I know what you’re trying to imply, unsuccessfully. My transition from YEC to OEC to ‘evolutionary providentialist’ took me through some ‘zones’.
Yep. No apologies.
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But what about the case where the connection doesn’t exist, without considering the author. How can you see something that doesn’t exist?
If the connection doesn’t exist then it is useless.
An argument will only succeed if it is valid.
Everyone has their own comfort zone.
Um … I’ve shared quite a bit here about my own odd ball beliefs and have never been made to feel unwelcome. My own are far more unusual than anything I’ve heard you share. Perhaps it has something to do with the manner in which we do the sharing? I don’t claim any special status and I don’t insist that fuddy-duddy mainstream scientists are incompetent or liars. I also have a keen appreciation for the difference between what is compelling to me and what I think is a compelling reason anyone should agree.
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Reality (or ‘nature’ if you will) is the only vote that finally counts. That’s kind of the ‘science’ thing. Who it is that best explains or interprets that reality to us and how well that explanation (working theory) matches up with reality … that’s where experts have a “higher-than-average” success rate than non-experts. Otherwise experts would not get hired for things. If any random person’s chances of properly understanding what’s going on with their car were just as likely to be right as that of any professional auto-mechanic, then we would have no reason to solicit (and pay a lot of money for) auto-mechanics to “do their thing.” The market itself militates against any widespread dismissal of experts. If oil companies want to find oil, they don’t hire theologians. Instead, they hire experts in the relevant field.
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Clearly I would not know what these might be but have you heard this sort of dogma?
And that is the end of the argument? No coercion, rhetoric or anything else can make someone see what they are blind to. ( and that is not meant as an insult).
I wonder which of these you think I claim?
If that has come accross then what I claimed for Chrissy comes back to me.
I am not sure I have ever accused anyone of lying as such, but you may be able to correct me there. Incompetent? Not in their field of expertise. but maybe unwilling or unable to look outside it? I claim single or narrowmindedness, again as a trait not as an insult. I can be very single-minded and it drives my wife crazy.
Forums are about communication? It seems we do not always succeed there.
Richard
Plenty of people who participate here are not experts, but I greatly value the resources they recommend. They are intelligent, well-read people with good judgment who know when they are talking about an area where their knowledge and experience is relevant and know when they should be deferring to qualified others. I learn a lot from them and from discussing questions with them.
I do not learn from people who feel they have important things to teach the world and are bent on using this forum as their podium and microphone, but they are not in really a position to be teaching anyone. I don’t want to learn from people who haven’t done the work of acquiring expertise and who are not respected or trusted by peers in their field. This is basic source vetting, not some kind of elitism. If you are trying to gain credibility and respect by presenting your arguments (against established science or theology) on an internet discussion board, you are doing it wrong.
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That would be correct. Education does help some kinds of blindness, however.
You keep insisting something is there when it isn’t. No coercion, rhetoric or anything else can make someone see what isn’t there in the first place. You could argue blindness if there was actually something there to see.
It is impossible for a rabbit to climb to the top of Mt. Everest therefore it is impossible for man to climb to the top of Mt. Everest. Is there a connection there to see? If you don’t see it you must be blind.
Edit to add:
Actually there is a connection. Bonus points for the first person to point it out.
I’ve summarized some of these in the bio blurb I wrote which you can access my clicking on my avatar. Not everyone writes one though I wish more did. Christy has one
There are always some who are so confounded by the audacity of someone not sharing their nearest and dearest beliefs that they lose their composure, but that describes only a couple of the regulars here and none of the moderators in my experience.
Well I don’t often engage in arguments because I’m not often concerned simple facts. I’m here for discussion of topics I continue to grope my way toward. I have no theory to promote to anyone uninterested and all of my own are constantly open to revision. I’ve become comfortable with uncertainty.
I think I see what your wife sees in you … 
. But seriously, why do you push so hard for agreement? Even if everyone would sign your petition in agreement you wouldn’t be entitled to one iota more certainty. I find it interesting to learn how others think about big questions. I don’t want to bully them away from those. We have no way of knowing what efforts others have made to reach the understandings they have or how critical those may be to their equilibrium. Wouldn’t it be better to respect other peoples right to self determination?
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Reality determines what is real. That’s why we keep asking for evidence, and when we don’t get that evidence we don’t feel compelled to accept the argument as true.
Qualifications are much more important when we are weighing the worth of opinions and personal beliefs. For example, I would rather seek out the medical opinion of a well trained doctor than someone who learned just this morning that the liver produces bile. Could someone with almost no medical knowledge stumble onto the correct diagnosis and treatment once every million tries? I guess. Does this mean I should give their advice the same weight as a trained doctor? Absolutely not.
