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Post by PreachCaleb on Sept 20, 2017 22:51:30 GMT
That's not the same. Knowing how to compare sizes is not the same as knowing how to add them into a coherent and meaningful amount. Two is not just a label. It's a numerical value. Crucial in calculations. Essentially, it's a different as claiming to know how rockets work because you've lit some fuses versus actually understanding the chemistry behind the fuses. Labels are created for the purpose of communication. Call it what you want; it makes no difference. Yes, it does. You need to know how to manipulate the values correctly and accurately. Saying, "I have more" doesn't mean anything to science.
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Post by PreachCaleb on Sept 20, 2017 22:51:59 GMT
Just need to clarify here for our discussion here... Which natural laws? The ones we know about in 2017? Our understanding of the universe is always changing. A lot of what was science fiction 200 years ago, is fact today. Our understanding does not change that which is understood. If we're going to base reality on what we might not yet understand or know, then literally anything should be possible - even the impossible. That's not how that works.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2017 0:59:47 GMT
If millions of people reported seeing A ghost, then sure, that would be super impressive. But that never, ever happens. As I understand, there HAVE been a few cases where several hundred to a couple of thousand people witnessed seeing the same UFO at the same time... There are cases where large numbers of people report seeing something - the Phoenix lights is an example. But 'a light in the sky' is only a UFO in a literal sense. There are no cases I know of of large numbers of people seeing an alien spacecraft. Put it this way - to give you a flavour of what I'm talking about, think of the beginning of The Day The Earth Stood Still, with a UFO landing in a city park in front of thousands of witnesses. Or the start of V, with an alien fleet arriving over the major cities of the world. Give me something like that and I'll happily be a believer. I agree with you, though I suspect we have different ideas of what the problem might be. Yes, that is completely correct. Anecdotal reports are not valid enough to be considered as serious evidence in a scientific sense. And for very good reason, since it has been proven that eyewitness testimony, especially of unexpected one-off events, is amongst the weakest forms of evidence there is. And no, it doesn't get much better when you look at so-called "highly trained people", who are just about as likely to make egregious mistakes as anybody else. This is why scientists require results to be measurable and repeatable under controlled conditions. Which is the thing people don't seem to get about science. All those "theories" - germ theory, atomic theory, the theory of gravity, the theory of evolution, etc - those aren't just guesses that scientists think are neat ideas. Every one of them was only accepted after an incredibly rigorous process of testing and gathering evidence over and over and over again. They were accepted only because according to the evidence available, there was literally nothing else that could possibly explain it. People complain that science sets the evidence bar too high, apparently not realising that that's how high the bar was for every single thing science accepts, and those things are only accepted because they cleared that bar. Because our legal system is founded in principles that date back hundreds of years, to a time when we didn't really understand much about evidence. And because people have a fundamentally flawed idea of how reliable eyewitness testimony is. If you're ever up for jury duty, tell a lawyer you took a course in the critical examination of evidence. You'll get thrown out of jury pool so fast your head will spin! He could have dropped it and only thought a force yanked it from his hand. He could have suffered some muscular twitch like a myoclonic jerk and interpreted it as it being yanked. He could have knocked it against something without realising he did it and assumed that it was knocked out of his hand by a force. Etc, etc. But even if we rule that out, the only thing to do with that is to say "it is unexplained". You suggest a spirit might have done it, right? But how do you know there are spirits in existence at all? Even if they do exist, how do you know they are capable of yanking things out of people's hands? Your explanation assumes things not in evidence. Right, of course they do. But when unexplained things happen, the only reasonable thing to do is search for additional evidence - by trying to recreate the circumstances and reproducing the result in order to find a causal agency. And if you can't do that, then you simply stop at "this is unexplained." But you are absolutely not justified in saying "I cannot think of any explanation for this... and therefore it is probably spirits." Unexplained means just that. It doesn't mean whatever explanation you like can be assumed to be true. I don't know that many people actually do that. Certainly I don't. The thing is that much of the 'research' done on the subject actually is ridiculous. Sure, but that runs both ways. And I find a great deal more close-mindedness on the part of believers than I ever do on the part of skeptics. Whenever there is a story about spirits, or UFOs, or whatever, the conversation I see from skeptics goes something like "Well maybe it's supernatural/aliens/bigfoot/nessie/dowsing, but then maybe it's just a camera artifact, or fakery, or people seeing something they didn't understand, or... as things stand, the evidence just isn't compelling." And the believer's response is almost always something like "No, it's impossible that it is any of those things, you are close minded and won't believe that it's actually something science doesn't understand!" Which is the real close minded attitude.
