Precognition in a nutshell is like "just knowing" the 97124480233rd random number returned by a good random number generator, without knowledge of either the algorithm or generator used or the seed. It doesn't violate my "sense of plausibility", it just violates my simple common sense -- it will never happen!
Well, I suppose we are at an impasse here, because, I know "empirically" that the equivalent does, in fact, happen.
As a broader statement that doesn't require (the unrequired) reproduction of something such that it is empirical for -you- rather than empirical for -me-, I'll continue to note that you are dismissing out-of-hand multiple ways such knowledge as your card shuffle scenario could be determined. I doubt it would be an insurmountable obstacle, for instance, for, say, the NSA to develop a technology that could scan/track the cards -through- the surface, and communicate information that is, upon overt appearance, unknowable. You are conflating a given state of technology and/or knowledge with laws of thermodynamics, with your sole criterion being your (epistemologically invalid--specifying this is impossible unless you are psychic with respect to the content of all the minds of all the residents of Earth, and have reviewed their entire content) notion of what "we know".
Further, your basic premise is quite broken within a multiverse model, as others have noted:
Another theory suggests that if Laplace's demon were to occupy a parallel universe or alternate dimension from which it could determine the implied data and do the necessary calculations on an alternate and greater time line the aforementioned time limitation would not apply. This position is for instance explained in David Deutsch's The Fabric of Reality, who says that realizing a 300-qubit quantum computer would prove the existence of parallel universes carrying the computation.
I think you've failed to fully appreciate Slashdot's vetting process. Describe anything whatsoever in vague terms of certain things succeeding/surviving and other things failing/dying, make some tenuous associations with any type of "selection", call it "evolution", and it will be immediately hailed here as both groundbreaking and beyond any requirement for further skeptical or scientific analysis.
If, indeed, there is no basis for the knowledge. If, say, someone/something could calculate all the movements of the cards for that "well-shuffled" deck, and communicate this directly in summary form ("It's a 5 of Hearts" requires remarkably few bits), it may violate your sense of plausibility, but it violates nothing in thermodynamics.
Well, except, again, a universally-applicable methodology is not necessary for the typical proposed "precognition" case. You are describing something more akin to "omniscience" than "precognition".
Certainly, given we can model many systems and predict, given a initial state, what their future behavior can be expected to be, there is -some- subset of "the future" that is not subject to such information constraints. The question is just how far that may be extended beyond our current, assumed capabilities, and this would be inclusive of heuristics which we use rather naturally--e.g. if I knew that a given room in a given building would exist in a year, for a wide range of future scenarios, "air is present" would likely be sufficient as opposed to the informational requirements of knowing the position of every constituent atom.
And yes, "as we know them", insofar as it's ever valid to claim as an absolute what "we know".
I think you'd need to be more specific regarding what you mean by "causally connected" here. It seems to me that you are arguing against one particular possibility of the hypothetical "implementation" of precognition rather than the concept per se (don't feel bad--the Slashdot summary is doing the equivalent far more egregiously than you)...
I'm not suggesting that the future effect "projects itself" back in time into the "precog's" brain, rather than the event is reconstructed from knowledge of the antecedent state. Are you saying that, for instance, if we said a year in the future we are going to drop a glass from a given point in a given hockey rink with a given orientation, even if we had unlimited simulation hardware and unlimited access to the rink and its physical characteristics before then, it is -impossible- to determine what that shatter event will look like, as a matter of thermodynamics?
If that is your stance, I think I'd need more detail.
Indeed, things like precognition overtly violate so very many physical laws...
Not really, if you posit those physical laws are deterministic. For any given future event, then, -precisely- what will happen is determined down to the most detailed particulars. From that premise, the only thing stopping us from modeling every single molecule involved between "now" and "then" and, say, displaying on a computer a precise reconstruction of the future event, "now", is processing power. That we can't (or the appearance that we can't) would be an issue of calculation ability (or the appearance that our brain's calculation ability is the only ability at hand), not physical laws. It would be in fact the existence of those physical laws that would stipulate that it is possible. Of course, the implications of "macro" effects of QM probability distributions could expand the overall question here...
