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Member (Idle past 93 days) Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Is My Hypothesis Valid??? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
However if RAZD insists that his deities are scientifically unknowable (i.e. inherently unknowable - not just due to inadequate technology) then... I don't think we're all talking about the same thing with the word "unknowable"... Way back in Message 220, I had this to say:
quote: And in Message 218 I said:
quote: Has RAZD explicitly stated that his diety is "inherantly unknowable" in the sense that you are using it?
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Straggler Member (Idle past 93 days) Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined:
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Has RAZD explicitly stated that his diety is "inherantly unknowable" in the sense that you are using it? Who knows what RAZD really means? What do you think he means? If something can be detected by means of our 5 senses can you explain to me how it can be immune from scientific investigation? Do you think RAZD is saying that gods might be explored one day if we can just invent the technology capable of doing so? Is that what you believe about your god? Are deities just ethereal "Higgs Bosons" waiting to be empirically discovered? Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.
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xongsmith Member Posts: 2587 From: massachusetts US Joined: Member Rating: 6.4 |
The exact nature of this non-empirical evidence remains unknown. You haven't said what it is that does constitute non-empirical evidence. You have only ever stated what doesn't. not true. what about the conscious, aware person who went for a walk in the woods and came back and told you what he experienced? this is subjective evidence. your original equation discounted it. (more coming after) - xongsmith
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
If something can be detected by means of our 5 senses can you explain to me how it can be immune from scientific investigation? Scientific investigation relies on the control, repeatability, predictibility, etc of the experience so something simply being of our 5 senses doesn't necessitate that we can investigate it scientifically. Lets say that your on one side of a dark canyon with your team of scientists and I'm, unknowingly, on the other holding a laser pointer and a pair of night vision goggles. When you are looking, and no one else, I shine the laser in your direction so you can see it. When the scientists turn to look, I keep it off. The experience you had of the laser would be empirical but immune from scientific investigation because I have the ability to decide who gets to see it. Same scenario, but this time the laser has a faulty battery where it sparatically turns off and on. This time it would be immune from investigation because the results are not repeatable or predictable. Or how about if I can shine the laser directly into your eye and, perhaps because of the total lack of any dust, the scientist cannot see it at even the slightest angle. For a totally different scenario, think of something that happened only once, how about the Big Bang, we can't investigate that scientifcally.
Do you think RAZD is saying that gods might be explored one day if we can just invent the technology capable of doing so? Is that what you believe about your god? Are deities just ethereal "Higgs Bosons" waiting to be empirically discovered? I believe that god is not a part of our universe, that he is "outside" of it, so I don't think we're going to see him from the inside, but I also believe he has the ability to effect the inside of our univers should he so desire. Maybe he is able to be sensed sometimes but not others, by design or by choice. Our lack of scientific evidence for him suggests that he just doesn't want to be detected, or is only detectible sparatically, just as much as it suggests that he doesn't exist at all.
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xongsmith Member Posts: 2587 From: massachusetts US Joined: Member Rating: 6.4 |
RAZD is only saying that there are lots of levels of non-empirical or subjective evidence. he gave you the example - the man coming out of the woods and telling you what he experienced. this is second-hand. it is subjective testimony. it can form the beginning of a hypothesis which can be further investigated. if the man says he saw a squirrel or if he says he saw an IPU then we can assign some importance to the evidence. but we have crossed outside the Venn Diagram's boundary of Objective Evidence either way.
to your equation {objective evidence} + {logic} => hypothesis and your associated question "Is this valid?" in a nutshell, he answers "No." couldnt this thread have just ended there? naw - we gotta do a complete autopsy.he eventually came up with a simplification for you: {evidence} + {logic} => {hypothesis} however, after long re-considerations of re-considerations, i have come back to one my first conclusions about this thread. this isnt about your question at all. it's all about getting RAZD caught in a trap. you wanted to use this thread to get him to trip over some detail in a different subject/thread whatever. you are repeatedly trying to get him to make a mistake, to miss a freethrow. he has stated that he doesnt want to get into that stuff here. he has seen through your deceit and refuses to fall for it. you keep asking him to shoot 10,000 freethrows in the hopes that he will miss one and you can lick your lips and move in for the KILL! you have already acknowledged that certain types of non-empirical evidence can form an acceptable basis for a tentative hypothesis that needs further investigation. that was all he trying to get you to admit. but then you keep asking him to shoot freethrows. you may now effusively say that you just want to know what his position on that other issue is, but that is not what you really want. you want to trip him up. he has seen through your thinly veiled attempt. give up. he is not going to the line here. i am also having trouble trying to understand the others who seem to support you and your crusade. p.s. - we should change the example to a woman coming out of the woods. because, as we all know, a man alone in the woods is _still_ wrong. - xongsmith
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Perdition Member (Idle past 3265 days) Posts: 1593 From: Wisconsin Joined: |
he gave you the example - the man coming out of the woods and telling you what he experienced. this is second-hand. it is subjective testimony The telling is subjective, but the beginning point was still objective. At the beginning of the chain is something objective and empirical, or at least possibly so.
