Some vews on Ayn Rand

[Rolf]

Re. Ayn Rand, one of Ray's idols:

http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=14;t=7640;st=7860#entry256742

Might be of interest to some people.
I was done with her 60 years ago.

Rolf

[johnetho...@yahoo.com]

Here is some more information on Rand that her admirers should take a look at.

http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/romancing-the-stone-cold.html

[Martin Harran]

On Wed, 22 Feb 2017 23:13:45 +0100, "Rolf" <rolf.a...@gmail.com>
wrote:

What makes you think she is one of Ray's idols? Seems rather unlikely
to me.

--
Martin Harran aka AAQ

[Bill Rogers]

Ray has said so many times. Thinks she'll be the only atheist allowed into heaven.

[raven1]

That's funny: if I believed in Hell, she'd be one person I'm sure
would be there.

[Rolf]

"Rolf" <rolf.a...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:o8l2ep$ai6$1...@news.albasani.net...

And a little more to fill in the picture here:

http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/romancing-the-stone-cold.html

Rolf



> Rolf
>

[Rolf]

"Martin Harran" <martin...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:sndtacdi33ed16vt1...@4ax.com...

That's what on might think, but from what I remember, he wrote abou her as
someone whose writings he approved of..

I hope for him to show up here to clarify his postion, or even better,
repost what he's written before about his opinion on her.

It was not a surprise to me, but strangely at odds with the character he -
not quite convincingly appears to present himself as.


Rolf

[Ray Martinez]

If God didn't exist I would worship Ayn Rand for her allegiance to objective truth. The only thing I disagree with Rand is her contention that her epistemology supports Atheism, when in fact it supports Theism.

Ray, Objectivist

[jillery]

My impression is that's a fundamental disagreement.

--
This space is intentionally not blank.

[Ray Martinez]

Of course.

Ray

[Ray Martinez]

So Rand was a brilliant person, the brightest secular scholar of the 20th century, she stands alone, without equal. All she essentially did was rediscover Aristotle, telling the higher education establishment in the West that they are loons for teaching uncertainty. Rand simply reminded the world that certainty isn't an elusive concept, but the foundation and backbone of Western thinking. How utterly ridiculous to see Kantian secular scholars argue for uncertainty, which has been the accepted view at least since John Dewey. We KNOW pain and suffering, for example, exist, and we know with absolute certainty. One exception destroys uncertainty.

Ray

[*Hemidactylus*]

Ray Martinez <pyram...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Thursday, February 23, 2017 at 2:24:58 PM UTC-8, Rolf wrote:
>> "Martin Harran" <martin...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:sndtacdi33ed16vt1...@4ax.com...
>>> On Wed, 22 Feb 2017 23:13:45 +0100, "Rolf" <rolf.a...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Re. Ayn Rand, one of Ray's idols:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=14;t=7640;st=7860#entry256742
>>>>
>>>> Might be of interest to some people.
>>>> I was done with her 60 years ago.
>>>>
>>>> Rolf
>>>>
>>>
>>> What makes you think she is one of Ray's idols? Seems rather unlikely
>>> to me.
>>>
>> That's what on might think, but from what I remember, he wrote abou her as
>> someone whose writings he approved of..
>>
>> I hope for him to show up here to clarify his postion, or even better,
>> repost what he's written before about his opinion on her.
>>
>> It was not a surprise to me, but strangely at odds with the character he -
>> not quite convincingly appears to present himself as.
>>
>>
>> Rolf
>>
>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>>> Martin Harran aka AAQ
>>>
>
> So Rand was a brilliant person, the brightest secular scholar of the 20th
> century, she stands alone, without equal.
>

Karl Popper surpassed her by far as a philosopher as have Simon Blackburn,
Patricia Churchland, Daniel Dennett, John Searle, and John Wilkins for that
matter. I leave as an exercise to the reader to think up other secular
scholars who eclipsed Ayn Rand.

>
> All she essentially did was rediscover Aristotle, telling the higher
> education establishment in the West that they are loons for teaching
> uncertainty. Rand simply reminded the world that certainty isn't an
> elusive concept, but the foundation and backbone of Western thinking. How
> utterly ridiculous to see Kantian secular scholars argue for uncertainty,
> which has been the accepted view at least since John Dewey.
>

The typical Randroid bogeys. Didn't both Kant and Rand argue for treating
individuals as ends in themselves, not means?

And Hume was easily a better philosopher than Rand. His arguments on how
people tend to hyperextend analogies from the known (machines and creative
intelligence) to the unknown (the universe and god) in his Dialogues
Concerning Natural Religion stand up to any fiction or "nonfiction" Rand
ever wrote. He pre-emptively demolished your hero Paley.

>
> We KNOW pain and suffering, for example, exist, and we know with absolute
> certainty. One exception destroys uncertainty.
>

I am certain 2+2=4. I am uncertain if it will rain next Wednesday. I could
check the GFS, Euro, and UKMET models I guess, but they are prone to some
error. I am also uncertain of intelligent life on other planets outside the
solar system. I am also uncertain of your understanding of basic
epistemology, an example where Rand's polemics may lead her readers astray.
Your clutching at the straws of certainty is telling though. I prefer the
stance of fallibilism or Keats' negative capability. You OTOH are never
wrong. Correct? Is certainty your security blanket against a harsh uncaring
world of randomness and chaos? Does religion provide the easy answers that
set your mind at ease?

[raven1]

On Thu, 23 Feb 2017 19:57:00 -0800 (PST), Ray Martinez

<pyram...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>On Thursday, February 23, 2017 at 2:39:57 AM UTC-8, Bill Rogers wrote:
>> On Thursday, February 23, 2017 at 5:24:56 AM UTC-5, Martin Harran wrote:
>> > On Wed, 22 Feb 2017 23:13:45 +0100, "Rolf" <rolf.a...@gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> > >Re. Ayn Rand, one of Ray's idols:
>> > >
>> > >http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=14;t=7640;st=7860#entry256742
>> > >
>> > >Might be of interest to some people.
>> > >I was done with her 60 years ago.
>> > >
>> > >Rolf
>> > >
>> >
>> > What makes you think she is one of Ray's idols? Seems rather unlikely
>> > to me.
>> >
>> > --
>> > Martin Harran aka AAQ
>>
>> Ray has said so many times. Thinks she'll be the only atheist allowed into heaven.
>>
>
>If God didn't exist I would worship Ayn Rand for her allegiance to objective truth.

Why worship anyone or anything?

>The only thing I disagree with Rand is her contention that her epistemology supports Atheism, when in fact it supports Theism.

Rand would likely reply that you're as confused as it is possible to
be.

[raven1]

I'm uncertain as to what Ray thinks the word means. If past experience
is any indication, he likely holds his own personal definition that
may or may not comport with the standard one.

[jillery]

Some things we know with certainty. Other things we know we can never
know with certainty, ex. the simultaneous position and speed of a
wave. So if one exception destroys uncertainty, it can be said with
equal veracity one exception destroys certainty. Just sayin'.

[jillery]

On Fri, 24 Feb 2017 08:29:04 -0600, *Hemidactylus*
<ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote:

>> So Rand was a brilliant person, the brightest secular scholar of the 20th
>> century, she stands alone, without equal.
>>
>Karl Popper surpassed her by far as a philosopher as have Simon Blackburn,
>Patricia Churchland, Daniel Dennett, John Searle, and John Wilkins for that
>matter. I leave as an exercise to the reader to think up other secular
>scholars who eclipsed Ayn Rand.

Pogo Possum.

[raven1]

On Fri, 24 Feb 2017 11:00:44 -0500, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Charlie Brown and Linus Van Pelt.

[Martin Harran]

On Thu, 23 Feb 2017 02:37:19 -0800 (PST), Bill Rogers
<broger...@gmail.com> wrote:

Reminder to self: no matter how daft something is, never ever be
surprised at it being something believed by Ray.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Ray's quirky beliefs are small fry. In reading scholarly conspiracy
literature I have encountered a bizarre aspersion about Rand. Her _Atlas
Shrugged_ was according to Michael Barkun in _A Culture of Conspiracy_
assumed by some in the 70s to be "an Illuminati code book" for conquering
the world. Odd. Greenspan did preside over the Fed during the dot com
bubble and the lead up to the mortgage crisis, but that's just Hanlon's
razor in action. It's been a while since I read _AS_, but I don't recall
anything about Illuminati recent fixation on subverting hiphop culture via
Jay Z, Beyonce, and Rhianna, but may have been a part of Galt's speech Rand
thankfully edited out due to space constraints.

Ironically Rand being in on the New World Order would have been quite a
shock to the tinfoil tricorn movement inspired by Glenn Beck or the
quirkier fringes of libertarian guano farmers who worship her. Or maybe I
am just saying that because Ayn.

[Rolf]

"Ray Martinez" <pyram...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:318057ea-4367-4174...@googlegroups.com...

Why not use the complete conglomerat of titles, including Paley and so on?

[RichD]

On February 23, Ray Martinez wrote:
> If God didn't exist I would worship Ayn Rand for her allegiance
> to objective truth. The only thing I disagree with Rand is her
> contention that her epistemology supports Atheism, when in fact
> it supports Theism.
> Ray, Objectivist

Among the millions of her readers over 50 years, Ray, you are
likely the only one to consider that her views support a
theology of spirits in the sky.

kudos!

--
Rich

[*Hemidactylus*]

Imagine that. Ray leaves the scene to the sounds of chirping crickets.

[Ray Martinez]

She gets my vote as the greatest secular scholar of the 20th century----that's why she was so hated by the establishment, having refuted them all.

> > All she essentially did was rediscover Aristotle, telling the higher
> > education establishment in the West that they are loons for teaching
> > uncertainty. Rand simply reminded the world that certainty isn't an
> > elusive concept, but the foundation and backbone of Western thinking. How
> > utterly ridiculous to see Kantian secular scholars argue for uncertainty,
> > which has been the accepted view at least since John Dewey.
> >
> The typical Randroid bogeys. Didn't both Kant and Rand argue for treating
> individuals as ends in themselves, not means?
>
> And Hume was easily a better philosopher than Rand. His arguments on how
> people tend to hyperextend analogies from the known (machines and creative
> intelligence) to the unknown (the universe and god) in his Dialogues
> Concerning Natural Religion stand up to any fiction or "nonfiction" Rand
> ever wrote. He pre-emptively demolished your hero Paley.
>

Since Hume died before Paley published Natural Theology your belief is loony. And I could care less about Rand's novels. When I speak about Rand I'm only talking about her Objectivist epistemology theory.

> > We KNOW pain and suffering, for example, exist, and we know with absolute
> > certainty. One exception destroys uncertainty.
> >
> I am certain 2+2=4. I am uncertain if it will rain next Wednesday. I could
> check the GFS, Euro, and UKMET models I guess, but they are prone to some
> error. I am also uncertain of intelligent life on other planets outside the
> solar system. I am also uncertain of your understanding of basic
> epistemology, an example where Rand's polemics may lead her readers astray.
> Your clutching at the straws of certainty is telling though. I prefer the
> stance of fallibilism or Keats' negative capability. You OTOH are never
> wrong. Correct? Is certainty your security blanket against a harsh uncaring
> world of randomness and chaos? Does religion provide the easy answers that
> set your mind at ease?