Well, you know, like Darwin might say, to forewarn us about such upcoming controversies...
"When you see your likeness, you are pleased. But when you see your images which came into being before you, and which neither die nor become manifest, how much you will have to bear!"
Oh wait.
But yeah, your opinion means fully as much to me as you're straining to posture, mister-soon-to-be-naturally-deselected-random-internet-guy.
For those understanding the meaning of "allegory" (or who avoid pretending they don't to repeat a joke that was old for Slashdot 10 years ago), and/or very basic standard Judeo-Christian symbolism I'll just leave this here...
Jesus said, "A grapevine has been planted outside of the Father, but being unsound, it will be pulled up by its roots and destroyed."
I think we have to draw a distinction between the costs to have a product -first- (with the corresponding IP lock-out opportunities), and the costs of producing and selling a product per se.
Developing a current Intel processor was costly. To produce the performance equivalent 10 years ago, would probably have required R&D expenditures equivalent to the whole world's GDP. Which price point would it be ethical to mandate paying (via IP laws, as that's the only reason a company would have the "need" for it "first"), given that hypothetical?
Or, to perhaps put it another way... was the discovery of aspirin inevitable, even if it happened 5 years later on humanity's knowledge curve, at much lower cost?
There is nothing in the least unclear about my language, or the in the least unclear in your own mind that you have no non-simply-knowingly-lying logical objection, or you'd make it.
Now, broad-brush dismissal of an entire thread of arguments and the person making it offered in lieu of actually addressing a single point meaningfully... wow. Never saw that one before. Original.
Okay, just understand this is simply your blatant lie, and that many people reading this who -know- there has been an observable effect, simply know it to be what it is--a blatant lie. Conveniently, it is also -impossible-, formally, for it to be other than a lie, because it is epistemologically impossible for you to review all people's experience, and note the -absence- of an effect, for all those people. This is a claim to psychic powers on your part. It is possible for you to know something. It is -not- possible, ever, for any topic, for you to know -nobody- knows, or has experienced, something.
I am not in the least claiming that prayer is non-testable. I have tested it, and thereby verified it. I think what you're missing is that, your hopefulness for it aside, there is simply no reason that a "test" must follow your requirements to be a test. This is simply your application of inapplicable criteria, given the domain, to make sure you could not get what you say you want to get. If you have a hypothesis that an employee is stealing from you, and you test it by installing a webcam, it is in -no way- necessary for a third-party to be informed of this, or for it to be a replicable situation, for a validating test to have absolutely occurred. Facts are a wider and distinct domain from laboratory scientific method. This negatively impacts the status of facts as facts, in no way.
Sorry, I'm used to the recognized actual fallacies of philosophy--not made-up ones. Is "Appeal to Mass Opinion", per its made-up nature per google, supposed to correspond to an Argumentum Ad Populum? I suggest reading what I said, because I generally mean what I actually said rather than what you'd prefer I said. I in no way made a strict logical inference that it -is unquestionably true as a matter of logic- that my premise is true--rather simply that is is evidence of such, as it is. The considered opinions of the majority is evidence, though, indeed, not a definitive determination of truth-status in itself--had I actually ever said that.
WTF are you talking about? Not only did you not pose this question to me, but I have no idea what you are getting at or the relevance to anything at hand. I have absolutely no idea what you are asking or how to respond.
As for this, you've described someone who accomplished specifically the claim I noted as one of "illiterate scientifically-ignorant goat-herders". It's quite simple. Make your prediction, maximum lifespan for the next 3000 years, and demonstrate yourself not vastly mentally inferior to that person, who actually accomplished this with -no comparison- in information resources at hand. I'll happily provide you that (remarkably accurate) prediction and exactly where you can look that up, but I'd prefer your attempt, first. They're "ignorant", right? You have the whole internet for worldwide statistics across hundreds of years. He had nothing. Beat within-two-years accuracy, along with your reasoning by which you make that estimate, if you think you can.
