What has been learned" includes everything that has been disproved. Of course science doesn't keep talking about disproved ideas as tho they are valid.

And hence, theories rest on what has been established. Make up your mind.

In fact, that creationism does take a disproved theory and pretend that it is valid would be a way to keep it out of science class. However, you are saying that common design is not a disproved theory. You are allowing Kristian to keep putting it forth. Ironically I, the theist, am the one saying it is disproved and we shouldn't keep puting it forth.

PLEASE stop misrepresenting what I said. And I never said common design is not a disproved theory. Common design is not a theory AT ALL, since it rests on no evidence. Common design is a policy position, a non-testable, non-provable statement. It is not science, and cannot be science. You can use science to learn all there is to know about how hydrogen and oxygen combine, BUT you can't know whether this is in accord with the intent of the hypothetical Designer. You can NEVER know that, because the Designer is imaginary. So Design is not a theory, it is a religious doctrine. It has no place in science class.

Sorry, but science is a process of dreaming up harebrained notions.

No, it is not. All such notions are ultimately based on some set of observations. By harebrained, I meant baseless, not unimaginative.

However, the next step is going out to refute them.

Exactly so. If they can't be tested, they are not scientific statements.

"When Günter Blobel and David Sabatini first proposed the signal hypothesis in 1971, the whole thing was simply ignored. There was not a shred of evidence to support it. " Volume 13, #22 The Scientist November 8, 1999
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/18750/

What do you suppose might have caused it to cross their minds? I can't get your link to work right now.

When Darwin proposed natural selection, it was a leap of imagination and he had NO supporting evidence.

Which he had just spent a couple of decades collecting and analyzing! And on the basis of all this non-evidence (Darwin was meticulous about details), he proposed an explanation of it. Try reading his book.

It was after he proposed the idea (as can be seen from his notebooks) that he began pigeon breeding and other tests of the theory. Now, what happened is that all the future data did support the theory.

Groan. Yes, based on EVIDENCE Darwin proposed an explanation. Then he went out to seek as much corroboration for that explanation as he could find. This is how things work. People do not think in a vacuum.

In science, evidence is collected to test a hypothesis. Even the Mormons are testing the hypothesis that the Book of Mormon is accurate history. So even in your example you are supporting what I claimed. Thank you.

Oops, more dishonesty. YOUR claim was that what is discovered depends on the motivation for discovering it. I showed you that even flat ridiculous motivations can produce good data, and that the motivation doesn't matter. So you shifted your goalposts. Bad boy.

That isn't exactly what I meant. That is a conclusion many people have reached about science, but I have my doubts as to the validity of the conclusion. First, I see knowing what is wrong is knowledge. This idea presumes that knowledge is only what is correct. Second, some things we have gotten as absolutely right.

Yes, and unknown. I agree that every test and set of observations that is unique, generates new knowledge whether or not the hypothesis generating the test turns out to be correct. Knowing what IS the case necessarily implies that all else is NOT the case. But such knowledge is inherently tentative. I shouldn't have to tell you that Newton was absolutely right, until Einstein. The earth going around the sun was absolutely right, until the barycenter was pinpointed. Evolutionary theory is absolutely right - except it is being improved, extended, and modified daily. Now, if you regard your subjective experiences as being Absolutely Right, have fun in there.

Sorry, but the pictures from space only show a circle, not a 3 D structure. A prediction from the theory is that the earth should look like a circle from space. So the observation is a circle from space. The theory is that the earth is round. See Niles Eldredge's discussion of this very thing in The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at Creationism.

This is very tiring. You have now painted yourself into the corner of insisting that ALL observations are "theories", since they are all necessarily incomplete. Care to THINK about this and then try again?

For the reasons given above, it's not pointless. Nor are the purposes necessarily unknowable.

For the reasons given above, it's pointless. Any assertion that is in principle impossible to determine, is a pointless assertion. The Designer is DEFINED as unknowable.

But the underlying position is different from the one stated. The underlying position is that deity is necessary for every process discovered by science to work. Mix hydrogen and oxygen and add a spark. The result is combustion and the chemical combination of the hydrogen and oxygen to water. The underlying hypothesis is that deity wills each and every atom to react.

