Peanut Gallery

For two years you have bee telling me how illogical and irrational it is to claim any confidence in any conclusion that involves rejecting an unfalsified supernatural possibility as unlikely.So how confident are you that when I drop my pen it will simply fall to the floor?How confident are you that the entire universe was not created supernaturally in full (including our memories) two nanoseconds ago solely to make me look silly when I drop my pen, expecting it to fall to the floor, and instead watch in bewilderment as it flies out of the window?Is the above supernatural possibility falsified? No. Obviously not. Not until I actually drop my pen.So on what objectively evidenced basis are you rejecting this supernatural possibility as pointlessly unlikely?Or am I wrong to have confidence in my pen simply falling to the floor?Why won't you answer this question?

Unless I'm misinterpreting what's going on, haven't the actors on the stage escaped out into the audience?This thread's for onlookers, not participants. Back to your thread, now, both of you! This isn't experimental theater. --Percy

Straggler writes: Absolutely not! LULZI'm on your side...all I want is things like photographic, video, testimonial stuff FROM THE GUYS THAT MADE IT UP, damn it.I know about all the other things you talk of - THEY ARE IRRELEVANT here. I'm talking about "made-up" evidence, not the abundancy of human imagination. I want forensic evidence. I want the guy who made it up to present testimony & film & other hard "fingerprint" evidence that the IPU was made up. I'm certain it exists, like I am certain evidence of atoms exists........ NONE. I am not arguing that at all. I am not arguing with you. And furthermore, I wont ask you to do Bluegenes homework for him instead of me doing it either.It's like you & I are riding in a motorcar and I ask you how this motorcar works - I know - and I know that you know, but I just want to hear you say it.The evidence that the IPU was made up, not the evidence that shows that the position that it was not made up is ridiculous. It's a much smaller scale of a question. Yet this is the question that RAZD asked of Bluegenes. And then the whole thing went off into the falsifiability of his theory - which is indeed a question of importance, but it is not the first question.Problem is, suppose Bluegenes does cite the mundane forensics asked for in the case of the IPU and then gets "OK, now do the Spaghetti Monster?" and then "do The Greek Gods" * and then the whole Judeo-Christian mythology* and so on. And, like an Ace of Spades buried in a deck of 2 million red suit cards, not having found it in 200,000 draws does not mean it doesnt exist in the deck. So with some 2 million different things offered up as possibly supernatural, finding out that the first 200,000 are made up doesnt mean that there might be one down in the deck somewhere than wasnt made up. At best we can only say it isnt likely, based on what we've seen so far. We might even be able to characterize the odds using MTBF statistics and the like. Like the odds on a dropped apple falling to earth from it's tree are overwhelmingly likely, they are not 100.000000000000000000000% certain.Now, dont get me wrong - using the descriptive words of the Dawkins scale, I would argue that I am not going to make the way I behave and move through this universe assume that the apple wont fall or that the IPU or the Greek Gods or any of those sorts of things exist. And I know you wont either.* of course, the forensic evidence for these is easily 5 orders of magnitude harder to obtain!

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- xongsmith, 5.7d

You want forensic evidence that an immaterial entity specifically designed to be unfalsifiable doesn't exist?If you cannot see the problem with that I am not sure what more there is to say to you.Except that disproving such things has no more bearing on our confidence in their non-existence than it does with regard to the the magically undetectable Easter Bunny, the etheral yellow squirrel or the incorporeal purple lobster.We know they are made-up exactly because they are imperceptible. As per Message 366. And the same applies to any imperceptible supernatural entity. Nobody on the atheistic side of the debate is saying this though.

I think his point was that it's impossible to know for certain that the IPU really is just a figment of imagination. After all, it's conceivably possible that you could make something up completely from your imagination and later find out that such a thing really does exist.In fact, that would be the case even if the originator of the IPU hypothesis did in fact testify in open court that he made it all up. Unfalsifiability is a two-way street.

I can only say it so many times."Beyond the philosophical possibility of some miraculous co-incidence whereby the human imagination has stumbled across some entirely imperceptible truth by pure chance - We know that the IPU is a made-up entity."As per Message 366 and at least three other occasions replying to Xongsmith in this thread alone.

I don't see how that statement is in conflict with his or my statements.Well, so long as "we know" means "we can assess the probability that the hypothesis is accurate to be so high that denial or disbelief of the accuracy of the hypothesis without significant evidence to the contrary would be considered irrational."

It's not in conflict. It's in absolute agreement.Which is why him (and now you) posting whole replies telling me that he is telling me we cannot be certain is kinda getting my goat.Because I have been saying the exact same thing for as long as I have been here. Indeed my first ever EvC post made that exact same point.I can only say it so many times.But why he thinks this is cause to demand "forensic evidence" that imperceptible entities do not exist remains a mystery to me.

Straggler, still confused about what I was looking for, asks: Not worded the way I want. Perhaps I might restate your question thus: It is not relevant to my evidence demand that the entity is immaterial or material or that it was designed to be unfalsifiable or that it does or does not exist. That is for another day.Straggler continues: Irrelevant to this issue. That statement requires an additional argument to come into play that uses logic and probability.You would use that argument to strike down a scientific board authorizing detectives and forensic laboratories to find the perpetrator and method of hoaxing us on the grounds that it is a waste of the science board's money. And, while that is something I would tend to agree with, that is not what is asked.I would want to see things like: For example, we have the individual (Bobby Henderson) who came up with the Flying Spaghetti Monster and how he did it. We could sit in an armchair and observe that it is not logically likely at all, but - hey - we have the guy that did it saying that he did it. And his story checks out. He didn't come off the street falsely claiming to have made up the FSM.The origin of the IPU is a little bit murkier. But not very different, I would guess. Again - I don't want to do bluegenes' homework for him.

