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No; that's just wrong - it's not fallacious to appeal to the authority of experts on the subject - particularly if they represent the consensus of expert opinion on the subject.
Argument from Authority: "A logically fallacious argument from authority grounds a claim in the beliefs of a source that is not authoritative."
Typically it involves quoting as support the opinion or beliefs of an authority who is not an expert in the relevant subject.
Agree. Every time anyone of us goes to a physician for healthcare and we follow that physicians advice, we are appealing to their authority on the matter. Is that a fallacy?
Granted. But then, to my limited knowledge we have never attempted to do so.Ok, I stand corrected. We can't create life *without* starting with preexisting DNA.
FYI that is a pure appeal to authority fallacy. What "ample evidence" are you even referring to?
FYI, these posts are getting too long for me to respond to them between tech calls at work. I'll probably just pick a few issues from your post to focus on and break up my response into a few posts.
That "something" you're talking about need not be *exotic/supernatural* in nature however. You are simply *assuming* that it A) exists and B) is *supernatural/exotic* in nature. Why part B) in particular? Even if A) (something exists there) is true, how do you know it's exotic in nature?
In terms of "direct" cause/effect justification, you have nothing to support your "belief" in exotic forms of matter. In fact there are numerous supposed "tests" that ruled out all their "popular" mathematical models of exotic matter. In the lab you have nothing, and based on direct observation, that matter could be made of *anything*, and most probably it's made of ordinary plasma just like 99 percent of the mass we *can* identify.
Pure appeal to (false) authority. This is about as convincing to me as "My Priest says so, and he has more "credentials" with respect to the topic of God than you do". How impressive of an argument is that from your perspective? It's certainly not "convincing" from my perspective. Your lack of any empirical cause/effect evidence of your claim isn't my fault, nor does an appeal to authority fallacy make up for your lack of empirical evidence. How can they be "authorities" on a hypothetical entity that continues to mystify and elude them, even after spending *billions* of dollars on "tests" that they themselves came up with? Furthermore their baryonic mass estimates have been *falsified* about a 1/2 dozen times since 2006.
So if you "don't" care, you don't really even question the dogma, but if you do "care", then you feel some need to have no other "possible" explanations for various observations before it's considered "evidence"?
Since I seem to "care", does that change anything, or are only *you personally* relevant to your own argument?
Really? I didn't really find my life changed all that much in terms of my sense of morality or the way I acted during my nine years as an atheist. It didn't change much either once I returned to theism. I do attend church from time to time now, but not all that often, and it's not because I'm "afraid" of anything by not attending. What exactly has to change about your morality or your actions in your opinion simply to embrace theism? I personally found that my basic moral beliefs were entirely congruent with humanism both during my stint as an atheist as well as now. I didn't personally find it made that much difference in the way I acted frankly. I still "helped" people as an atheist, and I still "cared" about others too.
Er, it might be "ok" to suggest that Jesus claimed to know more about God than you seem to know, but the sense of morality he "taught" was pretty much a humanistic value system IMO. In fact, I actually rejected my birth religion on "moral grounds" because some "dogma" of the church really wasn't all that consistent with the sense of morality that Jesus taught.
What exactly would "change" in your behaviors as a result of embracing the red letter parts of the Bible?
As it relates to the topic of God, you seem to require some sort of "cause/effect" justification of "cause" in controlled experimentation that is beyond question in terms of other potential causes, whereas you require nothing of the sort as it relates to "science" and astronomy. What conclusions should I draw from that double standard?
The problem as I see it is that you're imposing two different standards of "evidence" in order for you to 'hold belief'. In the case of astronomy, apparently all you need is to be "told" by supposed "experts" on supernatural entities how you should believe, and that's good enough for you. If I tried that same logic to support "God" based exclusively on a vague understand of what my "pastors" told me, you'd reject it outright. Notice a problem?
The gravitational lensing only tells you how much total matter is present. They also have to claim to know how much ordinary "baryonic" matter is present in any given galaxy. That number could *easily* be a matter of "miscalculation" and in fact there is now ample evidence that they did *ridiculously* underestimated the amount of ordinary matter in those colliding galaxies. They underestimated the number of entire stars in various galaxies by a whopping factor of between 3 and 20 times depending on the type of galaxy and the size of the star. They also underestimated the number of stars between galaxies in those colliding clusters, and they also underestimated the original "brightness" by at least a factor of 2, and that brightness figure was used to estimate the baryonic mass.
Thunderbolts Forum • View topic - Lambda-CDM - EU/PC Theory - Confirmation Bias
Not only that, they found more mass around our own galaxy in 2012 in the form of million degree plasma than exists in all the stars in our galaxy. They didn't even know that existed in 2006.
Certainly. It turns out that your "space expansion" thingy is about as impotent in the lab as any supernatural definition of God. Moving objects cause redshift. Inelastic scattering causes redshift in the lab too. Space expansion is a total dud. How do you even know that its even possible for "space expansion" to have any tangible effect on a photon? Let me guess? Some astronomer told you so?
