Tautology Culture

== Green Jobs and Tautology ==
http://patriotpost.us/commentary/2011/07/05/where-are-the-jobs/
....The much-touted green jobs revolution has morphed into tedious evolution with 
natural selection weeding out the weak. At least three green energy firms visited by the 
President and given subsidies to operate and grow have closed their doors. ...''
This is a good example of how everything is explained and thus nothing. The facts are that three 
green firms went bust(closed their doors). Why they did must be determined in each case,maybe they stole the 
money and it had nothing to do with their technology and market.
Those that closed their doors were weeded out. Weeded out implies they closed their doors and 
closed their doors implies they were weeded out but does not give us the actual reason they don't 
operate anymore.
This tautology3 was arbitrarily associated with the grammatical gargoyle natural selection. NS in turn is generally associated with atheism and thus over and over the non-sequitur of atheism follows from the many thousands of ways of formulating a tautology. The term ns isn't a tautology, only the idea expressed in the article is a tautology. Only ideas can be tautological, not objects like this,that ,selection or natural. 
Dawkins, Behe, Dembski, Hovind, AIG and icr.org(atheist to YEC) fake obtuseness on this issue because once understood, it is also understood that there is therefore no such thing as a ToE and the entire debate can be 
laid to rest.(Note that Spencer used ToE in 1852 in Leader magazine.)
But because each side is selling books to their particular audience they don't want it to be 
settled - they are making money out of the issue. Since tautologies can't be refuted nor verified, it allows YEC and atheist authors too engage in endless pseudo debate, with Atheists thinking they have refuted God's existence and YEC thinking they have proved(verified) God's existence.
God's existence or not can only be sensibly discussed once we have identified the Democritus Atomism tautology that is embedded into our culture using an arbitrary term: Natural selection or natural preservation(Darwin's preferred term).
=== Tautological thinking in our culture ===
From Empedocles to JohnWilkins it is the same banality: The good(algorithm, see monster,allele) - (survived,preserved, selected) the bad(algorithm, monster, gene) perished and therefore whatever my world view(theism, atheism, deism, pantheism, whatever it might be) is correct, which is a non-sequitur. PatrickMatthews claimed credit for "inventing the principle of natural selection" and so did Darwin. None of them invented anything, they labeled their reformulated Empedoclian and Aristotelian fallacy "Natural selection" which could be rephrased as "Natural survival" or "Natural Preservation" as per (EpiCurus#selection_or_survival).
The theists like Blyth , Ken Ham and GilDoDgen posting on http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/jerry-fodor-natural-selection-has-gone-bust/#comment-142129 tend to latch on the negative part of the tautology "...unfavourable ones ... destroyed..." and therefore God still exists. While the atheists latches onto the positive part "..favourable variations would be ...preserved..." form which they deduce that there is no God. Both conclusions from either side derives a world view which is a non-sequitur: Whether God exists or not must be deduced by some other means, the MalThusian argument(derived from DemoCritus and Aristotle) is a tautology, a logical fallacy. Natural selection the term, was but an arbitrary phrase coined to symbolically represent , formulate and narrate observations in the world in a tautological3 black/white dichotomy manner.
Natural selection was the grammatical gargoyle that enabled the re-introduction of Aristotelianism and Empedoclianism into our culture, science, religion and politics. Selection(selectus Latin) , adaptation, evolution(EvolVere, unrolling action - Latin), "descent with modification" etc. were all words used in the strong volitional sense by theists for thousands of years. By an act of strategic language deceit Aristotle's concept of "...result of accident...." or chance was associated with these words. It was an exploitation of English , a language that allows for much ambiguity. For example "...the assembly was favored1 by accident...." or ".... he favored2 that particular layout..." , favored like selection and any other word can be used in the Pattern or design sense. EvolVere was used to communicate the volitional intent of reaching a goal by unrolling something. See Naming Conventions for favored1(pattern) and favored2(design).
