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Paranormal Investigations and Belief in Ghosts
Esther Schindler writes "Sure, everyone uses technology on the job. But you may not have contemplated the tools used by paranormal investigators (at least, not until you began thinking about Halloween) who look for the truth in ghosts and other things that go Bump in the Night. In Paranormal Investigations and Technology: Where Ghosts and Gadgets Meet, CIO's Al Sacco writes about the most unusual of tool chests, with everything from thermometers to blimp cams." You want spooky? An anonymous reader passed a link to a survey that says a third of Americans believe in ghosts. Who you gonna call?
First Ghost!
captcha: fainted
Years ago a fellow I knew took to hanging out in graveyards with his camera and film sensitive to Infra Red (pick up the background IR, except where spirits, which apparently suck the energy out of their surroundings when they manifest themselves.) He claimed to have taken actual photos of ghosts hanging about graves, including some which were posessed. He offered to show me some of his work, but I wasn't in a mood for it as my Grandmum had recently passed away.
So here's this bloke:
Auerbach, on the other hand, strongly feels that ghosts and specters cannot be photographed. "If they could be, people would've already," Auerbach says. So this fellow with pictures was fiddling the film?I do believe in spooks! I do, I do, I do believe in spooks! Oh, sod, who was it then?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
... ghosts are bullshit!
...so what's the big deal? Ever read "The Bible" or other associated works? They're full of as much fantastic nonsense as any ghost-spotting con artist could ever dream up.
Gigameter, ghost trap, and a friendly overweight green ghost to help you out. I thought that was the standard package when investigating paranormal activities?
Although,
Others would argue that all you need is an intelligent ape, a talking car, bubblegum gun and skeleton elevator inside which you change clothes.
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
I thought it was well over 70% who believe in ghosts - at least the old bearded one in the sky.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
This bodes well for that movie I hope to make. It has a vampire and an explosion.
What sound do people on rollercoasters make? Hint: it's not Xbox 360.
More than that believed Saddam was behind 9/11 - it's not about people being stupid it's about effective storytelling and PR making people believe stupid things. See the "Amityville Horror" for a leading example. One of the major players (M. O'Gara ) in spinning that story to the public ended up spinning the story about SCO that people will be familiar with here.
I thought that 70% of Americans are religious. All religious people believe in ghosts. It would be great if only 30% of Americans were so gullible.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Good point. Belief in angels and supernatural go hand in hand.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Several universities host ongoing paranormal research, including Princeton University, the University of Arizona, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Amsterdam, the University of Hertfordshire in England, and the University of Virginia. Obviously, there's enough evidence out there that needs to be confirmed or debunked (depending on your point of view) that centers for paranormal research are justified.
Zonk, why don't you leave the editorializing to those things you know something about, unless you're willing to share *your* paranormal research credentials with us...at which point I'll shut up and go away.
Don't cross the streams. That would be bad.
Have gnu, will travel.
Not knocking the religious, just saying that 1/3 of Americans believing in the supernatural should not surprise anyone.
nothing.can.stop.me.now
Dr. Michael Persinger can give people the experience of seeing god by manipulating the field around their head.
http://ladyscientist.com/the_ghost_in_the_machine.html
There is evidence that ghosts appear in regions with high electrostatic fields. The fields are often/usually the result of the piezo-electric effect of rock under pressure, ie in mountain regions. The other thing that will give people the willies is sub-sonic vibrations.
I think trying to find ghosts is the wrong idea. These guys should be looking for the things that make people see ghosts.
is that surveys show that 60% of Americans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies%2C_damned_lies%2C_and_statisticsbelieve surveys fill out by Americans.
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
disproved by scientific means, I remind those who are making statements to the effect that there is no God, realize that they themselves are making a faith statement since they can not prove that God does not exist. To say "there is no God" is to express an opinion for which there can be no evidence given.
Scully: "So now we're chasing ghosts?"
Mulder: "Who you gonna call?"
Well, 92% of americans believe in God, so, boy I wonder if there is something wrong with those polls or if America REALLY is in so bad intellectual shape (to express myself nice)...
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
People using science and tools to try and explain things that are currently unknown or understood? I don't think that is too spooky. True the second article is about people and their beliefs, but I don't really find it that strange.
Sig it.
Nearly as spooky in my opinion!
I have this grand plan about being the cause for paranormal events in a house i'd like to buy but cannot quite pay the amount it's worth. What!? You have a house to sell? Mmmmhmmm BWHAHAHHAHAH :o 600K townhome for 400K? With a couple ghosts you say? I'm cool with that. Where do i sign?
I wasn't serious...but if you really have a house to sell *WHOOOOOOOO* *WHOOOOOOOO*
I've yet to see a photo/video of a ghost that convinced me of anything.
Thinks to consider:
- We're biologically programmed to see faces/figures in randomness. Seeing a vague human-like face in smoke is not a ghost. It is smoke.
- "They said it wasn't fake" Right...
- Special effects to make ghosts seem to exist are easier than you think. Most of the time the cheesiest solution is the correct one.
- Orbs are nothing. They are freaking motes of dust that are out of focus and caught in the lamp/flash from the camera.
- Low frequency noise can do some freaky things to your brain. Things like fans, wind through a roof, etc are able to generate a tone that you might not notice or be able to hear but it can cause you to feel like your not alone. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound
- There are more malicious people out there than you would like to think. "Real" hauntings have turned out to be vindictive neighbors more than a few times.
To be honest I would love for there to be ghosts. That is solid proof of an afterlife. However, with the evidence collected to date, I see no logical reason to believe in ghosts.
Ah! but you can fit angels onto the head of a pin (though I can't quite recall how many) wheras ghosts just make that spooky 'wooooh' sound. I'd say they're in completely different classes.
that God does not exist? How do you know you aren't wrong?
Nobody has proof that God does not exist. Because you can't prove a negative.
Just as you don't have any proof that The Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn't exist, but that doesn't mean you've been TBHNA.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
My proof that your god doesn't exist is your lack of proof that he does.
Anyway, my invisible red dragon in my basement is more powerful than your god.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
While pejorative in tone, this is essentially true. There's little practical difference between ghosts, angels, demons, and gods, other than how much power they have and their moral alignment. If you find any of them plausible, there's no reason you shouldn't believe in them all, other than peer pressure and social convention.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Your wrong.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Disclaimer: its a TV show. I understand that.
What I really like about that show is that unlike most 'psychics', they go into a 'haunted' house trying to DISprove a haunting. If they have a 'personal experience' they note it, but it doesnt count. Audio holds a little creedence, but not a ton. Video evidence holds much more, but only if they cant reproduce what they say - and they try to.
You can watch episodes online (tho the website seems to be behaving oddly atm) http://www.scifi.com/ghosthunters
Science can't prove that ANYTHING doesn't exist... I mean, science can't prove that giant pink whistling bears don't exist... so while you ARE indeed correct, it is -no more- a faith statement than saying "Giant pink whistling bears don't exist". The burden of proof lies on the side of people asserting something non-obvious is true/valid/exists/whatever, not the other way around, and it has little to do with it being about god or anything else.
People had to prove that the earth was round, because with my own two eyes, without knowing which signs to look for (even though in this day and age they are extremely obvious, but weren't always so), it looks flat. Therefore, its flat until someone proves its not. Someone proved it wasn't, therefore it isn't, until someone proves otherwise, and so on. No faith about it, its a methodology. Saying "there is no god!" is just short for "There is no solid evidence there is a god, thus by applying the commonly accepted scientific methodologies, we can say there is no god until proven otherwise". Thats just a bit long to say everytime, and people with scientific background, or who follows in standard science footstep just shortens, since they'll understand each other.
Then there are the morons who think they understand what science is but don't, and don't quite get that EVERYTHING in science is "theories until a better theory comes up", and use the words the wrong way. Can't help those.
I mean, now science says the earth is round. Sometime in the future we most likely will prove something similar to string theory (or some such), and realise that there were obvious signs around us that after all, earth isn't round, its in 1 dimention and our one dimentional human brain just interprete that 1 dimention as a sphere based on other inputs. Then scientists of the time will make jokes about "lol the earth is round rofl!". But we know that. Thats as opposed to people asserting something is true as if it was a fact, without evidence. There's a freagin big difference between "it doesn't exist until you prove it does", and "it exists until you prove it doesn't".
Obviously, there's enough evidence out there that needs to be confirmed or debunked (depending on your point of view) that centers for paranormal research are justified.
Now there's nothing a good academic center likes more than funding - I think we can all agree on that. So, why haven't they taken Randi's One Million Dollars from him to buy more Aeron chairs?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I have no proof that God does not exist.
However, I have seen a whole lot of things in my life, and not a one of them requires a God to explain it.
Given a choice between two systems of belief, which would you prefer? The one with Maxwell's equations and quantum electrodynamics and all the rest that accurately predict things out to twelve digits, or "God does whatever he wants to at the moment."
I don't have proof that God doesn't exist, but it's highly unlikely that She does. That's enough for me.
(the slashdot catagory, that is, not the operating system; I still have a bunch of NetBSD xen VMs and a few FreeBSD boxes kicking around) Last time I was on slashdot regularly, "bsd is dying" was a meame; but the section is gone, and that makes me sad.
A lot of religious people believe in heaven, but also they believe in ghosts. So which soul goes where?
To say "there is no God" is to express an opinion for which there can be no evidence given.
Quite true. A good scientist cannot rule out *anything*, when presented with overwhelming evidence. But that doesn't mean he gives good odds to there being a real Flying Spaghetti Monster, no matter how many people tell him there is one. But, should the scientist meet FSM, he may well become a Pastafarian!
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I do firmly understand one thing about science; a negative cannot be proved. Therefore anyone who says that God does not exist cannot offer scientific proof of their assertion. Therefore, people cannot make iron clad statements that there is no God. They are making a faith statement themselves that cannot be verified.
"Then, of course, there is faith in science itself."
Science is a method, it requires no faith. In fact it is a method through which provides it's own falsifiable test of itself.
No faith needed.
"Everyone has something they believe in that they can't prove," unless taken to an absurd level, that is not true.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Are angels in the same class as ghosts?
Yes. Superstition comes in many forms.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
A statement of fact, however, is the following:
There have been no observations made, since the time when people started being careful about their observations, that require the existence of a God. No evidence suggests that there is a God that cannot be explained by simpler, purely natural phenomena.
I can't prove God doesn't exist, but I don't need to. My world works just fine without a God, and if you want me to give your superstitions a second thought, you need to give me a reason why I should.
The burden of proof here is on the supernaturalists.
"disproved by scientific means, I remind those who are making statements to the effect that there is no God,"
What does belief in ghosts have to do with belief in God?
I can't comment on other traditions, but belief in ghosts haunting or roaming the earth is clearly excluded by mainline Protestant and Catholic doctrine, and has been for many centuries.
Of course there's no proof that knowledge makes us happier. "Ignorance is bliss". Chances are at this pace, things may eventually be "proven" that will totally ruin our image in ourselves and the world... For example, it may be only a matter of time before it is "proven" that we don't even think for ourselves, and actually don't make our own decisions...that hormones, biology, etc makes em for us... People are deathly afraid of things like that... Maybe its true, maybe its not, who knows, but if it IS true, the fact that there will be a mass refusal of it won't change that it is true.
Truth sucks. Some people can deal with that, some can't and imagine stuff to make themselves feel better. Thats all there is to it, little to do with faith.
That's great that ghost hunters use high tech tools but from what I can tell (see Ghost Hunters on SciFi) the hunters really have no clue when it comes to actually running an experiment. Has any validated that an EMF reading is a sign of paranormal activity? Of course not because its BS. What's worse is when they use it indoors surrounded by electrical equipment. Then theres the IR temp gun they use. They point it as if it reads the temperature of thin air but what they are really doing is reading surface temperatures of the walls/windows etc. Kinda sad...
What is there more evidence of...ghosts, or neutrinos?
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
There's a difference between belief and faith. Faith is thinking something is true even though there is no reason to think it is true. But if there is a reason to believe something is true (even if it hasn't been proven) then it's belief not faith.
What's the Slashbot/atheist/rationalist/skeptic/debunker's perspective on EVP? That the people doing it/listening to it are mentally ill? ;)
Hi dircha, I was responding to those using this topic to make statements to the effect that people who believe in God are somehow defective. That is my concern here. Look back over some of the other posts and you'll see what I am responding to. I myself do not believe that there are "ghosts" according to the common idea some have. In other words, I don't believe when people die they become ghosts who walk the and haunt the earth. I believe that the Bible teaches we either spend eternity with God or separated from Him-- not "haunting" houses. Sorry if I was not clear.
How exactly are origins not part of science? If you want to know how a system originated, you might carefully study its current state and the manner in which it develops over time, and thereby attempt to deduce by reason the state it would have occupied in the past. Or alternatively you might invoke God. One of these approaches is science, the other is not.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
They're not making a faith statement, reread my post for a sec. They're shortening an idea thats FREAGIN DARN LONG to write as a whole in a post on the internet, because other "science people" understand that its just a short.
There definately ARE some people that will say there is no god as a faith statement, and that IS equaly as rediculous, I completly agree with that. But when a scientist says "There is no god", that is NOT what they mean. Again, keep in mind: "There is no god" is equaly as valid or invalid as "There is no flying spaghetti monster". It does NOT mean "its impossible for it to be a god". It means "there's no reason for me to think there is a god, therefore I don't waste my time with it". Just shorter.
Again, let me repeat to be clear since my last post obviously didn't make that obvious: When a scientist says there is no god, it does not mean what you seem to think it does. Don't take it so literally. Do you know the difference between thinking something, and beleiving something? Both have to do with uncertainties. But there's a huge difference between the two.
You are (you're) wrong.
I saw a British documentary recently about an investigation of a haunted house. In particular, the house had one room where just about anyone who had slept there reported hearing a child screaming, and a sudden uneasy feeling. This was traditionally attributed to the ghost of a child who had died in the room. One paranormal investigator surveyed the room and found out that the mattress coils in the 200+ year old bed was made of highly magnetised material. He was able to show that the magnetic fields were so strong as to be capable of generating hallucinatory states in anyone sleeping on the bed. So this was one instance where I thought that investigation of the reports led to an interesting scientific finding. Dismissing the reports of hauntings as pure nonsense wouldn't have taught us much, neither would have accepting the reports at face value.
I'm not trying to prove anything to you. I'm simply stating the fact that people who say there is no God have gone beyond facts and evidence and are themselves making unverifiable faith statements.
Hey, atheists would have us believe in a bunch of secular stupidity as well. This mystical belief is at the heart of the environmental movement, and its utterly ridiculous. First and foremost is this notion that if we are nice to the earth, the earth will be mean to us. The earth is a fricking rock. It has no brain. You can't make deals with it.
This seems like a rather stupid argument, unless I'm missing something.
The earth is our environment. We live in it. If we don't treat it right, it won't treat us right; is has nothing to do with deals or brains, it's just simple physics and biology.
Would you take a shit on your dinner plate and eat it? Of course not. You'd get sick. Would you eat toxic wastes? Of course not; you'd get sick, and probable die. Polluting the earth is the same thing, only in smaller concentrations, and usually the concentrations are higher around people with less money. The toxins make people sick, and they die sometimes. These toxins don't just stay where we put them; as humans, we're dependent on air and water, which come from the earth. Pollute the air, and you're going to breathe it. Pollute the water, and you're going to drink it (at least water can be filtered; no one walks around with gas masks on, yet). Even worse, the food grown in fields for us to eat uses air and water. It's all a big cycle, so if you screw with it, it's going to come back and bite you in the ass most likely.
There's nothing mystical about this, and any idiot should be able understand it. Anyone who thinks it's ok to just pollute willy-nilly is either completely selfish (only cares about short-term consequences and not long-term), astoundingly stupid, or has some irrational belief that it won't affect them and others.
Then, of course, there is faith in science itself. It is an act of faith...
This is a rather stupid statement. Science doesn't require any faith at all; it's just a method for gaining knowledge where models are created and tested using evidence, and thrown out if contradicted by evidence. Do you have a better method?
I believe in ghosts.
I can't understand why most in the science and engineering fields, not only don't believe but disregard it, with out little thought.
As an engineer, I'm required to find solutions to problems. Some times, I'm required to look out side the square and consider things that at first might seem strange, but when understood, make perfect sense. This helps me be more creative and allows me to explore the possibilities.
It seems like it would be a core requirement of any scientist to be able to expect the unexpected.
Why is it so hard to comprehand that something like ghosts/spirits might be real, given all that we know that we don't know. We know we don't know everything. There fore, there must be a lot of things out there in the Universe that seem completely strange and foreign.
Not long ago, most people thought the world was round, but it was certain people who where able to think outside the square that would be proved correct in later years. They may have been looked upon as crazy for the time - now they're looked upon as visionaries.
I'm not asking people to fall head over heals and loose their brain. I just want people to understand there is a lot we don't understand. With the advent of Quantum physics and our understanding of certain aspects, we're now more aware than ever of just how much we don't know.
Is it that hard to entertain the possibilities?
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
I just finished college, and I am currently (until the 10 Nov.) on a bit of a hiatus from doing any work that remotely requires the use of my brain. For the past couple months I have been working at a small breakfast cafe that operates out of a house built around 1900.
As old as the house is, it has slightly unnerving properties: the floors creak, drafts blow napkins and receipts, etc.. I find it very easy to come up with reasonable naturalistic explanations for what my co-workers consider paranormal. All of the servers at this restaurant believe that it is inhabited by a ghost -- one that interacts with the world we experience. A poltergeist.
Most also believe in astrology and homeopathy. One server recently paid ~ $15 for a chalk tablet cold remedy. No matter how hard I try to dispel these harmful beliefs, I am (ironically) met with skepticism. For instance, today someone told me that they believed in symbols foretelling the future. I suggested that any notion of psychic ability is likely due to confirmation bias -- we are more likely to remember when our intuition was correct than when it had failed us. I also told this person about the JREF/Randi Prize.
At this point in most of my conversations with my mystically inclined associates, some "scientific explanation" is offered dealing with photons, leptons, "we're all made of light," and other new-agey pseudo-quantum-physics.
I am at the point where I have almost given up, except to always ask people to examine how they know what they proclaim to know without resorting to their feelings. I find it very hard to not come across as condescending when having these conversations.
Why can't it? Specifically, why can't the existence of God be proved by scientific means? If a god is proposed to exist, a being of vast power intervening in the world in response to human requests, why should we not attempt to observe these changes he allegedly makes?
