gee that was a real informative comment...:bugeye:
Evidence for the supernatural.
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gee that was a real informative comment...:bugeye:
Nice argumentation.
aren't there rules against ad-hominids?
there is the point right there..if its so obvious why bother responding to it like that?
answers
I understand you're not saying "proof", the problem is not really that but your first statement. Here it is: "there can be scientifically obtained evidence for the supernatural. I've added emphasis for a reason that should hopefully become apparent.
Many years ago people wandering through a forest would come across a very magical thing indeed - known as fairy rings. These rings indicated that fairies had been there the night before. The cause was seen as supernatural for the reason that they were not regularly occurring phenomena, (like day turning to night etc), were abrupt in their appearance and formed a wonderful circular pattern.
Some would, (and did), say that these fairy rings were evidence of the supernatural and took such sightings as signs of good or bad fortune.
A more bizarre example can be found in the case of a young girl from Lesotho who was born without a vagina. She got pregnant, (the case featured in the BMJ). I'm sure countless people claimed that this was a true miracle, performed by some deity or in it's contrary, some evil supernatural entity using her to give rise to the anti-christ or some such thing.
Let's for a moment pretend that we don't know how these things happen/ed. This is to say that we are missing a 'causal agent'. This is not evidence for a specific causal agent, instead it is a complete lack of evidence for any causal agent.
What we have is an unexplained phenomenon, not a phenomenon that supports claims to mystical entities.
We now know what how fairy rings are formed and we know how this young girl in Lesotho got pregnant even without a vagina, (to keep it short: she was engaged in oral sex with a man who was not her boyfriend. Her boyfriend stabbed her during the process and the sperm leaked through the stab wound into the required place - all very interesting).
When lacking a causal agent, are claims to natural cause and supernatural cause on equal footing?
The answer to this is "no" and there's a reason for it. We have actual knowledge of the natural world we live in. In the case of the girl, we know, for instance, that somehow or other sperm must have found it's way to her egg because the complete knowledge of the world shows that this is how people get pregnant. We have absolutely nothing to work on with any claim to the supernatural and any supernatural agent - be it gods, demons, mothmen, or invisible magical leprechauns is just as good a claim as any other given that we lack knowledge of the existence of any of them.
Even a "natural" claim such as 'aliens abducted and impregnated her' is of greater value - again because we know of natural, material creatures that are not human. We know that material enties can be intelligent, we know that other planets exist and so on and so forth.
A supernatural claim is not based upon any world knowledge but instead the complete absence of knowledge.
If we take your studies showing the efficiacy of prayer for example, what we can say is that for some currently unknown reason, those who are prayed for using x method have slightly better health than those who are not prayed for, (tests have shown that people fare worse in medical situations when they know they're being prayed for than those who are not prayed for at all). So what we have is a currently unknown causal agent. To list some 'possible' causal agents:
1. gods
2. Placebo
3. Aliens
4. Faulty test
5. False data
etc
As explained, any natural item on such list has real world basis, (we know of the placebo effect, we know that tests can be faulty or contain false data etc). At this stage we'd have to investigate which, if any, of these were accurate. We cannot do so with the supernatural items on such list. You cannot test to determine that (1) is correct - unless such beings have recently sent a memo expressing their consent to be probed and prodded. You cannot provide any evidence for (1), you can simply be as of yet unaware of natural causal agent.
Summary:
1. We can say that such studies are 'evidence' of an event, (in this case the improved health of certain patients under certain conditions), but that says nothing of any causal agent, it merely recognises a phenomenon - assuming enough tests have been done, reproducibility is essential.
Once we have that consistent phenomena (apples fall to the ground/people have better health when prayed for etc), we then attempt to work out the causal agent for it. It is not evidence of any causal agent, it is just evidence of the existence of a specific phenomenon.
2. When postulating what might be the causal agent, anything with a basis known to reality is always going to be of more value than one which has no basis in known reality.