:(Aristotle, in his "Physicae Auscultationes" (lib.2, cap.8, s.2) OoS:".............So what hinders the different parts (of the body) from having this merely accidental relation in nature? as the teeth, for example, grow by necessity, the front ones sharp, adapted for dividing, and the grinders flat, and serviceable for masticating the food; since they were not made for the sake of this, but it was the result of accident. And in like manner as to other parts in which there appears to exist an adaptation to an end. Wheresoever, therefore, all things together (that is all the parts of one whole) happened like as if they were made for the sake of something, these were preserved, having been appropriately constituted by an internal spontaneity; and whatsoever things were not thus constituted, perished and still perish.........."
(JamesHutton said essentially the same thing but left out the result of accident part due to his Deistic world view, if Aristotle had said that we weren't the result of accident but divine intervention, this conclusion would also be a non-sequitur, a point which Blythe, Ken Ham, GilDoDgen, DavidBerlinski and others in their attempt at accommodating Aristotle's indisputable proposition misses.).
PatrickMatthews in all probability got his tautology3 from Hutton and Darwin lifted "natural means of selection" from Matthew while reading his book on the Beagle which was required reading - (http://probaway.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/darwins-questionable-priority-over-thomas-matthew/)
Aristotle's passage reduces to: Things appropriately constituted were preserved and things not appropriately constituted perished. Or in other words: The good ones lived, the bad ones died , which explains everything. Appropriately constituted and preserved are a synonymous play with dissimilar words that alludes to the same fact but it doesn't independently derive the actual reason something was preserved. To identify the tautology take any of the synonymous dissimilar terms and formulate a question:
* Other than noting it was preserved how was its constitutability measured?
* Other than noting it wasn't constituted how was its perishability measured?
Wasn't constituted and perishable says the same thing twice, making Aristotle's argument watertight, explaining everything
, it cannot be refuted and is thus a LogicalFallacy. His tautology reduces to: The good(atom,idea,gene,allele,phenotype) lived(selected, survived,preserved) while the the bad(animal,atom,gene,idea) one died, able to explain anything past , present and future. This is why the 'no new genetic information' issue by Ken Ham can't refute what Darwin wrote. It is rooted in ancient mythology , the battle between Gods and Seemonsters, Zeus, Apollo, Mars God of war etc. which became the battle between good and bad atoms from the Atomists(600BC), which today is formulated by Dawkins as: ".....the good (gene,allele,phenotype) survived, the bad (gene,allele,phenotype) died...." in the light of OriginOfSpeciesAsMyth - http://lostborders.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/the-origin-of-species-as-myth. The mythology is extended to anything in existence,matter abstract ideas, and as new discoveries are made through the ages, the myth is retold by the secular priesthood and incorporated by the religious priesthood. Reproductive Success, genotype,fitness, and phenotype etc. are semantic and stylistic ruses that enables the myth to be retold by the Neo-Empedoclians within our reference frame of genes as a CyberneticAbstraction. If a cow was meant to produce beer instead of milk would it still be a success? For who is what a success - see DernavichInfidels on this issue.
After quoting Aristotle, Darwin went on to say: "...... we can see here the principle of NaturalSelection shadowed forth....". The question is how did Darwin solve the problem of genes as a CyberneticAbstraction if he couldn't define the problem? This question must be extended back to Aristotle and the answer is that Aristotle explained everything: past, present and future, thus nothing. Furthermore Aristotle's premise that everything was the result of accident means that everything he said ultimately is the result of accident, including the very paragraph itself, why then should we believe a word he said?
Aristotle formulated a rhetorical tautology in order to convince that the apparent design in the universe was a result of accident. He allowed no means for his world view to be Falsifiable, thus his conclusion based on proposition which cannot be refuted was a Non_sequitur_(logic) Non sequitur (logic). The world view might have been correct but not as a result of logical deduction. His tautological formulation is open ended allowing one to come to any conclusion because it reduces to: What happens, happens and therefore atheism,theism,random, non-random or whatever the user of the tautology wishes to be the as the correct world view. This is why the modern day Aristotelians formulates the same tautological core as Darwin but come to a different(evolution doesn't happen by chance) conclusion then the conclusion drawn by CharlesKingsley(1864) , JohnBurroughs(1918) of "evolution happens by chance". HenryFairfieldOsborn in 1898 in his book "From the Greeks to Darwin" also interpreted evolution as happening by chance but changed his mind by 1922 after being influenced by Waagen.
