The best scientific method (Bayesian form of H-D)

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Just to be clear, how does MN deal with electrons?

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If you are unable to answer this question yourself, then I have some serious reservations regarding your claims about science and philosophy of science.But maybe I am misunderstanding your point. The way it looks to me is that you are trying to suggest that MN has some sort of dual standard by allowing for the existence of electrons (which cannot be directly seen) and yet not allowing for supernatural entities (which are also unseen). Such confusion can only occur if you are ignorant of what MN is, and what electrons are conceived of as by scientists.What you should know is that electrons are not fully described entities, yet are part of science based on their measurable effects. There is something we call charge, associated with electromagnetic phenomenon (a particular force acting over distance). There is an entity which exhibits a charge (arbitrarily labelled negative), and also a particularly small mass. These entities can be measured to move between molecules and across various media (leading to a concept called current). The fact that such an entity has measurable effects requires them to be considered in molecular models (among other things). We call those entities electrons.Now what does this have to do with anything? Are you suggesting that I am being gullible for believing in electrons?

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holmes

I already said I try all sorts of different things out, just to see if they work. Other than the appearance of something working with tarot, nothing "supernatural" ever has worked. So even with an open experimental practice, I have had no success.The gullibility part comes in when one is going to add an experience to the body of knowledge. You can easily say something works, but one must have a pretty good description/understanding of how and why before it becomes knowledge of a phenomenon.MN is the best method for weeding out spurious explanations for things that "work".

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Anyway, the supernatural beings do manifest themselves, just as electrons. But, they are persons, not things, so the science is more psychology than physics. Not a big deal to H-D science. Does it matter so much to MN?

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My interest is about gone, if you think this is some kind of convincing argument.Without assuming something is real in an apriori sense, please explain how one MUST ascribe to a supernatural agent any natural phenomena you have discussed so far.The difference between supernatural agents and electrons is that electrons BECAME NECESSARY as an explanatory mechanism, and thus we MUST talk about them. Supernatural agents are both unnecessary, and would not have entered the picture at all except for the demands of the faithful.No one said "I am a scientist who does not believe in the supernatural, so there must be some thing called an electron somewhere. Let me try and find experiments to prove the existence of such things."However, this is exactly what you are doing with H-D, and so are not being scientific. By which I mean you are making yourself liable to creating really bad theories, supported more by presumption than assessment. While I am willing to give you that people can use this H-D idea to try things out, perhaps for later/better research, it is not useful as a tool of science for determining best models/paradigms.And unfortunately passing your criteria off as practicing good science, does allow for charlatans to hoodwink others. You have yet to give one reason why using the most stringent method is NOT the best method for creating the human knowledge base.As it happens, MN would allow for supernatural agents as soon as... like electrons... the become necessary for explaining a particular phenomena. That would include psychological phenomena as well.

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holmes[This message has been edited by holmes, 01-13-2004]

How do I explain widespread, and distinctly varied, religious belief?I believe (though I cannot be sure) that humans look for explanations for things they do not know. It is easy when one is scared, especially of one's lack of knowledge, to try and pretend like one has the answer.To come up with an answer, without actually studying a phenomenon, the brain reaches to describe a phenomenon using things already known. X is like Y. It is a very simple process, and without further checks, such explanations become ingrained and amplified.Perhaps one of the easiest explanations humans come up with, is that my not liking X means X is bad. Everyone else must also dislike X or they are bad. X must have been judged bad by some AUTHORITY, which is why it is bad.This same phenomenon goes along with guilt. If something bad happens, there must have been a reason... something we can understand. The person must have done something bad, and so something bad happened to him. Again something larger than life (an AUTHORITY) judged X as bad and delievered punishment.Of course if a deity (or deities) can punish, they can also reward. The happenstance of good service to reward, or good service to punishment are easily explained away to reinforce the dogma that good service leads to reward. For if good service didn't lead to reward you must have done something else bad to counter it.Or like the example of Job (the common interpretation), if one can find no fault in practice, there must yet be other reasons we fail to understand. Notice, it is not that we do not understand. Oh we understand all right... God or Gods do everything. We just don't always know why.There simply are no checks on this kind of reasoning.The Authority may not even be believed as real at first, just a vague notion, a myth to set examples. But with time and oft repeatings to children these myths becomemore concrete. One eventually gets diverse pantheons, or well described external/internal forces.Some results (by the nature of how they came about) end up delivering concrete examples of how artificial religion really is: the cargo cults, or the aztecs believing the invading Spaniards were gods. Why are we to believe the ancient founders of current religions are any better than these people?The fact that Xianity itself took from other mythological systems which came before it (yet which are considered foolish by Xians), shows an ad hoc quality... a form of oral bedtimestory tradition.People are simply making it up as they go along, swallowing a placebo to feel better about what they don't understand, without actually curing the real problem: ignorance.But this is religion. If you ask me why people have an almost instinctual need to find an AUTHORITY figure to guide them, or have "spiritual feelings" (that kind of awe about something grander than themselves), or feel better when they have an outside purpose to to their lives... I don't know.We know these experiences are common to almost everyone, yet their expression (or manifestation) are totally different between individuals. So is there something "greater", something actually "spiritual" out in the Universe? Maybe.The idea that anyone has found it seems contradicted by all evidence.Einstein suggested that the Universe is all there is and real spirituality is trying to understand it as it is, rather than as we'd like to believe it is. Concepts of souls and eternal life on a nonmaterial plane were just egotistical constructs because our minds can't accept that they will at some time no longer exist.This sounds like a pretty reasonable theory.Frankly I wish there were easier answers. And if magic were real that would be extremely cool. In addition to increasing our realms of exploration, it would also mean I didn't waste so many hours worshipping my (or someone else's) vanity.How do you explain the fact that religious experience is varied (including some of the more curious examples I have given above), that religious dogma about the natural world has invariably run afoul of natural investigation, and that no one (despite the enormous power claimed) has ever run into the kinds of supernatural entities that appear so frequently in ancient texts?

