I thought this thread was about the meaning of "evidence." I quit posting here because I thought that was pretty much settled.

Is that why you called something "evidence" in the other thread, when I would have called it "baseless speculation" ?

I haven't read this thread, but I wonder if this was "settled" only amongst the people who had the stamina to sit through pages upon pages of argument amongst the stubborn.

I don't know what other thread you are referring to or what I called 'evidence' so I can't answer your question. You will have to be more specific with remarks like that.

Well like in the designer thread some of you evidence was in the form of "I think" this or that. Like how you think a butterfly's wing is too complex to not have an intelligent force to make it.
"I think" or that sort of thing makes it speculation.

Now if you could say that the processes that make the butterfly wing just popped into existence out of nowhere in a single step or something like that- well, that would still be a claim but we could actually check that in some ways and checking is where you get evidence.

I am kinda curious to see these 'huge holes' described in a meaningful way myself...

I was actually asking Massagetrade, as he was the one who made the remark. The example above was a long time BEFORE Creative helped me to understand the definition of the term "evidence." Unlike some people, I actually do learn things and therefore I may change my thinking and approach to them.

It is funny too because when I stick to my opinion for lack of being convinced otherwise I have been called "closed minded" or "stubborn" and when I learn something and change my opinion, I have been called "wishy washy" or in contradiction of myself.

I am neither closed minded or stubborn. My opinions and beliefs can change when I learn new things.

I evaluate all information as best I can.

If you guys are under some impression that science has all the answers to everything you're far more deluded than I had originally thought.

In all the science courses I've ever taken I've never heard anyone claim that science is anywhere near complete, or even remotely suggest that science has the answers to everything.

Modern scientists have only recently discovered that the sum total of everything we even thought we knew constitutes less than 5% of what the universe is actually made of.

If 95% doesn't represent a "huge hole" to you guys then more power to you is all I can say.

Moreover, we don't even fully understand the 5% that we thought constituted the bulk of the universe.

Science is in its diapers. That's not a "put-down" for science. That's just an outright fact. There's no reason for scientists to be ashamed of that situation, and there's nothing to "defend". I've been involved in science my entire life and I'm quite proud of it. We've learned a lot about the universe. But there is far more than we don't know, than what we actually do know.

You guys are truly kidding yourselves if you think it's the other way around.

By the way, this has nothing to do with any imagined "war" between scientists and spiritualists. Even from a purly scientific point of view I would be the first to confess that science is far from knowing everything. I always have confessed this and it has nothing to do with any ideas of spirituality. It's just a fact.

Science has only just scratched the surface of the true essence of reality. In fact, it may have have not even scratched that particular surface much at all really.

You people often talk about "misrepresenting science". As far as I'm concerned if you are leading people to believe that science is all but finished with just a few loose ends to tie up, then you guys are the ones who are misrepresenting science.

That was what scientists were starting to believe back in the Newtonian Era, but then Einstein blew the roof off that with his discovery of Relativity, then the bottom fell-out after that with the discovery of Quantum Mechanics. And now we have dark-energy and dark-matter to deal with, and even the possiblities of new dimensions of space beyond the 3 we're familiar with.

I don't know where you guys are coming from, but I would say that to tell people anything less than the fact that science is still in diapers with tons of unanswered questions would be a totally fallacious misrepresentation of science.

Especially when it comes to things like spirit, etc. Science has no clue what's possible!

You're kidding yourselves if you truly believe otherwise. And if you've paid some institution to teach you that, I would suggest going back and demanding a full refund!

I figured "I don't know what I call evidence" was a good enough indicator that you hadn't picked it up yet so I thought I'd give that another go but I'm glad that you've already picked it up.

Abra wrote:



Hmmmm...

So because you have conflated some ratio which actually 'represents' observable/unobservable mass with/to all things known about the universe - this is supposed to represent a meaningful explanation of the 'huge holes'?



I see holes alright.

