Quotes

[The Lorax]

No any scholar will tell you that it's important to quote scripture in it's context. Quotes are great. Joe uses them all of the time. See above. Aren't they good ones? And they're not out of context either.

Exactly my point. Quotes must be presented in context. But that is a point that many YECs either don't respect or don't understand.

Okay, so you are saying this is out of context?

Feel free to embarass me then. Just show my why I should be embarrassed.

I wasn't referring to the quote that is in the beginning of your thread. Let me get to that.

You really, really hate quotes like these don't you? It really, really shows.

Hate them? Actually I really get a kick out of them. When a YEC claims some out-of-context quote is "evidence" against a scientific theory, that usually brings some levity to the discussion, even if it is unintentional.

Now let's get to that quote of yours:

"It was a parable for students of scientific objectivity. Wherever the chart disagreed with his observations he rejected the observation and followed the chart. Because of what his mind thought it knew, it had built up a static filter, an immune system, that was shutting out all information that did not fit. Seeing is not believing. Believing is seeing. If this were just an individual phenomenon it would not be so serious. But it is a huge cultural phenomenon too and it is very serious. We build up whole cultural intellectual patterns based on past 'facts' which are extremely selective. When a new fact comes in that does not fit the pattern we don't throw out the pattern. We throw out the fact. A contradictory fact has to keep hammering and hammering and hammering, sometimes for centuries, before maybe one or two people will see it. And then these one or two have to start hammering on others for a long time before they see it too." (Pirsig, Robert M. [American philosopher and writer], "Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals," Bantam: London, 1991, pp.343-344. Emphasis in original.)

I haven't read Lila but I read its more popular prequel, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. (Anyone else read it?) If this stuff interests you, artsylady, I encourage you to look up stuff by any eminent philosopher of science. Pretty much all of them cast doubt on scientific objectivity. You'd be interested to learn that scientific objectivity is an many ways a Christian idea, or at least an idea of Christian origin, in the sense it assumes humans can have a sort of "God's-eye view" of the universe. This notion doesn't exist in some Eastern cultures, where they recognize the observer and the observed to be "One," so to speak.

Now, your quote is basically Pirsig's rehashing of Thomas Kuhn's idea of the paradigm. It's true that contradictory facts are often initially rejected, and it may take time for them to finally be acknowledged. Very few scientists would deny that. So your quote is neither out-of-context nor untrue.

[Guest]

It would make things simpler for everybody because it would simply remove the middle man which is what all this hubbub is about.

Remove The Middle Man?

The Middle Man

Jacobs Ladder

"And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it" Genesis 28:12

Job's Redeemer

"For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:" Job 19:25

Ruth's Kinsman-Redeemer

"And the women said unto Naomi, Blessed be the LORD, which hath not left thee this day without a kinsman, that his name may be famous in Israel." Ruth 4:14

Our Lord The Spotless Lamb Of God

"Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:" 1 Peter 1:18-19

What This Hubbub Is All About - God's Middle Man - The Man From Heaven - The Lord Jesus Christ

"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." John 14:6

Amen!

>>>>><<<<<

Have You Said Yes To His Knock

"Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me." Revelation 3:20

Do You Know The Lord

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16

Yet

"For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God." Romans 14:10

>>>>><<<<<

Be Blessed Beloved

The LORD bless thee, and keep thee:

The LORD make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee:

The LORD lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.

And they shall put my name upon the children of Israel; and I will bless them. Numbers 6:24-27

Love, Your Brother Joe

[artsylady]

Exactly my point. Quotes must be presented in context. But that is a point that many YECs either don't respect or don't understand.

How about this one? In context or not?

"Our theory of evolution has become, as Popper described, one which cannot be refuted by any possible observations. Every conceivable observation can be fitted into it. It is thus "outside of empirical science" but not necessarily false. No one can think of ways in which to test it. Ideas, either without basis or based on a few laboratory experiments carried out in extremely simplified systems, have attained currency far beyond their validity. They have become part of an evolutionary dogma accepted by most of us as part of our training." (Birch L.C. & Ehrlich P.R., "Evolutionary History and Population Biology," Nature, Vol. 214, 22 April 1967, p.352)

Do you think the quoted person actually meant something else here or do you think that this is represented as a fair quote?

QUOTE

You really, really hate quotes like these don't you? It really, really shows.

Hate them? Actually I really get a kick out of them. When a YEC claims some out-of-context quote is "evidence" against a scientific theory, that usually brings some levity to the discussion, even if it is unintentional.

Stop claiming they are out of context and tell me why they are out of context.

Now, your quote is basically Pirsig's rehashing of Thomas Kuhn's idea of the paradigm. It's true that contradictory facts are often initially rejected, and it may take time for them to finally be acknowledged. Very few scientists would deny that. So your quote is neither out-of-context nor untrue.