Regards,
--------
NMSquirrel
You make a quite common mistake that comes in two parts:
1. There is abundant evidence that many places throughout history have suffered floods and indeed still do. We do, after all, live on a planet that is two-thirds water - we'd expect nothing less. There is however no evidence, (all the evidence in fact says the opposite), that there has ever been a global flood let alone one a few thousand years ago. And this is ignoring the very simple fact that such story forces us to abandon the very laws of physics, biology and so on - something theists seem all too eager to do.
2. It is true that countless cultures have flood stories - and given (1) it's of little surprise. We are familiar with and aware of stories beind adopted by foreign cultures as well - in this instance the adoption of the global flood story by the Jews from the Akkadians, Babylonians and back to the Sumerians.
We know that several thousand years ago, cultures were small, didn't have access to world news let alone know much about the rest of the world or if there even was a 'rest of it'. The world pretty much ended at the horizon. It would not be surprising to see flood stories taking on a grand or global scale even if the reality was that they were local floods simply due to the very limited scope of ancient cultures.
Important that confusion be avoided here. There are scientists that have faith and beliefs and whatnot, but scientists are not 'science' - the methods of which have no room for 'faith' and 'belief'.
Drink not wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing -Judges 13:4
God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine -Genesis 20:28
Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart - Ecclesiastes 9:7 (Ad nauseum)
Explained earlier. For more information, learn what the scientific method entails and you'll have your answer.
Regards,
------
The Esotericist
With respect, I don't have much time for baseless conspiracy theories always involving Mr.X or the cigarette smoking man who - for reasons explained or unexplained, are out to get you. What exactly are this 'ruling elite' up to here? They are funding this to... what? Get you to stop releasing so much toxins into the atmosphere?
You have more than enough 'imagination' for the both of us.
I think this is where we part ways Esotericist, this seems to be turning into a personal, emotional issue for you.
Regards,
I understand you're not saying "proof", the problem is not really that but your first statement. Here it is: "there can be scientifically obtained evidence for the supernatural. I've added emphasis for a reason that should hopefully become apparent.
Many years ago people wandering through a forest would come across a very magical thing indeed - known as fairy rings. These rings indicated that fairies had been there the night before. The cause was seen as supernatural for the reason that they were not regularly occurring phenomena, (like day turning to night etc), were abrupt in their appearance and formed a wonderful circular pattern.
Some would, (and did), say that these fairy rings were evidence of the supernatural and took such sightings as signs of good or bad fortune.
A more bizarre example can be found in the case of a young girl from Lesotho who was born without a vagina. She got pregnant, (the case featured in the BMJ). I'm sure countless people claimed that this was a true miracle, performed by some deity or in it's contrary, some evil supernatural entity using her to give rise to the anti-christ or some such thing.
Let's for a moment pretend that we don't know how these things happen/ed. This is to say that we are missing a 'causal agent'. This is not evidence for a specific causal agent, instead it is a complete lack of evidence for any causal agent.
What we have is an unexplained phenomenon, not a phenomenon that supports claims to mystical entities.
We now know what how fairy rings are formed and we know how this young girl in Lesotho got pregnant even without a vagina, (to keep it short: she was engaged in oral sex with a man who was not her boyfriend. Her boyfriend stabbed her during the process and the sperm leaked through the stab wound into the required place - all very interesting).
When lacking a causal agent, are claims to natural cause and supernatural cause on equal footing?
The answer to this is "no" and there's a reason for it. We have actual knowledge of the natural world we live in. In the case of the girl, we know, for instance, that somehow or other sperm must have found it's way to her egg because the complete knowledge of the world shows that this is how people get pregnant. We have absolutely nothing to work on with any claim to the supernatural and any supernatural agent - be it gods, demons, mothmen, or invisible magical leprechauns is just as good a claim as any other given that we lack knowledge of the existence of any of them.
Even a "natural" claim such as 'aliens abducted and impregnated her' is of greater value - again because we know of natural, material creatures that are not human. We know that material enties can be intelligent, we know that other planets exist and so on and so forth.
A supernatural claim is not based upon any world knowledge but instead the complete absence of knowledge.
