The best scientific method (Bayesian form of H-D)

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Liars, not idiots. Which criticism would you like addressed? I think I addressed most on the ELS thread, but I would be happy to elaborate further here.

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Funny, in another thread you claimed that at least I am not a liar...you lack consistency.You have not addressed the criticism by anyone thus far that what you call science is more than wishful thinking without supporting evidence. If you believe in Santa and see a christmas commercial in your mind this raises the plausibility that elves make toys in the North Pole. This is simply stupid. The argument is identical with your demons/Jehovah musings. You take prayer studies which critics have analyzed statistically and shown have no significant effect (or even the authors themselves admit they saw NOTHING) and claim that this makes demons more plausible. You should get off your kick that this is scientific and admit that it is your unsubstantiated belief. If that is not enough to sustain your faith, than that is your own personal defect and weakness, not the scientific establishments.

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It's not reasoning at all.

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I am glad you recognize this somehow

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They are, in fact, dogmatically opinionated, and reluctant to change their minds in the face of data. But those with middling prior plausibilities will have a more open mind, and data that makes the idea in their mind more or less plausible will have some effect.

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By your logic then you should be a hardcore drug addict. Many drugs have hallucinogenic properties. These hallucinations therefore make it probable that pink elephants make the sun come up in the morning.You know, you are actually more of a typical creationist than I would have thought. You rail against scientific methodology because it does not fit you personal worldview. You make constant appeals to authority (your supposed own or that of your mythological diety). You attack the peer review system because after all, if they don't accept you babbling bullshit then the system must be wrong. In fact, like any run of the mill creationist, you project the absolute powerlessness of your argument, the absolute lack of evidence for any of your positions, the lack of adoration by those who actually do understand science and attempt to blame science and atheists (another typical idiotic creationist linkage).You know why evolution is science and your babbling is not, I do not have to rely on "raising the plausibility". I can go and test any aspect I wish whether plausible or not and confirm it or falsify it. It does not have to be plausible, it only has to be testable and falsifiable. You are stuck with an a priori belief in a specific set of diety/demon mythological constructs that do not allow you to make any observations that would undermine their reality in your mind. You have shut your mind to science and the benefits it brings and have so confused yourself that you require science to prop up your faith. You diminish both faith and science in a way I would not wish on anybody..it must be truly sad to be so weak.

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Now, this is a very good point. But, I do insist, in fairness, that the analogy we applied correctly. Let's take the idea that Santa really is out there. From that hypothesis, what can we predict? Christmas commercials? Well, given the common understanding of Santa, I would actually predict that commercials, if any, would focus on wish-lists and good behavior, and maybe types of cookies and milk ("skim, please, I'm watching my weight.") Commercials which feature a Santa at a toy store would not be expected, and any H-D thinking child would view this association as evidence that Santa and elves at the North Pole may not be the source of the toys they get each Christmas.

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No Stephen, you are wrong. It clearly supports the hypothesis that elves make toys in the north pole. Your method assumes a priori that the conclusion is correct. Thus, any evidence for or even against the hypothesis (and even evidence not even remotely connected to the hypothesis you wish to test) is asserted as positive proof of the hypothesis. In fact, the hypothesis does not even have to be testable because the truth of the assertion is assumed a priori. Thus, the fact that I don't like hot dogs can be seen as proof of elves making toys for Santa in the North pole.

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Now, we ask this question: Suppose demons exist, in the context of orthodox theology (OT), Jehovah, Yeshua, the Holy Spirit, the blood of Yeshua, and the Bible as a "contact" with Jehovah giving methods for talking to Jehovah, driving away demons, getting to heaven, etc. If this is all accurate, what can we predict about the outcome of prayer studies?

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You can expect anything. Yet again, you have assumed the existence of demons a priori and thus anything supportive or non-supportive is taken as positive. You have no power to distinguish among any of a million different possibilities. You merely exclude all natural causes of an association or dismiss negative evidence.

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Granted, other people have the opinion that these studies have not been validated, but I see no reason to accept their opinion over those who differ with them. Of course, some nay-sayers will present their opinions as fact, which is how they see them. That actually makes those opinions less likely to be persuasive, as I understand subjectivity and epistemology.