Yourcomments are to broad, scatterbrain. No reply necessary.

Ray

[Rolf]

"Ray Martinez" <pyram...@yahoo.com> wrote in message

news:5292ed47-3cc3-458a...@googlegroups.com...

I am not surprised, but still have to wonder about how the Christian(?) Ray
sees fit to use an ad hom like "scatterbrain" in the debate.

I would never use a word like that, even when based on his writings I might
consider Ray as one.

Rolf

> Ray
>

[Bob Casanova]

On Sat, 4 Mar 2017 19:26:24 -0800 (PST), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Ray Martinez
<pyram...@yahoo.com>:

>On Friday, February 24, 2017 at 6:29:57 AM UTC-8, *Hemidactylus* wrote:

<snip to a single point, one which illustrates one of Ray's
major problems>

>> And Hume was easily a better philosopher than Rand. His arguments on how
>> people tend to hyperextend analogies from the known (machines and creative
>> intelligence) to the unknown (the universe and god) in his Dialogues
>> Concerning Natural Religion stand up to any fiction or "nonfiction" Rand
>> ever wrote. He pre-emptively demolished your hero Paley.

>Since Hume died before Paley published Natural Theology your belief is loony.

You might want to learn to read for comprehension; for a
start, look up "pre-emptively".
--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov

[jillery]

On Sun, 05 Mar 2017 12:20:36 -0700, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>
wrote:

>On Sat, 4 Mar 2017 19:26:24 -0800 (PST), the following
>appeared in talk.origins, posted by Ray Martinez
><pyram...@yahoo.com>:
>
>>On Friday, February 24, 2017 at 6:29:57 AM UTC-8, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>
><snip to a single point, one which illustrates one of Ray's
>major problems>
>
>>> And Hume was easily a better philosopher than Rand. His arguments on how
>>> people tend to hyperextend analogies from the known (machines and creative
>>> intelligence) to the unknown (the universe and god) in his Dialogues
>>> Concerning Natural Religion stand up to any fiction or "nonfiction" Rand
>>> ever wrote. He pre-emptively demolished your hero Paley.
>
>>Since Hume died before Paley published Natural Theology your belief is loony.
>
>You might want to learn to read for comprehension; for a
>start, look up "pre-emptively".

Ray doesn't lower himself to actually look up things, a characteristic
feature of the willfully stupid.

[Cy Fur]

Where "All hell breaks loose". LOL! Rand was a fraud.

[Ray Martinez]

Your understanding is the understanding that's lagging, not mine. Of course I saw "pre-emptively." Based on the fact that Paley published Natural Theology after Hume had died, I ignored because it's throwaway.

Ray

[Ray Martinez]

Since Paley published after Hume had died, pre-emptively is throwaway. A person cannot be said to have undermined or refuted another who published after the preceding person had died.

So both you and Bob are shown to be the ones who are stupid, not seeing or understanding the contradiction; no surprise here, both of you uphold the reputation of evolutionary theorists quite nicely and frequently.

Ray

[Ray Martinez]

Oh yeah? How much did she profit? And off of what?

Ray

[*Hemidactylus*]

Your vote amounts to squat. Have you enough knowledge of other 20th century
scholars to make such proclamation? Just because someone reviled her
doesn't lead you anywhere. Provide evidence of asserted refutation.

I call bullshit. You are just talking unsubstantiated smack.

>
>>> All she essentially did was rediscover Aristotle, telling the higher
>>> education establishment in the West that they are loons for teaching
>>> uncertainty. Rand simply reminded the world that certainty isn't an
>>> elusive concept, but the foundation and backbone of Western thinking. How
>>> utterly ridiculous to see Kantian secular scholars argue for uncertainty,
>>> which has been the accepted view at least since John Dewey.
>>>
>> The typical Randroid bogeys. Didn't both Kant and Rand argue for treating
>> individuals as ends in themselves, not means?
>>
>> And Hume was easily a better philosopher than Rand. His arguments on how
>> people tend to hyperextend analogies from the known (machines and creative
>> intelligence) to the unknown (the universe and god) in his Dialogues
>> Concerning Natural Religion stand up to any fiction or "nonfiction" Rand
>> ever wrote. He pre-emptively demolished your hero Paley.
>>
>
> Since Hume died before Paley published Natural Theology your belief is loony.
>

His characters Philo and Demea effectively disputed the proto-Paleyian
views of the teleological Cleanthes. You sidestepped my hyperextended
analogies part above. You may have much experience with watches and know of
their manufacture. They have brand names. What experience have you with a
universe being born, which is a one off event. And what experience have you
with a deity? How can you posit relation between things with which you
have no experience? You know people exist, have thoughts, and some are
authors of books and architects of houses. Can you reason ably from the
part to the whole? Humans are but a part of existence. How can you go from
human thought to projecting an analogy of divine thought that covers the
universe?

That you dismiss Hume because he died before Paley is a textbook example of
the genetic fallacy. Just because his ideas originate from a source decades
previous to Paley's does not make them any less powerful or relevant.

>
> And I could care less about Rand's novels. When I speak about Rand I'm
> only talking about her Objectivist epistemology theory.
>

That cardboard cutout naïve realism? Have you ever read Popper? You deploy
falsifiability as an argument, yet are you familiar with modus pollens at
least? Was Rand? You talk about certainty? Do you not see the danger in
that particular dogma?

>
>>> We KNOW pain and suffering, for example, exist, and we know with absolute
>>> certainty. One exception destroys uncertainty.
>>>
>> I am certain 2+2=4. I am uncertain if it will rain next Wednesday. I could
>> check the GFS, Euro, and UKMET models I guess, but they are prone to some
>> error. I am also uncertain of intelligent life on other planets outside the
>> solar system. I am also uncertain of your understanding of basic
>> epistemology, an example where Rand's polemics may lead her readers astray.
>> Your clutching at the straws of certainty is telling though. I prefer the
>> stance of fallibilism or Keats' negative capability. You OTOH are never
>> wrong. Correct? Is certainty your security blanket against a harsh uncaring
>> world of randomness and chaos? Does religion provide the easy answers that
>> set your mind at ease?
>
> Yourcomments are to broad, scatterbrain. No reply necessary.
>

No you prefer clear cut certitude. The real world doesn't provide very much
of that. Dogmatists such as you only think it does. You are delusional.

Odd that you couple 18th century natural theology with a 20th century naive
realism that was capably rejected by Hume two centuries previously. Hume
blows your doors on both counts.

[jillery]

On Mon, 6 Mar 2017 11:15:32 -0800 (PST), Ray Martinez
<pyram...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>On Sunday, March 5, 2017 at 8:24:57 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>> On Sun, 05 Mar 2017 12:20:36 -0700, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >On Sat, 4 Mar 2017 19:26:24 -0800 (PST), the following
>> >appeared in talk.origins, posted by Ray Martinez
>> ><pyram...@yahoo.com>:
>> >
>> >>On Friday, February 24, 2017 at 6:29:57 AM UTC-8, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>> >
>> ><snip to a single point, one which illustrates one of Ray's
>> >major problems>
>> >
>> >>> And Hume was easily a better philosopher than Rand. His arguments on how
>> >>> people tend to hyperextend analogies from the known (machines and creative
>> >>> intelligence) to the unknown (the universe and god) in his Dialogues
>> >>> Concerning Natural Religion stand up to any fiction or "nonfiction" Rand
>> >>> ever wrote. He pre-emptively demolished your hero Paley.
>> >
>> >>Since Hume died before Paley published Natural Theology your belief is loony.
>> >
>> >You might want to learn to read for comprehension; for a
>> >start, look up "pre-emptively".
>>
>>
>> Ray doesn't lower himself to actually look up things, a characteristic
>> feature of the willfully stupid.
>> --
>> This space is intentionally not blank.
>
>Since Paley published after Hume had died, pre-emptively is throwaway. A person cannot be said to have undermined or refuted another who published after the preceding person had died.

When Galileo made public his observations of the phases of Venus in
1613, he pre-emptively demolished any future attempts to support
Ptolemy's geocentric model of the Solar System.

>So both you and Bob are shown to be the ones who are stupid, not seeing or understanding the contradiction;

Only in the universe contained within your mind.

>no surprise here, both of you uphold the reputation of evolutionary theorists quite nicely and frequently.

Your last sentence is first correct thing you wrote in a long time.

[Bob Casanova]

On Mon, 6 Mar 2017 11:08:50 -0800 (PST), the following

appeared in talk.origins, posted by Ray Martinez
<pyram...@yahoo.com>:

>On Sunday, March 5, 2017 at 11:24:56 AM UTC-8, Bob Casanova wrote:
>> On Sat, 4 Mar 2017 19:26:24 -0800 (PST), the following
>> appeared in talk.origins, posted by Ray Martinez
>> <pyram...@yahoo.com>:
>>
>> >On Friday, February 24, 2017 at 6:29:57 AM UTC-8, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>>
>> <snip to a single point, one which illustrates one of Ray's
>> major problems>
>>
>> >> And Hume was easily a better philosopher than Rand. His arguments on how
>> >> people tend to hyperextend analogies from the known (machines and creative
>> >> intelligence) to the unknown (the universe and god) in his Dialogues
>> >> Concerning Natural Religion stand up to any fiction or "nonfiction" Rand
>> >> ever wrote. He pre-emptively demolished your hero Paley.
>>
>> >Since Hume died before Paley published Natural Theology your belief is loony.
>>
>> You might want to learn to read for comprehension; for a
>> start, look up "pre-emptively".

>Your understanding is the understanding that's lagging, not mine. Of course I saw "pre-emptively." Based on the fact that Paley published Natural Theology after Hume had died, I ignored because it's throwaway.

Let's recap, shall we?

Hemi - "Hume demolished Paley's arguments before Paley even
made them"

You - "That's loony, because Hume wrote before Paley"

See a problem with your "logic"?

[Bob Casanova]

On Mon, 6 Mar 2017 11:15:32 -0800 (PST), the following

appeared in talk.origins, posted by Ray Martinez
<pyram...@yahoo.com>:

>On Sunday, March 5, 2017 at 8:24:57 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>> On Sun, 05 Mar 2017 12:20:36 -0700, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >On Sat, 4 Mar 2017 19:26:24 -0800 (PST), the following
>> >appeared in talk.origins, posted by Ray Martinez
>> ><pyram...@yahoo.com>:
>> >
>> >>On Friday, February 24, 2017 at 6:29:57 AM UTC-8, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>> >
>> ><snip to a single point, one which illustrates one of Ray's
>> >major problems>
>> >
>> >>> And Hume was easily a better philosopher than Rand. His arguments on how
>> >>> people tend to hyperextend analogies from the known (machines and creative
>> >>> intelligence) to the unknown (the universe and god) in his Dialogues
>> >>> Concerning Natural Religion stand up to any fiction or "nonfiction" Rand
>> >>> ever wrote. He pre-emptively demolished your hero Paley.
>> >
>> >>Since Hume died before Paley published Natural Theology your belief is loony.
>> >
>> >You might want to learn to read for comprehension; for a
>> >start, look up "pre-emptively".
>>
>>
>> Ray doesn't lower himself to actually look up things, a characteristic
>> feature of the willfully stupid.
>

>Since Paley published after Hume had died, pre-emptively is throwaway. A person cannot be said to have undermined or refuted another who published after the preceding person had died.