Oh, wait. God does it so subtly that we can't tell the difference, right? God's hiding from us. Doesn't want to, you know, force us to believe or anything, by giving us actual evidence. Wouldn't be fair.
It's not that the existence of God couldn't in principle be proved by scientific means. It's that the existence of a God who uses all his divine powers and vast cleverness to hide his own existence that we could never prove. Of course, that raises the interesting philosophical puzzle of what exactly the difference is between a totally and perpetually undetectable god and no god at all...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Again, I am responding to those making statements to the effect that those who believe in God are somehow defective. Whether they are scientists or not, they are making statements that they cannot back up. Therefore, they should be a bit more careful about how they word their statements.
Actually, the stuff about ghosts at least seems more consistent and plausible than the religious myths. With the ghosts, there's various explanations for their existence, some ideas that they require energy and take it from the environment as thermal energy, etc. With the Bible et al, it's just a bunch of crazy stories about supposedly omnipotent gods who think that insects have 4 legs and bats are a type of bird.
There is a difference between belief and faith. I believe that I have ten beers in my refrigerator. But the existence of ten beers in my 'fridge isn't an article of faith. Show me evidence to the contrary, and I will cheerfully change my belief.
I also believe that men (people) are basically good. I have seen a lot of evidence to the contrary, and when presented with such evidence I get all blustery and won't listen to reason. It is an article of faith, for me.
Generally people who believe in God, do so on faith. They get all blustery and won't listen to reason when you show them evidence to the contrary. Generally people who believe that God doesn't exist don't hold it as an article of faith.
We do, however, tend to have a strong faith in logic. When the religious start making all sort of non-sense statements in the guise of logic we tend to get all blustery.
So, to the point; is there a tea kettle orbiting the Sun at 2.7 AU? That's dab in the middle of the main asteroid belt. It is far beyond the reach of human Science to look behind every asteroid and make sure there isn't a tea kettle lurking back there.
If I say I believe such a thing, will you really not say that you believe that it doesn't exist?
-Peter
I do firmly understand one thing about science; a negative cannot be proved. Therefore anyone who says that God does not exist cannot offer scientific proof of their assertion.
Proof of what assertion? They are responding to someone else's assertion. If someone asserts that pink unicorns exist, the burden is on them and them alone to prove it, not for everyone that doesn't believe to find a way to prove them wrong. The person asserting that God doesn't exist is not asserting anything, and is not under a burden to back it up. The person they are responding to that first asserted that there is a God is the one that made the perfectly provable assertion that there is a God. When you get God to come down and join Elvis at dinner, then you have proven it. That's nice and simple. However, people don't call on the UFO critics to prove UFOs don't exist. That's impossible, and even the wildest UFO nut realizes that. They present their blurry photos and accounts of drunks seeing things, but they don't just assert "UFO's exist, even though there is no evidence that there are any." If the UFO nuts can figure it out, why can't you?
Therefore, people cannot make iron clad statements that there is no God.
And you can't make the iron clad statement that there isn't a 40000 foot long Dune sandworm living below your house. But that isn't evidence that it is true. You can't prove there isn't a Tooth Fairy. Does that mean it exists? Does that mean that people denying that there is a Tooth Fairy are the ones that must prove there isn't, and not that those making the positive assertion must provide the evidence?
Learn to love Alaska
It's the quantum!
Listening to the skeptics guide to the universe podcast. It has helped me learn how to deal with these people and how to bring them back to reality.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
That's how the Washington Post puts it:
More people believe in ghosts and ESP than believe in President Bush.
Nearly a third of Americans believe in ghosts.
A new Associated Press/Ipsos poll found 34% of people believe in ghosts. And 23% even claim to have seen one.
If you feel haunted -- think how President Bush must feel.
http://watchingwashington.blogspot.com/2007/10/more-people-believe-in-ghosts-than-bush.html?referer=sphere_related_content
thegodmovie.com - watch it
if you find any of them plausible, there's no reason you shouldn't believe in them all
Many people would believe that ghosts(of deceased humans) contradictory to many religions, and the religions themselves contradictory of each other. Given that, you must choose what to believe in, the idea of God i assume seems a lot better to most people then ghosts, cause who wants to be scared by dead people and have to be stuck on earth after they die? There's very little direct evidence of a lot of things, and especially scientific ones, who's to say Einstein's Theories of Relativity are how the phenomenon they explain works, or much of quantum mechanics or string holds water, they where made up to explain/model something we don't understand, much like what an atheist would say about religion.
Secondly.... The "Subject" heading for the parent of this seems to be a little bigoted. There are plenty of other countries that the majority, and far above the majority, believes in some religion. The Middle East has Islam, except for Israel which has Judaism, the US and much of Europe are Christian, many far East counties its Buddhism, ect. From what I can tell you're just attempting to put down Americans which exerting yourself as some superior human. And usually those that flaunt intelligence lack it.
If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.
Alright, let's drop "faith" and use the term "belief." I'm not trying to prove anything to you. I'm just say that people who say there is no God are going beyond the evidence and making a statement that they cannot ultimately prove.
The people who say "there is no God" are speaking in shorthand, really. A scientist might say "electricity obeys Maxwell's equations", but that really means "There is a vast bulk of evidence to suggest that electricity follows Maxwell's equations, so I'm going to assume that it does, and you should too, until and unless somebody comes up with a good reason otherwise." If we had to include that caveat in everything we said, it'd make doing anything unbearably long. (1. "Evidence suggests F=ma. Therefore...")
Likewise, when a rational empiricist says "there is no God", he's really saying "There is a vast bulk of evidence to suggest that there is no God, and at this point it is irrational to claim that there is a God." Empiricists don't make "faith statements", they only give best guesses -- which are often very, very close to certain -- based on the available evidence. The available evidence very strongly suggests that there is no God.
That's not what "there is no god" means. "There is no god" means "there is no god." But since when do scientists say there is no God? Any scientist who says that is not saying it as a scientist. And anyone who says there's no reason to think there is a god is not looking.
(There is nothing particularly supreme about any of the Greek, Nordic or Celtic "Gods", for example. Nor were they ascribed unique ownership of any segment of worldly affairs. As best as I can tell, such views seem to originate more with the Semitic peoples and it is largely Judeo-Christian anthropologists who attach such views to others.)
Without a clear, meaningful definition of what it is a person is rejecting, it makes no sense to talk about rejecting it, because what you are rejecting, what others think you are rejecting and what you think you are rejecting are not going to be the same except by chance alone. However, this gets interesting in the case of anything which, by definition, transcends that which can be defined. It's like asking a computer to solve a non-computable problem. If a computer could solve it, it would not be non-computable.
The easiest way to handle this case is to simply place it into the category of "unknowable", along with all of the things that science has firmly and definitively shown to be unknowable. If you add two unknowables together, you still end up with an unknowable, so it really doesn't matter which of the unknowables are real and which aren't. At least, from any kind of scientific perspective.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
You leave "His Noodliness" out of this!
Not until after Ragnarok, anyway.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This mystical belief is at the heart of the environmental movement
So strong scientific evidence that humans have been the cause of several potentially dangerous changes in the environment is a mystical belief to you? Interesting...
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
Yes. If you're going to posit a claim that there is no Tooth Fairy, the burden of proof is on you to 1) define what you mean by a Tooth Fairy, and 2) offer evidence to support your position.
This is not proof. All you said is your proof is equal to my proof, and then likely some implied fallback on Occam's Razor. But existence a higher power is unfalsifiable, which is the reason why it is religious belief and not scientific theory. Rational people can believe in both.
And yes, I get just as upset when zealous fundamentalist Christians try to push their religious beliefs into science classrooms as by zealous Atheists try to push the scientific standards of proof into religion. I believe in both and, unless you get them confused, there is not much of a contradiction between the two.
As a sidenote, if anyone does have some interesting proofs for atheism (no doubt rooted in philosophy), would they mind sharing them?
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It is possible to prove there isn't a final digit in the square root of 2, that there isn't a sixth regular solid, that you can't trisect an angle by construction, and that there are no honest lawyers. Now, beyond that, you have a point.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Erm... you're messing philosophical schools there.... you wrote atheists, and gave a description of a cynic.... get your philosophical schools straight.
Cynicists preached that the purpose of life was to live a life in agreement with nature.... Atheists on the other end don't give a rats ass about deities because we believe in none.
I could go on about faiths, philosophical or theological view points, but why bother? Religion works the same way as placebos cure illness (specially the ones that have gods or mystical beings in their faiths).
So, do you say the same thing about leprechauns, the tooth fairy, the Flying Spaghetti Monster (praise be his noodley appendage), invisible pink unicorns, dragons, one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eaters, or the Great Green Arkleseizure? Or ghosts, for that matter?
Just because someone denies the existence of something that we have absolutely no evidence for, does not mean that they are making a "faith statement." I think you misinterpret reasonable deniable for absolute, "could-not-possibly-exist" denial. Few true scientists will claim that there is absolutely no possibility of a god-like being existing. However, these same sciences will also grant the same (quite possibly even greater, depending on the scientist) possibility for the existence, somewhere in this universe, for a one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater. Clearly, it's reasonable to deny the existence of the latter, since we have absolutely no proof of it, so it is therefore also reasonable to deny the existence of the former--not in absolute, I'm 100%-positive terms but in everyday "No, I'm pretty sure 'He' doesn't exist" terms.
Science can't prove that ANYTHING doesn't exist...
What if science where to prove a contradiction to something existing? For example, "an object of considerable mass traveling at or surpassing the speed of light" When you apply the relation between mass and velocity you realize that this is an impossibility. So you're left with two options: science can never actually prove anything, or that it is possible to prove that something cannot exist.
If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.
While the existence of a higher power called God may be as laughable as "Giant pink whistling bears" to you, a lot of people would take several thousand years of writing, personal testimony and philosophy as having a bit more credence than something you just made up on the spot. Whether or not each religion is true, partly true or not at all true at least there's some historical context for the discussion.
First of all, let me say that I'm a scientist by training. Secondly, that I have an open minded attitude towards ghosts. There, thats an oxymoron for you. Thirdly, that I was born on Hallowe'e. Whether this has anything to do with my interests or not, well, who knows :)
I have been interested in ghosts for all my life, but have been interested only semi-professionally for just over a decade. In that time, I have seen the rise of gullible, credulous idiots who believe in any old rubbish, and the fall of critical peer reviewed scientific method-driven enthusiasts. Even among university people, there are few interested people, and these tend to be lab-based ESP experiments, or groups who do research into the effects of magnetic fields on the brain, probing "god-like", or disocciated experiments.
A few of us are interested, though, but I doubt we'll find the answer. If you'd like, I'd ask you to review the pages on my web site, which list some of my experiences in the paranormal. Also recounts my meetings with some of the creduolous goons I mentioned above!
My web domain.
Luckily for those of us in the world who apply a thing I affectionately like to call logic, stating that God does not exist is not a faith statement as all the evidence in fact points to the fact that God in fact does not exist. What evidence you might ask? The lack of evidence for the existence of God. You cannot prove something by saying it cannot be disproven. In fact the very argument you are attempting to make is a long time recognized logical fallacy known as Argument from Ignorance" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_ignorantiam). The standard of proof always lies on the person making the claim (ie, God exists). By the way whoever modded this idiot insightful needs to be slapped in the face a few times, it is this type of ridiculous reasoning that is killing the US.
In my opinion there is just too much evidence that there must be some natural phenomena going on in physics that gives rise to these paranormal and religious explanations... I've looked at the evidence and I'm sure a few people at slashdot MUST have experienced:
1) Precognition (see a random fragment of a future event in a dream before it happens, but not remember until the event occurs, but you have no control over it)
2) See a person or animal very clearly (can describe who what the object is in amazing detail) that is there for a second and then is gone in a blink.
I really think these phenomena are tied to physics and multidimensionality, not that there are "ghosts" but there are "SHADOWS", bugs and echoes from spatial dimensions that exist that occasionally allow our eyes or perception to percieve the information in the phenomena for a brief moment.
See 4th dimension article here for some ideas of higher dimensions casting 'shadows' on lower dimensional objects and the nature of it. There are a few good analogies, like a 3D person can see inside a 2D object, where a 2D person cannot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4th_dimension
Of course all unprovable claims do not get equal value. I do believe in Zeus, as the preponderance of the evidence suggests that Zeus was a specific Greek representation of the spiritual authority of God, and I do believe in the spiritual authority of God. I do not believe in the FSM, because the preponderance of the evidence suggest that he was made up as a metaphor for the absurdity of religious belief, and I do not believe in the absurdity of religious belief.
It is absurd to claim that "there is no God" is a non-claim. "I don't believe in God" would be the non-claim. In my experience, most people who believe in God do so based on an overabundance of evidence, regardless of whether they are using the word "faith", "believe", or "knowledge".
I'm not making an argument for the existence of God. I'm simply saying that those who say "there is no God" have gone beyond the ability of science since a negative cannot be proved. Do you dispute that?
...and I believe the other poster's point was this:
While science has some really interesting guesses about the origins of the universe, as does religion, the simple fact remains that they're BOTH guesses. True, it's more systematic with science. However, most real agnostics and atheists I know will admit it's a guess either way, and as a Christian I need to honestly admit the same.
Folks, I'm with Jubal Harshaw on this:
"Come Judgement Day, if they hold it, we may find that Mumbo JumboDon't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
Generally people who believe that God doesn't exist don't hold it as an article of faith.
I'd replace 'generally' with 'many'. Too many people I've met consider atheism an article of faith. Very odd.
The real problem here is 'Faith'. A nonsensical idea that just doesn't compute. Faith in human nature, faith in democracy, faith in communism, faith in capitalism, faith in god, faith in the scientific method, faith in anything. All a delusion. Belief is OK. But faith is a poisonous delusion. I regard myself as a spiritual person, but faith ain't a part of it.
Bitter and proud of it.
Come on, this argument is so old.. Have you never heard of Occam's razor?!
From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor):
Occam's razor (sometimes spelled Ockham's razor) is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory.
So, actually, the burden of proof lies definitely on the "god-guys"!!! Jeez...
The burden of proof lies on the side of people asserting...
Heard this many times recently, but sorry, metaphysics, and philosophy in general, isn't Judge Judy.
At minimum, philosophy in general is at least 50% unprovable, but plausible, assertions.
Try, for instance, providing general proof of anything in the domain of aesthetics. Then, failing that, be consistent and personally avoid ever claiming something is "beautiful", "good", or "bad", or acting upon such an impression.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
For months I saw something that seemed to be a person moving just at the edge of my vision, on rare occasion, usually late at night when I was alone reading a book. But when I got up to look carefully, no one was there, or could possibly have been there.
Ghosts!
Or...maybe not. I went to the optometrist for my regular check-up, and she found a bunch of "floaters" in my eye. If I look at a blank wall, I can see them sometimes, they drift in and out of my field of view, and if I look steadily, the optic system edits them out and they vanish.
So, of course, when it was late at night and I was already tired, and moved my eyes after staring at something steadily (the book) a floater would sometimes wander into view briefly, and I'd "see" a moving shadow for a second or two.
I'll take that bet.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Wrong.
What I am saying is that there is no proof that God exists whatsoever. Until evidence is found to prove a/your/any God exists, it does not exist in our scope of knowledge.
Moreover, when debating the existence of something, it is on the believer to provide evidence when non exist. If evidence supports that something does exist, it is on the denier to discredit that said evidence. Now if you want to say that we just have not found the proof that God exists yet, that will not work either. You can only believe in it 'in theory' until it is proven. Sane people do not worship theories.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
The amount of scholarly research devoted to the latter, or pink elephants, or <insert ridiculous analogy here>, is hardly comparable.
There is a huge difference between those two statements. To claim otherwise is simply a logical fallacy.
11 words is too, in case I want to bust out, "So that's why you said you had to meet that ghost."
What sound do people on rollercoasters make? Hint: it's not Xbox 360.
... seems to me that there is quite a bit about physics we do not know. In fact what we do know is only that some of our theories work well enough that we can rely on them most of the time.
Gravity is something we really don't have a clear understanding of...
So about Ghosts, God, etc... perhaps we know more about them than what we know about physics.
In general when we can't explain something with known theories we use concepts like god to explain or communicate our lack of understanding.
IS there existence after life? Well of course there is, just as there is an energy extending from various elements that are not of life in their existence such as magnets.
Its all about energy, the focus and manifestation of it. The sort of energy that we are very capable of generating without additional technology.
However, this does not mean we have figured out how to measure it with technology. Or why haven't we figured out gravity yet?
By the way, there is absolutely no way you can determine whether I do, or do not, have proof of anything whatsoever.
There's a big problem with such negative assertions...
"Somebody has proof of who killed JFK."
This assertion requires that you know one point of fact--that is, you know a person who has the proof. This is possible to you.
"Nobody has proof of who killed JFK."
This claim is tantamount to a claim of personal omniscience. I requires that you have personal access to the knowledge of every human being on Earth, and can make this assertion on the basis of reviewing and finding the -absence- of proof in the mind and experience of every other human. This, you can never validly assert.
See the difference?
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Not really. If an angel enters this world and his an errand for God to carry out, it takes a physical form. If you meet an angel, you should very easily be able to test its reality.
I am not an expert on medieval philosophy in general and Occam's razor in particular. But isn't it possible to erroneously explain a phenomenon and eliminate possible causes if you misinterpret the evidence or if you don't have all the evidence available?
When are we going to be able to invent our own moderation tags? (:
Soylens viridis homines es
And with that statement you just firmly stated that you clearly don't understand jack. The ones that make a statement without any (clear) evidence of their believe must prove their point (Galileu, Hawkins, etc).
So if everyone in the world were an atheist, you would lose your proof that God doesn't exist? Now I'm getting confused.
I'm not debating the existence of anything. I'm making a simple statement of the fact that the person who says "there is no God" has made a statement that they cannot scientifically prove.
Let's hear this "it's own falsifiable test of itself".
Because if that's the case, I think you've thoroughly repudiated Godel, and that is likely to win you some intractable mathematics/science problem prize money.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
If that's not the case, then the burden of proof is certainly on you, much as the burden of proof is on anyone who says "There is a God". Unless you wish to admit that such a claim is a belief, not fact, the burden of proof is on you when you make the claim.
So you're communicating badly, or dodging the burden of proof. Either way, you seem wrong to me.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I'm not trying to prove anything to you. I'm stating a scientific fact. If you say "there is no God" you have make a claim you cannot prove because it is impossible to prove a negative.
