Non-scientific evidence

For a one time event with no way of replicating the results I would say that it is very unreliable. I think reliability is gained by our ability to futz with the observations, to manipulate it. For example, let's say that three different astronomers observe a celestial event such as a supernova. All they have is their memory of the event, none were able to record the event with scientific instruments. Their description of the event would be informative, but it wouldn't be reliable. What you really want is a full spectral recording of the event so you can manipulate the data, look at specific spectral lines to see which elements are present and the energies involved.

These seem like ego-centric questions. Why is Sirius out there? Why are 1000's of galaxies billions of light years away? --- Is there any difference in those questions?The world is here because its not over there. You are here because your parents reproduced you. Millions of humans don't get a chance to be born, millions do...no point to any of it. Just be lucky you are here. There are probably billions of unseen planets out "there." Technology... In my house it was my dad...but secretly we knew it was my mother. Anyway you want. It is a personal choice so there is no wrong answer. Yours could be Jesus, some else's could be an invisible unicorn...mine in particular is name George Carlin. Since it's a personal choice as to who or what god is to the individual, there would be an infinite amount of god/s and thus a never ending ambiguity.Testing at that point seems trivial. Belief & faith is all that matters.- Oni

So what does the predictive power of a theory tell us about it's superior ability to reflect reality? Nothing? Why do we need to show that every single conceivable possible cause of gravity (a near infinite array of concepts limited only by our imagination - gnomes are the tip of the iceberg) are NOT the cause?We have an evidenced predictively verified explanation. Why is that not the one we would consider most likely to accurately reflect reality?

That its reliable. That we can build further upon it. That we can use it. We don't. You're the one who wants to show that one conclusion is more likely to be correct than the other so you're the one who's gonna have to show that the gnomes aren't involved.Me... I don't care about the liklihood of correctness. I'm satisfied knowing that the scientific model is working and that the gnomes are irrelevant. We do consider it as the most likely to be accurate, but this is not something that follows from the science itself.

Does science help us understand and explain nature or is it just a predictive tool? I am hardly alone in that am I? Is evolutionary theory more likely to be correct than biblical literalism? Is curved space-time more likely to be the underlying cause of gravitational effects than magic gnomes? Where are you actually disagreeing with me on this? It does follow from the results of the scientific method. A demonstrable ability to make verifiable predictions is what leads us to consider one explanation as more likely to accurately reflect reality than another.All I have ever said to you (in how many threads now?) is that the rational conclusion is to consider the best evidenced explanation as the one most likely to be correct (i.e. to best reflect reality).I don't understand how you can disagree with that yet you seem intent on doing so. Why?

No, because you have other data available to you: photographs, video, eyewitness accounts, etc.Now, you might contemplate the idea that this data is fraudulent, and that there is a massive global conspiracy of cartographers, people pretending to be Parisians, people adept with Photoshop, etc, to convince you of the existence of Paris, but really how likely is that? The parsimonious explanation is that Paris does in fact exist.Nor would (having the sensation of) going to Paris clear up any lingering doubts entirely. After all, if you're prepared to be paranoid, you could suppose that someone might fly you round in circles for a few hours and then deposit you in a fake Paris built in Ohio and full of actors pretending to be Parisian. Or that you're sitting in a mental hospital hallucinating the experience of visiting Paris. Or that Satan is deluding you into thinking that you've visited Paris.The very fact that you give this as an example shows that you know that there are other data for the existence of Paris; and this is in fact how you know that Paris is a real place and Mordor is not.If, on the other hand, you were a pre-Columbian native American, and had no data whatsoever, then you would "forever stay in ignorance".Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This brings up a very important notion: consilience. The more an observation or idea fits with what we know of how things are, the more we can expect that it is correct. For example,if we are told that a bird flies beak-first, we are more justified in accepting the statement than we are if told it flies backwards. RAZD has given us superb examples in his threads on correlations among dating methods.Notions of the supernatural have problems in this respect.Edited by Woodsy, : No reason given.

To maintain rationality, it has to logically follow from the evidence.A liklihood of correctness does not logically follow from science.

No.For a theory to be held as correct, the evidence has to logically follow from the theory. And we can ask no more.Perhaps anyone who wants to understand the subject further should go to my The Scientific Method For Beginners thread, and we could carry on there.