Yes, he can; that's what "pre-emptively" means. Any claims
which ignore previous work which refuted those claims are by
definition pre-emptively refuted.

You can argue that Hume's writing didn't do that, but not
that the concept of pre-emptive refutation is invalid as a
concept.

>So both you and Bob are shown to be the ones who are stupid, not seeing or understanding the contradiction; no surprise here, both of you uphold the reputation of evolutionary theorists quite nicely and frequently.

There is no "contradiction". Based on other claims you've
made of contradictions when none existed, I think we should
cue Inigo Montoya.

[jillery]

On Tue, 07 Mar 2017 11:15:07 -0700, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>

"Prepare to die"? (I know what you meant. You don't have to explain
yourself).

[Rolf]

"Bob Casanova" <nos...@buzz.off> skrev i melding
news:ujttbctsb4dcbli1j...@4ax.com...

I am looking forward to the evolution of this thread.
Rolf, Boolean algebraist.

[Bob Casanova]

On Tue, 07 Mar 2017 18:03:49 -0500, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>:

OK. ;-)

[Ernest Major]

On 24/02/2017 03:57, Ray Martinez wrote:
> On Thursday, February 23, 2017 at 2:39:57 AM UTC-8, Bill Rogers wrote:
>> On Thursday, February 23, 2017 at 5:24:56 AM UTC-5, Martin Harran wrote:

>>> On Wed, 22 Feb 2017 23:13:45 +0100, "Rolf" <rolf.a...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Re. Ayn Rand, one of Ray's idols:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=14;t=7640;st=7860#entry256742
>>>>
>>>> Might be of interest to some people.
>>>> I was done with her 60 years ago.
>>>>
>>>> Rolf
>>>>
>>>
>>> What makes you think she is one of Ray's idols? Seems rather unlikely
>>> to me.
>>>

>>> --
>>> Martin Harran aka AAQ
>>

>> Ray has said so many times. Thinks she'll be the only atheist allowed into heaven.
>>
>

> If God didn't exist I would worship Ayn Rand for her allegiance to objective truth. The only thing I disagree with Rand is her contention that her epistemology supports Atheism, when in fact it supports Theism.
>
> Ray, Objectivist
>

The above statement looks as if your claiming to be a social Darwinist.
Are you sure that you're a Democrat supporter rather than a Republican
supporter?

--
alias Ernest Major

[Ernest Major]

On 23/02/2017 22:23, Rolf wrote:
> "Martin Harran" <martin...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:sndtacdi33ed16vt1...@4ax.com...

>> On Wed, 22 Feb 2017 23:13:45 +0100, "Rolf" <rolf.a...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Re. Ayn Rand, one of Ray's idols:
>>>
>>> http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=14;t=7640;st=7860#entry256742
>>>
>>> Might be of interest to some people.
>>> I was done with her 60 years ago.
>>>
>>> Rolf
>>>
>>
>> What makes you think she is one of Ray's idols? Seems rather unlikely
>> to me.
>>

> That's what on might think, but from what I remember, he wrote abou her as
> someone whose writings he approved of..
>
> I hope for him to show up here to clarify his postion, or even better,
> repost what he's written before about his opinion on her.
>
> It was not a surprise to me, but strangely at odds with the character he -
> not quite convincingly appears to present himself as.
>

Ray seems to like her metaphysics and/or epistemology, or more likely
his misunderstanding of her metaphysics and/or epistemology. Her
supporters have not encouraged me to investigate her views, but I doubt
that she'd stoop to arguments as stupid as Ray's.

He does tacitly admit to agreeing with her philosopy of ethics, which
puts him in company with Paul Ryan.

--
alias Ernest Major

[*Hemidactylus*]

It would be interesting to see if Ray himself could do so, but upon reading
the following:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/teleological-arguments/

I may have overstated the case. Hume seemed more focused on attacking
reasoning from the part (machinery) to the whole (world or cosmos) where
Paley seemed consumed by part-part analogies, such as watches to eyes or
coadaption of parts. Behe's biochemical musings beside the point, Darwinian
selection seems sufficient to supplant Paleyian natural theology at
morphological level. Ray would have to draw upon Behe for a more modern
attack upon vision. I don't think Ray likes Behe that much or could manage
the sophistication of the material. Not sure he has mastered Paley yet, or
Rand either. Strange syncretism that.

I am currently reading Paley. I would think a committed Paleyian would have
effectively countered my argument by now. I will have to counter myself I
suppose.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Recall Paley on form versus function? Did dogfish skin exist so it could be
co-opted as sandpaper? That unintended usage does hint at functional
shifting. The jaw articulation of the dogfish is homologous to our ear
ossicles. Ponder that.

[Bob Casanova]

On Fri, 10 Mar 2017 08:28:33 -0600, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by *Hemidactylus*
<ecph...@allspamis.invalid>:

OK. My point was entirely about the general relevance of a
pre-emptive argument, which isn't changed by the details of
a specific example, but thanks for the update.

>I am currently reading Paley. I would think a committed Paleyian would have
>effectively countered my argument by now. I will have to counter myself I
>suppose.

[Bob Casanova]

On Tue, 07 Mar 2017 11:08:54 -0700, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>:

Well?

[raven1]

On Fri, 10 Mar 2017 11:09:21 -0700, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>
wrote:

Ray wouldn't recognize logic if you spotted him "L_GIC" and let him
buy a vowel.

[raven1]

Rand was an outspoken strong atheist and materialist, who thought
religion is for the weak-minded, altruism is the root of all evil, and
selfishness the greatest virtue. What Ray finds appealing about any
aspect of her writing is baffling.

[jillery]

Be careful if you counter yourself and follow yourself at the same
time. You might get whiplash.

[jillery]

Now that's an interesting visual:

RAY: I'd like to buy an "A".
PAT: Sorry, there's no "A".

RAY: I'd like to buy an "E".
PAT: Sorry, there's no "E".

RAY: I'd like to buy an "I".
PAT: Sorry, there's no "I".

RAY: I'd like to buy an "U".
PAT: What??? I mean, sorry, there's no "U".

RAY: I'd like to buy an "Y".
PAT: "Sorry, you can't buy a "Y". Would you like to solve the
puzzle?"

RAY: There is no solution. You're an atheist.

[Ray Martinez]

AGAIN, I'm a rabid follower of her epistemology theory, nothing else. Her scholarship is second to none.

Ray

[Ray Martinez]

Well what? The fact that you don't understand pre-emptive as a throwaway claim is the only problem. The fact that X published before Y published means one cannot say or imply X refuted or undermined Y. I now have made this observation at least two times.

Ray

[Ray Martinez]

What is evident is that you're completely ignorant of Rand's epistemology theory known commonly as Objectivism.

Ray

[Kadaitcha Man]

Ray Martinez, an ass head and a most needless creature living and a
stony image, a lost soul and an iron-witted fool. Thou art a rascally
piss stain, a traitorous shrill-voiced supplicant, a scatterbrained
cuckoldy rogue, a full-gorged ticklebrain, ye contrived:

The only thing one needs know about Ayn Rand is that she was a
thoroughgoing nutjob.

--
"You're a wholly evil fucker. You take the 'I am a bastard' stance, and
extrapolate it out to 'I am an absolute uncaring bastard with the time
and means to make almost anyone suffer.' Whereas other people have
some faint nascent ideal about 'lines that should not be crossed', you
barge through taboo, and straight through 'unthinking prejudice', right
into "knock 'em down and then fuck them over."

David Andrew Clayton to yours truly.

[jillery]

Deep subject.

>The fact that you don't understand pre-emptive as a throwaway claim is the only problem.

That's not a problem. Instead, it's the fact that you think your
personal definitions pre-emptively change what words actually mean.

>The fact that X published before Y published means one cannot say or imply X refuted or undermined Y.

That's not what it means. Instead, it could mean that, depending on
what X and Y published. Even you have argued that Darwin's (X)
publications in the 19th century refutes and undermines the posts of
T.O. evolutionists (Y).

One can only wonder why you waste your time posting such silly
arguments, which are not only completely wrong but totally irrelevant
and contrary to your own claims. It's as if you're competing to post
the greatest number of willfully stupid and inane comments. I agree
you have a lot of stiff competition, but you're way ahead on points.

>I now have made this observation at least two times.

And how 'bout them Mets.

[raven1]

On Wed, 15 Mar 2017 00:26:19 -0700 (PDT), Ray Martinez
<pyram...@yahoo.com> wrote:

What the hell is a "throwaway claim" supposed to be?

> is the only problem. The fact that X published before Y published means one cannot say or imply X refuted or undermined Y.

Do you seriously not understand what "pre-emptive" means?

> I now have made this observation at least two times.

And you can repeat it until you're blue in the face, but you'll still
be wrong.

[raven1]

Please elaborate. I'm fascinated both as to what you think you mean by
"epistemology theory" (since experience tells me you're likely using
your own personal definition of the term that may or may not agree
with standard English), and what you think Rand's version is.

> nothing else. Her scholarship is second to none.

Can you give an example or two?

[*Hemidactylus*]

Given Ray's troubled relationship with words, meaning, and knowledge,
watching him struggle with Randroid epistemology will be a thing to behold.
Time to make some popcorn.

[Bob Casanova]

On Wed, 15 Mar 2017 00:26:19 -0700 (PDT), the following

>Well what? The fact that you don't understand pre-emptive as a throwaway claim is the only problem. The fact that X published before Y published means one cannot say or imply X refuted or undermined Y. I now have made this observation at least two times.

Yes, and both times you were incorrect. "Pre-emptive" is not
a "throwaway claim" (whatever you might imagine that to be);
it's a definition of timing, and an observation that a claim
had already been refuted by prior work. The fact that you
cannot seem to understand that would be surprising if you
didn't make this sort of assertion regarding the meaning of
words on a fairly regular basis.

[Ernest Major]

On 15/03/2017 05:28, Ray Martinez wrote:
> On Friday, March 10, 2017 at 2:59:56 AM UTC-8, Ernest Major wrote:

> Your comments indicate zero knowledge of Randian epistemology known commonly as Objectivism. The same is simply a rediscovery of Aristotelianism. The fact that you perceive my conveyances as stupid simply indicates the degree your thinking is detached from reality, which is Rand's main claim of indictment of scholarly thought based on Kant, Idealism, and Skepticism.
>
> Ray

To quote from an objectivist website on objectivist epistemology "To be
objective, people must know how to define the terms they use (so they
know what they mean), base their conclusions on observable facts (so
their beliefs are anchored in reality) and employ the principles of
logic (so that they can reliably reach sound conclusions)." I don't
recognise those principles in your arguments - you use idiosyncratic
unspecified meanings for words, you attempt to refute "Darwinism" by
literary criticism, and you regularly commit logical fallacies.

One of the principles of objectivist epistemology is that there is an
objective universe. That strikes me as a perfectly reasonable working
hypothesis, but doesn't seem to be consistent with your
presuppositionalism and occasionalism.