And you feel you can somehow gather evidence as to whether or not this position is correct? How would you go about it, exactly?

No, we can't disprove that. But it's not "pointless", either.

What can't be investigated is pointless. If we posit a designer who just happened to create reality exactly as we find it, no matter how much we learn, then I suppose we can SAY we're investigating the Designer's handiwork, but why bother? If the Designer is impossible to differentiate from NO designer, then the notion is pointless.

Again, as a scientist I would like to know that I have all the causes for the formation of water. But I may not have one. Therefore, my work is incomplete.

And always will be incomplete, because you can NEVER know that you have all the causes. There always might be another. Which is why I said certainty is not possible in science. NOW you agree. Earlier, you claimed otherwise. You are racing around the field with the goalposts. You might reflect on why you find this necessary.

[lucaspa]

The notion of "kind" seems related to familiarity or utility. I've seen species within a genus called separate kinds, and I've seen "kind" refer to as much as an entire class (the "insect kind") of animals. And of course, all bacteria and archaea are considered one "kind".

You might find this useful:
"In the above discussion, we have defined a basic kind as including all of those variants which have been derived from a single stock. We have cited some examples of varieties which we believe should be included within a single basic kind. We cannot always be sure, however, what constitutes a basic kind. The division into kinds is easier the more the divergence observed. It is obvious, for example, that among invertebrates the protozoa, sponges, jellyfish, worms, snails, trilobites, lobsters, and bees are all different kinds. Among the vertebrates, the fishes amphibians reptiles, birds, and mammals are obviously different basic kinds. Among the reptiles, the turtles, crocodiles, dinosaurs, pterosaurs (flying reptiles), and ichthyosaurs (aquatic reptiles) would be placed in different kinds. Each one of these major groups of reptiles could be further subdivided into the basic kinds within each.

Within the mammalian class, duck-billed playtpuses, opossums, bats, hedgehogs, rats, rabbits, dogs, cats, lemurs, monkeys, apes, and men are easily assignable to different basic kinds. Among the apes, the gibbons, orangutans, chimpanzees, and gorillas would each be included in a different basic kind." Duane T. Gish, The Fossils Say NO!, 1973, pp 34-35.

There are a couple of things to note in this discussion of "kinds" by one of the most prominent creationists:
1. He has kinds within kinds.
2. The number of species in a kind goes down the closer one gets to humans. Trilobites are a Class and are as diverse as any of the vertebrate Classes (like mammals), but Gish puts them all in a single kind.

As Niles Eldredge noted, Gish is willing to concede an enormous amount of evolution as long as humans are excluded and are special creations.

[phank]

2. The number of species in a kind goes down the closer one gets to humans. Trilobites are a Class and are as diverse as any of the vertebrate Classes (like mammals), but Gish puts them all in a single kind.

Yes, this is what I was trying to say (not very well, I admit) by "familiarity and utility".

[lucaspa]

Even string theorists admit that their efforts do not quite qualify as science. It's math. At best, they say it's "at the borderline of science". And the reason they say this is, it can't be tested in practice, and may not be testable even in principle.

Citations? As it turns out, String Theory has been tested. It has been failing those tests:
Kaku M, Testing string theory. Discover August 2005 http://discovermagazine.com/2005/aug/cover

One of the things that can happen to a theory is "ad hoc hypotheses". If a theory has data that would falsify it, then the theory can be saved by an "ad hoc" hypothesis. The most famous of these occurred when the orbit of Uranus did not match that predicted by Newtonian gravity. In order to save Newtonian gravity, the ad hoc hypothesis of another, as yet undetected, planet in an orbit beyond Uranus was affecting the orbit -- thru Newtonian gravity. And there was, the planet Neptune. Now, the rule is that an ad hoc hypothesis must be tested [B]independently[/B of the theory it is trying to save. The existence of Neptune was tested by the theories of optics (telescopes). What string theory is facing are ad hoc hypotheses to save it from falsification.]

Because scientists don't play football? I think you are confused.

I think you are obfuscating. Because no one considers football as a discipline of science. And no one considers any statement regarding football as scientific.

