Hi again CTD

Observation in all its forms, Empiricism in other words, is the source of knowledge. Word of mouth, written words on paper etc are methods of passing on what has been discovered empirically. How does the man down the street know what he knows about the world? Either he observed it or he was told about it. If he was told he was told by someone who either observed it or who was told. Except for imaginative inventions, fairytales, fictional stories, gods etc the buck stops with observation other wise its turtles all the way down.

Who can tell us what the earth was like before man was here? Empiricism, correctly used can give us information.

Who can tell us about the great flood of Noah? There are stories from cultures all over the planet about great floods but the details don’t mesh. If there’s truth there it’s hidden by inaccurate copying over many generations. At face value it seems more likely that they are not talking about the same event so how can we know about it. We observe what floods do around us as they still happen today so we can go out and look for the evidence you would expect to find if this story was true. Empiricism applied to history. Of course you already know that the evidence just isn’t there, the great flood did not happen at least not as described in the bible.

Have you ever played Chinese whispers? Have you ever watched a court case in progress? Surely you are aware that humans lie, deceive, forget, confabulate, misunderstand etc etc. We are very prone to getting it wrong even when we think we have the story exactly right. Empirical evidence can’t lie, we may misunderstand it but it can’t lie or forget or confabulate no matter how many years after the event it is observed.

In short to write off empiricism is to build a turtles all the way down view of the world. Infinite regress is a logical fallacy as I’m sure you know yet here you are presenting it as the way we should explore history.

You are correct that we can’t prove abiogenesis occurred, that was not my point, I never claimed that we could but Russ said that it didn’t occur. He made a statement of knowledge that is not supported by the evidence which includes some very interesting simple chemical only self replicators. Not proof but there is no proof for what Russ said either.

Have you ever read “Climbing Mount Improbable” by Richard Dawkins? If you want to understand a bit about what is really claimed for ToE you could do worse than to read this book. The levels of probability that need to be scaled are far smaller than you suggest. Evolution works on relatively small levels of improbability. The effects only seem highly improbable when you don’t understand the ratcheting effect of evolution or the very large numbers of organisms involved. Both of these reduce the improbabilities to relatively low levels.

All the best till next time CTD.

In Reason

Russell