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Evolution and the myth of "scientific consensus"

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The Cadet

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Religion and science are both altogether too dogmatic.

What's dogmatic about science, exactly? No idea in science is held dogmatically. The entire point is that ideas are held up to the evidence and tested every time.

Which is one of the reasons why anyone who is not a creationist when they hear the word "creationists" immediately think "lies, liars, deluded misguided people".

Yeah, the outward face of creationism has had some real impressive clunkers.
 
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Zosimus

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So, your argument against the concept of peer review is...... pointing to an instance of corruption? People who break the rules?

Really?

That's like arguing against a free society because criminals exist.
Peer review is slow, expensive, and ineffective. Bias exists in the system. For example, researchers have taken already-published studies and changed the names of the researchers from male to female. Results have shown that the female researchers are less likely to get published than males are. There are many examples of leading journals such as Nature and Science having rejected important research, including research that later won the Nobel prize. The peer-review system is often used to squelch papers critical of the beliefs of those doing the peer review.

I also wonder whether you are one of those people who claim that "What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." If so, shouldn't you be providing evidence to show that peer review is effective?
 
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Zosimus

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It's hard to take people seriously when they say such things.
Not to say that it is impossible to take them seriously...
Then we have a bet! I'll bet you $10,000 that I can get injected with HIV and never develop AIDS. Put your money on the table.
 
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Zosimus

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What's dogmatic about science, exactly? No idea in science is held dogmatically.
Science does not dogmatically assert that natural events need natural explanations? Science does not dogmatically assert that simple explanations are superior to complicated ones? Science does not dogmatically assert that all effects have causes that precede those effects temporally?
 
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Loudmouth

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The fossil record matches exactly what we observe today. The breed English Mastiff mates with the breed Husky and produces another breed the Chinook.

Where did we get the Mastiff and Husky?

There are no missing links because it happened in a single generation.

Australopithecines produced Homo erectus in a single generation?

Where is your evidence for this?
 
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Loudmouth

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Science does not dogmatically assert that natural events need natural explanations?

No, it doesn't. It is the curiosity of scientists that drives us to answers.

Science does not dogmatically assert that simple explanations are superior to complicated ones?

No, it doesn't. It states that the explanation with the fewest assumptions tends to be right, but not that it must be right. Occam's razor is a rule of thumb, not a scientific dogma.

Science does not dogmatically assert that all effects have causes that precede those effects temporally?

No, it doesn't. There are many processes in QM that are thought to be without cause.
 
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DogmaHunter

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Then we have a bet! I'll bet you $10,000 that I can get injected with HIV and never develop AIDS. Put your money on the table.

I'm sorry, my moral standards are a bit to high to participate in such an unethical bet.
I will further advice you to not engage in such a bet with other people either.
 
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Zosimus

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I'm sorry, my moral standards are a bit to high to participate in such an unethical bet.
I will further advice you to not engage in such a bet with other people either.
What would make the bet unethical? Or is unethical an admission that you would lose the bet?
 
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DogmaHunter

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Science does not dogmatically assert that natural events need natural explanations?

Euh.... Natural events have natural explanations by definition.


Science does not dogmatically assert that simple explanations are superior to complicated ones?

Well, they are...
But that doesn't mean that "simple" explanations MUST exist.
Otherwise, quantum mechanics would not be accepted. QM is anything but "simple".

However, if you have explanation A and B, and both do a good job at explanation a phenomena, but B is a lot more complex then A, then A is the better explanation.

The point of explaining something is to take a complex problem and reduce it to its simpler components....

If your explanation is just as complex as the phenomena you are trying to explain...then you didn't explain anything at all. You just shifted the question.

Science does not dogmatically assert that all effects have causes that precede those effects temporally?

No. Creationists assert that.
 
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crjmurray

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I'm sorry, my moral standards are a bit to high to participate in such an unethical bet.
I will further advice you to not engage in such a bet with other people either.

