what would you ask a skeptic?

[callis 18]

I would ask a true skeptic,

How can one verify on the Internet, if someone is a real scientist with verifiable credentials who works for a credible institution, lab etc?

Like Jay Alfred for example. This person seems to have a lot of articles about bio plasma, but I'm not sure how or where he got his info from.

I am highly intrigued by QM and the studies involving "consciousness", but some of things I find, I can't always tell if they are legit science, or legit BS.

That's a really good question. I think this episode of Brian Dunning's Skeptoid sums it up a lot better than I could.

[Brian Topp 3,824]

I would ask a true skeptic,

How can one verify on the Internet, if someone is a real scientist with verifiable credentials who works for a credible institution, lab etc?

Like Jay Alfred for example. This person seems to have a lot of articles about bio plasma, but I'm not sure how or where he got his info from.

I am highly intrigued by QM and the studies involving "consciousness", but some of things I find, I can't always tell if they are legit science, or legit BS.

All cards hands down, no bars holding back etc... Telling you the truth, You ever watched the news and they get these "experts" or "researchers" to tell you facts or information what not. Most of those people don't actually have a degree or a piece of paper that shows them they are really experts but hobbits or some one they randomly grab. It is very misleading and yes the experts can be wrong but it is no damage to the media for it's the experts fault for mislaying information not because the news didn't want to pay top dollar for some one with a degree or PHD on what ever topic they are covering.

People can walk around claiming that they have a degree or PHD or what ever on the internet but the way I hold with people with those claims is I put them in the same category with peeps who claim Michael Jackson is haunting their sock draw.

It is about dunking, research and the results... not if you got a piece of paper and that says you are right.

[AquaMerina 13]

That's a really good question. I think this episode of Brian Dunning's Skeptoid sums it up a lot better than I could.

Thank you for the link. I listened to it and I agree with what he is saying.

It's just hard to know sometimes. There's always criticism, and there should be, but I get lost in the "he said, she said" things sometimes, and then it becomes more an argument of who is "right" then what the "evidence" means.

[AquaMerina 13]

All cards hands down, no bars holding back etc... Telling you the truth, You ever watched the news and they get these "experts" or "researchers" to tell you facts or information what not. Most of those people don't actually have a degree or a piece of paper that shows them they are really experts but hobbits or some one they randomly grab. It is very misleading and yes the experts can be wrong but it is no damage to the media for it's the experts fault for mislaying information not because the news didn't want to pay top dollar for some one with a degree or PHD on what ever topic they are covering.

People can walk around claiming that they have a degree or PHD or what ever on the internet but the way I hold with people with those claims is I put them in the same category with peeps who claim Michael Jackson is haunting their sock draw.

It is about dunking, research and the results... not if you got a piece of paper and that says you are right.

I see what your saying.

I just hate stumbling upon something that at first appears legit, and then by then end I feel like I was mind raped.

So I tend to try and only look at research that comes from a reputable scientific source, but it's not always easy to verify things.

I have to remain skeptical of all information and it's sources, until I am satisfied, personally, that I can trust the source in an academic way.

A piece of paper, is just a piece of paper.

I know plenty of collage grads that can't find a job in their field because they lack experience to properly perform the tasks the job requires. While it seems that most employers want only collage grads, that doesn't mean those employers have the time, money or resources to teach someone "wet behind the ears" what they want them to already know, that can only be learned through on the job experience.

I don't watch the news, because I don't trust the media, personally. They tend to be biased and like to dramatize things, IMO.

[Agent. Mulder 51]

Have any of you ever considered that it may all be normal instead paranormal?? I don't mean like all in the person's brain... by this I mean a living creature of some sort that we have no yet discovered or figured out. The other day I read in some thread something about water not weighing down fish when it passes trough their gills. Could we have something similar to that happening here, a creature that lives in the air allowing air to pass trough it? Could it be a cloud of microscopic creatures that dissipate so it can't be detected? What do you guys think about that?? Because I think about this often... too often.

A biological being like that should be able to be detected.

But, itd be great if something like that was found.