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holmes[This message has been edited by holmes, 01-13-2004]

The following quote is a reasonable and SIMPLE hypothesis?

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We are not alone. There are biological beings more intelligent than we are, operating in a part of the universe that we cannot sense much about, that have senses appropriate to where they live. We develope religions to cope with them.

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So despite existing in a part of the universe that we cannot sense much about, humans somehow DEVELOP religions to cope with these entities... entities we cannot sense much about? Why would anyone develop large, complex and detailed institutions to deal with entities they can barely sense?What's more, despite not being able to sense much about them, you are able to say that they are biological entities which are more intelligent than we are? How can you know any of these facts? They certainly do NOT come from analogy with other biological species.And how on earth does Occam's razor mandate acceptance of any of the above?

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We don't have to postulate the existence of any wierd psychological stuff driving people to the dramatic behavioral extremes that we see in religion.

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So psychological states, which humans obviously have and we see that they can lead humans to incorrect assumptions about the world around them, are too weird for you to contemplate as a very good possibility? Yet human psychological capacities to sense and communicate in a limited capacity with other dimensions that we have so far been able to document outside of fragmentary and contradictory anecdotal accounts is not weird?And occam's razor would naturally exclude humans coming to incorrect conclusions, but include this "supernatural world"?

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What do you think?

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I think this is an incredible position to hold. What baffles me is that you would rather draw analogies between human religious practice and earthworms (which by the way only interact with the natural world), rather than uncertain human religious practice with certainly INCORRECT human religious practice.Where was your answer to the cargo cults and the aztecs? These were clearly people that deified nonsupernatural entities. They did go through those "weird" psychological states you dimissed so easily. Would this not suggest that other humans exhibiting the same behavior (ascribing supernatural powers to phenomenon) could very well be doing the same thing as the aztecs or the cargo cults?

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The varieties of religious experience is a puzzle. Maybe there is great species diversity in the spiritual world. Or maybe, it's because the spiritual parasites and we, the hosts, both have free will.

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So it is a puzzle if one accepts your theory, but not if you reject it and go with the SIMPLE explanation. That just goes to show why occam's razor would in no way accept your theory.But let's run with your version of occam's razor. Doesn't the only explanation become they are all real? That every idea humans have regarding their experiences are real? I can't see how that would not be the case, given your description of why religions must have a basis in reality.

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I know that you have not experienced any evidence supporting the existence of such beings, but I have, and see an abundance of such data in the scientific literature. I see general confirmation in testing,

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Unfortunately this is totally circular. You have seen data in experiments that you feel are scientific, but whose methods require dropping current science standards in order to even consider their results as data... and this shows you are right to drop the standards?

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As long as one does science in the Kuhnian truth-mode, instead of the conventional paradigm conservation mode, science confirms this simple explanation.

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Fine. So let's talk about alien abductions. There have been reports of these for years, which follow a greater similarity than most religious doctrines. Obviously then we can feel good in the explanation that they really have been abducted.So then what do we make of all the psychological research which did not make this assumption and decided to look at that weird thing we call the brain? It has slowly become evident that these experiences are the result of specific psychological (physical-psychological) states. Some psychological researchers have even been able to INDUCE similar feelings in humans based on the results of their research.Should we throw this out?

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Go on, start tithing and see what happens.

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Hm. I did (in the past) and it didn't work. What does that indicate? Is there anything I can take away from the results of my experiments showing no results (with the exception of tarot)? Under MN a scientist making claims to achieving success would have to have a pretty reasonable answer when the same experiment comes up Zeros for other researchers. Does H-D include anything like this?What good is it, if it doesn't?

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holmes

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you are certainly free to consider it unlikely that the God, Jehovah is out there... I might check carefully to see that I followed the protocols well.

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I'm free to? What kind of conclusion is this for a science? If yours is a better method, why does it have no definitive results?And boy I predicted that last sentence was coming: If I did not show the results you had I must have done it wrong. This is the hallmark of poor scientific methodology. One of us must be wrong... not just me. What do we do now? How do we make the determination?

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But, until there is some way to make doing and reporting that experiment a public affair, it remains private science.

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Tithing has been public for millenia. And there is no reason to keep it private.Until there is some way to make its proponents follow MN, so results can be tied to experiment and proposed mechanism, it will remain a pseudoscience.

