Belief Versus The Scientific Method

I have noticed that *we* are all over the map in regards to my ongoing assertions and discussions regarding my personal beliefs.

In this proposed topic, I want to gather all of the various discussions which seem to hijack nearly every topic and bring them all here.

(Yes Percy and Moose, it is my fault that so many other topics melted in to this ongoing discussion between myself and the peanut gallery.)

For the record, the peanut gallery includes most other active posters on EvC Forum and anyone is free to join this discussion, but my main antagonists are Jar, AZ Paul3, Ringo, Tangle, PaulK, dwise1,and Stile. (Whom I respect more than the others as he is nicer.)

Can we put this in The Great Debate Thread? And by the way, Percy...you and I never argue. Its ok to join the fray if you have any points which you feel that the others have not addressed.

Edited by Phat, : No reason given.

Edited by Phat, : added dwise1 to peanut gallery list

Thread copied here from the Belief Versus The Scientific Method thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

It might be worthwhile covering some very basic terms that so often get misused.

Reports: Reports are simply recitations of the facts under consideration.

Inference: Inference are additional statements not directly found in the report.

Let's start with these two since they are almost always evident in EVERY post from Phat and yet almost never identified.

An example are the alleged alleged "Supernatural" events he and others claim to have experienced.

A report of such an event would be who was there, when it happened, what was heard or smelled or tasted or seen.

But any statement about supernatural or demonic or spiritual causes is not a report, it is an inference.

Now inferences can be very important and in science inference is a major tool. A geologist can look at the shape of a valley and infer that it was produced by a glacier or a river or geological slippage or faults. But those inferences then get tested to see if there is any validity.

But that step never happens with spiritual or supernatural or demonic events. In those events the inference is made and then simply adopted and included in the Report as though it were factual and not an unsupported inference.

So if we are going to talk about belief versus the Scientific Method it is important to also understand words and language and not call an inference a report.

Edited by jar, : applin spallin

Edited by jar, : No reason given.

Belief vs the scientific method?

As in compare and contrast for efficacy?

Isn't that like comparing a Dick and Jane reader with the Feynman lectures?

The difference in efficacy has been established and recognized for quite some time, now. I'm afraid it's well past time to think anyone here could effectively challenge the conclusion already reached that science is the superior ontology.

So, what is the purpose of this thread?

First off, I'm a bit mad at Percy for placing this in the Science Forums as it insists that your evidence-based approach win by default. There are some things, however, for which no objective evidence is possible. My plan is to bring all of our scattered arguments here and I would have attempted to explain my argument more fully but evidently since we are stuck in a Science Forum, my assertions, experiences, beliefs and interpretations will get shot down without an argument.

AZPaul3 writes: The difference in efficacy has been established and recognized for quite some time, now. I'm afraid it's well past time to think anyone here could effectively challenge the conclusion already reached that science is the superior ontology.

Bullshit. Fuck off. You all should be glad that I even bother arguing with you. This place would be deader than a door nail if we never debated. And forgive my carnal nature in cussing you out, but it is far from conclusive that belief is dead. Either that or 50% of the population is delusional. And you lefties have no basis for insisting that it is not you as well.

The big possibility Phat is that you might learn how to think; and learn the tools that will allow you to understand how much you try to avoid thinking and reality.

Consider the post on the difference between reporting and inference.

Stop and look at you posts and try to identify how often you mistake reporting and inference.

As long as you show me politely where I am inferring rather than reporting, I will go along with this topic in a Science forum. When you start calling me stupid and bash the CCoI as pitiful and disgusting, you are going to get ignored by me and we wont have a discussion. I plan on fully explaining my thought process even though it may fall short of scientific critically thinking standards.

As you know, I have long objected to several of your ideas.
Among them:

That every belief needs to pass the evidence test before it is taken seriously.

That all beliefs should be taken at equal value.

We know darn well that Loki or Coyote are not even in the same league with Jesus Christ and if we don't, I give up trying to convince you and will simply pray for you in the future.

Now I will consider this argument if you argue it using scripture, but if you simply say that its a CCoI fantasy due to lack of evidence I will walk away. I have much more productive uses of my time than to get embarrassed in front of an impressionable group of lurkers who are already poisoned by your explanations regarding Theology and Belief.

Edited by Phat, : added ranting

---

"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." ~Mark Twain "
***
“…far from science having buried God, not only do the results of science point towards his existence, but the scientific enterprise itself is validated by his existence.”- Dr.John Lennox

“The whole war between the atheist and the theist comes down to this: the atheist believes a 'what' created the universe; the theist believes a 'who' created the universe.”
- Criss Jami, Killo

“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of a doubt, what is laid before him.” — Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You
(1894).

Look at your accounts of your experience Phat.

What parts are actual reporting and what parts are pure inference?

I'm a bit mad at Percy for placing this in the Science Forums as it insists that your evidence-based approach win by default.

