From: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,talk.origins
Subject: Re: Logic and God (was: Young earth creationist logic NOT!)
Date: 2 Sep 92 16:56:58 GMT
Article-I.D.: netnews.87732
Reply-To: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Followup-To: talk.origins
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology
Supersedes: <87715@netnews.upenn.edu>
In-reply-to: riggs@descartes.tec.army.mil (Bill Riggs)

In article <1288@tecsun1.etl.army.mil>, riggs@descartes (Bill Riggs) writes:
>>>	This guy (and quite a few others) has displayed absolutely NO
>>>idea of where I'm coming from or what I believe, or why.

>(Name calling and insults deleted)

{Self-righteous demand that his philosophastry be taken seriously kept.}

>>>							  He's set me
>>>up as some kind of straw man and started whacking away

>(More namecalling deleted)

{Completely imaginary straw man accusations left in.}

Tell you what: you stick to debate, I'll stick to debate.  Deal?  That
means you don't drop one-liners about the evidence of evolution being
beans, and I won't make any more cranial allusions.

>>>	The semantic style is obvious. By referring to me by my last
>>>name in the post above, he displays the fact that he does not really
>>>respect either my opinions OR my person. Which is fine as far as it
>>>goes, as long as we all understand the underlying power relationship
>>>here. 

>>I have the power of mountains--heck, whole continents and oceans full--
>>of solid convincing evidence for evolution.  That's the only power game
>>I'm interested in.  If you want me to respect you, quit posting gibberish.

>	These two sentences speak mountains, but Matt didn't choose to
>stop here...

Of course not.  I can and do back up my words.

>>>The problem is not that evolution does not have either facts or logic
>>>to support it, but that the proponents of the same have no tolerance
>>>for debate.

>>I have no tolerance for gibbering morons.  There has been no debate--you
>>haven't provided a shred of evidence that something is wrong with evolution.
>>Just that it doesn't meet your peculiarly chosen requirements.

>	What we have here is a failure to communicate...

Indeed.  I haven't communicated to you the fundamental importance of knowing
the background material before pronouncing judgment.  Nor the importance of
not claiming the high rhetorical ground when you haven't offered anything
up other than ill-thought out philosophy.

>>>	But is creationism bad science ? I am convinced that one can
>>>take the exact same set of data that exists now, and by changing the
>>>fundamental assumptions on which the theory is based, come up with a
>>>different conclusion.

>>You are CONVINCED.  Whooptie do.  I'm convinced you're an idiot.  Put up
>>or shut up.  Anyone can type "I've got a theory that fits the data."  The
>>scientific creationists have been singing this gibberish for a century now.
>>It's as offkey today as it was then.

>	Point of historical fact. Just *when* was enough empirical
>data gathered to prove:

Let's see.  First--complete evasion.  You made your remarkable claim about
what your convictions will allow, but aren't offering a single iota of
evidence to back it up, yet we're to take your word for it that it's really
there.  Second--counter with a malformed leading question.  As I spelled
out in the post you replied to, the evidence doesn't constitute a simple
binary choice, but involves such a complex web of multiple and variable
sources that it's impossible to assign dates to when the evidence reached
critical mass.  Different researchers were convinced by different examples.
And not just because certain examples were more or less convincing than
others, but because human deduction is fundamentally non-monotonic, and
each researcher was exposed to different (even if only chronologically)
accumulations of data.  Third--the question is further malformed.  It
assumes that your categories (see below) are all distinct and can be
easily distinguished.  Excluding abiogenesis, this is false, as they are
all interconnected and mutually support each other.

A valid question would be to identify reasonable terminal dates for
evolution and abiogenesis separately.  I'll only give very conservative
upper bounds--for most researchers, the critical mass was reached long
before.

>	- Abiogenesis ?
>	- Natural Selection ?
>	- Speciation ?
>	- Mutation ?
>	- Variations in gene pools ?

Excluding abiogenesis, I'd say the last intelligent dissents ended by
1905.  For the physicists realized that between radioactivity and E=mc^2,
their young earth models null and void, and not listening to the solid
weight of historical evidence had been foolish on their part.

Abiogenesis is much more subtle.  To stick to a conservative estimate,
I'll pick the 1981? Nobel prize to Cech for RNA autocatalysis as an
easily identified landmark.

>	It might help to think about the question before answering.

Considering that you didn't even think *before* raising the question, your
request is a mite supercilious.

>>As a historian, you're an idiot.  Why should anyone blindly believe a
>>written record in the first place, moreso than a fossil?

>       That, of course, depends on the credibility of the written
>record - a highly speculative matter in the case of Genesis 1. You
>might as well ask how the ancient Israelites thought they knew how
>the world started, in order to write down Genesis 1. The reason
>Genesis 1 is not convincing "as history" is that it isn't based on a
>primary source.

I certainly wasn't talking about Genesis 1.  What's your point in
bringing up the worst case history-wise?  You still have a difficult
philosophical problem regarding *any* primary text.  The exact same
problem that natural historians face.  Why should we believe that any
such are indeed representational of its apparent day and age?

>>How, in fact, do we claim to know anything about Julius Caesar?  The
>>process of acquiring historical knowledge is far more subtle philoso-
>>phically than you imply, and by ignoring this in your own pet subject,
>>you don't realize what a complete idiot you look like by making such a
>>deal about the exact same philosophical questions that arise in evolu-
>>tion.  Which is why I say, that as a historian, you're an idiot.

