Methodological Naturalism

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Now you might object that "obviously" energy falls under material, but then does information also fall into the category of material?

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As has been pointed out, e=mc^2. Energy and matter are convertable entities. And what's more important, energy is verifiable (another condition MrH mentioned).I might suggest that you take a chemistry course with laboratory work. When you enter the lab, inform teachers and classmates that you do not believe in MN (so they can get a good distance) and try to complete the labwork using the "supernatural" or "information" theories. Bunsen Burners and Heavy acids/bases in particular may be quite "informative".If you succeed in finishing a lab without recourse to MN, please let me know.

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Naturalism requires it's opposite supernaturalism to be meaningful, otherwise naturalism would equate to existence and be meaningless.

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About the only thing you seem to be saying here is that knowledge requires ignorance to be meaningful. I will agree to that. Thanks for bringing meaning to all of our lives.------------------
holmes[This message has been edited by holmes, 11-15-2003]

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...energy and matter are not interchangeable

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The boys at Fermilab beg to disagree. That equation does run both ways.I got my ass handed to me in a lecture hall when I said what you just said, and was amazed at the variety of proof they have for it.You can produce much larger masses than what you started out with, by running them into each other at high (enough) speeds.That's when I learned a chemist should not immediately argue with a physicist that has fulltime access to a supercollider.------------------
holmes

Okay, I see what you are saying, but that still makes energy interchangeable with matter. That is... out of a mass of matter you get an amount of energy, and out of an amount of energy you will get matter (and as it turns out some anti-matter) of a certain mass.The place I got my ass handed to me was a class specifically dedicated to the latest matter/anti-matter research at Fermilab, and the scientist was quite firm that it was matter coming out of those tests. Yes the m in the equation is mass, but the direct implication is that energy and matter are exchangable.------------------
holmes

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For example when a bullet is fired from a gun it gains mass in exact relation to the amount of energy introduced but the other properties remain unchanged.

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When you introduce energy to a bullet, it is in a way stored as "potential matter" because what you've just given the bullet is acceleration to a greater momentum.In order to release the energy added to the bullet, it must stop and stop in a way that it is not going to release the energy as energy imparted to other mass (which is normally what happens).You also have to remember how huge an amount of energy is required for creation of the smallest amount of mass (matter). This is why they have those supercolliders. the level of energy and the specific conditions required are not your every day man shoots bullet.But in a way supercolliders may very well be viewed as men shooting bullets. They shoot a subatomic "bullet" and accelerate it to near the speed of light and collide it into a substance, or another accelerated particle. Matter and anti-matter greater than the sum of the matter that went in, comes out. What I found fascinating is that there were subatomic particles almost as large as atomic particles that chemistry never talks about (because they aren't stable).At near the speed of light (and remember that c is speed of light) all sorts of weird things do happen. Thankfully bullets and cars don't go that fast.------------------
holmes

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In fact, it wouldn't be the first time would it?

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When I was a new member someone warned me not to bother arguing with Syamsu because he does this kind of thing. It ends up just not being worth the time.Being a person who believes anyone can change, I gave him a shot. I learned my lesson. And it looks like he still hasn't changed.------------------
holmes

Just give me a heads up if you're ever going to put me on your ignore list. You seem so reasonable, that would shake me up a bit.------------------
holmes[This message has been edited by holmes, 12-05-2003]

In short, science forces us to deal with the fact that we may not know everything.Faith, and faith-based science is the placebo that makes us feel like we really do.Perhaps we should have whole classes for children, where they can get comfortable saying the three most important words a human can utter: I don't know.