[aquatus1 7,088]

1. How do you eliminate spirits, and asign probabilities. Assuming of course it's not the usual humbug orbs and junk which I have no intrest in giving credit to. ( the problem with most reductionists/materialists is that their paradime forces them to assign probabilities to things with no reason other than the paradime. This is not scientific, and the staunch beleiver is just as guilty)

You eliminate spirits simply because they have not been validated to exist to begin with. Probabilities would depend on the situation. If we are talking about a spooky house in the middle of night and I go back the next and spot a light curtain next to an open window where I saw the ghost, it is quite probable that I saw the curtain being moved by air and the rest of the details were filled in by my mind, something which is known to regularly occur. And while I realize that paradigm is a popular buzzword and often used in place of "close-minded", I am not quite getting your usage of it here. What paradigm are you referring to?

2. I'll have to disagree with you there. Most skeptics.... Not the good ones of course. Seem to argue that science is capable of describing everything or predicting everything that can be. This is purely a faith in the methodology based on it's precieved success. Science cannot even predict life. Some things like life & conciousness are higher order informational constructs that cannot be predicted by a reductionist philosophy. The very nature of reductionist thinking does not allow the thinker to induce. Our current practice of science is nearly all reductionist. We will

miss higher constructs in this way of thinkink. I don't see beleivers ( although I heartily disagree with many of their paradimes as well) ending their thinking at the big Bang boundry, the planek or possible dimentional bounderies, they are quite willing in fact overly so to look past them.

Well, I'm not going to pull the True Scotsman argument out here, but it seems to me that if you recognize that skepticism isn't defined by faith in the methodology but by the usage of it, it seems somewhat guileless to refer to people taking things on faith as skeptics.

I'm not all that swayed by your examples, for that matter. Science cannot predict life? Why would science be expected to? Why would things like life and consciousness be higher order informational constructs? What does that even mean? I honestly don't know, as I have never had too much interest in philosophy, but I can't think of an example where anything other than a reductionist approach has ever come up with a theory that properly explains a given phenomena.

3. Fair enough..... I do this also. But thats not really what I ment. Back to number 1. You see a spirit. You work through all the explanations you can come up with. Nothing makes sense, so you asign a probability that it was a hullucination. Done. Well what caused the hullucination? Why does anything that dosnt fit into the materidlists paradime always end up being a hullucination, false memory, or imagination. Sure some have these..... But that by no means that all do. The questions stop once the disbeliver reaches the boundries of their paradime. Ill ask again if this person is truelly being scientific, on what data do they asign likely hoods?

You are putting the cart before the horse. If nothing makes sense, that includes a hallucination. If you decide it was a hallucination, you do so because the probabilities indicate that it was so. You don't decide on a conclusion and try to work the data around it. That is faith. You let the data lead to the conclusion. That is science. If you decide it was a hallucination, you do so because your state of mind at the time was such that other people in similar states of minds also reported hallucinations. That is what determines the likelihood of the cause being a hallucination. You seem to be under the impression that people will assume it was a hallucination just for the heck of it.

Additionally, the above also begs the question: "Why stop at ghosts?" Indeed, if we are to include ghosts as possibilities (I have no idea how you would calculate the probability of it) of what you saw, why not alien mind rays? Why not alternate dimensions? Why not super-intelligent clouds? The limits of science are defined by the limits of our current knowledge, and science has no problem acknowledging that. What are the limits of this new paradigm defined by?

4. You dodged the question. Beleiver/disbeleiver friction should be set aside.

I did no such thing. I stand by my answer.

[White Crane Feather 5,387]

I do apologize again it's fun and all, but you and I have the expanding arguments phenominon about to happen.. I'm going to take a paragraph of three points disecting each one of yours then you will probably do the same. We will have a book in three exchanges. I don't have the time or finger power on my little I phone to keep up so I'm just going to pick one.

The scenerio. Let's say you have an experience. No reason to think it was a hullucination false memor etc., all "normal" explanations are ruled. The experience was plain as day. Like an etherial woman walking past your line of sight., floating above your body.... What ever. Do you have to beleive that there is some non paranormal explanation or can you, after all explanations are exaused, Or can you. just conclude it is exactly what it apeared to be?

Edited April 7, 2011 by Seeker79

[callis 18]

The scenerio. Let's say you have an experience. No reason to think it was a hullucination false memor etc., all "normal" explanations are ruled. The experience was plain as day. Like an etherial woman walking past your line of sight., floating above your body.... What ever. Do you have to beleive that there is some non paranormal explanation or can you, after all explanations are exaused, Or can you. just conclude it is exactly what it apeared to be?

Not only are you supposing that there ARE ethereal women or ghosts, but you are also insinuation that any one person can extensively rule out ALL "normal explanations". That's really begging the question.

