the bluegenes Challenge (bluegenes and RAZD only)

Now I have to point out that you don't seem to understand the phrase ad hominem. My comment that you don't know what empirical evidence is was taken from what you say on this thread. When I present empirical evidence, and you say that I haven't, I come to a reasonable conclusion that you don't really understand the phrase empirical evidence, based entirely on what you have typed.It's the same with the phrase "mutually exclusive". If I describe three propositions that are clearly mutually exclusive, and you disagree that they are, then I reasonably conclude that you don't properly understand the phrase. If a theist presented the same level of empirical evidence for the existence of his or her god, I'd be a convert. He/she would have established an actual real god as the source of a god concept in a way that would make it the "best explanation" scientifically, and would have falsified my theory. It's part of the special privilege of religion in our cultures that theists are never expected to present any real positive evidence for their SB-concepts. Hundreds of millions of children around the world are being taught that this, that or the other god is real and true and very very important without one scrap of real positive evidence to support the actual existence of any of them.In debates with supernaturalists, I know well that they need to avoid actually having to present positive evidence for their SB-concepts. Look at your O.P. It shows that you are aware that it will be impossible to demonstrate that there is an SB-concept that couldn't be or is unlikely to actually be a figment of the human imagination. That is not the behavior of someone who really thinks that my theory is weak, although I'm sure you're capable of convincing yourself that you do think so.Think about it. If someone falsifies my theory, that person would become internationally famous, and as a celebrity with a great story to tell, would become rich, and would never have to work again. If my theory is weak, it should be relatively easy to falsify, and with all that incentive, why has no-one ever actually established the existence of a single supernatural being beyond all reasonable doubt? The ancient Greek atheists would have considered the Greek pantheon to be the invention of their fellow countrymen. This debate is not new. Yet supernaturalists have failed to confirm the existence of even one little fairy in more than 2000 years since then.So why are you claiming that my theory is weak (easily falsifiable) without falsifying it? I'd love to falsify it myself, and take the fame and fortune, but I can currently see no way of doing so, so I think it is a strong, high confidence theory. Do you know what a circumstantial ad hominem is? Just wondering, because there have been a lot of these on this thread.I've made repeatable observations that lead to the conclusion that human invention is the only source of SB-concepts known to science. I've pointed out that large swathes of the modern population believe in clearly invented SB-concepts. We cannot identify a single person who believes in an SB-concept that is demonstrably true. The statistical weight of the evidence at this stage in the discussion indicates that the theory is very strong. You asked for the empirical evidence against a specific SB-concept. I gave the concept of a god who created the earth flat, and then demonstrated that the only specification in the description was false. The described entity was defined by that one action (flat earth creation). If you ignore the specific descriptions of SB-concepts, then you just end up with non-specified supernatural beings, which would all be unfalsifiable, or you can invent the specifications (a god who created the universe as it appears to modern science - a relatively new god) so as to avoid the possibilities of falsification. Why obviously? The interpretation could be correct, and the text wrong, or both interpretation and text could be wrong. But more to the point here is that we can see that people can invent a number of different SB-concepts from one single text. We see evidence of invention, but no evidence that any of the SB-concepts are actually true (as always).Adam and Eve are in the text you're talking about, and as the empirical evidence tells us that humans descend from other animals, it seems that the text being wrong is the obvious conclusion. I expect that Adam and Eve will need to conveniently become allegories for something now. And they may well have been, along with the god and the serpent. It's unquestionable that the Genesis account is fictional, but what we don't know is if the original was intentional fiction, or the product of false "seers/prophets" who thought they actually knew the story of the beginning of the world.The story is a magical fiction about good and evil, just like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, interestingly. Of course. That would depend on the specification. In the creation mythologies, geo-centricity tends to be the norm, unsurprisingly in view of my strong theory and our ancestors' perspective. I can't remember one that sounded heliocentric, and the sun often arrives on the scene after the earth. All the stories are set in fictional worlds, like modern fantasy. Are you saying that people invent interpretations of ancient texts, and end up with imaginary gods? Sure, of course they do.If you don't understand something (the universe, for example) there's no requirement to invent things about it. The alternative is to try and find out as much as possible about it, which is why we do science. The two different approaches, invention and real discovery, often clash when the inventions prove to be false, hence the ongoing science/religion clash, and the reason for the existence of this forum. It goes much deeper than any particular form of creationism. There are two fundamentally different approaches to reality, and science will always clash with supernaturalist invention until the latter dies out. Unless my theory is false.That, presumably, doesn't apply to the visible yellow elf who's sitting on your lap at the moment, reading this with amusement. I expect you meant an SB-concept that people believe in, excluding, for some reason, the ones that modern writers have invented and which might well be believed in by nutters. You sometimes ask for concepts that weren't intentionally invented. But how can we know the intentions of ancient "prophets" and "seers", and whether they believed in their SB-concepts or not?When I do describe an SB-concept that can be reasonably falsified, what you'll do is try to remove the specifications that make the SB-concept false, and turn it into a different SB-concept which is unfalsifiable.Here we go. A creator god who created the planet in six days less than ten-thousand years ago, and created the first man from dust and the first women from a man's rib. He also caused a world-wide flood between four and five thousand years ago, destroying all humanity except for one family, and all animals except for sample pairs or groups which survived on a wooden boat with the humans.You've been asking for some time that we discuss SB-concepts that people actually believe in, as if you think that makes them less likely to be figments of the human imagination than concepts that people don't believe in. When I point out that every SB-concept that is about a being or beings who directly create the first two (or several in some myths) human beings is effectively falsified by the evidence that humans actually descended from other animals, you, of course will want to remove the "hands on creation" specification, something central to the beliefs of well over 1 billion people.So, what you'll try and do here is say that this is a misinterpretation, take away the falsifiable specifications, and then invent an unfalsifiable different SB-concept. Which is why the smarter theists have stuck their gods outside the universe long ago, not actually doing anything that could be falsified.When someone proposes something like a non-interventionist creator god outside the universe, we know that no human has ever been outside space-time to make observations, so the scientific conclusion, the "best explanation" for such an SB-concept, is that it’s a human invention, and the described character is therefore just as fictional as Gandalf.If we can't go outside space time and make observations, we have to imagine any SB-concepts that we put there. Don't you agree?Do you have an imaginary friend?Edited by bluegenes, : grammar/clarity

