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PostPosted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 9:19 am 
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Chuck D Wrote:
Popperian methodology


[img][346:500]http://www.skramer.com/Photo3/images/John%20Popper_jpg.jpg[/img]

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Chuck D Wrote:
....creation "science" doesn't seem to me to be appropriate for science classrooms, as it fails to adhere to Popperian methodology (point out for me a testable hypothesis that ID will provide).


Karl would rock these idiots. I think in addition to biologists they need to bring some philosophers of science out to remind everyone exactly what science is and what it should be.

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Hegel-oh's Wrote:
I don't understand the commonly held belief that evolution is fact. After all the years that evolution has been discussed, as far as I knew, it has remained a theory, quite absent of undisputable facts. There are just as many loose ends in the evolutionary theory, it seems, as in the Christian religion. Now, why is it that the mention of creationism(as a theory) is all of a sudden put into the rhetoric of dogma and conservativism?


But evolution is not a fact. It is a theory. As splates has also pointed out, "theory" is not the same as "guess". A theory is testable, provable and disprovable. When it is proved to be false, you amend and update the theory. You do not leap to the assumption that the entire theory is false and discredited, nor does it mean that an alternate theory is true.

Just because there are unanswered questions or loose ends does not mean the theory does not hold water, it simply means that they remain unanswered at the present time.

That's my main problem with the ID crowd. It "exposes" unexplainable or less explainable occurences as weaknesses or holes in the theory, thus disproving it. That is not true. If I don't know what the capital of Liberia is, it doesn't mean that they haven't chosen one yet, it just means that I've never heard of Monrovia. With more research and new knowledge, one day I could make that discovery.

I heard a fanfuckingtastic debate on C-Span Radio a few weeks ago. The principals were a lukewarm religious (at best) supporter of Intelligent Design, and an openly religious supporter of Evolution. They were both friends and while the debate was sometimes animated, it was never angry or laden with pejoratives. One point the evolutionist made was that some ID activist, whose name I will never remember, claimed to replicate thousands upon thousands of generations of bacteria in a lab, and none of them ever evolved any new characteristics, functions or forms. He claimed that because of his recreation of the evolutionists view of the origins of life did not advance his bacteria further, then it was evidence that it was necessary for an Intelligent Designer to intervene.

The evolution supporter posed one simple question: "How did this man exclude the Intelligent Designer from his experiment?"

That's also where I think the religious aspect sort of shoots itself in the foot with meddling in the classroom. If the designer is so intelligent, why are the breathing tube and the eating tube right next to each other, enabling choking? Why do humans have blindspots? Why is the spine all the way on one side of the body, rather than in the center, where it could provide better support? To me, it makes smacks some of the lustre off the omnipotent god thing.

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PostPosted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 11:24 am 
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Elvis Fu Wrote:
Hegel-oh's Wrote:
I don't understand the commonly held belief that evolution is fact. After all the years that evolution has been discussed, as far as I knew, it has remained a theory, quite absent of undisputable facts. There are just as many loose ends in the evolutionary theory, it seems, as in the Christian religion. Now, why is it that the mention of creationism(as a theory) is all of a sudden put into the rhetoric of dogma and conservativism?


But evolution is not a fact. It is a theory. As splates has also pointed out, "theory" is not the same as "guess". A theory is testable, provable and disprovable. When it is proved to be false, you amend and update the theory. You do not leap to the assumption that the entire theory is false and discredited, nor does it mean that an alternate theory is true.


Nicely said. I never get tired of reading stuff like this.

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PostPosted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 11:45 am 
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Elvis Fu Wrote:
Chuck D Wrote:
Popperian methodology


[img][346:500]http://www.skramer.com/Photo3/images/John%20Popper_jpg.jpg[/img]



but he's skinny(er) now.

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I don't understand why so many Christians feel that their "faith" is threatened by evolution theory.

And I also don't get why Christians think that this idea of "Intelligent Design" proves the existence of their god.

And is there an intelligent designer designer?

Because ID is just Paley's teleological argument for the existence of god all gussied up in faux science. Paley used a watch as the analogy (ie: you find a wristwatch on the ground, you automatically assume - because of the complexity of its workings - that somebody made it and, therefore, ditto earth, life, the universe, and all). But Paley only considered the beginning of the watch - and there's still the creation of the watchmaker to contend with.

