'Extraordinary Evidence Demands Extraordinary...'

[percysunshine]

Too philosophical to be meaningful. Ph.D. a Doctorate of Philosophy comes after achieving a bachelors and masters. If you haven't achieved that, philosophical queries are meaningless for lack of foundation in established fact and theory.

Can people still get a Ph.D. in Philosophy without mastering 7th grade grammar?

.

 

[Steven_R]

Too philosophical to be meaningful. Ph.D. a Doctorate of Philosophy comes after achieving a bachelors and masters. If you haven't achieved that, philosophical queries are meaningless for lack of foundation in established fact and theory.

Can people still get a Ph.D. in Philosophy without mastering 7th grade grammar?

.

Going by some of the accents my math professors' have had and by how well they communicate, I'd say having a 7th grade or higher ability to speak or write in English would be a detriment to getting a job.

You haven't truly lived until you've taken Intro to Differential Equations and didn't understand a single word the professor said all semester.

 

[JimBowie1958]

I'm not sure the two statements are in conflict. If a new discovery fits in with what we already know or what we have predicted, then there is less of a hurdle to being accepted by the scientific community. That doesn't necessarily mean scientists will cut corners or just blindly accept that new discovery, after all some careers are built on tearing down the wok of others, just that it is somewhat easier for the community to roll the new knowledge into what we already know.

By contrast, something that upsets the apple cart of our view of any subject is going to be held to closer scrutiny, if for no other reason than it is something new.

Hmmm, I disagree.

Say we have two sets of circumstances.

In set 1, we have new phenomena that have no established theory to explain them.

In set 2 we have a new phenomena but we also have some established theories that are impacted, say Theory A is contradicted and Theory B is caused to be seen in a different perspective.

In set 2, we would look at testing any theory to explain the new phenomena taking into consideration Theory A to see if we can contrast which theory is true, and with Theory B we might also design tests to clarify how the two impact each other.

But theories to explain set 2 phenomena would be no more 'extraordinary' than set 1.
Y
In fact anomalies are quite ORDINARY in science, and contradictory evidence and theories should never be considered 'extraordinary', as I understand it.

For example the split light experiment contradicted existing theories at the time it was discovered to be an anomaly, and the proposed theories to explain it were not extraordinary at all, except to an instinctive notion of how the universe may work.

We also have the so-called 'Black Swan' phenomena which essentially states that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. And yet the suggestion that black swans existed prior to their discovery would certainly have been considered 'extraordinary' in 1500. Does that mean 'extraordinary' evidence would have been required by the natural science establishment?

And what is 'extraordinary evidence' anyway? You have to prove it ten times over? The evidence has to be double plus good? What does the phrase 'extraordinary evidence' mean?

Too philosophical to be meaningful. Ph.D. a Doctorate of Philosophy comes after achieving a bachelors and masters. If you haven't achieved that, philosophical queries are meaningless for lack of foundation in established fact and theory.

lol, sounds like an appeal to authority to me....

Any thinking person has the capability to think rationally. You don't need a doctorate in philosophy, in fact, methinks your better off if you don't.

 

[JimBowie1958]

If someone proved that the paranormal world actually existed, science would be right there studying it. I realty do not understand why people think the paranormal, or even miracles, if proved true, would be outside the realm of science.

Because God does not do repeatability. He does His miracles for specific purposes, not situations combined with factors. Thus His behavior is outside the realm of science to test it by definition.

When His acts are 'proven' by science, it means that they were not originally miracles at all in the proper meaning of something that violates natural laws. If some 'miraculous' event occurs within the confines of natural law, it is 'providential' and not miraculous.

Sometimes I suspect that everything God has done has been providential instead of miraculous, but I know that is not true as I have personally witnessed miracles of all sorts, one of which was definitely a violation of natural law.

Also, the terminology used has a big impact. Imagine had Newton described the laws of gravity as the behaviors of angels who work consistently within a system of rules instead of an impersonal gravitational force, his theories might have been rejected out of hand, even if exactly the same in every other respect. The scientific community in the West has a built in bias against religious concepts.

Except there have been documented examples of God performing miracles. Medical science prefers to label these things as spontaneous remission, but when cancer disappears overnight something beyond nature is at work.

Documented but not scientifically tested via the scientific method. If it were then it wouldn't by definition be miraculous as science cannot repeatably confirm a miracle.