I'm hardly ignorant of the facts. Studies have repeatedly found no evidence of prayer having any effects, presence of ghosts, or anything supernatural at all.
Okay, so ignorance of both the facts and how a valid scientific study would work, then. How could a control group of "people who we know nobody is praying for" be established? However many people are in each group, they are statistical noise compared to the prayers including one or both groups, e.g. prayers for "all the sick people of the world". You do know how a control group works, right?
Since you're going to go ahead and assume nobody should feel they need any evidence for -your- claims, I'll await an actual citation for a "ghost" study, and actually provide evidence of my statements. Here's a peer-reviewed study on NDE's, which, indeed, in direct indication of conscious experiences during EEG flatline, is definitely evidence of something "supernatural". Note: before you try to change the subject to what I haven't said, this is evidence, not a claim to "proof", and as you'd already know as you started down that road, whether it is proof rather than the evidence it is, is irrelevant to anything in this thread.
There is simply not the slightest thing ridiculous about a "non-testable" God--a god that is just enough to hand you everything the moment you bitchily demand it, for no effort. Even apart from that, even you can't actually think "god + not testable by my methodology whims = ridiculous". As for the -overall- claim it is untestable, it is testable via a long-standing methodology, and has been repeated thousands of times. That test is, as you might guess, to ask the relevant entity hypothesized for evidence. Knowing that whether it corresponds to -your preferred- methodology matters not in the slightest way, have you tested it?
I give NO plausibility to personal exerpiences, that are as non-testable, non-repeatable, and non-falsifiable as the scientific idea of god itself. You are using circular logic. God exists because people believe it. Try again.
It makes not the slightest difference what you grant. It has plausibility, as a statement of fact, given the evidence present and reviewable at will. Your ignorance of facts doesn't alter them.
That people like you try and defend the ancient superstitions of illiterate scientifically-ignorant goat-herders as superior to modern directly observable scientific evidence.
Then I'll pose to you the same challenge I made earlier. Your guess as to the maximum lifespan of man for the next 3000 years, starting with an overwhelming information advantage for you relative to a "goat-herder"? Within two years, please, interpreting absolutely every aspect of the question in favor of making it as easy as possible for your side of this challenge.
As for your attempted false-dichotomy fallacy, I do not, and have no need to, present that science is an inferior "alternative" in any way. I'll happily compare qualifications with you in knowledge of either domain.
Sorry, words have specific meanings. You have claimed it is "ridiculous". Back that up, with actual content, since the only other metric (preponderance of opinion) is squarely against your claim.
And all else is equal. We have one universe and two competing explanations for its origin. One is unnecessarily complicated, non-testable, and non-falsifiable. It applies.
Ah, no, all else is -not- equal. The slightest evidentiary distinction entirely overrides Occam's Razor (as it always does), and we certainly have that. -Any plausibility- given to NDE's, accuracy of all prophecies being greater than.5 probability (not even a challenge), reports of personal experiences (of which there are thousands), takes care of this immediately.
Again, though, you must have -some- model of explanation of the Big Bang, and while alternate conjectures to theism exist, they all would have their own complexity of description on the level of physics. Even with your inaccurate overstatement of the principle, you must include this in evaluation of the alternate model's "complexity".
Ah, okay, well since you aren't taking a stance on whether you agree with the previous poster or not, do you want to start by showing the slightest way in which it is "ridiculous", using your own words? Given the majority of people on Earth say directly otherwise, your characterization is absurd on its face. Do you have a particular personal argument to overcome that?
It is my opinion that science deals in falsifiable claims.
I understand that, and as of recently, that is the standard stance. It is also an incorrect subset of what science is. For instance, the -majority- of cultural anthropology does not consist of falsifiable claims--the strength of a theory is purely inferential. You cannot test you notion that, say, a piece of pottery found near culture X, using a paint known to be used by culture X, of an artistic style of culture X, is in fact properly categorized as being from that culture. It is entirely untestable, and is simply a very strong inferential position, and yes, is science on that inference-from-knowns basis.