Another is the possibility of certain knowledge. To make that principle
workable requires preemptively dismissing solipistic, omphalistic and
occasionalistic hypotheses. Again that doesn't seem to be consistent
with your occasionalism. (I presume that it's the assertion of certainty
that appeals to you, but that assertion of certainty carries with it a
commitment to follow a particular method of acquiring knowledge which
excludes your acceptance of revelation (the Bible, the sermons of Gene
Scott), or intuition (that organisms are designed) as a source of
knowledge.) Would you like to explain how you reconcile a rejection of
fallibilism with the incomplete nature of any possible set of
observations of the universe and the objectivist reliance on empirical
data and reason as a source of knowledge?

A third is the rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction as a
false dichotomy. On the one hand I see a distinction between analytic
truths (e.g. evolution is the change of allele frequencies in a
population) and synthetic truths (e.g. evolution occurs) are useful; on
the other hand I wouldn't a priori rule out the possibility of being
edge cases. Would you care to explain what you see as the implications
of rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction as a false dichotomy?

I don't agree with all of objectivist epistemology - in particular I
don't see how fallibilism can be rejected - but based on what I see of
your arguments I conclude that your epistemology is not objectivist, but
is in fact further away from objectivist epistemology that mine is. (I
accept in practice things the objectivism accepts in principle, but
which you reject, and I reject in practice things which objectivism
rejects in principle, but which you accept.)

>
>>
>> He does tacitly admit to agreeing with her philosopy of ethics, which
>> puts him in company with Paul Ryan.
>>
>> --
>> alias Ernest Major
>

--
alias Ernest Major

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, March 15, 2017 at 4:09:55 AM UTC-4, Kadaitcha Man wrote:
> Ray Martinez, an ass head and a most needless creature living and a
> stony image, a lost soul and an iron-witted fool. Thou art a rascally
> piss stain, a traitorous shrill-voiced supplicant, a scatterbrained
> cuckoldy rogue, a full-gorged ticklebrain, ye contrived:

I don't know whether alt.flame is still a going concern, but from
what little I know of that newsgroup, its original intent was to
cultivate the insult AS AN ART FORM. So nobody was supposed to take
offense at anything if it was done artfully. Your numerous preambles
certainly would have qualified.

However, I didn't come to this thread just to flatter you, but to
let you know that I am glad to see you posting again; but even more,
to let you know that I replied to a post you did on the thread,
"Can science prove the existence of God" and am eagerly awaiting
feedback from you on my reply:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/talk.origins/8JcKZDCW498/xY9AepZUBAAJ
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2017 12:48:43 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <c8a596a5-1462-4cd4...@googlegroups.com>

As I told you there, I enjoyed our philosophical discussions on
sci.bio.paleontology when last I encountered you, years ago.

I don't know about that; what I do know is that her view of morality
was subjectivistic, not objectivistic. The only form of morality
that I would consider objectivistic is the Bentham/Mill principle
of "the greatest good for the greatest number."

I've run into some of her devotees, and they seemed to alternate
between claiming that everyone was selfish, and claiming that
this world would be a better place if everyone WERE selfish.
The more they were squeezed into a corner on this, the more
they harped on "enlightened self-interest", but once the pressure
was off, they reverted to a more primitive idea of selfishness.

> --
> "You're a wholly evil fucker. You take the 'I am a bastard' stance, and
> extrapolate it out to 'I am an absolute uncaring bastard with the time
> and means to make almost anyone suffer.' Whereas other people have
> some faint nascent ideal about 'lines that should not be crossed', you
> barge through taboo, and straight through 'unthinking prejudice', right
> into "knock 'em down and then fuck them over."
>
> David Andrew Clayton to yours truly.

Did he also cultivate the insult as an art form? It's hard to judge
from just one paragraph.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[raven1]

Well done! Now you'd probably best re-write it so that Ray has a
chance of understanding any of it...

[eridanus]

He probably agree with the three topics, religion to swindle the poor,
altruism a path to ruin, and selfishness a true Christian virtue.

Eri

[Ray Martinez]

Since my main on-going point is that Darwinism or evolution is illogical and thus false and thus non-existent, existing only in the minds of Darwinists, not in nature, your belief that I commit logical fallacies supports my main on-going point.

You don't recognize "those principles in [my] arguments" (E.M.) because said principles are completely foreign to your way of thinking and all other Darwinists. Your comments above simply convey the main point of contention between I and evolutionary theorists. Evolutionary theorists are COMPLETELY ignorant of the fact that evolution is an illogical theory----that's why no one understands it except believers/Evolutionists. You people are SO ignorant and deluded (and when I say you people I'm mainly talking about people like John Harshman and Peter Nyikos) that you don't understand the BASIC fact that if something is identified as illogical said identification means "doesn't exist, cannot exist." John Harshman has how many years of college and he doesn't know that illogical means non-existent, cannot exist? So you people are the dumbest and the most deluded people in Western society, very close neighbors with "Christian" Fundamentalists, your brothers and sisters who accept existence of natural selection and micro-evolution.

>
> One of the principles of objectivist epistemology is that there is an
> objective universe. That strikes me as a perfectly reasonable working
> hypothesis, but doesn't seem to be consistent with your
> presuppositionalism and occasionalism.

You've never been able to understand and convey my view----which again shows the degree of ignorance and delusion your mind is suffering. When Randian Objectivism speaks of an objective universe the same is defined within the well explained presupposition that existence = known absolute certainty. Absolute certainty of course is a concept wholly rejected by current scholarly mainstream thought, which Rand was attacking. So you've quickly scanned an Objectivist website and quote-mined a main claim without understanding it's meaning.

As for me I'm a "periodicist" also known as an "interventionist," which means I accept the fact that species, past and present, owe their existence in nature to Divine intervention occurring periodically in real time.

>
> Another is the possibility of certain knowledge. To make that principle
> workable requires preemptively dismissing solipistic, omphalistic and
> occasionalistic hypotheses. Again that doesn't seem to be consistent
> with your occasionalism. (I presume that it's the assertion of certainty
> that appeals to you, but that assertion of certainty carries with it a
> commitment to follow a particular method of acquiring knowledge which
> excludes your acceptance of revelation (the Bible, the sermons of Gene
> Scott), or intuition (that organisms are designed) as a source of
> knowledge.) Would you like to explain how you reconcile a rejection of
> fallibilism with the incomplete nature of any possible set of
> observations of the universe and the objectivist reliance on empirical
> data and reason as a source of knowledge?

Certainty in Randian Objectivism epistemology is NOT a possibility; rather, its her MAIN CLAIM OF FACT. The fact that you conveyed certainty via possibility shows your bias, and defective thinking, and the fact, as I just said in the previous paragraph, that you didn't understand the website you quoted from.

In Randian Objectivism "certainty" is achieved by establishing existence. In your defective line of thinking nothing can be known with certainty. It's this absurd conclusion that Rand attacks rabidly and unmercifully. I doubt you'll understand anything I've said even in view of the fact that I didn't use any jargon and have simplified things as much as possible. You're unable to understand because your mind has been brainwashed by skepticism. In your thinking, Doubt is King. You even doubt evolution, you're unable to say "I know with certainty evolution exists and is true." Since you're an Atheist you should be able to say you know evolution exists with absolute certainty.

>
> A third is the rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction as a
> false dichotomy. On the one hand I see a distinction between analytic
> truths (e.g. evolution is the change of allele frequencies in a
> population) and synthetic truths (e.g. evolution occurs) are useful; on
> the other hand I wouldn't a priori rule out the possibility of being
> edge cases. Would you care to explain what you see as the implications
> of rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction as a false dichotomy?

There isn't any distinction between the examples given, the allele frequency definition of evolution presupposes occurrence----that's why the definition exists. And based on what you wrote one cannot say you're conveying the synthetic because you failed to mention inheritance (Mendelian genetics). And I have no idea what you mean by "edge cases."

>
> I don't agree with all of objectivist epistemology - in particular I
> don't see how fallibilism can be rejected - but based on what I see of
> your arguments I conclude that your epistemology is not objectivist, but
> is in fact further away from objectivist epistemology that mine is. (I
> accept in practice things the objectivism accepts in principle, but
> which you reject, and I reject in practice things which objectivism
> rejects in principle, but which you accept.)

You failed to convey understanding of Randian Objectivism. You get an F.

>
> >
> >>
> >> He does tacitly admit to agreeing with her philosopy of ethics, which
> >> puts him in company with Paul Ryan.
> >>
> >> --
> >> alias Ernest Major
> >
>
>
> --
> alias Ernest Major

Ray (Objectivist)

PS: I would gladly lay my body over a mud puddle so Rand could walk over.

[Ray Martinez]

PLEASE don't feed the troll.

Ray

[Ray Martinez]

It's where Rand and I disagree. She says the concepts supporting Theism/Christianity are false, don't exist; I say the exact opposite.

Her epistemology says the parts of speech have corresponding material referents; thus existence = known with certainty. When the observer ceases to observe any referent, existence isn't harmed.

I know with absolute certainty that the concepts supporting Biblical Theism exist. Rand disagrees. But we agree all other non-fictitious parts of speech and their material referents exist with absolute certainty.

Ray

[Rolf]

"Ray Martinez" <pyram...@yahoo.com> skrev i melding
news:c6c6c295-8e02-4a61...@googlegroups.com...

Ayu would have loved to walk over you but stop in the middle till you shut
t.f. up.
>

[raven1]

Ray, as I have noted elsewhere, you wouldn't recognize logic if I
spotted you "L_GIC" and let you buy a vowel. Pull the other one.

>and thus false and thus non-existent, existing only in the minds of Darwinists, not in nature, your belief that I commit logical fallacies

It's not a "belief", it's a fact. As has been documented hundreds of
time by dozens of people on this newsgroup.

<snip increasingly delusional rant>

[raven1]

PLEASE look up the definition of "irony".

[Peter Nyikos]

Was she a fan of the materialists, like Hobbes, D'Holbach, and Diderot?

> > > Ray
> >
> > To quote from an objectivist website on objectivist epistemology "To be
> > objective, people must know how to define the terms they use (so they
> > know what they mean), base their conclusions on observable facts (so
> > their beliefs are anchored in reality) and employ the principles of
> > logic (so that they can reliably reach sound conclusions)."

Gosh, sounds like Wittgenstein and Korzybski, and John Locke centuries
before them -- so you, Ray, can't accuse the first two of plagiarizing Rand.
See the third book of Locke's _Essays Concerning Human Understanding._

I've been arguing in Amazon.com with someone who idolizes Wittgenstein
for pretty much the same reasons you idolize Rand. He thinks the
philosophy of the future "will just be footnotes" to Wittgenstein.
I'd love to see the two of you go toe-to-toe on who idolizes the
better philosopher.

[Granted, he might be too busy filling his replies with
"LOL!" at every bit of praise for Ayn Rand to deign to argue
with you. But you would be just getting a taste of your own
medicine.]

He goes by the moniker of SteveT, but he is an ethnic Chinese fellow
who lives in Malaya or thereabouts.

