Pseudoskepticism and logic

Number of RAZD Posts: 10,877 and steadily climbingGood lord, man. That could take a very long time!
Some of them ramble on for pages & pages.
And, if I'm not mistaken, isn't the Orbiting Teapot Around Mars one of Straggler's special little pets? So that means that when Kisimons starts getting close, there will be all those snarling tangles of huge rambling-ons between 2 of longest long-winded posters in the forum. Give the poor Kisimons a break.
Maybe a math problem to solve for the right post/thread number?

---

- xongsmith

He said he was a '4'.
He doesn't believe and he doesn't disbelieve.
He doesn't know.There's no 'no'.
And there's no 'yes'.And furthermore these horsechestnuts are not in my mouth, they're in my hands.

---

- xongsmith

Sorry - new here. A lovely search function (thanks Percy!).Post 157 in this thread, Kisimons.

---

- xongsmith

I think I was saying the cloud is a consensus of what the group thinks are supernaturals things, whether they exist or not. Straggler would like to put his IPUs in there, but we kneaux those are made up apriori. Maybe Joe The Plumber will get rid of his toilet demons as well. One of the reasons I want to leave this as a cloud is exactly to address people trying to stuff it with nonsense. Clearly the group isn't ready to make a consensus definition of the supernatural. I'm not saying that the stuff in the cloud is True. I'm just putting stuff in there that we think belongs in there and not deciding on whether it's True or False until later. The purpose of putting stuff in there is to get it out of the way of the other issue, which is finding a way to formulate how one would devise a scientific test to demonstrate the Presence of Evidence for a Universe with NO Supernatural things. We've had what I consider to be distractions from the OP regarding quantifications of probabilities, like "50-50" and "highly unlikely". And we've had a lot of Box 4, Absence of Evidence for a Universe with supernatural things. We've even had a lot of Occam's Razor parsimony, such as Rrhain's chocolate sprinkles not being needed. Which is not an issue of physical evidence. I would agree if that was my intention with that cloud. Yeah. Me too.

---

- xongsmith

We decide by consensus, I guess. Later! Do it later! I bet RAZD agrees with you there. And I am agreeing with you on the '6'. It is a rational position. But that is not what the OP is looking for.
It isn't a defense of how rational your position is, it's a demand for Evidence. "Highly unlikely" is based on Box 4. "We've never seen it" is Box 4. "Every story turns out to be made up." is Box 4.Now, if you argue that you are not using the Absence of Evidence to determine for you that it's "Highly Unlikely" then you are either making a very well-opinionated guess or you are relying on some Presence of Evidence, in which case I'd like to know what it is.Box 1: Presence of Evidence for a Universe with supernatural
Box 2: Absence of Evidence for a Universe with NO supernatural
Box 3: Presence of Evidence for a Universe with NO supernatural
Box 4: Absence of Evidence for a Universe with supernaturalSo far, Rrhain's observation that "The model works" is the only thing all of us '6's and '7's have come up with that goes in Box 3. However, for certain Deist positions, including even your IPU kicking the Universe off and then doing nothing, this body of scientific evidence is not contradicting that either and, under those circumstances, goes in Box 1. So it doesn't have much value. Neither position has been falsified. The YEC folk and perhaps the beardly bloke folk are in trouble.Remember, this is not all about where you think you are on that scale - it's about providing Presence of Evidence.(Maybe I'm a 5.7 - RAZD would like that choice)Maybe this example will help. A vacuum box with sensors and windows and a special door. We can measure to our hearts content with the sensors and windows that the inside has reached vacuum. There is NOTHING in it. All our sensors & windows provide us with is the Absence of Evidence of something in the box.Now to the special door. It's equipped to measure the airflow rushing in when it is opened in a well-known way. A prediction can be made on a whole raft of characteristics of the air flow if it is true that the inside in a vacuum. The door is opened, the data taken and - lo - the air flow behaved exactly the way we predicted it would if the inside was a vacuum. This is Presence of Evidence of nothing inside. I think this is the kind of evidence RAZD wants '6's and '7' to come up with. Not anything off those gauges and laser measurements on the sealed vacuum box.

---

- xongsmith

How about Rrhain's observation? Consider this hypothesis: There are no supernatural things in the Universe now or ever. Rrhain observes that the scientific method for testing this hypothesis out has been checking this hypothesis out. There has been no falsification of the hypothesis. Every time a scientific experiment using the scientific method is repeated around the world, it is evidence supporting the hypothesis. It works.Since there a many flavors of Deism that are also 100% supported by the "model" (as Rrhain terms it), this evidence is not as useful as it could be. But it is useful. For example, if RAZD were to stumble (he wont, but if he were) and claim there's still no one putting up any evidence for the '6' or '7' hypothesis, we can point to this tidbit. We haven't been shut out by the opposing pitcher. I know, it's not much....What we need is evidence that supports hypotheses with NO Supernatural things, but falsifies all of hypotheses that allow for something supernatural.That is where we have a major problem.

---

- xongsmith

That would be fine with me, too.Yeah, I really flaunted my ignorance there.
But I did have fun with those smilies....

---

- xongsmith