If we take your studies showing the efficiacy of prayer for example, what we can say is that for some currently unknown reason, those who are prayed for using x method have slightly better health than those who are not prayed for, (tests have shown that people fare worse in medical situations when they know they're being prayed for than those who are not prayed for at all). So what we have is a currently unknown causal agent. To list some 'possible' causal agents:
1. gods
2. Placebo
3. Aliens
4. Faulty test
5. False data
etc
As explained, any natural item on such list has real world basis, (we know of the placebo effect, we know that tests can be faulty or contain false data etc). At this stage we'd have to investigate which, if any, of these were accurate. We cannot do so with the supernatural items on such list. You cannot test to determine that (1) is correct - unless such beings have recently sent a memo expressing their consent to be probed and prodded. You cannot provide any evidence for (1), you can simply be as of yet unaware of natural causal agent.
Summary:
1. We can say that such studies are 'evidence' of an event, (in this case the improved health of certain patients under certain conditions), but that says nothing of any causal agent, it merely recognises a phenomenon - assuming enough tests have been done, reproducibility is essential.
Once we have that consistent phenomena (apples fall to the ground/people have better health when prayed for etc), we then attempt to work out the causal agent for it. It is not evidence of any causal agent, it is just evidence of the existence of a specific phenomenon.
2. When postulating what might be the causal agent, anything with a basis known to reality is always going to be of more value than one which has no basis in known reality.
Regards,
--------
NMSquirrel
You make a quite common mistake that comes in two parts:
1. There is abundant evidence that many places throughout history have suffered floods and indeed still do. We do, after all, live on a planet that is two-thirds water - we'd expect nothing less. There is however no evidence, (all the evidence in fact says the opposite), that there has ever been a global flood let alone one a few thousand years ago. And this is ignoring the very simple fact that such story forces us to abandon the very laws of physics, biology and so on - something theists seem all too eager to do.
2. It is true that countless cultures have flood stories - and given (1) it's of little surprise. We are familiar with and aware of stories beind adopted by foreign cultures as well - in this instance the adoption of the global flood story by the Jews from the Akkadians, Babylonians and back to the Sumerians.
We know that several thousand years ago, cultures were small, didn't have access to world news let alone know much about the rest of the world or if there even was a 'rest of it'. The world pretty much ended at the horizon. It would not be surprising to see flood stories taking on a grand or global scale even if the reality was that they were local floods simply due to the very limited scope of ancient cultures.
Important that confusion be avoided here. There are scientists that have faith and beliefs and whatnot, but scientists are not 'science' - the methods of which have no room for 'faith' and 'belief'.
Drink not wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing -Judges 13:4
God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine -Genesis 20:28
Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart - Ecclesiastes 9:7 (Ad nauseum)
Explained earlier. For more information, learn what the scientific method entails and you'll have your answer.
Regards,
------
The Esotericist
With respect, I don't have much time for baseless conspiracy theories always involving Mr.X or the cigarette smoking man who - for reasons explained or unexplained, are out to get you. What exactly are this 'ruling elite' up to here? They are funding this to... what? Get you to stop releasing so much toxins into the atmosphere?
You have more than enough 'imagination' for the both of us.
I think this is where we part ways Esotericist, this seems to be turning into a personal, emotional issue for you.
Regards,
this does not account for theories of global tectonic shifts..
actually i expected you to argue with the noah part as i intentionally left that out..
ok..i can accept that..
science is 2+2 is 4
scientist determine what is 2 what is + what is 4 etc..
the rest of it..
A certain man of Zorah, named Manoah, from the clan of the Danites, had a wife who was sterile and remained childless. 3 The angel of the LORD appeared to her and said, "You are sterile and childless, but you are going to conceive and have a son. 4 Now see to it that you drink no wine or other fermented drink and that you do not eat anything unclean, 5 because you will conceive and give birth to a son. No razor may be used on his head, because the boy is to be a Nazirite, set apart to God from birth, and he will begin the deliverance of Israel from the hands of the Philistines."
that advice was given to a specific person to help him to concieve a child..
contextual integrity please..