Nonsense. Science takes enormous faith: It takes faith in an objective reality; faith in the permanence and universality of physical laws; faith in the foundations of mathematics; etc. Math is the same way, the axioms are, and must always be, a matter of instinct/intuition/perception/faith. It's quite appropriate, as "thinking" brain is built on the foundation of our "feeling" brain. People who love logic would love to find a logic proof of the foundations of math or science, but the fact that it is impossible is good for us, as it reminds us that there is a whole lot more to thinking than just logic. After all, even a computer can do logic; it's really a specialized and limited task compared to the rest of thinking.
Ghosts are real, and here is the proof
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
Do I dispute what? That you cant disprove something for which there is not evidence in the first place? Um well then I guess not. However stating that it is beyond the ability of science when someone says there is no god is only in as that science can never disprove something for which its adherents do not base their argument for on logic and fact. Once someone departs from logic and fact, it is impossible to shake their support for an idea. So yes science will never be able to shake the belief of religious zealots, but then again, nor will science ever be able to convince my 4 year old cousin that the Barney is a man in a suit.
Well 34% also believe in UFOs. I wonder if the people they surveyed took that to mean little green men, or the actual definition, which is something flying around that you don't know what it is. I believe in the second (and that they are manmade), but not the first.
It's interesting that I have found people out there who believe in ghosts but not God, or even stranger, Angels, but not God. Of course many on this very board believe in Little Green Men, but not God. I suppose an Atheist might as well believe in other life forms, though I personally don't think they exist, or if they do, that they are not necessarily within a thousand orders of magnitude of our size, nothing like our chemical makeup, aren't based on carbon, don't give a rip about water, or in some other way are completely unlike what we so vigorously search for.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Any axiom is proof of its own truth, regardless of if it is true or not. Science takes a huge leap of faith that the existentialist third of the spectrum of philosophers refuse to take.
On the other hand, you believe in God, he exists, you die and spend eternity in heaven. Not a bad return on your investment of a couple hours a week in church and living basically the same moral code that athiests are required to live by because of laws that have been passed and social custom (murder, theft, lying, etc.).
Where the odds get you is picking the right religion.
In a country where 94% of the people believe in god you can sell anything.
Most people in Vatican City are religious!
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
They are not wrong in any way. If I say Santa Claus does not exist, that is not a statement of opinion, it is one of fact. The person, as in this case, saying something does not exist is ALWAYS correct, right, and most importantly (to you it seems) they are unquestionable. I will only cease to be right when you prove me wrong. In the case of saying God exists, I need to do the same, but instead science proves it wrong by discrediting your 'beliefs' with real facts.
There is no God.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
False dichotomy, asshole. Some people understand real morality, instead of the childish behavior of trying to avoid a spanking from an imaginary Daddy In The Sky.
I think you're reading that wrong. The issue is people having faith in science. Not "in science" as in a property of science, but "faith in" as in something they target to reinforce their untestable beliefs.
You are welcome on my lawn.
But let's not forget that the existence or non-existence of God can't be proven with either scientific or logical methods.
To take the first one first: Science relies on observable, repeatable phenomenon. Since the notion of God which we're trying to prove is sentient and conscious, it is impossible to say what God will or won't do in any given situation. You simply can't design a valid scientific experiment which would prove or disprove the existence of God.
And the logical proof of God's existence is even more problematic. In order to prove something exists, you must first define it fully. To fully define a being of infinite intelligence and wisdom is beyond the capability of a being of finite intelligence and wisdom. Thus, nothing of finite intelligence and wisdom could even accomplish the first step of a proof of God's existence - that is, a full definition of his being.
Science and philosophy are very useful tools in the hands of those who recognize the limits of each. However, all too many atheists derive their personal beliefs about the world based solely on philosophy and science, seemingly ignorant of the limitations of both. Yet this inability of their cherished disciplines to address the question of God doesn't keep them from demanding that believers "prove" God's existence, or attempt to show it empirically. As if science or philosophy could do such a thing.
While not empirically provable, it does seem rather odd that the notion of a higher power is common to all major cultures throughout history. I'm kind of curious how an atheist would explain away this fact, were it not for a God:
Okay, I realize those sound like trollish questions, but I'm more interested in really knowing than in starting a flame war. Because if you deny the existence of God, you've got to have a pretty good explanation for how Mankind got fooled for nearly 4 millenia. If God doesn't exist, he's the longest running joke in the universe!
And to quote an atheist, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." I expect you to provide more than just the usual conjecture about the evolution of the brain or primitive politics, etc...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
But the evidence that he has a brain exists. The evidence of a magical creature living in the sky who loves you unless you do something tiny that pisses him off, in that case you can burn in a pit of fire for eternity, does not.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
No one can "ultimately prove" anything in this life. When someone says something doesn't exist, the sane and reasonable interpretation is "from what I've determined using my obviously only-human brain and inevitably-NON-OMNIPOTENT KNOWLEDGE." You would literally have to stick that preface before every single time you ever said something that wasn't true, even if you were just saying that you ate oatmeal for breakfast. How do you KNOW it was oatmeal? Someone could have snuck in while you were asleep and exchanged it for extremely convincing oatmeal-substitute. An obscenely unlikely proposition, but still possible.
And you've still dodged the issue--is stating the nonexistence of god fundamentally different than stating the nonexistence of leprechauns/FSMs/faries/dragons/etc. or isn't it?
So where's your argument? Since you understand "real morality," feel free to enlighten the rest of us!
If what I have posed is a false dichotomy, then where's your counter-example?
My thought regarding the bible -- worth exactly what you pay for it -- is that it IS the inspired word of God, but that God gave that word to relatively uneducated (albeit contemporary) men. They very well may have had a "vision" that told them what to write in Genesis, but to avoid their dying of old age while the vision unreeled, God sped up the film a little. Therefore, there was some 'creative license' taken with the vision, which is why the writer said the world was created in 7 days. It probably wasn't created in 168 solar hours.
After all, even Bryan himself said during the REAL Scopes trial, "I believe everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there; some of the Bible is given illustratively. For instance: 'Ye are the salt of the earth.' I would not insist that man was actually salt, or that he had flesh of salt, but it is used in the sense of salt as saving God's people."
So back to your original question: the answer is "Yes, the Bible is all of these things, written through the lens of the contemporary writers of the day."
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Based on the phenomenon of ghost-hunting, I believe that a "ghost" would be a physical, natural, manifestation of a spirit (i.e. a dead person).
Therefore, the way I understand reality, there are no ghosts, but there are spirits. A person might see a spirit, because a person is simultaneously spiritual and natural. Even while we have a natural body, we are occasionally capable of seeing purely spiritual things or people. But we see them with the mind, not with the eyes, even though we might not be able to tell the difference. A camcorder will never see a spirit, because a camcorder is just there for the photons. So ghost-hunters relying on technology are wasting their time.
I'm not making an argument for the existence of God. I'm simply saying that those who say "there is no God" have gone beyond the ability of science since a negative cannot be proved. Do you dispute that?
I'd dispute that. Science doesn't waste its time with Gods, FSMs, pixies, demons, or anything else. It tries to divide statements into true, false, unknown, and pointless. Your God stuff is in the pointless category - it seems to have no effect on anything. By Occam's razor, we consider pointless a subset of false, but would be happy to move your claim into into either unknown or true if you could point to any interesting phenomenon we should look at.
We don't deny there are an infinite number of unprovable statements, it's just that treating them all equally doesn't advance science.
If everybody were atheist, then nobody will think about gods and the whole god question will disappear in a puff of nothingness.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Is that the believers or the non-believers.
All I ever say is that I've yet to see sufficient evidence to make the case for the existence of a god. If your standard of evidence is less rigorous, so be it.
But don't go around, like so many believers do, saying that those who do not believe in god are somehow immoral.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Actually, the number of Americans that believes in UFO's is closer to 60%. (http://www.scifi.com/ufo/roper/05.html)
And, despite Fox News' assertion that 90% Americans believe in God, I don't think the number is anywhere near that. In fact, I don't think more than 40% of Americans believe in Fox News. They have been known to make shit up to the point that if they said there was a 90% chance there's going to be a drought, I'd buy stock in umbrella manufacturers.
Monarchs, emperors and dictators have long used an organized belief in the supernatural and religion to keep the population docile. It's not accidental that despite their tremendous profits, religions are exempt from taxation. They are a great help to tyrants and do a great disservice to citizens.
Faith in a higher power and an immutable moral system is part of being human, and religions cynically use that against us.
Did you know that despite Fox News claims of a 90%+ level of belief that regular attendance at church is at 40% and declining here? I'm telling you, people are catching on to the BS. That's why there's such a desperate effort to create a locked-down surveillance society before it all blows wide open. There's a shrinking window of opportunity to prevent worldwide liberty, and the internet isn't helping any. That's one reason why net neutrality is being attacked so energetically.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Although sections contain both ancient history and ancient law, it is, in its entirety a religious book. That is, when understood correctly, it informs the reader about the nature of God, the nature of man, and the nature of the relationship between the two.
At least believing in God answers questions science can't and probably never will answer, like who created the Universe. Believing in ghosts is just pointless superstition.
No, they can't. What has confused you is the common tendency of irrational people to characterize themselves as rational, that's all.
Rational people don't believe in things for which there is no evidence of any kind, or for which claimed evidence consistently turns out to be mundane. Just as a rational person does not believe in the existence of a teapot in the shape of a small elephant with my mother's face on it presently orbiting between Jupiter and Mars, no matter how many people claim it is there, a rational person will not believe that there is a god, regardless of the number of others who so believe, or how many books have been written about it, until or unless evidence can be produced to back up the story, to bring the rational person's position of extremely low confidence up a few notches.
Claims for situations extant that lack evidence are stories. Rational people recognize them by this simple, yet manifestly obvious signature: No data. The fact that the signature is obvious is why people who aren't raging intellectuals can recognize it: They don't have to be smart, they just have to be rational. Missouri even puts the process on their license plate: "Show me." It isn't, as they say, rocket science.
Now, if you want to say that many smart people adhere to religious and other supernatural claims, I certainly won't dispute it - that's a fact. But when you say those people are rational... no. Not even close. But in our society, they are free to claim they are, while making any manner of claim they so choose; it's up to you to be rational enough to throw the gauntlet down and say "Show me!"
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
How does age of a topic in any way make it more or less valid? You sound like people who insist acupuncture or astrology are true just because they're old.
Everything will be taken away from you.
So I can't have faith that my chair can hold my weight. Instead I can only have belief? And then what if it doesn't hold my weight? Was my belief wrong? Or has the belief now downgraded to faith?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
As a result, you'll be apt to believe in what you're told or what others believe too - no matter if it's in the Bible or on TV. Or on the Net, for that matter.
Which, if true, means that all you have to do is spend a few minutes talking to someone to change their mind about their faith. Has this proven to be true?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I don't know about mysticism, but it would be very easy to argue that environmentalism is a religion for some.
What about the faith that science is the societal factor that has the largest impact on the growth of mankind? I think in that sense you could say it requires faith.
Scientists who believe in cloning, genetic research, altering DNA, etc have faith that the practice will further the race, and improve the world. There are those who oppose it and believe that these practices could harm our quality of life as a species hundreds of years down the line. Both groups have faith in those beliefs, and who can say who is right at this point?
To use some video game references, look at Bioshock - I don't want to include any spoilers for those who haven't played, but the ethics of genetic modification is definitely a theme in the game, and in some sense the concept of faith in science can be seen in the narrative. Or look at the science faction in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri - that faction essentially was a church of science (and who I always always played as I might add). Faith plays a definite role in the pursuit of science in my opinion.
Good analysis of the TV show. Webmistress Alison Smith's Skepticality interview is also worth a listen.
By pinching yourself to make sure your awake or by ditching the drugs which are giving you the hallucinations?
I've heard that 63% of statistics are complete nonsense.
Do all unprovable claims get equal value in your mind?
No, of course not. We have (or at least I have--I won't speak for you) the ability to evaluate -plausibility-.
Yes, you know yourself that whether capitalism or communism is a superior economic system can't be proven, but one is definitely more plausible. Yes, you know yourself that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is less plausible than Christianity. If you choose to lie, however, that's your temporary choice.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
How do you answer someone who claims to have seen God? Or another who claims that God has spoken to him?
You can't prove one way or another what someone else has perceived. Our society has condemned men to death on the eyewitness testimony of only a handful of witnesses; yet those who claim contact with God throughout history are innumerable. If our justice system believes eyewitness testimony is good enough for life-and-death decisions, why isn't it good enough for the atheist?
I say this because even though you might be an atheist yourself, might never have seen God, or anything even that would suggest his existence, this doesn't mean that others have not. Rather than dismissing a believer, you should be open to the possibility that they have chanced upon something you haven't. Before you ask for proof, first ask yourself how you - or anyone - could prove that they had seen anything, let alone God. Sometimes, the only thing you can evaluate is the trustworthiness of the witness. And religion, Christianity in particular, has a lot of trustworthy witnesses.
And as for the burden of proof, the notion of God's existence isn't new - it's as old as written history itself. So it's not really shifting the burden of proof to ask for a justification of atheism, because God's existence is pretty well documented.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
So if I say there is no piece of poop that has vocal chords and can sing me an Aria, am I also wrong? I am right until you show me said opera-singing turd.
I know more than you drink.
1. Do they really expect us to believe that all of humanity that came before them were collective idiots?
No, just that they were more ignorant of the world around them than those of today. We've had more opportunity to critically examine various beliefs than those. So as a general rule, each generation has had a tendency to become less ignorant of the world around them. Lack of knowledge is in no way the same as lack of intelligence though. As well, it's only recently that we've known enough for a god of the gaps argument to not be somewhat valid.
2. Do they think we should have to prove what each generation since Adam has come to accept as true?
Yes. That's where the largest boosts to humanity have come from, in critically examining our long held beliefs. It's by taking an experimental look at beliefs which seem obvious that we often find huge benefit. Say, "everyone knows that X will heal you". By examining X against other things, we find out that it has benefit but only up to the same level as a random substance put forward to be X. So we learn about the placebo effect, and the improve testing procedures allow better development of medicine.
3. Doesn't it occur to them that if they aren't seeing what everyone else around them is seeing/perceiving, perhaps it is they who have the vision/perception problem?
Sure. So they test things which are in dispute. The vast majority of people don't see atoms, doesn't change things though.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Just like all similar conversations, this one has ended with ignorance and the slamming of a mind.
I know more than you drink.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I also can answer your questions about life, Universe and everything. Will you pray to me?
You potentially right and also potentially wrong since nothing has been proved one way or the other.
A belief that science provides any kind of access to truth requires considerable faith. Especially given all the evidence to the contrary. "Evidence to the contrary?", you ask, with unconcealed incredulity. Yes -- it's called the "pessimistic meta-induction" -- the idea that new scientific theories so often overthrow older scientific theories that the safe bet is to believe that all current science is a load of bunk that will be overthrown eventually (its usefulness notwithstanding).
You have to start with the belief that it is effective in the first place for that to work! Can't you see that? In any case, I think you've massively overstepped the boundaries to which science can be validly applied. A scientific method is not a scientific theory which makes predictions and faces the prospect of contrary evidence: it is a prescriptive thing which tells you how you ought to go about a process. A scientific method can't be "wrong", because it doesn't make any claims, any more than a recipe makes claims. The "faith in science itself" to which the GPP referred is an attitude that people (like yourself) have towards science, rather than a thing intrinsic to science. Richard Dawkins, for example, asserts, "if science has nothing to say, it's certain that no other discipline can say anything at all." This is a very bold philosophical claim, and well outside the bounds of scientific test. It's only fair to describe such a claim as an "article of faith".
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
Incorrect. Science says "we don't know the complete origin of the universe, but here are some parts we do know from observation. We still need to observe and understand more before we'll know the complete origin."
Whereas religion says, "we know the complete origin of the universe: God made it."
However, most real agnostics and atheists I know will admit it's a guess either way, and as a Christian I need to honestly admit the same.
Again, science doesn't "guess", neither does it yet claim to know the whole picture. Religion claims to know the whole picture, and each denomination has a completely different story that they claim as the one true story. There's nothing to support the guess that the Christian God created the universe and a Hindu god did not, but yet Christianity says "no, ours is the real story". My point being, why claim faith that Christianity proposes the true God when there's no observable proof to support it (especially only any other religion?) Shouldn't belief in a specific God require some form of proof?
You're right. "I don't believe there is a god in the universe" isn't the same as "there is no god." One is a statement of opinion, the other is a universal fact with no qualifications.
But try this: close your eyes and say "I am in the year 2006." You didn't say "I think I'm in 2006," this is something completely different. Now, check your computer's clock. Is it 2006? No, it isn't. Because just saying something is true doesn't make it true. So what would it mean if someone walked up to you and said "this is the year 2006?" It would mean that this one particular person *thought* it was 2006. Not that they weren't sure, they were pretty sure. You should probably direct them to a calendar, or some other proof of the date. But it didn't make it true. Now someone walks up to you and says "there is no god." Obviously this statement of fact doesn't change the universe. Either there is a god or there isn't, one guy saying there isn't doesn't change that.
So what *does* "there is no god" mean, then, when someone says it? Why, it means they're pretty fucking sure there is no god. Or, in other words, "There is no solid evidence there is a god, thus by applying the commonly accepted scientific methodologies, we can say there is no god until proven otherwise."
The two statements are technically different, but functionally the same. I am not an agnostic, I don't wonder if there is a god or not. I've considered the question and come to the conclusion that there is no god. I am an atheist. I am, as a scientifically minded person, willing to change my working hypothesis to reflect new evidence, if such evidence surfaces, but it never has and it never will. Do I know that as a universal truth? Can I ever really be certain? Of course not. But just as I'm sure there is no flying spaggetti monster, and no invisible pink unicorn, and that zeus doesn't rule the gods from mount olympus, and that there is no Santa, and no loch ness monster, I'm sure there is no god. I know this as much as a thing can be known.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
Here you go.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
"By 31 percent to 18 percent, more liberals than conservatives report seeing a specter."
I'd guess that that has something to do with religion, but I'm not quite sure how.
"Overall, the 48 percent who accept ESP is less than the 66 percent who gave that answer to a similar 1996 Newsweek question."
That's a huge drop -- if it's real (and not, say, a problem with the survey question). If it's real, any conjectures as to the cause? I'd like to think that it's because people have become more scientific in the past 11 years, but, unfortunatly, I don't think that's the case.
what the agnostics and some atheists complain about.