Again, if you are going to try to come up with a demarcation criteria -- some criteria to say what is and isn't science -- then you test that against what we already consider science and not science. You don't get to then say "football is part of science". Yes, the statement "onside kicks are not usually fumbled" is testable. It has been tested and we know they are not usually fumbled. BUT, that doesn't make the statement "scientific". We have already decided that football, and statements relating to football, are not science. So what it means is that the criteria fails.

You must be kidding. The statement concerns the authorship, NOT the contents.

So what? The statement is still testable. Has been tested and accepted by the Biblical scholarship community. The Documentary Hypothesis is as well established within that community as evolution is within biology. The point is, however, that you don't consider the statement "scientific". Yet it meets your criteria. What it means, again, is that the criteria is flawed.

Ah, suddenly the special pleading. Yet prophets quite commonly went into the desert where the effects of heat, starvation and dehydration combined to give them visions.

Sorry, it is you using special pleading. I never said I was talking about prophets, did I? Nor did I ever say I was confining experience of deity to prophets, or people partaking in ceremonies using mind altering drugs. So, if you want special pleading, look into the mirror.

Why does someone need to be "wrong"?

That's the point. When we have personal experiences that differ among people, it is often inappropriate to say that one is wrong. Of course, that doesn't stop you from using that phrase to me. LOL

Do you run everything through religious filters? You have by now demonstrated repeatedly (I've lost count) that you have NO CLUE what an atheist is. You probably never will.

That is Red Herring. You never addressed the problem the statements about the unreliabilty of personal experience does to science.

I said no such thing. I said eyewitness testimony is extremely unreliable. That doesn't mean it's wrong

Excuse me, but what else can "extremely unreliable" mean? It means that it is wrong nearly all the time, right? It doesn't matter if they are wrong in different ways or if they are all wrong in the same way, wrong is wrong.

all of your people A through N all disagreed in different ways with one another, we could say that the methodology probably needs improvement. If they all agree, AND if their agreement leads to testable predictions which turn out to be correct, THEN we can tentatively conclude we are approaching intersubjective verification.

For about 10 years in science, it was thought that humans had 48 chromosomes. It turns out the the methodology was flawed, but flawed such that it gave the same answer each time. Each lab's personal experience was exactly the same. I know a scientist who did all his thesis work, replicated his data, used it to make predictions, and the predictions worked out, but it turned out everything he did was wrong. ALL his results were due to an artifact of his methodology.

Now, you will point out that this doesn't happen often, and, of course, you are correct. But that is my point! Personal experience is most often accurate. It is NOT "extremely unreliable", but is instead generally reliable. That's why we can say that intersubjective is even more reliable, because we are taking the very reliable subset of a generally reliable set. However, if personal experience is "extremely unreliable", then repeating that experience doesn't help: everyone's experience is unreliable and thus, we can't count on ANY of it.

Yes, nothing is more reasonable than a shared prejudice. So if you have doubts, just ask someone who shares your prejudice, he ratifies it, and you're safe again. Don't consult any atheists, Buddhists, Hindus, etc.

But I do talk to atheists all the time on the boards. What I am saying is: if it could be shown that the personal experience of deity was inherently flawed, then I would change my beliefs. Why is that so unreasonable? What you are apparently doing is making strawman versions of "personal experience of deity".

They might not rubber-stamp your emotional requirements. But I wil say you would be an agnostic if your emotional needs didn't make your illusions self-fulfilling.

I think you should remember that, when speaking as a scientist, I am agnostic. But you are talking about my "emotional needs". Since I haven't brought any needs into the discussion, what are you basing a hypothesis of "emotional needs" on? You say hypotheses must be based on data. What's your data and why are you violating your own standards?

Twice I have pointed out that IF a Designer set things up exactly as science finds them, there would be no way to tell. THINK about it, please.

I'm trying to clarify the position. Perhaps you are stating the same thing I am, but the words don't say that. For instance, "set things up" implies that the Designer set up the processes and now they run on their own. I want to make it clear that this is not the position. Instead, the position is that deity continually effects the processes so that they work.

Science is inherently never certain.

Sorry, now you saice scienc is never certain. But sometimes it is. When theories are falsified, science is certain. We may not be certain that the earth is round, but we are certain it is not flat. I am arguing because the statement undervalues the epistemological value of science.