True. We still have absolute zero evidence for the existence of any real supernatural beings. Don't apologise, keep looking. It's not me interpreting. I see Genesis as a fictional fantasy tale concerned with good and evil. A lot of the creation myths are Aesop's Fables kind of stuff. It's 100,000,000 of your compatriots doing the interpreting. They're believing in a demonstrably false god-concept. That's my point.If you can't present me with just one counter-example of just one person who believes in a demonstrably true SB-concept, you've certainly no grounds for your claim that my theory is weak. Exactly. The establishment of a god or god/s as the source of god concepts, just as horses are the source of horse concepts, including the horses we write about in fiction. We know where the original horse idea comes from. I believe in fish, for example. If someone theorizes that all fish are figments of the imagination, I can easily present evidence that they are real. When concepts that we have in our minds actually do exist externally, it's usually easy to demonstrate their real existence by direct or indirect evidence.So, why do you supernaturalists special plead? Is it because you can't make figments of your imagination materialize? Why shouldn't theists who claim to believe in a real god demonstrate that it's real? The SB-concept doesn't have to manifest itself. The Intelligent Design movement is trying to establish the real existence of an SB-concept (a "hands on" non-living intelligent designer of life) by the indirect means of attempting to establish that certain biological phenomena cannot come about without intelligent input. We establish the existence of ancient human cultures, like the one(s) that built Stonehenge, by observing the things they made. And claims for the past existence of mythological beings have been made on the same basis (the giant who built the Giant's Causeway, for example).So far, no-one has established the real existence of any supernatural beings by means of direct or indirect evidence, as my theory predicts. If I remember rightly, your definition of a pseudoskeptic is someone who thinks that it's very improbable that the universe was created by a transvestite omphalist god with green toenails, or any other such random, unsupported "hypothesis". That would include every sane, intelligent person on this board, so thanks for the compliment. We can observe private eyes and furniture makers. Our ancestors postdate the formation of the solar system, so the creation mythologies cannot be distorted accounts of what they've observed. Of course the fictional creation stories don't disprove the existence of all supernatural beings. That's impossible. I think you're missing the point, and you're always avoiding the main point. Human stories are not the source of the concepts of private eyes and furniture makers, although we certainly write fiction based on the realities, as we do with everything. But with supernatural beings, stories told by us are the only source known to science. One of my points about the creation mythologies is that they contain hundreds of supernatural beings in fantasy settings which are no closer to reality than the fiction genre that's called high fantasy. They are also mutually exclusive accounts of the same supposed thing, as well as completely inaccurate accounts. If you read them straight, those are repeatable observations that anyone can make, and therefore objective.If you present speculative interpretations of them, like that they might all be distorted versions of something true, then you're moving into the realms of subjectivity. You don't have any evidence of this original true story. As they stand, the stories are products of human invention.If you look in the stories for signs that our ancestors were getting special information from supernatural beings about the real history of the universe, there are none. Quite the opposite, they get it all wrong, and life, predictably, starts with modern animals and plants.You, presumably, don't take the characters in modern fantasy seriously. Why should you take the characters in ancient stories any more seriously? Because you know that the former are made up intentionally, why should the older ones not be? Were they made up accidentally?Are you suggesting that all these older SB-concepts are based on something real (apart from ourselves and other animals), and if so, what evidence do you have to support that idea? Why isn't Merlin just as much a fiction as Gandalf and Harry Potter? Do you think there is any more evidence for the Pharaohs being living gods than there is for Obama being the Anti-christ? By all means use analogy for illustration, but I've pointed out what's wrong with yours. Humans didn't observe the formation of this planet or the universe, for a start.The "known behavior of people" includes inventing non-existent beings, and also believing in false SB-concepts. That can be easily observed without even visiting a psychiatric ward, and I've presented the evidence for it on this thread. What isn't currently the known behavior of any single person is believing in an SB-concept that is demonstrably real.It doesn't require confirmation bias not to believe in supernatural beings. I do not have to avert my eyes to avoid seeing the crowds of them passing me on the streets, and pretend they're not there. But, on the evidence we have for their existence, I'd certainly have to start lying to myself big time if I decided to start believing that any SB-concepts were actually true.If it weren't for confirmation bias, there wouldn't be any religions. It doesn't take confirmation bias to believe that all books are authored by humans, but you can't believe that the Koran is the word of an all seeing all knowing creator of the universe without heavy confirmation bias. What we have objective evidence for on this thread is widespread human invention of SB-concepts, the capacity for delusional people to believe in demonstrably false ones, and for the existence of a delusional apologist for the supernatural called RAZD who believes that that evidence is subjective, and that he is the soul of objectivity.On your side, you have tried to make arguments based on the religious Faith of Hindus, and the laughable argument that books are a known alternative source to the human imagination of SB-concepts. Are unsupported beliefs your idea of objective evidence?A direct question which you'll probably avoid answering: What do you think is the best scientific explanation for the concepts of volcano spirits/gods and the evil spirits that cause disease?Human invention, or real existence?