Well let's see how this would play out. DH and Z would have to put the $20,000 (10 from each of you) in escrow or find a trustworthy intermediary to hold on to the money. Since the bet was to be injected with HIV and that Z would never get AIDS, this means there is no time limit. So now let's see the possible outcomes. A, Z gets AIDS and dies in which case DH gets his money (Congrats? I guess?). B, Z doesn't get AIDS but he inevitably dies of his HIV infection. In which case the money goes to Zs next of kin (Con....grats? God this is awful). So yeah this is a pretty terrible bet and I would advise Z not to go through with it. However, should Z decide to make this wager, I will offer my services as an intermediary for a small fee.
 
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DogmaHunter

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What would make the bet unethical?

I'm not going to bet with anyone that he can inject HIV and remain unharmed, just like I'm not going to bet with anyone that he can drink snake poison en remain unharmed. Or shoot himself in the head. Or drive a nail through his feet.

Or is unethical an admission that you would lose the bet?

No. It's unethical because I would be supporting / promoting you to harm yourself.
 
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DogmaHunter

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Peer review is slow, expensive, and ineffective. Bias exists in the system. For example, researchers have taken already-published studies and changed the names of the researchers from male to female. Results have shown that the female researchers are less likely to get published than males are. There are many examples of leading journals such as Nature and Science having rejected important research, including research that later won the Nobel prize. The peer-review system is often used to squelch papers critical of the beliefs of those doing the peer review.

Right, let's just stop with all this peer review nonsense and just accept whatever any scientist says at face value.

Yep, that will work...

/facepalm

Seriously dude........


I also wonder whether you are one of those people who claim that "What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

Yes. Yes, I am.

If so, shouldn't you be providing evidence to show that peer review is effective?

No, because it has nothing whatsoever to do with the idea that one can dismiss without evidence that which is asserted without evidence.

Assertions without evidence aren't even peer reviewed because....-drumroll-.... there is nothing to review.


However, the evidence I would present that the scientific method is effective... is the 21st century society and everything it contains: cars, planes, rockets, satellites, nukes, nuclear power plants, computers, cell phones, medicine, etc etc etc etc.

All these things are a direct result from the scientific method.

200 years of this has yielded more results then 8000+ years that preceeded it.

Science. It works.

(yes, I speak of "the scientific method" instead of only peer review, since peer review is an integral part of the method. Arguing against peer review = arguing against the scientific method).
 
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Colter

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What is dogmatic about science?

Science can be dogmatic as in denying spiritual realities or drawing final conclusions before all the facts are in. It appears a big bang is where the universe originated therefore the big bang is an established fact.
 
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Loudmouth

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Science can be dogmatic as in denying spiritual realities or drawing final conclusions before all the facts are in.

What spiritual realities is science denying? Where did you show that they are realities?

Science follows the evidence. If there is no evidence then science is silent on the issue. Science does not propose any universal negatives. It only makes tentative positive conclusions about the limited positive evidence that we have.

It appears a big bang is where the universe originated therefore the big bang is an established fact.

"It appears" means that it is tentative, not dogmatic. All conclusions in science are tentative and open to modification or falsification. The Big Bang continues to be described as a theory, not a fact.
 
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Colter

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What spiritual realities is science denying? Where did you show that they are realities?

Science follows the evidence. If there is no evidence then science is silent on the issue. Science does not propose any universal negatives. It only makes tentative positive conclusions about the limited positive evidence that we have.



"It appears" means that it is tentative, not dogmatic. All conclusions in science are tentative and open to modification or falsification. The Big Bang continues to be described as a theory, not a fact.


Maybe I should have said "scientist" for the anal retentive. Some scientist can be too dogmatic.

The spiritual realities are the ones that religionist experience in their inner life.
 
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JasonClark

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Science can be dogmatic as in denying spiritual realities or drawing final conclusions before all the facts are in. It appears a big bang is where the universe originated therefore the big bang is an established fact.
What are "spiritual realities"? spiritual means beyond reality, you are using words you do not know the meaning of, you are obviously a creationist.
 
