Message 31 of 207 (634748) 09-23-2011 5:41 PM

Reply to: Message 8 by Modulous 09-23-2011 11:13 AM

And I answered it. Fair enough?

Message 32 of 207 (634750) 09-23-2011 6:00 PM

Reply to: Message 21 by Percy 09-23-2011 1:52 PM

I didn't know that my aim here was to garner allies?

More to the point however - I am bewildered as to why you think I would want Nwr as an ally in any "Is it science?" context anyway? Nwr has demonstrated himself to have an entirely "unique" (to be polite) view of what science is.

Nwr has rejected the role of inductive reasoning in science in a way that I fundamentally disagree with Induction and Science

Nwr has demonstrated himself as completely unable to distinguish between scientific descriptions of nature (e.g. the heliocentric model of the Solar system) and arbitrary human conventions (e.g. a geocentric co-ordiante system) - See Message 28 and upthread from that.

More generally Nwr has described science as some sort of internally consistent human construct that is unrelated to any knowledge about nature at all:

Nwr : "Apparently, I was not clear enough. I'll say it again. Scientific theories have nothing to say about how nature behaves."

Nwr: "A scientific theory is, primarily, a description of the method rather than a description of the world."

Frankly I probably agree more with RAZD's epistemological stance regarding the role and nature of science than I do Nwr's.

What is he referring to?

Until Nwr specifies exactly what he does mean I would suggest that any judgement is reserved. Because his past record on the nature of science suggests to me that his approach is all his own and very probably not what you are assuming it to be.

Message 33 of 207 (634752) 09-23-2011 6:20 PM

Reply to: Message 22 by RAZD 09-23-2011 2:49 PM

That's fine RAZD - I don;t think we're here to discuss whether ghosts/spirits actually exist or whether appealing to the popularity of an idea lends weight to its probability of accuracy. It's just an example of something usually labelled "supernatural." That's all.

All you're doing with those examples is subdividing the sets {exist} and {not exist}. It's irrelevant. It's conceptually possible that aspects of reality might exist yet be undetectable to us. In fact, it's historically true - quarks and gluons, as random examples, were for the great majority of human experience, completely undetectable.

I'm not at all talking about the sets {known to exist} and {not known to exist} or {known to not exist}. I'm talking about the sets {exist} and {not exist}. In every single case, either a thing exists, or it does not, correct? What we currently know boils down to a matter of probability assigned by previous observation and testing, but what exists is irrelevant to our knowledge - the territory is independant of the map. North America existed long before Columbus or Eric the Red.

Stop. Is that "non-natural behavior?" Or is it simply "behavior not in accordance with currently understood natural law?" In other words, a mystery?

By labelling the phenomenon "un-natural" or "supernatural," it seems to me that you're identifying a mystery, a gap in our understanding and saying "wow, this doesn't fit with what I think I know, so I must never be able to really know it, it's compeltely untestable."

That's not the proper response to a mysterious question. The proper response is to accept that you don;t understand the phenomenon, and try to come up with some tests to determine what mechanism is at work. "Walking through walls" isn't even all that special - certain forms of matter like neutrinos pass through walls all the time. Electromagnetic fields can pass through most walls as well, which is why I'm able to post this despite the fact that my wireless access point is on the other side of a concrete pillar at the moment, and why my cell phone works indoors.

Identifying a mystery just doesn't mean you identify the phenomenon as some brand-new special subset that somehow disqualifies it from natual laws. Mysterious phenomenon, in fact, are exactly what help us the most in determining what the real natural laws are.

Remember, a scant few hundred years ago, Lord Kelvin identified the response of muscles to conscious thought as something "infinitely beyond" human understanding. This tendency to worship one's own ignorance by revering the mysteriousness of mysteries rather than trying to just figure out what's really going on is fascinating.

If it's observable, RAZD, then it is testable. It may not be easy to do so, but that hardly justifies the creation of a brand new set of ambiguous phenomenon called {supernatural}.

If it's not observable, meaning it cannot be detected with any of the senses, then how would you ever get the idea that it happens in the first place? If I can observe a mysterious human-looking figure or other object passing through a wall, then I can try to test under what circumstances this phenomenon seems to happen; test whether some substances are permeable and some are not; see whether the object responds to various stimuli; etc. "Posession" may be extremely difficult to differentiate from mental illness or powerful suggestion and the like, but again - if someone thinks they've seen it happen to themselves or others, then they've observed it and we can test it. Does a posessed individual respond to psychiatric medication? To verbal stimuli? Does it only happen in specific locations and conditions? To specific individuals who may share a common trait? To animals? What would be an indication of "posession" that differenciates it from "mental illness" so that we can tell which phenomenon we're studying in a given individual?

The question isn't whether it's a "natural" phenomenon or an "unnatural" phenomenon. The question is, what is the real mechanism at work in this case?" In any case with a mysterious question, we have to try to differenciate between many potential hypotheses to see which is the closest to reality. If we observe a parrtern of numbers that goes {2, 4, 6}, the rule "the number increases by two each time" fits equally well as the rule "the number increases each time" or even "any selection of numbers at all." That's the entire point of investigating a phenomenon - in large part you just have to describe the phenomenon by what you can test to be not happening.

