Who won the Collins-Dawkins Debate?

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I admitt that science is the King-shit in this modern era, but I think that it ends at describing how the chocolate bar is made, and should never try to explain why it's so tastey.

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So, you believe science should be restricted from studying the physiology and psychology of taste?

Well, I would say that Stephen Colbert and Sasha Coen spends most of their time mocking conservatives and sexists/racists, respecitively.

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I think you are calling things the scientific method that are not the scientific method. They are based on scientific thinking, in that it is good to do things to test or improve the reliability and validity of personal testimony, but they are not scientific, because they are not necessarily repeatable in the lab.

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Just because a phenomena isn't repeatable in the lab doesn't mean it isn't fully amenable to scientific investigation.

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We could perhaps do things to test whether my aunt really saw a ghost. We could give her a lie detector test. Not conclusive, but we could make progress. I have no idea what a PKE meter is, nor why anyone would think any meter would be useful in finding ghosts, but if there's some good reason for that, we could try that. We could interview neighbors or people who have visited her and see if they've seen anything. We could interview friends and other relatives to help determine her honesty. But most of these aren't science, they're investigative reporting or history.

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We could also get brain scans of the people who saw ghosts, take detailed medical histories, and in general see if anything in the dscriptions of the incidences raised any medical red flags. Here's an interesting, rather classic, traditional account of a "haunting" from the 1920's that actually turned out to be explained by low level carbon monoxide poisoning. (It's a This American Life radio recording)

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I actually think you're mostly agreeing with me, except that you are calling things the scientific method that I don't.

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Well, no offense, but considering that Larni is a scientist, don't you think he's rather more equipped to say what is and is not science than you are?

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I was defending my position. Pushing an appeal.

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Which, before you were banned, you had every opportunity do so on the board.Instead, you chose to spam me and several others with long sermon-filled e-mails.I had to block your e-mail address twice, rob.Just who do you think you are to be harrassing people in this way?

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It was not harrassment, it was true and effective.

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It was most certainly harassment, and it was not effective.I never once read your e-mails. I just blocked your address.

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I couldn't use the old one. It was taken from me though it was my real name, Rob (Robert Scott Lockett).

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But you could have used ROB (all caps).You also tried to hide your identity when you returned but we recognized you by your writing. You even tried to play coy and pretended that you didn't know who "Rob" was.You also could have used any other username and stated up front who you were.But no, instead you used an alias, hid who you were, and denied it when asked.Tell me why anyone should respect you. Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.

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However, that's not the issue. The issue is, if there's things we know can't be tested by science, does that automatically make them extremely unlikely.

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That's the issue, and my argument is no it does not.

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But at the same time, such things, being undetectable by us, are very likely to be irrelevant.If they have no detectable effect upon nature, then they might as well not exist.

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You can't use self-correcting scientific methodologies to determine guilt in a courtroom,

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But you certainly can use it when evaluating the physical evidence. that's what forensics is all about.

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which is why we use a 12 person jury trial. Whether that 12 person jury trial is a joke depends a lot on the nature of the evidence and the emotional state of the trial. In a low emotion trial with strong evidence, a 12 person jury trial works pretty well.

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The thing is, though, it's been demonstrated that witnesses and juries can be terribly biased and very wrong. Unreliable.This is why we have been seeing a shift in our legal system towards forensic and DNA evidence being given much greater weight than eyewitness testimony.Blood spatter patterns, DNA, and ballistics are much less likely to get things right than an eyewitness.Appeals to reason over emotion tend to favor the proseution more, to be sure.

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I am saying that in some cases, experience matters more than science, and can reveal truth.

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So my point is that truth can be known, from internal knowledge.

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So, if I show you an optical illusion, and your brain is manipulated to "see" something that isn't there, is the illusion "true"?How can I tell "truth" from "illusion" without scientific testing?

You are quite right!I meant to say: Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.

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That's why I said, "some". All it takes is that one example of experience is true, in order to fulfill the premise;

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Experience can reveal truth.

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Therefore, it might be true that only faith can find out the truth about God in the same manner that only tasting a chocolate can reveal it's tastiness.

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If you think chocolate tastes good, that's only your subjective feelings about chocolate. It says nothing at all factual about chocolate as a substance.It's true that you know your subjective feelings about God, but there is nothing factual about God contained in your feelings about God.

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It is rare that there is an optical illusion.

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You think so? You don't see spots in front of your eyes after a photo flash goes off? That's an optical illusion, as is any retinal afterimage (the color change ones are fun.)How about the "moving" of the stripes on barber poles, spokes of wheels appearing to spin backwards, depth and perspective tricks used by artists (like you!)?

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Should we assume a religious experience is an illusion or a hallucination, in all cases?

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No.Neither should we assume that a single one of them is real.

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Really? I can't say I'd have been prone to guessing one way or another. This isn't really on topic, and your comment was probably just offhand, but wouldn't emotion be as likely to get someone hung as to let someone off?

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Ah, another typo.I should have written, "...favor prosecution", as in, emotion helps get people convicted.

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Also, as someone else pointed out, you did mean to say that DNA and ballistics are more likely to get things right than an eye witness, right?

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Yepers!

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So if I experience that chocolate is tastey, it's not true that it's tastey to me?

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Sure, but that's subjective to you only. Your own personal, individual truth is different from some kind of revealed, general "truth", right?You weren't talking about you own, personal subjective truth, are you?

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It is factual that chocolate is tastey to me. That IS true. It's not a matter of subjectivity or objectivity. It fulfills both.

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Taste is subjective. Something cannot be subjective and objective at the same time, hon!

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Who would actually be so silly as to say that chocolate being tastey to me, isn't true? Why on earth would I disbelieve reality?

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It is a truth, but it is a subjective truth only.It makes no sense at all to speak of my objective sense of your subjective experience.I have no way of verifying your subjective experience.Therefore, is cannot be objective.

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All that matters is that it's true, because of experience alone.

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Right. Your subjective experience.It is true that you, subjectively, believe chocolate tasty.It is true that you, subjectively, believe God exists.So what?What does anyone other than you know through your experiences?What "truth" does anyone other than you derive through your experiences?

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Experiences can reveal truth, and experience can produce falsehood.

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How do you come to the conclusioon that the falsehoods are, indeed, false?

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You were no doubt reveling in my demise and being banned. Why?

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No, not at all. I certainly didn't "revel", although I certainly was relieved.I think it's sad, actually, that someone is so wrapped up in their own self-righteousness that they can't manage to follow the basic rules of politeness and reasonableness on an internet debate board.

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There is no winning with lot's like yourself.

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Sure there is.Just follow the forum guidelines.Very simple.

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They won't! Not unless I tell them what they want to hear.

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Dude, we don't respect you because you spammed us!. It has nothing to do with the content of what you were saying. You were incredibly rude. You DO realize that spamming rude and intrusive, don't you, especially continuing to do so after being told to stop?The reason you preached to me by sending me spam e-mails was because you didn't want to abide by the forum rules.The reason I like to debate on the forum is because the rules exist and are enforced.You were just as annoying to me as a telemarketer, or as the many e-mails I get telling me how I can increase the size of my penis.You are exactly in the same class of annoyance.Also, you left out the most damning part of my last message, in a clear misrepresentation of what I wrote; a misquote.I wrote: Why should anyone respect anybody else, you ask?Because they don't act like you have acted, rob.Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.

Rob, you are a waste of my time.

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"Only" implies that there is less worth in one truth, over another truth.

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No, not at all.It means it applies in a very narrow way. It applies ONLY to you.So what?What does anyone other than you know through your experiences?What "truth" does anyone other than you derive through your experiences?