What you appear to be doing is including only the currently valid theories as part of science. But if you say that scientific theoies are testable and falsifiable, then it follows that theories are still part of science when falsified.

Science does of course reach the point where Gould said it would be "perverse to withhold provisional assent". That's why science works. Science does not deal in "proof". Science is empirical.

Oh boy. "Empirical" is not the same thing as "proof". "Empirical" denotes "observable". Science does deal in disproof. Are you seriously tying "science works" to "perverse to withold provisional assent"? That's not why "science works". Science works because it does produce knowledge that seems to coincide with objective reality.

A scientific theory is the "berst-fit" explanation for all relevant observations.

How about a falsified theory? Is it a "best-fit explanation"? Of course not. A scientific theory is a generalized statement about the physical universe. A hypothesis is a more specific statement about the physical universe. Obviously there is a gray area where a statement could be called either a hypothesis or theory. A hypothesis/theory can be:
1. Untested.
2 Tested and falsified.
3. Tested and supported.

But initially a theory is the product of imagination. Hypotheses most often have NO data. Because theories are general statements, they often include previously tested and supported hypotheses. In that case, a theory is consistent with the observations that supported those hypotheses.

[quoteIt implies a great many predictions, and some of the implications are quite indirect and might require some inspiration to create. But still, your position is without merit. As usual.[/quote]
LOL! Has it ever occurred to you that a professional scientist and someone who teaches philosophy of science to biomedical graduate students might have a better understanding of what science is than you? Hypotheses/theories have observational consequences. That is, observations that should be there if the hypothesis/theory is true. These are called "predictions' not because they predict the future, but because they "predict" observations we should find when we go looking for them. Predictions are logical consequences. As such, they rely on logic, not imagination. Now, if the testing is very indirect, yes, it may require some imagination to think up an indirect experiment.

But the real point is that theory formulation is an imaginative process. New theories are not digests of known information, but are conjectures without evidence put forward for testing. The news article on the research of those particular Nobel prize winners is supporting evidence. My paper last year in CORR is another example. Initially, the editor criticized the Intro because there was not a solid logical chain between former research and the hypothesis of the paper. I told him no such logical chain existed. I took 2 very different pieces of information and made an imaginative leap to make the hypothesis.
"I thought that scientific theories were not the digest of observations, but that they were inventions -- conjectures boldly put forward for trial, to be eliminated if they clashed with observations, with observations which were rarely accidental but as a rule undertaken with the definite intention of testing a theory by obtaining, if possible, a decisive refutation." Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, 1963 p 38.

And hence, theories rest on what has been established.['quote]
Please walk us thru on how new theories rest on everything that has been disproved. That only tells you what is wrong, not what might be correct. So imagination/inspiration is needed to formulate a theory.

And I never said common design is not a disproved theory.

I'm afraid you did. Go up to your posts to Kristian. You state that common design cannot be disproved.

[quote[Common design is not a theory AT ALL, since it rests on no evidence.

Resting on evidence is not a criteria for being a theory. Look at the Nobel prize winners again. It appears to me that you are using "theory" only as "tested and supported". But "theory" is not that restrictive.

What is more, EVERY theory has some evidence to support it. That's one reason Positivism (verification) failed as how science works (altho my experience is that it is a very popular conception of science among atheists).

Common design is a policy position, a non-testable, non-provable statement. It is not science, and cannot be science. ... BUT you can't know whether this is in accord with the intent of the hypothetical Designer. You can NEVER know that, because the Designer is imaginary. So Design is not a theory, it is a religious doctrine. It has no place in science class.

It doesn't matter about any "intent of a hypothetical Designer". Common design is a statement about the morphology, physiology, and relatedness of biological organisms. As such, it has testable predictions. When the testing is done, common design is falsified. Since it is a falsified theory, it can't be taught in science class as a tested and supported theory (which is how IDers want it taught).

You can use science to learn all there is to know about how hydrogen and oxygen combine,

As I pointed out, unfortunately we can't use science to "learn all there is to know". We can't use science to find out if the material causes operate on their own or if they require an intelligent entity to make them work.

More later. Right now my computer is telling me I have to restart to install updates.

