Quote :

"People have altered the scientific method over time. This is done through a process of reasoning called philosophy."

First, invalid argument: The tool you use to shape something does not impart its qualities on to its respective medium.

Second, its not sound: The method that people use now is the method used that worked are produced results. The nomological model didnt come from philosophy, it came from observation and generalizations.

9/15/2006 2:00:53 PM

So fucking wrong. So fucking deluded.

If you actually think you're right, I hope you suffer intense personal embarassment when you finally realize that you aren't.

9/15/2006 2:02:44 PM

Since youre so big on philosophy, I can only assume the reason youre not giving me a reason is becuase you have none.

[Edited on September 15, 2006 at 2:03 PM. Reason : dfg ]

9/15/2006 2:03:32 PM

a) you're a joke

b) you're a joke that's not even really funny

9/15/2006 2:04:36 PM

Yet youre taking them time to tell me?

9/15/2006 2:05:27 PM

yeah, because you need to learn

if you're being serious, i feel so sorry for you

if you're trolling, you should step back and try to reevaluate your game

because you're coming off like a 3 year old who just says the same shit over and over again

it's pretty pathetic

9/15/2006 2:07:22 PM

So youre saying either way Ive won?

9/15/2006 2:08:13 PM

yeah man

you win

9/15/2006 2:08:26 PM

Mostly becuase I can articulate reasons, but better luck next time.

9/15/2006 2:08:59 PM

i'm trying to help you help yourself

9/15/2006 2:09:19 PM

like an AA meeting?

9/15/2006 2:09:39 PM

yeah, something like that

9/15/2006 2:09:49 PM

intelligent design is not a scientific theory. you do not teach it beside evolution or any other science.

it is not a theory because it invokes the idea of the supernatural. that is what separates it from science. both seek to explain the unknown. one defaults to the supernatural. the other defaults to examining and testing until a result is acquired

9/15/2006 2:30:21 PM

Quote :

"ChknMcFaggot: Yeah but you could just as easily argue that it was derived and defined by Rationalism too. I guess I didn't get the point of your distinction, as there were only three branches of Epistemology at the time, two of which were useful (Rationalism/Empiricism -- the "third" I'm labeling here is Skepticism, but that's hardly a helpful stance for any mode of explanation)."

I agree that it was. Why'd you ignore Spiritualism as a philosophy? It was popular at the time, a rejection of Skepticism, and exerted great influence on the views of Empiricism and Rationalism. That's the central thesis of Josh8315's argument. At least, I think so. Note his use of the word "correct" to describe what led to the dominance of Science. It reflects his philosophical predisposition to misunderstand anything about Epistemology, a.k.a. Science's grandfather/grandmother.

What I'm also wondering is why a philosopher who could so cogently explain the fundamentals of Epistemology elsewhere wouldn't recognize that both Empiricism and Rationalism are the parents of Science. As is Skepticism. The fact that you can easily argue Science came only from one doesn't make it true. Nor does it make it mutually exclusive from other facts that can also be easily argued, or argued at all.

The distinction I made was arbitrary, but still correct. Science grew out of the application of the Rationalist philosophy to the Empiricist philosophy. The degree of Skepticism, I'd say, is what upsets the balance between Empiricism and Rationism within Science, and forms the imaginary dividing line between "true individual experience" and "true individual experience accepted by societal convention." The influence of Spiritualism on Skepticism is, I think, the effect Josh8315 is somehow angry about, and yet ignorant as to its irrelevance to the point.

[Edited on September 15, 2006 at 3:09 PM. Reason : ...]

9/15/2006 3:07:00 PM

^ I'm in complete agreeance with you. That's why I objected to your sole citing of Empiricism. It made it seem as if you made the common mistake that Empiricism <-> Empirical Observation, which isn't necessarily true (as empirical observations can be argued to be synthetic a priori).

Quote :

"Why'd you ignore Spiritualism as a philosophy?"

I'm not sure what you mean -- I don't see why this can't be lumped in with Descartes as far as epistemology is concerned (all that I clearly and distinctly perceive to be true is true).

9/15/2006 3:14:47 PM

Quote :

"Josh8315 is somehow angry about, and yet ignorant"

ignorant maybe, but angry, not.

9/15/2006 4:13:35 PM

^^ I guess I think of Spiritualism more as a force (born out of Rationalism, admittedly), that acts counter to the force of Skepticism. I suppose calling is a philosophy was a stretch, though it's viewed that way.

9/15/2006 5:39:18 PM

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2014/02/03/why-im-debating-the-science-guy-about-creationism/?hpt=hp_t2

Bill Nye the Science Guy vs. Ken Ham. I've seen thim on something, maybe it was that Religulous movie? He crazy. This should be entertaining.