I think.
Those of us who believe can't get together on what we believe.
I don't believe angels switch back and forth between physical form and non-physical form. There are spirits of just men made perfect, and there are resurrected beings. I could explain further, but not in this forum, and I'm not sure I could communicate it well at will, even to a fellow believer, although, if you're interested, you can research more about what I believe on the web.
I think we who believe need to be more circumspect about how we present our beliefs, in particular, we need to be more cognizant that our own understanding of the metaphysical is not complete and may be hard to publicly reconcile with others' understandings. And we have to be more conscious of how much damage has been done historically by those who attempt to force their concepts of the metaphysical on others. If we could, I think we could have much more intelligent discussions with those who don't believe.
We have to acknowledge that, no, it is not a matter of course.
Morality is about the way things ought to be, and a "moral wrong" is a situation where things are not as they ought to be. This does create a dilemma for people who are both moral realists and strict physicalists (denying that there is anything other than the material realm). The problem is this: if you're a physicalist/materialist, then all real truths are truths about physical things -- about the way things are. Any statement about the way things ought to be can not be a real truth or falsehood, since there is nothing real to which it refers. A genuine physicalist can't consistently make absolute claims about morality for this reason. That's not to say that they can't be moral actors, but their moral code is necessarily fictitious because strict physicalism is incompatible with non-physical realities such as real morality. Physicalism is incompatible with moral realism.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
And I would say that if a ghost or spirit exists, it is physical, even if its physical nature is in some manner different from the physical existence of this world, such that would would not (normally?) be able to directly interact with it. Well, except in the case of an individual's own spirit, which does seem to have power to directly interact with the individual's body.
Definitely not very subject to technological experimentation, in any case.
So many people today believe in so much nonsense that a new dark age can't be far off.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Uh, I think you missed the sentence at the end of that paragraph that read:
However, most real agnostics and atheists I know will admit it's a guess either way, and as a Christian I need to honestly admit the same.Trust me, not all Christians are as hard-headed as some of the noisy ones...
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
What makes you think that you have to have a supernatural to have morality? Or are you saying that you need a belief in the supernatural to have morality? If this is the case, why are atheists so under represented in prison population statistics?
The smarter home exchange, http://switchhomes.net
Do YOU have no sense of right or wrong?
:(
Where does spirituality come into play here? Does your spiritually guided, moral compass tell you that killing someone is wrong without question - or - is killing someone who will be responsible for the deaths of millions morally acceptable? Does it tell you that you should love your parents unconditionally - or - should you stop loving them if they are responsible for heinous abuse, neglect or even murder??? Where do you draw the line? Do these things suddenly become moral or immoral based on some sort of invisible, cosmological line drawn between wrong and right?
Exactly
where in your spiritual text book does it explain you to you, word for word, what is absolutely morally right or unquestionably morally wrong? Is it 'instilled' inside of you? Does that mean you always make the right, moral decisions? If so, it must be nice to be you...
And I guess can no other living being make a moral decision without spirituality? When dolphins care for their injured or sick, is this not a moral decision? When animals such as dogs and walruses 'adopt' animals of other species and take care of them even though there's nothing to gain, is that not a moral decision?
It's hard to believe you summarized the entire multi-verse up in two categories - "immoral" and "spiritual". If spirituality is solely responsible morality, then nothing could have been immoral without it, no? You can't have good without evil and you can't have immorality without morality. It makes me sad that people have such a narrow vision.
If there's a universal right and wrong, then human beings don't know what the Hell they are doing.
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
I think angels should really be put in to the god category, they have superhuman abilities, can fly, live for ever unless killed by a stronger god etc.
The smarter home exchange, http://switchhomes.net
Such an obviously scientific-minded individual such as yourself surely has evidence to back this statement up?
First, you're trying to mix facts and opinion. "Koalas are cute" is an opinion, so asking for evidence or proof to start with is misguided. "90% of people will agree that Koalas are cute when prompted for their opinion" is a factual statement, and in this case the burden of proof would be on the one making the claim.
Heard this many times recently, but sorry, metaphysics, and philosophy in general, isn't Judge Judy.
If it's an opinion, you can't really be wrong, so burden of proof is silly. But factual statements, even ones with little or no evidence available, do have burden of proof. I can claim that I'm an angel sent by God to help enlighten you, and you can't possibly disprove that. But it's unreasonable for you to believe that without some evidence of some kind, right? The same hold true for the existence of God, (the one who sent me ;) ).
In science, nothing. However, again you fall back on religion being an explaniation for natural phenomenon. I am claiming that religion answers a different question. And for which explaination, well, philosophers and theologists have been debating for millenia. Atheism is merely one such answer. And, it certainly seems like Atheism has more complex answers than monotheism when it comes to questions covering discussions of free will, reasons one would be moral, epistomolgy, and other big, nonscientific questioning. But to answer your question, it is a question of faith, since there is no way to choose one explaination objectively.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Mod me funny! ; )
Well, simply... no.
I can validly assert that "Libertarianism is the best political system", as an assertion of how reality is, i.e., as fact, and provide evidence for that assertion, without being able to "prove" it.
I can validly assert that "Capitalist countries will outperform communist ones over the next ten years", as an assertion of how reality is, and I need not "prove" it if the domain is not amenable to proof, as economics among many others is.
And, I can come up with a thousand more examples like those...
While "fact" and "opinion" makes a neat little false dichotomy, there are things that are ultimately facts (one way or the other), which are of a presently-indeterminate nature in terms of proof--and making an assertion regarding them is not merely purely-subjective "opinion".
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
No, it's not. But argument by popularity is a fallacy.
and thereby attempt to deduce by reason the state it would have occupied in the past. Or alternatively you might invoke God
What do you mean? You can't ultimately test the origin of mankind or the universe because there is no way for you to go back in time, period. All you really have is inference, and that is guided by your FAITH that internal consistency in logic and invariant laws of physics yields truth.
This is my sig.
A quantum mechanic.
What?
He-Man!
One group could be called Friends of Ghosts, or FOG, for those who are sympathetic to the poor dear things, while their more skeptical counterparts can engage in Scientific Measurement of Ghosts, aka SMOG.
Dibs on the auburn-haired beauty in the leather catsuit.
"Ain't no right way to do a wrong thing."
Maybe this is the year... ...that paranormal investigators will come up with a single repeatable result, in ANY field of paranormal investigation.
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
There's a big difference between faith and the recognition that a particular method is the most pragmatic and reliable method available.
Nice try though.
And the trick to this is that you have to give me a good answer, one that I can accept, and that motivates me to believe that life is worth living, among many other things.
Only charisma? I guess you don't know my God.
Although there is this kind of ironic bit that my God is the source of all truth, and so is the source of all that is scientifically true as well. So, if you really accept science as true, in one sense you do know one aspect of my God.
Hmmm.
(What's the emoticon for crossed eyes and a stuck-out tongue?)
Maybe I am missing something (I am not a philosopher), but to this pedestrian, science makes predictions that give us reason to have faith in it. Our whole existence would come crumbling down if science failed to be predictable (e.g., f != ma). The faith required for believing in the bible is blind. There is no reason to believe it over any other competing mythology. In fact it is due the utmost skepticism because of the nature of our psychology. Watch this video. Watch the experiment in the beginning. Look how our brains seem well suited to "magical thinking." This is how religious myths are born.
Along with the refusal of some people to believe that there science is still built on quite a number of axioms that remain unproven.
Emperical, emperical!
Well, I have emperical, too.
Which really has little to do with belief - my entire family stopped going to church because every one they went to had nothing to do with God and everything to do with spying on each other and joining cliques... essentially a return to high school gossip. Oh, and the fact that the church they'd gone to for twelve years is now dropping $13 million on a new, bigger church, something they don't need since they don't fill the one they have now.
They still are very devout Christians, they just hold their own beliefs at home and decided not to have them messed with by churches that waste their tithing.
I believe!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I agree that science is just a method, and that no faith in it is required to practice it.
However, it seems to me there are a lot of people who put their faith in scientific theories and feel that they know as absolute FACT that which is only theorized. It also seems to me that the average person doesn't understand the reasoning behind many of the scientific "facts" they believe in -- so from a philosophical standpoint, I would call that faith.
I was taking on faith that the world is roughly spherical and that all matter is made of up atoms, and so forth, long before I understood the scientific reasons for believing so.
Who's the Holy Ghost then?
Your post is a good example of why the whole God, Ghosts, and UFO's crowd don't seem to have a clue.
Hint: All of those concepts are invented by human imagination. No evidence exists that these things are real. For centuries man has tried to find evidence of their existence with zero success, thus it becomes differing beliefs all trying to shout the loudest they are 'right' and the others are wrong- no supporting evidence for any of them to be right.
I really just cannot comprehend the whole having to have a supernatural being to use to explain things you don't understand.
"....who created the Universe...." What who? Why a who? Which who? (Dr. Suess and Whoville from 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas" comes to mind for me- sorry)
Since you seem to have your mind made up that someone created the Universe, then you have set yourself up for the need to believe in a god to be that someone. This mindset also has a knack for not using critical thinking and scientific methods to learn how it happened, it becomes easier over time to just say that some god did it. 'The ways of gods are beyond the understanding of man' seems to also be a recurring theme in most religions that involve a deity.
I don't get it....
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
>My proof that your god doesn't exist is your lack of proof that he does.
My proof that your science doesn't exist is that you never know when you are awake or dreaming. You can't prove you are not dreaming, else, you'd always know when you are dreaming and you don't.
unfinished: (adj.)
What if a natural explanation is found one day? What if it contradicts your faith? Will you then deny it? What would it take to change your mind? How do you even know which religious guess is right? Do you think that if you were born in Saudi Arabia, you would believe the Christian myth? No, you would likely be a Muslim. If you were born in India, perhaps you would believe the Hindu creation myth, because you would be a Hindu. So my point in all this is to say that you were likely indoctrinated into your current belief system by the culture in which you live. The mythology you believe is completely arbitrary. I put no more stock in Christ than I would in Zues, Oden, Mithras, or Kirshna. I am an athiest because none of these mythologies are intellectually satisfying. What if it turns out that our existence is some sort of a computer simulation? This seems much more plausible than anything else I've heard. The fact is, science destroys mythologies. Many phenomena throughout history were attributed to the supernatural (e.g., lightening, the sun, the stars, etc.), only to later proven by science to be anything but. I would give up my atheism in a second if I saw any evidence for a god. The theist waving his holy book is the one making the claim that this entity exists. There lies the burden of proof.
WHO created the universe? You are assuming SOMEBODY created the universe.
If you do not assume that (which is a weird assumption if you think about it) then there's no need to ask that question, the question is pointless.
If you ask HOW was the universe created (which IS a reasonable question) both religion and science have provided answers. But the answers by science are logical, can be tested to a certain extent and are converging to a specific explanation (though, of course, the more we research, the more we know about the answer and that means that some of the details of our prior understanding might become invalidated).
Religion, on the other hand, offers responses that have been PROVEN wrong (like the universe being created five thousand years ago), are inconsistent (even within the same religions) and incoherent (how can light from a star a million light years away have been created five thousand years away).
Getting answers from religion is asking the wrong questions to the wrong people.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
The only real "proof" you need to confirm that science works is that of basic logic: if you make an assumption that will yeld, by any logical process, a specific result, and the result is confirmed, as well as any possible result from applying the same principle as specified to other cases, then it is confirmed. Science makes predictions. So does faith. In almost every single case (from trillions of cases) science gets them right. In the cases where it's not, the rules of science are revised and science is advanced. In almost every single case, predictions made by faith that are testable are confirmed wrong (end of the world, faith healing, history of the universe, you name it). When the predictions are confirmed wrong, THE PREDICTIONS are revised. Faith is stil considered perfect and infallible.
That's true and correct. But that isn't about SCIENCE. It is about people's beliefs on science. It is not an integral part of science, it is not necessary for science, and it is actually detrimental to real science. It is like talking about the belief that science is fun. It is totally irrelevant to the fact that science works, science can be useful to make accurate predictions and science gives a pretty accurate description of the universe. Wether you beleive in it or not.
Is there anything beyond the natural?
yes: ghosts can exist, angels can exist, God can exist, pretty much anything supernatural could exist, and so there is no morality.
no: then we're living in a strictly materialistic world.
There are good biological explanations for altruism and the evolution of morality. These behaviors are not unique to humans. They are observed in many species.
On the other hand, the theist explanation basically says you better be good or else god will punish you. Morality is merely a consequence of fear. People are moral only because they're being watched?
How do you know what's moral anyway? The Bible is not a good source of moral inspiration. The God of Abraham condones human sacrifice, rape, mass murder, slavery, etc. I'm not making this stuff up. It's all in the Old Testament. How anyone can point to the Bible as a moral guideline is beyond me.
I completely agree with you. To argue for theism on Slashdot is definitely not going with the popular crowd, wouldn't you agree?
I don't believe that you think I'm arguing for the case that the popularity of an argument makes it right.
Little hard NOT to believe in the paranormal or supernatural when you've experienced said events/phenomena firsthand. There may be other explanations, but in some cases, I believe they fall under areas of a science or natural process that is not yet fully understood.
And actually, I didn't point at the Bible, but I am happy you are aware of its existence!
This is called Pascal's Wager, and if you look it up on Wikipedia, it has been very thoroughly discredited by far brighter minds than mine.
"Scientists who believe in cloning, genetic research, altering DNA, etc"
Are correct; These things all exist.
Opinions about what's good for humanity in the future are not science, regardless of who holds them. In judging what is good for humanity, you are not doing science. On the other hand, that's no reason to do it poorly by basing your opinions on fictional video games; you could look at history. Historically, Science has done more to improve the lives of human beings than any other philosophical framework or movement. Luckily, people wringing their hands about the terrible dangers of better understanding the world have had about diddly-squat impact. Simply by valuing knowledge over ignorance, science has proven unstoppable.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
>>Science is a method, it requires no faith. In fact it is a method through which provides it's own falsifiable test of itself.
Slow down there, cowboy. Nothing proves itself -- you always start with a certain set of axioms.
While it is indeed one of the great tools for knowing things that we have, it is certainly not the only way things become known. We can learn certain things through reason alone (such as math), and many things can only be learned through word of mouth (Sally said that Harry said that...). Statistics is one of the fundamental answers to epistemology (how can I know something), but ultimately we only can learn things at certain (not very high) confidence levels. While a p-value of 0.05 or 0.01 might sound pretty impressive (and are the standard rules of thumb for statistical 'proofs'), they represent 1-out-of-20 and 1-out-of-100 studies' results being nothing more than the result of random chance. If you have, say, 10,000 papers published a year, 500 or 100 of them will be wrong.
Given how often scientific answers have indeed been found to be wrong, especially in epidemiological studies (which is a sort of scientific wishful thinking), it hardly proves itself to be true (which can't be done anyway). A better way of putting it is, "It's the best method we have of figuring out empirical truths about nature."
There are very major limits on science and the scientific method. Notably:
1) Singular events. Science can't handle singular events very well, or not at all. For example, suppose the people that claimed they had seen cold fusion back in '89 really did see Cold Fusion. Perhaps a gamma ray hit something at just the right time, or maybe it required high altitude, or something. But when researchers tried to duplicate it, they couldn't and so the guys were branded as frauds. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't... but they could actually have made an honest empirical observation, and then branded as frauds as a result of it.
2) Trust. The motto of the Royal Society is "Nullis in Verba" ("On the words of no one") In other words, don't believe what people say, but only trust in reproducible experiments. The trouble with this is, of course, that no one can come close to reproducing all of the empirical experiments needed for a full understanding of modern science, and so it always boils down to trusting what other people say. If a car full of scientists drove through a mountain pass and saw a white substance outside, they could send one of their members out to report if it was sand or snow... without accomplishing anything. The friend could be playing a practical joke on them, after all. All of them would need to go outside and make an empirical observation of the substance themselves in order to be satisfied. This is a very fundamental flaw in the system, which only works since malicious papers (as far as I know) are not inserted into the literature like viruses.
3) The old induction problem / uncertainty. Science is based on inductive reasoning, and inductive reasoning from empirical events can't actually prove anything. We can make certain claims, but not proofs in the sense that logical or mathematical statements can be proven true. "The sun will rise tomorrow" is a scientific claim, but it cannot be proven to be true. The fundamental problem is that what is true in the past might not be true in the future. Since certain things like universal constants are likely to stay the same (though some have theorized they have not in the past!), it can be answered by simply stipulating "If things stay like they are now..." but this is still not the same level of proof as people deal with in logic and math. All scientific knowledge, ultimately, is uncertain.
4) Heretics. The heretics of science have always received rough treatment. Most of the time it is deserved (there are a lot of nutcases out there), but sometimes people have followed the scientific method but had their papers rejected because the reviewers assume their preconceived conclusion. The guys
Why James Randi of course; because if you really believe in ghosts, you really believe you have a shot at that one million dollars.
mr Randy was so flushed with insane people thinking they have power, that they changed the challenge rule so that only if you have a media presence you can do the challenge. Maybe those guy match the criteria, since they were interviewed ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
It is of course rather odd that while we can easily accept that a chair exists, a house exists or even some person posting online exists, it is impossible to verify the existence of the supposedly most present and active entity in the universe. In fact, the only real thing that we "know" about its existence is that it goes out of its way to not be seen to the uninitiated.
see a Text Widget
So what you're actually saying is that a statement to the effect of "Santa does not exist" is just as much an act of faith as saying "Santa DOES exist"?
This happy news will no doubt make a lot of children happy!
see a Text Widget
I've lost count of the times I have seen this "science cannot explain" argument.
What, do they think anything that science cannot explain is paranormal? For example, it was only when the general relativity theory was created that science could explain magnetism satisfactorily, without contradicting classical newtonian mechanics. Before that, magnetism was widely used as an example of a "paranormal" force in action. And, ironically, some people today still cite 19th century texts claiming that magnetism "cannot be explained by science"...
For those who never had or have forgotten their relativity lessons, let me explain. If an observer sees two electric charges moving at the same speed, he can measure a magnetic force between those charges. If the observer is moving together with the charges, he cannot measure any magnetic force. Newtonian physics cannot explain this, until the year 1905 science couldn't explain the magnetic force.