> >I don't
> > recognise those principles in your arguments - you use idiosyncratic
> > unspecified meanings for words, you attempt to refute "Darwinism" by
> > literary criticism, and you regularly commit logical fallacies.
>
> Since my main on-going point is that Darwinism or evolution is illogical and thus false and thus non-existent, existing only in the minds of Darwinists, not in nature,
> your belief that I commit logical fallacies supports my main on-going point.

Wow, that is SteveT to a T! Except that he argues for the opposite
things you do. He claims God exists only in the minds of believers,
as does a life after death and tries to use the Philosophy of Language
and Wittgenstein in particular to show that these things are illogical.

> You don't recognize "those principles in [my] arguments" (E.M.) because said principles are completely foreign to your way of thinking and all other Darwinists. Your comments above simply convey the main point of contention between I and evolutionary theorists.

These last two months, I've learned to draw a number of sharp distinctions
between evolution, evolutionary biology, evolutionary theory, and
the Theory of Evolution. This last would be a theory worthy of the name,
a gathering together of isolated bits of evolutionary theory into a
coherent theory worthy of being called The Theory of Biological Evolution.

And I've concluded that this is still in its embryonic stage. "Infancy"
would be too charitable a word.

In sharp contrast, the actual evolution of animals, especially
vertebrates, from a common ancestor
is so powerful that your best bet would be to not fight it but
to maintain that a purely secular evolutionary theory cannot
handle it. IOW, you ought to adopt Lord Kelvin's theory that
God speeded up evolution.

Lord Kelvin even believed that the sun was less than 100 million
years old (maybe a lot less, I forget) and so his theory could
be one that you might be willing to accept.

> Evolutionary theorists are COMPLETELY ignorant of the fact that evolution is an illogical theory----that's why no one understands it except believers/Evolutionists.

For the last month, I have been quizzing Harshman and Norman and Simpson
on evolutionary theory, and from their hidebound replies, I have come
to the conclusion that the embryonic Theory of Biological Evolution
is only a Theory of Biological Microevolution. It is a half century
old fossil that has been in stasis since Eldredge and Gould supplemented
Neo-Darwinism with "punk eek".

> You people are SO ignorant and deluded (and when I say you people I'm mainly talking about people like John Harshman and Peter Nyikos) that you don't understand the BASIC fact that if something is identified as illogical

Read: "something is blatanly asserted by me, Ray Martinez, to be
illogical..."

"said identification means "doesn't exist, cannot exist."

SteveT would say the same exact thing about the existence of God
and of a life after death, if I read him right.

> John Harshman has how many years of college and he doesn't know that illogical means non-existent, cannot exist?

He does know that, but he isn't about to accept the allegation
that it is illogical just on the basis of your say-so. That
goes for me too.

> So you people are the dumbest and the most deluded people in Western society,

SteveT is such a reflexive atheist that he thinks that concern about
the very QUESTION of whether God exists is an example of "Western
cultural imperialism" and a hang-up of "the Abrahamic religions."

> very close neighbors with "Christian" Fundamentalists,
> your brothers and sisters who accept existence of natural selection
> and micro-evolution.

Are you using a private definition of microevolution? The accepted
definition of that is "change of frequency of alleles in a population"
and "evolutionary change below the level of speciation," and you've
confirmed that you have no problem with these things.

And as for "natural selection", Harshman and co. have chided me
for thinking it could possibly apply to anything except
populations -- freely interbreeding groups of animals that are
well within the Biblical *min* ("kind").

I think of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and many other
creatures as an example of natural selection on a grand scale.
But no, that is excluded by evolutionary theorists BY DEFINITION.

On what grounds do YOU exclude it, by the way?

>
> >
> > One of the principles of objectivist epistemology is that there is an
> > objective universe. That strikes me as a perfectly reasonable working
> > hypothesis, but doesn't seem to be consistent with your
> > presuppositionalism and occasionalism.
>
> You've never been able to understand and convey my view----which again shows the degree of ignorance and delusion your mind is suffering. When Randian Objectivism speaks of an objective universe the same is defined within the well explained presupposition that existence = known absolute certainty.

And so her "objective universe" excludes what she thought of as the
Christian God. As it does for Robert Camp. I've sheathed my claws
in a rather long, ongoing discussion with him. He hasn't sheathed
his, but he's willing to keep the discussion going and I'm slowly
beginning to understand where he is coming from.

> Absolute certainty of course is a concept wholly rejected by current scholarly mainstream thought, which Rand was attacking. So you've quickly scanned an Objectivist website and quote-mined a main claim without understanding it's meaning.
>
> As for me I'm a "periodicist" also known as an "interventionist," which means I accept the fact that species, past and present, owe their existence in nature to Divine intervention occurring periodically in real time.

Well, then, you have no quarrel with Lord Kelvin or anyone else who
believes in speciation being speeded up by divine manipulation of
mutations. So what are you fighting against, exactly?

Maybe you will answer that you think God intervened to poof
first Hyracotherium, then Orohippus, then Epihippus, then Mesohippus,
into existence as fully formed adults, and so on down the line until
he poofed horses, asses and zebras separately, in the same way.

But why go to all that trouble when, with a few mutations, God
could have achieved the same effect while always having a lovely
panorama of whatever equids inhabited whatever environments (leafy
forests, grassy plains,...) to delight his angels and archangels?


I've snipped some specialized talk about Ayn Rand's philosophy
between you and Ernest Major. I don't know enough about it
to make it worthwhile to comment on it at this point.

> Ray (Objectivist)
>
> PS: I would gladly lay my body over a mud puddle so Rand could walk over.

With stiletto high heels? or did Rand not go in for such foolishness?

Peter Nyikos
Professor of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
U. of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[*Hemidactylus*]

Ernest Major <{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>

[snip]

That's a pretty good contrast of analytic vs synthetic. I see value in
distinguishing the definition of terms and the investigation of reality.

>
> I don't agree with all of objectivist epistemology - in particular I
> don't see how fallibilism can be rejected - but based on what I see of
> your arguments I conclude that your epistemology is not objectivist, but
> is in fact further away from objectivist epistemology that mine is. (I
> accept in practice things the objectivism accepts in principle, but
> which you reject, and I reject in practice things which objectivism
> rejects in principle, but which you accept.)
>

You are mistaking Rand's branded Objectivism for objectivism itself. The
fallibist Karl Popper was a small "o" objectivist.

As for Objectivism I found the following website where the metaphysical
distinction of necessary vs contingent is conflated with Ayn Rand's
otherwise useful (though gender biased) distinction of metaphysically
given vs manmade:

https://objectivismforintellectuals.wordpress.com/2015/05/21/the-meaning-of-necessary-versus-contingent-truth/

The assumption is that for anything to have been otherwise, it would have
to be a matter of human volition and anyone using possible worlds bases for
nonanthropogenic contingency is merely asserting primacy of consciousness.

But the mainstream view is given here:

http://faculty.washington.edu/wtalbott/phil450/hdmetaepist.htm

"An example of a contingent proposition is the proposition that human
beings have evolved from other forms of life."

The Objectivist here would apparently object to Gould's rewind the tape
contingency for evolutionary history as "primacy of consciousness". I say
teleonomic genetic systems as programmed by "selection" events could have
happened otherwise and that large impact events such as the K-T bolide add
some degree of otherwise to the mix. In a complex causal nexus with many
moving parts and long term history "otherwise" abounds. Quite different
from 2+2=4 which happens in all possible worlds.

And getting back to to Objectivist assertion of manmade contingency based
upon volition or libertarian free floating choice I can very easily flip
the script given that interpretations of the Libet experiment showing
causal antecedence to human "choice" as neurally constrained or the work of
Daniel Wegner taking sails out of free will, human action is pure necessity
lacking a true "could be otherwise" component.

I would do that to cut Objectivism down to size, but instead see
contingency in historical systems such as human societies or the collection
of extant species that may have otherwise not supplanted extinct species.

And does the nebular hypothesis of Laplace and Kant necessitate that our
Goldilocks world had its given birth or could that have been otherwise?

[*Hemidactylus*]

I am not sure what's worse, your epistemic cocksureness* or Berkeley Bill's
epistemic nihilism.

If Rand were in heaven she would launch a giant turd in your general
direction as suggested by Jung in Memories, Dreams, and Reflections for
besmirching her memory with such brain addled twaddle.

*- Spell corrector suggested "cocksure mess". The singularity approaches.

[*Hemidactylus*]

*Hemidactylus* <ecph...@allspamis.invalid> wrote:
> Ray Martinez <pyram...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>> On Sunday, March 5, 2017 at 8:24:57 PM UTC-8, jillery wrote:
>>> On Sun, 05 Mar 2017 12:20:36 -0700, Bob Casanova <nos...@buzz.off>

>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Sat, 4 Mar 2017 19:26:24 -0800 (PST), the following
>>>> appeared in talk.origins, posted by Ray Martinez
>>>> <pyram...@yahoo.com>:
>>>>
>>>>> On Friday, February 24, 2017 at 6:29:57 AM UTC-8, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>>>>
>>>> <snip to a single point, one which illustrates one of Ray's
>>>> major problems>
>>>>
>>>>>> And Hume was easily a better philosopher than Rand. His arguments on how
>>>>>> people tend to hyperextend analogies from the known (machines and creative
>>>>>> intelligence) to the unknown (the universe and god) in his Dialogues
>>>>>> Concerning Natural Religion stand up to any fiction or "nonfiction" Rand
>>>>>> ever wrote. He pre-emptively demolished your hero Paley.
>>>>
>>>>> Since Hume died before Paley published Natural Theology your belief is loony.
>>>>
>>>> You might want to learn to read for comprehension; for a
>>>> start, look up "pre-emptively".
>>>
>>>

>>> Ray doesn't lower himself to actually look up things, a characteristic
>>> feature of the willfully stupid.

>>> --
>>> This space is intentionally not blank.
>>

>> Since Paley published after Hume had died, pre-emptively is throwaway. A
>> person cannot be said to have undermined or refuted another who published
>> after the preceding person had died.
>>

>> So both you and Bob are shown to be the ones who are stupid, not seeing
>> or understanding the contradiction; no surprise here, both of you uphold
>> the reputation of evolutionary theorists quite nicely and frequently.
>>
> Recall Paley on form versus function? Did dogfish skin exist so it could be
> co-opted as sandpaper? That unintended usage does hint at functional
> shifting. The jaw articulation of the dogfish is homologous to our ear
> ossicles. Ponder that.
>
Amazing. Imagine that an expert Paleyian who thinks he can thoroughly
demolish modern evolution is unable to address an argument for co-optional
functional shift inspired from a passage found in Paley's Natural Theology
itself:

"V. To the marks of contrivance discoverable in animal bodies, and to the
argument deduced from them, in proof of design, and of a designing Creator,
this turn is sometimes attempted to be given, viz. that the parts were not
intended for the use, but that the use arose out of the parts. This
distinction is intelligible. A cabinet-maker rubs his mahogany with
fish-skin;* yet it would be too much to assert that the skin of the dog
fish was made rough and granulated on purpose for the polishing of wood,
and the use of cabinet-makers. Therefore the distinction is intelligible.
But I think that there is very little place for it in the works of nature.
When roundly and generally affirmed of them, as it hath sometimes been, it
amounts to such another stretch of assertion, as it would be to say, that
all the implements of the cabinet-maker’s workshop, as well as his
fish-skin, were substances accidentally configurated, which he had picked
up, and converted to his use; that his adzes, saws, planes, and gimlets,
were not made, as we suppose, to hew, cut, smooth, shape out, or bore wood
with; but that, these things being made, no matter with what design, or
whether with any, the cabinet-maker perceived that they were applicable to
his purpose, and turned them to account.

