Peanut Gallery

Good try. He didn't. Life had been around for at least 3 billion years before Pangea, and his description of the early earth should be a fiery ball, not watery. I'll count it as a little bit of noise, if you like, but it's not unlikely that, as you've got 4.5 billion years to play with, his description is going to fit somewhere.Then he messes it up big time by putting modern sounding vegetation on the land before creating the sun and the stars, which should have been there for billions of years.If I found you another creation mythology that is a closer fit, would you change your religion?

Well, I could give you two. One is obvious, if you look at the title of my theory, and the other is observation. Or rather, knowledge he might have from the observations of travellers. His people would only have known of one conjoined landmass, wouldn't they? Perhaps you should change your avatar.

You beat me by 2 minutes.

ICANT's just responding to a bit in the GB thread where I said that I had searched the creation myths for knowledge our ancestors couldn't have had. This was in the context that the stories could have been distorted over time, which is why ICANT should have a little more leeway than usual to ignore the obviously wrong parts.

Please, ICANT darling, think a bit will you? He's invented the story of Adam and Eve and their family. Of course he would see them as speaking one language.

I didn't say that he knew there was one language, but that he would assume it, as his story concerned just 2, then a small group of people. Why should there be more? No wonder there was a breakdown in communication, then, and things went wrong. Verboten probably means "eat the bloody apple" in Balsica.But a serpent speaking French is ridiculous. Everyone knows they can't roll their R's.Edited by bluegenes, : No reason given.

Of course bluegenes realizes..... Here in Message 59 and elsewhere.

It might be rather easy for Subbie to make the point that a "nothing" doesn't exist, by definition. Mind you, if the universe was self-creating or eternal in some state, as many scientists think, or if it's truly universal (everything) then it would have been created by nothing, and they'd both win the debate.

Actually, bluegenes was laughing at your brother, and taking the piss. The request to establish the invention of the IPU was ignored because I knew why it was being asked. This was why: Now, young xongsmith, having implied that PD is stupid, and stated that I was being stupid, you can tell us why bluegenes knew from the above that your brother had no real understanding of theorizing in science at all. He's as ignorant as you.So, as you insist on commenting on scientific theories on the internet, tell us what's wrong with what I've quoted from RAZD, and show that you understand a little bit of the basics, instead of just talking crap about science and calling other people stupid. {BTW mods, although I've read on RAZDs posts that participants in GBs have been asked to keep of the peanut gallery, it isn't actually true in my case - no-one has asked me - so, please don't consider this an infringement until I am asked. }

In the RAZD/Subbie debate, RAZD seems to have convinced himself that his hypothesis that the universe was created by an unknown god or gods makes predictions. Message 38Really? Suddenly we know something about how the unknowable gods would work. A lawyer won't miss that. Message 39RAZD tries again: Message 40Not if they'd wanted a universe full of random magic. If they created it by accident, it would be all of them. If they were constrained by laws external to the universe, it could be all or some of them. If they created it like "Hey, let's see what'll happen if we do this", it could also be all of them. "Unknown gods" won't make the predictions RAZD wants. How and what they would create would be unknown.And how have the creators also become controllers when we know nothing of them?

The phrase "All supernatural beings are figments of the imagination" automatically states that supernatural beings exist only as concepts. To help people with poor English comprehension who might want to make semantic arguments about my theory (they might be silly enough to think that such arguments are important in science), I've sometimes used the clumsy phrase "supernatural natural beings - concepts". But those who read English well will understand that if I'd added the word "concept" to the title, it would be rather redundant. I'll colour you wrong. The concepts in our minds of things that actually have an external existence do not have their origin in our imaginations. We didn't make up trees, just our word for them. I'm theorizing that the difference between trees and Dryads is that the former have a real existence external to our minds, and the latter don't.It's very straightforward, and the intelligent members of the board seem to have no problem understanding what I'm saying.Currently, there's a guy criticizing my theory on this thread (Chuck77). Like RAZD, he seems to have no understanding of how inductive scientific theories and laws work. But he does, at least, seem to understand the phrase "All supernatural beings are figments of the imagination", even though he regularly spells "whether" as "weather", and can't distinguish the word "its" from "it's". And he's a creationist.So, surely you should be ashamed of yourself if you can't even reach that level. Considering that you think the sun is a watch, I think I may have found out where you get most of your information from: When it rains, is it the Angels in Heaven crying, or just God peeing?