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Now, I see no reason so far that natural dark matter, weighty stuff that is beyond our senses, could not be inhabited by living beings, and some at least could have free will as we do.

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Again, you have abandoned science, in favor of the fantastic. Dark matter is simply unknown matter, or rather matter that our calculations predict must be there in order to suit our current models. It could be that our current astronomical mathematical models are incorrect, that there are astronomical forces or realities we are currently unaware of, or that the form of the matter is not detectable using our current methods.We have no idea if there is such a thing as dark "matter" or dark "energy".Yet you have already jumped to ideas that these are entities? Where is occam's razor?

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I find the analogy of such beings contrasted with humans, and birds contrasted to earthworms quite apt.

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Your analogy is hardly apt. Birds and earthworms exist in the same space time continuum. It is not that earthworms are unable to perceive the dimension that birds live within (which is how you posed humans vs gods in your earlier post), they simply do not have the wide range of senses within their environment.Now I see that with Dark Matter and Dark Energy that you are trying to argue this is a similar situation with humans (and in ad hoc fashion are now arguing that this is the way to conceive of gods).But outside of DM and DE, this analogy does not hold. DM and DE while perhaps invisible, must interact with our universe in ways that we can sense and measure. Which is why we can hypothesize about their existence and come up with experiments to understand more about them.The same goes for birds and earthworms. Given the ability to think and reason, the worms would begin theorizing that there is something they cannot perceive, yet interacts with them. Obviously something is killing them off.I am unaware how you think they would be correct to not use MN in figuring out what the nature of that phenomena is. Without it they could easily come to a conclusion that there are gods in another dimension that are picking out the unrighteous, instead of entities within their own realm of existence which the worms simply do not have the range of sense to detect directly. Would that be true? What method could they use to figure out if this god-bird theory is correct?

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The other would argue that, since we worms can only taste and touch, the only things we can know, do science, about, would be tasted, touched entities. "Do you believe in birds?" one would ask. "Science cannot deal with the existence of birds!"

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This is a particularly bad plank in your analogy. Thanks to MN we have ways to test the universe beyond our natural range of senses. If we had used H-D methods I am clueless as to how this would ever have come about. Everything would still be guessed at using our "god radar" sense, instead of probing phenomenon and discovering new ways to add to our range of senses.Do you really know of any scientist that says nothing exists which we cannot sense directly? The fact that you brought up DM and DE and electrons shoots down your own analogy.The real question is when do birds act like gods, only interacting with worms when worms do specific acts (and done correctly!) to summon them? And I suppose one could also ask why worms should presume the truth of any books written about "gods" by other worms, BEFORE conducting experiments to determine what birds are?In all of this you have not given one reason why we should accept the worm-human analogy over the false religion-unknown religion comparison. They clearly show that such "weird" psychological phenomenon you tried to dismiss do occur. Since they do occur, that modern religion is based on the same psychological phenomenon is the simplest explanation.If you fail to address this in your next post, we are done.

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Not to try to persuade you that you should do likewise. Only want you to know that the choice is available, and understanding of consequences and protocols, if you are interested.

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Wow, since when does real science need to throw around silly Pascal's wager arguments? I thought this thread was about a better scientific method. Yet it keeps reducing to conversion commentary, in that it is the best science method if I don't want to get eaten by Gods. Very very poor science.

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holmes

I will continue to protest, as your science method is fallable and faltering.

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Because successful science as attested by history never has definitive results. Or conclusions. That's what makes it better. It's a process. Just keep moving, testing, looking, re-searching. You'll get to the truth.

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This is my argument. You are the one who wants to end research into natural causes by bounding our research to the limits and presuppositions of one book. We must start there in order to end there...But more importantly, this does not answer my question. There should be a more compelling conclusion as a result of an experiment, than "well you can now think what you want, but it worked for me. Maybe you did something wrong."Ironically, the test retest process (which you applaud for science) is exactly what was used to develop the best methodology science can use: MN. Why should we abandon the fruits of this labor?

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Standard problem in scientific controversies. We go over together the protocols we used, to see why we got different results. In many cases, scientists visit in each other's labs, and do the experiments together.

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And now we take another babystep towards MN. And suppose we see that there are different results despite similar procedures? Will we then have to accurately describe the mechanisms which might account for different results? Then maybe construct a new form of experiment which is able to distinguish between mechanisms? Oh no! We are almost at MN...Finally, in choosing which mechanism to test first, it'd make sense to test the simplest mechanism first, right (this is occam's razor)? Voila, we are at MN!I am confused why you would insist on using H-D as "best" science, when problems during experiments will naturally drive us to reinvent and then use MN. Don't you see this is a step backward? MN exists for a reason, and so why it is less costly to start with it, rather than reinvent the wheel each time.I already agreed that one can use this H-D thing as a "dowsing rod" for places that science can investigate. However, there is no cause to abandon MN when scientists go to actually investigate a phenomena. At least you have given none. The fact that there will be differing results counts as a major reason to hang with it.

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Really? You know of a published study, with protocols, on titheing?