Likewise, neither the Everett nor Copehagen Interpretations of QM are falsifiable. They are still science, being plausible inferences from knowns of physics.
Evolution, in the "evolution is causally exhaustive to explain biology" sense, is entirely untestable and unfalsifiable. Is that position science?
Psychology, sociology, linguistics... don't get me started. Wouldn't even end up -looking similar- to what they are if we excluded all untestable premises from these sciences.
And, well, yes, Intelligent Design, in contrast to "evolution" in any sense than "evolution occurs", is testable. We enumerate all proposable-IC structures, determine all permutations of mutations that could lead to each structure, evaluate for survivability over the transition period, generate a probability. It not only is testable, it is -inevitable it will be tested- as our understanding of the genome increases.
Near term, though, I'm contenting myself with trying to limit the damage to science being done by people such as yourself promoting your erroneous statement of what science is, ever was, or ever could be, for rather-obvious personal objectives. "Falsifiability", if you choose to take a look at the history of science (say, Thomas Kuhn would be a good place to start), has literally never had this as a universal criterion--naturally, since it could never have worked for a moment. Falsifiability is very good to have when possible, it is definitely not always possible, and when not possible, and it is definitely, absolutely, -not- the sole criterion scoping the domain of "science".
Sorry you don't understand what Occam's Razor is, such that you don't understand what "passing" it would me. Occam's Razor simply says, -all else being equal-, the simpler description is preferred, for the purposes of human conceptual economy--and says absolutely nothing, ever, on any subject, about what is -true-.
We can go around and around in your characterization, that in fact "goddidit" is much more conceptually simple than any other causal description you can provide for the Big Bang, described in terms of physics (multiverses, quantum anomolies, etc.). This shouldn't be necessary, though, since your basic understanding of the principle is entirely wrong.
As for "parsing it", it's quite simple--if -you yourself- thought "magician" is an equivalent term to "God" in this context, there is no reason to simply not use the standard terminology. You aren't because you want to contradict yourself in asserting they are the same in terms of logical inferences, but you need to use another term to hope to introduce greater incredulity. In your very own brain, you hold the positions "they are the same" and "they are not the same", at the same time. For your purposes, I'll let you deal with the personal psychological issues involved, but for discussion purposes here, it's simply, directly logically invalid.
If Intelligent Design does not fit under the definition of "science", then it is obviously time to expand the definition.
Regardless of how you may view ID, it is certainly time to -restore- the definition to what would include untestable Everett-versus-Copenhagen Interpretation questions as remaining "science" via inference.
Nobody, previous to the "science is whatever excludes ID" (don't worry, I'm not asking you to -admit- that) assertion now in popular vogue, would doubt that the Interpretations are "science", nor would doubt to exclude inference makes every single scientist a hypocrite on a hundred scientific issues, every single day, nor would doubt that this exclusion would destroy the large part of the majority of the "softer" sciences. They were right.
Can you provide even one specific one of those "all ways" in which it is "ridiculous"?
Because, seems two can play the "bare assertion" game.
It is ridiculous in no way whatsoever.
Even granting your blatantly intellectually-dishonest "consider my term 'magician' the same for the purpose of conceptual equivalence, and different for the purposes of rhetorical effect, simultaneously" recasting from standard descriptive term and -actual- conceptual content of "God".
Fair enough. Personally, I don't consider a position in direct opposition to a person's religion's official stance to a be representative of any "religious group", much as I would say that a person self-identifying as following Islam who says Allah doesn't exist, is not, in fact, following a position of a "religious group" (other than, perhaps, a group consisting of him/herself), but rather, is an individual with a wrong opinion about what their religion is--but in any case, the official stances are now linked for review as one wills.
Slashdot Mirror
Precognition in a nutshell is like "just knowing" the 97124480233rd random number returned by a good random number generator, without knowledge of either the algorithm or generator used or the seed. It doesn't violate my "sense of plausibility", it just violates my simple common sense -- it will never happen!
Well, I suppose we are at an impasse here, because, I know "empirically" that the equivalent does, in fact, happen.