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holmes

For the price of a soundbite, I purchased something that could be misunderstood.What I meant was that to begin in science, one has to be capable and get comfortable saying "I don't know". It is from that position that real curiosity emerges. I mean if you think you know something, all you do is seek proof that it is real. This is exactly what we see with Creationists, where the "knowledge" simply needs to be proven, and they believe that is what scientists are doing (witness Steve's equating electrons and God).However, if you truly feel "I don't know X" that puts a fire under your tail to do what is NECESSARY to find out, and be sceptical of approaches that might lead to failure.You are correct, that as models are built "I don't know" is a little strong. It becomes for those things "I don't know for sure." But I believe that the basic DISCIPLINE of science has at its roots the wide-eyed wonder of someone that admits they have no clue what's going on, but is determined to find out.My last defense of this position is that MN comes from a sceptical philosophy, which made its greatest headway when Descartes set an example of starting with nothing. How do you get from nothing to knowledge? It's no wonder that Dembski and co hate Descartes and want to return to Greek and Dark Age concepts that one must first recognize the Truth, before seeking knowledge... why they want to overturn MN.So I say, tell the kids to admit they don't know anything... clear their minds to start fresh... and then move toward knowledge. As they do I agree with what you said... I don't know for sure, etc etcI hope this is more clear, and more acceptable?[This message has been edited by holmes, 01-13-2004]

Danke schon... sorry no umlauts. Have you heard that they found mammoth remains in Bush's home state of Texas? An initial conservative estimate has placed the find at 38K years old, but conservatives estimate that a proper revision of science will bring that number down quite a bit.

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holmes

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Lots of lives lost to skepticism, and being lost.

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Can you name one life which hasn't been lost throughout history?... besides Jesus?

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Love believes all things, or so I've heard.

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Yet you seem unable to believe in some very common scientific methods/paradigms... hmmmmmmm.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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There you go again, confusing yourself with me! I already told you that I believe MN, and use H-D, a subset of MN, to investigate dark matter living beings.

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Ad hominem won't get you anywhere in this case. Do I really need to repost your own quotes concerning how those who use MN are dogmatists never getting to the truth?Besides, what I was reacting to was your statement that a love believes all things, yet you do not believe what physicists say about dark matter/energy, nor what doctors say about mental illness, nor what anthropologists say about cargo cults, nor what... etc etc etc

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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The man who mentored me, and my grandmother, weren't lost. Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa, .... Yeshua was the first fruits of those who escape death. Of course, their souls moved out of their bodies.

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You and I were talking about physical lives and you know it.If it was about "souls" the same would hold true for atheists as well. The only question is where the souls of sceptics end up. Now for my money, if there are souls, it's reincarnation according to buddhist paradigms.Tell me how I can differentiate between the two? All experiments you have listed would hold for buddhist paradisms as well. If you know the tenets of buddhism, it would not even matter that you prayed to Jesus to see your results. And it explains why the prayers of other religions also appear to be answered (which yoru paradigm does not).

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But, I take it the doctors who knew about Semmelweis' hand-washing study, and wrote it off as a Jew trying to promote his religious agenda, who went on going from autopsies to deliveries with child-birth fever on their hands, these guys don't make you angry?