Not to mention that it is always possible that God will someday chose to reveal Himself in a more concrete way that will make it possible for science to actually study the work He does.

Maybe one day, but then again, He wont be appearing miraculously by definition as in and of itself appearing is not a miracle necessarily.

Anyway, my post was intended to be more abstract than just God. Science has studied multiple claims about paranormal activities, from ghosts to ESP. It has managed to prove that all of them are explainable by natural causes and chance. If someone ever actually develops ESP abilities, of any kind, science is perfectly capable of studying the phenomenon and rendering a judgement. I would love to see a brain tumor that works the way it did in the movie, I am pretty sure scientist would to. I just hope the courts aren't as stupid as they were and leaves the choice up to the person who has the tumor.

The healings at Lourdes are fairly well documented, and I have spoken with a number of other Christians that have witnessed bonafied miracles.

Science cannot prove they occurred or how they happened.

 

[alang1216]

No, it does not require extraordinary proof, but only nonscientific proof.

And what is supernatural today often becomes ho hum science fact tomorrow, like the beginning of the universe with a Big Bang or the existence of other universes besides this one.

So there is nothing 'extraordinary' about what people call the miraculous, not at all.

To call something supernatural or miraculous is to say it appears impossible, we don't understand it, and it is beyond our ordinary experience.

Sorry you don't like my ID example, do you have one you prefer?

Well, I was hoping to keep it more abstract, but the Big Bang theory or alternate universe theories would be analogous today, Continental Drift and theory on the formation of the moon would be past such controversies.

The BB and multiverses are at the edges of science so no "extraordinary" evidence is necessary, pretty much ANY evidence would be welcomed.

Cont. Drift is a good example of how science works. People postulated CD for centuries before (quite ordinary) evidence mounted that not only did it take place but it was consistent with existing physics. If someone came along now and denied CD they would be required to present extraordinary evidence to support their theory. Their evidence would have to outweigh all the evidence accumulated to date and would therefore have to be extraordinary.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Because God does not do repeatability. He does His miracles for specific purposes, not situations combined with factors. Thus His behavior is outside the realm of science to test it by definition.

When His acts are 'proven' by science, it means that they were not originally miracles at all in the proper meaning of something that violates natural laws. If some 'miraculous' event occurs within the confines of natural law, it is 'providential' and not miraculous.

Sometimes I suspect that everything God has done has been providential instead of miraculous, but I know that is not true as I have personally witnessed miracles of all sorts, one of which was definitely a violation of natural law.

Also, the terminology used has a big impact. Imagine had Newton described the laws of gravity as the behaviors of angels who work consistently within a system of rules instead of an impersonal gravitational force, his theories might have been rejected out of hand, even if exactly the same in every other respect. The scientific community in the West has a built in bias against religious concepts.

Except there have been documented examples of God performing miracles. Medical science prefers to label these things as spontaneous remission, but when cancer disappears overnight something beyond nature is at work.

Documented but not scientifically tested via the scientific method. If it were then it wouldn't by definition be miraculous as science cannot repeatably confirm a miracle.

Not to mention that it is always possible that God will someday chose to reveal Himself in a more concrete way that will make it possible for science to actually study the work He does.

Maybe one day, but then again, He wont be appearing miraculously by definition as in and of itself appearing is not a miracle necessarily.

Anyway, my post was intended to be more abstract than just God. Science has studied multiple claims about paranormal activities, from ghosts to ESP. It has managed to prove that all of them are explainable by natural causes and chance. If someone ever actually develops ESP abilities, of any kind, science is perfectly capable of studying the phenomenon and rendering a judgement. I would love to see a brain tumor that works the way it did in the movie, I am pretty sure scientist would to. I just hope the courts aren't as stupid as they were and leaves the choice up to the person who has the tumor.

The healings at Lourdes are fairly well documented, and I have spoken with a number of other Christians that have witnessed bonafied miracles.

Science cannot prove they occurred or how they happened.

Science can prove miracles happen, they just don't call them miracles, they call it spontaneous remission. The fact that scientist do not have all the answers is not proof that they will never be able to explain something, it just proves they haven't found the explanation yet. Some scientist are beginning to think that the reason that no one has developed a unified field theory is that Einstein got gravity wrong, and they are attempting to rework the entire theory of how gravity works.

 

[JakeStarkey]

To avoid Confirmation Bias, simply twist your thesis to the evidence, not the evidence to the thesis.