Unless you bring in the argument that god is an eternal being with no beginning or end - but as soon as you introduce that concept, then you may as well accept that the universe itself could be eternal, with no beginning or end, and shut the fuck up about ID.


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Are they gonna teach how people lived to be several hundred years old as well?


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Elvis Fu Wrote:
Hegel-oh's Wrote:
I don't understand the commonly held belief that evolution is fact. After all the years that evolution has been discussed, as far as I knew, it has remained a theory, quite absent of undisputable facts. There are just as many loose ends in the evolutionary theory, it seems, as in the Christian religion. Now, why is it that the mention of creationism(as a theory) is all of a sudden put into the rhetoric of dogma and conservativism?


But evolution is not a fact. It is a theory. As splates has also pointed out, "theory" is not the same as "guess". A theory is testable, provable and disprovable. When it is proved to be false, you amend and update the theory. You do not leap to the assumption that the entire theory is false and discredited, nor does it mean that an alternate theory is true.


I suppose I am not sure what makes the vast difference between a guess and a theory besides the fact that implied in the term "theory" is that there will be tests and the employment of the scientific method. However, there has to be a starting point. What then is the starting point for evolution? There has to be something beyond theory, something more substantial, something absolute in order to make the continued study of the theory of evolution all but futile. What is the truth about evolution? I am not asking to subtly prove my point. I am simply asking questions. It seems to be a widely accepted truth that evolution is right, yet it remains a theory that is still constantly being studied and challenged. Where does evolution start? What makes it true at the foundation, other than someone guessing or "supposing" it is that way followed by years and years of research dedicated not to seeking truth but to seeking evidence to try and uphold the thing that people believe in. That's what it seems like sometimes to me. It seems like folks try and collect the evidence that supports their case rather than allowing the evidence to create their case.


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Hegel-oh's Wrote:
Elvis Fu Wrote:
Hegel-oh's Wrote:
I don't understand the commonly held belief that evolution is fact. After all the years that evolution has been discussed, as far as I knew, it has remained a theory, quite absent of undisputable facts. There are just as many loose ends in the evolutionary theory, it seems, as in the Christian religion. Now, why is it that the mention of creationism(as a theory) is all of a sudden put into the rhetoric of dogma and conservativism?


But evolution is not a fact. It is a theory. As splates has also pointed out, "theory" is not the same as "guess". A theory is testable, provable and disprovable. When it is proved to be false, you amend and update the theory. You do not leap to the assumption that the entire theory is false and discredited, nor does it mean that an alternate theory is true.


I suppose I am not sure what makes the vast difference between a guess and a theory besides the fact that implied in the term "theory" is that there will be tests and the employment of the scientific method. However, there has to be a starting point. What then is the starting point for evolution? There has to be something beyond theory, something more substantial, something absolute in order to make the continued study of the theory of evolution all but futile. What is the truth about evolution? I am not asking to subtly prove my point. I am simply asking questions. It seems to be a widely accepted truth that evolution is right, yet it remains a theory that is still constantly being studied and challenged. Where does evolution start? What makes it true at the foundation, other than someone guessing or "supposing" it is that way followed by years and years of research dedicated not to seeking truth but to seeking evidence to try and uphold the thing that people believe in. That's what it seems like sometimes to me. It seems like folks try and collect the evidence that supports their case rather than allowing the evidence to create their case.


if you want this information, you are welcome to take a freshman level evolution course from me. i'll only charge $17,000 per semester.

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PostPosted: Wed Nov 09, 2005 4:15 pm 
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Chuck D Wrote:
if you want this information, you are welcome to take a freshman level evolution course from me. i'll only charge $17,000 per semester.


Nice. that sounds reasonable. How long is a semester for you? 7 years?


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Hegel-oh's Wrote:
Elvis Fu Wrote:
Hegel-oh's Wrote:
I don't understand the commonly held belief that evolution is fact. After all the years that evolution has been discussed, as far as I knew, it has remained a theory, quite absent of undisputable facts. There are just as many loose ends in the evolutionary theory, it seems, as in the Christian religion. Now, why is it that the mention of creationism(as a theory) is all of a sudden put into the rhetoric of dogma and conservativism?


