re: #757 jimc

No, Sal, we’re not communicating well. I don’t turn off my brain. In fact it is similar to what evolutionist do when something isn’t explainable yet. What do they do? They say “Well we don’t know yet how this evolved to do what it is doing but eventually a natural explanation will be found.” This is similar to what I do except I attribute it to God instead of having faith in our own cleverness, I have faith in God.

No, what happens is that creationists throw up their hands and say well, GodDidIt, it’s forever beyond our understanding how or why GodDidIt, so since we can never get an answer to such questions, it is useless to try to ask or explore them. GodDidIt is not an answer to ANY question; it’s a refusal to even TRY to answer.

But wht do empirical scientists in general, and evolutionary theorists in particular, do? They say hmmm; here is a phenomenon that is not predicted or explained by our particular model. Let’s investigate and experiment to ascertain the precise scope, parameters, and characteristics of this novel phenomenon, and then attempt to abstract a specific theory of it from the empirical evidence thus obtained with which we can modify, elaborate, augment or refine our general model so that this new phenomenon is included.

The fact that you do not even grok this difference demonstrates your egregious ignorance of the experimental method of empirical science; an ignorance that is easy to understand once one understands your rejection of both logic and empirical evidence in favor of dogmatic faith.

You’re are like a computer, fantastic consumer of information. You will be great at disseminating that information. You know the rules, on or off, true or false. You are so weighed down, constrained, burdened by conventional thought that you are incapable of thinking outside the box. You would never be someone who comes up with the next leap of knowledge because you are so bound to what you can see with your own eyes and touch with your own hands that the greater things escape you. You look backwards never forwards, always down at your feet and never up to imagine possibilities beyond this cold hard world. You are so anchored to this your observable world that you forfeit what your mind is capable of. This is the difference between you and I. It is not that I cannot know and understand and learn the things you are so desperate to cling to, touch, and see. No, I can understand those things but I am also capable of thinking bigger beyond what is visible, touchable. I imagine that if left unfettered man would advance science enough only to find God staring back at them, but our time will end before that happens and you will no longer be able to be anchored to the things of this world and what will you be left with? Nothing.

Nope. Religious fundamentalists such as yourself have boxes outside which they will not permit yourself to stray; these boxes are their particular interpretations of their chosen scriptures. Whatever is seen to contradict with what they are supposed by their adherents to be saying is dismissed, denied or ignored out of hand, no matter how strongly it is logically or empirically supported.

Empirical science have no such boxes. Its only constraints are the empirical evidence itself, and the logic by means of which general principles and theories are extracted and derived from it. Such principles are not imposed upon the empirical evidence like some a priori religious dogma; they emerge and arise from the empirical evidence itself, and any principles or theories that are contradicted by that empirical evidence are discarded, regasrdless of how fondly they might have been previously regarded. And empirical investigators and researchers experimentally interrogate the natural world, and follow the empirical evidence they uncover wherever it logically leads, without fear or favor.

to be continued…