Crop circles and intelligent design

I fail to see what is frightening about aliens making crop circles. And my point is that one shouldn't need to in order to be able to say something with confidence. You seem to be implying that we should. How dare we say crop circles are human creations, what about all those unfalsifiable theories that postulate non-human creation, you ask.My respsonse? What about them? I am not obliged to give them any credence in everyday speech or writing acts. I don't have to do it for any other piece of art, after all. For consistency you must also apply this reasoning to all forms of art (and indeed everything), since all forms of art have examples of anonymous or uncertain (from a scientific perspective) origins. This would lead you to spending twenty minutes to say anything at all, since you must necessarily fill up your time explaining how every statement you make is tentative because of the huge amount of unfalsifiable notions that you can't rule out.All the evidence that exists is consistent with human creation. All the evidence that is conclusive points to human creation. No evidence suggests that aliens that make crop circles that look the same as human created crop circles.With biology all the evidence that exists is consistent with natural origin. None of the evidence points to a tinkering unfalsifiable designer designing things that look exactly as if they have natural origins.Therefore - rejecting ID is done on the same grounds as rejecting alien made crop circles. There's no evidence for ID and it is unfalsifiable (since it postulates that SOME biological functions are the result of design, and that wherever science has no conclusive answer they try to squeeze in their designer - just as aliens are squeezed in when there is any degree of uncertainty with crop circles). Except that the evidence has stood up to scrutiny, which is why we don't think that aliens are responsible. Since the theory 'humans did it' is always more supported (since we know humans can and do do it, and that humans exist, have the opportunity and the motive).This would be like a defence lawyer saying that aliens might have committed a murder so since this unfalsifiable notion hasn't been rebutted - the case against his client does not stand up to scrutiny. He would be laughed at as much as your ridiculous objections are.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

If one starts from a basis of positive evidence and then forms a tentative falsifiable conclusion which also makes verified predictions - Then we can call that a scientific conclusion.As a point of comparison could you tell me whether you think it is justifiable to conclude evolution over Last Thursdayism on the basis of positive evidence? Any evidence of a singular non-human made crop circles is enough to falsify the theory that ALL crop circles are human made. If I showed you a herd of cows making a crop circle are you saying that the "human-crop-circles-are-the-only-ones" theory would not be falsified?

"The prediction that stems from the theory 'all crop circles are made by humans' would be that for any crop circle where we can identify the maker, it will turn out to be human. This can be shown to be in error if we were to able identify a non-human maker"But that's insufficient, surely?Since you have reduced your demand for evidence to a sub-set of the phenomena, you may as well have said 'All crop circles which we can identify as made by humans, are made by humans'.That is, the above 'prediction' is insufficient for scientific investigation.If we do NOT have a set of features in crop circles by which we can identify them as human made, without a confession (which we have no way of verifying) then the theory is unfalsifiable.

We have 6+ billion people ... some of whom construct something looking like a termite hill ... can we conclude all termite hills are made by humans?Suppose we couldn't find the termites? Does that mean they aren't there?That's why I say that a claim based upon heresay and replicatability is as weak as a claim that something that we haven't discovered yet caused it.

"Except that the evidence has stood up to scrutiny, which is why we don't think that aliens are responsible. Since the theory 'humans did it' is always more supported (since we know humans can and do do it, and that humans exist, have the opportunity and the motive)."But there is NO sufficient evidence.Heresay and eye-witness accounts are ruled out when they are eye-witness accounts of alines or strange lights, but accepted when it's 'doug n' dave' (well Ok maybe not now since I think at least one of them is deceased).That people CAN is not evidence of anything to do with the origin. It simply shows that there are ways of replicating the result.

"As a point of comparison could you tell me whether you think it is justifiable to conclude evolution over Last Thursdayism on the basis of positive evidence?"No it's not.The support for evolution is a lack of negative evidence/refutation."If I showed you a herd of cows making a crop circle are you saying that the "human-crop-circles-are-the-only-ones" theory would not be falsified?"OK ... that's true. But it'd also be evidence FOR non-human crops circles and a GREAT money-maker.But it is impossible to implement a test for that.To me that's just as unfalsifiable as 'aliens did it.'

But there is equally a lack of negative evidence/refutation of Last Thursdayism. So according to your line of reasoning the two proposals are equally valid aren't they? If not why not? Be specific. If you agree that any demonstrable non-human source of crop circles (whether cows or anything else) falsifies the theory I don't see how you can possibly continue to claim that the theory is unfalsifiable?Edited by Straggler, : Spelling.

They aren't eye-witnesses, they are culprits. If aliens came forward and claimed that they did some crop circles and explained how, I would accept that as sufficient evidence that aliens make crop circles. Especially if they video recorded how they did it, and invited a journalist along to observe them doing one. The same could be said of all experimental science. But that leads us to absurdities. Can you imagine this defense being used in a court of law?"Your honour, we know that having my clients fingers touch the murder weapon is one way to leave fingerprint shaped oil deposits, but that is not evidence of anything to do with the origin of the fingerprints at the crime scene."It's a ridiculous position, surely? It would undermine all scientific results.

Insufficient for what? Right, we could say that. That would be tautologous. Science is taking known specific examples and applying the rules that apply to those to all examples generally. It is called inductive reasoning. Newton and Galileo did not examine all pendulums before writing down the laws that govern all of them. You take what you know, and attempt to infer how that knowledge may apply to the as yet unknown cases. Nonsense. If you say it isn't, explain what this sentence is supposed to mean. Of course it isn't unfalsifiable. If we have evidence that aliens made even a single crop circle the theory is obviously false and thus falsified.

Not as ridiculous as all that.Just because I can demonstrate A way of doing something, does not mean that all instances of that 'something' were created in that way.The fingerprint thing is quite telling, since it IS possible to plant fingerprints in order to incriminate. So by themselves the fingerprints on the murder weapon are not sufficient evidence (in all cases).I'm sure there are lawyers who have tried that one when that's all the evidence against their clients

Without knowing the claims of last thursdayism I cannot comment on it's potential. OK ... I actually agree that 'all crop circles are human made' is a falsifiable proposition.However, it is an opinion rather than a theory ... since it, itself, is not based upon anything other than a failure to believe that crop circles could be formed apart from by humans.

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See Last ThursdayismGood. Now can you tell us how it would be falsified? No. It's based only the only known source of crop circles. Hence it is both falsifiable and a high confidence theory.If you know of a confirmed source for crop circles other than humans now is the time to let us know......?

That's true. Just because gravity causes some objects to fall doesn't mean that voodoo isn't causing some others to fall. What we are lacking is any evidence of another cause.

No, on a failure to find any case in which they were caused by anything else. It is one thing to believe that they could have been, but we don't know of any case in which we know that they were, or even have evidence suggesting that they were. "I can imagine an exception to what seems to be a theory" hardly qualifies as an argument, because one can always say that about any theory, it's the epistemological equivalent of background noise. Certainly it doesn't disqualify it from being a theory.