[Edited on February 4, 2014 at 12:56 PM. Reason : ]

2/4/2014 12:55:20 PM

any "scientist" who doesn't believe in evolution looses all credibility in my mind because it proves that he/she has zero critical thinking skills.

2/4/2014 1:33:09 PM

the creation scientist guys generally spend way more time coming up with sound bites and quips that real scientists require actual explanation and discussion to disprove, and they generally lose people trying to do this.

I don't see much gain from Nye doing this...

2/4/2014 2:01:16 PM

creation "scientist"

2/4/2014 3:09:29 PM

Mr. Nye, there is a book...

2/4/2014 9:26:25 PM

Quote :

"In schools across America, creationism remains a problem. According to a report in Science magazine (pdf), 13% of public school biology teachers are teaching creationism instead of evolution and another 60% are avoiding endorsing either."

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/04/bill-nye-science-guy-evolution-debate-creationists

2/4/2014 10:28:21 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI&t=12m40s

2/5/2014 2:09:23 AM

Did anybody watch it?

http://www.wral.com/bill-nye-bible-doesn-t-tell-earth-s-true-history/13360391/

2/5/2014 10:01:20 AM

watching it right now.

2/5/2014 1:01:13 PM

Just a heads up, many Christian academics don't even take Ham very seriously.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/02/the_ham-nye_deb081911.html

2/5/2014 10:16:45 PM

I'm on the fence about Bill debating this guy. One the one hand, it shows how much of an ignorant buffoon Ken is, and how ludicrous his beliefs are. On the other, it raises his credibility with his followers to be on the same stage with the likes of Bill Nye.

There isn't anything to debate with him anyway. Ken thinks people rode around on dinosaurs. And his common retort to carbon dating proving the age of dinosaurs or something is "You weren't there, you didn't see it." Well no fuck, Ken, but neither were you when dinosaurs were around, and they're not mentioned in the Bible, so why do you believe people were riding around on them? His beliefs are a mindfuck of schizophrenic fallacies.

2/5/2014 10:33:11 PM

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/02/06/camel-bones-suggest-error-in-bible/?intcmp=features

2/6/2014 10:52:09 AM

Quote :

"Well no fuck, Ken, but neither were you when dinosaurs were around, and they're not mentioned in the Bible, so why do you believe people were riding around on them?"

This is the kind of argument that Bill Nye should have made, but didn't.

A big part of the problem with his performance is that he wasn't prepared to critique the religious arguments at hand (not that he necessarily needs to be), but yet, he was forced to delve into those arguments. If it were Richard Dawkins, Ken Ham would have been torn apart.

That's the problem with civility. Nye was too respectful to the guy, and asked questions as if he thought they would be intelligently addressed. You know he's going to come back with BS.

The guy needs a religious scholar to debate him - because his theory is crap. There are Catholic scientists and scholars who would argue him into the ground. The 6,000 years is an interpretation of the bible.

And stop with this translation BS. Modern biblical scholars read the original Greek. That's one translation, and it was necessary because that's the language they wrote in during Jesus' time. Nye had weak arguments when it went into the theological territory. The real venom is that our modern biblical scholars disagree with this clown Ken Ham. The creationism they're teaching isn't common to all of Christianity. It's their denomination. It should be treated as such.

[Edited on February 6, 2014 at 11:52 AM. Reason : ]

2/6/2014 11:52:09 AM

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/messages-from-creationists-to-people-who-believe-in-evolutio

all of you evilutionists PLEASE read this and tell me with a straight face you really think darwin was real

2/7/2014 10:22:50 PM

lol

2/7/2014 11:35:51 PM

You need to watch the whole thing here:

2/8/2014 2:11:33 PM

^hahahahaha that's great.

2/8/2014 2:39:36 PM

Quote :

"Modern biblical scholars read the original Greek."

The original is long-lost: A series of re-transcriptions, many of which are fragmentary, are all that remain, and they've been reconciled into "critical texts" like Nestle-Aland (the standard for New Testament studies) and Westcott & Hort; it's even worse with the Old Testament, and while I was looking into it about a year and a half ago I too came to believe that the differences between the original writings and even modern translations (but especially older ones based on the Vulgate) came about much like a game of telephone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textual_criticism#Eclecticism

2/8/2014 4:17:59 PM

Quote :

"The original is long-lost"

Could you elaborate - what the heck does that mean?

We all know that the New Testament began to get recorded around 90 AD. This is obvious, and it's the starting point. Are you trying to argue that information was mangled and lost before that? Well duh. But that sure as hell isn't transcription error. It wasn't transcribed yet!

Then there's the Gospel of Thomas. That is thought to be written between 40 and 140 AD. What's more, it was hidden due to political reasons of the time, so it wasn't adulterated through that time. It wasn't discovered until 1945. It's beyond any believability that any alternations were made after it was discovered.