Thank you. Not why do you you mention 'out of context' above?

[artsylady]

Then why not simply post the flaws themselves?

A) Been trying to do that but people don't listen.

B) It would take forever to post them all.

It would make things simpler for everybody because it would simply remove the middle man which is what all this hubbub is about.

The prominent evolutionist is not the middleman. He is the top dog - the expert, and many of these experts say that evolution has flaws and that it's not even scientific and that the evidence gives rise to nice stories, not proven.

You are the middle man who is trying to say "evolution is fact. there are no holes." etc.

[artsylady]

vaguely refer to purported flaws with evolution and this silly debate is about whether or not they count as evidence.

"The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils." (Gould, Stephen Jay [Professor of Zoology and Geology, Harvard University, USA], "Evolution's erratic pace," Natural History, Vol. 86, No. 5, pp.12-16, May 1977, p. 14).

Is this vague? Do you think he meant something else by this quote?

[The Lorax]

"Our theory of evolution has become, as Popper described, one which cannot be refuted by any possible observations. Every conceivable observation can be fitted into it. It is thus "outside of empirical science" but not necessarily false. No one can think of ways in which to test it. Ideas, either without basis or based on a few laboratory experiments carried out in extremely simplified systems, have attained currency far beyond their validity. They have become part of an evolutionary dogma accepted by most of us as part of our training." (Birch L.C. & Ehrlich P.R., "Evolutionary History and Population Biology," Nature, Vol. 214, 22 April 1967, p.352)

Do you think the quoted person actually meant something else here or do you think that this is represented as a fair quote?

It's "unfair" in that it's outdated.

The quote refers to Karl Popper, a man who at one time said evolution was unfalsifiable, and thus not a theory. Popper later recanted that statement--he said he was wrong about it. But this quote is from 1967 and it cites Popper in a time before it was recanted. Now I don't know anything about Birch and Ehrlich--unlike Popper they're not well-known--but I'm willing to bet they've recanted this claim as well.

Can you direct me to the full Nature article, artsylady?

EDIT: I just did a little Googling and this quote appears on Answers in Genesis and only 9 other sites. I couldn't find the Nature article the quote came from so I hope you can, artsylady, because otherwise there is no way of telling if the quote is in or out of context. I'm guessing you found the quote through AiG, right?

[artsylady]

No I found it here.

http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/intrdc01.html

He probably recanted because he got into trouble. They do end up having to recant when their honest words and thoughts are used against them.

[The Lorax]

No I found it here.

http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/intrdc01.html

Hmm. So you haven't read the article from which it came?

He probably recanted because he got into trouble. They do end up having to recant when their honest words and thoughts are used against them.

Yeah, we know what thugs evolutionists can be. Just last week they slashed my tires because they thought I was getting a little too theistic.

Being serious, though, Popper was a philosopher of science and philosophers, more than anyone, have no problem disagreeing with large groups of people. Here's why Popper ACTUALLY changed his mind.

Why, then, did the Austrian philosopher change his mind? Because it turns out that while it is true that evolutionary biologists predict (i.e., deduce) the survival of the fittest (and the much more important fact that s/he is going to have the most offspring) by means of natural selection, they have independent ways to assess which members of a population of organisms actually are the "fittest." For example, biologists employ optimization analyses to predict which combinations of morphological, behavioral, or physiological traits are more likely to be advantageous (i.e., to increase "fitness") in the range of environments actually encountered by a given living form. They then sample natural populations of organisms, determine in which environments they actually live, measure those traits they hypothesize are more likely to make a difference, and obtain statistical predictions on where natural selection should push the population next. Finally, biologists wait until the next generation of organisms comes out and measure their characteristics again.

f the theory were correct (and given some other verifiable conditions, such as the presence of adequate genetic variation for the traits in question), the population's mean for the characters under selection should have shifted in the predicted direction. This is an eminently falsifiable hypothesis, in the same sense in which predictions made by astronomers or physicists are falsifiable, and very much unlike the explanations of human behavior put forth by psychoanalysts, which are notoriously so flexible that they can fit (a posterion) virtually any observed pattern.

The tautological circle thus broken, evolutionary biology can be fully admitted among the sciences even by the Popperian criterion of falsification. Much more than a useful metaphysical research program, the modern theory of evolution is as scientific as Newtonian mechanics, though by all means not as precise as, say, quantum mechanics.

Source.

[artsylady]

have to read later. I'm outta time!

[artsylady]

He says that though the fossil record is incomplete, we can make 'reasonable inferences' to fill the gaps

See there it worked. You didn't understand my logic of A) no one is listening or B) it would take too long to post them all, but here a quote did it all.

That is, if you would agree with Gould's statement.

Are inferences made because the fossil record is incomplete?