 

[percysunshine]

To avoid Confirmation Bias, simply twist your thesis to the evidence, not the evidence to the thesis.

Go further. Multiple independent thesis (thesi..thesees?) need to be considered. Not just an altered thesis.

 

[JakeStarkey]

To avoid Confirmation Bias, simply twist your thesis to the evidence, not the evidence to the thesis.

Go further. Multiple independent thesis (thesi..thesees?) need to be considered. Not just an altered thesis.

Just so!

 

[JimBowie1958]

To call something supernatural or miraculous is to say it appears impossible, we don't understand it, and it is beyond our ordinary experience.

Sorry you don't like my ID example, do you have one you prefer?

Well, I was hoping to keep it more abstract, but the Big Bang theory or alternate universe theories would be analogous today, Continental Drift and theory on the formation of the moon would be past such controversies.

The BB and multiverses are at the edges of science so no "extraordinary" evidence is necessary, pretty much ANY evidence would be welcomed.

Cont. Drift is a good example of how science works. People postulated CD for centuries before (quite ordinary) evidence mounted that not only did it take place but it was consistent with existing physics. If someone came along now and denied CD they would be required to present extraordinary evidence to support their theory. Their evidence would have to outweigh all the evidence accumulated to date and would therefore have to be extraordinary.

I don't think that science advances in quite that way though sometimes it does, in that theories get modified rather than completely disproven. For example, the Bohr atom was modified to the present Quantum Physics version, and the electron 'orbits' have morphed into 'valence shells' but that is hardly proving the 'orbits' wrong as the 'orbits' were just a crude model to try and illustrate something that could not be seen.

But back to the BB and multi-verses being NOT extraordinary; two hundred years ago if you tried to tell a scientist that there were alternate universes and the universe we live in came into being in an instant, he would have insisted that you were speaking of the miraculous. For what is the Creation if not the BB and Heaven but an alternate universe?

The process of the miraculous becoming normal seems to be the following:
1) the almost exact same behavior/phenomena is secularized with a de-religionized jargon.

2) A theory is proposed that describes the effects of the event in question, looks for non-miraculous causes, and proposes a tests based on how the exact same thing came about but not using any religious references or appeal to religious authority.

3) Testing is done and the secularized version of the miraculous event is accepted as true.

This is what happened with the BB and multiverse theories secularizing and winning acceptance for the Creation account and accounts of visions of Heaven in an alternate universe.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Except there have been documented examples of God performing miracles. Medical science prefers to label these things as spontaneous remission, but when cancer disappears overnight something beyond nature is at work.

Documented but not scientifically tested via the scientific method. If it were then it wouldn't by definition be miraculous as science cannot repeatably confirm a miracle.



Maybe one day, but then again, He wont be appearing miraculously by definition as in and of itself appearing is not a miracle necessarily.

Anyway, my post was intended to be more abstract than just God. Science has studied multiple claims about paranormal activities, from ghosts to ESP. It has managed to prove that all of them are explainable by natural causes and chance. If someone ever actually develops ESP abilities, of any kind, science is perfectly capable of studying the phenomenon and rendering a judgement. I would love to see a brain tumor that works the way it did in the movie, I am pretty sure scientist would to. I just hope the courts aren't as stupid as they were and leaves the choice up to the person who has the tumor.

The healings at Lourdes are fairly well documented, and I have spoken with a number of other Christians that have witnessed bonafied miracles.

Science cannot prove they occurred or how they happened.

Science can prove miracles happen, they just don't call them miracles, they call it spontaneous remission. The fact that scientist do not have all the answers is not proof that they will never be able to explain something, it just proves they haven't found the explanation yet. Some scientist are beginning to think that the reason that no one has developed a unified field theory is that Einstein got gravity wrong, and they are attempting to rework the entire theory of how gravity works.

If a miracle is an event that violates the laws of nature, and science involves only the testing and exploration of the laws of nature, how could science possibly prove a miraculous event that is outside the laws of Nature?

 

[JakeStarkey]

The Mormons are following the same type of intellectual development as you, discarding positivism and rely on a natural morality that cannot be proved.

Thatallows them to make silly statements, such as, "Only one living in the Spirit and follow gospel laws can authentically evaluate Joseph Smith's visions of the Father and the Son."

So refuse scientific testing as a valid process, and the believer gets to say smugly, "see, it is true!"

 

[JimBowie1958]

The Mormons are following the same type of intellectual development as you, discarding positivism and rely on a natural morality that cannot be proved.