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It depends on what you mean by published and protocols. I have seen plenty of televised statements that tithing works. It is one of the larger scams run on the desperate by the "pious".Now these did not exist in scientific publications, but that is the very criticism you are raising (that they should be)... however they are certainly public. It is simply the choice of those making these claims not to use MN protocols which keep them out of such science publications. If their claims are bona fide I am at a loss why they are not interested in using accepted protocols to get their message to a less credulous audience.And this is where my eyebrow is raised. You mention according to protocols. Well their experiments are run according to their own protocols. So they do follow some protocols. Do you have an issue with this? Do you believe people should rely on more established and agreed upon protocols? If so, then why should MN be disregarded? If not, why should the above people even have to follow yours?The concept of protocols goes right out the window, once we say that stringent and accurate methods are not the sole determiner of best methodology.

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Name calling (pseudoscience? Give me a break!), as I judge debates, usually means that the debater knows they have lost their case, and is starting to react and whine.

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In the subject line of this post I called you a name. It has no connection to anything and so is pure ad hominem. That is bad form.However, in a debate on scientific methodology, using the term pseudoscience when qualified as I had is not an insult, it is a definition. H-D appears to operate as a science, but does not adhere to all of the accepted methods (ie protocols), and standards of modern science. That makes it a pseudoscience.

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Physicists seem to have a few ideas.

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Yes, the possibilities are as I outlined, in addition to the possibility that there ARE masses and energies whose sources we have yet to spot (which is why they are called "dark"). You may note that no physicist has ever ascribed to these theoretical entities any sort of will or intelligence or communicative powers.

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Plenty of that, through gravity, universe expansion, the fact that electrons don't fall into atomic nuclei, the Casimir effect... As for the inhabitants of dm/de, there are prayer studies, the PEAR studies, NDE's, theomatics (have you read his stuff yet? Why not?). They appear quite busy influencing our world.

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What evidence connects one group to the other? Have you ever actually talked to a physicist about the nature of dark matter or energy, and what the limits of its interaction with the universe (and earth) are? Have you asked one what the possibility is of their containing/exhibiting intelligence, or what they think of these faithbased programs you mentioned? If not, why not? If so, what did they say?

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If MN is willing to hypothesize about the parts of the world that are beyond our senses, I'm all for it.

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It does. We have already established this as fact by discussing subjects such as gravity, electrons, dark matter, etc etc.

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But, the rules of H-D seem to work better, according to Bayes Theorem.

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Other than by jumping the gun to deal with issues you would like to address, can you explain how it "works better"?

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Gods, as anyone knows, are very unpredictable, and the placating or calling forth of gods, very chancy.

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KNOWS?!?!??!? Isn't their existence the very question being posed?Hey, everyone knows that halflngs are short with curly hair on their feet, and elves tend to live much longer than humans, but this does not make them real. Same goes for Gods. Once you show me evidence beyond tales written by men, then we can start making comments such as "we all know X about Gods." As it stands there are many people that have no concept of Gods, much less what their nature is.Sheesh.

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But, to make the analogy complete, now we need a Dr. Dolittle,

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Just look at where this analogy has gotten. You know you were the one who brought up occam's razor. What would it say about bringing in Dr. Dolittle at this point?Wait, don't answer yet!

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The worm-human analogy generates many predictions that have been tested and confirmed.

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Except never dealing with evidence (beyond hand waving) regarding the varied religions humans have, including the false religions.

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The Orthodox Theology hypothesis, as explained by the man-bird-worm analogy, has many confirmations, and is probably a better bet culturally than the other

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YOU BROUGHT UP OCCAM'S RAZOR. YOU HAVE SINCE REFUSED TO ADDRESS IT'S TRUE IMPLICATIONS ON YOUR THEORY. THE UMPIRE IS YELLING "STRIKE TWO". I AM PUTTING THIS IN CAPS SO IT WILL STAND OUT (NOT BECAUSE I AM YELLING).YOU HAVE ONE LAST POST TO DEAL WITH THE HOW OCCAM'S RAZOR WOULD ACCEPT THE FANTASTIC WORM-HUMAN ANALOGY, WHEN WE HAVE A VERY GOOD EXAMPLE OF HUMANS CONSTRUCTING RELIGIONS AROUND NOTHING (THOSE "WEIRD" PSYCHOLOGICAL STATES YOU DISMISSED, YET I HAVE SHOWN ARE REAL).YOU KNOW FULL WELL THAT GIVEN THIS REALITY ON THE GROUND OCCAM'S RAZOR IS FORCED TO EXCLUDE YOUR ANALOGY FROM CONSIDERATION UNTIL THIS MUCH SIMPLER EXPLANATION (WHICH WE HAVE EVIDENCE FOR) BECOMES INSUFFICIENT AS AN EXPLANATORY MECHANISM.You say insults are bad form in debate. So is ad hoc reasoning, and dodging direct questions. It has already been suggested that I stop wasting my time debating you, and I am about to reach that conclusion myself. If you dodge this once more, I am not wasting another minute. It will have shown that you understand you have lost the debate and are just attempting to ward off more public acknowledement.

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Any scientific method which produces theories that do not work in practise is basically bad. By work, we mean that people put the idea to use, expecting certain outcomes, and those are the outcomes they get.

