Caponizing physics

TOUCHSTONE SAID:

“This suggest you have some special knowledge of the purposes for these
‘Certain natural processes’.”

1.Does this also suggest that I require some special knowledge to deny that a rooster was designed to function as an alarm clock?

2.I’d add that since you subscribe to methodological naturalism, you cannot allow design concepts into the natural sciences; so, from your “agnostic” standpoint, natural processes weren’t designed to perform any function in particular or any function at all—in which case you’re debarred from saying that any natural process was designed to be using in dating.

Methodological naturalism banishes teleology from the realm of scientific explanation.

“What specifically are the processes you are referring to here.”

Processes which are used for relative and especially absolute dating purposes.

“And what is you basis for establish their purpose?”

Are you trying to be obtuse? Do you think the natural purpose of ice sheets (to take once example) is to tell us how old things are? You think that’s why it snows? Timex on ice?

“Mountains don't appear smaller at a distance.”

Go ahead. Deny the obvious.

“Only the most naive sensory reading would suggest that.”

To describe an appearance as “naive” is a category mistake. An appearance is simply the way an object appears or looks (or sounds or feels or tastes or smells) to the observer. It’s the direct, raw impression made by the object on the percipient.

“Naïve” has nothing to do with it. Naïveté would only be relevant if one equated the appearance with reality.

“A small movement of the head will provide parallax cues that place the far away mountain... far away, perceptually.”

Are you trying to be obtuse? Nodding your head doesn’t change the fact that mountains appear smaller at a distance.

Nodding your head may expose a discrepancy between appearance and reality. It may make the observer aware that appearances can be deceiving.

But it doesn’t change the fact that mountains still seem to be smaller at a distance.

Sorry you’re unable to grasp the meaning of the most elementary verbal and conceptual distinctions.

“While a far off mountain may only occupy a small number of degrees in the field of view, parallax informs the viewer that the mountains are very far off indeed.”

Which is irrelevant to whether mountains *appear* to be smaller at a distance.

“Or simply put, far off mountains appear ‘far off’, because they are far off.”

Now you’re substituting a different proposition as if that’s equivalent to the original proposition. To say that mountains appear to be smaller at a distance is not convertible with the statement that mountains appear to be far away.

Have you always been this mentally confused? Or to you become disoriented when debating a YEC?

“The physics we hold to predict exactly that phenomenon.”

Which is irrelevant to the gap between appearance and reality. Physics doesn’t make the phenomenon go away. It just attempts to explain it.

“If that's the case, then what do we do with rocks that appear to be quite ancient, according to the physics applied?”

There is no “we.” Just you and me.

Speaking for myself, I guard against anthropomorphic projections. I don’t equate a rooster with a cuckoo clock.

“Are you embracing the naive view here?”

You’re the one who’s acting dense, not me. Or maybe your not acting—which is even worse.

If you want a textbook example of someone who embraces the naïve view, a splendid example would be a caponizing physicist like yourself, according to whom, if a natural process or natural object like an ice sheet or rooster can be put to human use as a chronometer, then it would be unscientific or mystical to deny that a rooster really is a feathery clock, such that God would be deceiving you if you overslept because the rooster didn’t wake you up in time to catch the school bus.

“There's an implied ‘scientific’ in the use of ‘appear’ in these contexts, such that when I say the rocks in your garden appear old, I don't mean ‘naively appear’, like you're eyeballing it with a confused look. Rather, I mean ‘scientifically appear’ old -- old based on measurements of physical processes built into the rock itself. I have a hard time believing this distinction is lost on you.”

No, you don’t get to arbitrarily redefine basic words, concepts, and distinctions to weasel out of your duplicity. You try to play both sides of the appearance/reality fence, rejecting YCE because it’s supposedly counterintuitive while, at the same time, you fee free to embrace the counterintuitive theories of modern science.

There is no such thing as a scientific appearance. An appearance is inherently pretheoretical.

You are attempting to qualify an appearance in a way that collapses the appearance into reality.

“Naivete again, Steve. When we say ‘appear’, we don't mean some kind of ‘naive appearance’, like answers you might get from a three year old.”

Naïveté again, T-stone. There’s no difference in the way a mountain *appears* to a three year old, and the way it appears to Ed Witten.

There may well be a difference in the way they interpret the mountainous appearance, but the mountain itself doesn’t appear one way to a three year old, and another way to Witten. At a phenomenal or sensory perceptual level, which is the level at which appearances operate, the mountain looks just the same regardless of whether Witten is three years old or thirty.

*Appearances* aren’t *answers*. Is there some reason you’re so persistently dim on this elementary and irreducible distinction?

“Rather, the intent is to suggest "scientifically appear", which is more clunky in terms of the prose, but apparently necessary here.”

You’re trying to smuggle the corrective of reality into the definition of appearance. That violates the concept of an appearance.

“So, no, I don't see that the stars "scientifically appear" to be younger than they really are. Although that presumes my own estimates of their ages, I guess.”

Your estimate of their ages has nothing to do with how old they look in a telescope.

To the contrary, you are reinforcing the gap between appearance and reality when you contrast the way they look to an observer with their actual age (as you take it to be), after you correct for the time-lag. But that adjustment presupposes and intensifies the gap between appearance and reality.

“You've not been willing to stick your neck out far enough to venture a guess as to how old *any* star really is, from what I've seen.”

Because, according to metrical conventionalism, they don’t have a real or actual age. Are you trying to be obtuse?

“It's too scientific, perhaps?”

No, it’s too unscientific.

“You keep bringing this up.”

That’s because you keep acting as if, by shutting your eyes and clicking your heels, the problem will go away.

“Can you lay out how this applies here?”

Been there, done that.

You can’t recognize the answer because you keep asking the wrong question.

“In any case, maybe you could boldly venture out from behind that term and explain how it attaches here?”

I’ve explained both the term and its application on multiple occasions.

ANONYMOUS SAID:

“He's not just throwing that out there because some guy thought it up to harmonize the wackiness of Gen 1 and 2...he throws it out there because its clearly and OBVIOUSLY stated in the book.”

Actually, the difference in the narrative viewpoint is pretty obvious if you bother to compare Gen 1 and 2.

But even if it weren’t “obvious,” it doesn’t have to be “obvious” to be true. Exegesis can uncover subtle differences as well as obvious differences.

And the perspectival distinction I’ve drawn can be found in the standard literature. Try reading a few major commentaries on Genesis.