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- xongsmith, 5.7d

Imagine a house full of people.You are doing the equivalent of asking me to demonstrate that somebody non-existant in this house didn't kill somebody undefined in this house by proving to you that the fingerprints of the non-existant person are not on the murder weapon that nobody has ever seen.All the while I am pointing out to you that everybody known to be in the house remains very much alive. You keep looking for that murder weapon if you want. I meanwhile will keep dismissing ALL imperceptible entities on the same basis as laid out in Message 366.

Staggler writes: Oh, DON'T BE SILLY! I am doing nothing of the kind. I am saying only that bluegenes was asked to first find the equivalent of a Bobby Henderson for the IPU.Let's look at the RAZD question from the OP Message 1: bluegenes is asked to "demonstrate how you can determine that they are made up".He said it should be easy. Actually, in my opinion, RAZD was rather mistaken. Or, much more likely, being extremely devious. In my cursory examination of the internet literature on the subject, the origin of the IPU story is a bit murkier than "easy". It is not like the Flying Spaghetti Monster, where we have the evidence plain & simple in Bobby Henderson. I can, at best, only put a time bracket around it, perhaps. Error bars centered just before around July 1990 somewhere....?He quotes directly from bluegenes: bluegenes, in Message 167 further claims: He was not asked to first provide evidence the IPU does not exist. He was asked to first provide evidence that it was "made up".Do you understand the difference?In Message 408 I said: In my opinion, you have only abundantly addressed the second issue. And very well.How about this analogy: a room full of supposed Van Gogh paintings.In the gallery there are many Van Gogh paintings, but over here is a painting of the Lunar Module landing on the moon in 1969 claimed to be painted by Vincent Van Gogh.You are arguing that there is no way Van Gogh did that painting because he lived and died way before the event occurred.I am saying that RAZD wants the equivalent of bluegenes to do something like a Carbon-14 date and all manner of other chemical analyses on the paint used, the canvas backing, and the framing and whatever else, like calling all our attention to a guy standing there with a wet paint brush of exactly the same composition - admitting that he faked it in the Van Gogh style (our equivalent of a Bobby Henderson here), to prove it came from a time post moon landing. Hey, maybe the paint is still wet! Wait - that's even better. The paint is still wet.Why go into a long tirade about the extreme unlikelyhood of Van Gogh having any clairvoyant abilities when you can just say "Hey - the paint is still wet!"

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- xongsmith, 5.7d

In message Message 1 bluegenes starts the whole shebang with: Should have been: I don't have the "plenty of evidence", other than what are essentially only STORIES. But this isn't my ax to grind.Edited by xongsmith, : slow connections deleted a long massive reply

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- xongsmith, 5.7d

I have demonstrated to you how we can know that the IPU and any other wholly imperceptible entity is necessarily made-up. A figment of human imagination that all but certainly does not exist. Demonstrated as per Message 366.The demonstration requested has been provided. Neither you nor RAZD can find fault with that argument.So what exactly is your problem?

Straggler still dont be gittin' it: All you have argued is the from the point that "the IPU doesn't exist."It isn't what is being asked! My problem is getting it through your thick head that this isn't about the "does not exist" component. It's about the "is made up" component.Look at my Van Vogh analogy.You have been thoroughly thrashing & pounding the ground over & over that the IPU doesn't exist, like you would be arguing that there was no way Van Gogh could have painted a picture of the Lunar Landing. You trot out the equivalent of iron-clad documentation of the date of Van Gogh's death and the date of the Lunar Landing.But you could simply get up and go over to the painting and touch it and find that the paint is still wet, so it's a fake.Who started the idea of the IPU?

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- xongsmith, 5.7d

We don't know for sure. I could suggest that the first known instance was in the summer of 1990 on alt.atheism, as per the wiki entry on her. But that wouldn't be evidence the IPU was made up - only that she first came to our attention no later than 1990.Unless you want to suggest that since you won't find Yahweh mentioned before a certain date that is evidence Yahweh is made up, but I think you'll find resistance to that notion But if the IPU doesn't exist - it is most certainly made up!But even more importantly - if there is no way to actually gain information about the IPU (for instance, if she is intangible) then there is no way to actually get any information about her so she must necessarily be made up even if she also happens to actually exist.I blindfold you and tell you there is a painting in front of you that you've never seen or heard of before. I ask you to describe the painting and its artist to a third person who is also ignorant. You have no means of gaining this information so any answer you give must necessarily be made up.If you happen to say "It's a painting of a Lunar Landing.", and it was - this isn't because you knew it was a Lunar Landing. You made it up and by coincidence got it right.Thus: Your made up answer is probably going to be wrong, but it could be right. Regardless of whether you got it right - your answer remains made up, a fabrication, an answer derived only from your imagination.Finding out who started the IPU idea is meaningless to demonstrating that it was 'made up' since this assumes that the person that started the idea made it up. If you are assuming the person that started the idea made it up and that there was such a person - then you have assumed the conclusion An apologist would call them a 'prophet', RAZD might argue that initial conditions were set so that their brain evolved specifically for the purposes of generating the notion of the IPU, by the IPU.