[phank]

quote]I think you are obfuscating.[/quote]]I guarantee this is mutual.

Because no one considers football as a discipline of science. And no one considers any statement regarding football as scientific.

And nobody SAID football is a scientific discipline. The claim was that an empirically testable statement is a scientific statement. Even statements about football. You have moved the goalposts again. Why?

Again, if you are going to try to come up with a demarcation criteria -- some criteria to say what is and isn't science -- then you test that against what we already consider science and not science. You don't get to then say "football is part of science".

TESTABILITY is the hallmark of science. Any empirically testable statement is a scientific statement, regardless of the subject matter.

Yes, the statement "onside kicks are not usually fumbled" is testable. It has been tested and we know they are not usually fumbled. BUT, that doesn't make the statement "scientific".

Yes, it does. You are letting the footballs blind you to the nature of testable statements. (And incidentally, onside kicks are fumbled more than ordinary kickoffs. A LOT more.)

We have already decided that football, and statements relating to football, are not science. So what it means is that the criteria fails.

"We" decided no such thing. YOU ASSERTED that if the subject matter of a testable claim doesn't fall within what YOU consider a scientific discipline, therefore the claim is not scientific. Your assertion is wrong.

So what? The statement is still testable. Has been tested and accepted by the Biblical scholarship community. The Documentary Hypothesis is as well established within that community as evolution is within biology. The point is, however, that you don't consider the statement "scientific". Yet it meets your criteria. What it means, again, is that the criteria is flawed.

No, it means that you STILL can't seem to distinguish between the nature of a claim and the subject of the claim. Textual analysis is a scientific process, as much as forensics or archaeology. I clearly considered investigations into authorship to be scientific, EVEN IF the claims made in the texts are not. I gave an example.

Sorry, it is you using special pleading. I never said I was talking about prophets, did I?

Yes. You said that mental impairment disqualified knowledge based on experience. NOW you seem to be saying that, well, SOME mental impairments get a free pass. This is special pleading.

Nor did I ever say I was confining experience of deity to prophets, or people partaking in ceremonies using mind altering drugs. So, if you want special pleading, look into the mirror.

Nor did I say you were. You CAN NOT be honest, can you?

That is Red Herring. You never addressed the problem the statements about the unreliabilty of personal experience does to science.

This is a deliberate untruth. I'm getting used to these. I addressed the problem, here and elsewhere, repeatedly and explicitly, with examples. Do you really NEED me to go into a long discourse on the many many efforts the enterprise of science makes to counter the unreliability of personal experience? I don't believe you've never heard of peer review, null hypotheses, replication, publication, accuracy of prediction, etc. etc. etc. All of these exist as a check against the human tendency to see what they wish and expect to see.

Excuse me, but what else can "extremely unreliable" mean? It means that it is wrong nearly all the time, right? It doesn't matter if they are wrong in different ways or if they are all wrong in the same way, wrong is wrong.

Unreliable means there is a high enough probability of an experience being subjective, to justify subjecting that experience to a wide audience all with different viewpoints. Consensus tends to defeat self-serving claims. If there are all wrong in different ways, there is no consensus and no tentative conclusions can be drawn. If they are all wrong in the SAME way, chances are very good they are not all wrong. This isn't a foolproof method, but it's the best science has come up with.

ALL his results were due to an artifact of his methodology.

And? I suggest this is why the precise methodology is published as a matter of course.

Now, you will point out that this doesn't happen often, and, of course, you are correct. But that is my point! Personal experience is most often accurate. It is NOT "extremely unreliable", but is instead generally reliable.

And THAT, of course, is why there's no such thing as peer review, replication, publication, etc. All it takes is someone saying "I'm a scientist, and HERE is what I think" and POOF it's Truth! Why didn't I notice that? My methodology (reading, studying, practicing, etc.) must be flawed!

That's why we can say that intersubjective is even more reliable, because we are taking the very reliable subset of a generally reliable set. However, if personal experience is "extremely unreliable", then repeating that experience doesn't help: everyone's experience is unreliable and thus, we can't count on ANY of it.