But evolution is not a fact. It is a theory. As splates has also pointed out, "theory" is not the same as "guess". A theory is testable, provable and disprovable. When it is proved to be false, you amend and update the theory. You do not leap to the assumption that the entire theory is false and discredited, nor does it mean that an alternate theory is true.


I suppose I am not sure what makes the vast difference between a guess and a theory besides the fact that implied in the term "theory" is that there will be tests and the employment of the scientific method. However, there has to be a starting point. What then is the starting point for evolution? There has to be something beyond theory, something more substantial, something absolute in order to make the continued study of the theory of evolution all but futile. What is the truth about evolution? I am not asking to subtly prove my point. I am simply asking questions. It seems to be a widely accepted truth that evolution is right, yet it remains a theory that is still constantly being studied and challenged. Where does evolution start? What makes it true at the foundation, other than someone guessing or "supposing" it is that way followed by years and years of research dedicated not to seeking truth but to seeking evidence to try and uphold the thing that people believe in. That's what it seems like sometimes to me. It seems like folks try and collect the evidence that supports their case rather than allowing the evidence to create their case.


I don't think you understand science, let alone evolution. Start reading books about science, like Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions or Popper's Logic of Scientific Discovery or Conjectures and Refutations.

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Chuck D Wrote:
...if you want this information, you are welcome to take a freshman level evolution course from me. i'll only charge $17,000 per semester.


A bargain at twice the price!

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chowgurt Wrote:
SpontaneousPoet Wrote:
I thought this was going to be a Futurama thread.


Are you still thinking about that wedding?

BTW, Pat still hasn't invited me :cry:


Does he often make plans and not follow through?

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No, see when you test a hypothesis you generally test against it to to prove it wrong. If it holds up then you dont have to reject it.


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Also, evolution does not disprove there is a God. You can have your cake and eat it too.


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SpontaneousPoet Wrote:
chowgurt Wrote:
SpontaneousPoet Wrote:
I thought this was going to be a Futurama thread.


Are you still thinking about that wedding?

BTW, Pat still hasn't invited me :cry:


Does he often make plans and not follow through?


I think he made plans to show up for work today...
He loaned me some awsome music!

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chowgurt Wrote:
SpontaneousPoet Wrote:
chowgurt Wrote:
SpontaneousPoet Wrote:
I thought this was going to be a Futurama thread.


Are you still thinking about that wedding?

BTW, Pat still hasn't invited me :cry:


Does he often make plans and not follow through?


I think he made plans to show up for work today...
He loaned me some awsome music!


He must be working on a really awesome surprise then. Like booking the Zapp Brannigan Begin Again wedding band or something.

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yeah,

That's what I figured.

That Pat! What a guy!

Maybe he'll bring in brownies or something for dessert since i just finished my lunch.

Is the wedding in VT? or is it virtual?

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Radcliffe Wrote:
I don't understand why so many Christians feel that their "faith" is threatened by evolution theory.

And I also don't get why Christians think that this idea of "Intelligent Design" proves the existence of their god.

And is there an intelligent designer designer?

Because ID is just Paley's teleological argument for the existence of god all gussied up in faux science. Paley used a watch as the analogy (ie: you find a wristwatch on the ground, you automatically assume - because of the complexity of its workings - that somebody made it and, therefore, ditto earth, life, the universe, and all). But Paley only considered the beginning of the watch - and there's still the creation of the watchmaker to contend with.

Unless you bring in the argument that god is an eternal being with no beginning or end - but as soon as you introduce that concept, then you may as well accept that the universe itself could be eternal, with no beginning or end, and shut the fuck up about ID.