>	Actually, I probably understand a bit more about the core issues
>than you are giving me credit for. But let's continue...

So answer the question.  How *do* we know anything about Julius Caesar?

>>Our evidence comes from three sources, of different quality.  We have
>>artifacts from his day, we have texts that are copies of copies and
>>so on, from his day and later, and we have linguistic evidence.  The
>>artifacts include coins and statues and buildings.  The copies are
>>derived from his own writings and historians of his and later time
>>periods.  And his name has survived in a few words: "July" and "Kaiser"
>>and "caeserean".  The copies of copies etc are merely _interpreted_,
>>if you want to get philosophically accurate, as being representative
>>of evidence from 2000 years ago.  Yet few have qualms about this.  Why?
>>Because we believe--with good reason--that the past, while different
>>than the present, wasn't all *that* different.  And what's that good
>>reason?  Because our evidence of human history points to this direction
>>over and over again, overwhelmingly so, in a complex web of overlapping
>>and supporting evidence.  The archaelogist who finds a building as
>>described in a modern copy of an ancient work, with coins from the
>>expected time, in a city with a Latin name, can only point to the
>>sum, which is far greater than the parts.  And this happens over and
>>over again.  There is essentially no dissenting note.  There are no
>>particular reasons for believing otherwise.  People were people doing
>>people-like things.  Sometimes it's hard as hell to imagine life 2000
>>years ago--the Far Side of "what people did before television" factor
>>--but this is nothing compared to the overwhelming similarities that
>>come at us from *all* the evidence, over and over again

>	Using the present actions, attitudes, and beliefs of men to
>judge past actions, attitudes, and beliefs is very bad history.

Of course.  I said nothing about judgment.  I'm merely talking at the
level of historical fact.  Was there a man named Julius Caesar, general
and emperor of Rome 2000 years ago, assassinated by acquaintances?  Why
should we believe this, just because we have a text that says so?  And
coins with his bust?

>								 One of
>our problems in examining ancient (and a good deal of not-so-ancient)
>history is that we tend to make false analogies with the present.
>We do so because one of the uses of history is as a guide for current
>actions. But without the appropriate aim-off, our historical theory
>falls wide of the mark, even though there are few critics to challenge
>our thinking...at least among our contemporaries, who have the same
>"general perspective" as we do.

It is not a false analogy that people were people doing people-like things.
We may certainly misread "bread and circuses" as just another welfare
program, for example, and misunderstand and misinterpret history (and
welfare) as a consquence, but the overwhelming similarities we read into
the historical record are enough to believe facts regarding the existence
of the circuses, without having to worry that we are really dealing with
complete aliens and have instead to rely on mere speculations regarding
whether the circuses existed, since aliens, of course, would be borrowing
our terminology in sometimes completely arbitrary manners.

>				 Go find an old translation of Josephus
>and look at the accompanying commentary, and I think you'll see what
>I mean.

I do know what you mean.  It's completely irrelevant to what I'm talking
about.  Evolution is a historial fact, pretty much for the same reasons
that Julius Caesar is.  Difficulties at the interpretation stage are a
different issue, and certainly do not negate basic facticities.

>>So when someone comes at us with his theory that there was no Julius
>>Caesar, and that the name was invented as folk etymology for a few
>>words in our language, along with the documents to back it up, and
>>the mountains of side evidence and secondary documents, and this
>>someone can spew out any explanation to agree with his theory, and
>>by the way, did you know the world was created 500 years ago? etc--we
>>reject him and his theory out of hand.  The past was different, but
>>not *that* different.

>       That's interesting, because there is a school of biblical
>criticism which maintains that there was no Jesus Christ, despite the
>evidence to the contrary. These people claim to be both scientific,
>and skeptical.

There you go again, overwhelmed by someone saying he's "scientific".

>	        And yet, such theorists indulge in a marvelous amount
>of speculation to explain how Christ did not exist and could not have
>existed. Most of these guys also manage to mess around with his name,
>too.

Personally, I'm a psilanthropist, and think these folks you mention are
idiots.  I chose the other JC for a reason.

>>And it's pretty much the same with evolution.  The primary evidence for
>>evolution is copies of copies of copies etc from the past.  Today's
>>genes are a rich written record brought down from the past.  And yes,
>>there are numerous textual difficulties.  We know that.  What of it?
>>Artifacts from the past help to flesh out the record.  And most of all,
>>our understanding is based on the exact same kind of network of evidence.
>>The past was different, but not *that* different.  Life was life then,
>>doing life-like things.  And the overwhelming multitude of overlapping
>>and agreeing evidence on this point is why we can call evolution fact.

>	True students of history get to the point where the data
>overwhelms them.

Exactly.  Could you care to state a point at which the data concerning
the existence of Julius Caesar, and the broad outline of his career,
becomes overwhelming?  And more importantly, why?

>		 It all seemed much simpler in high school, when the
>textbook said that A was caused by B, and that was all they needed to know.

Certainly the high school text book version of history, whether natural
or human, leaves out the messy nature and philosophical issues behind
the raw data.  What of it?

>Yep, there are lots of gaps in the data, and nothing should be thrown
>out (at least without good reason), and everything ought to be taken
>with a pinch of salt. And all conclusions are tentative.

If you want to start down the road towards solispism, or a historical
variant of it, be my guest.  That's your problem.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,talk.origins