Funny how he tries to be cute there at the end & reveals his anything-but-the-truth stance. "Flood didn't happen, or if it did, the bible must've got it wrong because that's the truth & I won't have it." Based upon what R2 knows I know, that's the only possible line of reasoning that could lead me to such a conclusion.
Originally Posted by Russell2
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.
"Empirical evidence" can be even more deceptive than other lies. One can misinterpret it and fool oneself. One can also (easily if one is predisposed) misclassify conclusions as "empirical evidence".

Most importantly, physical evidence alone cannot ever tell anyone what happened. It can be consistent with a story or not - nothing more, and usually somewhat less.
Originally Posted by Russell2
In short to write off empiricism is to build a turtles all the way down view of the world.
Have you seen anyone suggest writing off empiricism? I missed that part.
Originally Posted by Russell2
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


Originally Posted by LindaLou
Oh I don't believe that at all. Anecdotal evidence can be very pertinent. It just isn't always reliable, and Russ has explained some good reasons why we need empirical evidence too when we are looking for the truth. The implication here was that, as you said, if you want to find something out you should just ask someone. Maybe you didn't mean this literally, in all cases?


Originally Posted by LindaLou
Quote
How do you obtain your empirical evidence?


By observation and testing.

We actually use the scientific method every day in some simple ways. Let's say your phone isn't working. What do you do? You try to find out why it isn't working. Is it plugged in? let's test that idea -- yes it is plugged in, so that isn't the fault. Is there a fault on this line? Let's plug in another phone which is working and see if it works here. It doesn't -- OK, so it's probably a fault on the line. Next step, contact the phone company.

You're making observations, formulating hypotheses, and testing them. What works better -- this, or asking someone if they think they know what's wrong with your phone? At some point, someone is going to have to investigate the physical evidence.

Some types of science lend themselves better to anecdotal evidence than others. Sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc are some of these. Other types are better studied by the methods above. I think it's only logical to keep in mind that people make mistakes and aren't always trustworthy. Ever read Herodotus? He's a cracking good read but he never intended to be completely accurate in his historical accounts. In those days, historians were expected to beef things up to be entertaining. Historians always have biases of some kind, just like journalists do, because this is the nature of the human being. Again, it would be illogical to discount this.


Originally Posted by ikester7579
Originally Posted by LindaLou
By observation and testing.


On a side note:

Let's put this to a test then. In the big bang theory. Is any part of it testable? And where did the matter come from that exploded? And if energy cannot be created or destroyed, where did the energy come from for such an explosion that created our universe?

So basically, the big bang has no empirical evidence. Only a conclusion that because the universe expands, there must have been an explosion. Sorry, not testable, not observable. therefore not empirical evidence.

Then we have the oil taking millions of years to form from decaying bio-mass. Let's see of the claim makes empirical evidence. Is there any proof of this besides that oil exists? No. Is there any observable process of the time that it takes to do this? No. Is it testable and repeatable? No. So what part of the claim was ever tested or observed as a process? None of it ever was. So this too fails to make empirical evidence.

Originally Posted by LindaLou
There's a thread about oil in which you can place these comments.

If you want to talk astronomy, it's one of my favourite subjects. I think that needs to go in another thread as well.

What about placing your remarks about "kinds" here? If we could try to stick to the topics of each thread more closely, especially as this forum has grown in size, it might help people to know where to look for pertinent discussions.
Good irony isn't so hard to find. One just needs to be alert.

Originally Posted by Russell2
Hi Ikester7579

Let's put this to a test then. In the big bang theory. Is any part of it testable?

Well yes it is in quite a few ways. The theory predicts the existence and character of the cosmic microwave background which is basically the afterglow of the big bang itself. Later observations have confirmed these predictions to a very high degree of precision. Big Bang theory makes predictions about the relative abundances of various elements in our universe and of the large scale structure of our inverse and again later observations have born out these predictions so it is well and truly empirically testable

The fine structure of the very early universe, in the first few microseconds, is not well undrerstood. In this realm we have limited evidence and a number of competing theoires which can’t yet be tested though some tests are upcoming when the LHC goes on line in the near future. This will give us insights into how matter behaves at the sorts of energy levels whih existed far closer to the initiating moment of the big bang that we currently have and may well rule out some of the competing theorys. Time will tell.