Hi All,By now, I think the majority of us are quite clueless as to what exactly I am going to propose as proof for the existence of God. I myself, admittedly, was a little confused because there are certain terms being thrown around by people which are causing ambiguity; for example, Woodsy’s use of the term, non-scientific. A non-scientific claim or argument can be made for anything and might even be theoretically proven for anything (theoretically, mind youwe have no reason to believe that such claims are true of our physical world). A non-scientific argument would not be verifiable by observation. However, the arguments that I am going to propose for debate are verifiable by physical observation. The only argument, which comes to mind right now, that you can verify while sitting on your couch is the ontological argument. For the rest of them, you most definitely can go out of there, physically observe the world, and test the plausibility of discussed arguments. I hope I made myself clear. In light of this, I personally think Woodsy’s non-scientific qualifier is not accurate. (since we are being scientific by invoking observation in our analysis) Another thingI think we should properly understand this statement that I use often: All I’m saying is: God Himself is not subject to science, but God’s effects certainly are subject to and can be studied by science. We can study the physical world around us, and make extrapolations about the supernatural world based on those studies but we can never physically study the supernatural world itself. I am going to use the scientific knowledge of certain phenomena---whose cause, I hope to properly and reasonably attribute, to God. Like I just said, I am not going to completely avoid scientific methods. I am going to propose arguments that are based on physical observation. For example, the Cosmological argument for the existence of God states that: Every created object needs a creator. The universe is a created object, therefore it needs a Creator. This argument is based on physical observation of the world around us. In this senseit is scientific. However, the argument itself is a philosophical statement which is verifiable a priori and by physical observation-- it is not a hypothesis that anyone can use to test specifically for God's attribute as Creator. (the words in brackets are mine)Absolutely. I agree with you. Again, by unscientific proof, I quite simply mean that I am NOT going to give you scientifically testable hypotheses to test the presence of God himself (like you would test the presence of Oxygen.) ---That’s all. However, I am going to use the scientific method to study effectswhich I hope to reasonably conclude are attributable to God through philosophical arguments. (this is the best we can do--extrapolate, since God Himself is not testable) Alright. Thank you for the preface, Meldinoor. I hope this debate will be of use in your quest for meaning. No, it cannot be studied by the best means of study we havescientific. This is exactly what I mean when I say the scientific method is not viable as a means to study the supernatural i.e God Himself (Can it study His effects (or effects that some would like to attribute to Him)? Sure as heaven, it can!)We can have beliefs about the unseen world (assuming there is one) and we can test those beliefs against out natural world and by doing this, we can measure the truth in our belief. If the elements of our belief do not agree with reality, then our belief isjust that, unsubstantiated belief. On the other hand, if our beliefs are verifiable by scientific means, then there is meaning and truth to our belief about the unseen world. (assuming there is one) Immanuel Kant differentiated between real and non-real existence in his objection to the ontological argument for the existence of God. All I was asking you is Is the greatest authority we can conceive of (which we are interested in doing in this thread), also really existent? He might exist as a non-real concept in my mindbut does He exist as a real being? —This was the essence of my question. I don't expect you to answer this---just think about it. I am going to propose an answer for your perusal. You can most certainly point out the holes in the logic of the arguments I present... This is a problem. If we define God differently, then I also would have to give up my work, and spend my life on EvC trying to prove every single conception of God out there. Right now, there might be hundreds or thousands of definitions of God. But we all have to settle for the traditional onea version of which Dr Adequate provides for us. I agree with you. I agree with you here also. Just because something complex exists, it doesn’t become direct evidence for Godas we traditionally define Him. The existence of a complex entity might cause different people with different viewpoints to formulate different hypotheses to explain its origin, one of which might be God caused this to happen, but the hypothesis by itself is no proof for God’s existence. Yes. Agreed. And if our beliefs about God agree with our physical tests for those beliefs, then we can lend credence to our beliefs, as truth. (any unverifiable beliefs unfortunately will depend upon faith) AND, if we can scientifically conclude that said observable indications are attributable to God only. Well, it can’t give us knowledge/facts, no. It can spark beliefwhose truth can be tested against reality using physical observation/empiricism---, but no, non-empiricism cannot be used to obtain direct knowledge or facts. Thank you very much for your answers, Meldinoor. I really appreciate your participation in this debate.****************************************************** But we do have a traditional definition of God which we all have to agree as universal. The concept of God has been handed down to us by our predecessors and to them by their predecessors. We are only going to test whether this concept is real or non-real. By unseen I mean physically undetectable, yes.In order to conclude that our conception of God is indeed, real, we HAVE to rely on physical observation. There is no shortcut to this. There's no escaping empiricism at SOME point in order to establish the reality of the object in question. You are right. I was wrong. I was thinking along the lines of something like, In order to believe that "Mahatma Gandhi was an Indian Freedom-fighter", I wouldn't (and couldn't) be able to do science to verify this.... However, testing this statement against the knowledge presented in websites, books, through people, etc for truth...is ultimately, a scientific process. You and Dr A are right.****************************************************** Very close.Here's a universal definition: The existence of God is a conceivable, and desirable idea. But you car is reliable to transport you to places...whether or not it is absolutely reliable is a different question. For that matter, nothing is absolutely reliable in this world. Not even the rising of the sun tomorrow. Yes, I have seen many. The point is, that my eyes have even helped me see the optical illusions I've seen. None of them are verifiable in and of themselves, but their effects sure are (if they have any observable effects). Testing the beliefs of the FSM, (if you have any) against reality in the physical world through physical observation and analysis,--will show that it is a mental idea and nothing more. I hope to show you God is more than a mental idea. There are things that I have never seen that I can define. For example, I can define the Taj Mahal. I've never seen it.I have not asked you to "make-up" a definition for God. We already have a universal set of attributes that qualify God. Now, my job here is to show you arguments that establish God's real existence...and leave it you to you to measure their reasonableness. Uhh....no. We're talking about a supernatural world here. We can use technology to verify out beliefs about an unseen world, but we cannot use technology to study a supernatural world in order to obtain knowledge. Next question... Uhhh, that's your idol, Onifre ; Don't confuse him with whom we universally call GodThis was the answer I was looking for. Thank you, Dr A.******************************************************Alright, I think we have established what I hoping we could before I present any arguments: a universal definition for God. I also hope we have cleared the ambiguity about whether or not my arguments will be scientifically verifiable i.e tested against reality for truth. And finally, I hope we understand how reliable these will be. Next post will contain my first philosophical argument for the existence of God...Edited by Dr. Sing, : No reason given.