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Besides the funny way you wish to cherry pick your data i.e. edit out the data that runs counter to your claims i.e. the negative results of prayer studies, it is also funny that you argue that it is a battle of opinion. This emphasizes again why you do not understand science. If one has a testable hypothesis, one can attempt to replicate the results of others independently. One can show that the data collected was in error. One can come up with experiments that demonstrate that another factor was responsible for the observation. You a priori say your goddidit and that is it. Your opinion. It cannot be reproduced independently. It cannot be reproduced by those of other faiths or no faith. It is a personal belief of yours...not science. Scientific methodology does not require that one hold a specific faith to achieve the same results. What you adhere to is a sham.

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This is your best shot at reasoning?

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Does looking in the mirror and seeing an example of your own "logic" bother you? Good, it should.

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I can tell you feel very strongly about this. Forgive me, but I just see all this as an expression of your own guilt. It is very close to what I am tempted to say about you.

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It bothers me that someone of obviously very weak faith wishes to appear as if they have strong faith by randomly pulling out or making up scientific terms in an attempt to bolster the credibility of their religion. You must be very envious of truthlover. He is a strong believer in his god yet does not demand that others believe as he does, does not attack or denigrate those who do not, and does not demand that science justify his faith i.e. he is probably the only true believer at this site. I don't share his beliefs but I do admire his honesty and the strength of his belief.

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Now, I got some interesting prayer results in the early seventies, and tried to share them in discussion with my colleagues at K-State. Nothing. Meanwhile, great grant proposals were getting turned down, on bird ecology, for non-sense, sneer review reasons. So, I knew that it was a waste of time. I didn't want, especially, the sort of reputation and stuff that peer review (boring) success brought, anyway. I wanted, and want to be remembered the way Newton is today. And I could see that sucking up to peer review would never get me there. So, I retreated to my kitchen table research.

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What unbelievable cowardice on your part Stephen. In your dillusional state that you actually have anything to contribute to science you claim that because people did not just accept your babbling, the peer review system must be useless. Lets try a better example of peer review from someone who actually has contributed to science and our understanding of a paradigm shifting observation. Stanley Prusiner who won the Nobel prize for his work on prions was completely skewered in exactly the same way you describe when he first detailed the "protein only" hypothesis of prion pathogenesis. To this day there is a continuing battle over the causitive agent in prion pathogenesis. However, as a consequence of the intense scrutiny and skepticism, Prusiner had to take the utmost care, do the extra experiments, refine his hypothesis, recruit others to reproduce his results independently and make his case water tight before it could even be considered legitimate. As a consequence, some of the best cell biology came out of the 3 decades of work on the subject. The intense gauntlet of peer review that NEVER ends in science is what distinguish the ideas which are mere crap from those which are accurate. You of course would rather do "kitchen table" armchair pseudoscience to avoid any scrutiny of your ideas..you wish for them to be accepted a priori and then ignore evidence that does not support your a priori accepted hypothesis. Anyone who disagrees you label a non-scientist or not interested in the truth. However, Newton and all your other idols made their way using MN and their ideas were subject to peer review.It is certainly clear why you would not want your musings peer reviewed or even scritinized.

Ah schraf, you are a little to late. Stephen had a little meltdown in the Free for All where he personally took it upon himself to be god's pointer dog and to order a contract killing on all of us non-believers (of course in the name of perfect love). On the other hand, it did raise the plausibility that he was a complete nutcase from 0.999999 to 1.0

Hi Percy,First the mild aftershock is SbY's last post since the 23rd
in Message 269. The theme is similar though the tone was a bit more moderate.But the real blow up is here
Free for All
Religion is Evil!!!
post Message 55Though he has posted a bit since this explosion, it has been far less often. Maybe he will jump back in but it was written in a very different tone from his other messages and was written like a parting shot.[This message has been edited by Admin, 02-25-2004]

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I try to make my opinion about methods and truth of a little value by presenting my credentials, something none of my critics have dared to do.

