nettxzl writes
“Sentient Developments revisits the Fermi Paradox which is “the contradictory and counter-intuitive observation that we have yet to see any evidence for the existence of Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (ETI) although the size and age of the Universe suggests that many technologically advanced ETI’s ought to exist.” Sentient Development’s blog post on the Fermi Paradox states that “a number of inter-disciplinary breakthroughs and insights have contributed to the Fermi Paradox gaining credence as an unsolved scientific problem” Amongst these are “(1)Improved quantification and conceptualization of our cosmological environment, (2) Improved understanding of planet formation, composition and the presence of habitable zones, (3) The discovery of extrasolar planets, (4) Confirmation of the rapid origination of life on Earth (5) Growing legitimacy of panspermia theories” and more … So, where is everyone?”
Heh, funny how that works.
No, I’m not looking for an argument. I don’t have time for an argument. I’m just making an observation.
17 Responses
August 6th, 2007 at 2:14 am
Welcome back Hans,
Hopefully you can get around to answering my questions about our book reviews when you are settled back in.
PS – Re Fermi – lets look at more than a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the local stars before we call the results on this one.
August 6th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
“No, I’m not looking for an argument. I don’t have time for an argument. I’m just making an observation.”
That’s the point Hans. If you don’t have time for an argument, then you don’t really have time for understanding what you are talking about, and this isn’t an observation, just an ignorant assertion.
I mean, your usage of evolution here doesn’t even make any sense: put aside the fact that you don’t believe evolution happened, only someone who didn’t know what evolution actually was would use it in such a context. Again: its one thing to think something is wrong. But be boldly ignorant of what it even is and then pretend to be commenting on it as if you were informed… well that’s just sort of embarrassing.
August 6th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Could you point me to your question?
PS
The point is that that according to evolution and atheistic cosmology, there should be life that is far more intelligent than we, thus possessing the technology to contact us. (It’s not about us finding them.) I think you and I would both agree that the possibilities of technology are endless (Gen. 11:6). Yesterday’s revelation that the Casimir effect can be reversed is only one example. If evolution and atheistic cosmology are true, we should have been contacted by ETI long ago.
August 7th, 2007 at 12:29 am
Hi Hans,
That would be a no and no then.
Your science knowledge is incredibly shallow isn’t it?
Atheism means – no belief in god.
The Theory of Evolution explains how life develops after it forms, nothing else.
Technology does seem to have limits as best we can tell, you know, little things like the laws of physics.
August 7th, 2007 at 6:35 am
Don’t be pedantic and insulting. Of course I know that technology is limited by the laws of nature. What I was saying is that our being able to use those laws through technology manipulating those laws in a manner beneficial to ourselves to do all sorts of wonderful things is practically endless. And furthermore, if you would understand the Fermi paradox, you would understand that you were wrong in making the assertion about us searching only a fraction of the systems around us. It’s about a more advanced civilization giving us evidence of its existence. Shoot, we should have had ETI contact in the stone age if the atheistic cosmologies and evolution are the truth of nature.
And yes, I am quite well aware of the meaning of “atheism”. Because of the new styles of cosmologies constantly coming into existence, I lumped them together, which for this conversation is sufficient (all I was indicating in my reference to cosmology was a cosmology that provides enough time for evolution, both of which are essential to the Fermi paradox). I also understand that evolution is a different area of study than cosmology. Notice I used a conjunction to separate “atheistic cosmology” and “evolution”. Of course, to believe evolution you need an atheistic cosmology as a foundation, so they certainly are linked. They are quite linked in the case of the Fermi paradox which uses the assumption of an atheist cosmology and the assumption of evolution as its basis.
I still await your book question.
August 7th, 2007 at 7:11 am
Ah good some clarification – thank you.
One key point though – about the big bang/evoltuion and atheism – make your mind up are they connected or not?
No they aren’t look I said “and” . . . but then they are “certainly linked”.
