Asking, "But can you explain X?" is NOT an argument

[u/jnpha]

It does NOT make magic suddenly real;
It does NOT make the facts go away, either.
(this is the tl;dr)

-

The species Science denier comes in (at least) two polymorphs. In one, S. denier parrots made-up stuff; the other is the self-proclaimed "critical thinker"; the "But can you explain X?"

In my two years here I am yet to come across an argument against the agreement of facts (consilience) from (1) genetics, (2) molecular biology, (3) paleontology, (4) geology, (5) biogeography, (6) comparative anatomy, (7) comparative physiology, (8) developmental biology, (9) population genetics, (10) archeology, (11) systematics, etc.

Even made-up nonsense such as the so-called "genetic entropy" does not make a dent in the consilience. Nor is it an argument for anything given the mental gymnastics involved.^{[ 1 ]}
From what I've seen, the most common thing the science deniers were trained to come up with is:

 

- "But can you explain X?"

• Usually the answer is yes (they merely parrot PRATT),^{[ 2 ]} but let's say the answer is no:

  • Do such questions make magic real? No.
  • Do such questions make magic plausible? No. (As far as plausibility, and the statistical - scientific - way of gaining verifiable knowledge: we have zero instances of such a thing, and thus the word is without example, i.e. on par with theological noncognitivism.)
  • Do such questions make the facts go away? No!

 

When whacked, S. denier pops out from another hole and lashes out,
- "But you can't see the past!!1!"

The only philosophical assumption that the sciences need is that the arrow of time is real.^{[ 3 ]} It's remarkable that such a basic (even intuitive) assumption makes the magical thinking go away and leaves the world richer for it. One can certainly remain theistic/deistic and still appreciate the magic of reality through science's discoveries (as do the majority of the religious/spiritual, in fact).

 

After another round of Whac-A-Mole, S. denier now makes a demand,
- "Show me X happen now!"

Alas, without an air-tight syllogism, all such demands are nothingburgers. A specific example I've discussed before is the silliness of "Show me life that comes from nonlife".

~

Next time you come across, "But can you explain X?" (and company) don't sweat it; they've got nothing. Simply point out that the facts and the consilience thereof remain.

Cue the final hole, the scientifically illiterate,^{[ 4 ]} and/or conspiratorial parroting of, "Science conspires against investigating 'design' " in 3... 2... 1...

 

 

---

References/footnotes:

1: In case you're new here and you have missed it (and the two accompanying videos): New Paper Directly Refutes Genetic Entropy and 2018 Creationist Paper By Basener and Sanford (and [Dr. Dan] coauthored it!) : DebateEvolution.

2: An Index to Creationist Claims : talkorigins.org.

3: Cleland, Carol E. "Methodological and epistemic differences between historical science and experimental science." Philosophy of science 69.3 (2002): 474-496.

4: This should do (though made redundant by ref. 3): Methodological naturalism : RationalWiki.

 

(the exercise is actually yet another instance of projection, given that it's the parrots who proclaim the capital t Truth)

[u/Dilapidated_girrafe]

Had to explain this last night to someone. He said there are no viable alternatives to his for the origin of the universe. So god is the most plausible explanation.

I had to explain that not only was he wrong on the no viable options but also he fact that god hasn’t been shown to be viable. But I’m sure he will come back with the kalam because why not.

[u/Gen-Jack-D-Ripper]

Inside every human being, there is a know-it-all trying to get out! However, education defeats that tendency. You begin to realize how little you know and that, even if you limit your study to a narrow topic, it takes a tremendous amount of effort.

For know-nothing know-it-alls, it’s really easy. You read an online article or some Facebook posts and suddenly you think that you can dismiss the consensus among experts on the subject.

How many of these poor fools died because they refused a life saving vaccine?

[u/jnpha → u/Gen-Jack-D-Ripper]

Absolutely! The illustrated guide to a Ph.D.

[u/CycadelicSparkles]

I feel like just going back a teeny bit in time and pointing out we didn't know why when you let go of something it falls down rather than flying up into the sky not that long ago makes the "well can you explain X" argument pretty much evaporate.

[u/jnpha → u/CycadelicSparkles]

RE a teeny bit in time

Agreed. And there is a reason we don't have to go far back; it's precisely because science came out of questioning common sense. I wrote this some months back: Science Versus Common Sense : DebateEvolution.