But your question was: 4. How can we know anything about an unseen world? My answer followed that question. World, like earth, is a planet.You even agree in your reply:

quote:

---

We can use technology to verify out beliefs about an unseen world

---

Now if your question has changed to, How can we know anything about a supernatural world? I would ask you to define what you mean by "supernatural," and in what context are you using the word "world."Because frankly the question IMO is nonsensical. Asking, "How can you know something about an (unseen) supernatural world?" begs the question that, if you know can see it how can you ever know anything about it?You said:

quote:

---

By unseen I mean physically undetectable

---

Then it doesn't exist. All you can do is claim it does, provide evidence to support the claim and hope that the evidence convinces everyone. After reading this whole post, I see no evidence to support the possibility of it existing. How dare you good sir! From your link:

quote:

---

Conceptions of God held by individual believers vary so widely that there is no clear consensus on the nature of God

---

I believe this leaves an open field of possibilities. Lets not forget that Jesus (I assume your concept of god) was man in the flesh, just like Carlin as far as my beliefs go.Now, if you can prove how Carlin doesn't qualify as a god I'd like to hear it. Just recognize that the very arguments you'll use to disprove my god concept are the same used to disprove yours. Too many concepts, too much ambiguity, there is no need for proof. Just have faith and believe in his existence.- OniEdited by onifre, : No reason given.Edited by onifre, : No reason given.