[White Crane Feather 5,387]

Not only are you supposing that there ARE ethereal women or ghosts, but you are also insinuation that any one person can extensively rule out ALL "normal explanations". That's really begging the question.

You see here is the problem. If I have seen such a thing I have to supose it exists whatever it is. Where as if you have not and cannot allow it into your world view we cannot have a conversation. That's why I asked if you had the experience. If your uncomfortable with etherial woman then use the floating above the body example.

[Sevastiel 18]

That's possibly true... maybe. It's pretty inconclusive. I can't say I subscribe to it, being that there haven't been any repeatable tests confirming that hypothesis. My concern here is, what is the relation to dark matter and Higgs fields to ghosts and hauntings? If dark matter really does make up, like, 80% of the universe and it is a form of "extraordinary matter" where's the relation?

I know you keep saying that it's "white board talk", but is that just a license to throw out any largely misunderstood or hypothetical, spooky sounding science term and suppose there's some link? It's like dropping quantum physics as a possible explanation. There's no reason tho think any of the ideas mentioned have ANYTHING to do with the paranormal. The idea that they are currently not fully understood does not infer theres a common link between the two.

I think what makes it "white board talk" is the fact that the same conceptual line of thinking can be applied to the flip side of what you're saying. Every hypothesis is nothing more than a 'spooky sounding science term' until it becomes empirically proven. Thus, there's no reason to think that the ideas mentioned don't have EVERYTHING to do with the paranormal; thus there's no inference that there isn't a common link either; unless/until they become less 'spooky' that is.

(LOL. Like having a conversation with myself, being both skeptic & believer. )

Sounds a lot like a conversation I once had concerning the idea of taking statistics, probabilities and ascribed 'data' (read as : assumptions) and presenting it as if they were constants whereas, by their very nature and definition, they vary and differ; otherwise they'd be called constants from the very beginning.

Edited April 7, 2011 by Sevastiel

[callis 18]

You see here is the problem. If I have seen such a thing I have to supose it exists whatever it is. Where as if you have not and cannot allow it into your world view we cannot have a conversation. That's why I asked if you had the experience. If your uncomfortable with etherial woman then use the floating above the body example.

I underlined your problem. You do not have to suppose it exists.

You also suppose:

- that all possible explanations are readily available to you and within your limit of understanding,

- you are aware of defined parameters and characteristics of a paranormal event and the process needed to define such an event.

I can allow anything into my world view that is supported by reasonable plausibility. I accept things based on evidence, not on what I want to believe. This is how progress is made. If rationality doesn't fit your fantasy, we cannot continue this conversation.

Edited April 7, 2011 by shadowofadoubt

[Sevastiel 18]

You see here is the problem. If I have seen such a thing I have to supose it exists whatever it is. Where as if you have not and cannot allow it into your world view we cannot have a conversation. That's why I asked if you had the experience. If your uncomfortable with etherial woman then use the floating above the body example.

The 'tree falls in the woods' line of thought is it?

Not unique in the game of skeptics vs believers of course.

The conceptual suggests that it is so for both, and exactly as they perceive and experience it, for no other reason than the fact that it was/is perceived and experienced in the first place; and therefore "real" (whatever that means). So from that approach, both are wrong and both are right; right in their own minds, wrong in the other's, and wrong & right by the 3rd who refuses to choose to take sides; the only truly objective one left standing of the trio (or are they...).

I think the real issue resides in a variant of the question : Is it measurable?

Can it be replicated in a controlled environment?

Of course, just because it cannot be measured doesn't just mean it's immeasurable. It could. But it might not.

It may be that the tools doing the measuring, human and inanimate alike, are themselves inadequate to the task.

And so could the measured be in kind. Partiality is a huge hurdle for both; be it the mechanistic process for process's sake or the unquestioning belief of the ... erm, unquestioning.

Answers aren't found through blind belief, but neither are they found by rote process. Those things only find what's already been found by someone else before. But bring the two together in one mind, then several minds, there discovery waits smiling at fools waiting for itself to be found. Doesn't mean we get to set aside that fool title once discovery is made though...it just goes off and hides somewhere else, sits down, and waits patiently, smiling at us fools stumbling about, bumping in to one another in the blindness we call intelligence, wisdom and enlightenment. (But I'm starting to wander...)

