Uh, for the majority of climate scientists; however, this is NOT the case when it comes to their un-wavering support of the radical Global Warming/Climate Change agenda!


Chess Fan

I still don't either, but I've found, if not the article I was looking at before, then at least one which quotes some of the same sources.

NASA's arsenic-based life discovery a catalyst for theological debate

A couple of excerpts:



Again, I'm kind of skeptical of the skeptics. When those who seemed to be completely convinced before claim to be even more convinced now, for reasons that aren't entirely clear, then I'm a little dubious.

But the second part of the quote implies that we've suddenly discovered, not arsenic-based life, but abiogenesis. Did I miss something, or did he hallucinate something?




I don't even see how this adds all that much to the young earth question. There are OTHER bits of evidence that make it extremely dubious, to be sure, but this one doesn't seem to contribute all that much.

Yeah, I just don't follow his reasoning, such as it is, even assuming As-DNA is all it is said to be. For years, common ancestry has been derived from many lines of evidence, including the universality of DNA and its structure. Now there's evidence that there is an alternate structure. If anything, that would weigh against common ancestry (in reality, it wouldn't make any difference at all as there is still a mountain of evidence for and all the As-DNA paper does is move a rock from the side and put it somewhere else on the mountain--that is, mutation and natural selection explain the finding).

And this may be all moot anyway and it may not be a new backbone after all--in which case, not even a rock has been moved.

Edit: I wonder if they made similar statements when extremophiles were discovered?

More 'add-it': If life, like those extremophiles, is found on another planet in the solar system (Europa, Titan--okay, moons), then at least I could understand his argument. Maybe that's his point?? As-DNA indicates that life could evolve using some different building blocks, so he's jumped to the conclusion that this finding supports As-DNA life on other worlds, and if this life exists, that itself would be evidence for his point of view. He's gone all astrobiology and life on other planets and missed all the logic in-between??

Ed...you might find this discussion interesting. A physicist takes a shot at a philosopher of science (and philosophy of science in general).

A response is then posted about attacks on philosophy by scientists. It misses the mark in so many ways, misinterprets the original post, leaps to the wrong conclusions, but it also does make some thought-provoking points along the ramble which are relevant and do address a point or two from the first post.

Cutting Through the Crap, a surgeon advocates for the acceptance of a term for units of wrongness. Quoting from Degrees of Wrongness.

I was just about to tell you about an Asimov article called The Relativity of Wrong, but it looks like its referenced in the first paragraph. I'm superfluous here.

I was going to post that link too, but decided if anyone wanted to read it, they could find it in the above links. I reread the article yesterday.

Ken, what do you do all day? Type in "really bad articles" on Google?

The first article is just plain bad. Philosophy of science is a well established discipline which this Perakh chap seems to know nothing about. His first paragraph is an association fallacy, linking Ruse with people he considers crackpots. His whole post is rotten.

The second article is meandering and weak-minded. Neither he nor Petrakh notice the key phrase in Ruse's post. It is: "why then should science which implies God does not exist be taught?" This is essentially a straw man fallacy; I know of no science, properly taught, that implies that God does not exist. If it did, it wouldn't be real science.

Ken, dude, get an endgame book and read that instead. This stuff will warp your mind. It warped mine.

I agree, Ed. I thought both were bad articles, but I rather liked the unintentional irony in the second article, while trying to repudiate the first article, actually supporting some of the first article's contention. Sort of like someone saying X is a violent religion and then members of X blowing something up to demonstrate their disagreement at being branded violent. It was a glorious shot in the foot.

Incidentally, can't read an endgame book. Am busy reading other books---have a whole stack besides my bed and another load sitting in storage. Lest you think I'm being too high-brow I'm also skimming through the series Smallville on DVD--free at our library--they were filmed in BC and I'm being nostalgic and identifying some of our haunting grounds. GoogleEarth now has the Kent Farm in photos, and the sign above the back driveway really does say, "Kent Farm" (we photographed the place just before we drove back east as it was about 10 km from my sister's place).

You WATCH Smallville?? Don't you have the Weather Channel in Canada? That is far less damaging to the brain--more fun too.