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Post by PreachCaleb on Sept 21, 2017 16:44:58 GMT
That's not how that works. Sure it is. If we're going to reject what we think we understand in favor of what we might understand in the future, then nothing should be considered impossible. "If anything is possible, then it isn't serious scientific theory." -Lawrence Krauss Who said to reject what we understand?
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Post by PreachCaleb on Sept 21, 2017 16:46:30 GMT
Yes, it does. You need to know how to manipulate the values correctly and accurately. Saying, "I have more" doesn't mean anything to science. I'll rephrase: I don't need "smart, hard working people" to tell me that "[this] plus [that]" equals "[this] and [that]," or that if something is moved, it's no longer located where it was before it was moved. The names that are assigned to the values have no bearing on the values themselves. Science does not create. Yes, you did need those people to teach it to you. You might not need them now for basic arithmetic, but you still need them for advanced theories. Exactly. Science explains.
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Post by faustus5 on Sept 27, 2017 11:36:50 GMT
Things that are self-evident do not require advanced theories, let alone "experts" from which to learn them. Nothing can create itself. Simplify. You are a perfect example of why it is complete and utter folly to ignore the work of philosophers and scientists who have been thinking hard about complex subjects for generations before you. Nothing about this is "self evident". It is both arrogant and utterly idiotic for you to think your personal intuitions suffice for careful, analytic thought. Please develop something that at least approaches basic intellectual curiosity about objective reality.
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Post by PreachCaleb on Sept 27, 2017 13:11:36 GMT
Yes, you did need those people to teach it to you. You might not need them now for basic arithmetic, but you still need them for advanced theories. Exactly. Science explains. Things that are self-evident do not require advanced theories, let alone "experts" from which to learn them. Nothing can create itself. Simplify. That's not how that works. This isn't solving fractions.
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Post by PreachCaleb on Sept 28, 2017 23:51:48 GMT
Did you just say existence is simpler than solving fractions? Yikes.
Just because you can't explain something, does not make it supernatural. We're not cavemen anymore.
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Post by marsexplorer on Sept 29, 2017 2:29:34 GMT
Since no one seems to want to answer your question I will.
Matter came from nothing.
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Post by faustus5 on Sept 29, 2017 10:33:02 GMT
It's much simpler than solving fractions. Matter exists. It either created itself, came into existence from literally nothing by literally nothing, or it has existed forever. Which of these are subject to explanation according to natural laws? There are serious scientific models for all of these possibilities. Educate yourself.
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Post by FilmFlaneur on Oct 4, 2017 9:40:39 GMT
Okay, just because people think a certain way, or hold certain beliefs, doesn't necessarily mean those thoughts or beliefs are based in actual fact..........but simply based on the MILLIONS of stories, over many, many centuries, of all the ghostly visits, and/or UFO/alien encounters that people have reported, one is naturally lead to the conclusion that there MUST be something to BOTH. What.........EVERY single person that EVER told others about ghostly encounters, or EVER saw a UFO, was COMPLETELY and TOTALLY lying (or COMPLETELY mistaken in what they actually saw) ?? Come on........if MILLIONS of people reported seeing a horrific crime being committed, chances are pretty DAMN good that that crime was actually committed (NOW, the actual DETAILS of certain specifics of that crime being committed may vary from person to person, but that doesn't change the basic fact that a crime was committed, and that MILLIONS of people witnessed it). Anyone ?? The Argument from Popularity is a fallacy. SAVE FERRIS
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Post by faustus5 on Oct 17, 2017 10:42:34 GMT
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Post by faustus5 on Oct 17, 2017 10:43:21 GMT
Prove it. You just bleating out your beliefs means less than nothing.