Enter the special theory of relativity. Moving reference frames are now treated by a special mathematical tool called a "Lorenz contraction", under which lengths, time intervals, and magnetic charges must be corrected if something is moving very fast. Classic mechanics are not affected by this effect, because it's very small at the speed we usually experience here on earth. It's only when you come close to the speed of light that the Lorenz contraction becomes relevant.
So, what about magnetism? Here's what happens: negative electric charges, in the form of electrons, are moving inside the copper wires. Because there are also positive charges in the wires, in the nuclei of the copper atoms, the electric force cancels out. However, the very slight Lorenz contraction that's applied to the moving electrons cancels out some of the electric force, the system becomes very slightly unbalanced and that difference between the effective electric charge of the static protons and the moving electrons is what we call "magnetism". Magnetism exists because the electrons are moving with respect to the protons. It's the same for ferromagnetic materials, the electrons in the atoms are moving with respect to the nucleus.
God obviously exists in the minds of a lot of people. This is not surprising as there is a lot of published evidence of the social and biological mechanisms that make people have religious experiences (e.g. the "God Hat" where this can be reprodicibly triggered at will).
As for the physical world, however, I have not seen anything to even hypothesize that there is an entity actively messing around with the laws of physics as part of some larger plan. Every single time, phenomena turn out to be consistent and - if not too complicated - possible to model and predict. Heck, even humans with their supposed free will are usually easy to predict if you have enough information.
All evidence really points to God being in people's minds first and foremost. That would certainly explain why all gods (not just yours) go out of their way to remain hidden from those who don't believe. Well, of course the Sun-God was pretty visible, but telescopes kind of shatter that idea.
As much as people like to believe their brains are excempt from the physical world, it really is part of the physical world and subject to measurements and knowledge derived from such measurements.
It's in your head. Learn to live with it.
see a Text Widget
I'm pretty sure about God. 'god' is a little tougher.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
How, exactly? Certainly the idea that the creator of the Universe would manifest as spaghetti is pretty implausible, but is that inherently more weird than manifesting as an Iron Age carpenter? Who went on to get killed and then come back from the dead so that he could forgive everyone for something that happened four thousand years previously, except that it probably never actually happened at all?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
The next step after flat to round has already happened. We now know the earth is an oblate spheroid - meaning it is flatter at the poles. :)
No mate, it is possible to prove a negative if a method to prove his counter exists. Lets see an example: I have methods to determine what metals exists in a given object. With the same method I can prove that, lets say, zinc doesn't exist in an object. The problem with religion is that there's no evidence that it exists, and the thing you can't ever prove in science is that something doesn't exist because it has some degree of uncertainty related to what you know/can observe/can extrapolate. You would have to know everything there is to know to prove that something doesn't exist.
So: a negative can be proven if you can provide a method to prove it's counter. Non existance can't be proved unless you have all the knowledge in the universe, and therefore your 100% sure it doesn't exist (but you can say that given the facts provided there's little chance for it to exist).
is not an answer sufficient to my needs.
See what the problem with you trying to be my god is?
There are ghosts and there are ghosts.
And there isn't a ghost of a chance that I can convince you, I suppose, that one is different in some essential way from another.
Where did that off-balance bias to physical randomness that biased the universe to succeed in prolonging itself instead of destroying itself? -- the bias that results in stars and life and evolution?
I mean, how is it that you and I can agree on some important aspects of the definition of "improve" when mathematicians can tell us that symbols are by definition independent of semantics?
At the very minimum, God expressed Himself in that balance of probabilities.
Incorrect. Science says "we don't know the complete origin of the universe, but here are some parts we do know from observation. We still need to observe and understand more before we'll know the complete origin."
How did you observe the creation of the universe? We have a lot of signs pointing in that direction, but, we can't go down the road ourselves to actually see it.
This is my sig.
Thanks, never heard of Pascal's Wager, but I was joking (not about believing in God) about the ROI.
I didn't say science claims to have observed the creation of the universe. That was my point. The parent poster claimed that both the science and religion equally "guess" at the Creation. I stated that science makes no such guess - it's still working on the answer, but has some observations as to what's occurred. Whereas religions don't use any observations, each having created their own version of a creation story, and yet claim that their story has absolute weight over any other creation story.
"At least believing in God answers questions science can't and probably never will answer, like who created the Universe. Believing in ghosts is just pointless superstition." Is that really an answer for you though? your not curious how or why? Do you often stop looking for an answer to a question when you can't find one right away?
Don't confuse holism with faith. The faith you claim to defend (in ghosts or other invisible entities) is immutable. Scientific knowledge is.
Why shouldn't 97% of Faux News watchers believe in god? After all, they are fed a non-stop diet of nonsense from Fox Noise daily, so they've already proven themselves to be inordinately gullible.
--MAB
Science provides a falsifiable test of itself? I'd like to see how this would go. What observation could we possibly make that would impugn the entire body of theory, evidence, experimental technique, etc. that we call science? I think you're right to say that there's no "faith" required to, as it were, believe in science, but there's certainly something faith-like. You might think its inference to the best explanation (i.e. the best explanation for the tremendous predictive and manipulative power of science is that its theories are (at least approximately) true), but notice that there's no obvious reason to think that something's being the best explanation guarantees that it is actually correct (since, note, the best explanation is always chosen from among those we *currently have available*). Put crudely, the point is that there's no such thing as an argument with no premises (i.e. no starting point). Some skeptics will call the premises of science "faith", but I don't think this is right. Better, I think, to think of them as reasonable, but unproven (and perhaps unprovable) assumptions, which may one day be rejected. An honest attitude about science is, I think, fallibilist.
As to your final remark: For any statement (hence, including the one you quote) it's either true or not true, right? So what's this business about being "taken to an absurd level"? Is this just a claim about how we should understand the domain over which the quantifiers (i.e. "everyone", "something") range? If so, then your statement just reads: "The statement: "Everyone has something they believe in that they can't prove," is not true, unless the domain of the quantifiers is interpreted in to be wide enough (i.e. ranging over the entire domain of a persons' beliefs) such that it is true." That looks tautologous, and hence lacking content, to me. If it's not a claim about how the quantifier domains should be interpreted, then it's just false. Goedel proved in 1933 that, for any consistent language powerful enough to express basic arithmetic, there are true statements expressible in that language that are not provable in it. This is the so-called "Incompleteness Theorem" (I'll give you a link to Wikipedia on it, but I haven't had time to see if what's on there is accurate, so I'll just warn you to take it with a grain of salt, which I'm sure you would have anyway: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incompleteness_theorem).
I agree that faith isn't a component in the scientific method - but the OP illustrates that the view that scientific progress is for the best for humankind is not universal. There is definitely a distinction between science and faith in science - the OP was referring to the latter, and the child (which I was responding to) claimed that it didn't exist.
My response simply claimed that that faith in science does exist, and furthermore is a GOOD thing because it gives people the drive to devote their lives to it. I disagree with your statement that it is detrimental to real science. In order to pursue a career at a high level in a scientific field, you have to believe that science is not only real, but good. If I strongly believed in Catholicism I would become a priest - I strongly believe *that scientific advances are to the benefit of mankind*, and so I am working on my PhD.
Speaking of "idiots"...
The word is "half", and one third is NOT "half".
Come hear me sing!
Frankly, sunshine: people like you whose morality depends on belief in a fantasy make me rather nervous. If the only thing that keeps you from going on a murderous rampage is the idea that some ultimate dictator will kick your ass if you do, then you're not someone I would choose for a neighbor.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Sorry, I read "honestly admit the same" as meaning 'admit that science is a guess,' not 'admit that Christianity is a guess' -- probably because when you said "either way" it makes it sound as if you believe empiricism and faith are equally valid basis for 'guessing.' If you admit that your religious beliefs are 'just' guesses, then by definition you don't have faith.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Science does guess. That's the scientific method. Guess, and then see how well your guess conforms with observation. It is the nature of induction. It doesn't deduce anything directly from observation. Furthermore, science can say nothing about the actual origin of the universe, or its cause; it can only form conclusions about the things that happened immediately after the origin.
First of all, all denominations of Christianity, as well as Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism, acknowledge that the one infinite, timeless God created all of nature and humanity. There is no disagreement whatsoever on that point. There is observable proof of God, and of God's influence, which is why these religions have so many adherents. However, it is internal rather than external proof. It cannot be measured by machines or even quantified, so it is outside the reach of science.
It seems like most of you are acting as blindly as the people you seem to disdain. To really break new ground in science, one must have an open mind to the possibility that we don't quite understand all of the biologic and physical properties of this planet.
What I am seeing from this thread are a bunch of people who are falling into groupthink because they don't want to be seen as foolish, which is sort of a microcosm for how the science community treats any investigation into the paranormal unknown. The fact that there are charlatans in this field of study polarizes things even more, but did we stop research into fusion because two guys claimed a free energy source out of their kitchen sink?
I was always quite the skeptic myself, but my wife and I have both had personal experiences that defy logical explanation. In one apartment we lived in, we were talking on the sofa and a glass bowl in front of us suddenly gained horizontal velocity and flew off the shelf it rested on, landing about a foot away. This bowl had enough mass that it would not be blown by a draft or toppled by vibrations, and its center of gravity low enough to make those events unlikely. This was just one of several incidents at that apartment.
If you have never had a personal experience like that one, it is hard to put any stock in such wild claims. But when you do, you begin to realize that there are strange phenomena happening all over our planet being completely overlooked by mainstream scientists. Am I going to necessarily attribute the experiences I've had to spirits? Maybe, maybe not. But I recognize that they represent phenomena that are totally at odds with our present understanding of the physical universe, and they should be investigated seriously as such.
I agree - the opinion that the pursuit of science is good for humanity is faith in science.
You're missing my point in the context of the OP and child which I replied to. The OP implied that faith in the pursuit of science exists, the child (which I replied to) stated that faith in science doesn't exist because science is absolute.
I assert that a fervent belief that advancing human knowledge is for the good of mankind can be considered a faith (it's the closest thing to a religion I've personally got). We don't know everything about existence, so the best course of action is to learn as much as possible about it, and put what we learn to good use. I think this belief is far more productive that faith in an arbitrary deity. But lets not fool ourselves - it's faith in either case. To play my own devil's advocate, if humankind were to wipe itself out via nuclear holocaust, that faith would have been false. I don't see that happening though.
I never said that faith in science is science - but both DO exist.
My opinions are not based on the video games I mentioned - they were simply examples of faith in science in popular culture. I know a fair bit about the history of science, and I'm in full agreement that it has had the single greatest impact on improving the lives of humans. But without the belief that these advances in knowledge would benefit humanity, would the scientists responsible feel the drive to pursue them? If I didn't think that increasing human knowledge would improve peoples' lives, I wouldn't be pursuing my PhD right now.
When did I ever say that "the only thing that keeps [me] from going on a murderous rampage is the idea that some ultimate dictator will kick [my] ass if [I] do?" I never claimed this, but for whatever reason people seem to want to quickly pigeonhole me into a particular box (their fantasy of what "religious" people fit into) and cast me aside, rather than actually engaging their brain.
Let's see. Since I've posted on this subject, mostly asking questions about where people think morality comes from, I've been insulted, called names, and moderated as a troll, none of which I have returned in kind. And all I did was suggest for argument that there can be no morality in a materialistic universe.
I think if we met in person we would actually get along great. I wouldn't mind having you for a neighbor.
all I did was suggest for argument that there can be no morality in a materialistic universe.
This is a claim which is just as specious and unsupported as your imaginary friend in the sky is in the first place.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Atheism is the absence of faith, in the same way that asexual is the absence of sex. Atheism is not a type of faith, and asexual is not a type of sex.
I stated that science makes no such guess - it's still working on the answer, but has some observations as to what's occurred.
That's the thesis that I am arguing against. I say that there are scientists or at least people that speak for it, who argue that science does KNOW, as in factually, how the universe was made and how we evolved. They cross in their minds a preponderance of evidence based largely on internal consistency with a faith that the fabric of physics has been constant and unchanged over the life of the universe. It is faith, it is unprovable, and that's the point... until you actually say you went back in time and saw the universe born, or talked to someone who was there, you haven't really proved a thing. The essence of true science is roof requires witness, get it?
In other words, what really differentiates science from mysticism is the idea that you can do something, and show it to somebody else, by doing the same thing again. You can't show someone else your little angel, but you can show someone vinegar and baking soda fizzing when you mix them. But now, some would have us believe that you don't have to witness to have science, and really, that's simply not true. Evolution, creation physics, all of that, IS NOT SCIENCE. Period. It's a good story, for sure, and to some extent, based on the evidence of what we have, is interesting, but, until you can say that you've seen the universe born or the first step of man yourself, and can show someone else, than, you don't have much more than Noah... its a cool story. Yes, evolution fits together well, and, you could probably walk into a court and slam the Creator down as guilty of it, but, there's that nagging issue of witness that must cause us to say that, we will never, ever, ever, really KNOW. No witness, no proof, and no proof, no science. It's really very simple. Anything else is faith.
This is my sig.
Here is a post with an excellent description of the problem of the lack of morality in a materialistic universe:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=341525&cid=21136937
So how exactly is my claim specious and unsupported?
I have yet to see any support for the counterargument: that morality does exist in a purely physical world.
I recognize that discussing philosophy on Slashdot can be intimidating (thanks to the ocean of verbal abusers), so I will ping you directly.
Colors are different wavelengths of light, and can be measured. How would you propose we measure the existence of morality in a purely physical world?
We have to be careful with the distinction between a description of behavior that appears moral, and actual morality.
However, we do both agree that morality exists. By definition, this means good and evil, or right and wrong, must exist. So in this environment, how would you go about deciding what is right and what is wrong?
By the way, do not assume that this is an endorsement of so-called Creation science by any stretch of the imagination. Those guys are frauds.
This is my sig.
That's the equivalent of saying that proving Nessie's existence means one should believe in Bigfoot as well.
A lot more than half of the population believes in bullshit like ghosts, son. Most of them just call it a "soul."
GP is an idiot though, so I guess we can agree on that.
The Farewell Tour II
Orthodox Christain theology holds that the soul leaves the universe after death, and doesn't influence it afterwards. Please don't confuse Christainity with urban mythology.
Science is a method for arriving at truth. It is good for arriving at strongly convincing conclusion, but like all methods, it has weaknesses- it can only examine that which is open to experiment.
(Even proving something only really means it should be the case- one can't prove that the universe is ultimately logical.)
Of course, of course. If I believe the evidence of my eyes and ears there must be something wrong with me!
Morality is no different than the concept of beauty. To take this one step further, is there a distinction between things that appear beautiful and actual beauty?
No, if you proved the existence of one, it wouldn't be a matter of belief.
If, however, you believe in Nessie with no evidence, then there's no reason not to consider the existence of Bigfoot equally likely.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
In my opinion many of the people who focus on the paranormal are themselves dissatisfied with the natural world around them. It would surely be nice if we lived in a world where our loved ones could continue living after their physical death, but just because it would be nice doesn't make it real. People think how nice it would be to talk with aliens or communicate with dead loved ones, and they construct an imaginary world full of UFOs and ghosts. People also think how nice it would be to ask a supernatural master for help when they need it, and construct an imaginary world where a god, goddess, spirit, or other entity will answer their prayers, magic acts, or meditations. They dislike the material world around them, so they create their own in their heads. The problem is that many times they try to convince the rational people to share their beliefs, often by threat of violence.
I have long had a theory that may explain the existence of ghosts. First, I'd like to point out that we are far from all knowing and have not learned all we can learn in science by a long shot. Now, since energy and matter can be converted into each other, I hypothesize that a spirit can simply be energy with the persona of it's previous matter state.
IANAP, so I don't have any details on how this could be, but while I do not necessarily believe in ghosts, I do think that there could be a way for "spirits" to exist via the above idea.
Can we know for certain what caused the universe to come into existence? Probably not (though I wouldn't rule it out depending on how accurately LISA ends up seeing gravity waves). However, we *can* *see* *how* it evolved over the course of billions of years, starting briefly after whatever event started it all. The exact same way we see anything, by receiving photons that have traveled some distance from the past to interact with us.
In fact, you *never* see *anything* but the past.
Of course, phenomenology says that we can't necessarily trust our senses, and we could all be in the Matrix. But it also says that we might as well trust our senses because it's all we have. I choose to define "reality" that way, so for me it counts as formal proof.
Likewise, we can't necessarily see that evolution created species in the past, and anything's possible. But we damn well *can* see that it's continually creating new species *now*, starting with bacteria of course, where we can actually observe the whole event play out, but even in the macroscopic.
Horses and donkeys are just barely separate species (always producing sterile offspring, but producing them reliably), and lions and tigers are just barely the same species biologically (interbreeding fertilely, but just barely). If you can't accept seeing both sides of an event, and observing many fundamentally biologically identical events as proof that something has happened, then you can't accept the proof of anything, and you might as well just kill yourself because the universe is useless.
Even so, that doesn't mean one automatically believes so.
Sometimes, yes. Anyway good luck with the angels. Let us know when you meet one.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
I understand you're claiming that we could all potentially have our own personal interpretations of the physical reality. My point is that there is a shared physical reality that is incontrovertible. I think we probably agree on that point. Along with that, I believe there is a shared universal morality as well. Morality is just a label to describe actions that lead to positive outcomes. I guess I am poorly representing my question. The question I am posing is, who decides what is positive?
I never said one would automatically believe in anything, just that there's no logical difference between believing one and the other other than culture.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I would assume that the percentage of atheists in prison probably corresponds with the percentage of atheists outside of prison. Is that reasonable? Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "under represented."
I'm saying that neither have all the answers, and am honest enough to admit it. I have faith. I just don't trumpet my belief set, insisting that anyone else not believing as I do is "clueless", "wrong", "deluded", or "ignoring evidence".
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
There's only one person who can save us from this belief in ghosts:
Carl Sagan!
Oh, crap, he's dead, isn't he. How ironic...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
I don't disagree with all of your points, but I disagree with the conclusion you seem to be drawing. You state all these things that you call limitations of science and the scientific method, but as a practicing scientist, I see them more as fundamental limitations of reality. In other words, I believe that science (in its ideal form) is not only the best method we've found so far, but the best method there could possibly be.
1. It's true that experiments are bad at dealing with rare events (I'm generalizing your statement by substituting rare for singular). The challenge, as a scientist, is to come up with a situation where you can study the same underlying phenomena in a system or regime where those rare events become more common. It's true that there are situations where this can be difficult or impossible, but saying that's a limitation of the scientific method is somewhat trivial. Science is dependent on observation, and you're saying that it doesn't work when you can't observe something. More on that below...
