What am I refusing to acknowledge. Be specific. What do my religious beliefs (if any) have to do with this. Again, be specific. There will be a test. You will fail it by changing the subject, fleeing, mocking, or otherwise not being specific.
Posted on 01/22/2005 7:38:12 AM PST by PatrickHenry
re: Observing "facts" in the wild
(true story)
There is a bird called and Indigo Bunting.
Any book you ever see about birds shows it as blue.
One day a newby birdwatcher came to ask about a black Indigo Bunting sized bird he had just seen.
Nearby scientist asked a few questions, then explained. The black colored bird was an Indigo Bunting.
The apparent "fact" that the bird was black was simply a data point better described as a bird that _apppeared_ black at this time of day and in this location in relation the observer and the sun.
So is the apparent "fact" that the Indigo Bunting is blue.
Scientists don't do "facts", we do "data"
Explanation of bird is left as an exercise for the student. ;->
What am I refusing to acknowledge. Be specific. What do my religious beliefs (if any) have to do with this. Again, be specific. There will be a test. You will fail it by changing the subject, fleeing, mocking, or otherwise not being specific.
"Oh! So you just don't agree with the established definition of a theory in science." - Alacarte
Incorrect. I'm explaining (above) that a directly observed fact in the lab or in the wild is closer to the truth than merely postulating a theory.
Wrong. Fire requires oxygen. The Sun's heat and light is the result of fusion (hydrogen now, helium later, heavier elements toward the end).
It's gone beyond that:
Review of "Nature's Destiny". Michael Denton has become an 'Evolutionist.'
No, that's incorrect. For honest scientists, the evidence shows that some processes are clearly unaided (e.g. volcanoes erupting, waves lapping), whereas other processes are clearly aided by Intelligent Design (e.g. software creation, robot welding).
Observations are simply statistical data points. Nothing is ever absolutely certain.
"The sun HAD to be larger. It's on fire! The fire that creates the heat from our sun is burning something."
You are too much my friend, you have some big nads saying this stuff in public, I have to give you that.
BTW, it's not burning, think of the sun as a permanent nuclear explosion.
Observations are not "facts." They are data. Theories must be consistent with that data and explain it better than anything else.
Theories explain relations among data.
The word "fact" is only used colloquially among scientists doing science.
A scientific paper follows a formula: question, methods, procedures, results, conclusions.
I am becoming tempted to write a paper as follows: Do self-identified creationists use more or fewer ad hominem arguments than self-identified non-creationists when posting to Free Republic?
proposed method: Take three consecutive crevo threads with more than 10 responses. Count ad hominems (using a standard definition) Analyse both per thread and per poster so that one poster will not unduly influence results. In order to maximize objecivtity, have 2 each of self-identified creationists and non-creationsits identify the ad hominems. Results tallied separately.
Also this: Creationists, Hitler and Evolution. Concludes that Hitler was most likely a creationist.
Observe, however, that this means nothing about the actual merits of creationism, and the evolution side of the debate never bothers to mention Hitler -- except when some creationists shows up and claims the opposite.
We're not talking about vulcanism. We're talking biology. What evidence in biology would you consider potential falsification of ID?
It was in the link that I gave in my original post, if you want the math for sequencing.
For sequencing, you have one set of probabilities for such structures forming without intelligent intervention, and a probability of 1 that such sequences could be ordered by an intelligent designer. That math is included in the link that I provided, though it should be intuitively obvious to a computer programmer such as yourself that it takes intelligent intervention to write a program rather than merely leaving a computer on overnight to have it form unaided.
Observations can identify facts. Those particular observations are *always* closer to the truth than merely postulating theories to an audience.
Threads must be at random however!
"Incorrect. I'm explaining (above) that a directly observed fact in the lab or in the wild is closer to the truth than merely postulating a theory."
What do "postulating a theory" and evolution have to do with anything? The term "postulating a theory" implies the common usage of the word, which is contrary to the usage used with evolution. Are you being deliberately dishonest with your wording? Evolution was "postulated" as an hypothesis, then later, after being proven right over and over, the hypothesis attained it's highest standing possible in science, a theory.
Evolution makes predictions. So everytime we find a fossil, or sequence a DNA strand, evolution is tested. Also, if something is so specific to a phenomena that it can be reproduced only in a lab, it would never become a theory, that's a law. A theory is a broad explanatory model, like flight or germ theory.
I like your response to southack better than mine.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.