Faith

Thankfully the scientific community thinks that way, hence why they demand work be submitted for peer review. As long as the scientific community keep doing that things should be ok

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I wouldn't jump off that bridge if the odds were 1% that I would crush my skull. I don't play games with my life, which has nothing to do with discussing odds.

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Of course you do, every single thing you do is playing games with your life as you put it. When you cross the street there is a chance you'll get run over. Even if you look both ways very carefully you might have missed something. When you eat food theres a chance you might have a fatal allergic reaction to something inside it. You weigh the odds and only do those things were you think it's an acceptable risk. Obviously jumping off a bridge would not be an acceptable risk (unless maybe you had a bungee rope attached to you, but some people aren't even happy with that).This message has been edited by happy_atheist, 09-04-2004 10:41 AM

I know, not all scientists are honest. I read in a science magazine a story about a very respected young scientist who'd maded some astounding discoveries. It turned out he'd either altered or just plain made up the results. He wasn't at all honest. The thing is it doesn't require everyone to be honest for the scientific method to work. If someone else can't replicate your results then you'll be found out. Unless every single scientist is grouping together in a big conspiracy to make up all the results and keep everything consistent then dishonesty won't work.If all the scientists WERE doing that though, science would be useless. Nothing useful could possibly come of it, no new technology would work. Since things made from scientific discoveries do actually work (this computer for example), then I think it's fair to say that the majority of scientists are honest enough

Thats fine, no theory is ever meant to be taken as 100% true. If it was it would become dogma and unchanging, which would be a bad thing. In science theories are never facts. Facts are plain observations. It is a fact that massive bodies have an attractive force because this is observed. General Relativity is not a fact though, its a theory that is used to explain the facts.

Well I have no idea of the validity of the results in that experiment so I won't comment on them. I don't doubt that psychology is a very hard place to get conclusive data though. I'm sure we'd have to look into the actual research papers to see just how valid or invalid the results are though, the media has a way of slanting things one way or the other.

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The only thing to me that remains true is God's word, and his promises. I can look into someones eye's and the Holy Spirit would tell me right away if this person is trust worthy or not. I do not need to judge him by his/her features.

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If you do not need to judge someone by their features then you do not need to see them (or have ever met them) to determine if they're lying or not. In fact you should be able to tell me if someone is trustworthy or not without knowing anything about them at all.This message has been edited by happy_atheist, 09-04-2004 01:25 PM

I'm new at posting, but i've been reading the board for some time. Anyway, evolution is a fact in that it is observed to happen. The facts have a theory to explain them. It is exactly the same with gravity, gravity is observed to happen (therefore fact), and it has a theory that explains it. General Relativity is not a fact, it is a theory.

Thanks, you seem trustworthy too. Maybe view the world very differently to me, but that makes it more interesting. What I don't understand is why you'd have to meet someone to tell if they're lieing if you're not actually using their features (eye contact, voice intonation etc). The only advantage I can see to meeting someone is that you'd get to see their features. Maybe i'm not getting what you meant though.

Do you need to see the person before you can ask the holy spirit? If not then how do you know that the it's the holy spirit (which I assume knows more than what you know) and not just you evaluating the evidence you see? If you have to see the person i'd contend that it's more likely you that is evaluating the evidence you gain by seeing them. I'd imagine a lot of it is subconcious though, there's too much visual information to process it all conciously. We often see things without realising it I bet.

What is it that you DO need to be able to tell if a person is lying then?

normally i'd have answered this straight away, but I didn't see it till now and sidelined has asked you a question about it so i'll give you a while to reply to that before i answer it. I've no problems with answering it fully btw.

No intrusion, you got there first. We're all in the forum together

Ok, i'll reply to this post now. I'm perfectly fine with answering it No, i'm not lying about anything. I'm afraid you were given a faulty impression then. I'm extremely happy at the minut, more so than normal. I'm under a little stress, but it is very welcome stress. I'm less than a week away from finishing my Masters Degree. A few weeks ago I had to give a presentation and demonstration of a Character Recognition program i made for my dissertation and it worked perfectly. There isn't anything i'd change about my life at the minute

No, those numbers mean nothing. I can't think of anything at all that has relevance to those numbers. I also don't know what you mean by blackness? Do you mean blackness as in you have no idea whats on the otherside, or blackness relating to me personally? I certainly have no metaphorical blackness in my life.

I don't think you can talk about feelings to see if they're the same. How I feel when i'm happy may be absolutely completely different to the way you feel when you're happy. It's like two people looking at something and trying to describe the colour they see. I have no idea if i'm seeing green in the same way you're seeing green (in fact i'd say it's almost certain that what you see green as is different to what I see green as). It would be much better to talk about the wavelength of the light since that is an objective measure of the colour.

If the observed event is within the confidence intervals of the prediction then the prediction is accurate, if not it's not accurate. A scientific prediction never ever gives an absolute number, it gives a range covered by a confidence interval.