Lost marbles (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Friday, October 23, 2009, 19:40 (5302 days ago) @ David Turell

One might argue that truth will out in the end, but does the end ever come? I wonder which of our scientific "truths" will still be valid a thousand years from now.
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> Well, we still can't fit General Relativity with quantum mechanics; we don't really know what force is expanding the universe; we still have no idea how life originated. There is much to be discovered and many current 'truths' to be overturned.-I equally appreciate you saying "truths" in quotes. -I think you make a similar mistake to dhw in that somehow science is about finding some kind of ultimate or "vedantic" knowledge... Science is about building a model by teasing out relationships in nature and then building the model to explain the relationships. By its very nature all of science is inferential and not conclusive, with exclusion to mathematics. -While it is true that many scientists fall victim to scientism, lets also note that the machine of science itself moves forward on its own self-directed path. It corrects itself, sometimes less rapidly than we would wish. You brought up plate tectonics, the guy who discovered that was challenged mainly due to his training in astronomy. But let it be known, that other scientists took the claims seriously enough to investigate it and conclude that indeed, tectonics is a real phenomenon. Science invariably leads us to better explanations because it corrects itself. -When you take an argument that says "Life is so complex, it must have been designed," you make a series of assumptions to unanswered philosophical questions. -First and foremost, you have to assume that a designer exists. You HAVE to assume it because there is no way to independently verify the existence of a designer. To me, this is unacceptable, and the primary reason that design is purely a metaphysical concept that lacks empirical merit. It is irrational to accept a claim based soley upon assumption.-Secondly, you make an assumption that life is complex. Most things, when understood--turn out to be pretty easy to understand. You make an assumption that we'll never be able to understand life, and by extension use this as a reason to imply design. In these terms, such an implication is unwarranted. -Thirdly, you make an assumption that the creator is natural. This is probably the most vacuous assumption because if a creator exists, there is two choices: natural or supernatural; and it cannot be both. -If there is no difference between God and Nature, than there is no reason to posit a deity because nature & God are one and the same; they are not separate entities. This means that there is concurrently no way to infer a design. If you're living in a box you don't know unless you can leave it; it's a re-visitation of the "brain in a vat" thought experiment. Therefore a creator, if it exists, is an entity that must be discernible from nature; the third assumption can be thrown out.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"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.\"