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Author Topic:   Absence of Evidence..............
randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4899 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 106 of 138 (468766)
06-01-2008 12:54 PM
Reply to: Message 99 by Perdition
05-30-2008 9:57 PM


Re: big problem
At most 30 million? At most, Stalin killed 110 million and the low estimates are 22 million. But getting into all the details are off-topic. Mao starved even more.
Past experience is empirical
Perdition, maybe you should think about that statement again.....past experience is definitely not empirical.

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Percy
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Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 107 of 138 (468796)
06-01-2008 4:32 PM
Reply to: Message 105 by bluegenes
06-01-2008 12:51 PM


bluegenes writes:
So, if I've understood you, there is a tiny bit of evidence for the proposition that 157 Djinns created the universe as soon as someone makes that suggestion. But I think that such propositions are on the Russell's teapot in space level. So that, if not zero, virtual zero chance has to be given them.
I think introducing the celestial teapot example is right on target, and this is where replication comes in. Someone asserts that the celestial teapot exists, so science examines his claim so that his observation can be replicated. If he was just blowing smoke and never had any observations (direct or indirect using instrumentation, doesn't matter) then his assertion is dismissed as baseless. If he claims observations then he must reveal his methods so that they can be replicated. If they cannot be replicated then they go into the dustbin.
This is sort of the situation faced over and over again by Randi's million dollar challenge. He gets applications every week from people who believe they have evidence of some paranormal phenomenon or skill and who also believe they can replicate that evidence for Randi. The evidence they can muster during the application process determines whether they're accepted to face the challenge, and it is often local skeptic groups that perform the initial investigation of the evidence, such as the New England Skeptics Society. The evidence all stinks and when it's examined actually turns out to be vapor or less, but it is evidence that was investigated and found lacking. That doesn't mean it wasn't evidence.
There's a part of this that is just nomenclature. Though it's been almost completely disproven and discarded, the aether theory of light is still called a theory. So I guess in a similar way I believe that unreplicatable evidence, even just someone telling a lie, is still evidence.
When someone testifies in court they are said to be giving evidence, and the jury considers this evidence, even when that someone was lying in everything they said. My take on things is that even evidence that is mistaken or false is still evidence.
--Percy

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bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 108 of 138 (468814)
06-01-2008 5:32 PM
Reply to: Message 107 by Percy
06-01-2008 4:32 PM


Percy writes:
There's a part of this that is just nomenclature.
Too true. Just checking out Wiki on "evidence" shows that she can be a complicated little concept!
Evidence - Wikipedia
But there are still such things as evidenceless claims, I maintain, and someone seriously suggesting the existence of the teapot or my creator Djinns would be making such a claim.
The thing is, of course, such ridiculous claims are rarely if ever made by people doing science. Even hypotheses/theories that turn out to be completely false usually have some base in evidence and reason, like our ancestors watching the sun rise and set, and coming to understandable conclusions.
But in the world's many religions, they're common, and religion, unlike any other area of human thought, seems to have this special privileged position of being able to make often outrageous claims without presenting a jot of what I would call real evidence, although what's presented does meet your minimum and, as I said before, generous definition.
Sure, just nomenclature, and I hadn't realised that evidence was such a complicated word! False testimony in a court of law is certainly testimony, but is it evidence, I wonder?

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Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


(1)
Message 109 of 138 (468817)
06-01-2008 6:22 PM
Reply to: Message 93 by randman
05-30-2008 8:23 PM


Re: big problem
Empirical evidence is that which is reproduced in a study, right? You seem to confuse objective evidence with empirical evidence, and yep, nearly everyone marries someone with no empirical evidence.
They have objective evidence as a filter, but even there, the deciding factor is subjective evidence for the most part. In other words, they limit the candidates via objective evidence and pick based on subjective feeling.
Firstly no. Empirical evidence is not that produced by means of a study. All sorts of crap conclusions are derived from all sorts of invalid studies. Studies into personal auras do not make personal auras empirical.
Empirical means observable. Directly or indirectly observable but objectively verifiable either way.
People do not generally get married without empirical experience of their potential partner.
However in this context that is neither here nor there. This thread is about evidence.
Not whims and not preference. I may prefer beer to wine. That is a personal preference. It is not objective evidence that beer is somehow better than wine.
Our choice of marriage partners depends on many things (and is not as non-empirical as you would suggest - even with your complete misapprehension of the term taken into account). However nobody is claiming that our chopice of marriage partner is necessarily based on reliable evidence
So ultimately what is your point?

