A Guide to Creationist Tactics

Yeah, that's probably true. I hadn't considered it, but maybe it is a function of language that we tend to not consider a middle ground between "certain" and "no idea", unless we've been trained to do so.

Sorry, but this is just nonsense.I do realize you are probably young, and I have no wish to play my normal full-out game against a much weaker opponent because it troubles my international sense of fair play.In one small paragraph you have managed to say one of the the most illogical things one could almost imagine. "QM mechanics teaches us that the world is random, and I know this because I can test it scientifically and it is repeatable every time. "You may be having psychotic, irrational hallucinations every time you believe someone can check your work, or that you have done any work at all.

There's nothing illogical about it. We have statistical tests to detect randomness. They're the foundation of all scientific experimentation.

You beat me to it :-)
Yes, just to reiterate, random means not deterministic which means I cannot predict what one occurance or outcome will be.
Many people get confused here. For example, if I say a dice is random then people think that means 'fair'. So if I say a 6d is random they assume it has a 1 in 6 chance for each result.
No, untrue. A loaded dice is still random. Unless you can say in advance with 'certainty' what the result will be then it is random.
Chaos is deterministic you CAN say what the next result will be, but the results taken as a whole don't form a pattern, or form bifurcating paterns just before becoming truly chaotic.So, sorry Bolder-dash but you are wrong - what I said was fairly precise and accurate.

If QM mechanics taught us that the world is completely random, how could you repeat a test everytime to show that was so. That is what is illogical!Of course you need logic to understand that.

Perhaps it's worth explaining to you one more time that if you can't understand some subject, that does not imply that the subject is stupid. There is an alternate explanation. If you are claiming that you are deliberately dumbing yourself down ... then that would explain a lot.You can stop now. We won't mind. Again, your incomprehension of a statement does not necessarily mean that the statement is illogical. It could mean that your unique and distinctive mental qualities render you unfit to distinguish logic from a hole in the ground. Either that, or you are ignorant of a subject that you are, in fact, ignorant of.Hmm ... which is more likely?

quote:

---

You may be having psychotic, irrational hallucinations every time you believe someone can check your work, or that you have done any work at all.

---

Possible but so unlikely as to be functionally impossible in this universe. If you want to use the ultimate existential get-out clause* then fine, but the discussion will go nowhere and there will still be a set of principled differences between science and faith.
I can check Einstein's work on SR (and a good portion of GR) so there is no faith required - the math is sound. You cannot check a reported religious experience because it is, almost by definition, entirely subjective/personal.
Now if I want to say that Relativity is correct then that is belief. In fact I know it isn't so I would not say otherwise. Most scientists are clear about this but since scientific language is so different from everyday usage then lapsing is understandable. The classic example is the word 'theory' which to a scientist means something far more rigorous than everyday usage as 'guess' or 'hypothesis'.
Most creationists do actually know this (or are made aware) but refuse to accept it and still regularly trot out 'evolution is only a theory' as if it revealed anything except their own ignorance....* that being we cannot say for certain that we even exist - we only have the input of our senses which could be feeding us bad data, no data or data being fed to them without our knowledge. Probably reasonable to call it the 'Matrix' argument.

I think what he probably meant to say was that QM teaches us that the particles within an atom behave randomly, and yet the world behaves predictably.He might have a hard time understanding the distinction, even despite "knowing his game, slaughtering his last opponents, and his pro-am level of debating proficiency."

I told you. Because we have a statistical test for randomness.

"QM mechanics".* snickers *What do you think the M in QM stands for?Once you've found that out, you might want to find out something about the actual subject matter of QM ... and probability theory ... and logic.And then if you try to lecture people on these subjects they won't laugh at you quite so much.(Of course, this assumes that you wish to avoid public humiliation --- an assumption which may not be warranted by your behavior.)

The opposite of order is chaos. You don't get to tell me what chaos means-it has a universal meaning, which you don't get to decide.The world is not chaos, precisely because we can make predictions about it.Order has to be derived from somewhere.

But I really like being lectured to by creationists. As a teacher it gives me some insight into what some of my students must feel occasionally :-)PS - Bolder - I should add that the thing which divides science from non-science, pseudo-science and other forms of belief is basically the ability (and willingness) to be proved wrong.
If you make a statement that cannot be proved wrong then it isn't science. Ideally any scientific hypothesis should not only be testable, it should say exactly what would prove it to be incorrect - ie it should invite people to shoot it down. That is basically the scientific method. Observe/experiment, hypothesise, test (try to refute it), and refine by going back to the first step. Science is the only form of human understanding that I know of that builds this in - the whole enterprise doesn't just welcome being proved wrong, it relies on it. If you want to educate yourself on this then look up 'induction, Hume and Popper'.This is what I find amusing when people say scientists are arrogant. Scientists are the people who can have their life-work trashed in a moment by anyone.
Now in reality, of course, we are all human with human flaws so you get scientific inertia - anyone wanting to pursue that should of course be reading Thommy Khun (who I could never take to as an author, but who nonetheless spoke truth to power).Edited by Bikerman, : No reason given.

That's your argument, that I can't say the mechanics of Quantum mechanics?Wow, powerful stuff A.Do you also debate at the same pro-am level as biker?

quote:

---

The opposite of order is chaos. You don't get to tell me what chaos means-it has a universal meaning, which you don't get to decide.

​

The world is not chaos, precisely because we can make predictions about it.

​

Order has to be derived from somewhere.

---

LOL, you do grant me such airs and graces. You think I decided? Thanks for the compliment but I must decline.
Heres a little illustration.
1. Take a pencil and paper.
2. Draw a triangle - any type, right angles, iscoceles, whatever.
3. Pick a point at random in the triangle and plot a point.
4. Repeat
5. Choose at random one of the vertices (corners) of the triangle, move halfway from where you are to that corner and plot a point.
6. for a long timeIs that chaotic? Do you think you can predict the outcome? Betcha!

There's a substantial field of mathematics, the results of which have indicated that order can frequently be derived from chaos. (And chaos from highly ordered rules.) Weird, since they're opposites, but true.