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You continue to use this inaccurate depiction of science. In addition to a theory working, a SCIENTIFIC THEORY must also take into account all the evidence we have currently gathered, and use the simplest plausible mechanisms to account for the results it predicts.I know for a fact that the practice of accupuncture works. I have seen it do wonders for others where western medicine failed completely and the human mind could not have supplied the cure (ie, it wasn't believing in its power that helped it work).In fact, I have first hand experience with accupuncture that did quite a bit to convince me it was more than just mental tricks. On my first visit, I was expecting to feel better. Instead my initial feeling of euphoria gradually built into a nausea that was wholly unexpected and then produced quite a bit of vomiting. This rather unexpected result started after I had gone home, and went on throughout the night, and I was forced to go in the next day for an emergency treatment.The practitioner had made a mistake. On being told what had happened, the doctor apologized and switched some needles around (from the way she had done before) and in minutes I could feel the nauseous feeling dissipate back into the initial euphoria. It stayed that way for the rest of the course of the treatments for my initial problem (which had nothing to do with nausea).Thus (IMO) this results of this practice had nothing to do with wishful thinking, but that SOMETHING was going on due to the placement of the needles. Accupuncture worked, and when not done right had quite negative results, which could be fixed in a predictable way.This is reinforced by the fact accupuncture can be done on animals. They certainly have no preconceptions that needles are going to help them.HOWEVER, I have Zero confidence in the THEORY behind acupuncture.While acupuncture certainly works, and so the "theory" behind it shows practical results, it really has no scientific validity. Thankfully as western and eastern medicines come together, the mysticism which has lain over that valuable art is slowly going away. An attempt to understand what "chi" is, and what creates the "channels" these needles appear to manipulate, is being made.This example is to show that science is about understanding mechanisms (the whys), and not just what needs to be done (the hows).Sincerely, every time I hear you describe science and how it works, I get flashbacks to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

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But, I take it that getting eaten by demons would not be regarded by you as a bad thing, and that science that prevented that outcome would not therefore be good science. So, what makes science good for you?

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What the hell are demons? Give me a definition, evidence for their existence according to this definition, and one credible example of a human being getting eaten by one that fits this description.I give only this condition: You may not use a religious text of any kind to make your case. Obviously if this thing is happening, then it will be recorded outside of purely religious texts.On the flipside I could ask you whether you were confident your practice would save you from the evil intentions of ogres. Would it bring elves and unicorns to your side (as everyone knows, the only plausible aid that would save an unarmed man from such beasts)? If not, what good is your science?Obviously that last one is a form of reductio.This has also been encapsulated in a well known and used mocking analogy...I have a charm to ward off tigers that I am willing to sell you. I guarantee that as long as you wear it you will never be attacked by tigers in Kansas. I and many others can guarantee this is true as we have all worn it and not one of us has been attacked by a tiger... Are you willing to buy it?

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holmes...
But what a fool believes he sees,
no wise man has the power to reason away.
...(D. Bros)

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This sounds to me like I win the Occham's razor debate!

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If you believe that a charge of "simplistic" means that the theory you advocate is supported by Occam's razor... I win.I sincerely hope this is a joke.If not, let me put it this way. "The hullabaloos did it." That is simplistic. But under no circumstances is that a simple theory, with the simplest mechanisms.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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You want to end research into causes that come from parts of the universe that you cannot sense (non-materialistic parts) where other intelligent beings might reside.

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This is incorrect. I have already said this can be done. It simply has to be done in a more rigorous manner. If there is interaction between material and nonmaterial entities then they become part of our model. We can see this is in ALL of the forces we currently include in our model of the Universe.If you want to jump the gun, and say there is a force acting which we have yet to detect, that is fine by me. You can even use H-D to root such forces out. But then when investigating them for the sake of knowledge about them, MN must be used. Or it will have to be reinvented which is what our last post just showed.

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"I tried that." (without a materials and methods section to the report) is a very good reason to not publish a paper.

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You are picking and choosing. I would say methods which do not explain how they have isolated the mechanism under consideration are a good reason to not publish a paper. How can you say I am wrong, but you are not?

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According to Kuhn,

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This does nothing to refute my statement. H-D is a pseudoscience, if it does not take care to isolate the mechanisms under study, and yet makes claims to knowledge, or greater plausibility. The mixed results, and your then moving closer to MN to make the study more definitive prove my point in this matter.It is not one experiment, nor one man's repeated experiments which create a base of knowledge. It is a myriad of people conducting the same experiment and coming to understand the differences in their results which create a basis for knowledge.

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Yes. Normally they say something to the effect that...

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Yeah, what I said. Don't bother digging up anything.

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But, at this point, H-D science allows us to assess the plausibility of spiritual hypotheses, which, I guess, MN will not even attempt to consider.

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This is incorrect. MN simply will not UNTIL other, simpler mechanisms have failed to provide an explanation. It is about priority in research, and building based on what one knows, rather than making assumptions to jump farther than one should.

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H-D science appears to allow us to proceed with baby steps

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This is also incorrect. There are no babysteps in making a grand assumption, in order to manipulate data so that it appears to support the assumption.The only thing H-D science does in babysteps, is go back through the process we used to get to MN.