2. Trust is less of a problem in science than any other human activity because science builds cumulatively on science done before. Despite what you suggest, direct reproduction is actually not even close to being the primary mechanism for validating past results. The truth is that new experiments are based on models constrained by old experiments, even if the new experiment is not a direct duplication of the old experiment. For example, your computer wouldn't work if all those experiments on electrons and whatever done in the 1950s were wrong. So old results, at least the ones that matter, are tested and retested every day as the findings are incorporated into the models.
3. You seem to imply that it's possible to "prove" things in the real world, but I would argue that it simply is not, through science or any other method. You can prove things in math because math is all made up. Sevens don't actually "exist." Those of us who operate in reality don't have it quite so easy. The type of "proof" you're talking about is not only impossible, but more importantly, completely unnecessary. We risk our lives every day wearing shoes we can't prove won't explode, using keyboards we can't prove won't electrocute us, confident that gravity will not fail us and fling us off the face of the earth. The level of certainty science can provide is sufficient.
4. It is simply untrue that "heretics have always received rough treatment" in science. Look at Einstein, the most famous scientist of the 20th Century. Your example of the discovery of the role of H. pylori is more an indictment of the medical establishment, which at the time was very dogma-driven and insufficiently scientific in its thought (and remains so today). Also, those guys eventually won the Nobel, if you forget--hardly the Galileo treatment.
I think the biggest problem with your understanding of science is that you seem to think that the sole activity of science is in providing "facts" and studying "events." I would argue that the main activity of science is in creating models based on observations, then refining those models. You make a lot of the idea that science rejects unique events, but I would argue that the very idea of truly unique events is fundamentally incompatible with the model of the universe that science has provided (i.e. we're all made out of the same atoms, those atoms all move around according to the same rules, etc.). Science seeks not to collect random facts, but to discover the general underlying principles of reality (which you refer to as "the natural world," as if to imply there is another).
I probably don't. They tend to only really show up for world-shaking matters, and I don't involve myself in those very much. Nor am I religious enough to be trusted to obey any angel who comes around with a message from God ;-).
Faith is the belief in the unprovable (or alternatively non-falsifiable).
If you don't believe in "the answers" then you don't have faith.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Try to beat that!
---
Note 1: I don't really believe in that.
Note 2: Despite Note 1, I somehow feel a similar circularity in the your argument that science does not require faith. I'm not saying science "is a faith", but I wouldn't be so sure that it isn't.... just that as you've said I can't come up with something better.
Don't quote me on this.
Update:
Ah, I see the circularity in the argument now.
This is an exercise of purely logic (not common sense)
*Suppose* somebody really believes (with unmovable "faith") my sarcastic comment above. Now how could you convince him that the scientific method is "better"? You can't do it without assuming he accepts some kind of scientific reasoning. The best thing you can do is hope that he wises up himself.
PS: Well maybe if he accepted some kind of logic, you can try proving that his "God" does not exist on the lines of Russel's paradox. But then as we all know they always try to find some ways to wriggle out of this situation and continue believing what they always believed.
Don't quote me on this.
1) Humanity has always been the same, and is only kindda getting better. But historically, there was always a few people in an elite cast, and a bunch of ignorant peasants, just about everywhere. So yes, I really think humanity has (and to some extent, still is) just a bunch of collective morons. Ever seen one of these shows that make fun of people not being able to answer 5th graders level questions? Thats the norm, not the exception. Most people don't know the very basics of science (like the obvious stuff). How can they make statements on super complex stuff like the origin of the universe or the possibility of evolution?
Remember that for the longest time most kids even in the most favored parts of the world didn't even go to the equivalent of elementary school. Thats where most supertitions (not even talking about the existance of god here, but really retarded stuff, like "tomato are extremely poisonous") come from. People mere -decades- ago would beleive ANYTHING. They still do, too.
2) Heck yes, else we still wouldn't know that by going west or east you end up at the same place eventualy.
3) Its not even CLOSE to "everyone else". Not only is there a very significant portion of the world that does not beleive in any god, a lot of those who do beleive in things relatively incompatible with each other. Also if you take out uneducated people (because sorry, but their opinion isn't worth much, in the same way MY opinion is worth absolutely nothing in things I know little of), the ratio shifts even more.
Just look around you on a day to day basis. People who are supposed to be very educated not being able to fill up a silly tax return. People barely knowing how to spell (me included), a stupidly large portion of people quitting highschool, people who don't understand how the difference in risk between going at 100 and 110 km/hour is NOT 10%, people without the knowledge to take care of their own kids... humans are nowhere as smart as they we'd like to think we are...
I'd be surprised if humanity did NOT get fooled like it did. Especially since religion is often forced on people at a very young age, by authority figure. It is simply human psychology. If EVERYONE, including teachers and parents, told you since you were 2 years old that a cat is called a dog, and a dog is called a cat, and it was on TV and stuff constantly, it wouldn't matter if ALL dictionary in the world said otherwise, most people would think that way... I'm sure you can think of MANY occurances of this in the world, its quite common and is the reason behind a large amount of the misinformation out there, on ANY subject. Religion is just the most extreme kind (I mean, once upon a time, these things were FORCED on people... STILL is in MANY countries...).
You seriously can't tell me that in countries where your life is on the LINE if you say you don't beleive in god, that you'd openly claim to be atheist... Take out all these factors, and you'll find the amount of educated, willing people beleiving in a religion or another, while VERY significant, is nowhere close to what your questions assert.
My point is that overwhelmingly the religion myth that one follows has more to do with indoctrination than any sort of truth. Please excuse my spelling errors as I was baked.
People can believe things for reasons other than the truth of the thing at hand.
As I've mentioned in another post, I am willing to believe that angels push celestial objects around the sky if it makes me feel happier (and if I can con myself into believing such an irrational idea).
Uh, a better example would be to believe that you would succeed in overcoming a significant hurdle (eg. getting into that prestigious University, getting laid with that hot chick, finding that perfect job, etc). Sure it might not seem rational if you think about the actual chances of suceeding (suppose it's exceedingly small), but that belief itself might have some useful side effect (in this case it raises the possibility of succeeding), so even if you don't think what you believe is true, sometimes you're still justified in believing it...
Don't quote me on this.
So how exactly is my claim specious and unsupported?
You assert that morality depends on an untestable premise: that your imaginary friend exists.
This is arguing for your superstition by threat: IE, that terrible consequences (ie, no morality, chaos, bloodshed, and whatnot) ensue from failing to join you in your delusion. Sorry, I'm not buying it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
There, fixed that for you. Agnostics don't know/care. Atheists believe that there is no higher power. That is, one is a claim it is all irrelevent, the other is a claim that there is no deity.
Therefore, atheism has just as high a burden of proof as religion when it comes to philosophical as opposed to scientific principles. So, what is the atheist explaination for how free will can exist, why this is not all a dream within a dream, or why one should be moral? Heck, Atheism also would have to justify that the laws of physics don't change from moment to moment, and had just coincidentally all been the same up until now, but that seems trivial enough.
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Basic definitions:
Science is defined the study of all phenomena in this Universe that lends itself to scientific study (through methods of empirical observation, formulating useful hypothesis to predict things, testing the hypothesis and refining them to meet observations if necessary).
This Universe is defined as everything that exists.
God and any other metaphysical are defined as things that cannot be explained by science.
Now the main argument:
Anything that has a observable pattern can be (in theory) formulated into a scientific theory. (I don't know how to "prove" this, but the idea is that scientific theories are just formal descriptions of observable "patterns") Note that observable pattern implies that it is repeatable.
Suppose to the contrary (to atheism) that God exists. God exists, so God is part of this "Universe" [Note1]. Since God is metaphysical, it does not lend itself to scientific explanation. Therefore the "God" phenomenon has no observable pattern. Since God has no observable pattern, we cannot make any meaningful hypothesis as to what it is, or what it will be (however, mentions of what God has done in the past is still logical here, since God might have made acts in the past which were observable, but without any pattern). So according to definition, either God can be known scientifically, or we will never know what it is... or what will be.
Note1: people tend to like to think that metaphysical stuff are not part of this "universe". But for this to be true the Universe is not "everything that exists", but merely "everything known to science that exists" -- which is inappropriate since science has a history of discovering new things (atoms, electrons, quarks, etc) that were not known to exist. Also note that either these metaphysical things can be causally affected by the "physical" universe or they cannot. If they cannot, then they cannot be observed, and they cannot affect us, and that cannot be observed nor affect us does not exist (at least for the purposes of this argument. I don't think any relgious claim about God goes as far as to say that God cannot affect us in any way)
Note2: This sounds more agnostic than atheistic. Perhaps it can be said to be weak atheism.
Note3: There is at least one thing that qualifies as metaphysical -- I. Also known as my consciousness. I have no idea how to deal with it scientifically, and I have no idea how to replicate my consciousness (with TWO mes), so i think that should qualify as metaphysical. Another good candidate might be the universe itself. The phenomena happening within the universe has observable pattern since it is repeatable, but I don't think we can ever experimentally repeat "the universe" (for example repeating its creation). A third good candidate would be Godelian weirdness where things are just "incomplete"... perhaps the "missing parts" (if they exist at all!) is metaphysical. Personally the second and third candidate combined is my interpretation of "God", if one exists.
Note4: I havne't slept and it's 8:15am in the morning. Typos and other errors must exist, and language might be a bit blurred. Please pardon.
==
Civil responses strongly welcomed.
Don't quote me on this.
But it sounds like you and I are in agreement on at least one thing: that immoral actions are wrong. Now the question I pose to you is this: if my morality is orthogonal in belief to your morality, who's to say which is right?
>In other words, I believe that science (in its ideal form) is not only the best method we've found so far, but the best method there could possibly be.
Your personal view points regarding the absolute perfection of the current state of scientific methodology is disturbing for someone who claims to be a scientist. What if someone comes up with a potentially better method? Don't you already have a bias against it and more likely to give them a "rough treatment"?
>You seem to imply that it's possible to "prove" things in the real world, but I would argue that it simply is not, through science or any other method.
Apparently, via some method, you have enough proof to believe that the current scientific method is the best it will ever be.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Well, I have been asking a lot of questions since my first post in this thread (which itself was a question that presented the same axiom: you can't have a moral world without spirituality).
Let us assume that there is no spiritual world from which to draw moral guidance.
This leaves the definitions of good and evil up to us? (feel free to elaborate here if you disagree)
I say A is good. You say A is not good.
Who is to choose who is right?
Without a higher moral authority to arbitrate the moral judgment, there is no way to determine who is right.
I(A) -> G
U(~A) -> G
therefore I(A) == U(~A), which is a contradiction; so how can a moral system built only from ourselves be correct?
Not to mention the implied lack of moral authority. Who can authoritatively express moral universals in a purely physical world?
I've asked more questions. I'm not trying to spite your statement about my questioning nature. I'm just trying to understand why so many people believe morality can exist in a non-supernatural world.
History tells us that today's God of Abraham is nothing more than tomorrow's Zeus. Some of us are just one step ahead of the rest.
That's right...and there's NO way to have "proof" of anything, even your senses. That's right, your "input", taken on faith every day, folks. Most people just never stop to think about it.
If you don't believe in "the answers" then you don't have faith.I have what *I* believe are the answers. That doesn't mean I'm any more correct than Hawking's early theory on black holes. H'wever, as I tend to revise my beliefs on new input, I'm not as worried that I'll end up as raving a fundamentalist as this guy. You can be humble enough to admit that you, yourself, don't have all the answers...just the ones that best allow you to live your life as you see fit.
And on a side note, hypothetically, wouldn't an omnipotent being that desires NOT to have proof of itself generally get its way?
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
To clarify, I'm not referring to the current state of scientific methodology, which is obviously imperfect and in many ways in a constant state of refinement. I'm talking about "science" in a more general sense, as the idea that we discover truth by making observations and formulating models that explain those observations, then making predictions about new observations and test them. That is "science," as opposed to religion, magical thinking, rhetoric, force of character, or whatever methods were used in the past to make stuff up and claim it was true. In other words, "science" is nothing but common sense.
I do assert that the concept of morality depends on the existence of a spiritual world.
Ergo, you are not a moral actor of your own accord, and not someone I should trust.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Your argument assumes that a person does not have a component of the spiritual world as a part of their makeup, right?
I do not deal in fantasies, sunshine.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Nor do I... so how about we reason about it?
I know that you are capable of a more well-formed argument than simple name-calling.
Am I being unreasonable?
These people need to watch the James Randi take these frauds apart. The man is simply amazing (hence his stage name, The Amazing Randy). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTPj9VlNzQ0 is worth a watch if you want to see him in action.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
I know that you are capable of a more well-formed argument than simple name-calling
Sure I am, but what's the point of arguing with someone who insists on starting from an absurd premise?
Got anything that's not already right here?
Looks like your position is somewhere around #411 on that list.
Am I being unreasonable?
Yep. That's why I'm not taking you seriously.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Excellent post.I'd add only that scientific method is more trusted then any other research methods and experience,because its officially supported by the scientific institutions.The "Mainstream Science"
is ridden with bureaucracy and dogmatic thinking.Their power is "power by decree",
They are very organized and wield alot of influence on every aspect of science(and receive the majority of funding for it).
...what's the point of arguing with someone who insists on starting from an absurd premise? Ok, so I will assume that this is your argument: that it is absurd to consider a super-natural world, right? Do you have any explanation for why it would be absurd for a supernatural world to exist? Looks like your position is somewhere around #411 on that list. While somewhat entertaining, we both can see it is simply a list of fallacious arguments. I'm not interested in childish name-calling and making fun of the person I am trying to engage in reasonable conversation. That's why I'm not taking you seriously. My argument is simply thus, and I've stated it a few times now, I think:A consistent and correct moral system cannot exist in a purely physical world. There is no universal moral authority in a purely physical world who can determine what is right and what is wrong.
Since you are so opposed to the concept of a spiritual world, let's take a different tack. For the sake of your argument, let us suppose there is no spiritual world. This sets aside your concerns of absurdity, yes?
Do you believe that in a purely physical world, that a moral system must be universal in order to be correct and consistent?
...here is the big assumption you have: that there are moral universals. Spot on! Now we're getting somewhere. If you assume that morality, or good and evil, are absolute and universal, then you could easily come to the conclusion that there must be a god-like absolute moral authority. Yes!
...morality is not universal. Rather it changes with the times and the culture. A.k.a. moral relativism. It tends to be a majority understanding... A.k.a. cultural relativism.It is my firm belief that probably most of the dissenters of my posit about spiritual authority in morality are moral relativists at heart.
Here is the problem with moral relativism: there is no true moral authority.
For example, you mentioned cultural relativism, where moral "correctness" is determined by the "majority understanding." You are arguing, then, that whatever is morally acceptable is determined by the common beliefs of a majority of a group of people. If a person acts inline with the beliefs of the majority then, they are behaving morally, and in fact, are pretty much obligated (as morals go!) to behave in accordance with the beliefs of the majority of the population. Am I understanding your argument correctly?
Ugh, I wrote a long response and lost it. Essentially, as I said before, I agree the scientific method is very useful, but I disagree when you say that "I believe that science (in its ideal form) is not only the best method we've found so far, but the best method there could possibly be."
My criticism of the scientific method are:
1) Unique events can and do all the time (it's a consequence of the probabilistic nature of the universe). A unique event is simply one that we haven't observed before or since. Science can't deal with unique events, which are often the most interesting things to us. What is the standard deviation of the heights of Martians, if we have only met one Martian? Science can't answer that question -- but you could certainly ask the Martian to gain this knowledge.
2) The scientific method's reaction to inexplicable events is to reject the event, and the person reporting it. When Roentgen was working with these crazy new X-Ray things, he didn't publish his observations until he had established the cause and effect, so as not to risk his professional reputation. A method which can take an observation, find no explanation, and as a result reject the *observation* has a fundamental flaw.
3) Science should eliminate bias and politics. Studies performed by people who have a financial stake in the result must always be suspect, as stats can usually be massaged to show whatever it is you want them to show. A better model would be a sort of escrowing process where Intel or Merck or GM hands money to an escrow dealer (possibly the government, possibly a private entity) who then presents an unbiased question to a scientist in the field: "Are Intel CPUs faster at 3DMARK07 than AMD's?" "Does Vioxx reduce or induce heart attacks?" "What is the 0 to 60 time on the following cars...?" With the proviso that the results will be published regardless of if they are favorable to the original sponsor of the study. This would go a HUGE way to fixing the problems of the science of today.
4) You said: "The level of certainty science can provide is sufficient." Hormone Replacement Therapy was "scientifically" shown to reduce breast cancer risk. As a result, some 10,000 women have died of breast cancer from HRT. All scientific studies are uncertain to different degrees; as you stated, studies in physics are probably pretty reliable. But studies in medicine are overturned constantly. The level of certainty in medicine is really quite low.
5) This is also the problem of trust in science. The problem is not malice or fraud (though the case of the South Korean cloning guy shows this can happen) but that whereas you or I can understand that studies inherently have uncertainty in them, people go out there and make life or death decisions based on studies, thinking that something which is scientifically shown to be true means the same thing as something mathematically shown to be true.
6) The combination of (1-out-of-20 (p-value less than 0.05) or 1-out-of-100 (p-value less than 0.01) studies being due to random chance) x (a large number of studies per year) results in a huge number of conclusions being published *due solely to chance*. This should be caught (eventually) by reproduction of results, but...
7) Reproducing results (whether building on previous research as you say, or simply doing a new study on the same topic) is done haphazardly, and the result of a follow-up study that contradicts a previous one does *not* actually overturn it... if you have one study showing that eyeblink therapy stops PTSD, then a follow-up shows it doesn't, the literature will conclude "Studies are conflicted". Only topics which interest someone at NSF get the kind of treatment needed to conclusively establish something as true. Many interesting questions linger in the "studies conflict" category for years without any systematic approach to resolving the conflict. Reproduction of results is the cornerstone of the scientific method, but studies are expensive, so follow-up studies are often neglected
Do you have any explanation for why it would be absurd for a supernatural world to exist?
Nice try, but he's your imaginary friend, and the burden of proof remains yours. Good luck.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
What if a natural explanation is found one day? What if it contradicts your faith?