If it relies on varying individual factors that is much more difficult. Just as genius isn't a gift that is ascribed to every human being that's born, it can be assumed that other gifts would be similar. There's no logical reason not to accept this concept. Certain things run in family lines, and others can be more or less anomalous. So rationally speaking, it is plausible that the same concept would apply. I'm sure there were persons of science that thought Einstein was a flipping crazed sop in much of his research. There's even that cliche about the relation between genius and insanity, but I'm not a genius.

No physically-evident, measurable and reproductive variables to play with = doesn't physically exist (or close enough for pragmatism's sake). Can't be measured yet, no biggy. It's not going anywhere. Inability to measure won't equate to inability to experience. It can't; well, not without medicating it away (why's that make me think of Brave New World?). Until an answer that is acceptable for everyone is found, this line of debate will continue. And by the time this one is resolved, we'll likely have many others to take its place. Isn't life great!?

K. Ranting done.

Question : At what point IS it to be considered acceptable to accept & apply probability and statistic as constant, other than in the macro-proportionate scheme of things?

[aquatus1 7,088]

I do apologize again it's fun and all, but you and I have the expanding arguments phenominon about to happen.. I'm going to take a paragraph of three points disecting each one of yours then you will probably do the same. We will have a book in three exchanges. I don't have the time or finger power on my little I phone to keep up so I'm just going to pick one.

I finally got internet service back after a month of IPhone time, so I feel for you, buddy.

The scenerio. Let's say you have an experience. No reason to think it was a hullucination false memor etc., all "normal" explanations are ruled. The experience was plain as day. Like an etherial woman walking past your line of sight., floating above your body.... What ever. Do you have to beleive that there is some non paranormal explanation or can you, after all explanations are exaused, Or can you. just conclude it is exactly what it apeared to be?

Well, let's just strip it down to its most basic, shall we? What you are asking is whether or not I would ever admit that ghosts exist.

There is a certain view that believers have of skeptics, which tends to assign their refusal to believe in a given subject with some sort of personal factor, be it fear, stubbornness, experience, or similar. That is not quite how a skeptics mind works. To a skeptic, it isn't a question of admitting the existence of a phenomena. Either the phenomena exists or it does not. To a skeptic, the existence of a phenomena is predicated on its repeatability. Can the phenomena be reliably reproduced given a specific set of circumstance, or has it been definitively documented with objective evidence submitted to peer review? In that event, the phenomena can be considered "real", and can be used, if the variables indicate it applies, to answer a given question. If a phenomena is not considered real, i.e., you have no way of knowing when it would occur, what would trigger it, or what the traces left behind would be, it is pretty much useless as an answer. It does not impart any data at all.

So, in response to your above scenario, my answer is two-fold: I would not conclude that it was a paranormal event. Why would I? Is someone pointing a gun to my head and demanding a conclusion? I would simply conclude that I do not have enough information to come to a conclusion. I would then refer to it as an unexplained mystery. I might even post about it in some sort of website devoted to such.

Now, if pressed, I would admit that it resembled some (not all) reports of ghosts. However, that is about as far as I could go. The fact is that I do not have data that would tell me if it was likely that a ghost had floated in front of me, because I have no data that tells me when a ghost is likely to float in front of me. Similarly, I have nothing to indicate that it was not an alien ray beam, or an intelligent cloud floating in front of me.

So, the answer to your unasked question above, about whether I would ever admit that ghosts exist, here is the answer to that, and it is, unsurprisingly, the same answer I gave at the beginning: Yes, I would. However, in order to do that, I would need a repeatable phenomena. Personal testimony is weak evidence, and weak evidence is not sufficient to establish existence, not even if it is my own personal testimony. Whether I personally would believe it, I do not know, as I have never been in that situation, but even if I was personally convinced, it would still be meaningless. I would never use my personal experience as evidence towards the existence of ghosts.

[TheDeadAreWatching 0]

So, the answer to your unasked question above, about whether I would ever admit that ghosts exist, here is the answer to that, and it is, unsurprisingly, the same answer I gave at the beginning: Yes, I would. However, in order to do that, I would need a repeatable phenomena. Personal testimony is weak evidence, and weak evidence is not sufficient to establish existence, not even if it is my own personal testimony. Whether I personally would believe it, I do not know, as I have never been in that situation, but even if I was personally convinced, it would still be meaningless. I would never use my personal experience as evidence towards the existence of ghosts.

