Inference and its role in NS (General)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Saturday, January 29, 2011, 23:15 (4856 days ago) @ dhw

I object to evolution being made synonymous with natural selection. NS is an automatic process which not even ID-ers would regard as needing guidance. The ID argument is based on the complexity of the mechanisms that have given rise to life, adaptation and innovation, without which evolution cannot take place. 
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> dhw: That is why the attempt to synonymize evolution and natural selection ... i.e. to exclude the huge questions raised by these mechanisms ... is not acceptable to anyone who takes evolution and the design issue seriously.
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> MATT: Dawkins doesn't take it seriously? No, again the real issue is normative epistemology. You disagree to what valid evidence is. That's it in a nutshell. Science is not about finding 'truth' it is about models that work ... and however incomplete it may be, name an explanation that works better? There's none on the table...
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> Not for the first time you have quoted me, and then ignored what I've said. I stated that my reason for this whole discussion "is the issue of chance v. design". Nowhere have I questioned the model, and nowhere have I suggested there is a better explanation. I believe that evolution (micro and - still unexplained - macro) happened, I believe the theory of common ancestry, I do not question that natural selection happens, and I do not question the existence of the mechanisms for life, replication, adaptation and innovation. The sole issue here is whether the mechanisms could or could not have assembled themselves by chance. The design argument is that the greater the complexity, the greater the degree of improbability that chance could do it. "That's it in a nutshell." You may disagree with that argument, you may feel that since we can't know the answers, it's not worth asking the questions, but that is no reason for defining evolution in a manner that deliberately excludes the questions.-dhw,-I will point out that this discussion has been about Dawkins saying that the whole of life is explained by natural selection, which you take issue with. My job here has been to "be" Dawkins. -The mechanisms which brought about life are also responsible for how life changes. This is a separate discussion. Dawkin's statement is to look at what we've observed. The reason for what we see now is because of millions of years of selection at work. -Thus, the "whole of life."-Maybe I need more context for his claim, but I don't see anything wrong with it.

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\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"