This isn't so implausible a question. Certainly the Buddhist belief that the world has eternally existed is troubled by the fact that, as best as we can tell, the universe did have an origin. Likewise, if that guy who theorized what the universe was like before the Big Bang was like (who did it out of a preconceived notion the universe has always existed, which casts doubts on his whole theory) turns out to be right, and we can somehow show the world is without beginning, then it goes worse for Christianity.
If incontrovertible evidence shows that Jesus was a fraud (it could happen, say an archeological dig turns up something), then I'd question the basis of my Christianity. I hope it doesn't happen, naturally, but Christians are taught that there is no contradiction between truths, which is why the whole "conflict between science and religion" does not exist as such.
I think a reasonable answer might be a sort of "Christianity for Atheists" as it were, but Modernist Christianity always seems pallid and wan compared to the traditional church. The fact that Christianity has been the most powerful force for good in human history says that it is something more than belief in Zeus or Invisible Unicorns, but I'm not convinced it's possible to retain the good without the core beliefs in Jesus and God.
>I'm not referring to the current state of scientific methodology, ...
>I'm talking about "science" in a more general sense, as the idea that we discover truth by making observations and formulating models that explain those observations, then making predictions about new observations and test them.
How is that not the definition of "scientific methodology"?
>In other words, "science" is nothing but common sense.
Um... what is common sense to you is not to others. "Common sense" is subjective. Is it "common sense" that a keyboard will not cause you harm if you've never seen it before? Is it "common sense" that multi-verses theory or string theory is valid? Wasn't it "common sense" that Newton's Three laws are valid when they first got accepted"? Wouldn't you have to be against "common sense" to get to Relativity? What is "common sense" now?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
About unique events: it's two separate issues whether events occur rarely, or are observed rarely. If they're observed rarely (like the Martian), you need to try to find a way to either observe them more frequently, or observe something other parameter that gives you the same information you need to constrain your model. You're partially correct in that difficulty observing something directly is problematic, but one of the main points of science is that you don't need direct observations to tell you what's going on, you need observations to constrain models of what's going on. In other words, observation of one martian gives constraints on the height distribution of martians, the same way measuring the size of doorways inside the pyramids constrains estimates of the height distribution of ancient Egyptians (even if we never found their remains).
2. About rejection of inexplicable events: I understand that you sincerely believe this to be true, but once again you describe Roentgen, a hero and pioneer who won all sorts of recognition. I work in neuroscience, where people publish results all the time with no mechanistic explanation--the reason why some are rejected and others not has to do with the reliability of those measurements. Experimental artifact is a fact of life, and the vast, vast majority of "inexplicable" results are simply wrong. To the non-expert eye the acceptance of some and not others might appear arbitrary, but it's based on our understanding of the reliability and potential pitfalls of the techniques used. Also, keep in mind what makes something "inexplicable." Your example describes observation of an entirely new phenomenon, which is not "inexplicable" at all, and I don't think those people have much trouble getting recognized. Truly "inexplicable" results are ones that appear to contradict the models that were constructed based on other results. Interpretation of those is a lot trickier, but we spend a lot of time thinking about them, and I simply don't think it's accurate to say that we dismiss them out of hand.
3. The examples of bias, politics, uncertainty, etc. that you're describing are accurate, but they're simply examples of bad science. The existence of bad science is not really an indictment of the scientific method per se, it's an example of what happens when people don't adhere closely enough to it. Clinical epidemiology research is a good example of where we know how to do the right science, but other factors don't allow us to. For example, it's never been "proven" that HIV causes AIDS. I know how to do that study: lock 1000 healthy people in cages, inject 500 of them with HIV and 500 with saline, and see what happens. The "problem," if you want to call it that, is that financial and ethical constraints prevent the scientific method from being rigorously applied. But I don't think you can blame the "scientific method" for that.
I think this is getting at the core of what we're actually discussing here. I think we both agree that science, as practiced today, is suboptimal in many ways. The difference is that you are arguing that this is a limitation of the scientific method, while I'm saying that these are examples of science-as-practiced not adhering to the standards of the scientific method.
5) This is also the problem of trust in science. The problem is not malice or fraud (though the case of the South Korean cloning guy shows this can happen) but that whereas you or I can understand that studies inherently have uncertainty in them, people go out there and make life or death decisions based on studies, thinking that something which is scientifically shown to be true means the same thing as something mathematically shown to be true.
The problem you're describing is the problem of scientific illiteracy in the public, which I agree is a huge problem. However, keep in mind that we make life and death decisions every single day based on scientific "proof," and we don't even think twice about it. I'm not worried th
My other post goes more in depth, but I think it's important to draw a distinction between science-as-practiced, and the scientific method. Science-as-practiced is imperfect because it doesn't always adhere to the standards of the scientific method.
I should restate what I said before: science is an extension of common sense. You are absolutely correct that the findings of science can be deeply counterintuitive, and you don't even have to go as far as string theory to see that. But by "common sense," I'm referring to the essential activity of the brain of any human, which is to generate internal models constrained by sensory input, then generate motor outputs consistent with those models. Science is an extension of this in that we build explicit models constrained by observations, then make decisions based on those models. The difference is that science has a higher standard of model testing than the human brain does.
>keep in mind that we make life and death decisions every single day based on scientific "proof," and we don't even think twice about it.
That is more of a product of human nature/physiological training than "scientific proof" (either the "correctness of" or the "acceptance of"). It just makes things easier to do it this way for fragile humans.
An example of this would be how people's health aliments are treated differently in different parts of the world. In rural China treatment is different than in NYC. (Is there a Western equivalent of a "hot blood" theory?) Treatment would be different in parts of Europe than in America also.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Surveys vary, but tend to show a lower proportion of atheists in jail than in the general population. Whether this is because atheists are more law-abiding citizens, or because atheists know that 'finding Jesus' while inside plays well with the parole board, is another matter...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
The parent didn't really imply that science proves itself. The parent stated that science provides a way to disprove itself. Those are two very different things.
If the parent meant to differentiate between articles of faith and axioms, that is correct to do so. Axioms are not articles of religious faith. You can tell this, in part, because articles of faith almost never qualify as axioms. Axioms allow for the construction of logical arguments and systems; articles of religious faith rarely if ever do. Just look at religious systems. They inevitably derive more articles of faith from an initial article of faith, and often not in a way that exhibits systemic consistency. This is not to belittle faith by any means; faith can and often does confer emotional comfort and subsequent stability that has real world benefits. It is also often a vehicle for social support as well - not an inconsequential thing at all.
Is seems to me that science says a lot about empirical observations of the natural world. Doesn't it address the nature of those it addresses? Aren't those often starting points for formulations of theories which attempt to explain the observations, or am I missing your point?
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
An example of this would be how people's health aliments are treated differently in different parts of the world. In rural China treatment is different than in NYC. (Is there a Western equivalent of a "hot blood" theory?) Treatment would be different in parts of Europe than in America also.
This is actually a perfect example of what I'm talking about. There probably was a Western equivalent of "hot blood" or whatever premodern Chinese theory you could come up with--it was probably "the black bile" or something like that. Treatment protocols differ slightly in different countries, but the underlying theoretical framework of modern medicine is the same everywhere in the world. If a person's blood pressure starts to drop, doctors everywhere immediately start to think hypovolemic shock vs. cardiogenic shock vs. distributed (e.g. septic) shock vs. obstructive shock, etc., and they base their management strategy on that. These are theoretical frameworks that are based in scientific knowledge of the underlying physiology. You can argue that the validity of these frameworks has not been "proven," the same way the round earth has not been proven, but it's a pointless agument.
An aside: as a medical scientist of East Asian descent, I find it somewhat offensive when modern medicine is referred to as "Western" medicine. Western countries do not have a monopoly on modern medicine, and scientists from other parts of the world have played significant roles in its development. Western countries have their own premodern medical traditions (e.g. the theory of the humours, blood-letting, chiropractic, homeopathy, etc.), and these are no different than any other culture's version.
I'm not actually convinced that there's a well-defined morality even if there is a God.
Let us assume that God presents the world with his definitive opus, 'How To Be Good', in a manner which leaves no doubt at all as to its authenticity. Even so, how do we know that what God says is good actually is good? If God defines good, then that's objective all right but it's rather arbitrary. What if God changes the rules? What if God orders something we consider abhorrent? Personally, I read the story of Abraham and I think he failed God's test - he should have refused point blank when ordered to kill his son.
Alternatively, God might not just be making up rules, but might simply be a far wiser, more intelligent philosopher than us - God is able to work out correctly what rules are best for us to live by, and tells us his findings. But if that's the source of God's rules, then we don't necessarily need God - we can, at least in principle, work out the same rules ourselves.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
"Certainly the Buddhist belief that the world has eternally existed is troubled by the fact that"
Interestingly, the budhha was known never to have addressed that question.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
My point is that atheism makes positive claims. One should be moral. Free will exists I(well, some atheists claim this). This is all not a dream. Deists can answer all of these questions in a religious context. Atheism also must make these claims. I will contend that Deists have a simplier and more complete model of the universe.
You keep thinking that I think atheism has to prove there is no higher power. Since my first post said I do not believe it is either verifiable or falsifiable, this is not the case. I believe that atheism has to answer philosopical questions as well as deism.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Hey, atheists would have us believe in a bunch of secular stupidity as well. This mystical belief is at the heart of the environmental movement, and its utterly ridiculous.
Being an Atheist means you don't believe in God/gods. That is all, and in itself has nothing to do with environmentalism.
First and foremost is this notion that if we are nice to the earth, the earth will be mean to us.
The believers of the Gaia hypothesis are a fringe movement.... hardly "at the heart" any more than Nazis are "at the heart" of all right-wing movements. And as others have pointed out, the non-mystical version of it is hardly a stretch. Destroying the habitat you depend on will make survival more difficult.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
You still have not even ventured an atheistic answer for my questions. And the answer you ascribe to Deists does not hold water. Free will can be explained by a manifesation of the divine, but morality does not happen because a deity did it. On the contrary, morality is something human beings must do. Nor is the Deist answer to the all we know or seem being but a dream within a dream rely on a deity performing it. Rather, the Deist answer would rely on an understanding of divine benevolence. But whereas I can answer those questions, you are unable to provide an atheistic alternative.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Then I'll be impressed!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
And now you're relegating a-theism to something "alternative"? So a non-belief in astrology is what? a-astrologistic alternative? Non-belief in fairies, a-fairistic alternative? Non-belief in spiderman, a-spidermanistic alternative? There is no evidence for any of these nonsense. For some reason, you don't feel the need to proof their non-existence. But you feel that the God of Abraham is somehow special and deserves a free pass.
I don't claim to know all the answers. I just don't believe things without evidence. Therefore, I contend that atheism is the default position, until evidence arises to proof otherwise.
Thousands of philosophers support the existence of specific supernatural deities, and have debated these topics for thousands of years [but not the other idea].
How am I supposed to take that as anything other than argument via popularity?
While "fact" and "opinion" makes a neat little false dichotomy, there are things that are ultimately facts (one way or the other), which are of a presently-indeterminate nature in terms of proof--and making an assertion regarding them is not merely purely-subjective "opinion".
Except for the fact that it isn't a false dichotomy, I agree with that. God's existence or non-existence is a matter of fact, not opinion.
I can validly assert that "Libertarianism is the best political system", as an assertion of how reality is, i.e., as fact, and provide evidence for that assertion, without being able to "prove" it.
No, you can't - "best" requires a relation - best for what or for whom. Plenty of slave owners, kings, despots, etc would disagree. And even if you mean to imply "best for most people", you still have to ask "what does 'best' mean" - plenty of liberals would say "best is what leads to the most equal society", conservatives would say "best is what preserves traditional society", and others would say "best is what allows the most freedom". All of those are opinions, and clearly aren't factual statements.
I can validly assert that "Capitalist countries will outperform communist ones over the next ten years", as an assertion of how reality is, and I need not "prove" it if the domain is not amenable to proof, as economics among many others is.
You can show that, on average, certain countries have a higher GDP than others - my only critique of this statement is that "outperform" is a bit vague.
Yes, certainly. We call this "being irrational."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Bullshit. Have you ever performed the double-slit experiment? Circumnavigated the globe? Reconstucted Mendel's experiments? Taken position data for the various planets and proven that gravity is inversly proportional to the square of the distance?
Possibly some, but almost certainly not all. And if you had somehow done all of those, I would come up with more and more. Which is not to say I think you should have, but I think you should drop the dumb "I don't believe things without evidence" meme. No one has the time.
But I did not ask you to prove the nonexistance of anything. I asked you to answer three well-known philosophical questions without falling back on the existance of a higher power. Because, people have for thousands of years and, as far as I know, failed.
It is not, that is why the next word was "but" and I go on to explain why 2/3 of the examples did not have an answer like that.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Yes. If you're going to posit a claim that there is no Tooth Fairy, the burden of proof is on you to 1) define what you mean by a Tooth Fairy, and 2) offer evidence to support your position.
Then you are just broken. You think that all things exist until they are defined and proven to not exist. You necessarily belive that your father rapes you every night while you are asleep and no one is watching. After all, if you think that's not the way it is, you are the one required to prove it isn't true.
Learn to love Alaska
Looks to me like there are actually plenty of threads now, with interesting discourse from posters representing moral relativistism, atheism and agnosticism alike. You might want to join them...
So you end up with an ad infinitum argument. It's "turtles all the way down."
That's why the definition of what is good terminates with God. He simply is good, declares himself to us as such, and defines for us what is moral. There is no arbitrariness since "the buck stops here." What if God orders something we consider abhorrent? If God orders something that we consider abhorrent, but He is the definition of good, what does that make of our impressions about His rules?
Crude analogy: does a child find the putting-down of a lame horse abhorrent? What is the right thing to do for an animal in pain? What is more important: what the child wants, or what is good? What if God changes the rules? What if God states that he is unchanging?
You're right. It's a poorly-worded way of saying that there is an abundance of philosophical research and arguments available for one, but not the other. I used the time component to emphasize the volume of material available in the case of the former. The amount of scholarly research weighs extremely heavily in favor of the former, making these two statements hardly comparable, in terms of legitimacy.
For example: you would be hard-pressed to find anyone, I wager, who've devoted their lives to the study of the latter; because it is so obviously not serious. But this is just common sense.
But there is a more insidious problem with catering to the beliefs of the majority. For example, the Jews in 1942 Germany were in the moral minority. How would moral relativism resolve a situation like this? To use your words: But unless they clash strongly with the beliefs of the majority, it is not commonly a problem. So when they do clash, how is the issue resolved? One side or the other must be wrong... right?
I didn't say that I think everything exist until it is proven not to. I said that if you are going to claim that something does not exist, the burden is on you to supply evidence to back up your statement.
This isn't really a problem with the scientific method. Its a problem with human society.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Everyone has a different conception of reality itself. Yet there is only one objective reality. So some conceptions must therefore be closer to the truth and others further. Because all conceptions are different does not imply that there is not a reality.
There is tremendous overlap between the teachings of, e.g., Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and ancient Egyptian religion, for one willing to look at their meanings, and not just the superficial things. Not just overlap regarding how one should live one's life, but overlap as to the nature of God himself, and the nature of judgment and the afterlife.
Saying that everyone has "a different (but only one)" path to heaven is false. Christianity has become largely like that since the reformation. While there was also good done by the reformation, the introduction of the concept that salvation is because of only belief and, not life, was a perversion, and caused the exclusivity that predominates in Christianity to this day. Most other religions don't have this degree of exclusivity, because salvation is dependent upon how you live your life, and the prescriptions for how to live your life are very similar across major all religions, excluding particular ritual. Schools of Hinduism even say that all religions are equally good, which is the other ridiculous extreme from saying that all religions are evil except for one. I am a Christian, but I follow the school of Swedenborg, which says that everyone can be saved who lives a life of repentance according to his own religion; that all in heaven acknowledge Jesus, but don't necessarily have to do so during their natural lives in order to be saved.
You could see "moral" as a direct result of "egoism" (aka "will to survive"). I do no harm to you, my expectation is that you therefore don't do any harm to me. Going a step further: I might be able to harm you (because I'm the bigger guy), but I don't know if you might come back with your friends or your bigger brother.
If you like a more philosophical approach, Kant's Categorical Imperative seems to be a good explanation.
I didn't say that I think everything exist until it is proven not to. I said that if you are going to claim that something does not exist, the burden is on you to supply evidence to back up your statement.
And that's just plain stupid. You can *never* prove something doesn't exist, but can easily prove something does. Why should those that make the initial assertion that something does exist need no evidence at all, but anyone that calls bullshit on their fabricated assertions must prove the absence when such proof is impossible?
It sounds like you are just trying to support having beliefs in ghosts/UFOs/gods/unicorns/whatever without having to think. Thinking must make you hurt.
Learn to love Alaska
I didn't really miss your point, I was just being a smartass.
"I assert that a fervent belief that advancing human knowledge is for the good of mankind can be considered a faith"
I understand this, and disagree. Faith is belief not supported by evidence. I assert that there is overwhelming historical evidence that advancing human knowledge is for the good of mankind.
I would only call a belief "scientific" is it is a well derived, evidence-based belief about how the world is. Beliefs about how the world should be or what one ought to do I would not call "science", but they can still be logically supported by good evidence and reasonable axioms, in which case I would not call them "faith".
>>This isn't really a problem with the scientific method. Its a problem with human society.
The way we have always done science is always consensus based. "The literature says..." A natural consequence of this is that anything published that disagrees with the consensus has a hard time of it.
If they're observed rarely (like the Martian), you need to try to find a way to either observe them more frequently, or observe something other parameter that gives you the same information you need to constrain your model.
:)
My point was that if you could talk to the Martian, he could provide you with data that I'd trust a lot more than guesses about the heights of Martians based on a single sample. Both stats and science have trouble dealing with singular events. Receiving the knowledge from an authority in this case would work quite well. But we're trained by our modern scientific sensibilities to consider argument from authority to be something of a heresy. But why? Wouldn't the Martian know the heights of his people better than we could guess based on a single sample?
Again, I'm not really doubting the usefulness of the scientific method. I simply think there are other methods by which we can gain information about the world as well.
The problem you're describing is the problem of scientific illiteracy in the public
That's a major part of the problem -- the other is, as I mentioned, the fact that falsehoods are held to be true. The scientific is supposed to give us truth about the world, but the system must necessarily publish falsehoods.