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I was only saying that, as normally hypothesized, gods have certain properties. This does not defend the idea that they exist, only prepares one for the H-D testing of the hypothesis.

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You of course left out the part of my criticism which noted that not everyone agrees with what you stated as "everyone knows". Once again, the problem of discrepencies between experiences.

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The evidence that people are weird, which I accept, when used as an explanation that they have weird religious behaviors, is a circular argument

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This is actually not a circular argument at all, but does not matter if it was as this is not the argument I was making.

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All these natural models would explain human weirdness as infections or imprisonment, by another malign living being.

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Show me one where the malign living being infecting any animal has been shown to be of a nonmaterial nature and you can begin your argument. Otherwise, it has just been cut to pieces.But what I find strange is that you had to jump to disease. I would totally grant that damage to the brain (of whatever PHYSICAL KIND) is able to create odd mental states.That is not what is the case for the examples I gave at all. What we are dealing with is people making mistakes with respect to perception and attribution. This is possible when there is no damage to anything at all. It's called a mistake, or overreaching.You see a spot on the horizon of a desert. It looks to be an oasis. That is what your brain attributes to the shimmering shadow, because it is trying to come up with an explanation for the inputs it is getting. To bad it is just odd refractions of light.Same goes for other unexplained phenomena. When we search for explanations without seeking more evidence (ie making assumptions or presumptive judgements) we are prone to error in this way.Clearly this is what the cargo cults and aztecs did. We can even see human desire to anthropomorphize objects as if they had intelligence in daily life, though we know this is wrong. It is projection of personal feelings about an object. This happens more in children (who have less experience) than in adults.Why must we jump to disease to explain every day states of affairs?

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That this behavior can be modelled in the nature we see is, I think, what Occham's razor is all about. We don't have to come up with very much new to explain the behavior.

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You must come up with quite a few new things. Does this biologist friend of yours describe demons possessing the animals, or corporeal parasites for which there is documented EXPERIENCE and STUDIED MECHANISMS?The best you can say in such a comparison as the one you have made... if you are to try and use Occam's razor... is that it must be some sort of infection damaging people's minds.Otherwise you are inventing whole new mechanisms and entities for which there are no documented experiences or studied mechanisms. Again, there simply are no babysteps, and no support from Occam's razor.This is it...I gave you another round because you finally dealt with the issue. But you know as well as I do... if you know occam's razor at all... that your argument must be restrained to parasites and physical damage, if it is going to use the animal analogy.If you have some way out of this, you need to present it in your next post.I am not allowing for wiggle room in our debates. From now on, I need for you to stick to the key element under discussion. Occam's razor is one of the big weapons you decided to draw, and it cuts both ways. I do not see how you are about to escape this last cut.

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This is a dogmatic opinionation statement. H-D would say,

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Apparently unless H-D was discussing MN, or theories which come from MN.By the way I did not give the all the reasons why I found the theory behind accupuncture to be incorrect. It had to do with coming to understand the practice of accupuncture and the major disconnects between practice and theory (and in fact the contradictions). Much of it is handwaving, mystical hoo ha.I began some basic training with a master who trained from masters in China. He was one to point out the unknown quantities that still exist as to how it works.Are you going to tell me something different with this H-D science of yours? You sure seem qualified to make opinionated statements about others' opinions, while bashing others for doing the same (and who happen to have a bit of experience).

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(preceeded by complex description of demons)...Being more powerful than humans, they cannot be studied scientifically by human without help from the symbiotic spiritual beings with whom they are at war (prayer). Read CS Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, and Pigs in the Parlor (forgot author) for an introduction to their natural history.

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They cannot be studied scientifically without the aid of other equally problematic entities. But CS Lewis can help us out?Either all of this, or people make a mistake and ascribe powers that do not exist, to natural phenomenon... which we have seen humans do (without the aid of parasites).Occam's razor anyone?

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But lots of crazy people, whose behavior is most easily explained by demons.

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Yet animals act crazy because of physical damage to their brains and not nonmaterial demons.... hmmm.

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Did you bring up the physics stuff to excuse your staying ignorant of the references I pointed you too?

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No. You brought up entities posited by physics. You then appeared to imply there was some connection between the physicists studying those phenomena, and groups that jump the gun and ascribe characteristics to these entities we are not even sure really exist. So I asked how the two connected.I have yet to hear you make a statement that lends any credibility to your sources. If you are unable to grasp how occam's razor applies to this situation, and it is because of these sources, then I am only remaining ignorant about other people's willful ignorances.Not much loss there.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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I didn't pick up what H-D is.

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To be honest, I haven't either. I think it might be more accurately acronymed as:
Ad-H (ad-hoc theory). He has yet to set up (or stick with) any set of methods, besides "try it and see if you like it, if you don't like like I did, you must have done something wrong... but don't give up or you may be eaten by demons."I'm actually not kidding, so Steve if you have a problem with this description, please set out what the actual methodology is besides referring to author's names.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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Just to re-affirm my agenda here, I personally am convinced that the world is haunted, and that you are in danger. I am also convinced that I can not help you, unless you choose to be helped.