I agree, personal experience is no substitute for hard evidence. This is a open rational thought that believers alike would be wise to follow in how they approach things. I am a believer and I have always walked this tight rope. The truth is understanding life for one's self and not convincing others of their error for what will be will be in every individuals life.

[sinewave 2,604]

I agree, personal experience is no substitute for hard evidence. This is a open rational thought that believers alike would be wise to follow in how they approach things. I am a believer and I have always walked this tight rope. The truth is understanding life for one's self and not convincing others of their error for what will be will be in every individuals life.

Yep, and unfortunately personal experiences are all the evidence anyone has ever been able to present.

[White Crane Feather 5,387]

I finally got internet service back after a month of IPhone time, so I feel for you, buddy.

Well, let's just strip it down to its most basic, shall we? What you are asking is whether or not I would ever admit that ghosts exist.

There is a certain view that believers have of skeptics, which tends to assign their refusal to believe in a given subject with some sort of personal factor, be it fear, stubbornness, experience, or similar. That is not quite how a skeptics mind works. To a skeptic, it isn't a question of admitting the existence of a phenomena. Either the phenomena exists or it does not. To a skeptic, the existence of a phenomena is predicated on its repeatability. Can the phenomena be reliably reproduced given a specific set of circumstance, or has it been definitively documented with objective evidence submitted to peer review? In that event, the phenomena can be considered "real", and can be used, if the variables indicate it applies, to answer a given question. If a phenomena is not considered real, i.e., you have no way of knowing when it would occur, what would trigger it, or what the traces left behind would be, it is pretty much useless as an answer. It does not impart any data at all.

So, in response to your above scenario, my answer is two-fold: I would not conclude that it was a paranormal event. Why would I? Is someone pointing a gun to my head and demanding a conclusion? I would simply conclude that I do not have enough information to come to a conclusion. I would then refer to it as an unexplained mystery. I might even post about it in some sort of website devoted to such.

Now, if pressed, I would admit that it resembled some (not all) reports of ghosts. However, that is about as far as I could go. The fact is that I do not have data that would tell me if it was likely that a ghost had floated in front of me, because I have no data that tells me when a ghost is likely to float in front of me. Similarly, I have nothing to indicate that it was not an alien ray beam, or an intelligent cloud floating in front of me.

So, the answer to your unasked question above, about whether I would ever admit that ghosts exist, here is the answer to that, and it is, unsurprisingly, the same answer I gave at the beginning: Yes, I would. However, in order to do that, I would need a repeatable phenomena. Personal testimony is weak evidence, and weak evidence is not sufficient to establish existence, not even if it is my own personal testimony. Whether I personally would believe it, I do not know, as I have never been in that situation, but even if I was personally convinced, it would still be meaningless. I would never use my personal experience as evidence towards the existence of ghosts.

Strong honest answer. I apreciate that. Haveing so much faith in a process, society of people, institution, and meam That I would completely right off personal experiance just because the institution says it can't be because I can't reroduce it, is just something I can't do. It sounds to much like church for me.

[White Crane Feather 5,387]

Yep, and unfortunately personal experiences are all the evidence anyone has ever been able to present.

Is there anything that is not a personal experience? How many people does something take to not be a personal experience?

[aquatus1 7,088]

Strong honest answer. I apreciate that. Haveing so much faith in a process, society of people, institution, and meam That I would completely right off personal experiance just because the institution says it can't be because I can't reroduce it, is just something I can't do. It sounds to much like church for me.

You keep making the same mistake. This has nothing to do with faith. The entire purpose of the process is to divorce yourself from faith.

Again, Skeptics do not assume a conclusion and force data around it. That is faith, not science. Skeptics do not assume that personal experience is undeniable just for the heck of it. They know it is unreliable because it has been tested, re-tested, and verified multiple times. Nor are ghosts dismissed simply because the "institution" (you make it sound like there is some sort of secret conclave of scientists somewhere deciding what should be believed and what shouldn't be) decided it shouldn't be believed. The reason it isn't believed is because no one has been able to provide the requested level of objective evidence sufficient to persuade scientifically minded individuals. In other words, it is useless. It provides no data, no answers, no solutions. Because of this, there is no reason to consider it a possibility.

As long as you continue to frame skepticism and science as a faith, it will never make sense to you. That is because the inherent nature of skepticism and science is diametrically opposed to faith.

[aquatus1 7,088]

Is there anything that is not a personal experience? How many people does something take to not be a personal experience?