BTW you are quite wrong again – you don’t have to be an atheist to think that the evidence for evolution on the big bang is pretty comprehensive, just not a fundamentalist who thinks that the bible is in-errant and should interpreted literally including the genesis myth.
Kenneth Miller is one good example.
Many, many Christians take the view that god started it off and doesn’t answer prayers to demolish rival temples.
I posted the book question back on the post where we were discussing it (Snakes have legs I think) – remember were we agreed to post each others book reviews?
I am looking forward to your review of “Blind Watchmaker”. Are you OK just cutting and pasting my review of McDowell on to this blog?
August 7th, 2007 at 10:17 am
Please engage in some basic reading comprehension skills. I said they are “different areas of study”. I did not say they aren’t linked. Let me clarify once again to clear up your manufactured conflict:
Evoltuion (sic) is not the same discipline of science as cosmology, however, evolution as the origin of the species cannot exist without a cosmology that allows for billions of years for the earth’s age (and far more for the universe). So indeed, modern evolutionary theory rests inextricably upon the foundation of modern cosmologies. Beyond their normal context, the two are even more intertwined in the subject at hand: Fermi’s paradox.
I know it is atheist/evolutionist habit to try to ridicule creationists by portraying them as believing that evolution, cosmology, and abiogenesis are the same thing. I do understand the difference.
They call themselves Christians, but they are not Christians. The meaning of Christian is “little Christ” or “follower of Christ”. Christ said, “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’” (Mar. 10:6, ESV) He also said, “from the beginning of the creation that God created”. (Mar. 13:19, ESV)
Christ also said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” (Luke 17:6, ESV)
So you see, those that believe those things (evolution, no miracles) only call themselves Christians. They are not followers of Christ.
August 8th, 2007 at 3:01 am
psil:
I wasn’t aware that me publishing your review on my blog was part of the deal. I am going to review The Blind Watchmaker and post the review on my blog and you were going to read A Ready Defense and post a review on your blog. Here’s what you said:
It is an ambiguous sentence that could be taken the way you were thinking, but that’s certainly not what I was thinking.
August 8th, 2007 at 9:01 pm
Of course not.
“We could both publish both our reviews and comments on our respective blogs.”
Could mean:
Both of us could publish both our reviews and our comments on our respective blogs.
Both of us could publish both (each other’s) our reviews/comments on our respective blogs.
I honestly understood the former. If it had been my mistake of misreading, I would feel obligated to negotiate a mutually acceptable resolution. However, the sentence was grammatically ambiguous. (If you have doubt on that fact, I asked my TESOL professor who has a Masters in English whether that was the case and he verified that it was.)
August 8th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Hans: “The point is that that according to evolution and atheistic cosmology, there should be life that is far more intelligent than we, thus possessing the technology to contact us.”
No. This is by no means established cosmology: the Fermi paradox is highly speculative, and this particular article is written by a transhumanist with, as far as I can tell, no scientific background whatsoever. Again: something you’d want to know before declaring that this is “according” to anything other than this one guy. No actual working cosmologist would think that the Fermi paradox is well enough understood to conclude much of anything from it: there are just too many unknown possibilities and explanations, without anywhere near enough data to choose amongst them. Read the wikipedia article on it and you’ll see a small sampling of all the different sorts of possibilities.
“I think you and I would both agree that the possibilities of technology are endless (Gen. 11:6).”
No, I would not agree: there is no reason to think that, and a Bible quote has nothing to do with whether it is or not. We have no idea what sorts of limitations there are on technological development. Just as there are certain to be many different possible technological advances out there, there are equally likely to be new fundamental limitations as well.
“Yesterday’s revelation that the Casimir effect can be reversed is only one example.”
Of what? What it is an example of is how much we have yet to learn about physics and every other subject: all the more reason not to jump to conclusions without solid evidence one way or the other. Trying to employ the Fermi paradox to support this or that further argument involves filling in all sorts of assumptions as if we knew the answers, and we simply don’t. It’s the very definition of psuedoscience.
