Why accept consensus as reality?

Why would we? I only accept the consensus of evidence.

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I was thinking the same as I was about to reply to your previous post. Thinking that real life needs my attention for a while but that I should respond.
If you’ll still respond then let me know and I’ll write it sometime soon I hope. If not then it would be pointless to do so.

The forum can be like the La Brea Tarpits

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That’s good. Does that include the dogma of naturalism?

So what’s the consensus of evidence on the Origin of Life?

[quote=“Klax, post:421, topic:49830, full:true”]

Because it would either be:

  1. A consensus
  2. Not a consensus and thus Darwin’s statement was not based on the overall culture if most of the new evolutionists of his time rejected this part of his theory.

If it is the former it directly applies to the OP and should be discussed. If it is the latter then we need to at least stop covering so much for Darwin’s deadly racism.

There is no dogma in evidence. The consensus of evidence for the origin of life is by Hadean abiogenesis. What else could it rationally faithfully be? Magic?

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There’s no contradiction because abstractions can exist in a physical-only universe. They exist in physical-only computers, as one example.

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Darwin said some reprehensible things. A lot of people said reprehensible things throughout history.

What is your point? If we found out that Einstein made some racist comments do we throw the Theory of Relativity out the window? If Newton was a misogynist, will we suddenly start floating in the air because gravity seizes to exist?

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It is not a contradiction, because what is dismissed is abstraction in the sense of independent platonic reality, as opposed to abstraction in the sense of emergent reasoning. So they are different. Logic is safe under naturalism, probably safer than under mysticism or some metaphysics.

A roof is nailed to a wall. How, exactly, is the mind physically connected to the brain, especially if given our abstract thoughts have no location. In what sense is something real that is not real in any place?

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I don’t think Darwin saw evolution and natural selection as ‘moral’, it just was. It produced ichneumon wasps whose larvae would eat their hosts while the hosts were still alive; something which he found appalling. His comment about ‘civilised races’ (i.e., those with better armaments) eradicating those without an effective means of fighting back was observational (well supported by, e.g., the British eradication of Tasmanians or American attempts to eradicate the Native Americans) but not necessarily approving. He did underestimate the power of the so called ‘savage races’ to survive (biologically we Homo sapiens aren’t that diverse even though culturally we are very diverse [though not as diverse as we were]). He could also be very snarky about some members of civilised races especially those who saw slavery as fine. Darwin was a man of his times though one who was anti-slavery and was ok with at least some women getting higher education (he donated to the building of a science lab for women students at Cambridge) and corresponded with women on issues of science (though he also espoused many of the then standard views on women’s roles).

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I wonder if he O.P considers Michael Behe, Stephen Myer, Kirt Wise…are these men scientists or, because they are proponents of YEC, are they delusioned non scientific idiots?

Like Professor Sir Fred Hoyle FRS, Paul Davies, Sir John Polkinghorne FRS, Sir Arthur Eddington FRS, Freeman Dyson and others whose boots as IDers they - non-physicists - are not fit to lick, as long as they stay the scientific side of the fallacy of incredulity, they can believe whatever fantasies they like.

And it’s Meyer and Kurt.

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Are YEC-cers Newtonians?

No, they are scientists. But that doesn’t automatically make them right. What it does do is give them an extra duty and responsibility to make sure that they are getting their facts straight. Whether or not they actually fulfill those duties and responsibilities is a different matter.

“Delusioned non scientific idiots” can be excused on the grounds of ignorance if they make claims about science that are untrue or misleading. These men do not have the luxury of that excuse.

For what it’s worth, neither Stephen Meyer nor Michael Behe are YECs. As far as I can tell, both of them acknowledge the fact that the earth is billions of years old and not just a few thousand. Behe acknowledges the universal common ancestry of all life on earth; he only believes that evolution is insufficient rather than incorrect.

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…is not a YEC.

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Uhhh, … don’t Kurt & Meyer make ice cream?

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It ran in the family! His grandfather Erasmus Darwin was anti-slavery and espoused education for women.

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That’s a false dichotomy.

I see no deadly racism.

“As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races.”

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The other thing I keep thinking is how people will speak matter-of-factly about what they recognize as the status quo. If most people are casually racist, even if that is not your own disposition you may not speak up against it everywhere to everyone any chance you get. You don’t go baring your soul, casting all your pearls where doing so just exhausts you to no good end. My impression is he was a pretty sensitive individual for his times.

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Both his grandfathers and, if anything, his maternal family was on the whole more fervent abolitionists.

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