however, after long re-considerations of re-considerations, i have come back to one my first conclusions about this thread. this isnt about your question at all. it's all about getting RAZD caught in a trap. you wanted to use this thread to get him to trip over some detail in a different subject/thread whatever. you are repeatedly trying to get him to make a mistake, to miss a freethrow. he has stated that he doesnt want to get into that stuff here. he has seen through your deceit and refuses to fall for it. you keep asking him to shoot 10,000 freethrows in the hopes that he will miss one and you can lick your lips and move in for the KILL! My interest in this thread, and I assume many others' as well, is that we find RAZD to be one of the best posters on this forum, effortlessly chopping creationists up with grace and skill. Yet he claims to believe in, which means asserts the actual existence of, a deity that is inherently unknowable. This seems very strange and I want to know where the disconnect is. How can he be such a rational, logical person when it comes to others' sincerely held beliefs, yet can't be so when it comes to his own? I find it perplexing, but I try and stay out of these conversations, to a degree, because I do respect that he doesn't want ot talk about it, as frustrating as that is. Edited by Perdition, : No reason given.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
i am also having trouble trying to understand the others who seem to support you and your crusade. They expect a belief in god to be irrational and/or illogical. ABE: Just saw the post above mine after I submitted:
quote: See? A belief in god couldn't possibly be rational or logical Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.
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Rahvin Member Posts: 4042 Joined: Member Rating: 7.7 |
See? A belief in god couldn't possibly be rational or logical I have yet to see a belief in god(s) based on sound logic. Faith, by its very definition as a belief that is not based on evidence, is irrational.
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xongsmith Member Posts: 2587 From: massachusetts US Joined: Member Rating: 6.4 |
he gave you the example - the man coming out of the woods and telling you what he experienced. this is second-hand. it is subjective testimony The telling is subjective, but the beginning point was still objective. At the beginning of the chain is something objective and empirical, or at least possibly so. well yeah, but (Yabbet) it's still is outside of the Objective Evidence circle in your handy dandy Venn Diagram and the Objective Evidence circle is what is in Stragger's OP. the fact that Straggler himself allowed as to how such subjective evidence could be used to begin the formulation of a tentative hypothesis would mean that even he really didnt think the OP equation was a valid hypothesis. Edited by xongsmith, : typo - xongsmith
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1433 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi Rahvin, I'll try to keep this brief ...
So you're basically just talking about experiences through the five senses that are had only as an individual, with nobody else to help verify whether your interpretation of that evidence is accurate? That's interesting. I am interested in perceptions of reality, and what we can know. Personally I think any and all concepts can be tested against reality to see how they stack up, and readily discard any that are falsified. The issue I have with Straggler is that he keeps trying to divide evidence into two categories -- those he is comfortable with and those he is uncomfortable with -- and it seems he doesn't understand is that his bias can lead him to discard valid concepts. Curiously, I only need to keep the focus on very specific forms of experience to show that his attempts to divide evidence into different categories is doomed to failure. Xongsmith took him to the mat on subjective experience until Straggler was left with an impossible position: only the sensations of a person completely and totally unable to sense anything can be discarded as evidence of reality. Fascinatingly, I do not see that end of the spectrum as being heavily populated.
I understand what you mean, I think. When I thought I saw a man out of the corner of my eye, it would have been a reasonable conclusion that there was a man had I not been able to determine that the plant had simply fooled my brain (ie, contradictory evidence). Agreed. It is impossible to divide the evidence into what you think is good evidence and what you think is poor or impossible evidence, because it may be one or the other.
In other words, I see personal subjective experiences as a reason to seek verification for a mundane explanation first, rather than seeing them as reason to immediately investigate the supernatural. Only after all possible mundane explanations have been exhausted would I consider there to be reason to investigate the supernatural. Is this due to my "worldview," RAZD? Or is it simply the most rational course of action given that human beings are typically rather gullible? Is it perhaps possible that some "worldviews" are more rational than others? Of course some worldviews are more rational than others, I've never disputed that, what I have suggested is that in the absence of any other evidence, in the absence of any contradictory evidence, that a majority of worldviews agreeing on a concept would indicate that such a view is rational, ... and possibly true. Certainly one should test (what one considers) the most probable answers first.
I rather strongly disagree. There is ample evidence that concepts of the supernatural are purely made up: we have countless examples of exactly that. Fairies are made up. Goblins are made up. Most gods that have ever been believed we now know were simply made up. All A is B, B!!! therefore A? (do I need the diagram?) We know that some concepts are made up, as for example the IPU, but we do not know that all concepts are made up.
But again - when has this discussion ever been about a reasonable basis for further investigation? Check Message 1.
If faith is immune to the rules of logic, why even have this entire discussion? Amazingly I have been saying that attempting to discuss this is inherently pointless, and have instead tried to focus on what we can know about reality by the use of our senses and testing of experiences.
I think I finally comprehend your Venn diagrams now. You're saying, essentially, that there are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. You're saying that some aspects of reality can only be taken on faith, and have nothing to do with evidence or logic. Unless you know everything.
