The contradictory claim that words have both an infinite number of meanings and that words have a single fixed meaning doesn't make any sense to me. This example is one of many contradictions that are often presented in the same post or group of posts. How would you reconcile or address that sort of thinking? It seems like the same sort of "all over the place" claims of creationists.
I've suggested that thinkers with ideas that are rejected by mainstream academia have a motive to attempt to undermine standards for knowledge and the authority of experts. And so, they introduce confusion and uncertainty where there is little or none. Everything's subjective, and nothing you think you know is really known - a sort of epistemological relativism (or nihilism in the extreme forms).
at best most [doctors] are very well educated technicians.
You're describing the surgeons and others who use their hands in their work. There are also the docs who make a living with their heads, like internists, pathologists, and radiologists. But none of us are scientists if we aren't doing research.
Which fossil or group of fossils shows species change because of survival of the fittest?
Fossils show that the anatomy of life has changed over time. Fossils of extinct forms alone don't confirm the theory, but their absence in a world where only modern forms were found in the ground would jeopardize it. Thus, fossils are necessary but not sufficient to confirm the theory.
Which fossil or group of fossils shows species change gradually?
The most direct evidence for that doesn't come from fossils directly, but through extrapolation of collected fossil data consistent with gradual evolution. Of course, your definitions of gradual and sudden are a bit different than mine. You once described the collision of galaxies as a sudden event by comparing it to the life of the galaxies.
And how many times have I told you that "evidence" is always interpreted.
That's true, but I think you mean that it is all evaluated personally. Yes, each of us is a subject experiencing an object (objective reality) and modifying it as we generate the conscious content, but we can make that evaluation more objective using interobserver opinion when there is a high degree of agreement (consensus), and that's all we really need to know about objective reality - the predictable ways it manifests in conscious content.
You might think you can read something in a book and it becomes knowledge but you are mistaken.
So what should I do with this sentence of yours I just read? Disregard it?
We're all in the same boat. Nobody knows much of anything.
This is an example of you trying to level the playing field by invalidating the authority of others who actually do know quite a bit more than most.
I saw this during the pandemic and discussions on vaccine efficacy involving science deniers here on RF and elsewhere. Somebody would make a correct scientific statement about the relative risk of vaccination to acquiring Covid unvaccinated, and somebody would say, "That's just your opinion" in an effort to level the playing field and undermine the possibility of expert opinion. And I realized that this is what Dunning and Kruger were writing about. I had always imagined that it described people who understood that there were better thinkers among us and imagined that they were among them.
But now I understand it as people not realizing that there is a better way to process information than guessing as they do as with vaccines. They think all opinions are equal, because they're all arrived at the only way they ever arrived at any belief - choosing to believe it without justification. They're unaware of what critical thinking and justified thought are, or that other people can know much more than they do and know it with relative assurance that they are correct - an opinion often called arrogant by those who are unaware of this world of justified thought.
I believe "creationists" may have different definitions of what "creationism" means. Or maybe you do. Who knows?
For me, anybody who believes that the world was created by an intelligent designer - my definition of a god - is a creationist (synonym supernaturalist). Everybody else would be a naturalist or physicalist. Nature assembled itself and runs itself without intelligent supervision or input.
I SUPPOSE they, the medical doctors, study science, do you think?
Yes. My experience is fifty years old now, but is probably still mostly relevant. They generally are science oriented and are exposed to physics, chemistry, and biology in high school and as undergrads. I took a course in astronomy and one in evolution, and learned electronics. University physics and chemistry were a little more advanced. My undergraduate degree was in biochemistry.
Medical school is all life and behavioral science. First year is anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, behavioral science, medical microbiology, and medical pharmacology. The last two were known as bugs and drugs.
But as noted, the practice of medicine is applied science, and physicians are not scientists.
I completed my survey of the sciences when done with internship and residency at home, where I learned about quantum science, relativity, cosmology, and the earth sciences.
I think the Pope is a smart man. But how he figured that evolution is ok, or maybe or is (I can't remember his exact expression on this) the way God created or did things, I can't figure. I guess he went along with the reasoning that maybe survival of the fittest or natural selection was the way God did things?