Exactly. My interpretation is not the YEC interpretation. If you don't know of any evidence that the YEC god-concept is false, then go back to school. Your ignorance doesn't weaken my theory.

How is it that they are talking about the same being if it has different descriptions? When we have a fictional story, like Black Beauty, the actual horse is fictional, not real, but it's based on creatures that are demonstrably real. When we have fictional stories about supernatural beings, like the creation mythologies or modern fantasy, the characters and their actions, as with Black Beauty, are fictional, and they are not based on creatures that are demonstrably real.With supernatural beings, we have only the stories to go on. Horses we can observe. When we do not have empirical evidence to establish the real existence of entities, we have to imagine them; we have only the concepts in our minds to discuss."All supernatural beings are figments of the human imagination" is therefore a very strong theory. The only thing that can weaken it is good evidence for the real existence of one or more supernatural beings.The YEC's describe the character they believe in (it's not for you or I to make up their concept), and their descriptions are all we have to go on. The character described is demonstrably fictional. You have asked me in this thread to falsify a specific supernatural being- concept that people actually believe in, as if you think (incorrectly) that belief is some indication of veracity in itself. That's been done. The YEC story is the YEC SB-concept. A different interpretation of Genesis by other Christians, a different story, would give us a different Christian SB-concept. There are many, and you'd be misunderstanding me if you think that I claim that the falsification of one falsifies the others. Some of them are unfalsifiable.There's little point in asking for the falsification of supernatural beings that are independent of human stories, because we can't find any. All we have is some concepts that are unfalsifiable and unsupported by evidence, and others that happen to be falsifiable as well as unsupported.There's something very strange in the way you read evidence. We have a phenomenon to examine, which is the supernatural concepts in our minds. That human beings can and do invent fictional supernatural beings is a fact. Supernatural beings actually existing is something for which we have zero positive evidence. We cannot even establish the real existence of even one of the many concepts. A theory that attributes the phenomenon to human invention cannot possibly be described as "weak" under those circumstances. I wasn't exaggerating when I described the score as 1 billion to Zero.Supernatural explanation for diseases: The evil spirits cause them.Natural explanation: Germ theory. Germs are a known source of disease.Supernatural explanation for our SB- concepts: Real supernatural beings exist.Natural explanation: Human invention. Human invention is a known source of SB - concepts.