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Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


(1)
Message 110 of 138 (468818)
06-01-2008 6:28 PM
Reply to: Message 94 by randman
05-30-2008 8:25 PM


Re: big problem
Define "personal empirical experience" please. Personal experience is not empirical data unless and until it is subjected to empirical verification under certain standards.
Perosonal empirical experience (and I don't claim this as a formal definition - just the meaning I gave it in the post you are replying to)
Is evidence that can be objectively observed by others.
Where an eye witness claims to have seen something take place, for example, that is a personal empirical experience. If the claim is true anyone could have witnessed the event if they had been there. The evidence itself exists in an objective reality external to the experiencer.
Feelings of having a soul for example cannot, by definition, be indepently verified because they are inherently personal.
That is the difference.

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Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


(1)
Message 111 of 138 (468819)
06-01-2008 6:40 PM
Reply to: Message 95 by randman
05-30-2008 8:28 PM


Re: Evidence
straggler, you are missing the point. Just because someone hasn't yet thought of a way of detecting the soul doesn't mean there isn't a means of doing so.
It is not just that nobody has thought of a way to test the existence of a soul. There is no empirical basis on which to think a soul might even exist.
Should we also search for little green men that live in the wall? The mighty invisible pink unicorn? If we look for everything that is claimed to exist on the basis of the claim alone we would be chasing rainbows pointlessly.
But the article awhile back published in the Lancet offers evidence for the soul or mind existing apart from the body. That alone proves you are wrong, as they offered testimony of out of body experience where brain wave function was too low to record events in the room, and yet people remembering things that occured after their heart stopped as evidence.
this sounds like the sort of study that is conducted by those who "know" the soul exists and then set out to prove the existence of the soul. Unsurprisingly they then do so.
But I will give you the benefit of the doubt - Do you have a link to this study. It sounds interesting.
I am sure as time goes by some will come up with other technigues to try to verify the existence of the soul.
I have no doubt techniques to try and verify the existence of the soul will be found. What I do doubt is that there will be any valid independently verifiable evidence for such a thing.
However the great thing about science and empirical investigation in general is that no matter what one thinks the truth of reality will get you in the end.
So care to provide more details of this study? Who conducted it? Was it peer reviewed? Did the authors give any other possible explanatiions for their findings along with possible causes of error in their study?
These are all standard practice and procedures in scientific research. These are the methods science uses to weed out bias and wishful thinking. Does the study you mention conform to these criteria?

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 Message 95 by randman, posted 05-30-2008 8:28 PM randman has replied

Replies to this message:
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randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4899 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 112 of 138 (468822)
06-01-2008 7:14 PM
Reply to: Message 111 by Straggler
06-01-2008 6:40 PM


Re: Evidence
So before producing the study, are you admitting then that the existence of the soul is potentially empirically verifiable?
Also, why should we only accept that which is empirically verifiable? If I or anyone has an experience with God, or angels or whatever, why should that belief be rejected simply because people lack the technology to experimentally verify it?
Seems to me you are advocating a fallacy by ignoring the limits of current technology and so insist, regardless of one's own personal verification of something, that all should pretend it isn't there because, you know, we can't empirically verify it?
Can you empirically verify the right person to marry? Even if theoritically possible, does anyone really do that?
The answer is clearly no.
I have no doubt techniques to try and verify the existence of the soul will be found. What I do doubt is that there will be any valid independently verifiable evidence for such a thing.
So you admit to maintaining beliefs (doubts) without any empirical reason for doing so.
However the great thing about science and empirical investigation in general is that no matter what one thinks the truth of reality will get you in the end.
You are a man of faith indeed. The question is whether your faith is rational and well-placed.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
 Message 117 by bluegenes, posted 06-02-2008 6:38 AM randman has replied
 Message 120 by Straggler, posted 06-02-2008 12:48 PM randman has replied

  
randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4899 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 113 of 138 (468823)
06-01-2008 7:16 PM
Reply to: Message 110 by Straggler
06-01-2008 6:28 PM


Re: big problem
Personal and empirical don't belong in the same sentence together. There is no such thing as personal empirical evidence. If it is not reproduceable, it is not empirical regardless of whether it is true or not.
Where an eye witness claims to have seen something take place, for example, that is a personal empirical experience.
No, it's not, but if that's the case then we'd have to say the resurrection of Jesus Christ is empirical evidence. Are you prepared to admit that?