Personal experience is not weak evidence because it is personal experience. It is weak evidence because it is subjective in nature. Science and skepticism and science always prioritize objective evidence to subjective evidence.

A process that can be repeated by anyone, regardless of their personal preferences or biases, and reach similar or same results, would be considered objective.

[White Crane Feather 5,387]

You keep making the same mistake. This has nothing to do with faith. The entire purpose of the process is to divorce yourself from faith.

Again, Skeptics do not assume a conclusion and force data around it. That is faith, not science. Skeptics do not assume that personal experience is undeniable just for the heck of it. They know it is unreliable because it has been tested, re-tested, and verified multiple times. Nor are ghosts dismissed simply because the "institution" (you make it sound like there is some sort of secret conclave of scientists somewhere deciding what should be believed and what shouldn't be) decided it shouldn't be believed. The reason it isn't believed is because no one has been able to provide the requested level of objective evidence sufficient to persuade scientifically minded individuals. In other words, it is useless. It provides no data, no answers, no solutions. Because of this, there is no reason to consider it a possibility.

As long as you continue to frame skepticism and science as a faith, it will never make sense to you. That is because the inherent nature of skepticism and science is diametrically opposed to faith.

And as long as you have faith in materialism scientific methodology works just fine. As long as you have faith in the process you can sleep at night ( metaphorical only I'm not implying that you loose sleep). Unless you are willing to go out and reproduce all the experiments yourself from biology to particle physics you are takeing it all on faith, because you were taught that all these people did it the right way. How is that not exactly like religiouse indoctrination. You have faith in the methodology, the people that perform it, the past experiments that are fundamental to uphold it all. Unless you your self have started from square one to identify say the dopeler efect. I'm not saying it's wrong, but you seem to think that your trust in the whole shibang is not faith. It is. Until you have a personal experience with the reality of the experiments themselves, you are trusting, people, and an istitution that is not above human fallacies of competativness, comercialism, egoism, and guruism. The guy the first proposed more than 7 dimentions in string theory comes to mind. He could not even get graduate students to work with him because it was not until the gurus finally got on board....., hawking and the rest, and he barely got credit for it. Also the over medication of America based on..... Yup the scientific institution is also another example.

We also know that probably everything we know now will probably have to be scrapped in two hundred years if things continue the way they have been for the last 2. But yet so many take everything as fact now. It's going to be a tough sell to me that faith is not rampent in the institution. Not that it's not effective in certain ways, but the materialist paradime is dangerously close to a church. Economics, egos, meams, and government control the direction of scientific progress, and the fixation on materialism blinds the original Nobel atempt at discovery.

[callis 18]

And as long as you have faith in materialism scientific methodology works just fine. As long as you have faith in the process you can sleep at night ( metaphorical only I'm not implying that you loose sleep). Unless you are willing to go out and reproduce all the experiments yourself from biology to particle physics you are takeing it all on faith, because you were taught that all these people did it the right way. How is that not exactly like religiouse indoctrination. You have faith in the methodology, the people that perform it, the past experiments that are fundamental to uphold it all. Unless you your self have started from square one to identify say the dopeler efect. I'm not saying it's wrong, but you seem to think that your trust in the whole shibang is not faith. It is. Until you have a personal experience with the reality of the experiments themselves, you are trusting, people, and an istitution that is not above human fallacies of competativness, comercialism, egoism, and guruism. The guy the first proposed more than 7 dimentions in string theory comes to mind. He could not even get graduate students to work with him because it was not until the gurus finally got on board....., hawking and the rest, and he barely got credit for it. Also the over medication of America based on..... Yup the scientific institution is also another example.

We also know that probably everything we know now will probably have to be scrapped in two hundred years if things continue the way they have been for the last 2. But yet so many take everything as fact now. It's going to be a tough sell to me that faith is not rampent in the institution. Not that it's not effective in certain ways, but the materialist paradime is dangerously close to a church. Economics, egos, meams, and government control the direction of scientific progress, and the fixation on materialism blinds the original Nobel atempt at discovery.

Faith is belief in the absence of evidence. Scientific experiments are reproduced all the time from grade school and up, providing evidence. You constantly mention theoretical models in your arguments, yet how would you know about them if you weren't reading them in magazines published by your evil establishment? are you performing such experiments? You seem to appeal to the underdog, as if that gives you leverage, yet you even say that "the gurus" got on board. Why would they have, unless the scientific method works?

