sensei in Message 685 writes:
Taq:
sensei:
Show me where I said this.
According to you, it is nonsense that a theory is the preferred theory if:
1. It is proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
...
No, you claimed that it is proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
And you said that was nonsense:
sensei in Message 676 writes:
Taq:
The theory proven beyond a reasonable doubt is the preferred theory.
Another one of your made up rules? What nonsense even.
Moving on:
I asked you for your evidence and reasoning.
You support it by stating that it is the preferred theory.
That doesn't accurately characterize the discussion. People have presented evidence in this thread, in Taq's case of a nested hierarchy.
And yeah, it is nonsense, that being the preferred theory, makes the theory proven beyond reasonable doubt.
By reversing the definition Taq provided you've stated a fallacy. When Taq says a theory is proven beyond a reasonable doubt he only means that it has enough evidence to have developed a consensus within the relevant scientific community and has become broadly accepted within that community. But instead of using all those words, people speaking casually usually just say a theory is proven or accepted.
That is your ad hoc nonsense rule. You have plenty of such rules, and you just cannot stick to facts.
Parading ignorance isn't an effective approach.
Here, I needed to spell it all out for you yet again. But I doubt, that you will get it now even, as you rarely do.
Becoming personal isn't an effective approach, either.
But let me ask you this. Suppose we find extraterrestrial life. And we analyze life on Earth and the lifeforms we found from other planet(s). And we find that single celled lifeforms on other planets have similarities with those on Earth. Then we could fit all into a single hierarchical tree, could we not?
You seem to be operating under the misapprehension that if alien life is discovered that it will absolutely fit into the nested hierarchy of life on Earth. That's not true. Only if alien and terrestrial life shared a common ancestor would that be true, something that is possible only if life on Earth was seeded from space. But that common ancestor would be from billions of years ago.
Would that, in your opinion, prove beyond reasonable doubt, that we share common ancestor with life on those other planets?
No, of course not. It would be a possibility. Even if it were a fact that life on Earth came from space, we likely wouldn't be able to uncover evidence of that fact sufficient to create a broad consensus. That's because the common ancestor existed billions of years ago, and both alien and terrestrial life have been evolving for all the billions of years since. The hypothesis that life on Earth came from space would be competing with the hypothesis that conditions conducive to the formation of life based upon nucleotides on a backbone of sugar-phosphate existed on more planets than just Earth.
And of course if this alien life used a non-DNA blueprint for life then we would know from the outset that it wasn't related to life on Earth.
If you are consistent in your reasoning, you would not doubt that you are related to the aliens in this case.
We can only reason from evidence. If the evidence strongly supports that life on Earth was seeded from space then a consensus will form and that theory will become accepted. Proven, in the vernacular.
If you do have doubts for whatever reason, then you gonna have to admit that your whole reasoning that leads to believing in common ancestry, is shaky at best. And that the hierarchical tree itself does not prove common ancestry at all.
Doubt is fundamental to science. The underlying principle is tentativity.
--Percy
™ Version 4.2
