re: #515 alexa kim

As I just commented in the new Overnight Thread, my reference to intelligent design was in the generic, not to the movement.

Salamantis, you continue to preach your science is perfect because it relies on empirical evidence rather than addressing the good or ill of the public policy of teaching it and only it or allowing for other interpretations of the why of the world.

I didn’t say that empirical science was perfect; of course it isn’t, and never will be, because the supply of things we do not know is inexhaustible. Each answer we obtain allows us to ask questions we could not have known to ask before. But arguments from ignorance fall flat here; just because there are things that we DON’T know doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that we DO know - and one of the things we DO know is that evolutionary theory is valid, solid, sound and empirically supported science. It ain’t a popularity contest; the ancient world wasn’t a flat disc circled by the sun that only morphed into a sun-circling sphere when public opinion changed. One cannot interpret away empirical facts, and while you are entitled to your own opinions, you are NOT entitled to your own facts. The facts are the same for everyone, whether they choose to acknowledge them or not. It simple CANNOT be good public policy to teach untestable metaphysical contentions or religious dogmas as if they were empirical facts. It cannot be good public policy for the state to systematically lie to our kids by teaching them the myths of which we are fond as if they were truths. And whose myths? There are as many different myths as there are faiths, and they do not agree.

Fine, that is what you believe. There is merit in what you believe. There is merit in what others believe. They argue that you do not consider the evidence empirical only because you are incapable of detecting it. The fault lies in you, not in the presence or absence of evidence.

It’s not a matter of BELIEF; that only manifests in the ABSENCE of supporting empirical evidence; in its PRESENCE, we are talking KNOWLEDGE. And empirical evidence is not subjective (therein lies the realm of private revelation), but INTERsubjective, capable of being perceived by anyone under identical circumstances. I can’t believer you’re honestly trying to maintain that it’s the entire scientific edifice’s fault that the metaphysical is impossible to detect via physical means.

But as long as you insist as hard as you do that science is right, even when it is wrong, the more you sound fanatical. Sorry, you just do.

No, it is fanatical to maintain a contention is empirically the case in the ABSENCE of supporting empirical evidence, and even in the face of evidence that FALSIFIES and CONTRADICTS the contention in question. Maintaining that a contention is empirically the case in the PRESENCE of supporting empirical evidence is merely to acknowledge the facticity of observed phenomena.