I must admit that I find how jurors and judges adhere to naturalistic biases not only disgusting, but downright anti-Christian. An example: A murder has been committed. The accused's DNA is found on the victim. The accused's fingerprints are found on the gun. The accused was seen arguing with the victim 10 minutes before the gunshot was heard. The accused had the victim's blood on his clothes. Now, the naturalistic jurors and judges would no doubt interpret these facts so that they fit into their naturalistic framework. To them, only natural forces are at work, and hence the accused is guilty. However, they are only making INFERENCES from the data, and these INFERENCES are NOT CONFIRMED, ABSOLUTE FACTS!!!!111ONEONE Since they are NOT ABSOLUTE KNOWLEDGE, then they must be blind belief, and other inferences must be equally valid. If you were to interpret these facts according to Biblical scripture, it is quite possible that an 'Intelligent Designer' merely 'mimicked' the conditions necessary to 'frame' the individual. Of course, my 'Intelligent Designer' theory not only fails to make any useful predictions, it is also unfalsifiable, and does not obey Occam's razor. But never mind that, we all know that all inferences are equal! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! So, according to the above, every prisoner in jail should immediately be acquitted and released! They have been imprisoned on BLIND BELIEF and FAITH, and we must right this TERRIBLE INJUSTICE. AMEN! Not only this, but all father's paying child support must immediately be given a refund. The similiarities between their DNA, and their 'child', could have actually been planted by a Common Designer (TM). Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Your scenario is quite accurate and results in thousands of innocent people being convicted annually. The reason is quite simple. The assumption that only 'natural forces' are at work is indeed ludicrous. Other forces, like government tampering with evidence, witness collusion, and racial prejudice result in wrongful arrests, the refusal to follow up alternate leads, and the exclusion of contradictory or exhonorating evidence that would result in aquittal. The sometimes ridiculous procedures and legal wrangling that obstruct justice, obscure the true nature of crimes, and hide those involved higher up on the economic and political ladder, are evidence enough that taking a 'natural process' view is fatal to real justice for many people of ethnic origin or economic disadvantage. In the real world, the surface appearance of the most 'natural' subset of evidence is often worthless and criminally misleading. Just as we should suspect that 'evolution' is not a blind, benign and 'fair' process uncontrolled and free of manipulation, so we should also suspect that the process of 'justice' is also not a blind, benign, and 'fair' process uncontrolled and free of manipulation. Your ironic presentation actually lends evidence to an 'Intelligent Designer' rather than making it implausible. The only thing is, the Designer may not be the friendly Judaeo-Christian friend you thought 'He' was. ... The real issue has always been, not "does God exist?", but "Is God a far scarier and deliberately malignant force than previously suspected?" After listening to your arguments, I'd be seeking alternate universes to hide in.
Einstuck: Well isn't that just fascinating! I never knew that 'government tampering', 'witness collusion', and 'racial prejudice' were not natural forces! By golly, I guess those government officials must be supernatural entities! How does the sometimes corrupt nature of courts demonstrate that adhering to a naturalistic interpretation of evidence is flawed? Adhering to a naturalistic interpretation of evidence, and the legal process, can be mutually exclusive. Your attempt to drag the 'legal process' into the mix is an poor attempt at a red herring. We are discussing methods of inferring evidence... I guess if you totally distort my statements, then my presentation could support a number of things. However, you fail to realize that your examples of 'witness collusion', 'government tampering', and 'racial prejudice' are not supernatural forces. We can make valid predictions with each scenario, and falsify each possible explaination. Quite simply, my example of how a jury interprets evidence is an excellent example of why scientists adhere to a naturalistic interpretation of evidence. Introduction of supernatural forces cause a breakdown of reason, due to lack of falsifiability, lack of predictive power, lack of parsimony, and the ad hoc logic fallacy.