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Too bad that other religions can use the exact same arguments and come to quite opposite conclusions. In fact Xianity is NOT a majority religion on the planet.Is this not arrogance to say the world is haunted and I am in danger (from demons) and must be saved through prayer to the one God and his son Christ when the vast majority of the world does not believe this?I am at this forum to discuss knowledge. Your assumptions have not been very convincing, and you have yet to address the fact that eventually one would have to use MN to get to concrete answers. Why not just stick with MN through the course?

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or my efforts to explain something complicated you are not understanding.

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Or to proselytize about something that you have no right to claim exists. It's when it gets to this part, especially when I have contrary evidence, that your arguments hit rock bottom.

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You view the commonplace religious thinking as delusion of some sort,

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No, I consider it a human habit to try and make sense of data the best way we can. With a lack of proper data, it is easy to mistake, and so ascribe, more properties to something than one actually has the right to make (given the data). This isn't just religious theory. Humans ascribe all sorts of things to entities they are not really knowledgeable about.I should mention that this idea of mine does not even preclude the actual existence of supernatural entities. It is simply a reminder that we must be cautious in science and not make grander assumptions than the data allows us to make, and especially not use those assumptions ahead of time in order to "skew" the data.

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I say pathogens, including in this term a pathogen that modifies behavior, keeping the host otherwise healthy. And, I am willing to entertain the hypothesis that these pathogens are made of "spiritual" stuff, or some sort of "dark matter."

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You do not have one bit of evidence to back this up. Not even H-D can allow you to make such a grand claim. Oh you can have the hypthetical, but where is the deductive? Show me one bit of evidence that a psychological pathology has been ascribed to the tested actions of darkmatter or energy.You know very well that there have never been nonmaterial pathogens documented by the very person you gave as an example. Or does this person treat animals with seances and exorcisms, or telescopes and physics equations (if it is dark matter)?Is it because demons don't eat animals, and so there is no need to understand animal pathology as anything more than material pathology?

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Occham's razor is, as I was taught it, an "other things being equal." sort of rule.

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About mechanisms. We have evidence of people making mistakes. You do grant this right? People make mistakes all on their own? People exaggerate claims of knowledge? There are magicians and cheap huckster religious evangelists?This is the most credible and simple set of mechanisms, using all evidence at hand. It is clearly demonstrated by cargo cults (do you know what those are?) and the aztecs in their encounters with Europeans.This is even demonstrated every day by children believing there is a monster in the closet/under the bed, or that their favorite blanket has feelings. Or are these all real too?

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Given the great heap of data that imply a connection between dark matter and energy and human behavior, that are unexplained by any materialistic (electro-magnetic) hypotheses, not to mention the widespread interest in spiritual matters, it would be socially irresponsible to not consider these hypotheses.

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Yes, that great steaming heap of "data" you keep going on about. While I agree that it is irresponsible to deny all claims a priori, I am unsure what is irresponsible to use MN (and occam's razor) to analyze data, instead of saying "my stuff works for me".Remember I tried to enter some data points into that "heap" and your answer was to discredit my data. Is this how data gets handled? How about the reason all the prayers of Jews in the Holocaust were unanswered... oh yeah, that data can be excluded (or explained away) too.

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Arrogant, really, to call the vast majority of the human species deluded, while the few "materialists" have got it right. Case closed.

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It is not arrogant to say all humans make mistakes and can have researcher bias which must be taken into consideration. That includes me as much as everyone else.And as I did not call people deluded, but mistaken, I am not arrogant at all (at least not on that matter).How are you not arrogant for coming up with your world view which is counter to the vast majority of the humans species now and across time. Xian theology takes up a very small amount of human consciousness. Heck, you even say that most other Xians are headed for the pit. How big exactly is your group of true believers?You can keep calling my scientific methodology black, but yours is blacker still. You have condemned all but a very few to the pit, or the teeth of demons. Mine simply says people make mistakes and to be careful not to confuse faith with science. What definition of arrogance do you use where you come off better?Occam's razor is about choosing from the simplest mechanisms, which cover the greatest breadth of known data. It is not about choosing the most simplistic explanation covering the breadth of all claims to knowledge.Case closed.

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Since you seem to remain ignorant of these data, what are you here for? We have to explain the anomalous results presented there, and MN can't do it. Not according to the guys publishing the research, anyhow.

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See what good your theory is. Actually all you can say is that I seem resistant to discussing it. You have no way of knowing how much I do or do not know about this "research".And yes, MN can discuss the anomolous results. The research is not very good, hardly isolating mechanisms, and so not in a position to challenge standard models. I mean they aren't even coordinated in creating a coherent explanatory model. It's patchwork Steve, ad hoc.I tell you what though, if I or one of my friends ever get eaten by a demon, I'll admit I am totally wrong.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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We all should be saying, "Somebody's wrong here. Let me not exclude the possibility that it might be me. What will it take to get me to change my mind?"

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Exactly. And the best answer? A carefully described set of experiments which isolate proposed mechanisms, and logically connect data between experiment and mechanisms.In other words, careful experiments conducted under the protocols of Methodological Naturalism.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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I checked into MrHambres' discussion of MN, and see that H-D science is a subset of HN, with a particular set of methods.