Thatallows them to make silly statements, such as, "Only one living in the Spirit and follow gospel laws can authentically evaluate Joseph Smith's visions of the Father and the Son."

So refuse scientific testing as a valid process, and the believer gets to say smugly, "see, it is true!"

What's that Starkey, some kind of guilt by association fallacy?

Lol, science cannot prove or disprove mystical experiences, dude.

 

[JakeStarkey]

The Mormons are following the same type of intellectual development as you, discarding positivism and relying on a natural morality that cannot be proved.

That allows one to make silly statements, such as, "Only one living in the Spirit and follow gospel laws can authentically evaluate Joseph Smith's visions of the Father and the Son."

So refuse scientific testing as a valid process, and the believer gets to say smugly, "see, it is true!"

What's that Starkey, some kind of guilt by association fallacy?

Lol, science cannot prove or disprove mystical experiences, dude.

My comment is an equivalent comparison (and quite accurate) to what you are trying to do.

Hint: no one can prove or disprove mystical experiences.

Mass hallucination is not probative for anything other than "Hey, there's a lot of people unable to process reality."

 

[daws101]

Documented but not scientifically tested via the scientific method. If it were then it wouldn't by definition be miraculous as science cannot repeatably confirm a miracle.



Maybe one day, but then again, He wont be appearing miraculously by definition as in and of itself appearing is not a miracle necessarily.




The healings at Lourdes are fairly well documented, and I have spoken with a number of other Christians that have witnessed bonafied miracles.

Science cannot prove they occurred or how they happened.

Science can prove miracles happen, they just don't call them miracles, they call it spontaneous remission. The fact that scientist do not have all the answers is not proof that they will never be able to explain something, it just proves they haven't found the explanation yet. Some scientist are beginning to think that the reason that no one has developed a unified field theory is that Einstein got gravity wrong, and they are attempting to rework the entire theory of how gravity works.

If a miracle is an event that violates the laws of nature, and science involves only the testing and exploration of the laws of nature, how could science possibly prove a miraculous event that is outside the laws of Nature?

miracles have never been proven to be outside the laws of physics or nature
what is lacking is our knowledge of those laws.
miracle is just another name for short lived phenomena or rare phenomena.

 

[alang1216]

But back to the BB and multi-verses being NOT extraordinary; two hundred years ago if you tried to tell a scientist that there were alternate universes and the universe we live in came into being in an instant, he would have insisted that you were speaking of the miraculous. For what is the Creation if not the BB and Heaven but an alternate universe?

The process of the miraculous becoming normal seems to be the following:
1) the almost exact same behavior/phenomena is secularized with a de-religionized jargon.

2) A theory is proposed that describes the effects of the event in question, looks for non-miraculous causes, and proposes a tests based on how the exact same thing came about but not using any religious references or appeal to religious authority.

3) Testing is done and the secularized version of the miraculous event is accepted as true.

This is what happened with the BB and multiverse theories secularizing and winning acceptance for the Creation account and accounts of visions of Heaven in an alternate universe.

To say something is miraculous is to say we don't know how it happens. Your list should be:
1) a mechanism is proposed for an observed and documented phenomenon
2) the mechanism is tested and a set of laws deduced
3) another aspect of nature is now described by science

Miracles are not a part of science but of ignorance. Likewise the BB does not support the creation myth of Genesis. One is an interpolation of existing physics and the other is a theological story. Genesis is not meant to be a literal account of creation, it is a synthesis of creation myths of the Iron age.

 

[JimBowie1958]

The Mormons are following the same type of intellectual development as you, discarding positivism and relying on a natural morality that cannot be proved.

That allows one to make silly statements, such as, "Only one living in the Spirit and follow gospel laws can authentically evaluate Joseph Smith's visions of the Father and the Son."

So refuse scientific testing as a valid process, and the believer gets to say smugly, "see, it is true!"

What's that Starkey, some kind of guilt by association fallacy?

Lol, science cannot prove or disprove mystical experiences, dude.

My comment is an equivalent comparison (and quite accurate) to what you are trying to do.

Hint: no one can prove or disprove mystical experiences.

Mass hallucination is not probative for anything other than "Hey, there's a lot of people unable to process reality."

Inability for science to prove an event does not prove it was an illusion, hallucination or hysteria. That is merely your bigotry and prejudice slanting the plausible options in your mind.