The normal meaning of the English usage of 'natural' here is a play on words, (which you apparently missed), but quite adequate to convey the distinction between 'natural', i.e., undirected blind forces like nature and physical laws, and 'unnatural' (not supernatural) hidden forces driven by wills of sentient beings who wish to actually deliberately subvert a process like justice, and find it easy to do so when it is carried out naively. You have been arguing about 'evolution' so long you have forgotten how to speak ordinary English.
A simple question, if I may. What would you suggest, then, is a better alternative to our criminal justice system?
I have missed nothing. You are merely reaching in an attempt to distort what I have to say. Ah, I see. So humans aren't part of nature, nor are natural forces involved when they fudge evidence, or engage in collusion. Fudging evidence leaves marks in the physical (aka. natural) world, and involves natural forces. Engaging in collusion leaves physical evidence. Collusion and fudging evidence are NATURAL explainations. They both have predictive power, and are falsifiable. It is obvious that I was distinguishing between 'natural' causes (events which are caused by physical entities, which leave traces in the physical world and can be detected via physical (natural) means), and 'supernatural' causes, which cannot be detected via natural means. You have been a Creationist for so long, you've forgotten that equivocation is a logic fallacy, and highly dishonest. It was quite obvious that I was including the actions of humans under the definition of 'natural'. To say that human activities are not subject to natural forces is absurd in the highest degree. Fudging the evidence is a NATURAL explaination, since natural forces are used to fudge evidence, and natural (scientific) methods can be used to detect such underhanded tactics. Then again, I guess that inferring that the accused shot the victim is also an 'un-natural' explaination, since it was driven by the will of a sentient being. Why, those bullets didn't obey natural laws, nor did the fingerprints found on the gun, or the DNA found on the victim.
My words are easy to understand, and I am happy to let them stand. I am not selling the supernatural. The concept of supernatural isn't at all necessary to 'Intelligent Design' which has nothing to do with the existance or non-existance of the Judaeo-Christian God. 'Intelligent Design' applies quite well to 'natural' forces like sentient human or alien beings. Two size 'AA' aliens included: No God batteries required.
Einstuck: Well, that's tough shit for you, because I am the one who concocted this argument, and hence MY definitions stand. I was quite clear about what constituted as 'natural'. An 'intelligent designer' is not detectable via natural laws. We cannot falsify an Intelligent Designer. Your 'intelligent Designer' theory has no predictive power. Let's assume we had my original example, regarding the man accused with murder, complete with a lot of circumstantial evidence. Would you... 1. Infer that he is guilty of murder, or... 2. Infer that an 'Intelligent Designer' (supernatural entity) has framed him, rigging the evidence to give the ILLUSION of guilt. Quite simple. Give me an answer, please.
The simple answer is that he is obviously framed. If you believe in evolution, he has committed no crime. The system of 'justice' is just an artificial piece of social evolution, which may or may not be practical in terms of long range survival of species or genome, or even interspecial evolution. According to evolution, no moral/ethical judgements are necessary, except inasmuch as they function in the process of survival of individuals/groups/species/life. If you want a simple answer, it is this. If you insist upon there being no God and no afterlife, then the only 'crime' is being caught, and the only deterrant is material threat or reward for individuals. Smarter 'criminals' will not get caught, and economically disadvantaged or stupid criminals will not succeed. Success will be judged by how much advantage is secured by individual behaviour. Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler maximized their individual resource and power bases, and Gandhi failed to do so, hence Stalin and Hitler were successful heroes, and Gandhi was a loser. Nixon is a hero, and Kennedy is a loser. Bush is a hero, and your local pastor is non-viable evolutionary dead end. There is no such thing as a 'murderer', only a dumb competator over resources, real or imagined, who got caught by bigger competators. A serial killer is a successful evolutionary abberation, and a cop is a counter-evolutionary monkey-wrench in the machinery. These are the true philosophical ramafications of the garbage you believe in. But even in this case religion cannot be rejected, since it acts to opiate the stupid, and allows rich clever criminals to accrew the resources they need, to control populations through mass killing by instigating wars, (preventing overpopulation) and engaging in horrific biological attacks upon unsuspecting populations of Blacks, Chinese, and Arabs. In this scenario, the uber-men, the super-rich criminals simply carry out what atheistic evolutionary scientists already believe, namely that most of the human race must be exterminated to save the planet for a handful of rich perverts so they can evolve to the next level. Blacks and Mexicans will be turned into McDonald's burgers to make room for Stepford Wives carfully selected in breeding programs. Scientists will keep quiet of course, hoping to be among those left behind, when the 'dirty inferior ethic groups' are eliminated to make lebensraum (living space) for the New Man, Homo GermanJewmanicus. Go watch a movie about yourself: Dr. Strangelove. Pay particular attention to the doctor's explanation of what to do, and the ending.
