>> The short terse answers yielding very little substantive information
>You asked, I answered.
Yeah, but saying "Yes". You want me to answer like that too?
> Bill Bryson did one on the history of science which is well spoken of, but I haven't read it
Thanks! I will take a look. I am interested in learning more about the history of science and how people got past erroneous theories.
>> I think I have been quite clear
>Fraid not. What is your alternative to evolution, specifically? Please reply without using ad homs.
It's not about "my" alternative. Saying that something isn't scientific doesn't require me to come up with alternatives. For example someone could talk about spontaneous generation, and if I questioned it, coming up with a bunch of just-so stories about how spontaneous generation could be working, isn't doing science. It's just a narrative, same as Marxism or Freudian psychology etc.
If someone said "well what's YOUR alternative to Freudian analysis" that wouldn't require someone to come up with a whole other theoretical framework (e.g. behavioral psychology) in order to criticize Freud or Darwin or Marx etc.
> You pointed out that the cursorial hypothesis had problems, and you were right. You said nothing about the other 3 hypotheses.
All these just-so stories are problematic. The biggest problem is that they are just that -- stories. They are not testable. And if you debunk one, someone can just come up with 800 other ones.
It's a bit like the criticism people have of string theory not being testable. You could say "well, what's YOUR alternative to string theory?" But that is beside the point. Same with multiverse theory explaining fine-tuning etc.
And by the way, I don't see much difference between postulating a multiverse with no evidence, or theism, to explain fine-tuning. And similarly, if atheists believe we are living in a simulation, I don't see much difference between that and theism. In short, we just don't know, and most of these alternative theories seem to just reflect a psychological bias (e.g. towards an idea that we can explain everything using a small set of mechanisms that we have already discovered). It's similar to hidden variable theories favored by proponents of determinism, or interpretations of quantum mechanics that preserve causation or locality etc.
In all these cases, you may have a preconceived notion (e.g. in Darwinism) that biases what you could believe was the case. And in Darwinism, your notion is that all speciation comes about through random mutation and natural selection, so in every case you comfort yourself with stories of how it could have happened.
Anyway, my whole point is that concocting just-so stories is not a valid scientific approach to figuring out how things work.
I don't have time for this. You clearly don't understand how science is done. Scientists propose hypotheses, the hypotheses are tested and rejected if falsified (there's your Popper).
Just because something isn't testable today doesn't mean it isn't tomorrow. Back in the 1970s black holes were little more than theories the concept that we could actually test for them physically would have been beyond belief. It would simply not have been comprehensible. Well, today we do.
I don't buy the multi-verse, I find it as stupid as you do as a proposition because by definition it can't be tested (AFAIK). The evolution of flight, watching an animal attempting to use its wings for other purposes such as wing assisted incline running (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing-assisted_incline_running), that's doable and to my knowledge has and is being done.
Like I said, I don't have time for this. You ain't going to learn anything from me, nor I from you given the woolyness of your posts and your unwillingness to propose something different/better. I'll stop here.
I read your posts on the future influence in the past. AFAIK this is being proposed at the quantum level, I'm not aware of anything 'higher up'.
“I’m all for rigor, but I prefer other people do it. I see its importance—it’s fun for some people—but I don’t have the patience for it. If you looked at all my past experiments, they were always rhetorical devices. I gathered data to show how my point would be made. I used data as a point of persuasion, and I never really worried about, ‘Will this replicate or will this not?” (Daryl J. Bem, in Engber, 2017)
also http://osc.centerforopenscience.org/2014/06/25/a-skeptics-re... but I don't like this: "If ever there was a paper that showed the futility of meta-analysis, this one is it. Here we have one of the most ridiculous claims that intelligent people have ever dared to make (yes; the hypothesis that aliens built the pyramids is more plausible than people being able to look into the future) – and a meta-analysis supports this claim. The unavoidable conclusion is not that psi exists; rather, it is that meta-analysis is a tool that is fraught with danger". The other points are perhaps valid.
You talk about science but don't have the basic critical thinking to look for opposing viewpoints. You should be seriously embarrassed.
Yeah, but saying "Yes". You want me to answer like that too?
> Bill Bryson did one on the history of science which is well spoken of, but I haven't read it
Thanks! I will take a look. I am interested in learning more about the history of science and how people got past erroneous theories.
>> I think I have been quite clear >Fraid not. What is your alternative to evolution, specifically? Please reply without using ad homs.
It's not about "my" alternative. Saying that something isn't scientific doesn't require me to come up with alternatives. For example someone could talk about spontaneous generation, and if I questioned it, coming up with a bunch of just-so stories about how spontaneous generation could be working, isn't doing science. It's just a narrative, same as Marxism or Freudian psychology etc.
If someone said "well what's YOUR alternative to Freudian analysis" that wouldn't require someone to come up with a whole other theoretical framework (e.g. behavioral psychology) in order to criticize Freud or Darwin or Marx etc.
> You pointed out that the cursorial hypothesis had problems, and you were right. You said nothing about the other 3 hypotheses.
All these just-so stories are problematic. The biggest problem is that they are just that -- stories. They are not testable. And if you debunk one, someone can just come up with 800 other ones.
It's a bit like the criticism people have of string theory not being testable. You could say "well, what's YOUR alternative to string theory?" But that is beside the point. Same with multiverse theory explaining fine-tuning etc.
And by the way, I don't see much difference between postulating a multiverse with no evidence, or theism, to explain fine-tuning. And similarly, if atheists believe we are living in a simulation, I don't see much difference between that and theism. In short, we just don't know, and most of these alternative theories seem to just reflect a psychological bias (e.g. towards an idea that we can explain everything using a small set of mechanisms that we have already discovered). It's similar to hidden variable theories favored by proponents of determinism, or interpretations of quantum mechanics that preserve causation or locality etc.
Scientists, for instance, are now increasingly finding evidence that the future might influence the past. Bem's psychological experiments were just the beginning (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4706048/). And now we have this: https://www.vice.com/en/article/epvgjm/a-growing-number-of-s...
In all these cases, you may have a preconceived notion (e.g. in Darwinism) that biases what you could believe was the case. And in Darwinism, your notion is that all speciation comes about through random mutation and natural selection, so in every case you comfort yourself with stories of how it could have happened.
Anyway, my whole point is that concocting just-so stories is not a valid scientific approach to figuring out how things work.