I think you underestimate me Les. I have never minded admitting that I don't know. I do it quite regularly. I don't even mind finding out that I am wrong. As long as it is actually shown to me, and I am not just accused of it.
Originally posted by LW Sleeth
To explain “empiricentric” I’ll start with an analogy.
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Scientism devotees all agree on the standards, and don’t have the slightest openness (that I’ve seen) to those standards being questioned.
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I would agree that measurement is necessary for empirical work.
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But that is not the same as saying if it cannot be measured by empirical means it doesn’t exist! If one says and means that, one is revealing his/her bias for empirical standards by claiming they apply to everything. It is completely possible that empirical standards only apply to material processes, and what they do not reveal is simply due the limitations of the empirical method. So why aren’t scientism devotees content to say “if something exists other than physical processes, it is outside the scope of empiricism”? I say it is because they are working to establish the absoluteness of their philosophy.
It is hard to express, so i will just try to say it again in another way, and hope you get what I mean: If something, anything, has any influence on our universe...it
is measurable. Whether we actually can measure it or not isn't the point here, it is whether it is measurable or not. If it has an influence, it is measurable, and so it is within the scope of empiricism, within the scope of 'scientism'. So whether you want to talk about the existence of neutrons, strings, or personal experience: They are all measurable: They all have some impact on the universe. Just as I cannot see an atom, I cannot see that you love your wife: But the existence of an atom may be measured by weight, and the presence of your love may be measured by your actions, your words, and your brain activity. (And possibly something much more sophisticate in the future)
And thus I present my bias to you out in the open, no denying it: I want to say "For everything in existence, there is a direct interaction with something else, and we can either measure that first thing, the second thing, or something else down the track of causality which in turn may indicate the existence of the first thing. And thus EVERYTHING is measurable." But that isn't entirely true. I know that. The truth is that there are probably things which don't interact, and so aren't measurable. They exist nonetheless right? And this is the important part: It is not that anyone is trying to force a philosophy into absolute acceptance here, it is just that there is no point considering those non-interactive factors. They have NO role in our universe. So we can just ignore them.
No fault in doing that, it's just practicality. All of this, is practicality to the nth degree.
That statement assumes in advance the accuracy of the materialist model, and that empirical standards can reveal everything. Yet it violates the empirical standard itself by suggesting abiogenesis has to be disproved.
It's a progression. You want us to say "Oh, we can't be certain, we should stop assuming we know anything"? We have to work with what we have, and what we have so far, is the way things seem to us. And the way things seem to us right now, are all pointing towards Abiogenesis. If everything of our current world view is pointing towards abiogenesis, then we are going to assume there is a good reason for it. And at no time does it assume that it has to be disproved. It just needs to be replaced with a better model. Same with every other theory. Until it is either disproved or replaced with a better model, then it will remain the accepted model.
Remember: That was the whole point of me asking if there was another option outside of Abiogenesis: You could achieve your point without disproving it.
...not that you
need to disprove it, but its just that as long as it is the only model, and everything in it is functionally possible, and there is no conclusive evidence either way, it will be accepted as 'the most likely', and will remain so until one of those 2 elements is broken: It becomes 'not the most likely' or 'it is not functionally possible.' It's all very simple really.
OK: I ahve to sort of step back and make a very serious point here: Why do you keep pushing with some of these points. You ask some questions which, well, have either been asked several times over, or a blatently obvious to anyone who wants to think about it, yet you ask them nonetheless as if they are problematic for the 'Scientism devotee
'. If you stopped for a second with this Crusade complex, and start tto discuss this topic with a mind towards solving problems, not creating them, then perhaps this could all be a little more progressive. Instead you keep asking why 'it needs to be disproved' when no one said anything about that. And you ask 'Why you should need a replacement theory first', when no one said you did. Maybe you didn't get it at first, hopefully you do now, and we can move on from this point.
A practice that is useful to get into: Try to answer your own questions before you ask them. I find that you wil tend to be able to.
The question of where life came from has been around for so long, and since God was first put into doubt
Sorry, i worded this terribly. I meant to say that it has been around since the single Creation event was put into doubt: ie: Since Lyel and his dynamic geology theories, and Darwin and the Origin of the Species. Of course these works were largely denied in the begining, because it didn't fit in line with the Bible world view, but the question was finally out there, and as long as a few people doubted creation, then the question was being worked on "Well, if God didn't do it, how did it come to be?"
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Whose race is it? Is it the world community of human beings, or is it a scientism race which only allows materialist horses in the race?
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You know, this is a good point, because the answer is exactly what you fear it would be: It is a scientism race that only allows materialist horses in the race because 'the human race' is stupid and have no idea about how their world functions (I'm sure that will get soments here...), and only materialism ever produces winners. (Yes, even by the materialist method of rating winners!) Funnily enough, the materialistic method of rating winners, also happens to be the 'Human' method of rating winners : ie: Which one has acheived something.
Like the philosophy behind it or not, it is the human method, just refined a little.
Again, useless to whom? If you first set up standards which judge as useful only that which can be verified by the standards of your philosophy, then aren’t you arrogating the path to useful, truth, etc.?
I feel like this is another one of those questions just put in here to make me answer more. Something you could have answered for yourself if you had have thought about it, but you chose not too, because the more questions you ask, the more problematic my stance appears.
That which is useful, is apparent. It is clear. It doesn't need to be explained. You know what is useful, and I know what is useful. What is useless, is everything outside of that which is useful. These things can be considered on an individual level, or they could be considered on a global level, or on a community l;evel, whatever. But for each case something can be easily chosen as useful, or useless without me needing to sit here and explain it to you.
Because empiricism has only revealed a material universe, we are justified in assuming empiricism only reveals physical processes.
And because material universe is all we are interested in, who cares about the rest?
The empirical standard is superbly equipped to describe the physical aspects of the universe, it can say nothing of value about anything that is metaphysical.
Metaphysical doesn't mean what you think it does: Materialism is a metaphysical theory. Metaphysics is the term used to refer to a philosophical world view. It comes from the naming of Aristotles books, and the book about his theories of 'how things really are' was chronicaled before his book on Physics: Hence 'Meta=physics', before physics.
Anything which is not-physical, has no role in the physical, and thus can't influence us. Since we are, physical beings. Yes, we have subjective minds, but that mind is nothing more than an emergent property of a physical body. remover the physical body and suddenly you have no subjective. Change the subjective, the physical changes. Change the physical, the subjective changes. 1 to 1 ratio all the way. We are physical, our unvierse is physical, and that which isn't physical, is of no regard to us.
) created the universe, then from purely materialist perspectives there is no problem. The idea may be rather forcibly rejected for other reasons, like there being no evidence such a giant alien exists, but it isn't materialistically invalid. Or the idea that a knowable, but not yet found fundamental law created the universe, which has in fact being the driving hypothesis of many materialist thinkers. In fact many very much materialist thinkers have dispensed with any distinction and simply called such universal codes God. 
