What constitutes evidence?

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I'm just asking a question. I'm not arguing against or for anything. I'm just trying to get to the truth, that's all.

As far as my religious beliefs go, well, that really doesn't have much to do with it. This thread was formerly about evidence and arguments for/against God. My whole point with Velikovsky was to actually demonstrate another point I made earlier: How fast evidence gets dismissed even if you provide it. Nobody even bothered to look into Worlds in Collision. Nobody even bothered to independently look into purported stories from other cultures. If they actually HAD looked into it, they'd have told me what I already knew: The "sources" appear to be all made-up and supposed source texts were "lost."

My "argument," if you want to call it that, was a doomed one from the beginning, and intentionally so. Others got too hung up on the name "Velikovsky" to even try to dismantle it. What I succeeded in demonstrating was how quick people are to dismiss without much thought any challenge to what they want to believe. My point earlier in the thread was you can't prove God to unbelievers, and you can't disprove God to believers. I've since moved on from that to questioning the nature of that problem and asking why that is exactly.

As to the epistemic values of science and what I actually think about it, I don't have a problem with science. It's a logical problem of verification. If the scientific method requires verification, then how does the scientific method account for itself in a non-circular fashion? Everything has to be verified, and the method itself doesn't get a free pass. If the method gets a free pass, then we have to be open to giving other things a free pass. But if it doesn't get a free pass and we're stuck with the method and it's fundamental question-begging flaw, we have to resolve the problem of circular reasoning if we intend to justify its use and usefulness. Nobody seems to want to answer the question! So…exactly where do I go with this? Just write off or ignore others in this forum as unreasonable? Not likely…if it keeps me away from screaming kids and doing lawn and garden work on an otherwise lazy weekend, and as long as I'm able to sit in bed in my underwear for just a few…more…minutes…I'll probably keep coming back and asking the same old question! Maybe I'll eventually get an answer. Who knows, right?

OK, but I'm not really arguing anything. I'm asking about an apparent logical flaw. I'm not making an argument. I'm asking a question about an argument.

I kinda already addressed the rest of your post in my response to blunnet and lovenothate. My religious beliefs and personal opinions are really beside the point here. Blunnet get a little bit closer to the mark by bringing up the epistemic values of science, so you might find my last paragraph more useful as a response to your last post.

Science is cumulative, and self correcting. The limits of our instruments can be checked for by further observation as our instruments get better with time.

Since you're not "making a point", but just humbly "asking a question"- let me ask you a question. Why are you asking the question?

How is it relevent?

The cumulative, self-correcting nature of science is great. I don't dispute the usefulness of science nor the trustworthiness of the scientific method. But the method is also a logical one, and logical errors are going to negatively impact its reliability.

If all we have is the method, and the method requires verification, then it requires verification for itself.

Viper proposed that predictive power lies outside the method itself. To put it another way, "it just works". That poses another problem, though. How do you know that? You observe it. That requires a sense experience that may or may not be reliable. It would be easy to argue solipsism, but that doesn't really solve the problem...it merely avoids it, and you probably end up with more problems than you solve. You have to accept a certain margin of error, which is fine if you can minimize that. Ok, fine, just be sure to document the accuracy of your observation.

The bigger problem is that if you are to observe the predictive power of the method, you are using an observational methodology to detect it. It is fundamentally the same methodology that forms the basis for the scientific method, i.e. what you're trying to prove. This does two things: it create a mutually exclusive relationship between the observation and what is to be observed, i.e. you cannot have one without first having the other. I've already mentioned the second problem, which is the logical problem of assuming what you're trying to prove. How do you get around the logical problem without question-begging?

Why ask the question? I figured that would be pretty obvious! Because I want to know! Before you grill me on THAT, let me say I never claimed a rational basis for it. I will say this, though...it could form the rational basis for any number of things later on. I suppose if I really wanted to, I could propose a good answer...but that's kinda like skipping to the end of the book or reading the spoilers. I was taught that virtue is its own reward, and I've gained a lot of satisfaction in life that way. Maybe a small part of me is just a masochist like that, but if I ever had a problem with it I could always change. In the meantime, I'm just happy to sit back and maybe learn a new thing or two.

I've also had a change of heart. I've spent hours in here making long posts to make unnecessary points and rigorously defend different positions in such a way to mostly inform but in small part in hopes to persuade as well. I learned a lot just by studying reactions to my posts and learned a lot MORE when my posts were ignored entirely. Which is just sad. So I suppose if all I ever wanted were answers, perhaps instead of setting out bait on a hook to see who takes a bite, perhaps I'll do better just asking about what I'm looking for. The sad thing is that it had to be such a big revelation: I'm wasting a LOT less time and expending a lot less effort in doing so. That doesn't mean I'm going to change my views, but I don't have to. But it does mean that I'll start to enjoy being a REAL active participant on this forum. I'm not NEARLY as mentally/emotionally attached and consequently DRAINED as I have been at times. I like it, and if I were just doing it for attention, I could certainly say that I succeeded!

A few points

Velikovsky: we all derided or rejected your use of him simply because he has been falsified ad nauseum by the scientific community. It would be like you submitting David Irving as proof in a holocaust denial thread (yep this thread has finally invoked Godwin's Law ) and then saying you did it as way to prove we were closed minded to other research.

With regard to your thoughts on the scientific method, I am not sure if you came to the thought experiment yourself or you came across it somewhere, but for what its worth I think it is unsolvable. The point is this; many things in life are perceived differently, for example in situations where sight has been given to people who had previously not seen colours and clear shapes, they have needed extensive counselling because in their minds eye the various colours were completely different as were objects etc. How do we know that we are perceiving things correctly with the scientific method, we don't. Sometimes the assumptions made from the evidence are wildly wrong for example "the Luminiferous Aether"

All science can do is make assumptions and predictions based upon the current knowledge. Take Newtons Law of Universal Gravity, for centuries it was thought to be correct, it took einstein to disprove it, however it is so close to being correct that it is still used today for certain situations as it is far easier to work with than Einsteins Theory of General Relativity. James Clerk Maxwell showed for the first time that light is a wave, we now know that it can also be a particle.