If you think that there's no objective empirical evidence that human invention is the only source of supernatural beings known to science, then you don't know what objective empirical evidence is.I'm away for a couple of days, but I skimmed your post, and you seem to be going back to your beliefs in Hindu beliefs.Unsupported religious beliefs don't weaken scientific theories.I'm away for a couple of days, but I'll be interested in discussing why real beings should have different interpretations when I come back. Briefly, you ask a couple of questions. Brahman? The descriptions. How do you interpret a being?

If you don't understand the evidence I've already presented, that's not a problem for the theory.I've established that human invention is the only source of the supernatural beings - concepts that we have in our heads known to science. That makes "All supernatural beings are figments of the human imagination" a very strong theory. No exception has ever been demonstrated.The way that you've been arguing just seems to show that you don't understand inductive reasoning. The evidence required to support the theory is the evidence that human beings can and do invent fictional supernatural beings. That wouldn't lead to the theory if it couldn't be combined with the fact that the real existence of supernatural beings has never been demonstrated. But the two together make a very strong theory.Established facts:1) Humans can and do invent fictional supernatural beings.2) The existence of a single real supernatural being has never been established.3) Therefore, human invention is the only source of them known to science.Theory: All supernatural beings are fictional constructs (or "All supernatural beings are figments of the human imagination").The conclusion can only be stated as a theory, rather than a fact, because the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the 3 facts. No scientific theories and laws can be stated as facts.Science explores the unknown, hence the use of unprovable but falsifiable theories and laws, and inductive reasoning. "Confirming evidence" doesn't mean proof.Your claim that the theory is weak is unsupported. People's beliefs are not evidence of the real existence of supernatural beings, and that's what you keep trying to present as evidence.

Evidence does need to be understood, and it's common on this board to find people, invariably supernaturalists, who don't understand evidence when it contradicts what they want to believe. When evidence is presented, they use arguments like "it's just your world view" and "that's just your subjective interpretation of the evidence". That's what you're doing here.The two posts you've just made show that you still don't know the difference between something that is stated as a theory and something that is stated as a fact. You show that you do not understand my last post, and the inductive reasoning on which scientific theories and laws are based. People write literature. Isn't it one of your unsupported suggestions on this thread that the characters described in creation mythologies might be "caricatures" of real beings? And my inventions prove that people can and do invent SB-concepts. They are not caricatures of any real supernatural beings, because I don't know of any real ones.Read the creation mythologies. Tell me which ones do not describe fantasy fiction worlds. Jewish mythology is included, and cultural bias doesn't give it special privilege. "The sole source known to science" doesn't mean there can't be other "possibilities". Again, you've shown that you don't understand what scientific theories are. Unsupported and unfalsifiable "possibilities" do not weaken them. By their nature, there must be considered to be other possibilities, or they would not be regarded as potentially falsifiable in terms of our current knowledge. It is only scientific facts that exclude other possibilities. You also don't understand the difference between evidence of people making claims, and evidence for the veracity of those claims. I repeat, Joe Schizophrenic's claim to know that angels are communicating with him because he hears their voices is not evidence that there actually are angels who communicate with some people. No-one has ever established that any individual has actually received messages from any supernatural beings. Mohammed's claims have never been supported, and 1.5 billion people believing them makes no difference to that.If you're going to discuss a scientific theory and claim that it is weak, you need to learn some basics.Edited by bluegenes, : typo correction

So you keep saying, Mr. Objective. But as your idea of evidence is "some Hindus believe something", then we certainly have evidence on this thread that you're not qualified to make the judgement. And learn how to understand the inductive reasoning that leads people to believe that all raindrops come from clouds when there's no other known source of them. Continue your interesting discussions on the peanut thread for a while.