Indeed. It is the height of arrogance to criticize an inductive theory without even bothering to find out what that means, and to understand how such things work. I agree. And we all make typos sometimes. I was just laughing at xongsmith and his more important problems with language, which relate to comprehension.Although, it could be said that learning to spell common words in your own language might be a little easier than understanding the subject you've chosen to tackle on this thread. We shall see. Has he found one? That's just RAZD demonstrating that he has no idea what inductive scientific theories and laws are. Several people on this thread have already tried to explain to you what's wrong with this. "Newton, your first task is to show us that your universal laws apply on the far side of the moon. Failure to do so means you lose the debate. Then show us that they work in other galaxies".Do you understand what's wrong with requesting this?Read what I was saying on the thread about Pasteur's Law. If you pointed to a particular rabbit in a field and asked Pasteur to prove that it had been born from other rabbits rather than being conjured out of a real magicians hat, or created individually ex nihilo by a god, he couldn't do it. That's the equivalent of your IP Unicorn request.Rabbits remain the only known source of other rabbits, and human invention remains the only known source of supernatural beings.One thing that might help you is if you stop thinking about the supernatural beings that you yourself believe in. Perhaps that's a version of the Jewish tribal god, and maybe angels, Satan, etc. Also, ignore all the many other gods, whole pantheons, that you must presumably agree are human inventions. I'm not just theorizing about gods.Supernatural beings are any beings who are not constrained by the physical world in the way that we are. So, think of things that you (presumably) don't have an emotional attachment to, like fairies, elves, vampires and werewolves. There are thousands of such concepts in the many different cultures of the world, and some of the concepts are very old; thousands of years old and perhaps more.Yet with all those numbers and all that time, no-one has ever established the existence of one single supernatural being beyond all reasonable doubt.Think about it. I'd say that when people make the (unsupported) claim that my theory is weak, they do so from personal desire, not from a reasonable assessment of the evidence.And consider that I'm trying to make falsification as easy as possible. Just one little fairy, or any supernatural being of any type will do.Now, do you agree, at least, that human invention is the norm, or do you think that thousands of different supernatural beings actually exist?

How do you know the evidence for one SB is impossible? That could only be the case if no supernatural beings exist. Wrong. Learn the basics. If I had the "proof" I wouldn't be theorizing. Science explores the unknown. That is why we make theories and laws that cannot be conclusively proven.When we know something for sure, it is a fact, not a theory. There is no way for anyone to know for sure that there are no supernatural beings. Think. If there are elves, we can't prove that there aren't elves. But if there are no elves, we can't prove that there aren't any either. How? But we can theorize that they are human inventions, based on our knowledge that humans can and do make such things up. We can't know. So we can try and look for one example of a supernatural being actually influencing someone beyond all reasonable doubt. For example, if a Goddess communicated with you, and told you what all the important news stories in the American papers would be on a certain day in 6 months time, it would be very convincing to others, wouldn't it? Exactly. That's why we theorize. When we cannot know. Science, I repeat, explores the unknown. We can never conclusively know if Newton's laws apply all the time in other galaxies. We can only infer it. By "known", I mean easily knowable to all of us, and known or knowable to science. Which other source is known in that sense, and why has no-one on this board told me about it yet? You could make a claim to know an SB personally, but you would need to support that claim in order for it to be knowable to the rest of the world.Now, are you beginning to understand the difference between someone saying "I have a theory that all supernatural beings are figments of the human imagination" and someone saying "It's a fact that all supernatural beings are figments of the human imagination"?Me, I theorize about the unknown.Incidentally, if you're inclined to believe in people's claimed experiences, why aren't you a Muslim? And why don't you believe in the experiences of the ancient Greek seers, who would have experienced many gods, not just one? In order to have a theory, you need to find that one person who can demonstrate beyond all reasonable doubt that they've experienced a real supernatural being. It's not much to ask. In return, you can ask me to invent just one to support my theory of invention. Poor Newton having to voyage the whole galaxy, and poor Pasteur having to watch the birth of every single organism on the planet.

Chuck, bluegenes does not claim to "know" that "the only source of supernatural beings is the imagination". I claim that the only known source of SBs is the human imagination, meaning the only source that everyone on this board can know of, and the only one that can currently be established scientifically beyond all reasonable doubt.Other suggestions, like SBs communicating to some people, have never been confirmed. But there's no way we can conclusively know that this has never happened.If you're going to paraphrase me, please get it right. Try to understand why "All supernatural beings are figments of the imagination" is stated as a theory rather than as a fact.

That's a theory, not a fact that one can conclusively know. It matches my theory and I would describe it as a strong theory. That is a fact which supports both your theory and mine. Just like the fact that the only known source of supernatural beings is the human imagination. These statements support both of our theories. Exactly. It's theoretically falsifiable, just like my theory. Very strong, high confidence theory. Just like mine.Re: My theory: I'll help you. The central field is psychology. My theory could possibly be described as a law in psychology. There are already a number of hypotheses in the field attempting to explain the phenomenon (our tendency to invent SBs and believe in them). Plenty of people are getting their hands dirty. These hypotheses could potentially explain my theory when it's stated as a law.More accurately, the modern "field" described as "cognitive science" is the area. Neurology and anthropology are involved along with psychology.My theory (or law) is often taken as written and treated as if it were a fact.This demonstrates what a very strong, high confidence theory it is.