The First Philosophical argument I would like to propose for the existence of God is:The Ontological Argument A few thoughts from my side:1. I like the objection put forth by Immanuel Kant in response to Anselm's Ontological Argument. Reading this objection got me thinking about the property of existence. And the question I repeatedly kept asking myself was
"In order for something to exist, must it also correspond with reality?" A lot of people will say yes. However, there are examples of non-real existences. For example, if someone has a recipe they have created for the first time in their mind but have not yet tried/cooked, then that recipe exists-----non-really. There is nothing physical that corresponds (in the natural world) with it, but it is exists. In this sense, a recipe that is real i.e prepared is perfect while a recipe in mind is imperfect--because it can be prepared. What do you guys think?2. I think this argument is relevant because, like Dr A pointed out earlier, perfection is definitely an attribute we ascribe to God.3. This argument, if it is viable, establishes the plausibility of the existence a being who is perfect is every sense conceivable. Perfect in power, perfect in knowledge, perfect in emotions, perfect in work, perfect in wisdom...perfect in everything. However, we still have not tested this argument against reality in order to see it applies to our world. Let's try to do it....If there was a perfect Being, we would see a LOT of perfect things in our world...perfect people, perfect places, perfect health, perfect wealth since we would expect that a perfect Being would create perfect things. However, we have reasons to doubt the existence of a perfect Being since we see that our world is imperfect---which means we need to account for where the imperfection came from and why is it existent?******************************************************Next argument...The Cosmological Argument One of the objections raised to this argument is: Who caused God to exist? My answer to it is: We have to go back to the definition of God. Like we said, He is perfect in everything, therefore His existence must also be perfect i.e there need not have been something greater than Him to cause Him to exist. IOW, anything that has a beginning (both in space and time), is lesser than what caused its beginning. The manufacturer of a pen is greater than the pen itself.(IF on the other hand, we assume that God--like any other created being--also needs a creator, then He is no longer God, and the Creator of the Creator now is the candidate in question (since god is anyone who is in the most supreme position of authority)--which tells us that there is no escaping a first Cause. Its either infinity or first cause. Formost scientists like Einstein also agreed that the universe had a beginning. The big bang Theory also agrees that the universe had beginning. The beginning part---is unescapable )If established as concrete, the cosmological argument presents us with a plausible reason for the existence of a Creator. We still need to test the validity of this statement. Does our universe need a Creator to explain its origin? Well, let's take the look at the scientific theories put forth to explain the origin of the universe. Science clearly tells us that the the universe had a beginning. However, it tells us nothing about where the first singularity, which blew into pieces and expanded into space and produced the universe as we see it, came from. Here's a quote from the same quote quoted above: It does look like the more we discover about the origin of the universe, the more plausible the idea of a first Cause becomes because everything seems to have a beginning.The Case for a Creator is strong.Next argument...Teleological Argument Here are certain real life examples of wider teleology:1. A three-dimensional world 2. The Existence of Fine-tuned Constants that enable life 3. Why does Pauli's Exclusion Principle exist? 4. Water's life supporting qualities 5. Nitrogen, a stroke of luck? Here is an article that's a good read (it is also the source for the above quotes)Someone once made a neat objection to the teleological argument for God's existence:"There are so many uninhabitable places, inedible (even poisonous) plants, dangerous chemical (even natural carcinogens!!), lethal natural air pollutants arising from completely natural processes, threats to humanity in the form of wild animals and micro-organisms, that to think this universe is a place suitable for life is ridiculous! Rather, we have made ourselves adapt and suit to this terrible place called Earth."^ That's pretty convincing.A website does a good job of responding to this objection: There is no denying that humans adapt well to their surroundings. This is not the statement in question. The point made by the Teleological argument is that the conditions that even allowed for human beings to even live their first breath, are so intricately fine-tuned to suit such existence that they cannot be mere coincidence. Once humans have appeared and them adapted is a totally different matter altogether...Well, to me the case for a Perfect, Creator, Designer looks plausible.Next Argument...The Moral Argument I have seen attempts at explaining morality in the context of evolution. Perhaps some one can give a explanation right here in order to refresh the concept.Here's are some of my thoughts on the moral argument:The source doesn't really talk about the concept of conscience. We all know that animals lack conscience. They steal, but do not feel guilty. They kill, but do no view it as a sin. Whereas, humans feel certain emotions that are specific to them and also closely related to their concept of morality. For example, murder. People feel terrible after killing someone for the first time. It is only after they've done it many times that they get de-sensitized to the feeling of guilt. So, why do people feel guilty after committing murder? After all, one's most basic natural instinct is to protect one's own life...******************************************************To be continued...

Funny, that's the same definition I have for the universe. Kinda leaves your god out.The rest of your post is discussed in other threads.- Oni

There is nothing more perfect that mathematics

What you are doing, though you might pretend otherwise, is nothing more than religious apologetics--theology in disguise.And as Heinlein noted:

Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.

​

Robert A. Heinlein, JOB: A Comedy of Justice, 1984

---

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.