Evidence is a funny thing, we as people dont care about evidence in all reality, it comes down to "will and desire", people want evidence of alot of things, to name a few

God
Aliens
Ghosts

regardless of the proof available ive seen alot of believeable aliens videos and ghost videos, it comes down to what u believe through your will and desire to believe. Evidence to some will never be proof enough, or real enough =)

i agree

yet science starts with a, could it be like this? and adds on it, which i like to do my self, digging deeper and deeper into somthing trying new things and process until somthing fits, we learn, somtimes during this process word of mouth spreads partially finished ideas, theories =)

The scientific community doesn't make any claims about how much science knows compared with what it might not yet know. In fact, to even make such an erroneous claim would be quite unscientific.

Although, we can say with confidence that there is much we don't yet know because there are many things we don't yet understand.



Trust me, they don't speak for the scientific community and the scientific community does not support their views.

No argument here.

Remember a few posts ago when I talked about how you SHOULD be able to stump me? Remember how I had asked you to tell me about what those lectures you attended were about?

You've made it abundantly clear that you can't convey any details of that sort so at the level you can handle YES it has all the answers. There are obviously and undeniably things we don't understand but the problem here is that you don't understand the significance of that and constantly apply it to situations that don't make sense.

You also haven't heard me claim that in this topic or any other one.

The hell does that mean? We'd have to know 100% to know that the previous amount was 5% wouldn't we?

No, I do know what you're talking about but that's one of those less than justified cosmological issues. We know about how much gas there is in the vacuum of space and about how much is planets and how much is stars. Add that all up and it's not enough to hold things in orbit in our galaxy.
So they made something up. Dark matter, referring to some mystery mass of things that we couldn't detect. Maybe we just don't understand how gravity works on larger scales or maybe there really is about 3 times as much mass just hidden away somewhere, everywhere.

But to get to five percent you've got to add in dark energy. Another one of those things they just made up when the numbers didn't add up. What you won't hear about on NOVA or the discovery channel specials is what the hell those numbers are (seriously, they just omit it every freaking time.) Well the big maths from Einstein and Hawking and all the rest is way too much to go into in a show like that (and would mostly go over my head as well,) but what they are talking about is the energy it takes to stretch space-time.

We know how going near the speed of light warps space-time quite a bit and if you actually get relativity you know that's because energy, mostly in the form of a lot of mass, meaning lots of gravity, has really accumulated in the process of reaching that speed.

Now, much like how we could misunderstand large scale gravity there's options for misunderstanding this as well. Imagine if instead of space-time even really stretching in the energy fashion at all that all those particles that arise from the quantum field were essentially shrinking. You would expect some problems because with relativity time progresses at non-uniform rates so we should end up with very large atoms but if instead this was a normal progression of the quantum field itself it would be a different story.

Obviously that's highly speculative but you seem pretty annoyed with my just recanting general information so I thought I'd experiment a little.

If you're talking about the 95% I think you are that's "number of hairs on your head" information.

We're never going to count the number of hairs on everyone's heads, or at least not without such advanced technology that it's impossible to talk about it in a meaningful way at this point in time. But what does the number of hairs on your head matter? A much more useful piece of information is how many there are in a square centimeter. We can work that one out easily if you've got any reason to want to know (like if you were dealing with hair implants.)

But if you want to say that somebody only knows 5% of what there is to know about the hairs on your head if they've only directly counted 5% of them you're can't see the forest for the trees.

At a glance someone can say if most of your hairs are black, brown, or whatever and say if you've got any major bald spots or a receding hairline. Color and overall shape, are you going to say that these are just two things counted compared to millions of uncounted hairs on your head as if that's the same thing?

You can keep saying that but you don't seem to have a real point beyond how you want to strip science of any power to justify your beliefs.

Of course not, it's just changing what science is so it's easier for you. You don't want to strip away something from everyone else, that's just a side effect of wrapping yourself in this "Science can't say I'm wrong" security blanket.

If you want to equivocate. You don't seem to hold any concern for how riddled with fallacy your arguments are so that's probably what you want to do.