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randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4899 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 114 of 138 (468824)
06-01-2008 7:19 PM
Reply to: Message 109 by Straggler
06-01-2008 6:22 PM


Re: big problem
Studies into personal auras do not make personal auras empirical.
Empirical means observable. Directly or indirectly observable but objectively verifiable either way.
If the study is repeatable, the data derived from it is empirical whether the data is true or not.
If you are going to simply define empirical as what people experience as an objective reality, then I think we'd have to say Jesus' resurrection is an empirical fact.

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randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4899 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 115 of 138 (468826)
06-01-2008 7:28 PM
Reply to: Message 111 by Straggler
06-01-2008 6:40 PM


Re: Evidence
http://zarqon.co.uk/Lancet.pdf
The Lancet: Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest
some discussion of the idea.....
Also Greyson2 writes in his discussion: “No one physiological or psychological model by itself explains all the common features of NDE. The paradoxical occurrence of heightened, lucid awareness and logical thought processes during a period of impaired cerebral perfusion raises particular perplexing questions for our current understanding of consciousness and its relation to brain function. A clear sensorium and complex perceptual processes during a period of apparent clinical death challenge the concept that consciousness is localized exclusively in the brain.” And Parnia and Fenwick3 write in their discussion: “The data suggest that the NDE arises during unconsciousness. This is a surprising conclusion, because when the brain is so dysfunctional that the patient is deeply comatose, the cerebral structures, which underpin subjective experience and memory, must be severely impaired. Complex experiences such as are reported in the NDE should not arise or be retained in memory. Such patients would be expected to have no subjective experience [as was the case in the vast majority of patients who survive cardiac arrest in the three published prospective studies1-3] or at best a confusional state if some brain function is retained. Even if the unconscious brain is flooded by neurotransmitters this should not produce clear, lucid remembered experiences, as those cerebral modules, which generate conscious experience, are impaired by cerebral anoxia. The fact that in a cardiac arrest loss of cortical function precedes the rapid loss of brainstem activity lends further support to this view. An alternative explanation would be that the observed experiences arise during the loss of, or on regaining consciousness. The transition from consciousness to unconsciousness is rapid, with the EEG showing changes within a few seconds, and appearing immediate to the subject. Experiences which occur during the recovery of consciousness are confusional, which these were not”. In fact, memory is a very sensitive indicator of brain injury and the length of amnesia before and after unconsciousness is an indicator of the severity of the injury. Therefore, events that occur just prior to or just after loss of consciousness would not be expected to be recalled. And as stated before, in our study1 patients with loss of memory induced by lengthy CPR reported significantly fewer NDE. Good short-term memory seems to be essential for remembering NDE.
Page not found - Metanexus
Page not found – Toward The Light…leading back to the Source
Edited by randman, : No reason given.

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Marcosll
Junior Member (Idle past 5778 days)
Posts: 25
From: Estepona, Spain
Joined: 02-14-2008


Message 116 of 138 (468888)
06-02-2008 5:48 AM
Reply to: Message 115 by randman
06-01-2008 7:28 PM


Re: Evidence
Came accross this searching for experiments in the field.
These looked interesting
RetroPsychoKinesis Experiments Online
I found them at this site The Parapsychological Association
Looks like lots of interesting reading will comment when I get a chance to plow through bit busy right now though.

Estepona Apartments - Apartments for sale and rent in Estepona, Spain

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bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 117 of 138 (468890)
06-02-2008 6:38 AM
Reply to: Message 112 by randman
06-01-2008 7:14 PM