But, again; so far as this solution is attempted to be applied to those
parts of animals the action of which does not depend upon the will of the
animal, it is fraught with still more evident absurdity. Is it possible to
believe that the eye was formed without any regard to vision; that it was
the animal itself which found out, that, though formed with no such
intention, it would serve to see with; and that the use of the eye, as an
organ of sight, resulted from this discovery, and the animal’s application
of it? The same question may be asked of the ear; the same of all the
senses.”

The ear? Hear that Ray? If you cannot grok the significance I point you to
Gould's essay "An earful of jaw".

Or this:

http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2011/04/25/an-earful-of-jawbones/

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/homology_06

Yet it doesn't cut as deep to show our relation to sharks as Neil Shubin
does in _Your Inner Fish_.

[Burkhard]

There isn't really such a thing. Objectivism is Rand's brand of realism.
Popper was an ontological realist, and possibly even an epistemological
one, but we do not use the term small "o" objectivism for this position.

One of the problems with Rand, and the reason that her influence on the
philosophical debate on metaphysics and epistemology was pretty much
zero was indeed that much better forms of realist philosophy were around
by the time she wrote. Since she was isolated from the academic debate,
she was simply not aware of these, the problem of the amateur writer .

[*Hemidactylus*]

"This is just one example of the objectivist approach, for which I have
been fighting in epistemology, quantum physics, statistical mechanics,
probability theory, biology, psychology, and history.

"Perhaps most important to the objectivist approach is the recognition of
(1) objective problems, (2) objective achievements, that is, solutions of
problems, (3) knowledge in the objective sense, (4) criticism, which
presupposes objective knowledge in the form of linguistically formulated
theories."

Karl Popper from _Unended Quest_

And as Popper the greatest scholar of any century was an objectivist so am
I. I think it an important position to take in this allegedly post truth
world. Anyone who cringes every time Kellyanne Conway vomits bullshit is an
objectivist. I admit the alternative facts the person who isn't in the job
of evidence alluded to recently has me looking askance at my microwave
oven. Is it staring at me? Bowling Green...never forget!

>
> One of the problems with Rand, and the reason that her influence on the
> philosophical debate on metaphysics and epistemology was pretty much
> zero was indeed that much better forms of realist philosophy were around
> by the time she wrote. Since she was isolated from the academic debate,
> she was simply not aware of these, the problem of the amateur writer .
>

I would think she would take serious issue with the current state of
affairs having experienced the effects of totalitarianism first hand. She
would give no quarter to nationalistic populism.

[Burkhard]

I stand corrected.But his use didn't catch on either.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Maybe because the term is tainted by Randian association? Or because
philosophy has largely become a postmodern cesspool where the only
alternative is the trendy Hegelian Marxist rock star Zizek and his movie
reviews?

[Ray Martinez]

Don't know.

> > > > Ray
> > >
> > > To quote from an objectivist website on objectivist epistemology "To be
> > > objective, people must know how to define the terms they use (so they
> > > know what they mean), base their conclusions on observable facts (so
> > > their beliefs are anchored in reality) and employ the principles of
> > > logic (so that they can reliably reach sound conclusions)."
>
> Gosh, sounds like Wittgenstein and Korzybski, and John Locke centuries
> before them -- so you, Ray, can't accuse the first two of plagiarizing Rand.
> See the third book of Locke's _Essays Concerning Human Understanding._

Ernest Major wrote what you have commented on, not me or Rand.

>
> I've been arguing in Amazon.com with someone who idolizes Wittgenstein
> for pretty much the same reasons you idolize Rand. He thinks the
> philosophy of the future "will just be footnotes" to Wittgenstein.
> I'd love to see the two of you go toe-to-toe on who idolizes the
> better philosopher.
>
> [Granted, he might be too busy filling his replies with
> "LOL!" at every bit of praise for Ayn Rand to deign to argue
> with you. But you would be just getting a taste of your own
> medicine.]
>
> He goes by the moniker of SteveT, but he is an ethnic Chinese fellow
> who lives in Malaya or thereabouts.
>

Invite him over to Talk.Origins.

> > >I don't
> > > recognise those principles in your arguments - you use idiosyncratic
> > > unspecified meanings for words, you attempt to refute "Darwinism" by
> > > literary criticism, and you regularly commit logical fallacies.
> >
> > Since my main on-going point is that Darwinism or evolution is illogical and thus false and thus non-existent, existing only in the minds of Darwinists, not in nature,
> > your belief that I commit logical fallacies supports my main on-going point.
>
> Wow, that is SteveT to a T! Except that he argues for the opposite
> things you do. He claims God exists only in the minds of believers,
> as does a life after death and tries to use the Philosophy of Language
> and Wittgenstein in particular to show that these things are illogical.

Invite him over.

> > You don't recognize "those principles in [my] arguments" (E.M.) because said principles are completely foreign to your way of thinking and all other Darwinists. Your comments above simply convey the main point of contention between I and evolutionary theorists.
>
> These last two months, I've learned to draw a number of sharp distinctions
> between evolution, evolutionary biology, evolutionary theory, and
> the Theory of Evolution. This last would be a theory worthy of the name,
> a gathering together of isolated bits of evolutionary theory into a
> coherent theory worthy of being called The Theory of Biological Evolution.
>
> And I've concluded that this is still in its embryonic stage. "Infancy"
> would be too charitable a word.
>
> In sharp contrast, the actual evolution of animals, especially
> vertebrates, from a common ancestor
> is so powerful that your best bet would be to not fight it but
> to maintain that a purely secular evolutionary theory cannot
> handle it. IOW, you ought to adopt Lord Kelvin's theory that
> God speeded up evolution.

The theory of evolution actually means the theory of how evolution occurs (natural selection). And I'm fully aware of the power of the evidence for common descent, which convinces scientists that descent and evolution has occurred. Yet common descent is dependent on microevolution occurring and microevolution in turn is dependent on natural selection occurring. But natural selection is nonsense, it doesn't exist. So the theory of evolution has a major weak link that cannot be overcome. In view of these facts all you have is a theory loaded with effects that lack a cause. Absent a main agent of causation all you really have is evolution based on assumptions and assumptions are not evidence. Thus the importance of natural selection looms very large.

>
> Lord Kelvin even believed that the sun was less than 100 million
> years old (maybe a lot less, I forget) and so his theory could
> be one that you might be willing to accept.
>
> > Evolutionary theorists are COMPLETELY ignorant of the fact that evolution is an illogical theory----that's why no one understands it except believers/Evolutionists.
>
> For the last month, I have been quizzing Harshman and Norman and Simpson
> on evolutionary theory, and from their hidebound replies, I have come
> to the conclusion that the embryonic Theory of Biological Evolution
> is only a Theory of Biological Microevolution.

Yes, I completely agree. Except embryonic is hardly true. Accepted evolution has always been Darwinian microevolutionary. Micro changes are the main rodeo, and the only rodeo for evolutionary theorists.

> It is a half century
> old fossil that has been in stasis since Eldredge and Gould supplemented
> Neo-Darwinism with "punk eek".
>
> > You people are SO ignorant and deluded (and when I say you people I'm mainly talking about people like John Harshman and Peter Nyikos) that you don't understand the BASIC fact that if something is identified as illogical
>
> Read: "something is blatanly asserted by me, Ray Martinez, to be
> illogical..."

Not asserted, but argued via logic and reason.

>
> "said identification means "doesn't exist, cannot exist."
>
> SteveT would say the same exact thing about the existence of God
> and of a life after death, if I read him right.
>
> > John Harshman has how many years of college and he doesn't know that illogical means non-existent, cannot exist?
>
> He does know that, but he isn't about to accept the allegation
> that it is illogical just on the basis of your say-so. That
> goes for me too.
>
> > So you people are the dumbest and the most deluded people in Western society,
>
> SteveT is such a reflexive atheist that he thinks that concern about
> the very QUESTION of whether God exists is an example of "Western
> cultural imperialism" and a hang-up of "the Abrahamic religions."
>

Well, in the West, when we argue for the existence of God our arguments are not meant or directed at Eastern philosophers.

> > very close neighbors with "Christian" Fundamentalists,
> > your brothers and sisters who accept existence of natural selection
> > and micro-evolution.
>
> Are you using a private definition of microevolution?

Micro changes that contribute to speciation, accomplished by an unguided material agent.

> The accepted
> definition of that is "change of frequency of alleles in a population"
> and "evolutionary change below the level of speciation," and you've
> confirmed that you have no problem with these things.

Ridiculous. As you know I'm a species immutabilist, like every scientist was before 1859. Allele frequency changes are only evolutionary if accomplished by an unguided material agent. Since unguided material agency doesn't exist allele frequency changes are teleological.

>
> And as for "natural selection", Harshman and co. have chided me
> for thinking it could possibly apply to anything except
> populations -- freely interbreeding groups of animals that are
> well within the Biblical *min* ("kind").
>

Don't understand.

Good to hear from you Peter, you're still the most interesting Evolutionist out there. And Robert Camp is hard to understand. Since you both are die hard Evolutionists it's hard to fathom any real problems you might have with each other. Gotta go, as you say, duty calls.
Will finish reply ASAP.

Ray

[Peter Nyikos]

He quoted an objectivist website, and I was commenting on the quote.
Do you think Rand would have disavowed it?
Do YOU agree that this was one of the main aims of Objectivism?

> >
> > I've been arguing in Amazon.com with someone who idolizes Wittgenstein
> > for pretty much the same reasons you idolize Rand. He thinks the
> > philosophy of the future "will just be footnotes" to Wittgenstein.
> > I'd love to see the two of you go toe-to-toe on who idolizes the
> > better philosopher.
> >
> > [Granted, he might be too busy filling his replies with
> > "LOL!" at every bit of praise for Ayn Rand to deign to argue
> > with you. But you would be just getting a taste of your own
> > medicine.]
> >
> > He goes by the moniker of SteveT, but he is an ethnic Chinese fellow
> > who lives in Malaya or thereabouts.
> >
>
> Invite him over to Talk.Origins.

Thanks, I will!

Not just that. It includes mutation. PE is an attempt to put together
how these things work to produce "speciation".

Except that "speciation" in the context of PE does not mean that the two
"species" cannot interbreed to produce fertile offspring. It means that
they simply stopped doing it. Prime example: the polar bear is considered
to be a different species than the brown bear, but they have been
interbred in zoos to give fertile offspring; ditto lions and tigers.

OTOH the horse and ass are different species because their offspring
are sterile. [There are very rare alleged counterexamples.]

You have repeatedly ducked the question of whether horse and ass, both
well known from the Bible, are of the same biblical "kind" (*min*)
or not.

> And I'm fully aware of the power of the evidence for common descent, which convinces scientists that descent and evolution has occurred. Yet common descent is dependent on microevolution occurring and microevolution in turn is dependent on natural selection occurring.