What really makes the problem worse is the bottom-drawer bias in publications. In other words, studies which show no correlation, or no new information tend to get unpublished, whereas papers which discover "a new link between cancer and breathing!" tend to get published. So falsehood becomes fact, and millions of people stop wearing deodorant or taking antacids because they're afraid of getting Alzheimer's:
http://www.mercola.com/1998/archive/aluminum_and_alzheimer_prevention.htm
Physicians make life/death decisions every day based on scientific models of human physiology, and medicine's failures are only very rarely due to the incorrectness of those models.
How do you know? Right now, there's probably a huge number of people in your hospital that have diabetes. Our model for the underlying cause of diabetes has been shaken up several times within the last few years. How do you know we're not killing thousands of Americans every year out of our ignorance or errors? I agree, we must do the best we can, but the best we can is still quite limited, especially when it comes to diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer's, and other diseases.
But what is the alternative to the scientific method? You can gain empirical knowledge (sorted from most- to least-reliable) through: testing, observation, tradition, and word of mouth. Most scientifically minded people are able to work with the first two comfortably, but feel uncomfortable when dealing with the last two. But sometimes the only way you have of learning a fact is through word of mouth. Sarry might have kissed Harry and told you about it -- but you can't put them into a double-blind controlled experiment and replicate the results.
I personally, feel more uncomfortable than most with the second category (observation, or epidemiological studies). Famously, a "scientific" report showed a link between ice cream and polio. But I am more comfortable than most with tradition (though I still don't put much stock at all in word of mouth). Where did aspirin come from? Tradition. And its efficacy has been upheld by the scientific method. Where do we find systems of relationships between people that have been shown to work in the long run? Tradition. And nowhere else, in fact.
Science has provided no evidence that there is another, therefore there is no reason to believe that another exists. I am not only a scientist, but a scientism-ist
Logical Positivism's fundamental axioms state: 1) That anything that isn't falsifiable isn't scientific. And 2) Anything that isn't scientific isn't worthy of being thought about. But many of the most important things in life are not falsifiable, and rather impossible to put in a test tube. There's more to life than what can be known scientifically, and there are more ways to know facts than through the scientific method.
To assert that something exists requires evidence. To assert that something doesn't exist also requires evidence. If you make any assertions without evidence you are making assertions without thought. There is a difference between evidence and proof. No, thinking doesn't make me hurt; listening to you trying to think on the other hand...
How could you possibly conclude that "faith" in the supernatural is immutable? Some Buddhist monks spend their entire lives in meditation trying to perfect their conception of the supernatural. Theologians and many philosophers spend their lives studying, contemplating, and praying, to perfect their understanding of the supernatural. I've spend much of my life so far doing the same. There is nothing that even approaches immutability in my understanding of God, or the spiritual world. Nearly every experience I have adds in some way to my comprehension. We Christians pray and meditate on the word of God for the purpose of further enlightenment, including the correction of our many misconceptions. And to the extend that we are willing, God obliges.
Based on my admittedly limited experience, when a person comes of age they begin questioning everything they've been taught, and generally rejecting whatever they can't confirm for themselves.
Do you say "there was no Socrates," and "there was no Pythagoras"? Only a few people are on record having interacted with these people, but millions claim to have interacted with God. Hundreds claim to have seen him in person, and at hundreds more claim to have seen some aspect of the afterlife in person. If this isn't a "suggestion" of the reality of the existence of God and the afterlife, why do you presumably have a radically different standard for what suggests historical reality? I'm not saying these things should constitute proof, but they certainly constitute the "suggestion" to which you allude, meaning that to claim God's non-existence, you must presumably have some counter-evidence to override the eye-witness accounts.
I reject the notion that there was some time in human history when intelligence was generally lessor or when superstition was generally greater. Accumulated knowledge of the natural world does not imply greater intelligence. When was this time of lessor intelligence? I assume it was well before the time of Pythagoras and Confucius? Was it also before the Egyptian Old Kingdom? If so, it was prehistoric, so how can there be evidence of lower intelligence. If not, how do people of lessor intelligence build structures of superior imagination, and at least equal engineering as us? Superstition is and was always tied to our knowledge of causation in the natural world. Science emerged out of superstition, and superstition today expresses itself largely in terms of pseudoscience. Both science and superstition are largely orthogonal to spiritual understanding, i.e. the understanding of the human spirit, of God, and of the afterlife.
For "suggestion" of the reality of God, as I suggested, you need only look to the mountain of hearsay. If you want proof, then yes, it will be necessary to start with the sacred texts themselves, or else some other guidance. As it is difficult for modern humans, with their complete inexperience with thinking outside the bounds of space and time, to understand these text, some guidance or gradual introduction is usually required for them to make sense. Regardless of the sacred text, but especially if it's the Bible, I recommend Swedenborg. His 12-volume Arcana Celestia lays down the foundation for understanding how spiritual concepts can be expressed through natural language, using the book of Genesis and half of Exodus as an example. Fair warning though, the idly curious of today can not make it through the first volume. Compared to many times in our past, today is a time virtually devoid of intellectual discipline.
To assert that something exists requires evidence.
That is a direct contradiction to everything you've said so far. If someone walks up to me and says the Tooth Fairy exists, and I say that there is no Tooth Fairy, you've stated that I need to show evidence for my assertion, and you have never indicated that the person asserting the existance of the Tooth Fairy needs to show any evidence. If you think that both must show evidence, shouldn't the one making the initial assertion (that there is a God/Tooth Fairy) make the first display of evidence?
There is a difference between evidence and proof.
Yes, and I'm sure the "evidence" you'll accept will have to fit what you believe to be sufficient. God/Tooth Fairy/UFOs don't exist. Evidence? Occam's razor. There, done. And there has never been a shread of evidence that God exists other than stories so old they are unverifiable and "we can't explain it so it must be God."
Learn to love Alaska
First of all, legitimate spiritual beliefs are almost never legitimate bases for the prediction of natural events, such as the end of the natural world, etc.
As an aside, in the field of archeology, there is a long and embarrassing record of failed prediction by the secular archaeologists of non-existence of biblical cities. The bible has proved superior to anything else for predicting archaeological finds. But it is largely irrelevant, except to point out the silliness and arrogance of those who in the name of "science" tout the superiority of any system of thought that rejects whatever is in the Bible.
Second of all, the statement that "in almost every single case" science makes the right prediction, is absurd. Science is almost always wrong. For example there is currently something like 10 versions of String Theory. There are only two possibilities: 9 of them are wrong, or 10 of them are wrong.
Legitimate spiritual understanding is no more considered perfect and infallible than legitimate scientific understanding. There are people who have claimed infallibility or perfect knowledge in both religion and science, and they are all abominations to reason and thought. The difference is that most religions, for example Christianity, explicitly teach that, though we should strive for perfection, no one can ever be perfect but God. Science, on the other hand, has no such guiding principle, and as a result is nearly constantly under the delusion that the last-discovered degree of matter is the fundamental level, and that perfect knowledge is now within grasp. It happened with the molecule, with the atom, with the fermion, and now it's happening with the string.
If you want a prediction of natural events from spiritual understanding, here's one: There is no most fundamental particle of nature, but as long as there are scientists who are atheists, they will believe (without evidence) that the most fundamental known particles in nature are THE fundamental particles of nature, and that they are therefore close to perfect understanding of the natural world.
Okay, so if everybody were atheist, your proof would no longer work, but you wouldn't need a proof, because no one would be thinking about God. What would happen if God then appeared to one those atheists, and sent him to evangelize the world? One person would have first-hand proof, and everyone else would have second-hand proof of God. Would your proof of non-God work then, or would it take some number of generations for this proof to become too old to be valid (and thus requiring a new advent)?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
How do you know? Right now, there's probably a huge number of people in your hospital that have diabetes. Our model for the underlying cause of diabetes has been shaken up several times within the last few years. How do you know we're not killing thousands of Americans every year out of our ignorance or errors?
I didn't intend to claim that medicine knows everything--what I meant is that certain basic aspects of medicine are fully understood, and if they weren't understood it would become obvious very rapidly. My example of the mechanics of blood flow illustrates that.
That's a major part of the problem -- the other is, as I mentioned, the fact that falsehoods are held to be true. The scientific is supposed to give us truth about the world, but the system must necessarily publish falsehoods.
What I'm saying is that the belief that every published result is even supposed to be correct is, in itself, a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the scientific method on your part. Like I said, bad science exists, and even good science can reach incorrect conclusions. The claim advocates of the scientific method would make is that incorrect results get rooted out over time, not that all published results are intrinsically correct the very first time.
But what is the alternative to the scientific method? You can gain empirical knowledge (sorted from most- to least-reliable) through: testing, observation, tradition, and word of mouth. Most scientifically minded people are able to work with the first two comfortably, but feel uncomfortable when dealing with the last two. But sometimes the only way you have of learning a fact is through word of mouth. Sarry might have kissed Harry and told you about it -- but you can't put them into a double-blind controlled experiment and replicate the results.
I think you're lumping a whole bunch of things together there. Tradition and word of mouth are means of communication, not means by which the facts were discovered. If Janet directly observed Harry kissing Sally then told me about it, that's totally different than if Janet "had a feeling" that Harry kissed Sally and told me. And salicylic acid (not aspirin, which is a derivatized form developed to have decreased gastric side effects) was not discovered through tradition, it was discovered through empirical observation by some culture of proto-scientists a long time ago, then passed down to us through tradition. Of course, the vast, vast majority of traditional medicine has been shown to be absolutely worthless, if not directly harmful, so using salicylic acid as an example of the wonders of tradition is a bit of the "file drawer" effect you mention.
Logical Positivism's fundamental axioms state: 1) That anything that isn't falsifiable isn't scientific. And 2) Anything that isn't scientific isn't worthy of being thought about. But many of the most important things in life are not falsifiable, and rather impossible to put in a test tube. There's more to life than what can be known scientifically, and there are more ways to know facts than through the scientific method.
It may turn out that I'm some form of "weak" logical positivist--I've forgotten a lot of my undergrad philosophy, and you'll have to help me--but my understanding is that the position is that any model that is fundamentally unfalsifiable isn't scientific, not simply models that can't be falsified with the evidence we have at hand. In other words, the only reason to believe something is based on evidence, and things about which evidence can fundamentally not be collected are not worth thinking about. Contrary to what you say, I think almost everything in life has evidence attached to it, with the possible exception of things like whether or not God exists, and almost every decision in life can and should be made based on application of rigorous logic to the evidence at hand. The human brain is optimized to be naturally good at this in evolutionarily relevant contexts, but it breaks down beyond that, which is the only reason why formalized science is necessary.
I didn't mention the person making the positive assertion until now. You apparently strongly assumed the non-existence of my requirement for evidence due to lack of evidence for my requirement for evidence. Funny, that.
Both have an independent burden to back up their assertion with evidence regardless of who goes first. The presumable reason to want the person making the positive assertion to go first, is that so you can argue that his evidence is insufficient. But even if you can adequately prove that that person's evidence is insufficient for belief in the existence of X, you haven't offered evidence sufficient for the belief in the non-existence of X... unless you plan to demonstrate that every possible evidence of the belief in the existence of X is inadequate, including people who have seen and touched X.
Occam's Razor is a justification for you to find Y a better explanation of a particular phenomenon than X. The only way that Occam's Razor amounts to evidence in favor of the non-existence of X, is if you are applying it to the totality of evidence in favor of the existence of X. If X is the Tooth Fairy, that's fairly easy to do. If X is God, it would probably take a lifetime to gather the totality of evidence for God. You'd have to look at millions of individual personal accounts of interactions with God, and apply Occam's Razor to each one. You'd have to do the same with many hundreds of accounts of PERSONAL PHYSICAL interactions with God and/or with the afterlife, in recent times and throughout history -- from the hundreds in modern times who have experienced "Near Death Experiences" to Swedenborg, who spoke with God directly and who was shown and recorded great detail from heaven and hell, to Joan of Arc, to the Apostles of Christ, to Pythagoras and Plato who derived God's existence and nature rationally, to Moses, to Zarathustra and to and Enoch, who, like Swedenborg, recorded details from the afterlife in their times, to countless other priests prophets from the far east, to India, to ancient Egypt who did likewise, and described in similar terms the infinite, timeless, creator, who is Being itself.
Anyone who claims to have shown every one of these sources to be baseless, is either lying, insane, or both.
I contend that:
1. The claims of the existence of a "generic" deity (Spinoza's God) is a non-statement. This is a God that doesn't interfere with reality. This God is just a synonym for Nature.
2. The claims of the Judeo-Christian God is simply wrong. There is an enormous amount of evidence that the universe was not created as described in the Book of Genesis.
So you apparently think that the only type of thought is scientific thought, and the only type of statement is a scientific statement? The deductive principle of logic is unfalsifiable. Is it a non-statement? Is its validity irrelevant? It is hard to imagine you think it is, as you can't do math or science without it.
I agree that using "God" as a synonym for a deterministic Nature is meaningless. It's not only meaningless, it's a manipulation of semantics to disguise atheism. Your second conclusion is a non-sequitur. It is the equivalent of claiming that the claims of the Christian God are wrong because Jesus claimed in Matthew 5:13 that his followers were made of salt, but they are demonstrably not. The subject of the first chapter of Genesis is the creation of the mind of man -- both of mankind in general, and of the spiritual development of each individual. The nature of the Judeo-Christian God is consistent with the Hindu God, the Islamic God, and the Pythagorean and Platonic God, etc. If you want super-literal explanations of God, you should stick to Plato or possibly Mohamed, or else the later Christian philosophers, like Augustine or Kierkegaard. But although it can take a lot more work to follow, there is vastly more insight that can be expressed in metaphor.
Perhaps 6 days was really 4.5 billion years. Adam and Eve were actually single-cell lifeforms. Abraham and sons were really dinosaurs. Egypt was really Pangaea.
If you are allowed to reinterpret the Bible to fit modern scientific observations, then it's a meaningless book. You can do the same thing with any book, any movie, any song, anything... and it'll describe the nature of the Universe "perfectly".
So to you words can only have strictly literal meaning, or else be wide open to any any interpretation? That's not how it works. "Salt" has a specific meaning. "Light" has a specific meaning. "Water" has a specific meaning. The Bible does not describe formation of the planet, single-cell lifeforms, or dinosaurs. It describes the nature of God, man, and the relationship between the two. Either you can go through the process of understanding it, or you can just let it forever be "a non-statement" to you. Scientific observations are "non-statements" in relationship to the subject matter of the Bible, which is spiritual reality, which is the only subject matter of lasting importance.
OK, I think I know what you're getting at. But it still doesn't make a good argument - there's still no evidence.
Popularity can be indirect evidence, because if most people believe it, in many cases, they have some direct evidence that you don't know about. But if you find out that they don't have that direct evidence, then the popularity of the idea ceases to be a good argument for the truth of that idea.
There's three points I'd like to make in conclusion of this thread (which I've enjoyed, by the way -- the Philosophy of Science is a fun topic for me). It's obviously a huge topic, so I'd like to summarize what I'm trying to say:
Point One: There are many paths to learning facts, not just the scientific method.
Point Two: Science as practiced (as opposed to an ideal practice of science) is flawed, but it works well enough that we use it.
Point Three: The Scientific Method even in its ideal form could be better, and doesn't deserve the sort of religious fervor associated with it by many people these days.
Point One:
I think you're lumping a whole bunch of things together there.
Quite true. The field of epistemology -- how do I know something to be true? -- encompasses a great many ways and means.
Different kinds of questions have different methods for appropriately answering them:
Question 1: Did Sally kiss Harry? Answered by an observation or self-reporting followed by a chain of word-of-mouth.
Question 2: Are Scrub Jays blue? Answered by an orthinologist going out and studying a number of Scrub Jays.
Question 3: Are men taller than women? Answered by statistical methods.
Question 4: Is 5 greater than 4? Answered by a rational claim without any empirical observations.
Question 5: Does ice cream cause polio? Answered incorrectly by establishing correlation, Answered correctly by establishing causation.
Question 6: Should people wear hats in church? Answered by religious debate from authority.
Question 7: Is murder wrong? Answered by a variety of ethical or religious arguments. Some people claim that "murder is wrong" is not a fact at all, but an opinion. Others claim it is a fact.
Question 8: Does adding fertilizer cause tomato plants to grow faster? Answered by every 8th grade science fair, using the traditional scientific method of hypothesis testing.
My point is that the scientific method, while indeed a powerful tool at arriving at truth, and useful in many situation, is not the only means of learning truth. Different questions have different ways that are appropriate for answering them. The scientific method is not the complete answer to epistemology. It has made *huge* advances possible, and was right to excise argument from authority from questions that can be tested, but it is not the answer to epistemology that Logical Positivists make it out to be.
In other words, the only reason to believe something is based on evidence, and things about which evidence can fundamentally not be collected are not worth thinking about.
Logical Positivism has gone through various incarnations over the last century, but the most strident version says that that which cannot be scientifically proven (via verification or falsifiability) is not worth considering. Other versions accept different sets of facts. "My fiancee loves me" is resistant to being put in a test tube, but we could perhaps look at evidence for it, like taking her word for it, or perhaps looking at a cake she baked for me.
The trouble of course, is that it really is a slippery slope from there to reports of people seeing ghosts (the original point of this Slashdot article). How can we accept my fiancee's word that she loves me, but not accept the fact that her friend saw a ghost when she was young? We can't start from the assumption that ghosts don't exist, since then we're just assuming our conclusions. Hence the strident version of Logical Positivism -- that which cannot be shown scientifically is not of interest.
Point Two: The practice of Science will never match the ideal.
What I'm saying is that the belief that every published result is even supposed to be correct is, in itself, a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the scientific method on your part. Like I said, bad science exists, and even good science can reach incorrect conclusions. The claim advocates of the scientific method would make is that incorrect results get
all I require is that my God be ultimately good and true.
I recognize that that seems to be a paradox, because I require it, but I can't judge it until some point beyond my death. (My being imperfect prevents my judging it properly.)
It has something to do with trusting one's conscience, and in being willing to do the best one can with the ability one presently has to judge. And this thing called repentance, which many people think is masochism, but is actually a willingness to reform if it is really repentance. And the belief that God, at least, will forgive an honest mistake (and can tell the difference between a real honest mistake and a poor excuse for deliberately screwing up). Faith and repentance.
But, no, the offer I was responding to did not contain anything which would inspire faith on my part.
Not unless I repent, and even then not unless I keep it up until I die.
Does that answer your question?
Is it more reasonable to argue a lack of difference without evidence that the either exists, or to argue the assumption of a difference allows an interpretation of the evidence which shows the existence of both?
In this case, no, but it's a question to be considered, I think.