"PeteM" <postmaster@torquemada.net> wrote in message
news:WDKBhUAcaVi$EwGb@torquemada.net...
prabbit1@shamrocksgf.com <prabbit1@shamrocksgf.com>
averred
On Wed, 8 Oct 2003 08:32:24 +0000 (UTC), PeteM
<postmaster@torquemada.net> wrote:
Jason Cortina <jascortinaCLIPTHIS@comcast.net> averred
On Mon, 6 Oct 2003 21:20:42 +0000 (UTC), PeteM
<postmaster@torquema
da.net>
wrote:
Nick Keighley <nick.keighley@marconi.com> averred
and explain away a whole heap of observational
evidence,
to make that one fly;
What observational evidence (aside from the
evidence for the Big
Bang)?
sorry? We're supposed to discard any evidence for
the Big Bang?
No, I didn't say that. I know the evidence for the
Big Bang (which is
essentially limited to the red shift and the
microwave background).
asked what astronomical evidence there was against
panspermia.
It's nobody's job to show evidence *against* your
viewpoint. It's your job
to show actual evidence *for* it.
I deny the statement you just made about whose job it is
to supply
evidence. Now, according to you, I don't have to produce
any evidence
against it. It's up to you to produce evidence that your
claim is true.
Go ahead.
Simple. It's impossible to demonstrate that something
does not exist.
In order to do so, you'd have to be able to look
everywhere at once.
So therefore, you are not under the burden to show
something 'is not.'
The one who has the burden is the one who claims
something 'is.'
In the above passage, you switch from using our previous
terms of "to
provide evidence", to "to demonstrate", which means "to
prove". That's
illegitimate. The two terms don't mean the same thing.
Proof is for
mathematicians. In science we do not ask people to prove
things, just to
provide some evidence for or against them.
So let's re-phrase your claim in legitimate terms: "It's
impossible to
provide any evidence that something does not exist. In
order to do so,
you'd have to be able to look everywhere at once. So
therefore ..." This
claim is clearly false. It perfectly possible to *provide
evidence* that
something does not exist. Your argument therefore fails.
Your argument is also fallacious in another way: namely,
the term
"burden" is present in the conclusion but not in the
premises. In order
to derive your desired conclusion, you need another
premise, something
like "If a person makes a claim that his opponent cannot
disprove, the
burden of proof lies on that person." Unfortunately, this
premise is the
very proposition that I am challenging.
And thirdly, even supposing that your argument were
correct, it works
against you rather than for you. For I am not the one
claiming that
"something is". I did not claim that panspermia existed,
only that it
was a logical possibility. (Check back on the thread if
you doubt this.)
It was the other poster (Nick?)
Two letters in common, at the wrong end of the name - you
really should check back on the thread.
who claimed that something (namely a
"whole heap of observational evidence against it")
existed.
Nuhuh. I claimed that you would have to explain away a
whole heap of observational evidence; that is the evidence
that others have referred to in support of the consmoilogy
of the last 35-40 years.
Lines of evidence such as:-
1 Increasing red shift at increasing distances (measured
independently from the red-
shift by standard candles such as cepheid variables and type
1a supernovas);
2 The existence of CMBR - the discovery fo which,
incidentally, was the death knell for steady state
cosmology.
So by your
own argument, the burden of proof is on him to show that
this evidence
exists - or at least to describe it so that we can discuss
it.
As I have stated, others got in first with a list of lines
of evidence.
You didn't answer anything with your "panspermia"
garbage^H^H^H^H^H^Hpseudotheory.
I can never understand why you people feel the necessity
to start
shouting insults in what is supposed to be a rational
debate. Fair
enough perhaps when one is provoked. But really this
doesn't help your
image.
Your claim was that life had "always existed". According to
current cosmology, the entire physical universe came into
being as a ball of inconceivably hot elementary particles.
No life could exist in such an environment. Ergo, life
could not have "always existed".
That being the case, life must have arisen somewhere. It is
not wholly impossible that life arrived on this planet by
panspermia, although that is not the way to bet - but even
if that turns out to be the way life got here, you're still
left only with the two possibilities for abiogenesis that
were canvassed in the post to which you first replied:-
1) life arose from a supernatural entity's active creation,
and
2) life arose and arises from non-life.
--
I don't trust camels - or anyone else that can go for a week
without a drink.
(Use - deleting big blue -
for email)
.