Unlike you, the peanut boys probably understand what empirical evidence is, and they know it's been presented here.They are probably smart enough to know that if there's only one known source of something, like raindrops, rabbits or SB-concepts, then it's automatically a strong theory that all individual examples come from that source. The accounts of the origins of the first humans in the three stories I gave you as examples are definitely mutually exclusive. Your argument amounts to "if they were other different stories, then they wouldn't necessarily be mutually exclusive", which is obviously true and entirely irrelevant. You've also argued that they could be distorted accounts of a real event. They'd still be human inventions in that case, and the formation of humans wasn't an event, it was a very long slow process, and our ancestors didn't witness it.The creation stories are false accounts of history, whether they were originally intended as fiction or not. They certainly read like high fantasy stories, set in fictional worlds. Read them and tell me which ones are true. If you don't think that they're evidence of human invention, you must think they're all true.Why are you frightened of direct questions?(1)Are you continuing to argue that human invention is not a known source of SB-concepts?
Yes or no?(2)Are you still arguing that it's not the only known source of them?Yes or no?Remember, we can all think of speculative sources that have no evidence to support them. Things based on people believing things, for example. But these aren't "known" by scientific standards. If you don't agree, what's another known source that can be demonstrated to exist?(3) Do you believe that some people believing in an omphalist god weakens the very strong theory that the earth is between 4 and 5 billion years old? I ask because you have declared yourself to be uncommitted on the age of the earth due to the fact that omphalism cannot be falsified. At the same time, at least twice on this thread, you have given your opinion that evolutionary theory is a strong theory, which is a strong commitment against omphalism.Are all the scientists who would be more than 99 % sure that the earth is between 4 and 5 million years old "pseudoskeptics"?These questions relate to the thread, because the answers might help readers see whether or not you actually understand scientific theories, and are capable of making a rational judgement on mine.My theory is an all or nothing theory. You can't support your claim that it's weak without actually establishing the real existence of just one supernatural being, which would be falsification. I have. If you want to claim that an unfalsified theory is weak, you certainly need to support your claim.BTW, you pretending that the YECs are believing in an SB-concept that they don't actually believe in doesn't effect my point that the concept they do actually believe in is effectively falsified.Would you consider our modern knowledge of disease as effectively falsifying the evil spirits that cause disease? Or would you just wriggle out by claiming that disease causing is a false interpretation of other evil spirit concepts?

What is there to ignore? Give me one demonstrably true example of a supernatural being communicating with someone, and I certainly won't ignore it. You know as well as I do that many people "see" and "hear" things that aren't there. 53% of Malaysian mental health patients attribute their conditions to witchcraft or evil spirits, but that does not give us any evidence for the real existence of witches and demons.When will you learn that beliefs aren't evidence, and scientific theories are not weakened by unsupported suggestions/beliefs like "supernatural communication", or omphalism.Why are you frightened to answer my questions? Because they know that factory workers exist. With supernatural beings, we have only stories and concepts. Does your analogy mean that you think that some human beings witnessed the creation of the first humans beings by supernatural beings, but got the numbers of beings, their descriptions, and the materials used wrong in their accounts? Additions to what? They're complete inventions. Read them. My observations are repeatable. Nobody watched the sun moon and stars form, then came up with the account that a god, standing on earth, picked up some material and threw it into the heavens to make them.Now, why are you frightened of direct questions, and why do you still seem to be arguing that people making up SB-concepts is not a known source of them, when you know very well that we can and do make them up?You've used the word pseudoskeptic again. Would you describe every scientist who thinks that the earth is very very probably, between 4 and 5 billion years old, a pseudoskeptic, because they would be dismissing omphalism as very, very improbable?If you're going to use the word, readers need to know what you mean by it, because that was how you used it on earlier threads, and newcomers will be interested to know that its a word that you use to describe virtually all scientists.