No, there is also genetic drift.

> But natural selection is nonsense, it doesn't exist.

You've repeated that mantra so often, you may actually believe it.
But I've never seen you argue for it.

<snip non-argument for nonexistence of natural selection>

> >
> > Lord Kelvin even believed that the sun was less than 100 million
> > years old (maybe a lot less, I forget) and so his theory could
> > be one that you might be willing to accept.

Why no response from you about Lord Kelvin, Ray?

Concluded in next reply, as soon as I've seen that this one has posted.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Saturday, March 18, 2017 at 11:09:54 PM UTC-4, Ray Martinez wrote:
> On Friday, March 17, 2017 at 1:54:55 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> > On Thursday, March 16, 2017 at 4:14:55 PM UTC-4, Ray Martinez wrote:

picking up exactly where I left off in my first reply:

> > > Evolutionary theorists are COMPLETELY ignorant of the fact that evolution is an illogical theory----that's why no one understands it except believers/Evolutionists.
> >
> > For the last month, I have been quizzing Harshman and Norman and Simpson
> > on evolutionary theory, and from their hidebound replies, I have come
> > to the conclusion that the embryonic Theory of Biological Evolution
> > is only a Theory of Biological Microevolution.
>
> Yes, I completely agree. Except embryonic is hardly true.

It is embryonic PRECISELY because it is only a microevolutionary theory.

> Accepted evolution has always been Darwinian microevolutionary.

Accepted by whom? Even Behe accepts common descent, as did Lord Kelvin.

> Micro changes are the main rodeo, and the only rodeo for
> evolutionary theorists.

So it would seem from the dogged resistance of Harshman, Norman,
and Simpson to any Theory of Evolution that goes beyond
microevolution. But none of them is a paleontologist, so I'm
currently trying to find a paleontologist who is willing to
discuss this issue with me.

However, there ARE little bits and pieces of evolutionary theory
that are floating along in isolation. Coevolution is a good one;
it is both microevolutionary and macroevolutionary, but AFAIK
no one has tried to weave it into a coherent theory with the
embryonic theory outlined above.

And "natural selection" could really be expanded beyond mere
populations were it not for the arbitrary Procrustean Bed
that evolutionary theorists have forced the term into,
by amputating one finger and laying it in the bed. See my
clarification at the end of this post.

>
> > It is a half century
> > old fossil that has been in stasis since Eldredge and Gould supplemented
> > Neo-Darwinism with "punk eek".
> >
> > > You people are SO ignorant and deluded (and when I say you people I'm mainly talking about people like John Harshman and Peter Nyikos) that you don't understand the BASIC fact that if something is identified as illogical
> >
> > Read: "something is blatanly asserted by me, Ray Martinez, to be
> > illogical..."
>
> Not asserted, but argued via logic and reason.

Here is Rhodes, now jump! and show us your alleged argument.

> >
> > "said identification means "doesn't exist, cannot exist."
> >
> > SteveT would say the same exact thing about the existence of God
> > and of a life after death, if I read him right.
> >
> > > John Harshman has how many years of college and he doesn't know that illogical means non-existent, cannot exist?
> >
> > He does know that, but he isn't about to accept the allegation
> > that it is illogical just on the basis of your say-so. That
> > goes for me too.

See challenge above.

> > > So you people are the dumbest and the most deluded people in Western society,
> >
> > SteveT is such a reflexive atheist that he thinks that concern about
> > the very QUESTION of whether God exists is an example of "Western
> > cultural imperialism" and a hang-up of "the Abrahamic religions."
> >
>
> Well, in the West, when we argue for the existence of God our arguments are not meant or directed at Eastern philosophers.

They OUGHT to be, if you really believe God exists.

Do you?

>
> > > very close neighbors with "Christian" Fundamentalists,
> > > your brothers and sisters who accept existence of natural selection
> > > and micro-evolution.
> >
> > Are you using a private definition of microevolution?
>
> Micro changes that contribute to speciation, accomplished by an unguided material agent.

"contribute to" is backpedaling. There are lots of fundamentalists
who aren't committing themselves to belief in speciation; but they
do accept what BIOLOGISTS call "microevolution":

>
> > The accepted
> > definition of that is "change of frequency of alleles in a population"
> > and "evolutionary change below the level of speciation," and you've
> > confirmed that you have no problem with these things.
>
> Ridiculous.

You fail to support this put-down below.

> As you know I'm a species immutabilist, like every scientist was before 1859.

Have you forgotten about Lamarck, or are you knowingly lying here?

> Allele frequency changes are only evolutionary if accomplished by an unguided material agent. Since unguided material agency doesn't exist

So your parents were guided by God to conceive you and not anyone else,
because God timed their intercourse just so?

So God guided an asteroid to the Yucatan in order to wipe out the
dinosaurs, etc. to end the Mesozoic era, in the World According
to Ray Martinez?

So God makes every sparrow drop dead at a time of God's choosing,
even though Jesus only said that God OBSERVES these things happening?

> allele frequency changes are teleological.

I think I see what your game is here. Every definition that biologists
use is to be interpreted as "being accomplished by non-divine agency"

Note that I didn't say "non-intelligent agency": you have an
irrational hatred of directed panspermia.

> >
> > And as for "natural selection", Harshman and co. have chided me
> > for thinking it could possibly apply to anything except
> > populations -- freely interbreeding groups of animals that are
> > well within the Biblical *min* ("kind").
> >
>
> Don't understand.

I'm telling you that evolutionary theorists, according
to Harshman, ONLY use the term "natural selection" for events that
are too small to produce REAl speciation, which produces animals that cannot
interbreed (as opposed to "do not interbreed in the wild") to
produce fertile offspring.

Clear now? Or will you pull a John Harshman, telling me to
stop beating around the bush and get to the point?

> Good to hear from you Peter, you're still the most interesting Evolutionist out there. And Robert Camp is hard to understand. Since you both are die hard Evolutionists it's hard to fathom any real problems you might have with each other.

If someone were to slander you repeatedly, but support you 100% in your
arguments against "Evolutionists," would YOU find it hard to fathom
any resentment you feel about his slanders?

> Gotta go, as you say, duty calls.
> Will finish reply ASAP.

I'm waiting ...

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
U. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Bob Casanova]

On Wed, 15 Mar 2017 11:42:53 -0700, the following appeared

BTW, Ray, a good example of a pre-emptively refuted claim is
the current assertion by the Flat Earth Society that
(surprise!) the Earth is flat.

[Earle Jones27]

On 2017-03-06 19:08:50 +0000, Ray Martinez said:

> On Sunday, March 5, 2017 at 11:24:56 AM UTC-8, Bob Casanova wrote:
>> On Sat, 4 Mar 2017 19:26:24 -0800 (PST), the following
>> appeared in talk.origins, posted by Ray Martinez
>> <pyram...@yahoo.com>:
>>
>>> On Friday, February 24, 2017 at 6:29:57 AM UTC-8, *Hemidactylus* wrote:
>>
>> <snip to a single point, one which illustrates one of Ray's
>> major problems>
>>
>>>> And Hume was easily a better philosopher than Rand. His arguments on how
>>>> people tend to hyperextend analogies from the known (machines and creative
>>>> intelligence) to the unknown (the universe and god) in his Dialogues
>>>> Concerning Natural Religion stand up to any fiction or "nonfiction" Rand
>>>> ever wrote. He pre-emptively demolished your hero Paley.
>>
>>> Since Hume died before Paley published Natural Theology your belief is loony.
>>
>> You might want to learn to read for comprehension; for a
>> start, look up "pre-emptively".

>> --
>>
>> Bob C.
>>
>> "The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
>> the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
>> 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"
>>
>> - Isaac Asimov
>

> Your understanding is the understanding that's lagging, not mine. Of
> course I saw "pre-emptively." Based on the fact that Paley published
> Natural Theology after Hume had died, I ignored because it's throwaway.
>

> Ray

*
Ray: I don't believe you.

You ignored the use of "pre-emptively" not because it's a throway. You
ignored it because it doesn't fit in your amniotic warmth of Christian
certainty. When you have certainty, you cannot take on any
dissonance**.

**
See Festinger, Leon; "Cognitive Dissonance."

earle
*

[Ray Martinez]

On Friday, March 17, 2017 at 1:54:55 PM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:

[snip material addressed previously....]

> > I think of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and many other
> > creatures as an example of natural selection on a grand scale.
> > But no, that is excluded by evolutionary theorists BY DEFINITION.
> >
> > On what grounds do YOU exclude it, by the way?

Mass extinction is not origins biology per se.

> >
> > >
> > > >
> > > > One of the principles of objectivist epistemology is that there is an
> > > > objective universe. That strikes me as a perfectly reasonable working
> > > > hypothesis, but doesn't seem to be consistent with your
> > > > presuppositionalism and occasionalism.
> > >

> > > You've never been able to understand and convey my view----which again shows the degree of ignorance and delusion your mind is suffering. When Randian Objectivism speaks of an objective universe the same is defined within the well explained presupposition that existence = known with absolute certainty.

> >
> > And so her "objective universe" excludes what she thought of as the
> > Christian God. As it does for Robert Camp. I've sheathed my claws
> > in a rather long, ongoing discussion with him. He hasn't sheathed
> > his, but he's willing to keep the discussion going and I'm slowly
> > beginning to understand where he is coming from.

So where is he coming from? I'd like to know.

> >
> > > Absolute certainty of course is a concept wholly rejected by current scholarly mainstream thought, which Rand was attacking. So you've quickly scanned an Objectivist website and quote-mined a main claim without understanding it's meaning.
> > >
> > > As for me I'm a "periodicist" also known as an "interventionist," which means I accept the fact that species, past and present, owe their existence in nature to Divine intervention occurring periodically in real time.
> >
> > Well, then, you have no quarrel with Lord Kelvin or anyone else who
> > believes in speciation being speeded up by divine manipulation of
> > mutations. So what are you fighting against, exactly?

You said exactly: I'm fighting against the existence of all unguided/undirected/unintelligent material and/or natural causal agencies because we know only designed agencies exist.

Moreover, when Kelvin lived speciation was a completely unknown process; the same did not become known or explained until the appearance of Ernst Mayr on the scene. So I think you've erred.

In addition: "speciation" and "divine manipulation" (your phrase) or divine involvement contradict. God is known NOT to be involved with evolutionary processes----that's why these processes are called unguided, undirected, and unintelligent or collectively as "natural," which means "non-supernatural." So IF Kelvin said what you have him saying, what he said is subjective, not accepted by science after the rise of Darwinism.

And if Kelvin was an interventionist, which he most likely was, I don't know for a fact, then whatever speciation he accepted MUST have been "speciation" and not speciation or evolution as accepted by science since the rise of Darwinism in the years 1859-1872. IIRC you never been able to understand this point.

>
> >
> > Lord Kelvin even believed that the sun was less than 100 million
> > years old (maybe a lot less, I forget) and so his theory could
> > be one that you might be willing to accept.

Relevance? What theory?