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While I care about the "sluts" you thought "good-riddance" to, I was less angered by the doctors which defied Semmelweis, than depressed. It goes to show how rigid people can be in the face of evidence, in order to hang on to their own ideas of the world.While Semmelweis's theory may not have made much sense without further investigation, it certainly bore further investigation. And in any case it was a practice which (regardless of theoretical knowledge of why it worked) did produce positive results. The doctors also appeared to have defied historical knowledge of dressing wounds that promoted cleansing areas, which made their own position even more incredible.Either way you seem to miss the point of the story. It was not MN which kept Semmelweis's theory/practice down. It was the bigotry of men which kept them from applying MN based research to his techniques.You are asking others to throw away MN as the stringent tool for accumulating knowledge. That is the intellectual equivalent of having learned handwashing saves lives, and then disregarding it because the Bible doesn't say you have to.MN has developed through time by the fruits of its use, and the rotten fruit of disregarding its techniques. Semmelweis is an example of it working in the end.Why you feel you must resist, and badmouth MN in trying to research your own claims I do not know. While you portray yourself as Semmelweis, you act as the other doctors and fling bigotry at atheists and other scientists, saying that we should not bring our inspections to bear on your work because it is tainted with our "faith".If your theories are so right, why not use Methodological Naturalism to support them? It was good enough to prove Semmelweis correct.I do want to add one further point. Semmelweis postulated physical entities too small to be seen with the naked eye. That is a far cry from postulating nonmaterial entities, which do not obey physical laws, as a cause.If your H-D was used, one could have at the time explained that there were no germs at all and just demons, and as we all know demons are afraid of water (especially vampires) and so that is why hand washing works. Even baptisms use water on the nonwounded, to clean the soul. And thus if held as the standard even today we could have never explored the miscroscopic world and understood that it was minute biological entities, instead of "darkmatter" at work in patients. H-D is that good.As it is some people still claim that it is evil entities that rule infection and health of the patient, instead of physical causes. Should you not support their beliefs over Semmelweis? If not, why not?

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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Hey, what about cargo cults? You were going to fill me in.

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Check your thread on best methods. I "filled you in" yesterday and still have some outstanding questions to be answered.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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As defined, MN is a good idea.

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This is one of the reasons I keep saying what I do. It is not just a good idea, it is the best practice we have when moving from observation to statements of knowledge.While I have already stated that HD (hypothetic-deductive) can work as a starting point, the clean up job must be through thorough analysis under MN (methodological naturalism) protocols. Otherwise one is prone to error, or will be forced to reinvent MN as one deals with varied experimental results.If I have changed your mind, and you believe the above, then I'll stop pressing my point. Otherwise you are badmouthing MN (discrediting it), in order to prop up a weaker form of knowledge building.

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Dogmatically opinionated people who mis-use MN to hide from the truth, and dogmatic opinionation itself, are bad.

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This I agree with. But you do appear to be dogmatic in holding onto results of H-D, and dismissing those who point out they are not rigorous enough to pass muster (as they are currently handled) with MN. It's not that they never could, just that they certainly aren't in their current form.The movement to remove good science is gaining ground in the US. I find any attempts to replace it, without some good evidence to support new methods, as a foe that must be fought firmly.I certainly don't mind people toying with fringes of knowledge, and speculating on alternate realities which might underlay the conventional models we have right now. But when a part of that research demands never using our tightest methods, and furthermor then says its results (which can only be had if our best methods are never used) prove that we shouldn't use our best methods... that is going too far. It is careless, and makes the public prone to weak science and hucksterism.If another methodology works, its results must be able to stand up under our existing best method. As I have shown H-D could very well have discredited Semmelweis's theories, just as you have (using H-D) discredited anthropological theories that religion is a manifestation of humans trying to describe phenomena they do not understand. It is the weakness in inaccurately assessing the former, which is why I do not think it is valid to apply the latter. It is not a strong enough filter. Other, weaker, theories get by.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

But then you have to address everyone's criticims, including my own, of the studies you have mentioned.The prayer studies are particularly weak, and I have already outlined (in another thread) how they would have to be tightened if they were going to gain any real scientific credibility.And your dismissal of my results on tithing, as well as many failed prayer attempts by many millions of people, have to be explained better than "must not have been doing it right." This is were an ad hoc element enters your discussions of experiments.I should have added that while you believe H-D is fastest at getting to the truth, one should remember the addage that haste makes waste. Of course it will get to the truth because it is a shotgun approach. It ends up hitting almost anything in front of it. The problem is then having to sort through the remnants to get to the actual truth out of the many possible truths that were bagged, when more carefully aimed shots using more precise "weapons" would have actually reduced the search time over all.And in light of cargo cults and your own analogy to animals-humans, you have yet to admit your were wrong about occam's razor.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)< !--UE-->[This message has been edited by holmes, 01-21-2004]