My bold.Are you saying that the fact that human invention is the only source of supernatural beings known to science is unsupported? If so, you're plain wrong. What you don't seem to understand is that that fact does not mean that science will not have another known source next week, next year, or at any time in the future. There's a huge difference between use of the words "known" and "knowable".The theory does not eliminate alternative possibilities. No theories do. Quite the opposite, it has to allow for alternative possibilities, otherwise a theory cannot be considered falsifiable.All currently unfalsified SB - concepts would be considered to be possible alternative sources, whether fairies, werewolves, or communicating beings. If we can establish beyond all reasonable doubt that just one person is getting communications from a real supernatural being, then my theory is falsified.I think your main problems are that you don't understand inductive reasoning very well, and how it's used in theories, including evolutionary theory, and that you seem to think that unsupported and unfalsifiable speculative propositions need to be falsified before a theory is strong, although that contradicts your expressed view that evolutionary theory is a strong theory.That's one reason I'm asking you about omphalism once again. Do you still think that those of us who think the earth is very probably about 4.5 billion years old are being illogical pseudoskeptics? And why are you avoiding so many direct questions?You also should be able look at how other things that have only one known source are considered by science. The source as the origin of all examples is essentially treated as a virtual fact. I've given you examples, like all raindrops coming from clouds, all rabbits from other rabbits (plus Pasteur's law) and all books being authored by humans. These aren't actually verifiable facts, but rely on inductive reasoning of exactly the same kind as my theory.Attributing all examples of a phenomenon to its only known source is certainly not an extraordinary claim. It is your claim, early on in the thread, that my theory is an extraordinary claim that is an actual extraordinary claim.I quite liked your description of pseudo-skepticism. The I.D. folk on William Dembski's blog keep accusing the scientific establishment and all people they call "Darwinists" of being exactly like that.

When I point out that the documented creation stories are accounts of fantasy worlds that never existed, you pretend that the stories are not saying what they actually are saying, so that you can make a subjective interpretation of them as being about something else that you would have to invent and which would presumably be unfalsifiable. Having changed the evidence presented into something that you want it to be, you then ask: bluegenes, where's the evidence? The answer is: hidden from you by your own delusional behaviour.There's lots of discussion about the myths by people who study them, and no-one can really know the intentions of the inventors, but many modern commentators think that the supernatural beings in them may be intentional fictions. You might be wrong if you're seeing a distinct difference between them and modern fantasy writing of the type that uses symbolism and seeks to convey serious messages. But whether intentional fiction or not, they are clearly human inventions in fictional worlds. As I pointed out in the last post (and several others) "possible" alternatives are no problem for scientific theories, and they theoretically require them as potential falsifications. However, unsupported claims don't weaken a theory, whether they're written in documents or not. If you're referring to the experiences that many people interpret as religious/spiritual, they certainly happen. As I said further up the thread, I've had one of the well known ones, and it was quite striking. But even if I hadn't had one, I would certainly still agree that these things happen, and possibly to about half the population at some time or another. Some people are very prone to them, and have numerous such experiences.What's completely lacking, though, is evidence that there is anything actually magical about them. If you're referring to my use of the phrase "known to science", that was just for you. I'm perfectly happy with "known", but I thought that the new phrase would save you the trouble of asking me to falsify lots of unsupported claims of knowledge. Many people claim to know of supernatural beings of many different descriptions, and some EvC members may well claim to know that their god exists, but that doesn't mean we can establish that they do know this.Such people would have existed in the past, also, and they're perfectly capable of documenting their beliefs, and claiming to know them as truths. They are the "ones" on the Dawkins scale, whom you regard as illogical. I shouldn't have to keep repeating this, but all we've found to talk about on this thread and in the peanut gallery, are SB-concepts. We haven't established the existence of any real SBs, so we're all stuck with imagining things, as my theory predicts.It's nothing to do with cherry picking. Some SB-concepts are falsifiable, but many are unfalsifiable, so we can put them broadly into two categories. Those that are unsupported by evidence and falsifiable, and those that are merely unsupported by evidence. The potential third category, SB-concepts that are known to exist, remains empty, as it always has, and as my theory predicted it would when I first started talking about it a few months ago. I'm not sure if it's a good idea constantly to begin sentences with "amusingly" and "curiously" while complaining about rhetoric. My inventions can't be caricatures of real SB-beings, because we don't know of any such things, do we? The point of them was merely to demonstrate formally that people can and do invent SB-concepts, something that you still seem to be questioning. Why are you asking for evidence when you really know that invention is the only known source of SB-concepts, just as clouds are the only known source of raindrops. Of course we have many concepts of unknown source, but the only known source is human imagination. If we had established human experience of real SBs as a known source, my theory would have been falsified. I have a theory which is shown to be true "some of the time", by which you mean "in some cases" just as Pasteur could show that a tiny percentage of the worlds organisms came from other organisms. It was the fact that there was no other known source that combined with this to create his law, a product of inductive reasoning. Why do you find this so hard to understand?
Pasteur's law is reasonably assumed in evolutionary theory, in a modern form stated something like: "All life comes from life, and came from life throughout natural history since the first life form(s) came into being." That cannot be conclusively proven, but the theory is not weakened by unsupported suggestions like the nineteenth century one that the devil had laid down the fossils to fool us, or that conjurers can really magic rabbits out of hats, or by omphalism. That should read "must be", by definition, and would be a fact, not a theory. Once again, you show that you struggle to understand the difference. And no, my unfalsified strong theory is that all supernatural beings are figments of the human imagination. Actually, you have used all those, whether you realise it or not. (I suspect not).Do you agree that the YECs SB-concept, the one they actually believe in, is effectively falsified or not? Or are you still pretending that they're believing in something else that they're not actually believing in, or some such crap. It's no good asking me for evidence of false beliefs if you're going to invent other people's beliefs.