Einstuck: Since when have I done this?! By golly, that's the biggest strawman argument in existence. And the fact is that the rest of your argument hinges on this premise. Since your premise is a strawman, your entire argument collapses like a house of cards in a swamp. But we aren't talking about the system of justice per se. We are talking about different inferences made from the same evidence, and why some inferences are innately fallicious. Evolution theory doesn't make moral or ethical judgements, because it is science. It is NOT atheistic, it is agnostic, because it is science. Quite simply, what constitutes as a 'crime' is irrelevant. What we are trying to determine here is whether the accused shot the victim, or whether he was 'framed' by an omnipotent 'Intelligent Designer'. Once again... 1. Did the accused shoot the victim? or, 2. Was he framed by an omnipotent, supernatural, Intelligent Designer? Your entire post is just incomprehensible. You have no clear contention, and you are jumping all over the place, erecting straw man arguments, and introducing red herrings.
Answer number two. no he did not shoot the victim. (1) The fact he has been arrested tells me he's Black. (2) The fact someone's dead tells me there was someone who knew too much. (3) He was framed, but whether or not the framer was 'omnipotent' supernatural, or Intelligent' is your own red herring. Are you so clueless that you don't recognize a hypothetical proposition in the abstract? Or must you take everything in an argument personally, like a child under 25?
I agree, Einstuck, you crass moron. Only a cretin with brain damage could take everything presented in an argument personally. What a dim wittingly uneccessary thing to say, even for one of your stullified intellect. Light - Mountainhare has no particular problem with the judicial system. He is simply demonstrating the flawed logic of the ID arguments.
Einstuck: If he was framed... who framed him? Given that there is no evidence of him having been framed, how did you come to such a conclusion?
The evidence of him being framed is in the nature of the world as we know it. The biggest framers of all are the police and court systems, who practically force a guilty plea to save face, either by bribe of leniency or threat of harsh treatment. Second, who writes the law? The power to declare what is and isn't a crime is obviously a frame by defintion. The evidence is not in the courtroom itself in your hypothetical case, but if that case is being conducted for instance in the USA, I have a large body of evidence in the form of wrongful convictions and reversals that show a systemic racial and economic prejudicial bias in the whole system. The Rodney King video is simple example.
Invoking every ad-hoc excuse from ghosts framing the defendant to aliens setting him up in order to fervently deny the logically sound and painfully obvious implications. The greatest set-ups are the ones that produce no evidence and leave absolutely no sign that they ever took place. Since there is absolutely nothing to indicate that the person was framed in this case, it's obvious that he was set up by some real professionals. In other words, it's true because there's no evidence for it. Whatever the case, one thing is sure. If anyone is guilty of a crime, and the evidence suggests it, they should walk free merely to satisfy the ridiculous system that requires gross abandonment of logic as a precondition that Einstuck has described; where the default assumption is "Framed when proven guilty".
Right. You're either innocint, or it's a conspiracy. Those are the only 2 options. The conclusion is essentially a foregone one. All that remains to be seen is which one of the 2 predetermined conclusions get decided on. In either accord, there's no such thng as a guilty person. Ever.