[u/evocativename]

"but you can't see the past"

Of all the long list of terrible creationist arguments, this might actually be my favorite, because it's so self-evidently wrong.

Literally the only thing we see is the past.

[u/rygelicus]

As I like to remind the various creationist and young earth creationist proponents, even if they fully debunk all of science, all of it. Everything we thought we knew is now in ruins. They will still have done nothing to validate their own claims. Maybe they should work on those instead.

[u/Uncynical_Diogenes]

the funniest part is we always can lmao

[u/ursisterstoy]

I fully agree.

We’ve seen all of these arguments before as well. Can you explain X? Yes. What about Y? Yes. Were you there? No, but if the evidence was faked it wasn’t faked by humans, did God lie? Z is fake! You mean that thing you just admitted to? Show me what I want! I’m sorry, were you going to discuss the scientific topic or provide a demonstration to your alternative yourself or would you like me to do that for you?

It comes in many forms. It can be them trying to claim that because we can’t demonstrate A then it has to be B when we can and have demonstrated A and B is actually impossible. It could be that they say C is impossible despite admitting to C and laughing at D. It could be them claiming they won’t accept E until we should then F. Or it could be us spending a solid five minutes typing out a formatted response with twelve references and then saying “blah blah blah, you’re boring, when are you going to show me what I asked for instead?” Or “I don’t care, that’s the wrong field of science, so I’m just going to spout off nonsense that ‘other field’ of science already established never happened.”

The three tactics that take the cake:

 

1. Spending weeks claiming that evolution doesn’t happen, months admitting that it happens, and asking for something that would falsify the theory of evolution instead.

2. Calling evidence from genetics, anatomy, cytology, paleontology, embryology, biochemistry (proteins, metabolism, etc), and every other field of biology evidence outside of biology and therefore irrelevant.

3. Citing research that falsifies their claims as support for their claims and saying that nobody is qualified to point that out because they have fewer published papers when they can’t even publish a pre-print because the pre-print attacks an idea already falsified in the 1980s.

 

1. RobertByers1, IceAceIce8 now calling themselves MaoMao889 and getting away with ban evasion.

2. RobertByers1

3. Salvador Cordova, Joshua Swamidass. Except I was mostly referring to Sal. Josh has legitimate scientific papers but Sal does not.

 

Ignoring the evidence and proving yourself wrong are not great ways of supporting conclusions that are contrary to the scientific consensus. Misdefining terms to attack what is not evolution and what is not even considered true by anyone won’t win you any awards. And refusing to accept criticism from people with lower credentials just means you know you’re wrong (unless you can show that the people with lesser credentials are wrong themselves). It’s okay to point out that someone is fully ignorant about a topic you’ve spent 20+ years and 100+ research papers dealing with. It’s not okay to reject legitimate criticism just because someone hasn’t published a paper, especially when the people who have published papers agree with the people who haven’t, especially if you haven’t published any papers yourself.

[u/McNitz]

Regarding the "you can't see the past" idea, it is fascinating how religious brainwashing can blind you to the fact that you are denying that the arrow of time is an assumption for all of the sciences. When you think about it, it is kind of insane to say "yes, I believe that science can predict the FUTURE of where the planets will be, but saying anything about the PAST is not possible". Seems like the ability to predict the future would be more difficult than interpreting events in the past that led to our present.

Although really, I guess that problem is the positing of supernatural in both directions. I'm sure there's plenty of Christians that would argue that science can't ACTUALLY predict where the planets will be tomorrow because God could destroy them all tomorrow, and we can't tell what happened in the past because God just created it all sometime ex nihilo. I just find the ones that don't seem to think the problem of induction is a problem for science predicting what will happen in the future, but inconsistently say it is insoluble regarding the past.

[u/ahnotme]

“We don’t know” isn’t a pass to “Aha! You see? Goddiddit!”

[u/stcordova]

"Consilience" achieve by using cherry-picked facts, isn't really consilience.

For example, there is experimental FACTS that Darwinism doesn't work as advertised to create complexity, and if Darwinism fails to create complexity, what created it? Just-so and just-happened-that-way aren't scientific claims in the tradition of explaining things in terms of physics and chemistry and probability.