Likewise with oil we can’t reproduce the process given how long it takes but we can hypothesis about it. From those hypotheses we create predictions which are testable and that’s where empiricism comes into the picture and allows us to test our understanding of oil even though we can’t reproduce the process in it’s entirety in the lab. We can also reproduce many of the hypothesised steps in the lab to ensure that they do in fact operate as we expect so there are a number of ways that we can empiracly test our ideas of how Oil was formed.

If you want to go into this further I think we should take it out of this thread.

In Reason

Russell
More irony.
Originally Posted by CTD
Originally Posted by LindaLou
Quote
How do you obtain your empirical evidence?


By observation and testing.

We actually use the scientific method every day in some simple ways. Let's say your phone isn't working. What do you do? You try to find out why it isn't working. Is it plugged in? let's test that idea -- yes it is plugged in, so that isn't the fault. Is there a fault on this line? Let's plug in another phone which is working and see if it works here. It doesn't -- OK, so it's probably a fault on the line. Next step, contact the phone company.

You're making observations, formulating hypotheses, and testing them. What works better -- this, or asking someone if they think they know what's wrong with your phone? At some point, someone is going to have to investigate the physical evidence.

Some types of science lend themselves better to anecdotal evidence than others. Sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc are some of these. Other types are better studied by the methods above. I think it's only logical to keep in mind that people make mistakes and aren't always trustworthy. Ever read Herodotus? He's a cracking good read but he never intended to be completely accurate in his historical accounts. In those days, historians were expected to beef things up to be entertaining. Historians always have biases of some kind, just like journalists do, because this is the nature of the human being. Again, it would be illogical to discount this.
As I have said before, even animals employ empirical science. But, to restrict oneself to one's own personal practice of empirical methods is absurd. And in order to know what results others have obtained, one must ask somebody. This is what everyone does.

Shame to waste space explaining this, but it appears there's a demand.
You might think it'd be winding down, but even the most obvious, universally-known things must be questioned in pursuit of off-topic discussion.
Originally Posted by Russell2
Hi CTD

I know you will deny it but I think you have made a breakthrough here. You have realised that the source of all knowledge is, at its root, empirical. You may ask other people for their empirical knowledge or that of others they have heard from directly or otherwise, we have to do that as we can’t all reinvent the wheel as it were, but those peoples knowledge will lead us to an empirical source if we follow it back as far as you can go.

Now you just have to come to terms with the idea that non empirical sources can lie, cheat, screw up, misunderstand, deceive, suffer from delusions, fall for illusions, misinterpret, forget, confabulate etc while empirical sources can’t.

Obviously we must take into account the limitation of all sources when we chose to use them. Empirical data can be hard to find or interpret but if we wish to know what happened more than a few thousand years ago we have no choice, there is no other source. Even more recent history shows that human accounts are unreliable and the older they are the more unreliable they are likely to be. The real trick is to work out how to find the good data amongst the bad. We have a very effective system for doing so, its call the scientific method.

So why would you prefer word of mouth rather than going to the source, empirical observation, when it is available when there is doubt about some information?

I agree that that was all too obvious to need stating but it seems that it did need to be spelled out here.

In Reason

Russell
Misstating my position again. I would prefer my own direct observations. I never said otherwise. Investigating past events strongly implies one wasn't present. One could have been alseep, or not paying attention, but these situations are rare.

Note how the term "empirical observation" is continually employed. Observation is observation. This is just conditioning folks to consider all observations to be a part of empirical science. But they're not. Not until the famous "scientific method" is applied to them, which may or may not ever happen. In the case of 99,999 observations out of 10,000 nobody ever gets around to it.
Originally Posted by CTD
Originally Posted by LindaLou
LOL, you just ignored most of what I said.

So you really do believe that all witness statements are the absolute truth, and they never contradict each other?

Sure, talking to people is one way of gathering information. It can be a very flawed way though, which is why we do other things as well like look at empirical evidence.

If this is part of your own personal system for discovering truth, so be it I guess . . .
What? You expect me to bother with the most obvious fallacies?

Because some sources are unreliable, all sources are unreliable. No-oh-OH! And your ad hom tactics wouldn't even appear if this were the case. Your actions shoot down your own arguments.
Is it not funny how my position is continually misrepresented? Does this indicate weakness or strength?

Dark Matter + Dark Energy = Dark Truth

"We find that such evidence demonstrates that the ID argument is dependent upon setting a scientifically unreasonable burden of proof for the theory of evolution." - Judge Jones Kitzmiller case
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Falsify.cfm

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