Yes, intersubjective is even more reliable. And it is used PRECISELY because of the frequency of methodological flaws, confirmation bias, etc. Half of the people DID NOT SEE the gorilla. Many experiments have shown that people are poor observers, and tend to see what they expect. This is the NORM.

But I do talk to atheists all the time on the boards. What I am saying is: if it could be shown that the personal experience of deity was inherently flawed, then I would change my beliefs. Why is that so unreasonable? What you are apparently doing is making strawman versions of "personal experience of deity".

This strikes me as circular. Your personal experience cannot be shown TO YOU to be inherently flawed, because such a demonstration would be refuted by your personal experience! Tell a theist there is no god, and he knows better because his god tells him otherwise!

I think you should remember that, when speaking as a scientist, I am agnostic. But you are talking about my "emotional needs". Since I haven't brought any needs into the discussion

An imaginary personal deity is an emotional need. YOU brought it into the discussion, I didn't.

what are you basing a hypothesis of "emotional needs" on? You say hypotheses must be based on data. What's your data and why are you violating your own standards?

So far, nobody has been able to demonstrate any deities. They appear to be entirely subjective. People have been asking for a very long time for ANY intersubjectively verifiable evidence. There is none. So why do people believe in such things anyway, except that it fulfills some need.

I'm trying to clarify the position. Perhaps you are stating the same thing I am, but the words don't say that. For instance, "set things up" implies that the Designer set up the processes and now they run on their own. I want to make it clear that this is not the position. Instead, the position is that deity continually effects the processes so that they work.

If there is a distinction here, I can't see it. So long as WHATEVER is observed, no matter what it is, is how the Designer did it, then the Designer is pointless. There is NO WAY, in principle, to distinguish a designer fro no designer.

Sorry, now you saice scienc is never certain. But sometimes it is. When theories are falsified, science is certain. We may not be certain that the earth is round, but we are certain it is not flat. I am arguing because the statement undervalues the epistemological value of science.

OK, this is a good point. Science can establish falsehood, not truth.

What you appear to be doing is including only the currently valid theories as part of science. But if you say that scientific theoies are testable and falsifiable, then it follows that theories are still part of science when falsified.

I don't think I follow your reasoning here. Theories are subject to continuous improvement. Yesterday's version is part of the history of science, of course.

Oh boy. "Empirical" is not the same thing as "proof".

In fact, these may be different categories altogether.

"Empirical" denotes "observable". Science does deal in disproof. Are you seriously tying "science works" to "perverse to withold provisional assent"? That's not why "science works". Science works because it does produce knowledge that seems to coincide with objective reality.

I can't parse this very well. I think I agree with you. So long as we don't regard anything learned empirically as Absolute Truth, we do get closer and closer to a correct understanding of the operation of the universe.

How about a falsified theory? Is it a "best-fit explanation"? Of course not.

Not anymore.

But initially a theory is the product of imagination.

No. Initially a theory is the process of the mental integration of various observations, the process of finding what appears to be a pattern.

Hypotheses most often have NO data. Because theories are general statements, they often include previously tested and supported hypotheses. In that case, a theory is consistent with the observations that supported those hypotheses.

And of course, that's required. But hypotheses rarely if ever are based on NO data. As Asimov wrote, the most powerful words in science are not "Eureka, I found it" but rather "Hmmm, that's funny..." Something in some set of observations struck someone as anomalous. Unexpected. People being curious, they want to see if the anomaly was replicable, or if it was an illusion or a misunderstanding. BUT the point is that the anomaly is DATA.

LOL! Has it ever occurred to you that a professional scientist and someone who teaches philosophy of science to biomedical graduate students might have a better understanding of what science is than you?

It also occurs to me that we may be saying the same thing in very different ways, in most cases.

Hypotheses/theories have observational consequences. That is, observations that should be there if the hypothesis/theory is true. These are called "predictions' not because they predict the future, but because they "predict" observations we should find when we go looking for them. Predictions are logical consequences. As such, they rely on logic, not imagination. Now, if the testing is very indirect, yes, it may require some imagination to think up an indirect experiment.

Yes, this is my understanding.

But the real point is that theory formulation is an imaginative process. New theories are not digests of known information, but are conjectures without evidence put forward for testing.