Great reply mate. Thanks for taking the time to lay it all out logically and step by step for me.
I agree with you from the start, but I think I just didn't put my views across in as clear a way as you.
Basically I believe that there can be evidence for the supernatural, however that evidence is always going to point more strongly to a natural phenomenon that is yet unknown. And that's due to the simple fact that a natural phenomenon that is yet unknown is a much more parsimonious explanation for the evidence than a supernatural phenomenon. However this 'unknown' isn't even required, natural phenomenon that is already known explains away all the supernatural claims I have heard of.
The point of this whole thread was simply to see what evidence people are using to justify their supernatural beliefs. I had no expectation that any of it would be convincing proof of the supernatural.
You're right. There are a lot of pointless complicated words used in science and psychology. It annoys me too.
I'm studying right now and this is what I just read "The assumptions of the test must be met, or else the results may be spurious. Most importantly, the regression slopes (predicting the DV from the covariate) must be the same for each group (strong assumption). I.e., homogeneity of regression."
Which could be said like this "The test must be used in instances where it's designed to be used. It's only meant to be used when there is no interaction present between the two regression slopes."
You get sick of all the needless complication after a while. But then you fall into the trap of complicating things yourself...
i just deleted everything i understood....
sounds like..you gotta use the right tool for the right job..
i see that alot on sciforums...
its a communication thing..
if there is a way to misinterpret what is posted, it will be (murphys law )
so some users end up using bigger word to try to avoid any misinterpretations,(and i think to condense their thoughts into a single post)
but deeper understandings require more information with simpler words(not everyone knows all the big words)
When you have all the money you could ever want, then the sport is politics, the ultimate sport being of course, international politics, and summarily, world domination.
By the way: The Tri-Lateral Commission is not a "conspiracy theory". Neither is the CFR.
Trilateral Commission 1156 Fifteenth Street, NW, Washington, DC 20005 202-467-5410
Council on Foreign Relations founded in 1921 and based at 58 East 68th Street (corner Park Avenue) in New York City, with an additional office at
1779 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20036 202-518.3400.
Any questions? I'd just like the people around here to start thinking. . . to become, well, dangerous, and not be pawns of the international ruling elites. But. . . . as they have set up the public education systems in all the western countries, and have set up the university systems, and fund all the endowments, and own all of the main stream media, well, it's almost impossible to deprogram my fellow citizens. You really do have to wake up on your own. And even then trying to figure out what is truth, and what is disinformation is a constant battle. It's really why I think they are getting close to censoring the internet, just like they do in China. It won't be too long if too many people start waking up to these evil criminals. If you guys stay asleep though, our internet won't be censored. lol
I think that will be conveniently filed under "Conspiracy Theory", meaning
there is no need to respond.
jan.
there is no need to respond.
jan.
NMSquirrel
Kindly explain, I am unsure how this fits with what we're talking about - which was:
1. We do expect floods to occur in many places around the world.
2. We do expect people to talk about such floods and for such floods to be mentioned as part of their stories and legends.
3. Claims to 'global floods' have been refuted by modern day science. This doesn't make those ancient people bad people, simply ignorant - something we would expect.
4. These ancient flood stories, in their very claims, typically force us to abandon physics, biology, geology and well, everything else we actually know about the world.
5. In accepting the Noachian flood, you've just dismissed everything you'll ever learn in science class.
Good.
Yes, you're right - my apologies. Unfortunately I was trying to make a point the quick way and so didn't check that specific source. In hindsight, I clearly should have done.
Regards,
------
The Esotericist
To be honest with you, I found your post so amusing that I cannot help but respond to it, although I doubt I can be anywhere near as funny.
I see. Let me get this straight then:
There's these really rich people who have taken over science and scientists and got them to lie about global warming because in doing so, and us no longer using cfc's, they achieve world domination?
If that's "world domination", it's certainly more boring than it ever was when depicted in the James Bond movies. At least they had space rays and a secret compound hidden in the bottom of a volcano.
