razzelflabben
Contributor
is it necessary for me to watch a bird build a nest to know that an eagle built a nest? Let me rephrase that to make more sense...let's say I find a new creature, my youngest is into deep sea creatures, so let's say that I am in the sea and spot a new creature...it hides in some coral (I'm not deep sea right now) and I find laying close by a lump of something kind of squishy, nothing like anything I know. How do I identify it? Do I just say, well, it must be natural because I haven't seen it before? Do I say it can't be from our new creature because I haven't observed it creating anything like this? What allows me to identify this new squishy thing? That is the point here. I understand what you are saying, and it is by far the best argument so far presented on any of the threads I have participated on, but your missing the bigger picture. Just because it's a new creature, just because it hasn't been observed making a squishy nest, doesn't mean we can't test to see what or if that squishy thing is created and what it's purpose is...where your logic falls appart is that a some point, everything we observe as new and different and of unknown origins which didn't stop science from exploring and testing and observing.Yeah, I kind of ignored non-humans in that post. As with humans, we have countless examples of other animals creating structures. In the end, it comes down to the plausibility of natural explanations (see the nest example in my reply to part 1) and/or the similarity of the structure to known natural and known animal-made structures. And I'm pretty sure that sometimes you just can't tell.
why not? Please explainThe point stands: you don't have the same luxury of data points with the supernatural.
and we can experiment and explore and observe to see if there are any other options but a creator...see above for more indepth explaination.I'm not quite sure what the question is.
Comparison. Do they look like scratch marks made by animal claws/teeth/antlers? Or are they something a random wind-/water-borne sharp object could produce? You can look at scratch marks of known animal origin, you can observe animals scratching trees, you can use the body parts that you think were involved to simulate the forces they could inflict on a tree, the number, depth, length, shape, regularity of the scratches that can be produced (I don't know what parameters could be useful; these are a few I think would be). You can get a wind tunnel or an artificial water current and blow things at pieces of trees to analyse them in similar ways. Then take your stats software and quantify the similarity of the marks under examination to samples of both kinds of marks.
what tests are we doing for createdness? I've been told we weren't testing for it because we couldn't....The point remains: you need comparison.
But do they have characteristics that identify them as "created", or only characteristics that identify them as a "member of X class of created object"?
Not really. Evolving life forms obey different rules from non-evolving chemicals, and the origin of the earth or the universe is another matter entirely. Just because they are all "origins" doesn't mean they represent comparable situations. And once again, you don't know if God created the universe (remember, that's one thing we are trying to test).
yep...and a baseline helps to identify what does not fit the expected.A naturally occurring what?
Can you give me a link so I can see the context?
BTW, I did NOT say that "a base line is a requirement for science". A base line is a requirement when you have no other means of answering a question. Most of the time, you can use observations, logic and mathematics to generate and test predictions.
all awesome questions that must be asked in order to test for createdness...I wish I had more time at the moment to deal with this, but I am in a rush and was afraid if I did this post tomorrow I would forget and be accused of ignoring it altogether, just because it slipped by me.With evolution, for example, a unique tree of life (or, more precisely, of life forms that don't swap genes too often) is an inevitable logical consequence of a branching evolutionary process from a common ancestor. The bending of light by massive objects is similarly a logical consequence of the general theory of relativity. Therefore, you don't need things that don't evolve, or things that don't obey general relativity, to falsify these theories. (You DO need a kind of baseline to verify them - OK, evolution must produce a branching pattern, but can't other processes also do so? What's the likelihood that they do?) What are the logical consequences of createdness? How unique are they to this hypothesis? How likely are the alternative explanations?
actually I find you to be mostly listening, a few things here and there that indicated more of a communication problem, other posters however arent' listening and sometimes, when pressed for time, I mix the two, sorry if I did that with you.See, no double standards here: these are the same questions you could ask about evolution, general relativity, wave-particle duality, germ theory or any other scientific hypothesis you care to name.
You probably know that I'm not convinced, so that's why
Are you saying that because you don't think I'm listening? Then please tell me how I could indicate I'm listening without agreeing?![]()
I love the scientific method, including testing....Do I really look this clueless?
Saying so won't make it so.
In what? BTW, I did say that "purpose" was specific... I just didn't agree that it was a good metric.
I don't understand what you mean. Grammatically, the last bit reads like this to me: "we can test by comparing the purpose of life to [the purpose of] those without purpose." That's clearly not what you mean, so could you please... rephrase your point in such a way that my brain can parse it?
I have a feeling that you aren't completely comfortable with the scientific meaning of "testing"![]()
as have I, so I'm not sure where that leaves us, if I confused you with another post, I am sincerely sorry. I am so used to being ignored, falsely accused, lied to, etc. that I do sometimes confuse people especially when pushed for time. If, however, you simple dont' want to deal with my arguments (as some of your posts hint at) then I'm not sure where we stand. Maybe the "hints" are just communication barriers we need to work around.I find it quite amusing that you are trying to tell me what science is about.
(BTW, "testing" is how we find answers in science.)
Limiting science to questions we can answer is kind of the definition of science.
If memory serves, I acknowledged that "purpose" was something specific. I think it's a worthless indicator of createdness, and I told you why I think that, but that doesn't equal claiming you have not given specifics.
I dearly hope that's not an accusation of dishonesty. If I ignored your points and kept claiming you didn't answer my question, now THAT would've been dishonest. I didn't do that. So far, I've answered your posts pretty much point by point.
I spent literally hours trying to put my thoughts into some kind of a digestible form, and I'm quickly approaching the point where I can't be bothered any more.
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