I understand all that, RAZD. But we still have to invent the concept of the SB communicators in order to make that explanation. I already did that earlier in the thread, when I suggested that the stories could have evolved from originals when our ancestors were all one group in Africa, and in contact with some real SBs. Whatever the history of the stories, the actual SBs in the final results have to be inventions. The entire worlds, as I've said before, are just as fictional as those in modern high fantasy. Any stories that can't be true have to be showing elements of human invention, even if they're distortions of something that was actually told to our ancestors. We're left with lots of evidence for the human capacity to invent, and none for the actual communicator SBs that you're speculating about.As for the Christians and their different reinventions, it was you who seemed to place great value on me falsifying something that people actually believe in. I did that with the YECs. But if you're going to argue that all actual beliefs are distortions of some speculative original belief, then why were you placing such emphasis on what people actually believe in anyway? Especially as I've explained before that you can find people who'll believe in Harry Potter, and pretty much anything. You're assuming my assumptions. Certainly, I agree that eyewitnesses give different accounts, and that stories would evolve and distort over time. What I was looking for in the creation mythologies was "noise" that might weaken my theory. I certainly wasn't expecting detailed literal scientific truth. An example of this noise would be if there were inexplicable consistencies from different continents. It's no surprise getting SB creators in ones, twos, threes, because we begin counting at the bottom, but what if I had found five stories from five different continents, each with 7 creators? And what if those stories had other things in common that seemed alike enough to be more than coincidence? And what if there were elements that could be quite easily stretched to fit the scientific view, or at least, not to radically contradict it? But there was nothing like that. My point stands that, as they are, they are human inventions, and they provide no positive evidence for your communicators.The stories were used for hypothesis testing. Theoretically, they have the potential to weaken my theory. Had one or more appeared to contain information that our ancestors before the epoch of modern science shouldn't have had, then that could be a problem for the theory.Ironically, I've actually looked at the stories for signs of the kind of ideas that your expressing. Observation of the creation mythologies is repeatable, and anyone can compare them with one another and with the scientific view. Also, anyone can conduct an experiment to confirm that humans can and do invent supernatural beings. Both have been done on the thread, and as you must agree that humans can and do invent supernatural beings, I don't understand your complaint here. Would you like to quote me claiming that they should be taken as 100% true? See my points above. Merely containing information that ancient cultures couldn't know without outside help would have been enough. Really? In all of them? Wrong. If you're criticizing observations I've made about human stories of SBs, shouldn't you find out what you're talking about first? Not if they all described person A and person B very differently, and there were other eyewitnesses who disagreed on the hitting. The theory is about the human invention of SBs, and all stories involving SBs are therefore relevant. If stories, whether ancient or modern, describe complete fantasy worlds, they are evidence for human invention. So far, we know of no SB stories that have been confirmed to be true.Direct questions.(1) Do you agree that human invention is the only known source of supernatural beings, (remembering that "known" doesn't mean "possible")?(2) If not, what is the other known source? You claim that the (1)'s are illogical, which indicates that you don't believe that any of them can be getting messages from SBs. Oops! How can you know this? If you can't, then you should, by your way of thinking, be an uncommitted (4) on whether or not there are people who know there is a god.But as you're not a (1) yourself, then it follows that you do agree that human invention is the only known source of SBs. The rest of us ( and "science") cannot know if the claims of any of the (1)s are true.(3) Do you think that scientific theories are weakened by unsupported and unfalsifiable propositions that contradict them, like omphalism and "SBs communicate with some humans" or "conjurers can magic up real rabbits from nothing"? It's direct questions that are being ignored a lot on this thread. Again:(1) Do you agree that human invention is the only known source of supernatural beings, (remembering that "known" doesn't mean "possible")?(2) If not, what is the other known source? (You have to be an "illogical" (1) to actually know a source).(3) Do you think that scientific theories are weakened by unsupported and unfalsifiable propositions that contradict them, like omphalism and "SBs communicate with some humans"?If you don't answer the questions, I'll assume "yes" for the first, and "no" for the third, which means, whether you understand why or not, you'll be close to agreeing that I have a strong theory.We're finally getting somewhere.