When the argument is based almost solely on opinion, and the person bringing the argument forward has demonstrated a serious lack of knowledge in the field, then there is every reason to not take the argument seriously until a knowledgeable argument backed by evidence is brought forward.
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So all arguments here are boiling back to a topic I do not wish to address again. That ship sailed a long time ago and I can only bang my head against a wall for so long before it hurts.
That has never been my intention. I throw out ideas for discussion not assertio
You have said it yourself, this forum has not the authority to change anything the world thinks so why would anyone, including me, think that they could “teach”.
My frustration is not on what people believe but what they refuse to even consider.
And it is that assertion that frustrates me the most.
It doesn’t matter what data is shown, if you are only going to look at it the same way you are never going to identify anything different…
I am not going to trawl through every post and point out data, neither am I going to start over.
I have repeated myself so much that it has been taken as an attempt to teach, so it stops.
So, at the risk of doing most of the above, I will summarise.
A lot of time was spent assessing my qualifications. That in itself proves something. My scientific ones were rejected but my Christian ones seem to hold for now.
The problem with my science qualifications is that they are not Evolution specific so I have no authority to even speculate let alone postulate.
It is impossible for science to accept anything that is not data-based. That is not my assertion that is what I am being told.
Apparently, I am a self-opinionated upstart.
Have I missed anything?
Richard
Well we are all limited in our ability to check, but not to the extent that we know nothing at all. For starters, we should all be able to apply the following at the very minimum:
- A basic understanding of mathematics (to GCSE level at least; if we’ve studied it further we may be able to apply more advanced techniques such as calculus, differential equations, complex numbers, infinite series, linear regression etc).
- A basic understanding of how measurement works (even if just being generally aware that error bars, random errors and systematic errors are a thing).
- A basic understanding of logical fallacies (e.g. black-and-white thinking; straw man arguments etc).
- A basic understanding of core scientific principles such as what reproducibility is and how it works. (Unfortunately Answers in Genesis muddies the water here with a lot of misinformation in the form of their “were you there?” fallacy.)
- The basic fact that science has rules.
We will also need to make the basic assumption that when subject matter experts reach their conclusions, that they follow their own documented procedures in doing so.
These basic principles may not tell us everything about what is real, but they go a long way towards filtering out a whole lot of stuff that is not.
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Now that may be entertaining to chew out.
It is a clincher that neither evolutionists nor Creationists, nor anyone else can evever achieve.
Yet certainty still exists. Fallacy?
Better not go there I suppose.
Richard
Take a look at this, Richard.
How do you know that that is a fossil of a fish? Were you there?
I hope you get the point here. Not having been there to see things happen may mean that we don’t know everything, but it most certainly does not mean that we don’t know anything. There are ways of figuring things out about the past that do not require you to have been there to see them happen. For example, you can cross-check different measurements against each other, and you can make testable predictions about what you expect to see in future discoveries.
Anyone who asks “Were you there?” is simply telling everyone that they haven’t a scooby-doo how science actually works.
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I hope you do not think that is the only point or that it is also a clincher.
All I saw was a photograph…
Pedantic, maybe, but things are by no means as black and white as you seem to be claiming.
Noone is saying science knows nothing.
Figuring out is not proof of existence. More importantly, because something works or is proved in one situation does not necessarily mean that it can be applied universally, or with certainty. Ther must be an element of doubt.
But I think if we are going to pursue this it would have to be elsewhere. (Maybe a different forum judging by my current scientific status here.)
Richard
I’m not talking about things that only work in one situation, Richard. I’m talking about things that work repeatedly in multiple different situations. I actually made this point. Did you notice that I said this?:
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What part of not here did you not understand? No offence intended but I have made it clear that I am not arguing specifically here.
Richard
As in the man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes the man: The man is the argument. This is not a fallacy. Therefore it is a valid argumentum ad hominem.
Valid ad hominem [counter-]arguments occur in informal logic, where the person making the argument relies on arguments from authority such as testimony, expertise, or a selective presentation of information supporting the position they are advocating. In this case, counter-arguments may be made that the target is dishonest, lacks the claimed expertise, or has a conflict of interest. Another type of valid ad hominem argument generally only encountered in specialized philosophical usage refers to the dialectical strategy of using the target’s own beliefs and arguments against them, while not agreeing with the validity of those beliefs and arguments.
Even the specialized usage can be applied here.
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I take it you mean this?
I think that is for the moderators to decide. As for your own status, I personally believe that your arguments should be assessed on their own merits rather than on anything to do with you yourself.