> Maybe you will answer that you think God intervened to poof
> first Hyracotherium, then Orohippus, then Epihippus, then Mesohippus,
> into existence as fully formed adults, and so on down the line until
> he poofed horses, asses and zebras separately, in the same way.
>

It's called "direct creation" or "special creation" or "independent creation" or "separate creation" or collectively as "interventionism." It's not called "poof" or "poofing." Interventionism says EACH species, past and present, was created by God in real time wherever found (references available upon request).

> But why go to all that trouble when, with a few mutations, God
> could have achieved the same effect while always having a lovely
> panorama of whatever equids inhabited whatever environments (leafy
> forests, grassy plains,...) to delight his angels and archangels?
>

What trouble?

>
> I've snipped some specialized talk about Ayn Rand's philosophy
> between you and Ernest Major. I don't know enough about it
> to make it worthwhile to comment on it at this point.

Neither does Ernest Major----LOL!

Ray

[Ray Martinez]

The main aim of Randian epistemology theory, known commonly as Objectivism, which is, as Burk has observed, her view of Realism, was to attack the mainstream notions of uncertainty and doubt. We know Rand purchased the complete works of Aristotle; then a short time later she unveiled Objectivism. The relevance of Rand lies in the fact that she was an Atheist. By contrast: It was Atheist scholars who were responsible for causing the acceptance of doubt and uncertainty.

Will finish replying ASAP.

Ray

[Ray Martinez]

On Monday, March 20, 2017 at 7:09:55 AM UTC-7, Peter Nyikos wrote:

[snip material addressed previously....]

Of course; mutation is presupposed to come along with selection. Just like in Theology where the Trinity comes along with God.

> PE is an attempt to put together
> how these things work to produce "speciation".
>

Yes, Mayr's view of speciation.

> Except that "speciation" in the context of PE does not mean that the two
> "species" cannot interbreed to produce fertile offspring. It means that
> they simply stopped doing it. Prime example: the polar bear is considered
> to be a different species than the brown bear, but they have been
> interbred in zoos to give fertile offspring; ditto lions and tigers.

But one will never find ligers in the wild because tigers only mate with other tigers and lions only mate with other lions.

>
> OTOH the horse and ass are different species because their offspring
> are sterile. [There are very rare alleged counterexamples.]
>
> You have repeatedly ducked the question of whether horse and ass, both
> well known from the Bible, are of the same biblical "kind" (*min*)
> or not.

Tell me, what is a "biblical kind"?

Kind is derived from kin; indicating relatedness. Are you suggesting the Bible is scientifically correct, having successfully predicted evolutionary relationships? If not, what's your point?

>
> > And I'm fully aware of the power of the evidence for common descent, which convinces scientists that descent and evolution has occurred. Yet common descent is dependent on microevolution occurring and microevolution in turn is dependent on natural selection occurring.
>
> No, there is also genetic drift.

What I said is factually correct; to say "No" is to say "false." Drift is NOT an adaptive mechanism. Evolutionary theory is MAINLY concerned with the production of adaptations. Note the fact that I said "production" which means "construction" or positive mutational phenomena. These mutations and their preservation are essential because without them complexity cannot arise. Therefore drift cannot produce any thing that demands explanation absent selection.

>
> > But natural selection is nonsense, it doesn't exist.
>
> You've repeated that mantra so often, you may actually believe it.
> But I've never seen you argue for it.

Traverse over to "Non-random evolution" where debate is on-going:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/talk.origins/ZGBJJnxpXo8%5B201-225%5D

But I have argued extensively for the claim that natural selection is nonsense, doesn't exist.

>
> <snip non-argument for nonexistence of natural selection>
>
>
> > >
> > > Lord Kelvin even believed that the sun was less than 100 million
> > > years old (maybe a lot less, I forget) and so his theory could
> > > be one that you might be willing to accept.
>
> Why no response from you about Lord Kelvin, Ray?

See previous reply.

>
> Concluded in next reply, as soon as I've seen that this one has posted.

Ray

[Ray Martinez]

I predict you can't identify even ONE mainstream scholar who says Hume refuted Paley preemptively or non-preemptively. Please include a quotation that says ANYTHING about Hume refuting Paley or even design for that matter.

What almost all scholars do say: Hume crafted good anti-design arguments, but these were not accepted when he lived; and it was Darwin who refuted Paley and design, not Hume.

Ray

[*Hemidactylus*]

http://chem.tufts.edu/science/pigliucci/rationally-speaking/RS2000-11.htm

"Unfortunately for Paley, the famous skeptic philosopher David Hume had
already refuted his argument, more than 50 years before Paley’s
formulation. In his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hume left it to
his legendary character, Philo, to concisely explain what is wrong with the
argument from design:"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massimo_Pigliucci

"Pigliucci was born in Monrovia, Liberia, although he was raised in Rome,
Italy.[1] He has a doctorate in genetics from the University of Ferrara,
Italy, a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Connecticut, and a Ph.D.
in philosophy of science from the University of Tennessee.[10] He is a
fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of
the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.[1]"

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/feb/20/religion-philosophy-hume

"Hume on religion, part 3: How he skewered intelligent design...Hume was
here anticipating the argument of William Paley, who argued that it is as
rational to infer the existence of a divine creator from the existence of
the marvellous, complex universe as it is infer the existence of watchmaker
from the discovery of a watch. The analogy, however, is hopeless."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Baggini

"Julian Baggini (born 1968) is a British philosopher, and the author of
several books about philosophy written for a general audience. He is
co-founder of The Philosophers' Magazine.[1]

Baggini was awarded a PhD in 1996 from University College London for a
thesis on the philosophy of personal identity.[2][3]"

I count two scholars.

>
> What almost all scholars do say: Hume crafted good anti-design arguments,
> but these were not accepted when he lived; and it was Darwin who refuted
> Paley and design, not Hume.
>

Hume wasn't trying to win a popularity contest. His arguments stand on
merit not what contemporaries thought of him. He made a good case against
design through Philo until that character backpedalled a little toward the
end. Hume effectively countered Paley's arguments before they were
published, but as Dawkins and Dennett point out Hume had no alternative
means of explaining the appearance (or analogic semblance) of design.
Darwin did that.

The fideist Demea also opposed Cleanthes. In trying to ascribe design to
God with empirical argument don't you run the risk of pigeonholing him with
anthropomorphic characteristics? Why can't pure faith be sufficient if
reason cannot address design sufficiently given the knockout blow selection
provides aided by Hume's refutation of the analogical approach?

Have you bothered to read Hume's Dialogues? Have you bothered to read
Paley? I believe I have quoted at length where Paley lingers on the
question of functional shift (sharkskin sandpaper) but you lack the acumen
to address that. Crickets chirped.

[Burkhard]

Dennett, Daniel C. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings
of Life, p. 29 footnote 7 for instance

Or Bernard Williams, "Hume on Religion" in D. F. Pears, David Hume,
essaya from a symposium, 1963 p. 85

or Loesberg, Jonathan. "Kant, Hume, Darwin, and design: Why intelligent
design wasn't science before Darwin and still isn't." The Philosophical
Forum. Vol. 38. No. 2. Blackwell Publishing Inc, 2007.

[*Hemidactylus*]

One way to look at the sutuation is Paley got his ass kicked half a century
before he made the argument by Hume and a half century afterward by Darwin.
After that effective one-two punch Ray still thinks Paley is a means
strangely syncretically coupled with the rabid atheist Rand to demolish
evolution.

Given Rand's obsession with the dollar sign and her associate Greenspan's
love of the gold standard I will now invoke William Jennings Bryan's cross
of gold speech as any true Christian or sympathetic atheist would.

[jillery]

Good show, old chap, jolly good.

[*Hemidactylus*]

What? Do you think I am putting on a fucking show? Am I here to amuse you?
Am I a clown?

[jillery]

>>> already refuted his argument, more than 50 years before Paley?s

Note to self: Hemi takes compliments poorly.

[stevet...@gmail.com]

Stevet would briefly say re the great " evolution" pseudo- debate

The historic fact that organisms have changed over time can be denoted by the generalised term " evolution".

Similarly " natural selection" is a generalisation denoting trillions of individual and different events in which organisms either survived or did not survive.

To misconstrue these useful generalisations as denoting or being actual "processes" or " events" in or by themselves leads to endless confusions.

Evolutionary theories should merely describe the historic facts, including the use of useful generalisations such as " natural selection" to denote the logical , within the theory, similarities between the myriad of historic " selection" events i.e the terms natural selection and evolution are themselves logical and not empirical.

SteveT would say on " certainty" that it is certain we are not certain on the use of the term " certainty".

125. If a blind man were to ask me “Have you got two hands?” I should not make sure by looking. If I were to have any doubt of it, then I don’t know why I should trust my eyes. For why shouldn’t I test my eyes by looking to find out whether I see my two hands? What is to be tested by what? (Who decides what stands fast?) And what does it mean to say that such and such stands fast?

- Wittgenstein "On Certainty"

[raven1]

On Tue, 21 Mar 2017 06:50:48 -0700 (PDT), stevet...@gmail.com
wrote:

Stevet should stop Bogarting that joint.

[John Harshman]

So why only if a blind man asked him? What is the relevance of blindness
here? And why can't two things be tested at the same time? Looking to
confirm you have two hands is a test of both your eyes and your hands.
Of course you could test your eyes and hands independently in many ways,
which ought to build up a bit of trust in both. Was Wittgenstein a Bayesian?

[stevet...@gmail.com]

And Raven should stop wasting their life making inconsequential and pointless comments . If you say what you find " stoned" in my comments and why then perhaps you have a point, at present it seems you are masking incomprehension with turgid wit.

[raven1]

On Tue, 21 Mar 2017 08:33:54 -0700 (PDT), stevet...@gmail.com
wrote:

>And Raven should stop wasting their life making inconsequential
>and pointless comments .

It seemed a fitting response to an inconsequential and pointless post.

[stevet...@gmail.com]

Take it you are incapable of giving any reasoning behind your opinions, being instead content to bask in the comforting glow of your own amusement at your own incomprehension.

[stevet...@gmail.com]

His example was illustrative only, and not of any great significance in itself. The point he was illustrating being that to say you are certain of X you also have to be certain of your method of being "certain of X" and so on in infinite regress i.e " certainity" is not a "absolute" that can be " reached" but more, in many cases, an assessment by whatever criteria of our confidence in our own knowledge.

And the obvious parallels between this aspect of his thought and Bayes have been well noted and are the subject of academic musings.

[John Harshman]

It's certainly uncontroversial that certainty isn't something science
can deliver. It's a pity that his illustrative example was so faulty in
showing that simple point.

[Bob Casanova]

On Mon, 20 Mar 2017 13:03:04 -0700 (PDT), the following

>I predict you can't identify even ONE mainstream scholar who says Hume refuted Paley preemptively or non-preemptively. Please include a quotation that says ANYTHING about Hume refuting Paley or even design for that matter.
>
>What almost all scholars do say: Hume crafted good anti-design arguments, but these were not accepted when he lived; and it was Darwin who refuted Paley and design, not Hume.

Quite simply, I don't believe you. It's up to *you* to
provide evidence regarding when Hume's arguments were
accepted, and to show that the consensus at the time Paley
published was that Hume was wrong. Both Hume and Paley
argued based on logic, not evidence, when they published;
Darwin provided actual evidence from observations of nature,
and he wasn't the first.