#ambiguity

Before you can ask 'Is Darwinian theory correct or not?', You have to ask the preliminary question 'Is it clear enough so that it could be correct?'. That's a very different question. One of my prevailing doctrines about Darwinian theory is 'Man, that thing is just a mess. It's like looking into a room full of smoke.' Nothing in the theory is precisely, clearly, carefully defined or delineated. It lacks all of the rigor one expects from mathematical physics, and mathematical physics lacks all the rigor one expects from mathematics. So we're talking about a gradual descent down the level of intelligibility until we reach evolutionary biology. ↗

— David Berlinski

#biology #clarity #darwinism #evolution #macro-evolution

He prizes ambiguity; he loves to keep you guessing. ↗

— Lionel Shriver

#guessing #love

The result is - document destruction - we're really not going to be able to prove beyond a truth the negatives and some of the positive conclusions that we're going to come to. There will be always unresolved ambiguity here. ↗

— David Kay

#always #ambiguity #beyond #come #conclusions

The many meanings of 'evolution' are frequently exploited by Darwinists to distract their critics. Eugenie Scott recommends: 'Define evolution as an issue of the history of the planet: as the way we try to understand change through time. The present is different from the past. Evolution happened, there is no debate within science as to whether it happened, and so on... I have used this approach at the college level.' Of course, no college student—indeed, no grade-school dropout— doubts that 'the present is different from the past.' Once Scott gets them nodding in agreement, she gradually introduces them to 'The Big Idea' that all species—including monkeys and humans—are related through descent from a common ancestor... This tactic is called 'equivocation'—changing the meaning of a term in the middle of an argument. ↗

— Jonathan Wells

#ambiguous-terminology #ambiguous-words #darwinism #equivocation #evolution

Writing a really general parser is a major but different undertaking, by far the hardest points being sensitivity to context and resolution of ambiguity. ↗

— Graham Nelson

#being #context #different #far #general

All people are paradoxical. No one is easily reducible, so I like characters who have contradictory impulses or shades of ambiguity. It's fun, and it's fun because it's hard. ↗

— Edward Norton

#because #characters #contradictory #easily #fun

My observation is that after one hundred and twenty years of modernisation since the opening of the country, present-day Japan is split between two opposite poles of ambiguity. ↗

— Kenzaburo Oe

#ambiguity #between #country #hundred #japan

Take advantage of the ambiguity in the world. Look at something and think what else it might be. ↗

— Roger von Oech

#ambiguity #else #look #might #something

The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to "overcome" doubt. ↗

— Joyce Carol Oates

#art #complexity #writing #art

It's the side-by-side culture of the Talmud I like so much. 'On the one hand' and 'on the other hand' is frustrating for people seeking absolute faith, but for me it gives religion an ambidextrous quality that suits my temperament. ↗

— Jonathan Rosen

#faith #talmud #faith