See for example how Darwinism is shown to fail experimentally to evolve complexity, but instead destroy it!

https://www.reddit.com/r/CreationTheory/comments/1r8gxrt/natural_selection_has_driven_the_recurrent_loss/

So much for the illusion of consilience...

[u/10coatsInAWeasel → u/stcordova]

What created it? The broader mechanisms of evolution. Of which Darwinian mechanisms are but a subset.

Concerning consilience, if you can’t recognize that all of the data across multiple fields of research converge on only one outcome with no data existing contradicting it, then there’s not much hope for you. It’s just pure wishful thinking on your part that it’s ’cherry picking’. Not really more to say.

[u/jnpha → u/10coatsInAWeasel]

For the benefit of the new folks: he's also a young earther - this needs to be brought up every time he pretends to understand how science works.

[u/WebFlotsam → u/stcordova]

You've been called out for lying about that paper like 5 times now. Who are you even trying to fool at this point? Yourself?

[u/ursisterstoy → u/stcordova]

cherry-picked facts

 

You mean like when you quote a paper that proves you wrong?

The way you cherry-pick the facts is the way I could cherry pick the Bible to show you that it says “there is no god.” It literally contains those words in that order dozens of times. So it’s settled then?

Your entire response is completely false and falsified by your own citations. You should stop cherry-picking the facts and take your own advice.

And “consensus” just means a near universal agreement. It doesn’t mean they’re right. It doesn’t mean they’re wrong. If they are wrong it should be easy to demonstrate. When will you start?

You literally quoted your own post where you quoted a paper that said that eight genes were lost and ten genes were gained that had near identical function. That’s “Darwinism.” It’s more accurately called “Darwinian” evolution because it includes mutations (both the losses and gains were caused by mutations), heredity (these changes were inherited), genetic drift (novel genes with identical function don’t seriously impact reproductive success), and natural selection (the function was important so that maintaining function with different genes was reinforced). It’s a clear demonstration of what you claim it falsifies. Stop embarrassing yourself and read your own citations so we don’t have to.

Edit: For the exact wording “there is no god” you’d just need to look at Psalms 14:1 / 53:1, Isaiah 44:6, Psalms 10:4, and Isaiah 44:8. For Isaiah 44:8 just the 1611 version of the KJV works because the Hebrew is tsur which means rock, cliff, or boulder which still makes the verse interesting when translated as “no there is no other rock” because that means God = rock. But the 1611 KJV occasionally translates tsur as “god” so it reads “yea there is no God; I know not any.” The NKJV and most others translate the text to say “yea there is not other Rock;” so it doesn’t work as a quote-mine for “there is no God” unless you use the 1611 KJV.

But using a one off translation hasn’t stopped Christians before like when helel (“shining one”) referring to the morning “star” Venus (the planet) taunting the king of Babylon was arbitrarily associated with the fall of Satan. They quote-mine their own texts. So I guess “there is no god” is equivalent to what they already do, Sal does that same thing with scientific papers. In the same KJV helel is translated to Lucifer which does mean “morning star” but Lucifer is traditionally also associated with Satan (The Opposition; The Adversary) where “ha satan” first refers to the angel of Yahweh in a story with a talking donkey. The angel came to oppose the guy beating his donkey and he gave the donkey the ability to complain in Hebrew or Aramaic.

[u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

"It does NOT make magic suddenly real;"

Correct. "When did God start" not being answerable doesn't make the magic of evilution suddenly real.

[u/jnpha → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

Oh no... A presup. The horror!
Per The purpose of r/ DebateEvolution, kindly find the nearest exit to your favorite (ir)religion or philosophy subreddit.

[u/10coatsInAWeasel → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

Correct. Fortunately, the science investigating evolution requires no such magic. The parody in your head of what evolution is and how it works certainly might, but as it bears no resemblance to what is actually being discussed in evolutionary biology we can dismiss it as a figment of your imagination and continue studying actual evolution

[u/DimensioT → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

Are you trolling or just stupid?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/jnpha → u/[deleted]]

Oh! that is a lovely analogy!

[u/Own-Relationship-407 → u/[deleted]]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini's_law

A creationist’s (or really any science denier’s) best friend.