If by "imaginative" you mean "seeing subtle patterns buried in incomplete, often VERY incomplete, sets of observations", then I agree with you. Imagination is a requirement to propose a theory. BUT I continue to insist that there must be a set of observations to sense a pattern IN. People do not think in a vacuum. So maybe our disagreement here is whether a vaguely-sensed pattern constitutes "evidence". I would argue that it does.

The news article on the research of those particular Nobel prize winners is supporting evidence. My paper last year in CORR is another example.

What caused the subject of your paper to cross your mind in the first place? Did it appear ex nihilo in a dream? Or were you curious about something?

Initially, the editor criticized the Intro because there was not a solid logical chain between former research and the hypothesis of the paper. I told him no such logical chain existed. I took 2 very different pieces of information and made an imaginative leap to make the hypothesis.

Aha! We do have semantic issue here after all. You based your hypothesis on INFORMATION. Yes, that information suggested a pattern you chose to investigate. I personally would regard the requirement of "a solid logical chain" to be fatal to science.

"I thought that scientific theories were not the digest of observations, but that they were inventions -- conjectures boldly put forward for trial, to be eliminated if they clashed with observations, with observations which were rarely accidental but as a rule undertaken with the definite intention of testing a theory by obtaining, if possible, a decisive refutation." Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, 1963 p 38.

Sigh. Yes, I agree scientists are not people filling out forms, and any worthwhile hypothesis is the product of imagination. But subconscious digesting of information (which you yourself used) is still digesting. Digestion does not require solid logical chains. What do you think "standing on the shoulders of giants" refers to? Do you think it means that the "giants" don't matter, didn't exist, or what they accomplished is irrelevant? Seriously? The "giants" are the existing body of knowledge, hard-earned, from which further advancement can be made. Science as an enterprise is incremental (sometimes the increments are large).

And I never said common design is not a disproved theory.

I'm afraid you did. Go up to your posts to Kristian. You state that common design cannot be disproved.

??? We are both correct here. I am correct that I never said common design is not a disproved THEORY. You are correct that I said common design cannot be disproved. The reason it can't be disproved is, it is NOT A THEORY. It is not based on observation. It is a policy position. Policy positions are not testable, they are not subject to disproof. Please read what I said, not what you WISH that I said. YOU stuck "theory" in there. Bad boy.

Resting on evidence is not a criteria for being a theory. Look at the Nobel prize winners again. It appears to me that you are using "theory" only as "tested and supported". But "theory" is not that restrictive.

Again, problems with a definition. A theory is the best-fit explanation of a set of related observations. But any good theory implies predictions. I think you are arguing that the predictions are part of the theory. But if so, some scientists read the theory differently from others.

What is more, EVERY theory has some evidence to support it. That's one reason Positivism (verification) failed as how science works (altho my experience is that it is a very popular conception of science among atheists).

LOL! What does religious orientation have to do with this? You are suffering terminal confirmation bias. Every theory has some evidence, because every theory is a proposed "best fit" explanation OF that evidence. Verification retains the best-fit requirement. Even your own findings must be verified. That's how science works. That's how science works when done by Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Confucians, etc.

It doesn't matter about any "intent of a hypothetical Designer". Common design is a statement about the morphology, physiology, and relatedness of biological organisms. As such, it has testable predictions. When the testing is done, common design is falsified. Since it is a falsified theory, it can't be taught in science class as a tested and supported theory (which is how IDers want it taught).

Ah, more confusion cleared up. I was using "common design" in a different sense, in the sense of produced by a common designer, who designed all things. That claim cannot be falsified. I would like it if you can give an example of how your idea of common design has been falsified. My personal definition of the term prohibits that.

As I pointed out, unfortunately we can't use science to "learn all there is to know". We can't use science to find out if the material causes operate on their own or if they require an intelligent entity to make them work.

Is there an echo in here? Yes, that's exactly what I said.

[magellan004]

I am replying to a post by Pancreasman here because it seems the most appropriate thread.

Post24 from Methodological Naturalism (in science)

Except that in that same thread you asked for a test distinguishing 'species' rather than speciation which I provided with a whole article and precis. You avoided talking about it. If you can't keep your own craziness straight how can you expect to follow anything?