Whilst we cannot say that what we are observing is entirely correctly perceived, we can look at the probabilities of that perception being correct. To paraphrase Prof Brian Cox "the Scientific method has given us the technological age, in short it works"

So yes sometimes our perception of the natural world, as garnered by the scientific method, is wrong or (as is more often the case) incomplete , but as we slowly march forward in our quest for knowledge these mistakes get found, sometimes it takes many years, Newtons took nearly 400 years to uncover. However the one thing that has never happened on our journey from supernatural understandings is a backtrack to the supernatural.

Is what fundamentally bothers you is that humans observe, and "true/objective/unbiased observation" of reality cannot be certain, because of the needs/biases of the human vision process (from eye to brain processing) ?

In the position/momentum version of the 'Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal', Heisenberg developed a 'thought experiment' of using a 'gamma-wave microscope' to illuminate the electron. This is shown in the image below as a green gamma wave. It is this gamma wave that creates the uncertainty by colliding with the electron, and imparting a momentum change to the electron. Thus, the observation means of illuminating has influenced the observation.

However, the scientific method does not require 'true/objective/unbiased observation'. A hypothesis can be developed that accounts for human influence, human vision needs/biases (e.g., the influencing gamma wave needed for illumination). The hypothesis can be developed from the perspective of biased human observation.

The answer is that you are right. True objective observation is not certain.


source, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle
source, http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p08b.htm

No. I point out that you don't know whether he has any references. You have only read in some other, unnamed source that Velikovsky is supposed to have a reference. And when you are two steps removed from the reference (and I three steps), and one of the steps involves someone extremely dubious, then that doesn't give me enough confidence in either the quality or even the existence of the original reference. Any reference that might exist could be examining something entirely different. And you expect me to buy a book full of crap and read it to find a reference that you think may exist? When you don't have enough confidence in it to look it up yourself?


Why would I bother? You don't seem to know where to find the goal posts, and I am not sure you know what they look like. I haven't needed to change my standards of evidence because you are nowhere close. On the contrary, I'd have to move the goal posts a long way to accept what you consider evidence.


Did you get a bit tangled up here? Suspending disbelief is what you do when you accept something unlikely, when you choose to accept something for the moment. So you say you will accept something when you get evidence that it didn't happen?

Edit: I wondered whether you deliberately offered something too nebulous to follow up, to give you an excuse for an attack. And then I found this in a more recent post:

You fail to understand that what you offered was not evidence. You merely offered an unsubstantiated claim that evidence exists.


Translation: you offered what you knew was crap, and then attack me for being suspicious of crap.


Translation: you lied.


You didn't have evidence that could be dismantled because you didn't have evidence, and you didn't give me good enough reason that I might find evidence.


You succeeded in demonstrating that my suspicions were justified, though admittedly for the wrong reasons. I did not just assume you were lying, I only worked out that your claims were too nebulous to be evidence. Is me being justifiably suspicious of your "evidence", but failing to spot a lie a demonstration that I dismiss a challenge without thought?

You're a bit late?I already personally hammered the final nail in the Velikovsky coffin a few posts back in my response to blunnet.

Honestly, prior to the discussion I'd never heard of Velikovsky, and as soon as I read about Velikovsky's theories, I figured you'd have a heyday if I so much as breathed the name. I wasn't going to go there, but then it occurred to me that the reaction it would get would be the exact same predictable behavior we discussed earlier in the thread. There's no point in continuing in that line.

And, no, I'm not tangled at all. "I do not believe it is impossible" is not the same thing as saying "I believe it happened." I'm stating a lack of belief. I'm going to need some pretty hard evidence to suspend, i.e. momentarily drop, that disbelief, i.e. give it more than a passing thought. And before I get accused of moving goalposts again, evidence is not "proof," and it is really proof beyond a doubt that we're really looking for. That's going to be a tremendous burden for you given the subject matter?and since science is not about certainties or proofs in any absolute sense, the real question is whether anyone really has the means to shoulder the burden of proof. Personally, if I knew I was faced with proving beyond a doubt that Joshua's long day actually DID happen, I probably wouldn't try to take it up. If you really want to try to prove the opposite, that it absolutely, 100%, DID NOT HAPPEN, be my guest.

Wrt. "edit," I'm past the point of caring. You pretty much made my point for me, and you'll stay on the defensive until you're blue in the face. It's time to move on.

@Dent: I've been posting between yard and garden work sessions. I live in the armpit of the United States and we've had a long winter and wetter-than-usual spring. I spent some 4 hours just cutting one acre of grass yesterday and I'm still not done. I actually liked your response and am hoping to get back to you as soon as I can.

I was referring to the last sentence, the only one I left in the quote this time. The phrase "suspending disbelief" was a clue.


I wasn't asking for proof beyond doubt, merely something that could move my probability estimate.


You lied. You tried to make me waste money and time on chasing evidence that doesn't exist. You had no evidence, you admit to never having had any evidence, you admit to having deliberately set out to make it apparent you had no evidence. Then you claim I am on the defensive because I didn't waste time and money on searching for evidence when you had given me no good reason to believe that any existed. I would like to know whether you genuinely believe that, but what would be the point? It's not as if I could trust your answer.

AngelRho I think you will like this excerpt from The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe By Douglas Adams.


Ruler of the Universe.

I have the book. Good stuff!