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Post by faustus5 on Oct 18, 2017 10:55:44 GMT
Your delegation indicates that you are either unwilling or unable to explain it, which bolsters the assertion that you are indeed appealing to authority and not thinking for yourself. Apparently, in your quest to remain an arrogant know-nothing, you have never happened upon the idea of scholarly citation, where the work of others is offered in support of a proposition to further discussion. This is a standard practice among people dedicated to learning about reality. If you had a freshman's understanding of what the "appeal to authority" fallacy was, you would never have been foolish enough to accuse me of it. Of course, I predicted that you would refuse to engage with the material. I'm inclined to believe that this is because you can't. Prove me wrong by pointing out the flaws in the arguments that have been presented. Further refusal to engage with modern scientific approaches to cosmology will just reinforce the idea that you simply have no idea what you are talking about and are just bleating out uninformed personal opinions.
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Post by faustus5 on Oct 18, 2017 10:56:43 GMT
If it can do something, it isn't nothing. Your personal opinions, formed without any kind of serious contemplation, mean less than nothing. Consider the option that the very concept of "nothing," as you apologists want to conceive it, is meaningless and problematic. Here's a hint: playing a game where what you believe about nature gets to be true just because of the way you have defined your terms is a child's way of doing philosophy and science.
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Post by faustus5 on Oct 19, 2017 12:09:12 GMT
faustus5 You presume too much. It is not an opinion that nothing can't do anything. Your ignorance is on display once again. The fact of the matter is that the very meaning of the concept of "nothing" is in dispute among philosophers and scientists, and therefore the contention that "nothing can't do anything" is also debatable. But go ahead and keep embarrassing yourself in a public space. You are quite good at it.
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Post by faustus5 on Oct 20, 2017 10:39:47 GMT
"Nothing" by any other name is still nothing. Call it 'something' if you must, but it is still no thing, not any thing at all. It is non-existence. You can play semantic games til the cows come home, but no matter how you spin it, if it doesn't exist, it can't do anything. Yes, you've already established that you are a know-nothing with no interest in developing a sophisticated or substantial understanding of a complex subject. There is no need to pound the table and call more attention to this fact about yourself. (The irony of it all is that the only semantic games being played here are yours, which I've already pointed out. You're like a little kid playing dress-up at philosophy.)
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Post by looking4klingons on Oct 20, 2017 11:11:46 GMT
Okay, just because people think a certain way, or hold certain beliefs, doesn't necessarily mean those thoughts or beliefs are based in actual fact..........but simply based on the MILLIONS of stories, over many, many centuries, of all the ghostly visits, and/or UFO/alien encounters that people have reported, one is naturally lead to the conclusion that there MUST be something to BOTH. What.........EVERY single person that EVER told others about ghostly encounters, or EVER saw a UFO, was COMPLETELY and TOTALLY lying (or COMPLETELY mistaken in what they actually saw) ?? Come on........if MILLIONS of people reported seeing a horrific crime being committed, chances are pretty DAMN good that that crime was actually committed (NOW, the actual DETAILS of certain specifics of that crime being committed may vary from person to person, but that doesn't change the basic fact that a crime was committed, and that MILLIONS of people witnessed it). Anyone ?? SAVE FERRISyep....things are goin’ on!Yep....things are goin’ on!
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Post by faustus5 on Oct 21, 2017 12:55:18 GMT
From your first link above: Good, you are making your first baby steps. Now read more than just a handy paragraph that actually has nothing to do with anything in this thread and afterwards, get back to me when you are finally able to articulate what is wrong with or insufficient about modern, naturalistic accounts of cosmological origins.
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Post by faustus5 on Oct 22, 2017 11:41:05 GMT
faustus5 When you're finished "name-calling and point-missing," you can try explaining to the class how something can create itself. No one is saying that anything created itself. What is being claimed is more complicated than that. But since you refuse to engage the material I've provided, this goes right over your head. Or you could keep ignoring the science I've provided and pretend no one notices. Every time you willfully ignore the citations I've shown you or make claims that are unsupported by evidence or reason, YOU MAKE IT ALL ABOUT YOU. For instance, this: This statement is unmitigated bullshit stated by someone who is willfully ignorant of centuries of successfully naturalistic explanations. Time and time again, people like you have claimed that one phenomena after another cannot be explained through mindless mechanical processes, and every time you losers eventually get your sorry asses handed to you. This will be no different. Prove me wrong--defend this claim of yours with an actual argument with sophisticated steps and citations of evidence. But you won't, because you've never bothered to study the subject or give it any kind of careful, reasoned thought--and boy, does it show.
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