Like what? I know there are things we don't know but you don't seem to be able to apply any of it in a relevant way. The real revelation here is that it's you don't care what science knows, as long as it's not everything you think your argument automatically stands but THAT is what I'm disagreeing with you about here and basically every other time we contact each other.

I'm not saying that science knows everything. I'm saying that it can be clearly shown that you're wrong even if we know almost nothing.

Once again: stop making me into Jack 2.0
I'm not a new version of someone you've argued with before and I'm not arguing their points. Stop kidding yourself thinking that you can argue against what they've said at me; I'm arguing something different and there's not just this one stereotype group of people that all say the same thing out of some kind of hatred for what you stand for.

I know you're not going to suddenly open your eyes and see that I'm an individual but if you're going to tell me to think outside the box without even paying enough attention to see what I'm saying how would you ever know if it's in the box or not?
Oh right, anyone that disagrees with you just doesn't "get it" because you're a fundamentalist Christian that just doesn't want to be called Christian.

And Africa isn't part of the Americas. Oh, you never said that? Well everyone that ever disagrees with me thinks that Africa is where Brazil's at so it's probably a key part of your argument. Wouldn't it be dumb if I kept reminding you that Africa's south of Europe as if you were arguing otherwise? Especially after you had told me a dozen times that you knew that and agreed but that it had nothing to do with the discussion?

Try thinking about core samples. If we had one of those little fast food scratch off cards and we took the silver stuff off of just a few thin lines through the center of it, like maybe 5% of the area, would might be able to make out the words "try again" and then what would it matter that we still had 95% of the stuff unscratched?

You've been saying I talk about it since long before I ever brought it up.

As far as you're concerned...
You know, that's really telling about you. You don't care what I'm saying, as far as you're concerned it's dumb and I smell bad unless I agree with you and I probably still smell for having opposed you for so long.

I asked you what a gap IS. I didn't say science knows everything. How can you can you mix those two up and write up such an vacuous response? You really need to think outside of that box where all of your rehearsed rants are stored.

I'm not asking you to play quote-fu like I do but when you pick out a single tiny fragment of what I've said you can at least make your response correlate to it.

What I've been saying is basically that you're a liar. Not in the sense that any of that is false but more like,
Well it would be like a child saying he didn't break some vase. Then it comes out that they did break it with a baseball and they say "ya, I didn't break it, the baseball did."

Now your responses don't typically acknowledge what you quoted but if they did we'd get to that stage.

You're playing a deceptive little game, basically every time you bring those things up. It's very much like saying "I didn't do it, the baseball did." That's clearly the wrong context.

Might as well ask again: what you do you mean by gaps? I'm not asking how big they are. I'm asking what makes something a gap and what that means.

"God of the gaps" is so played out. Go ahead and keep doing it if you like but it makes it clear that I'm philosophically superior.


You're kidding yourself if you think I'm going to forget what I'm talking about and suddenly decide that it's all these fake targets you keep acting like you're getting bulls-eyes on.

I said it simpler Shoku...

You guys can talk to each other. I have no interest in these silly circular games.

I'm certain that the scientific community does not claim to have all the answers, and that's all that needs to be said.

I'm tired of these silly merry-go-round games.

So long fellas!

I suppose if one only reads halfway through a sentence it could seem like a game, huh? The rest of that sentence made it perfectly clear what was being talked about, and the partial quote does not capture the meaning even halfway.



Hasta luego, esse.

Why not instead of saying "science says" you actually name some specific scientists and what they are talking about? There is no actual person who speaks for all of science.

It ends up being enough of a drawn out history lesson as it is without me going on about how and what Henry Eyring did with transition states.

Stuff like replica printing I'd be all for giving out name drops but my repertoire of "who did what" is really focused on Biology and biology doesn't come up much in these (beyond irreducible complexity opinions.)

That's actually a good thing though as it seems everyone here is knowledgeable enough to accept genetics for the most part.

I don't understand how your reading comprehension could be so low that you could miss what that meant.

Oh well, I guess that's pretty much the end of the thread as everyone left seems capable of integrating new information.