Evidence is evidence, some of it good at leading to more information, some is not so good, and some of it leading to no conclusions at all. In the face of an absence of contradictory evidence, what we have are testable, rational possibilities to start an investigation for further understanding, places that are better than random guessing. When those possibilities are actually testable, I agree. And you won't know if they are testable or not unless you try. Enjoy by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1433 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi xongsmith,
RAZD is only saying that there are lots of levels of non-empirical or subjective evidence. he gave you the example - the man coming out of the woods and telling you what he experienced. this is second-hand. it is subjective testimony. it can form the beginning of a hypothesis which can be further investigated. if the man says he saw a squirrel or if he says he saw an IPU then we can assign some importance to the evidence. And that would be applying your subjective interpretation to the matter. What you absolutely cannot do is tell if the experience is completely "empirical" completely "subjective" or somewhere in between.
it's all about getting RAZD caught in a trap. And curiously, his original OP (Message 1) had nothing to do with my beliefs, so yes that is off topic even if he started the thread. Interestingly he has not discussed the topic of the thread for a long time.
Message 378 not true. what about the conscious, aware person who went for a walk in the woods and came back and told you what he experienced? this is subjective evidence. your original equation discounted it. And the experience of anyone NOT the totally insensate individual at the lonely end of the spectrum of experiences that ARE valid.
Message 384 the fact that Straggler himself allowed as to how such subjective evidence could be used to begin the formulation of a tentative hypothesis would mean that even he really didnt think the OP equation was a valid hypothesis. Exactly. He has essentially admitted that any evidence can be a valid starting point for an hypothesis. Straggler's dichotomy only exists if he sits at the end of the spectrum with his special person, any evidence vs no evidence. pwnd Enjoy. by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Straggler's dichotomy only exists if he sits at the end of the spectrum with his special person, any evidence vs no evidence. In my first post in this thread, Message 198, I replied to Straggler:
quote: His Message 197, subtitled: "Refutation: RAZD's "Perceptions of Reality" - RIP", was his "final refutation":
quote: We can clearly see that his refutation relies on the tautology that I originally suspected.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1433 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi Catholic Scientist,
In my first post in this thread, Message 198, I replied to Straggler: ... We can clearly see that his refutation relies on the tautology that I originally suspected. Indeed. But then it was a false argument from the start, because it relied totally on his made up concept of my argument rather than the real thing. Enjoy. by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1433 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
Hi again Perdition,
... we find RAZD to be one of the best posters on this forum, effortlessly chopping creationists up with grace and skill. Thanks, however my arguments here are just another application of the same logic and, perhaps, dealing with similar false preconceptions, or the perception of them.
Yet he claims to believe in, which means asserts the actual existence of, a deity that is inherently unknowable. This seems very strange and I want to know where the disconnect is. How can he be such a rational, logical person when it comes to others' sincerely held beliefs, yet can't be so when it comes to his own? Philosophically I can find no contradictory evidence, no refutation of the concept of gods, no need to not believe, so I don't see such belief as irrational. Unexplained possibly, but not irrational. "Asserts" is a bit strong to me, as that would imply that I am telling you that what I believe is true, while just telling you that I am a deist is as much of a confirmed objective fact as that I am a liberal.
The telling is subjective, but the beginning point was still objective. At the beginning of the chain is something objective and empirical, or at least possibly so. Your "at least possibly so" is the key to why any such experience may be a valid experience of reality. Consider an analogy: the casting of nets into pools of water. The pools represent possible concepts, the nets represent testing of concepts, and the ideas caught in the nets are validated by a scientific process or similar validation of evidence (such as the mundane process used for common information) The fundamentalist will cast nets sporadically, inspect the results and cast out any that contradict their beliefs, thus leaving only concepts that fit within their worldview of reality. Then we have people that inspect the pools first and only cast nets in pools they think contain valid information. This is just as biased as the fundamentalist. And then there are people that cast their nets on any pool, if not on dry land, for they are not worried about the quality of the evidence, only about what is caught in the net of testing and validation. The sound you hear is the Flamingo Dancer stamping in the last nail in the coffin (I love mixed metaphors) of Straggler's attempts to bias the evidence by pre-selection. What you start with is not important, you can start with any concept, for what is important is what passes the testing and the validation and passes from the realm of conjecture into known (but tentative) fact. Enjoy. by our ability to understand Rebel American Zen Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share. • • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •
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Straggler Member (Idle past 93 days) Posts: 10333 From: London England Joined:
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I readily confess that RAZD's beguiling use of terminology has led us all a merry dance. However the very simple basic problem with RAZD's position remains.
If we all only accept that which can be observed by means of our 5 empirical senses as evidence then the Immaterial Pink Unicorn is simply unable to be evidenced by ANY "experience". Subjective or otherwise. And so are any other immaterial non-physical entities. Like gods. So all such immaterial gods and other supernatural entities are equally unevidenced. Exactly as I have been saying. Simple really. I know how much RAZD enjoys his dictionary definitions so here are some.
http://www.yourdictionary.com/immaterial writes: immaterial (im′ə tir′ē əl)adjective http://www.yourdictionary.com/incorporeal writes: incorporeal (in′kr pr′ē əl)adjective Edited by Straggler, : No reason given. Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.
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