Into the lens
Joe wrote:
The astro-physicist's term "gravitational lens" picks-out physical phenomena in the universe - which occur when light from a bright source is deflected by the gravitational field of a massive object, located between the source and an observer. Astro-physics terms - such as "gravitational lenses" - cannot be "metaphorical devices". What they refer to exist as states of affairs in the universe. However, Khuno might - by performing word-spells with physics terms - make gravitational lenses wink-out of the world - just as he's made evolution wink-out of it.
Darwin (from the Descent of Man):
"The males (passing over a few exceptional cases) are the more active in courtship; they are the better armed, and are rendered the more attractive in various ways. It is to be especially observed that the males display their attractions with elaborate care in the presence of the females; and that they rarely or never display them excepting during the season of love. It is incredible that all this should be purposeless. Lastly we have distinct evidence with some quadrupeds and birds, that the individuals of one sex are capable of feeling a strong antipathy or preference for certain individuals of the other sex."
- Khuno wrote:
- And the final insult is your block headed insistance that any term a biologist uses is defacto a biologist's term. Now preference is a biologist's term according to you. They aren't using helpful metaphorical devices to relate the mating behavior of scorpionflies to you.
Substituting "astro-physicist" for "biologist", "astro-physicist's term" for "biologist's term", "gravitational lens" for "preference" and "the behavior of light interacting with powerful gravitational fields" for "the mating behavior of scorpionflies" yields the following counter-real howler:
- Joe wrote:
- And the final insult is your block headed insistance that any term an astro-physicist uses is defacto an astro-physicist's term. Now a gravitational lens is an astro-physicist's term according to you. They aren't using helpful metaphorical devices to relate the behavior of light interacting with powerful gravitational fields to you.
Under evolutionary theory - if Sexual Selection (SS) terms were metaphorical devices, denoting no states of affairs in the world, then evolutionary theory becomes myth (or farce). Either mate preferences for ornaments shift gene frequencies in sexually reproducing populations or evolutionary theory is potty. Identically for General Relativity (GR), the velocity of light, mass-density, gravity, the space-time continuum, etc. must exist for it to be a viable theory. One of Einstein's predictions from GR is the existence of "gravitational lenses". If non-metaphorical light did not bend-around non-metaphorical massive objects in space, then his prediction (and much of GR) would fail - hideously.
Neither Darwin's SS terms nor Einstein's GR terms are answerable to any counter-rational mallet-head on a Myspace group. Science remains immune from this cult's perverse, meaning-bending rituals. Biologists and physicists have not lost control over their sciences. Khuno, Norton, etc. have lost control over their grips on reality - by illicitly redefining bio-terms then consigning evolution to the dung-heap. Evolutionary theory remains the only viable theory - which explains the magnitude of genetic variation and diversity, observed in nature. Khuno, Norton and related myth-makers have lost touch with something precious: a default, human understanding of the world - even more radically than Fundamentalists, who neither deny the existence of SS (over a relatively short span of time) nor the validity of SS experiments.