I don't think it would make a difference what forum this was in. It wouldn't change my approach to your arguments and you shouldn't change yours because of it either.

There are some things, however, for which no objective evidence is possible.

Yes, there are, like garden fairies, YHWH, the luminiferous aether.

...but evidently since we are stuck in a Science Forum, my assertions, experiences, beliefs and interpretations will get shot down without an argument.

It won't make any difference, Phat. Wrong is just wrong no matter what forum it's in.

forgive my carnal nature in cussing you out...

No need. We're good.

...but it is far from conclusive that belief is dead.

So very true, which is a situation I hope changes this next century.

Either that or 50% of the population is delusional. And you lefties have no basis for insisting that it is not you as well.

You can say we are all delusional, Phat. Question is whether we live a good, humane, let's help people live better kinda delusion or the bad, inhumane, let's kill people kinda delusion. Your kind doesn't fair very well.

Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

I plan on fully explaining my thought process even though it may fall short of scientific critically thinking standards.

Yes, please do. Just understand that you are not doing so in a vacuum. You will be challenged, drawn out, drawn down, drawn and quartered, eviscerated, hanged and harrassed and verbally pilloried.

Do you really want to do this? As you have observed, you've already lost.

jar writes: Look at your accounts of your experience Phat. What parts are actual reporting and what parts are pure inference?

I turned to an old friend, in order to better understand reports and inferences.

Language In Thought & Action writes: Most of our knowledge, acquired from parents, friends, schools, newspapers, books, conversation, speeches, and radio, is received verbally . All our knowledge of history, for example, comes to us only in words. The only proof we have that the Battle of Waterloo ever took place is that we have had reports to that effect. These reports are not given us bv people who saw it happen, but are based on other reports: reports of reports of reports, which go back ulti- mately to the first-hand reports given by people who did see it hap- pening. It is through reports, then, and through reports of reports, that we receive most knowledge: about government, about what is happening in China, about what picture is showing at the down- town theater — in fact, about anything which we do not know through direct experience.

Critics could thus argue that the only knowledge that humans could ever have about Jesus Christ stem from first hand reports passed down through the centuries. Tangle likes to remind me that the only place the character could exist would be in reports and legends.

Let us call this world that comes to us through words the verbal world, as opposed to the world we know or are capable of knowing through our own experience, which we shall call the extensional world .

I will say that though much of my initial understanding of Christianity was entirely through reports, (books I had read, people I had listened to) my passion began when I was Born Again.

LIT&A writes: The human being, like any other creature, begins to make his acquaintance with the extensional world from infancy. Unlike other creatures, however, he begins to receive, as soon as he can learn to understand, reports, reports of reports, reports of reports of reports. In addition he receives inferences made from reports, inferences made from other inferences, and so on.

Thus Hayakawa describes the charge made by Tangle and others that Christianity is entirely cultural and is based on reports and inferences. I argue that my passion began through extensional experience.

Reports are verifiable. We may not always be able to verify them ourselves, since we cannot track down the evidence for every piece of history we know...But if we are roughly agreed on the names of things, on what constitutes a “foot,” “yard,” “bushel,” and so on, and on how to measure time, there is relatively little danger of our misunderstanding each other. Even in a world such as we have today, in which everybody seems to be quarreling with everybody else, we still to a surprising degree trust each other's reports . We ask directions of total strangers when we are traveling. We follow directions on road signs without being suspicious of the people who put them up. We read books of infor- mation about science, mathematics, automotive engineering, travel, geography, the history of costume, and other such factual matters, and we usually assume that the author is doing his best to tell us as truly as he can what he knows.(...)We still have an enormous amount of re- liable information available and that deliberate misinformation, ex- cept in warfare, still is more the exception than the rule. The desire for self-preservation that compelled men to evolve means for the exchange of information also compels them to regard the giving of false information as profoundly reprehensible. .

Now to be fair, many of you regard scripture as an entirely human created story. Thus I can give you information which lines up with scripture and you are still more likely to turn to science to verify the information or to place it in the context of critical thought. Granted, hayakawa states:

...At its highest development, the language of reports is the language of science. By “highest development” we mean greatest general usefulness.

But how, it may be asked, can there be agreement about even this much among people who are at each other’s throats about practically everything else: political philosophies, ethical ideas, religious beliefs, and the survival of my business versus the survival of yours? The answer is that circumstances compel men to agree, whether they wish to or not. If, for example, there were a dozen different religious sects in the United States, each insisting on its own way of naming the time of the day and the days of the year, the mere necessity of having a dozen dif- ferent calendars, a dozen different kinds of watches, and a dozen sets of schedules for business hours, trains, and radio programs, to say nothing of the effort that would be required for translating terms from one nomenclature to another, would make life as we know it impossible.

Which is a good argument to stick with Christianity and quit trying to introduce every god created!

Your kind doesn't fair very well.

Since when did "my kind" advocate killing anything other than demons?

Since Genesis 7:21