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Oncedeceived

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Well let's see how this would play out. DH and Z would have to put the $20,000 (10 from each of you) in escrow or find a trustworthy intermediary to hold on to the money. Since the bet was to be injected with HIV and that Z would never get AIDS, this means there is no time limit. So now let's see the possible outcomes. A, Z gets AIDS and dies in which case DH gets his money (Congrats? I guess?). B, Z doesn't get AIDS but he inevitably dies of his HIV infection. In which case the money goes to Zs next of kin (Con....grats? God this is awful). So yeah this is a pretty terrible bet and I would advise Z not to go through with it. However, should Z decide to make this wager, I will offer my services as an intermediary for a small fee.
I agree this is really terrible and yet you say you will do it for a small fee? Wow.
 
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Paul of Eugene OR

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As a life long student of the Uranta Book I have found so many helpful teachings around this issue of the material world and the spiritual world, they are two different yet parallel entities.

Philosophic Co-ordination

"Theology is the study of the actions and reactions of the human spirit; it can never become a science since it must always be combined more or less with psychology in its personal expression and with philosophy in its systematic portrayal. Theology is always the study of your religion; the study of another’s religion is psychology.

When man approaches the study and examination of his universe from the outside, he brings into being the various physical sciences; when he approaches the research of himself and the universe from the inside, he gives origin to theology and metaphysics. The later art of philosophy develops in an effort to harmonize the many discrepancies which are destined at first to appear between the findings and teachings of these two diametrically opposite avenues of approaching the universe of things and beings.

Religion has to do with the spiritual viewpoint, the awareness of the insideness of human experience. Man’s spiritual nature affords him the opportunity of turning the universe outside in. It is therefore true that, viewed exclusively from the insideness of personality experience, all creation appears to be spiritual in nature.

When man analytically inspects the universe through the material endowments of his physical senses and associated mind perception, the cosmos appears to be mechanical and energy-material. Such a technique of studying reality consists in turning the universe inside out.

A logical and consistent philosophic concept of the universe cannot be built up on the postulations of either materialism or spiritism, for both of these systems of thinking, when universally applied, are compelled to view the cosmos in distortion, the former contacting with a universe turned inside out, the latter realizing the nature of a universe turned outside in. Never, then, can either science or religion, in and of themselves, standing alone, hope to gain an adequate understanding of universal truths and relationships without the guidance of human philosophy and the illumination of divine revelation.

Always must man’s inner spirit depend for its expression and self-realization upon the mechanism and technique of the mind. Likewise must man’s outer experience of material reality be predicated on the mind consciousness of the experiencing personality. Therefore are the spiritual and the material, the inner and the outer, human experiences always correlated with the mind function and conditioned, as to their conscious realization, by the mind activity. Man experiences matter in his mind; he experiences spiritual reality in the soul but becomes conscious of this experience in his mind. The intellect is the harmonizer and the ever-present conditioner and qualifier of the sum total of mortal experience. Both energy-things and spirit values are colored by their interpretation through the mind media of consciousness.

Your difficulty in arriving at a more harmonious co-ordination between science and religion is due to your utter ignorance of the intervening domain of the morontia world of things and beings. The local universe consists of three degrees, or stages, of reality manifestation: matter, morontia, and spirit. The morontia angle of approach erases all divergence between the findings of the physical sciences and the functioning of the spirit of religion. Reason is the understanding technique of the sciences; faith is the insight technique of religion; mota is the technique of the morontia level. Mota is a supermaterial reality sensitivity which is beginning to compensate incomplete growth, having for its substance knowledge-reason and for its essence faith-insight. Mota is a superphilosophical reconciliation of divergent reality perception which is nonattainable by material personalities; it is predicated, in part, on the experience of having survived the material life of the flesh. But many mortals have recognized the desirability of having some method of reconciling the interplay between the widely separated domains of science and religion; and metaphysics is the result of man’s unavailing attempt to span this well-recognized chasm. But human metaphysics has proved more confusing than illuminating. Metaphysics stands for man’s well-meant but futile effort to compensate for the absence of the mota of morontia." UB 1955

Oh, there's no problem reconciling metaphysics and science as long as you don't start with denying the science.
 
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