I don't get how anyone is really being a pawn to anyone by recognising global warming. Ok, I bought some low energy lighbulbs... Ooooh, I'm a slave to the system, they have world domination! *chuckle*
However, I have just thrown out all my copies of New Scientist and bought the Anarchists Cookbook instead, (oh and destroyed my energy saving lighbulbs too).
-----
answers
Once again I can only express disagreement here. I would - as said earlier - state that there can be no evidence for the 'supernatural', simply no current evidence for any causal agent. Perhaps this is of more benefit:
Empirical testing relies fundamentally upon use of the lawful regularities of nature that science has been able to discover and sometimes codify in natural laws. For example, telescopic observations implicitly depend upon the laws governing optical phenomena. If we could not rely upon these laws—if, for example, even when under the same conditions, telescopes occasionally magnified properly and at other occasions produced various distortions dependent, say, upon the whims of some supernatural entity—we could not trust telescopic observations as evidence. The same problem would apply to any type of observational data. Lawful regularity is at the very heart of the naturalistic world view and to say that some power is supernatural is, by definition, to say that it can violate natural laws. So, when argued that science should allow in supernatural powers and intelligences they are in effect saying that it should allow beings that are above the law). But without the constraint of lawful regularity, inductive evidential inference cannot get off the ground..
Of course science is based upon a philosophical system, but not one that is extravagantspeculation. Science operates by empirical principles of observational testing; hypotheses must be confirmed or disconfirmed by reference to empirical data. One supports a hypothesis by showing consequences obtained that would follow if what is hypothesized were to be so in fact. Darwin spent most of the Origin of Species applying this procedure, demonstrating how a wide variety of biological phenomena could have been produced by (and thus explained by) the simple causal processes of the theory. Supernatural theories, on the other hand, can give no guidance about what follows or does not follow from their supernatural components. For instance, nothing definite can be said about the processes that would connect a given effect with the will of the supernatural agent—God may simply say the word and zap anything into or out of existence. Furthermore, in any situation, any pattern (or lack of pattern) of data is compatible with the general hypothesis of a supernatural agent unconstrained by natural law. Because of this feature, supernatural hypotheses remain immune from disconfirmation.
Excerpted from Robert T. Pennock, Tower of Babel: The evidence against the new creationism (Cambridge, MA: Bradford Book/MIT Press, 1999), 88–89
Kindly explain, I am unsure how this fits with what we're talking about - which was:
1. We do expect floods to occur in many places around the world.
2. We do expect people to talk about such floods and for such floods to be mentioned as part of their stories and legends.
3. Claims to 'global floods' have been refuted by modern day science. This doesn't make those ancient people bad people, simply ignorant - something we would expect.
4. These ancient flood stories, in their very claims, typically force us to abandon physics, biology, geology and well, everything else we actually know about the world.
5. In accepting the Noachian flood, you've just dismissed everything you'll ever learn in science class.
Good.
Yes, you're right - my apologies. Unfortunately I was trying to make a point the quick way and so didn't check that specific source. In hindsight, I clearly should have done.
Regards,
------
The Esotericist
To be honest with you, I found your post so amusing that I cannot help but respond to it, although I doubt I can be anywhere near as funny.
I see. Let me get this straight then:
There's these really rich people who have taken over science and scientists and got them to lie about global warming because in doing so, and us no longer using cfc's, they achieve world domination?
If that's "world domination", it's certainly more boring than it ever was when depicted in the James Bond movies. At least they had space rays and a secret compound hidden in the bottom of a volcano.
I don't get how anyone is really being a pawn to anyone by recognising global warming. Ok, I bought some low energy lighbulbs... Ooooh, I'm a slave to the system, they have world domination! *chuckle*
However, I have just thrown out all my copies of New Scientist and bought the Anarchists Cookbook instead, (oh and destroyed my energy saving lighbulbs too).