August 8th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
joshuabgood: a”A fairly staple item of many evolutionists is ad hominem ad nauseum.”
You know what? Sometimes, a thing really is what it is: people get frustrated with the tactics of creationists, and so they talk ABOUT them and how dishonest they are, rather than directly refuting them. This is not, in fact, ad hominem. No one pretends that it is a logical substitute for a refutation of their claims. But after refuting their claims a million times over and just having them repeat them again to a different audience, you know what? It IS fair game to point out what sort of people they are, and how dishonest those tactics are. Not doing so would be like watching someone cheat grostesquely at chess, moving pieces out of turn, stealing pieces, making illegal moves… and not saying anything.
Honestly, I don’t see any reason to spend a lot of time refuting your individual claims, especially when most of them, including all your authors, have been roundly and soundly debunked over and over. But more importantly, I don’t see any reason to believe that even if you are finally backed into a corner on the evidence and exposing all of the flaws in your arguments, that it would make any difference. You believe what you believe, and arguments and evidence are ultimately irrelevant: by your own admission of the primacy of your beliefs. If you convince me otherwise, I’ll apologize and address your arguments, but otherwise, what’s the point?
This is what I was saying to Hans. It’s one thing to understand what something like evolution says, or what Gould said and cite or criticize it. But I don’t see evidence that this is what’s going on. When you guys say things that basically expose a gross lack of understanding of what you are even talking about, I scratch my head. You claim that “Gould has repeatedly questioned traditional evolution due to the fossil record.” But honestly, I very much doubt you’ve actually read Gould’s actual criticisms: I don’t think anyone that has and understands the specific area of contention he was a part of, could really say something like that. I don’t think you actually even know what it was Gould was questioning. Can you even name the view he set himself against? (Hint: it wasn’t “traditional evolution” or even “gradualism”).
If you can’t, then how are we supposed to have a sensible debate over the relevance of his criticisms when you not only start out uninformed, but, and here’s the rub: you don’t seem to care about becoming more informed? Not being informed about what you are talking about has not stopped you or humbled you in the least. I for the life of me can’t understand that mindset. But I do know that it’s near useless to try to argue against it until you show some willingness to change.
That’s not ad hominem by the way (like Hans, I don’t think you really understand what logical fallacies are or how to spot them). I’m not claiming that who you are refutes your arguments. Rather, it’s an explanation of what is practical in a discussion and why I need a lot more than a bunch of random scattershot claims from you to convince me that you actually CARE about whether any of them are true or false: that you actually have any stake in defending them or learning from the outcome.
August 9th, 2007 at 3:46 am
Funny how you can make such absolute moral judgments when your worldview doesn’t allow for the existence of such.
August 9th, 2007 at 3:48 am
As for “both publish both”, you are ignoring the issue by truncating the quote out of context. The sentence very clearly could mean either thing, whether you take a technical or a vernacular view. You only harm your credibility and show dishonesty by not admitting the ambiguity of the sentence.
August 9th, 2007 at 4:00 am
Also, in regards to the picture, you had not indicated that that was necessary, even though I offered. On Saturday a two week semester break starts and at that point I will strive to finish the book.
August 9th, 2007 at 4:01 am
As for timestamps on comments, I have the default WordPress settings.
August 10th, 2007 at 11:10 am
“Plunge, I am not a scientist, I never was and never will be and have never claimed to be. Our discussion here is epistemological and metaphysical in nature.”
You think so, but you have employed all sorts of scientific claims, and your basic criticism of evolution demands at least some understanding of biology and evolution which I don’t see any evidence that you have acquired.
It’s like reviewing a book without having read it: it’s okay to say that the book is lousy, but if you’ve never read it, how seriously should anyone take your review?
“As for Gould, perhaps you could correct my notion from HIS writings that the reasons he suspects evolution may be punctuational in nature is because of the fossil record and the Cambrian explosion.”