This is one of the inherent conflicts that we have by you assuming that "God" is not "natural". I'm not even sure you can "assume" that awareness and consciousness and life are possible *without* a "quantum God field" type of energy flowing through the entire physical universe.
It's not like we can even "create intelligent life" if we wanted to yet, using "intelligence" in our design. We can't even create living organisms in a test tube yet, and even that wouldn't necessarily rule out quantum effects that we simply don't understand yet.
QM definitions of gravity rely upon an hypothesized particle called a "graviton" as it's carrier particle for gravity. We've never seen one in a lab of course, but such particles may indeed exist in "nature" and exist "naturally". Other types of quantum fields may also exist beyond our current knowledge. Most QM definitions of God begin with the premise that consciousness is the original "field" from which all physical things derive, much like the Higg's Boson (God particle) is thought to give rise to mass.
I would personally assume that "God" is "natural", just as you seem to be assuming that "dark matter" and "dark energy" and "inflation" and "space expansion" are *natural*, even though you've never seen such things in lab experiments.
I think before we can continue our conversation about "evidence" of a "natural" God, you'll have to explain to me what kind of 'evidence' that you think exists for a cosmological claim like "space expansion" or "dark energy", or "dark matter" or something that you "hold belief in".
I think if we don't define what you're calling "evidence" of such things, our conversation will simply go in circles.
Your responses are well thought through thus far, but our posts are becoming prohibitively long for me to respond during the day at this point.
I think I'd like to understand your definition of evidence before I can try to convince you that there is "evidence" to support a Panentheistic cosmology theory, and how such a cosmology theory might result in tangible "effects" on humans which you will accept as "evidence".
Right now, I'm not sure we'll get anywhere unless you can define your concept of evidence beyond just an appeal to authority fallacy. It would be like me claiming that you haven't personally studied the topic of God like the Pope has, or his Cardinals, so I'm not impressed with your 'credentials' on that topic, so if and only if they change their opinions, will I change mine.
That's exactly how your arguments sound to me.
IIRC Michael initially did present his ideas to the scientific community and got his butt handed to him on a regular basis. That´s why he ended up here, licking his wounds and complaining about science.Well I'll tell you what Michael...if you're confident in your understanding of this extremely dense and difficult topic....how would you feel about me copying and pasting these posts on an actual physics forum where scholars, experts, and the like can comment on your grasp of the topic?
IIRC Michael initially did present his ideas to the scientific community and got his butt handed to him on a regular basis. That´s why he ended up here, licking his wounds and complaining about science.
Way to miss the point. Appealing to the authority of the consensus of experts in the relevant field is not a fallacy, it's entirely reasonable. It makes no difference whether you think they're wrong, or even if they are wrong. If you appeal to the expert authority of the 'International Society for Astrological Research' for information on astrology, it is not a fallacious appeal despite the whole subject being fallacious.Thunderbolts Forum • View topic - Lambda-CDM - EU/PC Theory - Confirmation Bias'
Let's review their track record over the past decade, and please explain to me *exactly* what you think makes them "experts" on dark stuff. Not a single one of their "predictions" in the lab passed any tests. Their baryonic mass estimates they used in 2006 were also shown to be *horrifically* flawed. Their claims about WIMP, axions and sterile neutrinos even failed "observational" tests last year too. What makes them experts on a type of matter that may or may not exist and which has eluded them after spending *billions*?
Not a single one of them can name a single source of "dark energy", let alone explain how it supposedly retains a constant density over multiple exponential increases in volume. The last "test" they ran on SN1A events using a larger data set *decreased* the likelihood of acceleration even happening to just around three sigma, two full sigma short of an actual "discovery" in physics.
What exactly are they "experts" at other than wasting money, time and effort on invisible snipe hunts?
Michael doesn't seem to understand that I don't claim to know squat about dark matter...I simply trust those who do over him.
Oh they're still going strong. Not many physicists think we'll be able to observe them because the energies would likely be too high; but if - as many think (e.g. proponents of Loop quantum gravity) - gravity is a quantum field (i.e. quantized), then gravitons would be implied as quantized excitations of that field. If gravity is not a quantum field, hopes of reconciling GR with quantum mechanics would take a blow.... I don't know any physicist who believes in "gravitons" anymore.
Life as we know it requires DNA (unless you include RNA viruses), but we can synthesize the DNA from scratch.Ok, I stand corrected. We can't create life *without* starting with preexisting DNA.
I think he means our ability to create life using synthesized DNA.What is? Can you be specific?
If you mean synthesizing DNA to create life, then yes, obviously any physical creative act involves manipulation, and if we want to create life as we know it, we must mimic life as we know it. Duh.Manipulation and mimicry.
Way to miss the point. Appealing to the authority of the consensus of experts in the relevant field is not a fallacy, it's entirely reasonable.
It makes no difference whether you think they're wrong, or even if they are wrong.
If you appeal to the expert authority of the 'International Society for Astrological Research' for information on astrology, it is not a fallacious appeal despite the whole subject being fallacious.
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