-----
answers
Once again I can only express disagreement here. I would - as said earlier - state that there can be no evidence for the 'supernatural', simply no current evidence for any causal agent. Perhaps this is of more benefit:
Empirical testing relies fundamentally upon use of the lawful regularities of nature that science has been able to discover and sometimes codify in natural laws. For example, telescopic observations implicitly depend upon the laws governing optical phenomena. If we could not rely upon these laws—if, for example, even when under the same conditions, telescopes occasionally magnified properly and at other occasions produced various distortions dependent, say, upon the whims of some supernatural entity—we could not trust telescopic observations as evidence. The same problem would apply to any type of observational data. Lawful regularity is at the very heart of the naturalistic world view and to say that some power is supernatural is, by definition, to say that it can violate natural laws. So, when argued that science should allow in supernatural powers and intelligences they are in effect saying that it should allow beings that are above the law). But without the constraint of lawful regularity, inductive evidential inference cannot get off the ground..
Of course science is based upon a philosophical system, but not one that is extravagantspeculation. Science operates by empirical principles of observational testing; hypotheses must be confirmed or disconfirmed by reference to empirical data. One supports a hypothesis by showing consequences obtained that would follow if what is hypothesized were to be so in fact. Darwin spent most of the Origin of Species applying this procedure, demonstrating how a wide variety of biological phenomena could have been produced by (and thus explained by) the simple causal processes of the theory. Supernatural theories, on the other hand, can give no guidance about what follows or does not follow from their supernatural components. For instance, nothing definite can be said about the processes that would connect a given effect with the will of the supernatural agent—God may simply say the word and zap anything into or out of existence. Furthermore, in any situation, any pattern (or lack of pattern) of data is compatible with the general hypothesis of a supernatural agent unconstrained by natural law. Because of this feature, supernatural hypotheses remain immune from disconfirmation.
Excerpted from Robert T. Pennock, Tower of Babel: The evidence against the new creationism (Cambridge, MA: Bradford Book/MIT Press, 1999), 88–89
a whole earth tectonic shift would account for a 'global' flood..
if the whole of earths crust had shifted during some event in history.
Cataclysmic pole shift hypothesis
found this also..interesting video..(don't have patience to see if has anything to do with my point..)
Greatest I am
Valued Senior Member
Please Google
Neil deGrasse Tyson-Intelligent Design
To see what he thinks of a creator.
Regards
DL
Neil deGrasse Tyson-Intelligent Design
To see what he thinks of a creator.
Regards
DL
when i looked for those link most of them were in the context of 'last days' scenarios..so i'll be giving up now...:shrug:
This is a field that I am open minded about, but quite unsure.
One train of thought is to compare time as a disk, like the old LP albums, with the track running continuously. On occasion, it is possible to see 'over the rim' into another track and see something from the past.
An example of this is a local one to me. Several times in a local park, roman soldiers have been seen marching along in silence along an existing roman road that is now buried beneath the top soil to a depth of approx 18 inches to 2 feet. The soldiers are actually marching with the bottom 2 feet or so of their bodies on the 'old road'. They are still in their own time track!!
Are ghostly 'apparitions' of the same? Are they time slips of past events? It is said that a person who dies a particularly violent death is somehow projected into the local stonework as an ethereal memory which 'leaks' to the perceptive person.
I also do not believe the supernatural can be tied to a religious belief, hence this is the wrong section for this thread.
One train of thought is to compare time as a disk, like the old LP albums, with the track running continuously. On occasion, it is possible to see 'over the rim' into another track and see something from the past.
An example of this is a local one to me. Several times in a local park, roman soldiers have been seen marching along in silence along an existing roman road that is now buried beneath the top soil to a depth of approx 18 inches to 2 feet. The soldiers are actually marching with the bottom 2 feet or so of their bodies on the 'old road'. They are still in their own time track!!
Are ghostly 'apparitions' of the same? Are they time slips of past events? It is said that a person who dies a particularly violent death is somehow projected into the local stonework as an ethereal memory which 'leaks' to the perceptive person.
I also do not believe the supernatural can be tied to a religious belief, hence this is the wrong section for this thread.