I then set up an entire thread on how species are determined with dichotomous keys using objective criteria. Again, you were noticeably absent in your response and since everybody else (including YEC proponents) agreed that species was a well defined concept the conversation moved on to the issue of common ancestors.

While discussing 'kinds' the other YEC proponents honestly admitted that kinds are not well defined. Jorge at least offered a suggestion that reproduction was a key issue with kinds identifying kinds with the species level of classification.

You have made these claims which no one, not even your YEC compatriots agree with:

1. Species is an undefined subjective categorization.

2. Biblical kinds explain something. (What exactly, since nobody knows what they are?)

3. No evolution of any sort ever takes place. If you believe this then you are on your own since most YEC's believe Noah took a smaller number of creatures on board rather than representatives of every single species on Earth. This smaller collection than evolved (really, really fast) into the vast array of species we have today.

So instead of hurling snide remarks and insults it might be a more profitable use of your time to address the content that has refuted your own misconceptions that have even placed you at odds with the rest of the YEC community.

Here are five dichotomous keys. Some of them are clear and easy to use. They are use what we might call objective tests. One of the keys depends on judgement – what I would call a subjective test .
However two of the ‘objective keys’ are clearly faulty. Yet the Key with the subjective test looks fine.

Dichotomous Key1.jpgDichotomous Key2.jpg

I did reply to your Dichotomous Keys thread in Post 8. Perhaps you missed my reply? The problem with your line of thinking is similar to equating Race with Place of Birth. You are mixing up two concepts. On the face of it race seems to depend on place of birth – but when we think about it the association of race with place of birth just gets too hairy.

You might like Key 4 where race is determined by the parents’ race. That’s fine. You can’t deny that using the key involves personal judgement. And more importantly, if you accept a dichotomous key that uses judgement then you can’t criticise someone for using other keys that use personal judgement – For example :

What Kind is that animal?
Is this object designed?
Did God create this universe?

If you take the view that science requires ‘objective’ tests rather than tests involving personal judgement then you cannot bide a discipline (if it can be called that) where personal judgements about interbreeding ability are the foundation, but not the means of testing an animal’s classification.

Magellan

[pancreasman]

I am replying to a post by Pancreasman here because it seems the most appropriate thread.

Post24 from Methodological Naturalism (in science)


Here are five dichotomous keys. Some of them are clear and easy to use. They are use what we might call objective tests. One of the keys depends on judgement – what I would call a subjective test .
However two of the ‘objective keys’ are clearly faulty. Yet the Key with the subjective test looks fine.

Dichotomous Key1.jpgDichotomous Key2.jpg

I did reply to your Dichotomous Keys thread in Post 8. Perhaps you missed my reply? The problem with your line of thinking is similar to equating Race with Place of Birth. You are mixing up two concepts. On the face of it race seems to depend on place of birth – but when we think about it the association of race with place of birth just gets too hairy.

You might like Key 4 where race is determined by the parents’ race. That’s fine. You can’t deny that using the key involves personal judgement. And more importantly, if you accept a dichotomous key that uses judgement then you can’t criticise someone for using other keys that use personal judgement – For example :

What Kind is that animal?
Is this object designed?
Did God create this universe?

If you take the view that science requires ‘objective’ tests rather than tests involving personal judgement then you cannot bide a discipline (if it can be called that) where personal judgements about interbreeding ability are the foundation, but not the means of testing an animal’s classification.

Magellan

Those are not dichotomous keys. They have only one step in them and leave out other options. I suggest you find proper examples to make your point with (if any). Further the ability to interbreed is not the only way to determine different species. If you read some of those papers I referenced for you, you'd see genetic markers are much more useful in a broader range of contexts.

[magellan004]

Those are not dichotomous keys. They have only one step in them and leave out other options. I suggest you find proper examples to make your point with (if any). Further the ability to interbreed is not the only way to determine different species. If you read some of those papers I referenced for you, you'd see genetic markers are much more useful in a broader range of contexts.

Please state the way to determine Species.

A dichotomous key would settle it.


Magellan

[pancreasman]

Please state the way to determine Species.

A dichotomous key would settle it.


Magellan

Already done. See the OP for several examples.