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If you are such a great scientist, in fact willing to debate the validity of MN at length, why would you need to go to MrH's thread to find that out?This was apparent to me from the beginning and why I was suggesting that eventually one will be led back through the steps of creating MN, when trying to settle judgements of greatest pluasibility for a theory.

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Whoever taught you to talk or think this way was not your friend.

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Why not? I might throw the same insult back at you, and with more validity. It is reasonable to point out when an opponent has no evidence for a claim. It is not so reasonable to avoid this charge by using ad hominem.

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Remember Yeshua's experience with the pigs and the demons, where they drove the pigs into the sea and drowned them.

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No, which journal was this written in? Sorry for the sarcasm, but this is another dodge on your part. You were discussing a veterinary or zoologist friend of yours. I wanted to know if she ever treated, or read of treatments regarding demons affecting animals in her line of work.If it is as common as what happened to Yeshua, it ought to be there right? And if not, then your animal-human analogy is constrained by occam's razor to physical parasitism.

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No, actually. Fill me in.

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I'll keep it brief. A group of pacific islanders were visited by a pilot. They had never encountered modern technology and thought him a god capable of of flight. He had a bunch of goods with him that they also found divine. He eventually left the island, never to return.Years later, when another group of people from the "modern" world landed on the islands they had discovered the people had made a religion around the pilot and his items. His cargo... hence Cargo cult.This is a specific, and definitive, example of humans mistakenly ascribing divine qualities to something they do not fully understand, and then building those initial ascriptions into a detailed religion.

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"narrow is the gate, and few there are that find it." Jehovah has a habit of narrowing things down considerably, before expanding again. Very "evolutionary." Adam, Noah, Abraham, Yeshua.

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And this gets you off the hook of arrogance, how?

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Yes. Every entry of data into the system must be accompanied by a materials and methods section. Mine's the Bible. What's yours?

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Ahhhh. Mine couldn't have been the Bible, because it didn't work, right? Same for all those Jews in the holocaust.The data is there. If you choose to ignore it, you are doing so at YOUR intellectual peril. You may not get eaten by demons, but you've apparently already been gnawed on by some hucksters.

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Could it be Satan?

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Holy cow! Your posts have been so comedic I should have guessed all along. Dana Carvey is at EVC! Go churchlady go!

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Actually, these guys are mainstream scientists extremely nervous about what they are discovering

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They should be, because their studies are tenuous at best, and their credibility slipping away into that dark matter they pretend to study.I know scientists that actually study dark matter. Your guys are wayyyyyyyyy off.

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What am I supposed to do? I have gotten 7 natural and 6 adopted grandchildren from this philosophy. I get 3-400 citations a year from research I did 20 years ago. I've watched miracle after miracle take place, wonderful things. My students are international successes. I have friends who are laying their lives down for me. One of my biggest sources of discomfort is from eating too much, because the food set before me is soooo good.

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A family I know that have been immensely successful, scientfically and socially, have fallen on hard intellectual times and got suckered into ID. They are still pretty smart, just a bit credulous. Sounds like you guys share something in common.Look at how much Hugh Hefner has gotten out of life. Does that mean his philosophy is proven correct?

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I pay no taxes.

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This stems from H-D science? How does not paying for upkeep of the nation's government, mark you as someone superior intellectually or morally?

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Lots of people thank me for helping them find richer lives. All from receiving, learning, the love of the truth. From paying the price to get the truth, by choice.

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You are about to ask me for a donation aren't you? I'm supposed to tithe to you, right?Goodbye huckster.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)< !--UE-->[This message has been edited by holmes, 01-20-2004]

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To be regarded as bad science is a necessary (really, likely) but not a sufficient indicator of a paradigm shift towards truth. Not all "kooky" hypotheses are advancements, but virtually all major advancements are initially regarded as kooky.

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Yet the only ones that make it over the long haul, must first get through the wringer of MN based testing.I also think you missed Percy's point on your constant claiming how great an authority you are. More than one of us on this site are scientists. Some with more or less credits on our resume than you, though I would suspect many more recent.We could all start throwing out our shingles and beating on them to say that is why you should trust what I say. What point is there for this if we all have credentials?Your theories must sink or swim, unattached to the buouy of your degrees and/or past research successes. If anything it seems more like attaching lead weights, because it simply is not impressive to someone else who has a degree or other credentials.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

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but if you keep these insane people distracted by oh..say debates on EvC, they won't have the time or energy to devote to trying to kill everyone on the planet.

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I'm not so sure about that. Half the time I read their posts I fear my gut will split from laughing, the other half (when I try to communicate) I feel like I'm having an aneurism.They'll get us one way or the other.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)< !--UE-->[This message has been edited by holmes, 01-21-2004]

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Farting during deliverance is, actually, quite commen,

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Once again, I wonder at how one knows that this "God" is not actually a malign entity.Anti-sexual openess, anti-intellectual, pro fart, pro killing.Or am I mistaken and you were refering to Deliverance (the movie)? I have not had any problem with farting while watching it, but one scene in particular made my ass hurt.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)