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Hegel-oh's Wrote:
I suppose I am not sure what makes the vast difference between a guess and a theory besides the fact that implied in the term "theory" is that there will be tests and the employment of the scientific method. However, there has to be a starting point. What then is the starting point for evolution? There has to be something beyond theory, something more substantial, something absolute in order to make the continued study of the theory of evolution all but futile. What is the truth about evolution? I am not asking to subtly prove my point. I am simply asking questions. It seems to be a widely accepted truth that evolution is right, yet it remains a theory that is still constantly being studied and challenged. Where does evolution start? What makes it true at the foundation, other than someone guessing or "supposing" it is that way followed by years and years of research dedicated not to seeking truth but to seeking evidence to try and uphold the thing that people believe in. That's what it seems like sometimes to me. It seems like folks try and collect the evidence that supports their case rather than allowing the evidence to create their case.


I recommend this book to anyone trying to reconcile evolution and creationism:

Image

Link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060930497/ref=bxgy_cc_img_a/102-7742618-8458539?%5Fencoding=UTF8


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DumpJack Wrote:
I don't think you understand science, let alone evolution. Start reading books about science, like Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions or Popper's Logic of Scientific Discovery or Conjectures and Refutations.


Yes. Don't mistake this for a jab, but did you ever learn anything resembling the scientific method around 6th or 7th grade? The ol' Problem--Hypothesis--Testing--Observations--Conclusions type of deal?

That's another one of my problems with ID. The scientific method is not reserved for science classes only. It gives you a pretty effective method for solving problems, which comes in a hell of lot more handy than knowing that a murder is the collective noun for crows, or knowing the difference between annelids and nematodes.

Just for starters, here's an excerpt from Wikipedia:

There is sometimes confusion between the scientific use of the word theory and its more informal use as a synonym for "speculation" or "conjecture." In science, a body of descriptions of knowledge is usually only called a theory once it has a firm empirical basis, i.e., it

1. is consistent with pre-existing theory to the extent that the pre-existing theory was experimentally verified, though it will often show pre-existing theory to be wrong in an exact sense,
2. is supported by many strands of evidence rather than a single foundation, ensuring that it probably is a good approximation if not totally correct,
3. has survived many critical real world tests that could have proven it false,
4. makes predictions that might someday be used to disprove the theory,
5. is tentative, correctable and dynamic, in allowing for changes to be made as new data is discovered, rather than asserting certainty, and
6. is the most parsimonious explanation, sparing in proposed entities or explanations, commonly referred to as passing Occam's Razor.

This is true of such established theories as special and general relativity, quantum mechanics, plate tectonics, evolution, etc. Theories considered scientific meet at least most, but ideally all, of the above criteria. The fewer which are matched, the less scientific it is; those that meet only several or none at all, cannot be said to be scientific in any meaningful sense of the word.

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I stumbled across this article during my morning information grab. It's from Tech Central Station, which I enjoy reading but it is generally more conservative in nature--most of the articles I end up reading are written by economists--but I would think that that affirms the argument.

Is Intelligent Design a Bad Scientific Theory or a Non-Scientific Theory?
By Uriah Kriegel Published 11/10/2005

In an election in Pennsylvania this week, voters tossed out eight members of the Pittsburgh school board who wanted Intelligent Design theory to be taught alongside evolution in school. But should Intelligent Design -- the theory that living organisms were created at least in part by an intelligent designer, not by a blind process of evolution by natural selection -- be taught in public schools? In one way, the answer to this question is simple: if it's a scientific theory, it should; if it's not, it shouldn't (on pain of flaunting the Establishment Clause). The question, however, is whether Intelligent Design (ID) is a scientific theory.

Opponents dismiss ID's scientific credentials, claiming that the theory is too implausible to qualify as scientific. But this reasoning is fallacious: a bad scientific theory is still a scientific theory, just as a bad car is still a car. There may be pedagogical reasons to avoid teaching bad scientific theories in our public schools, but there are no legal ones. The Constitution contains no interdiction on teaching bad theories, or for that matter demonstrably false ones. As long as theory is science and not religion, there is no legal barrier to teaching it.

To make their case, opponents of teaching ID must show not just that the theory is bad, but that it's not science. This raises a much more complicated question: What is science? What distinguishes genuinely scientific theories from non-scientific ones?

In one form or another, the question has bothered scientists and philosophers for centuries. But it was given an explicit formulation only in the 1920s, by Karl Popper, the most important 20th century philosopher of science. Popper called it "the problem of demarcation," because it asked how to demarcate scientific research and distinguish it from other modes of thought (respectable though they may be in their own right).

