My blog about my experiences defending science

[Pengwuino]

edit: Who or what is this directed at?

OP

ten characters yo

 

[silkworm]

And I most certainly did NOT refuse to listen or call BS - I refuted point after point, all for nothing though (the audience was mostly fundamentalists). Do you spout off ill-considered nonsense like this intentionally, or is it merely an a reading comprehension difficulty which none should blame you for?

The fundamentalist part doesn't matter, the crowd is looking for some sort of scientific affirmation of their faith. For that the scientific part has to be preserved. The problem is much of the crowd is likely to have no frame of reference so you must put things in the most practical of terms, and look for feedback. If you still don't think they understand, say it again, and if still nothing say it differently.

May I ask who the PhD was?

 

[silkworm]

OP

ten characters yo

Is that me?

I certainly don't do that. The man is a lunatic though. While at the meetings I treat everyone with respect, but they last 3 hours and then I'm there for at least 2 afterwards talking to people so it's hard to put everything down verbatim with that much conversation. I'm trying to solve this. I got a request for a webcast of the CCTV, and I'll do my best to secure that. I think it would be good for this sort of explanation. I'm also trying to think of the best way to document and present what occurs at these meetings, it is A LOT of material however.

 

[Rach3]

OP

ten characters yo

It appeared to have been directed at the preceding post, which was mine. My bad. :shy:

(but you really should have made that clear...)

 

[Rach3]

The fundamentalist part doesn't matter, the crowd is looking for some sort of scientific affirmation of their faith. For that the scientific part has to be preserved. The problem is much of the crowd is likely to have no frame of reference so you must put things in the most practical of terms, and look for feedback. If you still don't think they understand, say it again, and if still nothing say it differently.

May I ask who the PhD was?

I forget his name. He got a PhD in metallurgy at some third-tier school, then joined one of the ID institues and now goes on tour giving a standard talk. He's a stereotypical charlatan.

 

[Rach3]

I think is has been stated before, but it is worth emphisising that; in science nothing can ever be proved, only disproved. No one can ever claim that a theory is indisputably true (well they can but they'd be wrong). No matter how much evidence is presented in support of a theory, it only takes one piece of solid evidence to bring this theory into question. Even now there is debate into the theory of evolution, such as the "adaptive mutation" theory. I cannot tell you how serious these debates are as I am not a biologist, but still a debate occurs.

Any scientist who claims that a theory is 100% unquestionably is setting themself up for a large fall.

~H

Yes, and put this into perspective: what would a competing theory have to explain? The same juggernaut of evidence - speciation, fossil records... in essence it would have to be some variation or superset of evolution. The core phenomenology would be unchanged.

 

[Pengwuino]

OP as in the original post in the linked thread... not hte original post here

 

[Pengwuino]

I forget his name. He got a PhD in metallurgy at some third-tier school, then joined one of the ID institues and now goes on tour giving a standard talk. He's a stereotypical charlatan.

PhD in metallurgy? What's he doing talking about physics. Tell him to go... melt something...

 

[Rach3]

In that case, my criticism stands. I'm going back and editing it back in.

(hint: I am that other OP...)

 

[Rach3]

PhD in metallurgy? What's he doing talking about physics. Tell him to go... melt something...

Physics, Biology, Theology, he's an expert in it all.

 

[Pengwuino]

Yes, and put this into perspective: what would a competing theory have to explain? The same juggernaut of evidence - speciation, fossil records... in essence it would have to be some variation or superset of evolution. The core phenomenology would be unchanged.

Ah but let's not expose ourselves to the possibility of falling into the same trap physicists found themselves in before Einstein came along.

 

[Hootenanny]

Yes, and put this into perspective: what would a competing theory have to explain? The same juggernaut of evidence - speciation, fossil records... in essence it would have to be some variation or superset of evolution. The core phenomenology would be unchanged.

Yes, but one additional element to this theory, as far as I can deduce is that bacterial atleast exhibit some characteristic of Lamarkian evolution. That mutations that are advantageous appear, while those that are not simply do not occur. See this link for more information; http://www.mun.ca/biochem/courses/4103/topics/adaptive_mutation.html

Apologies to silkworm for hijacking your thread.

~H

 

[Rach3]

Ah but let's not expose ourselves to the possibility of falling into the same trap physicists found themselves in before Einstein came along.