As a broader statement that doesn't require (the unrequired) reproduction of something such that it is empirical for -you- rather than empirical for -me-, I'll continue to note that you are dismissing out-of-hand multiple ways such knowledge as your card shuffle scenario could be determined. I doubt it would be an insurmountable obstacle, for instance, for, say, the NSA to develop a technology that could scan/track the cards -through- the surface, and communicate information that is, upon overt appearance, unknowable. You are conflating a given state of technology and/or knowledge with laws of thermodynamics, with your sole criterion being your (epistemologically invalid--specifying this is impossible unless you are psychic with respect to the content of all the minds of all the residents of Earth, and have reviewed their entire content) notion of what "we know".
Further, your basic premise is quite broken within a multiverse model, as others have noted:
Another theory suggests that if Laplace's demon were to occupy a parallel universe or alternate dimension from which it could determine the implied data and do the necessary calculations on an alternate and greater time line the aforementioned time limitation would not apply. This position is for instance explained in David Deutsch's The Fabric of Reality, who says that realizing a 300-qubit quantum computer would prove the existence of parallel universes carrying the computation.
I think you've failed to fully appreciate Slashdot's vetting process. Describe anything whatsoever in vague terms of certain things succeeding/surviving and other things failing/dying, make some tenuous associations with any type of "selection", call it "evolution", and it will be immediately hailed here as both groundbreaking and beyond any requirement for further skeptical or scientific analysis.
As far as I can tell, we are in agreement here. Or, to put it another way, it's a matter of tuning into the correct energeia for the desired ousia.
If, indeed, there is no basis for the knowledge. If, say, someone/something could calculate all the movements of the cards for that "well-shuffled" deck, and communicate this directly in summary form ("It's a 5 of Hearts" requires remarkably few bits), it may violate your sense of plausibility, but it violates nothing in thermodynamics.
Well, except, again, a universally-applicable methodology is not necessary for the typical proposed "precognition" case. You are describing something more akin to "omniscience" than "precognition".
Certainly, given we can model many systems and predict, given a initial state, what their future behavior can be expected to be, there is -some- subset of "the future" that is not subject to such information constraints. The question is just how far that may be extended beyond our current, assumed capabilities, and this would be inclusive of heuristics which we use rather naturally--e.g. if I knew that a given room in a given building would exist in a year, for a wide range of future scenarios, "air is present" would likely be sufficient as opposed to the informational requirements of knowing the position of every constituent atom.
And yes, "as we know them", insofar as it's ever valid to claim as an absolute what "we know".
Well, this argument seems to hinge on the amount of information required for "arbitrary", for which some values are smaller than others. ;)
I think you'd need to be more specific regarding what you mean by "causally connected" here. It seems to me that you are arguing against one particular possibility of the hypothetical "implementation" of precognition rather than the concept per se (don't feel bad--the Slashdot summary is doing the equivalent far more egregiously than you)...
I'm not suggesting that the future effect "projects itself" back in time into the "precog's" brain, rather than the event is reconstructed from knowledge of the antecedent state. Are you saying that, for instance, if we said a year in the future we are going to drop a glass from a given point in a given hockey rink with a given orientation, even if we had unlimited simulation hardware and unlimited access to the rink and its physical characteristics before then, it is -impossible- to determine what that shatter event will look like, as a matter of thermodynamics?
If that is your stance, I think I'd need more detail.
Indeed, things like precognition overtly violate so very many physical laws...
Not really, if you posit those physical laws are deterministic. For any given future event, then, -precisely- what will happen is determined down to the most detailed particulars. From that premise, the only thing stopping us from modeling every single molecule involved between "now" and "then" and, say, displaying on a computer a precise reconstruction of the future event, "now", is processing power. That we can't (or the appearance that we can't) would be an issue of calculation ability (or the appearance that our brain's calculation ability is the only ability at hand), not physical laws. It would be in fact the existence of those physical laws that would stipulate that it is possible. Of course, the implications of "macro" effects of QM probability distributions could expand the overall question here...
Well, you know, like Darwin might say, to forewarn us about such upcoming controversies...
