What difference would it make? You don't even know how to identify key terms in an argument, do you?
Grow up, sport.
If others struggle to distinguish your legitimate arguments from farcical ones it is likely time improve your arguments. I'd say you're far overdue.
Have you not read a word I've written or are you really as hypnotized by your own prejudices as your comments make appear?
That's fitting.
biggrin" I politely left at the end of my post.Yes, I have...and you've spent your first few replies talking at people, whereas real "teachers" talk with people -- even if they strongly disagree.
It remains that your history of posting ridiculous things in earnest makes this wolf-cry difficult to distinguish from the rest.I guess you missed the "
Oh, bullshit. If you don't like the way I discuss the topic, kindly fuck off to any of the other threads. I'm not here to coddle anyone. Nobody's got their kid gloves on when they're talking to me.
His arguments are met with the derision they deserve. They are terrible, and I'm not going to pull any punches in pointing that out. If you don't like the way the grown ups talk, go swim in the kiddie pool.
I'm not the one who started criticizing a person instead of discussing the actual topic, Rob. It has devolved to this so quickly because you don't like me, and for no other reason.
Then what in the ever-loving fuck are you even doing posting in this thread? The merits of the theory of evolution are precisely its topic, and you just admitted you're in here for some nebulous reason which explicitly does not include the discussion of the thread topic. Really?
That's great. Go start a thread about it somewhere else.
They might. That's their problem and not mine.
I'm trying to make them confront the facts of the reality in which we all live. How they handle that confrontation is up to them.
Yes, you're right, you're way off topic. When you have something on-topic to post, I'll be happy to engage you.
False. The two as posed are mathematically equivalent due to Duhamel's Principle. See my previous annotation with two asterisks.
That's not a refutation of anything I said. It is possible to pose the young Earth creationism "hypothesis" such that it is mathematically equivalent to any other cosmological theory which predicts all obsevables. We cannot scientifically distinguish whether
I agree that a scientific theory can never be proven correct - it can only be proven false with some finite probability of support for the null hypothesis. Along that same line of reasoning, there is no scientific support (other than a lack of contradictory evidence) for any scientific theory. That is more or less the crux of the argument. There are infinitely many models which yield identical predictions over the observable variable space. You cannot scientifically distinguish between the two theories (if properly posed) that (1) you have pressed the key or (2) the key is sentient and moves to avoid your finger's approach. We have plenty of accurate models which explain a mechanistic basis for (1) but it is also possible to formulate a model which makes (2) indistinguishable from (1). The only distinction, then, is philosophical: we choose (1) because it's a simpler model and has equal predictive power for any case we care to study. We also choose it because we as yet have no way to distinguish between (1) and (2).
Unfortunately in your rage, you missed everything I posted. There are infinitely many models which yield identical predictions regarding any observable event. The two I described are simply two of those infinite possibilities. I never denied any scientific theory (if such a thing can even exist as a theory is nothing more than a philosophical construct by which we can try to understand observables using abstraction).
One cannot test scientific hypotheses objectively without invoking a mathematical model of the hypothesis. Scientific theories make mathematical predictions. That's how they can be tested. Unless you're a social scientist...
The problem is that science has not yet answered everything about the natural world. All it can do is try to predict new observations. It cannot distinguish between two theories which make equal predictions for those observations. The latter is a philosophical exercise, at least until science progresses to the point where it can observe something new wherein the two models offer different predictions.
I'm glad you finally agree with me. Occam's Razor is a philosophical heuristic, not a scientific method.
You're admittedly neither a mathematician nor a scientist? I figured that out when you called my mathematically and scientifically sound argument absurd without effort toward refutation.
Two things having identical properties cannot be distinguished using scientific means. Two models making identical predictions in the space of all observables cannot be distinguished using scientific means (at least until the observable space is expanded using new techniques/technology). Occam's Razor is simply a philosophical heuristic in which one picks a model based on an arbitrary criterion (simplicity): it says nothing about which theory is "correct."
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