Do you posses any method or knowledge gained outside of what has been learned by science? if not, does that imply that you have "faith in science"?

[Nadia B. 9]

The thing I have a problem with is trying to box spirit activity into a certain predictable format in order to test it. If it were that easy, we wouldn't be having this discussion. It isn't a repeatable predictable occurance. If everything we KNOW as scientific fact made it true and repeatable, and if the things we can't predictably see happening are not true, ... well it makes no sense to me. Nobody can tell me exactly when my car is going to break down, or when a certain part is going to go bad. Nobody can tell me which thunderstorms are going to knock my power out. These things DO happen, though. It IS a fact, lol. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding.

[White Crane Feather 5,387]

Personal experience is not weak evidence because it is personal experience. It is weak evidence because it is subjective in nature. Science and skepticism and science always prioritize objective evidence to subjective evidence.

A process that can be repeated by anyone, regardless of their personal preferences or biases, and reach similar or same results, would be considered objective.

I understand that. But you say everyone. Can you perform particle physics equations? Can you do the experiments? I sure can't. Infact a large portion of the earth can't. A great many people will never be able to understand basic calculouse. Only a relativly small group of people have access to the resources and brain power to understand. It's definantly not everyone. Not even close. I'll say it again unless you have done it yourself and have had the personal experience of the discovery, you are takeing it all on faith. Even if you understand the peer reveiwed papers, you are still placeing plenty of faith in the writter. Yet personal experience is considered not important. There is nothing that is not personal experience and takeing another person's or group's experience over your own is an act if faith more sophisticated than following a church or prophet but faith none the less.

I understand where you are comeing from I gave a degree in economics ( somewhat a scintific pursuit) I have a library of science books and plenty of biology and physics courses in my college days.

I guess I have just learned to be a skeptic of the skeptic. A necessary function. The collective ego of the common educated skeptic is so daunting it's amusing. I love how all you guys get your panties in a ruffle ( no insult intended) the second someone sugests your world view has elements of faith just like the rest of them.

I'll pm you an article I found here on NDEs it has some good points along the lines of what I'm talking about.

[callis 18]

I understand that. But you say everyone. Can you perform particle physics equations? Can you do the experiments? I sure can't. Infact a large portion of the earth can't. A great many people will never be able to understand basic calculouse. Only a relativly small group of people have access to the resources and brain power to understand. It's definantly not everyone. Not even close. I'll say it again unless you have done it yourself and have had the personal experience of the discovery, you are takeing it all on faith. Even if you understand the peer reveiwed papers, you are still placeing plenty of faith in the writter. Yet personal experience is considered not important. There is nothing that is not personal experience and takeing another person's or group's experience over your own is an act if faith more sophisticated than following a church or prophet but faith none the less.

I understand where you are comeing from I gave a degree in economics ( somewhat a scintific pursuit) I have a library of science books and plenty of biology and physics courses in my college days.

I guess I have just learned to be a skeptic of the skeptic. A necessary function. The collective ego of the common educated skeptic is so daunting it's amusing. I love how all you guys get your panties in a ruffle ( no insult intended) the second someone sugests your world view has elements of faith just like the rest of them.

I'll pm you an article I found here on NDEs it has some good points along the lines of what I'm talking about.

When experiments have been reproduced again and again, by reputable sources, I wouldn't consider believing that faith, being that they provide the data they've collected (evidence). To think that they're lying or pushing an agenda is baseless paranoia not a lack of faith

[White Crane Feather 5,387]

Faith is belief in the absence of evidence. Scientific experiments are reproduced all the time from grade school and up, providing evidence. You constantly mention theoretical models in your arguments, yet how would you know about them if you weren't reading them in magazines published by your evil establishment? are you performing such experiments? You seem to appeal to the underdog, as if that gives you leverage, yet you even say that "the gurus" got on board. Why would they have, unless the scientific method works?

Do you posses any method or knowledge gained outside of what has been learned by science? if not, does that imply that you have "faith in science"?

I'm not saying the method dosnt work to a degree, I'm typing on an iPhone...,,, there is reality in my hands. I'm saying it's not going to work for everything. One method is never going to give us the understandin we seek. We are human. We cannot seperate from our experiences no matter how hard we try. This notion that skeptics are not faithful is dangerouse for the skeptics atempt at objectivity itself.

Yes I have a large amount if faith in science as you do. The difference is that I am aware of it. My faith is not total, however.

Edited April 8, 2011 by Seeker79