"When you see your likeness, you are pleased. But when you see your images which came into being before you, and which neither die nor become manifest, how much you will have to bear!"
Oh wait.
But yeah, your opinion means fully as much to me as you're straining to posture, mister-soon-to-be-naturally-deselected-random-internet-guy.
Hmm... I think Saying 13 for you, then.
Because... there are no missing links, but that's what the discovery of the next one will be another one of.
For those understanding the meaning of "allegory" (or who avoid pretending they don't to repeat a joke that was old for Slashdot 10 years ago), and/or very basic standard Judeo-Christian symbolism I'll just leave this here...
Jesus said, "A grapevine has been planted outside of the Father, but being unsound, it will be pulled up by its roots and destroyed."
--Gospel of Thomas, Saying 40
Slashdot's own Mr. Extracanonical, checking in.
I think we have to draw a distinction between the costs to have a product -first- (with the corresponding IP lock-out opportunities), and the costs of producing and selling a product per se.
Developing a current Intel processor was costly. To produce the performance equivalent 10 years ago, would probably have required R&D expenditures equivalent to the whole world's GDP. Which price point would it be ethical to mandate paying (via IP laws, as that's the only reason a company would have the "need" for it "first"), given that hypothetical?
Or, to perhaps put it another way... was the discovery of aspirin inevitable, even if it happened 5 years later on humanity's knowledge curve, at much lower cost?
There is nothing in the least unclear about my language, or the in the least unclear in your own mind that you have no non-simply-knowingly-lying logical objection, or you'd make it.
Now, broad-brush dismissal of an entire thread of arguments and the person making it offered in lieu of actually addressing a single point meaningfully... wow. Never saw that one before. Original.
So... total cop-out then.
Fair enough. Come back whenever you get the... confidences... to back up your statements in the obviously called-for way.
And yeah, I already know massively more about science, and philosophy of science, than you do. Enjoy.
NO observable effect, ever.
Okay, just understand this is simply your blatant lie, and that many people reading this who -know- there has been an observable effect, simply know it to be what it is--a blatant lie. Conveniently, it is also -impossible-, formally, for it to be other than a lie, because it is epistemologically impossible for you to review all people's experience, and note the -absence- of an effect, for all those people. This is a claim to psychic powers on your part. It is possible for you to know something. It is -not- possible, ever, for any topic, for you to know -nobody- knows, or has experienced, something.
I am not in the least claiming that prayer is non-testable. I have tested it, and thereby verified it. I think what you're missing is that, your hopefulness for it aside, there is simply no reason that a "test" must follow your requirements to be a test. This is simply your application of inapplicable criteria, given the domain, to make sure you could not get what you say you want to get. If you have a hypothesis that an employee is stealing from you, and you test it by installing a webcam, it is in -no way- necessary for a third-party to be informed of this, or for it to be a replicable situation, for a validating test to have absolutely occurred. Facts are a wider and distinct domain from laboratory scientific method. This negatively impacts the status of facts as facts, in no way.
Sorry, I'm used to the recognized actual fallacies of philosophy--not made-up ones. Is "Appeal to Mass Opinion", per its made-up nature per google, supposed to correspond to an Argumentum Ad Populum? I suggest reading what I said, because I generally mean what I actually said rather than what you'd prefer I said. I in no way made a strict logical inference that it -is unquestionably true as a matter of logic- that my premise is true--rather simply that is is evidence of such, as it is. The considered opinions of the majority is evidence, though, indeed, not a definitive determination of truth-status in itself--had I actually ever said that.
WTF are you talking about? Not only did you not pose this question to me, but I have no idea what you are getting at or the relevance to anything at hand. I have absolutely no idea what you are asking or how to respond.
As for this, you've described someone who accomplished specifically the claim I noted as one of "illiterate scientifically-ignorant goat-herders". It's quite simple. Make your prediction, maximum lifespan for the next 3000 years, and demonstrate yourself not vastly mentally inferior to that person, who actually accomplished this with -no comparison- in information resources at hand. I'll happily provide you that (remarkably accurate) prediction and exactly where you can look that up, but I'd prefer your attempt, first. They're "ignorant", right? You have the whole internet for worldwide statistics across hundreds of years. He had nothing. Beat within-two-years accuracy, along with your reasoning by which you make that estimate, if you think you can.