Evidence of the Supernatural needed.
randman writes:
Also, why should we only accept that which is empirically verifiable? If I or anyone has an experience with God, or angels or whatever, why should that belief be rejected simply because people lack the technology to experimentally verify it?
It's not lack of technology. Your experience wouldn't be counted as evidence for the existence of that particular God or for the angels because of the well documented evidence of people from different cultures reporting "experience" or visions of different Gods, and of different individuals reporting God's voice in their heads telling them contradictory things.
In past epochs, you might well have been taken seriously.
Looking at your prolific recent posting, randman, I think you ought to start a thread on evidence for the supernatural. This way, you could tie up the near death experience stuff with the ghost photograph that you posted on another thread plus the psychic stuff another member has posted above.
I say this because you're one of our most enthusiastic I.D. advocates, and presenting evidence that there are supernatural phenomena that effect life and the universe is an essential step that the I.D. movement must make.
The reason that methodological naturalism has gained in influence over the last few centuries is not because its practitioners share some grand philosophy (like metaphysical naturalism). They don't now, and historically, certainly didn't.
Its success is because natural explanations for natural phenomena have so often proved correct, and naturalistic science can be shown to work.
So, as the I.D. movement seeks to challenge the predominance of what's usually called "materialism" or "materialistic ideology" by I.D. advocates (see the mission statement on William Dembski's blog {here}) it is necessary to show that there is a supernatural side to things.
That's where the I.D. movement should be concentrating its research. What other research can it really do?
So why not start an evidence for the supernatural thread, not just to give us all a good laugh, but because this way you would actually be presenting evidence for your own camp, rather than merely making rather pathetic attacks on the naturalistic view of biology.

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 Message 112 by randman, posted 06-01-2008 7:14 PM randman has replied

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randman 
Suspended Member (Idle past 4899 days)
Posts: 6367
Joined: 05-26-2005


Message 118 of 138 (468918)
06-02-2008 12:19 PM
Reply to: Message 117 by bluegenes
06-02-2008 6:38 AM


Re: Evidence of the Supernatural needed.
Yawn.......as usual, you make the same boring error so many other materialists have. Think of it this way. God, angels, or any spiritual or supernatural thing is by definition, from a science perspective, a natural or material thing.
You cannot define everything within the universe as automatically material or natural and then exclude spiritual things based on definitions. By definition then, spiritual things are "natural" relevant to the universe, but by your tone, it's obvious it may be best to conclude any discussions with you.

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Coyote
Member (Idle past 2106 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 119 of 138 (468920)
06-02-2008 12:33 PM
Reply to: Message 118 by randman
06-02-2008 12:19 PM


Re: Evidence of the Supernatural needed
Yawn.......as usual, you make the same boring error so many other materialists have. Think of it this way. God, angels, or any spiritual or supernatural thing is by definition, from a science perspective, a natural or material thing.
You cannot define everything within the universe as automatically material or natural and then exclude spiritual things based on definitions. By definition then, spiritual things are "natural" relevant to the universe, but by your tone, it's obvious it may be best to conclude any discussions with you.
In other words, you have no evidence.

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Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


(1)
Message 120 of 138 (468923)
06-02-2008 12:48 PM
Reply to: Message 112 by randman
06-01-2008 7:14 PM


Re: Evidence
So before producing the study, are you admitting then that the existence of the soul is potentially empirically verifiable?
I am not denying the soul as non-existant on principle!! If there is empirical evidence for it then hooray for the soul.
However there is no empirical evidence for the soul. So actually it is you who believes in such a thing on purely philosophical grounds.
Seems to me you are advocating a fallacy by ignoring the limits of current technology and so insist, regardless of one's own personal verification of something, that all should pretend it isn't there because, you know, we can't empirically verify it?
In the absence of any empirical evidence for the soul whatsoever how on Earth would we even go about perfecting technologies to verify it's existence? Is it made of matter? Is it affected by electric fields? Where do you suggest we begin?
We might as well start looking into technologies to verify the existence of the Easter Bunny.......
Also, why should we only accept that which is empirically verifiable? If I or anyone has an experience with God, or angels or whatever, why should that belief be rejected simply because people lack the technology to experimentally verify it?
We should not reject things due to insufficient technology. This, for example, is why we should not reject out of hand the possibility that there are lifeforms on other planets.
However in the complete absence of any empirical evidence to even suggest that something might be possible and is worth investigating further the only rational and practical conclusion is that it does not exist.
The lack of evidence for the soul, or for God or for angels has got nothing to do with technology.
Also, why should we only accept that which is empirically verifiable?
Because personal subjective feelings are subject to delusion in a way that objectively verifiable phenomenon are not.
The things you are advocating (feelings of having a soul, personal experiences with angels etc. etc.) are equally as unreliable as the genuine belief of the mass murderer who believes that God told him to do it or the local lunatic who chats to his dead friends as he wanders round town with a bottle in one hand and his wordly possessions in the other.
Can you empirically verify the right person to marry? Even if theoritically possible, does anyone really do that?
Now you are just being stubbornly stupid.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 112 by randman, posted 06-01-2008 7:14 PM randman has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 121 by randman, posted 06-02-2008 12:56 PM Straggler has replied

  
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