So it boils down to semantics
I described to you yesterday what that word means. Yes, definitions are semantics. Semantics is a branch in linguistics. So what is your actual complaint? What are you implying is being done that you disapprove of?
"It's semantics" reminds of the complaint "It was taken out of context." Yes, meaning are semantics, and citations are language extracted from the other words that come before and after them. If one cites any of the Ten Commandments by themselves, he is taking it out of the context of the full set. A person who makes such a claim also needs to explain why that matters, and I think you should as well rather than just saying "That's semantics."
What simultaneous causation (if real) shows is that you don’t need “time” between the cause and the effect………..refuting a previous argument.
But you're not showing or refuting anything. You're simply defining simultaneous.
The definition doesn’t exclude the possibility of cause and effect being simultaneous, therefore the cause is not necessarily prior to the effect, or at best it´s a controversial claim that requires more than “it is true because I say so”
That's exactly what you're doing. You're saying that cause and effect can be simultaneous because you say so, but that's incoherent for the reason I gave you. If cause didn't precede effect, there'd be no basis for calling one the cause and the other the effect or even to believe that either affected the other.
You were referring to quantum entanglement earlier as an example of simultaneous causation. Presumably, you mean that when an observer observes a quantum particle in one place and collapses the quantum wave function there, that causes the other particle with which it is entangled to collapse in a predictable way at the same time however distant it may be.
It sounds like you are saying that the collapse of one particle collapses the other instantaneously. That's not my understanding, or at least not an assumption one can justifiably make. I understand that as the single observation preceded and caused both collapses. The spooky part is how that observation has its effect on a distant unobserved particle so quickly. These particles can be a light year apart, but that single observation causes both effects simultaneously.
it's certainly true that there is no evidence to support the notion that species change gradually as a result of survival of the fittest.
That's incorrect. You have either not seen the evidence or haven't understood its implications.
Yet this "compelling evidence" is based on the assumption that the fit are more likely to survive.
As explained, "survival of the fittest" is language representing an observable process (a name for it). That phenomenon is that there are differential reproductive rates among organisms, and this has been named survival of the fittest. The term can be applied to competing businesses, where fitness means the ability to stay in business. It's simply a few words that stand for that observable phenomenon - in competition, some prevail and some fail.
Without ever defining a single characteristic of a single individual who ever lived its fitness is simply assumed to be correlated to the amount of its genes in the pool
The number of genes isn't a factor. This creature is apparently fit enough to not have gone extinct: "How small can a genome get and still run a living organism? Researchers now say that a symbiotic bacterium called Carsonella ruddii, which lives off sap-feeding insects, has taken the record for smallest genome with just 159,662 'letters' (or base pairs) of DNA and 182 protein-coding genes."
History shows again and again that popular beliefs fall by the wayside when real science steps in.
The theory of evolution is overwhelmingly likely here to stay for good. The evidence for it too robust, and the evidence against it nonexistent. We can accurately describe it as correct beyond reasonable doubt. The creationists also doubt the theory, but their objections aren't reasonable.
Just as you earlier defined religion as superstition and science as reason you now define change in species as survival of the fittest based not on empirical data nor experiment but on definition and observation.
None of those are correct definitions in my estimation, but yes, I do have a vocabulary of words with meanings that represent the objects, processes, relationships, and other qualities I encounter. These correlate with parts of speech (nouns, verbs, prepositions, and adjectives).
This isn't science. It could become science by merely demonstrating an ability to predict which individuals will survive leading to a gradual change.
We don't know how to do that. Nature does the testing or us and we see after the fact who the winners and losers have been. The extinct forms were the losers.
All homo omniscience see what we believe and experience reality only in terms of our beliefs.
I already rebutted that. Yes, language, prior experience, and a belief set derived from it shape thinking, but there are people who can actually look at something, realize they were wrong, and change their minds accordingly, and I'm pretty sure that you are one of them. Have you ever been surprised by seeing your car wasn't where you thought you left it or did you see a car there anyway because you had believed you would?
Maybe if you painted with a less broad brush.
I believe all belief is superstition hence I try to avoid beliefs in my models.
You can't.
The only true knowledge is experiential knowledge anyway so who needs abstractions and inductive logic.
We need abstractions to reason and to communicate with language. Words are abstractions.
And experience generates inductions in a mind capable of that.
none of the things that describe life or how it changes has even yet been defined.
That's obviously incorrect on the face of it. Or maybe you didn't mean what this says and are merely being hyperbolical.
Still a circular argument.
He wrote, "That's what 'fitness'
means in evolution." Are you not able to tell the difference between a definition, a claim, and an argument? Those words aren't an argument. They're a claim and a definition if one specifies what the pronoun "that" means (the definition of "fitness").
Do you know the words definiendum and definiens?. They refer to a dictionary entry, the definiendum being the word defined and the definiens being the definition that follows. Both are abstractions.
I was told to adhere to the rules therefore would not debate
You can debate in this thread.
Never did I confirm or deny the world was created in literally six days
No, Genesis make that claim and sciencr has disconfirmed it.
I wouldn't treat a scientific article as a historical article and that's what most people do.
I treat all claims of fact the same way. I critically assess the claims using the same rules of evidence and inference.
Back to the Newtonian mindset - you don't even seem to realise you're doing it. The space-time can be finite in the past and still always exist - exist at every point in time. The manifold contains time, it does not 'experience' time. It did not start to exist, even if it's finite in the past.