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BA Cornell Universtiy, major in Biology
Ph.D. University of Michigan, Human Genetics
NSF postdoc in molecular evolution
Did a postdoc on the genetic consequences of end-Pleistocene extinction
Currently working off an NSF grant on extinction of muskoxen in Eurasia and simultanously working off another grant studying the evolution of human endogenous retroviruses and their interaction with such pathogens as prions.
Oh yeah, most of my research has been or is in the process of being published in peer reviewed journals or in books. I have also done a few lectures and television interviews to convey the results from some of my projects to the general public (which for some reason the television interviews appear almost monthly here in Germany though they are out of date).boy was I scared to admit that By the way, most of us have explicitly listed our credentials in other threads...I was unaware that you had any interest. But your arguements are soley based on your own percieved authority...mine are based on science..if I am wrong, my Ph.D. will not make it right...you seem to fail to grasp this concept among other things.[This message has been edited by Mammuthus, 03-01-2004]

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The entire evolution/creation debate hinges on whether the changes we see in common descent are divinely designed or "natural selection."

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The first is an untestable and unfalsifiable hypothesis for which there is no evidence and no possible way to gather any. Natural selection is directly observable, even possible to artificially manipulate. It is also both testable and falsifiable and has withstood all attempts since its formulation. But I do agree that the debate hinges a great deal on this subject.

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Since the main way we might have to influence "divine design" is prayer, the responsible thing for you to do is to see whether a sincere effort to get prayer to influence the sorts of changes you are uniquely able to detect succeeds or fails.

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You don't know that the main way to influence design is prayer..it could be jumping up and down with a pickle in your butt. This a pure I say so story. I'll tell you what, I am constructing a plasmid that expresses the bovine prion protein expressed from a cytomegalovirus promoter. I will use standard techniques to make it and you pray that the construct appears in your fridge and we will see which method gets us there first.More importantly, you falsely claim that I am in a position to "uniquely" detect the changes in my scientific studies. That is patently false. They are scientific because great pains are taken to insure that anyone from any religious background can repeat the experiments I have done from any study to confirm my results. I have no "unique" power of detection. Just the unique power of methodological naturalism to uncover the unknown.

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So, that's your first prayer study. Probably not publishable, but it might persuade you personally. I know that it did me.

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As I said in the Welcome Visitors forum, I had a religious upbringing and prayed as a kid. It was a waste of time. My life is no different now than it was when I prayed except that I don't waste time talking to the imaginary..I grew up..why don't you?In any case, it behooves you to provide evidence for the effects of prayer by either reproducing previous results or by doing a larger controlled study. The burden is on you to support you assertions, not on those who disagree with you.

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The credential on myself, by the way, that makes me trust my opinion of me more than your opinion of me, aside from the astonishing inability you have to understand my most straightforward remarks, is the fact that I stated (in my book's preface, 1972) the method I was committed to, applied that method, and got really good results.

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The reason you trust your own opinion is because you wrote your own opinion in a book? Don't drive a car Stephen...you will end up in an endless circle.

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Also, there is a sports official here in Lawrence, Charles Adams, who I ask to call intellectual "fouls" for and on me.

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Ah yes, find someone who agrees with you to tell you he agrees with you..great correcting mechanism...maybe you can get your mommy to tell you that you are the greatest to while you are at it
In any case, I have my work reviewed constantly so I have plenty of input as to whether I am in error or not..and I do not need a "sports" official to tell me.

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My doctorate, or post-doc, or tenured post at K-State, or publications per se don't really justify much confidence in my remarks.That I taught a course on the philosophy of science throughout the seventies, and that the research I did then based on what I believed was right has so many citations today, convinces me that what I say on the subject is worthy of respect.

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Get over it Stephen, I and just about every scientist I know gets cited all the time. That every single study of evolution that I or Loudmouth have referenced for you in our discussions is completely unknown to you suggests your knowledge base is very shallow. That you are stuck in the 70's suggests at best you are badly out of date and at worst that you never understood evolution or science in general at all.

If Stephen ben Yeshua was still here he would say that this raises the probability from 0.1 to 0.11 that demons exist...or he might just pass gas and point to the evidence.