What trap? Everywhere Newtonian mechanics was applied, it remains experimentally correct. SR is only relevant on what was then a very new regime of physics; it is, just as I said, a variation and a superset of Newtonian mechanics, which falls out in the limit c->infinity.

 

[Hootenanny]

What trap? Everywhere Newtonian mechanics was applied, it remains experimentally correct. SR is only relevant on what was then a very new regime of physics; it is, just as I said, a variation and a superset of Newtonian mechanics, which falls out in the limit c->infinity.

It would be more apt to consider Newtonian mechanics as an approximation of Relativity.

~H

 

[Rach3]

Yes, but one additional element to this theory, as far as I can deduce is that bacterial atleast exhibit some characteristic of Lamarkian evolution. That mutations that are advantageous appear, while those that are not simply do not occur. See this link for more information; http://www.mun.ca/biochem/courses/4103/topics/adaptive_mutation.html

Apologies to silkworm for hijacking your thread.

~H

Interesting, a mechanism competing with natural selection. Hardly evidence that natural selection never occurs, or isn't universally observed... Theories become more sophisticated and accurate over time; while much is thrown out, experimental evidence is here to stay.

 

[Rach3]

It would be more apt to consider Newtonian mechanics as an approximation of Relativity.

~H

That's what I did, you may have misread. Relativity extends Newtonian mechanics, which is recovered as c->infinity.

 

[Rach3]

Or, as ID'ers would call it... Newtonism.

 

[Pengwuino]

What trap? Everywhere Newtonian mechanics was applied, it remains experimentally correct. SR is only relevant on what was then a very new regime of physics; it is, just as I said, a variation and a superset of Newtonian mechanics, which falls out in the limit c->infinity.

Thats a very small part of what Einstein changed.

 

[Rach3]

Thats a very small part of what Einstein changed.

Then I'm afraid you haven't made your point clear at all. What are you thinking about, gravity? Photons? EPR paradox? In each case (GR, QM), there is a limit in which purely classical behavior is recovered - the only regime which was experimentally accessible before then.

 

[Hootenanny]

Thats a very small part of what Einstein changed.

Exactly, GR for example completely changed our understanding of gravitation and our concept of space, time and motion.

~H

 

[Rach3]

But Newton's laws remain valid! That was never in question. Civil engineers don't need differential geometry to do their stuff.

 

[Pengwuino]

But Newton's laws remain valid! That was never in question.

Einstein didn't only theorize on gravity and motion...

 

[Rach3]

Einstein didn't only theorize on gravity and motion...

That's obvious. What exactly is your point?

 

[Hootenanny]

But Newton's laws remain valid! That was never in question. Civil engineers don't need differential geometry to do their stuff.

How about the mass - energy relationship? Before Einstein, they were considered separate entities, completely unrelated.

~H

 

[silkworm]

I think Rach3's point is that Newtonian physics still work when applied properly. So it wasn't proven wrong, it was just expanded.

 

[Rach3]

How about the mass - energy relationship? Before Einstein, they were considered separate entities, completely unrelated.

~H

Yes, the theory is completely different, our understanding of the universe changed drastically. The point is that the observations and phenomenology that were described by Newtonian mechanics, remain valid. They may be valid for completely wrong reasons, but they're still valid. My analogy was that, if evolutionary biology underwent an Einstein-like revolution, a lot of very important stuff would still be true - we'd still be seeing speciation, for instance. The new stuff might be far more predictive and general, but it couldn't contradict existing experimental observations.

 

[Rach3]

Here's a relevant organization to this thread.

National Center for Science Education
Defending the Teaching of Evolution in the Public Schools

http://www.natcenscied.org/

 

[silkworm]

Here's a relevant organization to this thread.

National Center for Science Education
Defending the Teaching of Evolution in the Public Schools

http://www.natcenscied.org/

Hey, thank you for the link. And, I just found the quote button. Things are looking up for me.

 

[Mk]

If you want it to say "Originally posted by Rach3" then you can just copy his text that you want to cite, and put

and [ /quote] tags around it. (without the space)

 

[silkworm]

Thanks Mk. I couldn't figure out how to pick and choose here, and I didn't see the quote button. I'm totally new here. I've posted a bit on other forums (the best of them being SFN), but I like the content here.

Note: I'm pretty much computer illiterate anymore, but I'm working on it.