I asked you a very simple question, utterly 101 stuff for understanding Gould and PE: what view was Gould claiming to refute? What was it called and what was it? If you don’t know, are you really sure you have any clue what the relevance of his work was to the field: what and who it challenged and why?
Do you even know what Gould means by punctuational?
“Maybe also you explain why their as such an uproar in the scientific community when he first published.”
A lot of people also thought that Gould was grossly exaggerating the relevance of his claims (and in fact, he was) and was doing so in terms of playing up politics into his work, which were socialist and Marxist, and which many people felt had no place in science. And a lot of the controversy at the time, in fact, had little to do with PE proper and everything to do with what’s known in academia as the Science Wars, which were primarily about Edward O. Wilson’s sociobiology ideas. Today, PE is a part of mainstream evolution, but it was never as revolutionary as the public seems to think (and as Gould portrayed it), and a lot of the controversy and debate had to do with rather arcane disputes over specifics and terminology.
“I also ask you to provide a list of “missing links” between apes and men. (*There should be thousands) Unless of course Gould is right then the evolution happened quickly in one unlikely jump.”
Amazing. First of all, if that’s what you think punctuantional meant to Gould, then you really are ignorant of his work. Second of all, and this is what’s so ironic, is that Gould himself authored many discussions on the subject of human evolution. Nowhere does he describe this evolution as happening in “one unlikely jump”: he’s right there talking about the different lineages of hominid with everyone else.
If you want a basic overview of the hominid family tree, try here:
http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/afri.html
“Missing link” is a term largely used by lazy journalists (in fact, a lot of creationist misunderstandings unfortunately come from reading accounts of things by uninformed and confused journalists rather than actual science): it is by and large misleading as to understanding evolution and how lineages are derived from physical evidence.
“Apes to men” is itself a confusion: it would be like asking for “birds to chickens” or worse the wholly misguided belief that modern apes became modern humans. Human beings are _subtypes_ of great apes generally: they do not change “from” apes into men. Men are apes: every morphological and genetic distinction that uniquely sets apes apart from all other life is shared also by human beings, right down to our unique teeth shapes and patterns (all great apes have them, and in the animal kingdom, only apes have this pattern, and humans have it as well) the density and coverage of hair follicles, unique individual fingerprints, skeletal structure, and so on. Within great apes, there are variations from these basic characteristics: gibbons are different from gorillas which are different from orangs, which are different from human beings. All evolved from a similar basic ape type they shared as a common ancestor, diversifying each within their own branching lineages.
If you go to the link above, what you’ll see is not a linear line from ancient apes to humans, but rather a branching family tree, built from fossil and (to some extent these days) genetic evidence. We build such trees not by having or needing every single species that ever lived in full fossil form, but rather by noting how lineages change over time era to era: what sorts of branching differences there are, and where subsequent forms would match on which branches (matched because of collections of distinct traits). We really can see distinctly human traits appearing “gradually” (that is, not all at once) over time. Amusingly these changes are such that while creationists insist that all such fossils are either “apes” or “men” (again belying the basic misunderstanding of how taxonomy works), they can rarely agree even amongst themselves on which are which: they are that hard to distinguish over time.
“We are not having a scientific argument. Maybe you are a scientist but I doubt it. Or else you would understand that my discourse with Psil is philosophical in nature and not scientific. I do not need to be phsycist or biologist in this discussion with Psil.”
Again, simply not true: not when you make claims about things like what Gould wrote, or what evolution suggests, or when you ask for things like “missing links” that strongly suggest that you do not understand the science you disdain.
August 10th, 2007 at 11:16 am
“If you are atheistic you cannot discuss morality outside of your subjective opinion.”
Of course, the same goes for theism. There is no theological explanation for morality that’s any more workable than any non-theistic explanation: morality is just a plain philosophical mystery (and like virtually all philosophical mysteries, theism claims to be able to explain it best, but never gets around to ever actually doing so). All require the same sorts of value assumptions. It’s just that theists tend to smuggle them into the picture without admitting having done so.
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