But I had to invent the concept of the "real SBs in ancient Africa". Does this apply with agriculture, boats, shoes, pyramids, bows and arrows? Separate cultures could easily invent the idea of the sun as a god, don't you think? It's actually a ball of gases.Read the stories. As many as you can. Then list all of what you see as points of consilience that do not contradict the scientific evidence. And tell me which of the stories do not take place in invented worlds. I repeat, false stories are automatically evidence of invention. My claim is not that the human imagination is the only possible source. My claim is that it's the only known source; the only one that can be established beyond all reasonable doubt. This leads to the theory that all SBs are human inventions. I asked you about known sources, not known claims. I've proved that humans can and do invent supernatural beings experimentally on this thread. As I've pointed out before, because an SB-concept is documented by humans, this does not demonstrate a source for the SB-concept other than the human imagination. You are repeating one of the worst creationist arguments, the "because it's written in an ancient book" one.By answering "no" to my question, you have now claimed that there's another known source of SB-concepts. What is the known source behind the concepts described in religious documents, and what is the known source behind claimed religious experiences? Ignore? Who brought up the creation myths? Me. If I were examining the historical event of the coming into existence of our species, I would note that all the creation myths I've read that give an account of this give a completely false account when compared to the scientific literature. That's been done earlier in the thread. I know the (1)'s exist. I think you're missing my point about your "logic". You cannot conclusively know whether or not there is someone on this earth who does actually know that a god exists (we all know there are people who claim this). By your own reasoning, you must therefore be an uncommitted agnostic on the point. Yet you describe this position as illogical. To put it more simply for you, the position would be illogical if the person doesn't actually know that there's a god, but logical if he or she did.To put it even more simply, your claim that the (1) position is illogical is not derived from logic, but is a belief position.You can only theorize that there is no-one who knows that there's a god. A strong theory, like "All supernatural beings are products of the human imagination" might lead you to the tentative conclusion that no-one actually knows there's a god, but there's no strict logical proof for the point.That's why we sort out questions about reality by making observations. With science, rather than abstract logic in a void. You haven't actually answered my question, which was a general one about all scientific theories. As for my particular theory, you keep bringing up unsupported claims in order to support your view that the theory is weak, or that it isn't a theory. Why?So, I'll ask the question again, and I'll keep on asking it until you stop presenting unsupported claims in relation to my theory. You could stop doing this by actually presenting a demonstrably true example of a real SB communicating with a particular person, for example.Do you think that scientific theories are weakened by unsupported and unfalsifiable propositions that contradict them, like omphalism and "SBs communicate with some humans" or "conjurers can magic up real rabbits from nothing"? Yes or no? Not at all. Human invention is the only known source of SB-concepts, and there's no known difference between the SB-concepts, and "supernatural beings". I use them interchangeably because of this. You seem to be making a semantic argument, not a logical one, and your English isn't up to it. "Fairies are figments of the human imagination" makes perfect sense in the English language; there's no need to say "fairy concepts". There's no "hidden assumption" required. Which supernatural beings are known to actually exist?My sentence that you've quoted above is presented as a fact, and the analogy is there for illustration. If you disagree with either of the two phrases in the sentence, then why can't you present another known source of either supernatural beings or rabbits or both?English lesson of the day: "Known source" does not mean "unsupported claim", or "hypothetically possible sources". I don't claim that other sources are known to be impossible. You still don't understand the difference between things stated as facts and falsifiable theories. Hypothetical alternative possibilities are automatically considered possible with scientific theories, because the theories are considered falsifiable.. A theory is strong and "high confidence" when there are no known exceptions to it. Your arguments about logic are because you don't understand how inductive reasoning is used in science, and you keep treating theories as facts that can be arrived at by deductive reasoning. Sort this out. It's basic

Once again, a direct question that's central to any discussion on scientific theories. This point is a stumbling block for many creationists.

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Do you think that scientific theories are weakened by unsupported and unfalsifiable claims that contradict them, like omphalism and "SBs communicate with some humans" or "conjurers can magic up real rabbits from nothing"? Yes or no?

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That's a general question on scientific theories.