One thing Popper emphasized was that a theory's status as scientific doesn't depend on its plausibility. The great majority of scientific theories turn out to be false, including such works of genius as Newton's mechanics. Conversely, the story of Adam and Eve may well be pure truth, but if it is, it's not scientific truth, but some other kind of truth.

So what is the mark of genuine science? To attack this question, Popper examined several theories he thought were inherently unscientific but had a vague allure of science about them. His favorites were Marx's theory of history and Freud's theory of human behavior. Both attempted to describe the world without appeal to super-natural phenomena, but yet seem fundamentally different from, say, the theory of relativity or the gene theory.

What Popper noticed was that, in both cases, there was no way to prove to proponents of the theory that they were wrong. Suppose Jim's parents moved around a lot when Jim was a child. If Jim also moves around a lot as an adult, the Freudian explains that this was predictable given the patterns of behavior Jim grew up with. If Jim never moves, the Freudian explains -- with equal confidence -- that this was predictable as a reaction to Jim's unpleasant experiences of a rootless childhood. Either way the Freudian has a ready-made answer and cannot be refuted. Likewise, however much history seemed to diverge from Marx's model, Marxists would always introduce new modifications and roundabout excuses for their theory, never allowing it to be proven false.

Popper concluded that the mark of true science was falsifiability: a theory is genuinely scientific only if it's possible in principle to refute it. This may sound paradoxical, since science is about seeking truth, not falsehood. But Popper showed that it was precisely the willingness to be proven false, the critical mindset of being open to the possibility that you're wrong, that makes for progress toward truth.

What scientists do in designing experiments that test their theories is create conditions under which their theory might be proven false. When a theory passes a sufficient number of such tests, the scientific community starts taking it seriously, and ultimately as plausible.

When Einstein came up with the theory of relativity, the first thing he did was to make a concrete prediction: he predicted that a certain planet must exist in such-and-such a place even though it had never been observed before. If it turned out that the planet did not exist, his theory would be refuted. In 1919, 14 years after the advent of Special Relativity, the planet was discovered exactly where he said. The theory survived the test. But the possibility of failing a test -- the willingness to put the theory up for refutation -- was what made it a scientific theory in the first place.

To win in the game of science, a theory must be submitted to many tests and survive all of them without being falsified. But to be even allowed into the game, the theory must be falsifiable in principle: there must be a conceivable experiment that would prove it false.

If we examine ID in this light, it becomes pretty clear that the theory isn't scientific. It is impossible to refute ID, because if an animal shows one characteristic, IDers can explain that the intelligent designer made it this way, and if the animal shows the opposite characteristic, IDers can explain with equal confidence that the designer made it that way. For that matter, it is fully consistent with ID that the supreme intelligence designed the world to evolve according to Darwin's laws of natural selection. Given this, there is no conceivable experiment that can prove ID false.

It is sometimes complained that IDers resemble the Marxist historians who always found a way to modify and reframe their theory so it evades any possible falsification, never offering an experimental procedure by which ID could in principle be falsified. To my mind, this complaint is warranted indeed. But the primary problem is not with the intellectual honesty of IDers, but with the nature of their theory. The theory simply cannot be fashioned to make any potentially falsified predictions, and therefore cannot earn entry into the game of science.

None of this suggests that ID is in fact false. For all I've said, it may well be pure truth. But if it is, it wouldn't be scientific truth, because it isn't scientific at all. As such, we shouldn't allow it into our science classrooms. At least that's what the Constitution says.

The writer teaches philosophy at the University of Arizona.

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PostPosted: Thu Nov 10, 2005 11:33 am 
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Elvis Fu Wrote:
Popper concluded that the mark of true science was falsifiability: a theory is genuinely scientific only if it's possible in principle to refute it. This may sound paradoxical, since science is about seeking truth, not falsehood. But Popper showed that it was precisely the willingness to be proven false, the critical mindset of being open to the possibility that you're wrong, that makes for progress toward truth.


Thanks for posting this, it sums it up perfectly. I think it might be my quote for awhile.

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Great article, thanks for posting this. I think this sums up both sides very well.

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