ICFreely,
as much as I enjoyed your rants against the Global Warmongering propagandists, as much you lose me when you start jumping around from in my opinion reasonable to completely irrational branches like in your last post.
You seem to bear a hatred or intrinsic suspicion against "science" and uses words like "scientism" (a self-contradicting insult; when the scientific method, the philosophy behind empirical and reproducible experiments and consequent physical laws gets "ism'ed", "institutionalised", politised, corrupted, religionised, etc. by definition it loses its scientific status. From within, from philosophical base) to generalise a population of many millions of people.
It's sad to see both your and hoi.pollois "attacks" on evolution theory/geology.
If you attack a standardised, "official", "main stream" story, make sure at least that you shape your opponent right.
The way I'm reading what is thought of as evolution theory, geology, determination of the age of the Earth, the origin of fossil fuels (Ataraxia's post), etc. and then this straw man "attacked" (with what? not with science, 'cause dirty!, not with arguments, 'cause reasoning is scientific and dirty, not with any substance, no real material), it reads like if you'd build a September Clues video on 9/11 and describe the "official story" you oppose like this:
13 Jordanian, Turkish and Inuit terrorists tried to fly submarines into the White House, the Chrysler Building and a missed attempt on Bohemian Grove on September 13, 2003. NORAD was flying around but ended up in the wrong location cause their GPS was already set to winter time.... etc. etc.
I call for nonhocapito to back me up in saying that this is nor should be to the standards of serious research on this forum. Not only does it make a complete fool out of yourself,
which you obviously are not as you contributed so many good things, it also drives Cluesforum in the direction of the Guilty By Association trap that Simon identified in his brand new Flat Earth topic. Ironically I fear he is doing this GBA trick in the same topic, but that's for there to discuss.
Where the value in this topic in my eyes lays, is to reveal the ridiculously religious side of "modern science"; the unreachable, near-religious jibberish of "The Big Bang", "String Theory" and other
Theoretical "Physics", Einsteinian 'relativity', etc..
As soon as it falls beyond the realm of "we can empirically come to the same results and thus perform decent scientific peer review
*" and into the bucket of "you have to believe us, we are the authorities, the Gods of Science, no, experiments are unnecessary, we've ununderstandable to normal human beings, cracked tha whol' thang thru", yes, then there's space to fill in a true clueseeking manner.
But with arguments, point by point, addressing not only all points of the "official theory", but also explaining why other theories do not stand scrutiny.
I hope and trust Simon to build an example case of how attacking an official Earth-scientific standpoint with reason and providing enough weight to lift his own (adapted from Inspired Indians, Brahe Basterds or Lonely Longmontanus or self-invented) hypothesis above all others.
Any rants without proper well-evidenced and worked out argumentation against broadly accepted theories (and not only "because it's mainstream", those are childish MSM-guilty by association attacks) should be avoided.
If your explanation for the
observations of biological diversity and similarity is "Intelligent Design", then there's no rational discussion possible. It becomes a Babylonian language problem. Irrational, religious and metaphysical world views are not necessarily right or wrong; they simply cannot be an answer to a scientific problem.
If you reject the scientific method, the core values of scientific philosophy, the rules of experiments, the proper use of statistics, etc. as a whole, then the question becomes: on which basis you reason in looking at all the fakery around?
I think science (and the real one, not the politised or corrupt one) is our toolkit to show that these space, media and other fakeries are around and why the "official" stories do not stand the scientific test.
Another good point about this topic would be the dive into Nikola Tesla and Simons heretic hero Tycho "Michael Jackson avant la lettre" Brahe and other "forgotten gods of science".
I wouldn't dare to call upon people, cause they would be attacked on the basis of "evolutionism" or other strange Newspeak.
I just rely on decent methods of observation and irrational explanations may well be respected, but not as alternative to scientific (so; controllable) ones.
Evolution, mainly driven by
epigenetical processes triggered by environmental changes is what I perceive in a lot of first hand study as the most reasonable explanation for the geological and present day diversity and similiraties of life on this amazing planet of ours.
If you attack that theory well-argumented, well-explained and without fallacies and guilty-by-association-we're-5-years-old-and-play-in-the-sand-pit-reasoning, I am all ears.
Hoi.pollois "attack on geology" by calling "archeological sites" is far below his standards and what he has accomplished on this forum and on 9/11. We may differ in personalities and levels of trust of other people (I consider "do not trust anyone but yourself" an impossible, cold, harsh and foolish way or living), I respect him for his work and intelligence.
Again, when you attack, do it right, otherwise you unnecessarily make a fool out of yourself;
Archeology is the study of ancient
human cultures/societies (by definition not the natural world, although these studies are used in archeology)
Paleontology is the study of
fossils in general
Paleo-antropology is the study of
human ancestors (hominids; fossils, tracks, etc.)
I am not free of foolish things at all like no one is. But
I try to avoid inflicting foolishness upon myself, which I think is a proper way to go.
Selene
* I'm talking real peer review, serious scrutiny, honest criticism and demands for data when necessary.
Strictly
not the politised, corrupted and biased "review" that is
too prevalent in scientific journals (examples all over; BigPharma, AGW, "NAScience", "planes can fly into buildings"-non-science etc.), unfortunately.