I'm hardly ignorant of the facts. Studies have repeatedly found no evidence of prayer having any effects, presence of ghosts, or anything supernatural at all.
Okay, so ignorance of both the facts and how a valid scientific study would work, then. How could a control group of "people who we know nobody is praying for" be established? However many people are in each group, they are statistical noise compared to the prayers including one or both groups, e.g. prayers for "all the sick people of the world". You do know how a control group works, right?
Since you're going to go ahead and assume nobody should feel they need any evidence for -your- claims, I'll await an actual citation for a "ghost" study, and actually provide evidence of my statements. Here's a peer-reviewed study on NDE's, which, indeed, in direct indication of conscious experiences during EEG flatline, is definitely evidence of something "supernatural". Note: before you try to change the subject to what I haven't said, this is evidence, not a claim to "proof", and as you'd already know as you started down that road, whether it is proof rather than the evidence it is, is irrelevant to anything in this thread.
http://profezie3m.altervista.org/archivio/TheLancet_NDE.htm
There is simply not the slightest thing ridiculous about a "non-testable" God--a god that is just enough to hand you everything the moment you bitchily demand it, for no effort. Even apart from that, even you can't actually think "god + not testable by my methodology whims = ridiculous". As for the -overall- claim it is untestable, it is testable via a long-standing methodology, and has been repeated thousands of times. That test is, as you might guess, to ask the relevant entity hypothesized for evidence. Knowing that whether it corresponds to -your preferred- methodology matters not in the slightest way, have you tested it?
I give NO plausibility to personal exerpiences, that are as non-testable, non-repeatable, and non-falsifiable as the scientific idea of god itself. You are using circular logic. God exists because people believe it. Try again.
It makes not the slightest difference what you grant. It has plausibility, as a statement of fact, given the evidence present and reviewable at will. Your ignorance of facts doesn't alter them.
That people like you try and defend the ancient superstitions of illiterate scientifically-ignorant goat-herders as superior to modern directly observable scientific evidence.
Then I'll pose to you the same challenge I made earlier. Your guess as to the maximum lifespan of man for the next 3000 years, starting with an overwhelming information advantage for you relative to a "goat-herder"? Within two years, please, interpreting absolutely every aspect of the question in favor of making it as easy as possible for your side of this challenge.
As for your attempted false-dichotomy fallacy, I do not, and have no need to, present that science is an inferior "alternative" in any way. I'll happily compare qualifications with you in knowledge of either domain.
Sorry, words have specific meanings. You have claimed it is "ridiculous". Back that up, with actual content, since the only other metric (preponderance of opinion) is squarely against your claim.
And all else is equal. We have one universe and two competing explanations for its origin. One is unnecessarily complicated, non-testable, and non-falsifiable. It applies.
.5 probability (not even a challenge), reports of personal experiences (of which there are thousands), takes care of this immediately.
Ah, no, all else is -not- equal. The slightest evidentiary distinction entirely overrides Occam's Razor (as it always does), and we certainly have that. -Any plausibility- given to NDE's, accuracy of all prophecies being greater than
Again, though, you must have -some- model of explanation of the Big Bang, and while alternate conjectures to theism exist, they all would have their own complexity of description on the level of physics. Even with your inaccurate overstatement of the principle, you must include this in evaluation of the alternate model's "complexity".
Ah, okay, well since you aren't taking a stance on whether you agree with the previous poster or not, do you want to start by showing the slightest way in which it is "ridiculous", using your own words? Given the majority of people on Earth say directly otherwise, your characterization is absurd on its face. Do you have a particular personal argument to overcome that?
It is my opinion that science deals in falsifiable claims.