So what the heck do you mean? It was pretty unchanged for 1900 out of the 2000 years since Christ, and this is a pretty verifiable fact. If you go earlier than that, well then we get into those supernatural events, and the circumstances that lead to a consensus on the resurrection story, and so on. Those "errors" are just as must definitional to Christianity as the teachings of Jesus were.

For the Old Testament, of course, any part of it could have been (and likely was) made up.

2/8/2014 7:15:54 PM

Here's what the hell I mean: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_manuscript#New_Testament_manuscripts

Quote :

"Textual scholar Bart Ehrman writes: "It is true, of course, that the New Testament is abundantly attested in the manuscripts produced through the ages, but most of these manuscripts are many centuries removed from the originals, and none of them perfectly accurate. They all contain mistakes - altogether many thousands of mistakes. It is not an easy task to reconstruct the original words of the New Testament....""

Also Wikipedia quoted Bruce M. Metzger, former professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and board member of the American Bible Society and United Bible Societies, "one of the most influential New Testament scholars of the 20th century" according to his own Wikipedia article...

Quote :

"Instead of the lapse of a millennium or more, as is the case of not a few classical authors, several papyrus manuscripts of portions of the New Testament are extant which were copies within a century or so after the composition of the original documents."

(It was part of a longer quote showing that at least there's more material, closer to the original writings, to make a critical text from than for other ancient writings, like from Homer or Euripides, but the point is that we don't have the originals.)

Finally, after mentioning a 2008 discovery of manuscripts in Albania, the article says this: "When comparing one manuscript to another, with the exception of the smallest fragments, no two copies agree completely throughout."
It goes on to describe some of the areas of disagreement among manuscripts, but the point is clear: game of telephone.

[Edited on February 8, 2014 at 7:34 PM. Reason : Likely the Gospel of Thomas & other non-canon writings are only known through ancient copies.

2/8/2014 7:31:24 PM

clearly god guided the translation of the bible until it reached perfection in his native tongue of king james english.

2/8/2014 8:22:37 PM

Going from this:

Quote :

"Here's what the hell I mean: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_manuscript#New_Testament_manuscripts"

I'm just not sure what the point of some of the arguments are. They say:

Quote :

"Parts of the New Testament have been preserved in more manuscripts than any other ancient work, having over 5,800 complete or fragmented Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin manuscripts and 9,300 manuscripts in various other ancient languages including Syriac, Slavic, Gothic, Ethiopic, Coptic and Armenian. The dates of these manuscripts range from c. 125 (the John Rylands manuscript, P52; oldest copy of John fragments) to the introduction of printing in Germany in the 15th century."

I know that the bible was copied a lot of times, and copied incorrectly. But 10k inferior Latin transcriptions do nothing to erode the scholarly significance of the one Greek copy from 125.

The metric which would be the most convincing to me would be the most recent earliest copy of a NT book. For instance, if the earliest transcription of Jude we have was from 500, then that would be much more telephone-y than the other ones.

But none of that diminishes the core books, which we have a really good handle on. We have versions that clearly date to 100 AD-ish. Lots of religions don't use those, but that's a much weaker statement. The most you can say is that their religious leaders aren't very good at curating the holy book. Considering the nonsense that's been passed as Christian ministry over the years, this is about as unsurprising as it gets.

In general, it sounds like this "game of telephone" argument applies to things like The King James Bible. While that's certainly relevant to specific ministries, it's not universally applicable. I could use the internet right now and quote a verse that went through two translations... or one if I post the Greek.

2/10/2014 10:29:30 AM

Two translations at least 75 years after the supposed facts 1500 years before the printing press was even invented.

[Edited on February 21, 2014 at 9:02 PM. Reason : .]

2/21/2014 8:55:55 PM

http://bibviz.com/

2/21/2014 11:28:15 PM

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/02/28/noah-ark-project-in-kentucky-to-move-forward/

Quote :

"Creation Museum founder Ken Ham announced Thursday that a municipal bond offering has raised enough money to begin construction on the Ark Encounter project, estimated to cost about $73 million. Groundbreaking is planned for May and the ark is expected to be finished by the summer of 2016. Ham said a high-profile evolution debate he had with "Science Guy" Bill Nye on Feb. 4 helped boost support for the project."

2/28/2014 12:49:28 PM

I can't wait to see it! I really wanna see the part about how none of the animals ate anything for 40 days but were ok.

2/28/2014 5:53:58 PM

Go ahead and waste money building an ark. Hollywood just spent hundreds of millions doing it for the big screen. I will point and laugh at the dinosaurs in their pens, and the retarded reasoning he uses to explain how and why they are there.

2/28/2014 11:11:56 PM

What if this just serves to point out how ludicrous a literal reading really is?

I think that's secretly the purpose of the Hollywood movies, to trivialize the stories and shift them to the realm of myths rather than belief systems.

2/28/2014 11:45:39 PM