Comments on: Egnor Sinks to New Lows

By: martin_heth

martin_heth — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 06:47:12 +0000

Evolutionists and their theo(il)logical illk always get me theorising about what the psychological motive is for what they believe, similar to the feeling one of my girlfriends gave me in wanting to believe she could cast spells….maybe she’d miss out the word ‘wanting’, but there is a question of the subjective drive of people to brainwash themselves into a worldview(would feel rather pompous using the term weltanschauung, though one could) which simply cannot be born out analytically….what drives this guy to believe this, or galvanises him into this anti-belief, what’s the problem (and one intuitively grasps that at some point Egnor has been a rather upset fellow after reading a well-reasoned piece of scientific writing), well, I would go for Egnor and those whom he considers supporters as being cognitively inferior, and/or possessed of a weak constitution.
This type of exchange maks me feel the ‘evolutionist’ is revelling in attention that isn’t worth giving to him or her.
Here’s something a little different as a statement: a man who had been a top-secret weapons technician in Rosyth Naval Dockyards north of Edinburgh informed me thus: “I had had to knowthat….that….you know that explosion over Siberia in….in….quite a while ago….”
“What, that Tunguska explosion in 1908?” You knew instantly he felt he was going to say something quite…..contradictory to one’s extant conception of what-is-possible…..
“Yes, that. I had had to knowthat that was an incoming extra-terrestrial craft.”
Can go into much more detail regarding how that little datum came to be confided, but as a basic statement, that’s good enough for now. Let’s see how the religious sorts deal with that.

By: HHC

HHC — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 03:02:06 +0000

Correction to comment posted 25 Feb. 2009 at 3:11pm. Article referred to is available in the archive of the Jerusalem Report.

By: artfulD

artfulD — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:05:37 +0000

An attack on someone’s false clams of authority is not the fallacious use of ad hominem, which means to the person. You can’t duck the responsibility for making authoritative pronouncements by invoking some ad hominem immunity. The argument from authority is the fallacy that more aptly applies to this situation.

By: artfulD

artfulD — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:53:20 +0000

“Purpose can closely be tied to interests, and interests require a nervous system.” This is exactly what Daedalus2u was denying about biological entities. And he wasn’t trying to debate the issue as he claims, he was authoritatively denying this in the name of science, which it turns out he’s not that much of a authority in after all.

And when I used the phrase “serve a purpose” repeatedly to try to explain how we have in fact abused the meaning of the term, he repeatedly restated that phrase as “having a purpose.” When I said purpose was a human concept, he said it was anthropomorphic in that it implied inanimate objects had human attributes.
I tried several ways to demonstrate how the word is used to describe an object’s function, whether it be of animal or mineral, and he couldn’t grasp that for something to serve a purpose, that something didn’t have to intend to.
He seemed to think I was simply out to trick him in some non-scientific fashion. Then when asked to answer some non-tricky questions about the nature of his own understanding, he had a meltdown.
My goal initially had been to explain that one can’t be an evolutionist without understanding or at least hypothesizing about the role that purpose plays n the process. Without such understanding we leave the field to those who deliberately misstate the role of purpose to serve their own ends.
As far as we know now, “a gene does not intend to mutate”, but it is important to understand more about the purpose that it serves when it does so.

By: daedalus2u

daedalus2u — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:28:54 +0000

medmonkey, I have no difficulty discussing ideas that may be wrong or that are on (or beyond) the limits of our understanding.

There is a big difference between an open discussion and an exchange meant to demean and put-down an opponent irrespective of the content of the ideas. The latter approach I have no use for and won’t willingly participate in. That is the essence of the ad hominem attack. There is a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt that comes to mind:

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

By: medmonkey

medmonkey — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:39:08 +0000

I should add that this has nothing to do with purpose! Giving purpose to inanimate objects is clearly a post-hoc rationalization by intelligent beings. Purpose can closely be tied to interests, and interests require a nervous system.

Another use of the word purpose is to talk about an inanimate object’s function. For example, the “purpose” of a hammer is the drive nails. This definition of purpose has little to do with the above dialogue since the purpose purported on the hammer is done so by an intelligent being. It has nothing to do with intention – the hammer does not intend to drive the nail, just like a gene does not intend to mutate.

By: medmonkey

medmonkey — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:24:23 +0000

Daedalus2u,

It’s my understanding that the majority of scientists and physicists still “think” that time/space began with the big bang. However, there are legitimate physicists who are either on the fence on the subject, or maybe leaning toward time-before-time theories.

Theoretical physicist Sean Carroll, CalTech, blogs about these issues among others. He seems like a good resource to me, but my knowledge in this field is addmittedly lacking. In a blog about The Lopsided Universe, he writes,

“…I wanted to impress upon people that the origin of the entropy gradient in our everyday environment could be traced back to the Big Bang, and that conventional ideas about inflation did not provide straightforward answers to the problem, and that the Big Bang MAY NOT have been the beginning of the universe.” (emphasis is mine)

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/06/08/the-lopsided-universe/

Here is another blog entry about current state of understanding on the big bang:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/04/27/how-did-the-universe-start/

By: daedalus2u

daedalus2u — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:49:36 +0000

“Purpose” is not my term, it is AD’s. I don’t know what AD means when he uses the term beyond the normal dictionary definition of it. It is not a precise term. There are multiple dictionary definitions of it. The term “purpose” presumes the intent of an intelligent entity. Applying the term “purpose” to an object does not demonstrate that an intelligent entity created that object. That is a defect of the term “purpose” when applied in a non-anthropomorphic setting.

AD, show me a link where “scientists believe” there was time before the big bang.

This exchange is illustrating a point that was made in another thread that it is impossible to “debate” people who are not arguing honestly and in good faith. It is impossible to reason with people who don’t have the objective of trying to reason together and understand something. Not sure what your objectives are.

By: cwfong

cwfong — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 03:17:25 +0000

AD: You were contending earlier that if humans can have a purpose, while at the same time there were other life forms that cannot, then the purposes of those forms that have it would need to have been got from a creator, whose intent was to carry out such creator’s own purpose.

And thus Daedalus, in offering such preconditions initially, has confirmed he views things almost exactly from the creationist perspective?

Isn’t this the same Daedalus that argued with me that lower life forms could not have expectations?

But then would this Daedalus also have us believe the creationist dogma that since the beginning there have been no consequences that were ultimately unexpected?

Go figure.

By: artfulD

artfulD — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 03:06:56 +0000

daedalus2u: Scientists now believe that there was both space and time in the cosmos before the big bang, and that in any case the big bang did not create its own matter with that bang. And this beginning of time only means that there was thought to be no measurable changes in the universe prior to the bang. Time, in effect, was standing still. Although as it turns out, there is evidence to the contrary.

So you failed that question and have ducked the rest with babble and gibberish.

You spoke authoritatively of purpose, but can’t define what you meant by it? Then your use of the word was meaningless and you had no standing to even offer your initial opinion on the subject.

Your brain was an inappropriate tool to choose for that purpose.