This thread should read "the science of philosophy, or the philosophy of science?" 

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Don't worry, you wont see my resolve weaken against religious pressure... see my argument in the other thread. I do not recognise that there is even an argument between science and religion, they are mutually exclusive if you ask me.

I can take him seriously if I choose and we do need to take our morally superior cousins seriously if there is to be any sort of civility, I am just addressing his argument as he presents it

What I see here though is a purely scientific area that has been challenged on the grounds of faith based presumptions.

Aushole:  science vs religion arguments are always such fun aren't they?

Sense calm down mate, we are together on this one

You have to have respect for people as individuals if you ever expect other to have respect for you (I believe). If I see a man beating a woman be he Muslim, christian, hindu, atheist or whatever I will call him up on his actions and likely beat him black and blue, this does not mean I will attack any group of people that person is associated with. If an individual builds a bomb and uses it to hurt a whole lot of others then he is a worthless pile of sh!t who I would beat black and blue if I ever met him (or her), this does not make the groups of people they associate with all worthless pieces of sh!t unless every individual in that group is also building a bomb to hurt others. My approach is that each individual is assessed as an individual and that is that.

Right now sense you are being about as irrational as those who you are crossing swords with and that gets everyone absolutely nowhere. If freediver chooses to attack science on valid scientific grounds it is far more productive to counter his attack on the ground he has set, simply charging in and saying his claims are nonsense without actually dismissing their merits leaves his argument more open to be considered by others. People may  see what you are writing and think freediver seems to be the more rational one in this case, I try not to leave this back door open.

And mate, I hold many views that are in line with the traditional right wing, free markets, individual freedoms and responsibilities and so on. I do hold many views that are often wrongly associated with the left such as personal social freedoms. I believe I am a libertarian, I sway to the right on economic issues and I am libertarian on social issues, I do believe in a minimal amount of socialist policy used as a safety net to ensure people are free from destitution but I do recognise the negative effects of the welfare state. See the political compass: http://www.politicalcompass.org/ there is more to political position than left and right, I don't even think the extra axis of libertarian/authoritarian used in the political compass is inadequate but it is a dam sight better than the one dimensional left/right.

Edit: Political compass tells me I am dead center on economics and very libertarian on social issues. So there you go.

Sense, I can handle that

freediver wrote on Apr 12^th, 2007 at 1:52am:


Here:

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and here:
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Because the point of evolution is to propose a scientific model for the way in which life spontaneously came about and evolved into what we have today. You are simply saying: "science shouldn't do this, this is the realm of religion", and yet science is and has done exactly this, while the origin of life may be a question of faith for you, evolution is a scientific explanation of it. It seems to me freediver that you have more problem with the idea that there is a scientific model for the origin of life and you want science to butt out of this question.

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Neither could relativity until very recently, and many predictions made by Einstien are still yet to be tested empirically, neither could QM be tested empirically until recently and again only in limited capacity, did that mean these were not scientific theories until they were able to be tested? Absolutely not.

Some quotes from Jared Diamond might help to clear things up:
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So you see empirical experiment is not the be all and end all of science, careful observation and consideration are often sufficient in the development of scientific models, especially ones where direct experiment is simply not possible.

Evolution is  an attempt to reconcile the idea of a random spontaneous emergence of life with scientific understanding, the model may be imperfect but it has proved so useful in so many areas of biology that it has never been dismissed by true scientists, only altered and improved as all complex scientific models should be.

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And never once has a proponent of evolution attempted to answer such a question, you on the other hand are using the idea that life must involve a soul and life could not have arisen spontaneously as a basis to attack evolution as though it were not science. Evolution answers a purely scientific question: how could life have arisen without resorting to faith in divine intervention?

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Maths is science, history is science, engineering is applied science, law enforcement is more or less applied science (at least concerned with).

Science IS an all encompassing term, it simply means the study of naturally observed phenomena. You are the one trying to change the definition of science here simply so that you can show evolution does not fit your idea of what science is. Your argument is a straw man, you invent your own definition of science that conveniently does not fit in with evolutionary theory, then attack evolution on the basis that it does not fit the straw man you are calling science.

Another link to the same site: http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA211.html

This one I simply have to quote:
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More on falsification: http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA211_1.html

On predictions: http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA210.html
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we have fossil records that demonstrate

Again, not empirical evidence. Using non-empirical evidence to back up your view when it is the use of that evidence that is in question is clearly absurd.

Is self-disproving, if DNA is exchanged between species, they are not separate species, that violates the definition of species.

And yet it happens, and evolutionists don't bat an eyelid even though it contradicts one of the 'claimed' fundamental premises of their theory. Of course, when it sinks in they will just drop that part because the theory can be used to explain anything.

There are many conceivable lines of evidence that could falsify evolution.

None of which are empirical.

The difference in predictive power between evolution and other sciences is one of degree, not kind.

It is of kind. Scientific theories predict the outcome of experiments. Evolution does not, it just adapts to them.

All theories are simplifications; they purposely neglect as many outside variables as they can. But these extraneous variables do affect predictions. For example, you can predict the future position of an orbiting planet, but your prediction will be off very slightly because you can not consider the effects of all the small bodies in the solar system. Evolution is more sensitive to initial conditions and extraneous factors, so specific predictions about what mutations will occur and what traits will survive are impractical.

Not impractical, impossible. With scientific theories you are able to isolate the key factors in an experiment to predict the outcome, even if it is impractical to make predicitive calculations in scenarios when too many factors combine. The accuracy of the prediction of planetary motion is limited by effort and knowledge of intiial conditions, and is very accurate. On the other hand it is impossible to predict the outcome of even the most carefully controlled experiment on evolution.

Also, to claim that scientific theories are simplifications is misleading in the sense that it implies that they do not accurately describe the real world. They do. The simplification is in that they explain one phenomena, or one part of it at a time, not that they only approximate them. Those extraneous variables only effect predictions if you let them. The whole point of an experiment is not to let them so that the theory is not a 'simplification.'

It is still possible to use evolution to make general predictions about the future, though. For example, we can predict that diseases will become resistant to any new widely used antibiotics.

Natural selection, not evolution. Resistance to drugs requires some initial inherent resistance, not a beneficial mutation that randomly generates that resistance. If this were not so, we would wipe diseases out long before they developed resistance.