RE: Question about "faith"
September 25, 2020 at 1:29 pm
(This post was last modified: September 25, 2020 at 2:29 pm by John 6IX Breezy.)
(September 25, 2020 at 12:59 pm)HappySkeptic Wrote: 1.No, dendritic spines aren't similar to ghosts. The first had tentative evidence for its existence, was postulated and was testable in-principle, and later shown to be the best hypothesis.
2. It also wasn't an extraordinary claim, since it wasn't disallowed by current science.
3. Are you arguing that because science doesn't know all, and finds new ideas, that somehow that makes it scientific to postulate gods?
1. We agree that carefully defined propositions and models are essential for falsification. But we disagree that ghosts and leprechauns are by their very nature unfalsifiable. There is nothing stopping the conjecture from being properly defined and tested. Likewise, by ghosts in science I mean conjectures that are just outside the scope of research, but not outside the realm of possibility. Dendritic spines had to wait until the tools of research advanced enough to encompass it's claims.
2. I think that unless you have a way to measure how extraordinary a claim is, this idea should be discarded. It is subjective in nature.
3. I'm arguing that things aren't off the table simply because you think they are far-fetched. Scientists aren't skeptics; their job isn't to sit around and reject conjectures a priori. We agree that ghosts haven't been formulated in a testable manner; but we disagree that if they ever are formulated in such a manner, that we should still reject them simply because "we all know ghosts aren't real." As it stands, we don't know anything about ghosts other than we can't currently test them.
(September 25, 2020 at 1:15 pm)Simon Moon Wrote:(September 24, 2020 at 8:41 pm)John 6IX Breezy Wrote:(September 24, 2020 at 8:23 pm)Simon Moon Wrote: Just like I do not have to consciously rule out gods as an explanation for the universe, I need justification to rule it in.
That's not how we do science ironically enough, quite the opposite.
Seriously? Ever hear of the null hypothesis?
Exactly; you aim to reject the null hypothesis, not to justify the alternative hypothesis. You don't prove anything in science.