I understand that, and as of recently, that is the standard stance. It is also an incorrect subset of what science is. For instance, the -majority- of cultural anthropology does not consist of falsifiable claims--the strength of a theory is purely inferential. You cannot test you notion that, say, a piece of pottery found near culture X, using a paint known to be used by culture X, of an artistic style of culture X, is in fact properly categorized as being from that culture. It is entirely untestable, and is simply a very strong inferential position, and yes, is science on that inference-from-knowns basis.
Likewise, neither the Everett nor Copehagen Interpretations of QM are falsifiable. They are still science, being plausible inferences from knowns of physics.
Evolution, in the "evolution is causally exhaustive to explain biology" sense, is entirely untestable and unfalsifiable. Is that position science?
Psychology, sociology, linguistics... don't get me started. Wouldn't even end up -looking similar- to what they are if we excluded all untestable premises from these sciences.
And, well, yes, Intelligent Design, in contrast to "evolution" in any sense than "evolution occurs", is testable. We enumerate all proposable-IC structures, determine all permutations of mutations that could lead to each structure, evaluate for survivability over the transition period, generate a probability. It not only is testable, it is -inevitable it will be tested- as our understanding of the genome increases.
Near term, though, I'm contenting myself with trying to limit the damage to science being done by people such as yourself promoting your erroneous statement of what science is, ever was, or ever could be, for rather-obvious personal objectives. "Falsifiability", if you choose to take a look at the history of science (say, Thomas Kuhn would be a good place to start), has literally never had this as a universal criterion--naturally, since it could never have worked for a moment. Falsifiability is very good to have when possible, it is definitely not always possible, and when not possible, and it is definitely, absolutely, -not- the sole criterion scoping the domain of "science".
Sorry you don't understand what Occam's Razor is, such that you don't understand what "passing" it would me. Occam's Razor simply says, -all else being equal-, the simpler description is preferred, for the purposes of human conceptual economy--and says absolutely nothing, ever, on any subject, about what is -true-.
We can go around and around in your characterization, that in fact "goddidit" is much more conceptually simple than any other causal description you can provide for the Big Bang, described in terms of physics (multiverses, quantum anomolies, etc.). This shouldn't be necessary, though, since your basic understanding of the principle is entirely wrong.
As for "parsing it", it's quite simple--if -you yourself- thought "magician" is an equivalent term to "God" in this context, there is no reason to simply not use the standard terminology. You aren't because you want to contradict yourself in asserting they are the same in terms of logical inferences, but you need to use another term to hope to introduce greater incredulity. In your very own brain, you hold the positions "they are the same" and "they are not the same", at the same time. For your purposes, I'll let you deal with the personal psychological issues involved, but for discussion purposes here, it's simply, directly logically invalid.
If Intelligent Design does not fit under the definition of "science", then it is obviously time to expand the definition.
Regardless of how you may view ID, it is certainly time to -restore- the definition to what would include untestable Everett-versus-Copenhagen Interpretation questions as remaining "science" via inference.
Nobody, previous to the "science is whatever excludes ID" (don't worry, I'm not asking you to -admit- that) assertion now in popular vogue, would doubt that the Interpretations are "science", nor would doubt to exclude inference makes every single scientist a hypocrite on a hundred scientific issues, every single day, nor would doubt that this exclusion would destroy the large part of the majority of the "softer" sciences. They were right.
Can you provide even one specific one of those "all ways" in which it is "ridiculous"?
Because, seems two can play the "bare assertion" game.
It is ridiculous in no way whatsoever.
Even granting your blatantly intellectually-dishonest "consider my term 'magician' the same for the purpose of conceptual equivalence, and different for the purposes of rhetorical effect, simultaneously" recasting from standard descriptive term and -actual- conceptual content of "God".
Fair enough. Personally, I don't consider a position in direct opposition to a person's religion's official stance to a be representative of any "religious group", much as I would say that a person self-identifying as following Islam who says Allah doesn't exist, is not, in fact, following a position of a "religious group" (other than, perhaps, a group consisting of him/herself), but rather, is an individual with a wrong opinion about what their religion is--but in any case, the official stances are now linked for review as one wills.