Creationists think Evolutionists think like Creationists.

Fortunately he qualified what he said by saying "Almost always, an infinite answer is meaningless."

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

I didn't suggest otherwise nor did Greene. All Greene is saying is that right now when the formulas of relativity and QM are combined they come up with an answer that doesn't make sense in a physical way.

He also said this to this particular iussue which isn't quailfied."In practice, the incompatibility between general relativity and quantum mechanics rears its head in a very specific way. If you use the combined equations of general relativity and quantum mechanics, they almost always yield one answer: infinity. And that's a problem. It's nonsense."Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

Please point to where he said anything about metaphysics or super-natural.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

He obviously doesn't. The point is that in the world in which he works is physics which comes fromythe same root word as physical. Within that world it doesn't make sense. Therefore if the calculations are correct, (which they may well not be as there is no doubt more to be leartned), then the evidence leads to a non-physical or a metaphysical answer.

Or more knowledge about the physical, natural world.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

crashfrog responds to me:

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But it seems to me that there's little reason to suspect that even if someone could do psychic surgery, or remote viewing, or mental telepathy or whatever, they're able to do so by fundamentally metaphysical or supernatural means.

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Well, that gets to the question of just what is meant by "supernatural." Depending on how one defines "natural," there is no such thing as "supernatural" because everything is "natural"...just not necessarily easy or capable of being done by a particular being.Humans cannot breathe water "naturally." That doesn't make breathing water "supernatural." It just means that the method of extracting oxygen from water is not present in the biology of humans and cannot be done.This is a kin to the claim that we should worship god because god created us. Well, on a much more visceral level, my parents created me but that hardly means I owe them any worship and they are certainly not gods. Just because a being is tremendously powerful doesn't mean he is god.I don't have a good answer for the distinction between "natural" and "supernatural." Let's assume that the Second Law is true but there is a being that seemingly can break it at will. Well, it has to be done somehow. There is a process involved. That process is "natural" even if none of us are capable of it.This is connected to the question of god and good: Is it good because god does it or does god do it because it's good? Are the "laws of physics" immutable and thus wouldn't someone who could break them be "supernatural" or is that just evidence that the "laws of physics" aren't what we think they are?

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

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Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.

Agreed, and I think it works best, in fiction at least, to separate the two directions from which people approach this - the direction of supernatural doings from the direction of supernatural natures.But I have no idea what "supernatural" is supposed to mean in real life, either. Aren't we all a little too old to believe in ghosts and goblins? You'd think so.

nwr responds to Bolder-dash:

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We are talking about the volunteers administering the tests, like the one's turning over cards, or sending out the mental image.

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Then perhaps you are talking about wholesale cheating.

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That's what Gardner points out in Science: Good, Bad, and Bogus. In studies of psychic phenomena, the method by which data is collected is very important. A study was developed to "test" the ability to predict the outcome of a random number but what was really being studied was the way in which the people recording the results were doing so.They found that in those results that showed a high level of precognitive ability, there were massive errors in the data collection.If you want it to work, you'll do what it takes to make it work, even if that means faking it.

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Rrhain

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Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.

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Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.