The question should be "does the mechanism of posession exist or not," not "is the mechanism 'natural.'"

Once again - that a phenomenon may be difficult to investigate, but if a phenomenon is observable in the first place, then further observations can be made to investigate what's going on. Sometimes we don't have the tools to really figure it out; sometimes we don't even have the tools to make the tools that would let us test another phenomenon that would let us create the tools to even observe what's really going on. At no point does that make the phenomenon some super-special set that takes exception to reality's laws. We don;t know all of reality's laws with absolute certainty; that much is going to be true for the forseeable future, and so the proper response to a mysterious question is "let's investigate and see what's going on; if we can't do it yet, let's try to find out what we might need to do so; and until then, we'll accept that we just don't know. Yet.

The response to a mysterious question is never to simply revel in our own ignorance, create a special set of phenomenon that "cannot ever be understood," and make sacred our lack of understanding. Either a thing exists, or it does not. The territory is the way it is, and our lack of an accurate map for one part doesn't say anything whatsoever other than that we are ignorant of that part of reality.

Message 34 of 207 (634754) 09-23-2011 6:20 PM

Reply to: Message 19 by RAZD 09-23-2011 1:44 PM

Surely the scientific conclusion is that thunder and lightning are caused by static electricity. Thus refuting any invocation of Thor as the cause of thunder and lightning to all practical intents and purposes. What role for Thor are you suggesting is required?

Or are you just making the inane observation that any naturalistic explanation, no matter how highly evidenced, fails to prove the absence of any undetectable supernatural involvement?

If so - You might as well invoke undetectable gravity gnomes, rather than space-time curvature, as the cause of gravitational effects mightn't you?

It's the same old same old "you can't falsify my unfalsifiable belief" drivel.

Message 35 of 207 (634762) 09-23-2011 8:14 PM

Reply to: Message 29 by Dr Adequate 09-23-2011 4:04 PM

I agree with what Mod said, and it seems compatible with what Nwr said, I just liked Nwr's way of saying it better, and Straggler's strenuous objection over what is really just minor terminology differences seemed out of place.

As for the rest, I was speculating that since the creationist pickings are so slim these days that it was causing people who would otherwise agree to bicker among themselves over minutia out of boredom.

--Percy

Message 36 of 207 (634763) 09-23-2011 8:31 PM

Reply to: Message 32 by Straggler 09-23-2011 6:00 PM

Understood, but you were replying mostly to the history and not so much to what Nwr actually said in Message 7.

I already know Nwr and I have differences about the nature of science, but I agree with what he said in Message 7, which wasn't controversial. I think if you temporarily set aside any past disagreements you might have had with Nwr and read that message again that you might see it differently.

As to what Nwr is referring to, Thor and lightning wasn't his example, but all he meant was that when lightning is given a supernatural explanation, such as "Thor did it," that science shows that lightning has a natural explanation. Over time this process of providing natural explanations for the supernatural reduces the breadth of the religious domain, and he thinks that religion might be better off claiming that nature is God.

He didn't mean that science provides Thor a natural explanation.

--Percy

Message 37 of 207 (634767) 09-23-2011 8:54 PM

Reply to: Message 26 by Dr Adequate 09-23-2011 3:25 PM

And everyone considers themselves to be logical and rational.

Simple, imho. They start to differ where our world views, opinions and beliefs differ, areas not necessarily subject to science or logic but just the accumulation of life experiences and the associated beliefs and opinions that you have gained in your life-tiime.

What makes a conservative different from a liberal?

Who goes around condemning certain specific people (many of which happen to be atheists, but not all) for exhibiting the behaviors typical of pseudoskeptics.⁽¹⁾

Is perfectly fine: it is a belief. There is no need to substantiate a belief (or an opinion or a guess about the future) -- you aren't claiming that it is true.

If I say that I don't believe in unicorns either⁽²⁾, then that too is my belief. If someone happens to show that unicorns do in fact exist, then both our opinions would be falsified, but that wouldn't mean that we were not able to have those beliefs logically due to the evidence available before then.

http://english.glendale.cc.ca.us/unicorn1.html (one of my favorite stories).

If someone says "{X} does not exist," or that "the preponderance of evidence shows that it is highly improbable that {X} exists," they should be prepared to substantiate those claims with some objective evidence (and not just the "absence of evidence" that it exists).

Enjoy.

Notes:

⁽¹⁾ - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoskepticism and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcello_Truzzi

quote:

---

Truzzi was an investigator of various protosciences and pseudosciences and, as fellow CSICOP cofounder Paul Kurtz dubbed him, "the skeptic's skeptic." He is credited with originating the oft-used phrase "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."

After leaving CSICOP, Truzzi started another journal, the Zetetic Scholar.[2] He promoted the term "zeteticism" as an alternative to "skepticism", because the term "skepticism", he thought, was being usurped by what he termed "pseudoskeptics". A zetetic is a "skeptical seeker". ... “Truzzi considered most skeptics to be pseudoskeptics, a term he coined to describe those who assume an occult or paranormal claim is false without bothering to investigate it.

---

Maybe I should describe myself as an open-minded zetetic ... ?

⁽²⁾ - For the stalkers, belief that {X} does not exist would be a 5, imho.

Message 38 of 207 (634770) 09-23-2011 9:06 PM

Reply to: Message 21 by Percy 09-23-2011 1:52 PM

I was just referring to the recategorization as natural of phenomena and events that had previously been considered supernatural.

Message 39 of 207 (634771) 09-23-2011 9:08 PM

Reply to: Message 28 by nwr 09-23-2011 3:51 PM

Agreed, however I find it more parsimonious to reply to you as a clarification of how I see the picture that you initiated and I agree with.

Enjoy

Message 40 of 207 (634776) 09-23-2011 9:26 PM

Reply to: Message 32 by Straggler 09-23-2011 6:00 PM

There is something called The Principle of Charity, which one is supposed to follow. You seem to instead follow a principle of uncharity, which is why I ignore most of your posts even when the topic is of interest.

Message 41 of 207 (634786) 09-23-2011 11:49 PM

Edited by Portillo, : No reason given.

Message 42 of 207 (634788) 09-23-2011 11:58 PM

Reply to: Message 37 by RAZD 09-23-2011 8:54 PM

(1) Yes there is.
(2) Yes I am.

I found the rest of your post obscure to the point of being evasive.

Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Message 43 of 207 (634823) 09-24-2011 7:01 AM

Reply to: Message 9 by Straggler 09-23-2011 11:20 AM

Is Science trying to explain where life came from thru the TOE?

The TOE explains how life happens not how it came to be. Science looks at the evidence, then forms the theory around it, right?

Science doesn't need to explain the SN in order for the SN to exist.

Just because something can be explained in a natural terms doesn't mean it can't have a SN connection.

There are still a lot of things Scientists' don't know about lightning:

Reference:http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/primer/lightning/ltg_basics.html

So since some things are still relativley unknown can we assume it's due to not knowing how to detect or test the SN?

Of course not. There are tons of things that will always be unexplained and Science is only a part of that. If Science never finds God does that mean God doesn't exist?

If the natural world has laws and explanations maybe the Creator set it up that way.

Goddidit is a terrible thing to say I know!! My god man, I would not utter that here trust me, but maybe God created lightning to act and work the way it does. Science explains how, God supplied the lightning. Deal? Im thinking no deal...

Ignorant of what? So your saying as soon as something can be explained away God is out?

Was He ever in? So basically everything that does not have an explanation you think we say Goddidit but once Science explains it we are left with the rest of the unexplained?

So you get all the explained things that Science explains and we get the unexplained for now? Thanks a lot. Why do you have a problem with Science explaining things and God creating them?

What if the evidence is just that, the lightning? Can you claim otherwise? And if so on what basis?

God can be practical you know...just because He is SN doesn;t mean he has no common sense.

COME on mannnnnnn. You think once something is explained the SN is refuted?

Geeez Louise.

Leonhard Euler-mathematician

So, as soon as everyone understood what this great mathematician was trying to convey to people and science he was simply discarded and given no credit whatsoever? Everyone else gets/takes the credit now? That doesn't sound right to me.

Wow man, thanks. Atleast you are being fair.

What kind of evidence do you need? Do you need to see the mathematicion in order to leave the possibility open that the SN may have played a part?

Edited by Chuck77, : No reason given.

Message 44 of 207 (634828) 09-24-2011 7:42 AM

Reply to: Message 41 by Portillo 09-23-2011 11:49 PM

Well that sort of thing can be tested. For example, these people who have the experience of floating to the top of the operating theater. We want to know whether this is a genuine shift in their perspective or just a convincing hallucination. This is testable --- you can put things in operating theaters which would be visible only from the point of view of someone who was in fact looking at it from above. This has been done.

Sadly, the results have so far been negative.

Message 45 of 207 (634831) 09-24-2011 8:32 AM

Reply to: Message 43 by Chuck77 09-24-2011 7:01 AM

You seem to be arguing that study of the supernatural is just an attitude change, that studying the supernatural only requires remaining open to the possibility of ultimate supernatural causes, no matter that in every instance of a scientifically investigated phenomenon traced to a cause, that cause turned out to be natural.

You also hinted that you believe some people (or maybe just Straggler, I'm not sure) are arguing that what we don't know is supernatural and what we know is natural. That's not quite the argument, though. It's religious or at least superstitious or primitive people who attribute what we don't know to the supernatural. As time goes by science demonstrates that more of more of these phenomena are natural.

Science doesn't believe that what we don't know is supernatural. Science believes that what we don't know is what we don't know, and science also tries to remember that we may not really know what we think we know.

What I'm wondering is how you believe study of the supernatural should be conducted?

--Percy