Note that HenryFairfieldOsborn never defined what exactly he meant with "evolution not happening by chance". Was it "directed" then, we don't know because English isn't like Greek: Any word can be made mean anything by a user in any context. A person for example might say "non-random" but not mean by this that it was "directed" , what then is meant can't be deduced because there are only two options: Patterns or designs, volition or non-volition.
These tautologies and battle-between-atoms-and-organisms myth was originally from Empedocles 600B.C, reformulated and expanded through the centuries by Aristotle, Democritus, EpiCurus,....Darwin right up to our modern era by JohnWilkins, Dawkins etc who all basically said the same thing: The good live , the bad die. But from such a banality each propogates different world views, Deism, Atheism, Pantheism and Theism. None of them realized that their world view didn't logically follow from the Empedocles tautology. It was't really Darwin that was responsible for the Hitler and Stalin but Empedocles, it seems.
CharlesKingsley, 1863 in a letter dated 1863 to FrederickMaurice he interpreted Oos as: ".. Darwin is conquering everywhere, and rushing in like a flood, by the mere force of truth and fact. The one or two who hold out against Darwin are forced to try all sorts of subterfuges as to fact or else by invoking the tedium theologium.... The state of the scientific mind; they find that now they have got rid of an interfering God - a master magician as I call it -- they have to choose between the absolute empire of accident and a living, immanent, ever-working God..."
Thus chance(accident) and Design(God) were the dichotomy's world view, the defining paradigm of that era. NS1 was used in this context - Pattern or design and Peppered Moth Pattern or Design.
Charles Hodge, 1874 , natural selection represented: "...Natural selection1, unguided, submitted to the laws of a pure mechanism, and exclusively determined by accidents, seems to me, under another name, the chance proclaimed by Epicurus, equally barren, equally incomprehensible......". Note how this idea differs from the Dawkins non-random natural selection3 usage. What both Hodge, Blyth, Dawkins, Ken Ham and Dembski seem to miss was that the "result of accident" part was an arbitrary non-sequitur. Divine intervention would also be a non-sequitur. The error that Epicurus , Lucretius, Empedocles and Aristotle made , was in the immortal words of Darwin himself: ".... the truth of the propositions cannot be disputed...." ,they formulated their arguments in such a way that they were unfalsifiable. Since then Blyth , Gill Dodgen and even Berlinski it seems have battled to "refute" their arguments , something which in principle can't be done.
By trying to force some sort of actual meaning into the semantic gargoyle "natural selection" the confusion has deepened. Aquinas was so overwhelmed by Aristotle's tautological3 prose that he tried to reconcile it with Catholic doctrine. (It is especially saddening that Berlinski refuses a head on assault of "natural selection", but if he does so and exposes the tautology3 it is a proxy for, how would he then sell books and what would he mock and make fun off and hold endless conferences, speeches, radio shows ect? The love of money is the root of all evil. Of all the scholars in the ID,YEC movement, Berlinski is one of the few who understand that nothing got naturaled: We are only dealing with Aristotle reformulated and resymboled. )
Hodge didn't know about genes and information theory, modern rebuttals of Darwin focus on information theory, something darwin didn't know about.
Instead one must try and rebut darwin using the knowledge of that time era to try and understand what made darwin so convincing in 1870.
JohnBurroughs ,1922 in his book The Last Harvest(1922) interpreted Darwin as: "....Try to think of that wonderful organ, the eye, with all its marvelous powers and adaptations, as the result of what we call chance or Natural Selection. Well may Darwin have said that the eye made him shudder when he tried to account for it by Natural Selection. Why, its adaptations in one respect alone, minor though they be, are enough to stagger any number of selectionists...."
HenryFairfieldOsborn wrote New York Times 1922, 5 Aug. "....Waagen's observations that species do not originate by chance as Darwin had once supposed, but through a continues and well ordered process has since been confirmed, has since been confirmed by an overwhelming volume of testimony, so that we are now able to assemble and place in order line after line of animals in their true evolutionary succession, extending , in the case of what I have called the edition de luxe of the horses , over millions of years. ..... Evolution takes the place with the gravitation law of Newton.." I am not sure, but can't recall Osborn using "natural selection" in the entire NYtimes article probably because of the strong association it had with chance during that time.
Category:TauTology