Here is one big point you keep missing, dude: The point is: Has this experiment that you just described actually been carried out? Has it been replicated by independent researchers?
Or are you just explaining a kind of "thought experiment"?If you just want to talk about thought experiments ("what would happen to methodological naturalism if such a set of phenomena were actually observed under rigorous conditions..."), that's fine. It's an interesting topic, and I totally agree that the tool kit used by scientists to form and test hypotheses would need to expand significantly, in ways that are hard to imagine because so far such phenomena have never been observed and confirmed rigorously.So, to repeat the point: You haven't brought up any specific examples that demonstrate actual occurrences of this sort of "thought experiment" because there never have been any. You can't say that methodological naturalism is inadequate just because you can imagine cases where it might fail. You need to show the specific cases where it has failed. (But you can't, because it hasn't.)There have been anecdotal reports of cases, which, if investigated carefully, turn out to be far less "supernatural" than the initial reports implied (e.g. chance correlations, post-facto interpretation of ambiguous statements or actions, deliberate deceptions, etc), but there's been nothing that systematically and repeatably defies a purely natural explanation.In other words, the only place where phenomena defy current methods of scientific explanation is in our imagination. It's no coincidence that this is also the only place where we find gods.Here's the other point you keep missing: That "unfortunate fact" has this unfortunate consequence: when you draw the conclusion that "we then are left without knowing which supernatural cause it is", you are saying: "At this point, we can make up any assertion whatsoever about the 'supernatural cause', and that assertion will suffice as an explanation."In fact, different people and groups can make up different assertions, and they'll all be equally "right" (and equally wrong); in this case, we'd have to maintain and expand the idea of "religious freedom", or else squelch people whose chosen explanations differ from the one sanctioned by the church or state that governs them.Alternatively, we can just step away and say that we can never hope to explain the cause (because of course supernatural entities are intrinsically unknowable -- as I'm sure you yourself have stated, when speaking of God).That's all bullshit. It's a dead-end for intellectual progress. Discovery and learning cease. We abandon our innate drive to expand our control over our environment to further our own survival. To hell with that. No, it's not like that at all. Although I'm not a physicist (let alone a QM theorist), I think it's safe to say that whatever indeterminacy is present in quantum mechanical theories today, it falls within measurable parameters; further research, new hypotheses and further refinements to the theories will lead to a better understanding, with improved accuracy of predictions (which are already astonishingly accurate at present).In contrast, assertions like those of "Intelligent Design" are simply a matter of drawing a line and saying "don't look for natural causes beyond this point." In other words, "accept the idea of a supernatural agent -- my bible study guide gives you everything you need to know -- you don't need to ask any more questions. So stop asking -- and especially don't ask for accurate predictions, because our supernatural agent is omnipotent and omniscient and we can't know what will happen" and so on and so on. Sorry, but I'll say "no thanks" to that.

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autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.

I think you are contradicting yourself without even realizing it.First you are trying to say that any studies of the super-natural have been proven wrong (as if you really know about every study ever done on psychic behavior-which clearly you don't) but then you go on to say that it is useless to even find out about super-natural phenomenon because once we discover this, we can not know the cause so its a useless endeavor. It would be useless to find out the truth, if that is what it was?You further make a another logic fallacy with this: What law says that because we don't know a cause, we can make up any at all?Do we know the reason for the uncertainty in QM? According to you, since we don't know the cause, we can make up any we want-and yet oddly, you are already asserting that one day we will know the reasons-and of course those reasons will all be naturalistic.There are so many contradictions in your reasoning its hard to keep track:We can look for a super-natural cause or we can't? We can make up any explanation for the unknown or we can't? You are asking for examples of thought experiments that show evidence of non--materialism, but you are already saying they have all been proven wrong.Studying intelligent design means to stop asking questions about how the origins of life, and yet the validity of the ToE to explain the origins of life is unquestionable.Wow, Are you a dualist?

Would you mind providing these studies then? If the truth is "supernatural" then yes, that's useless. No law. However, simple logic tells you that if something is supernatural, anything goes. I think we can potentially look for it, I have no idea how, though. It's you who asserts we can. If we want a supernatural explanation we can, if we don't we can't. No he isn't. He's saying that so far as he's aware (ok, he didn't really say it like that, but I think that's what he meant), all studies into the "supernatural" have been shown to be wrong, or have shown that there is no such thing as the "supernatural". The ToE does not, nor has it ever, explained the origins of life.

For once I am in total agreement with you. Edited by Bolder-dash, : No reason given.

You do realize no "evolutionist" thinks that it does, don't you?

Still waiting for you to provide a cite to even one of those studies, Chuckles.

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. -- Thomas JeffersonFor we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers. -- Barack ObamaWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- PhatIt has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate