skeptics and the paranormal

by Decidedly_Unsure 24 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  stillajwexelder

  They ask for reproducible results, things that can be tested and reproduced under controlled conditions.

  You make some good points -- I believe in evolution BUT -----for reproducible results, things that can be tested and reproduced under controlled conditions. By definition Evolution can not be reproduced under controlled conditions -- so even scientists try to have it both ways -- so they are not truly being fair.

  I do not require 100% scientific proof -- and I try not to be arrogant so I try to have an open mind -- I accept there may be paranormal phenomena - just like I probably will never become an atheist only an agnostic
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  stillajwexelder

  They ask for reproducible results, things that can be tested and reproduced under controlled conditions.
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  rem

  Not to be pedantic, but evolution has been tested and observed in a lab environment. Speciation is quite common and has been observed in controlled environments as well.
  
  rem
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  Decidedly_Unsure

  Rem and Abaddon
  
  Thanks for your well considered replies. I appreciate the references and hope to find the time to read more on this intereting subject, since I'm clearly without sufficient factual data to consider this much further I'll accept your well-researched viewpoints.
  
  BTW Abadddon, I just remembered, you said this:
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  In all mass tests I have seen, there is no significant deviation from probability; no incidents of 5,000,000 people being asked to guess a 5-digit number and 1000 people getting it right (which would be a total violation of probability, a clear indication of unknown phenomena, and a media frenzy).
  **************
  
  In a sense you've admitted that many repeated occurences on the far edges of the statistical curve would imply something beyond natural ...er supernatural perhaps?
  Well I'd like to congratulate you as one of the first skeptics to admit (indirectly of course :-)) that if evolution did occur, then it was by supernatural means!!!
  
  I'm sure you see where i'm coming from. If you accept the infinitesmally small probaility that a complex organism such as the eye could ultimately evolve from a simple organic soup _and_ the infinitesmally small probability of males and females evolving matching organs so as to repeatedly procreate _and_ the infinitesmally small probability .........
  All this under natural law?
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  Abaddon

  I've made no such implict admission about the role of the supernatural in evolution; you have a misconception about how evolution occurs.

  The mechanism for evolution is chiefly natural selection; that which gets to breed passes the characteristics that enabled it to breed on to the next generation. Even a feature confering a 5% reproductive advantage can spread through a population of organisms in a few hundred generations.

  This is not a random process, it's a process where the environment the organism is in the organism interact. SOme features may arrise through mutation, which is an effectively random process, but this random process is not evolution, it's mutation.

  The evolution is in the survival of the fittest. A rock in a stream is not shaped by random processes, but by what it is made of and the movement of water around it. That is why rocks that remain in the same place on a stream's bed are shaped by the current. If it was a random process, they would be randomly shaped. It's just the same with evolution; what is is what fits best in the environment, everything else didn't have enough babies to still be around.

  You also seem to miss the fallacy of designers needing designers too, by focusing on apparently complex objects and saying they need designers, when you have no idea how the eye designer came about.

  I suggest you read up on some evolution; you have misconceptions about it which mean discussion on the topic would be dominated by your misconceptions being corrected. Try http://www.talkorigins.org/ as a starting point.