Other than you just being a fucking liar.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Science can prove miracles happen, they just don't call them miracles, they call it spontaneous remission. The fact that scientist do not have all the answers is not proof that they will never be able to explain something, it just proves they haven't found the explanation yet. Some scientist are beginning to think that the reason that no one has developed a unified field theory is that Einstein got gravity wrong, and they are attempting to rework the entire theory of how gravity works.

If a miracle is an event that violates the laws of nature, and science involves only the testing and exploration of the laws of nature, how could science possibly prove a miraculous event that is outside the laws of Nature?

miracles have never been proven to be outside the laws of physics or nature

No, they are outside the laws of science by definition. Were they within the laws of science they would not be miracles but instead would be providential events.

what is lacking is our knowledge of those laws.
miracle is just another name for short lived phenomena or rare phenomena.

Not by the literal meanings, though people often use them that way. A man I once knew said that he was in a car wreck and was tossed from the car as often happens. Everyone else in the car died, and his being tossed just happened to save his life when it more typically sends the person into the path of the rolling car and they die instead.

That is not a miracle though he doubtlessly felt it was.

I met a man in Germany who claimed to have been shot at by a viet cong at point blank range and after he killed the VC he looked at the bullet holes behind him and saw that they had to have passed through his body harmlessly. If true that was a miracle, but it is more likely that the bullet markings he saw predated the incident he was in, and so he merely was mistaken.

But one time I did see a real miracle that was inexplicable. I investigated the thing from every angle, above, below inside and outside and it was simply impossible to have happened the way I saw it happen, and yet it did. I'm not an idiot. I can explain various tricks and have a talent for doing so, such as Penn and Tellers bullet catching trick.

And I cannot test this phenomena, it is not repeatable. I cannot describe it because the details are pointless; it couldn't have happened and yet it did.

It changed my life, some good and some bad, but it totally altered me and my view of the world.

Science could never possibly prove that what I witnessed happened but that does not change what I saw or shake my certainty that it happened in reality.

THAT is a miracle.

Scientific proof is irrelevant; I know what I saw and science has nothing it can say about it. The laws of Nature were temporarily suspended for a moment and science cant touch that.

 

[JakeStarkey]

You have every right , Jim, to your own mystical experiences and testimony.

But that is not testimony or witness for others: it is for you.

Only your bigotry and prejudice would suggest that it should be.

Go pray in secret and see if you get a witness of the right of it.

 

[JimBowie1958]

But back to the BB and multi-verses being NOT extraordinary; two hundred years ago if you tried to tell a scientist that there were alternate universes and the universe we live in came into being in an instant, he would have insisted that you were speaking of the miraculous. For what is the Creation if not the BB and Heaven but an alternate universe?

The process of the miraculous becoming normal seems to be the following:
1) the almost exact same behavior/phenomena is secularized with a de-religionized jargon.

2) A theory is proposed that describes the effects of the event in question, looks for non-miraculous causes, and proposes a tests based on how the exact same thing came about but not using any religious references or appeal to religious authority.

3) Testing is done and the secularized version of the miraculous event is accepted as true.

This is what happened with the BB and multiverse theories secularizing and winning acceptance for the Creation account and accounts of visions of Heaven in an alternate universe.

To say something is miraculous is to say we don't know how it happens.

So by your logic, volcanoes were miraculous in 1500 AD? No, a real miracle is miraculous in fact, and those things we once thought miracles, like the Creation of the Universe, that were done by the laws of science and science finally caught up, those are not real miracles. They are mistakenly described as miracles.

Your list should be:
1) a mechanism is proposed for an observed and documented phenomenon
2) the mechanism is tested and a set of laws deduced
3) another aspect of nature is now described by science

Except that does not describe what happened with the BB or alternate universe theories.

Theologians said the universe was created in an instant millennia ago and scientists are finally realizing that they were right, and the process you have written does not reflect that reality.

Miracles are not a part of science but of ignorance.

What an amazingly bigoted thing to say. I suppose you think that nothing that is outside the ability of science to prove is true?

Likewise the BB does not support the creation myth of Genesis.

It is the Creation Story in the form of scientific laws as depicted by modern science.

One is an interpolation of existing physics and the other is a theological story.

And the first came from the latter.

Genesis is not meant to be a literal account of creation, it is a synthesis of creation myths of the Iron age.

You suppose.

I think it is primarily a moral story that also contains some reality facts that are not central to the main story.