Question about "faith"

[John 6IX Breezy]

And ? I'm not sure that says what you have imagined it to.

The fact that there are only two sentences instead of a paragraph causes me to suspect quote mining. 

And if I had quoted the whole paragraph instead of the chapter, I assume the same logic applies, right lol?

Karl Popper's book "Conjectures and Refutations" is available if you wish to read it. And any introductory book on the philosophy of science will cover these topics.

[LadyForCamus]

"The belief that science proceeds from observation to theory is still so widely and so firmly held that my denial of it is often met with incredulity. I have even been suspected of being insincere- of denying what nobody in his senses would doubt. But in fact the belief that we can start with pure observation alone, without anything in the nature of a theory is absurd.” -Karl Popper

Observations are theory-laden whether you know it or not. It is misguided to assume you can simply sit and observe, without any idea of what and why you are observing. An activity perhaps more useful in mindfulness training than science.

That is simply not the way the mind works. Every observation you make is influenced by your expectations. Consider a visual scene in which a fire hydrant is placed inside a kitchen: a scene in which the object and it's environment don't match. When researchers show these types of scene to participants, they are slower at recognizing the fire hydrant in the kitchen than when it is on a street corner (Fenske, et al., 2006). Why? Because your brain is never simply observing and collecting data. It is actively creating and supplying predictions about your observations, interpreting information and making estimates.

Reference:

Fenske, M., Aminoff, E., Gronau, N., Bar, M. (2006). Top-down facilitation of visual object recognition: Object-based and context-based contributions. Progress in Brain Research, 155, 3-21.

Cool. So where is the data that represents the observation of a soul?

[The Grand Nudger]

I doubt that he'll be any better at defining a soul than he was at describing his belief in soul sleep or annihilation as not believing in a soul.

I'm aware that John does not believe in souls, but his claim seems to be that if they did exist they would not be unfalsifiable.

Hence my clarification on what he believes that other people believe a soul is, that his denomination refutes exists. Frankly I've never had such a strange conversation where two people agree on something, but the waters are still muddied somehow !

So far as i can tell there are two mainstream thoughts on what a soul is, as i understand it the Greeks defined it as essentially 'all that makes a person up' it does not really delve into the spiritual.  This is i understand how many people still use it.

In religion however the soul is often referred to as a spiritual, none material form that either informs us, or in fact is us, this is i suspect what John means when he says we don't have a soul. To me you cannot falsify the soul, simply infer that we have much better idea's about what consciousness could be etc, in other words make an unprovable soul unnecessary.

My position being that should a soul exist, there is no way to prove/disprove (unfalsifiable)  

I find myself in this back to front conversation where people it seems can make any claim, that the scale of what's extraordinary is subjective, and John seems to think the responsibility is on those who doubt it to refute it rather than the person who makes the claim to prove it.

I'm trying to understand why John under these circumstances would reject a alien abduction claim out of hand.  In other words where does  does healthy scepticism kick in in the mind of John given that all claims must be disproven rather than proved ?

Use the unfalsifiability of another claim, to falsify yours.

Things aren't unfalsifiable simply because you want them to be or you feel they are too vague. They are unfalsifiable because they predict every outcome of an experiment. Vagueness is measured by this fact alone. If you want to claim souls are unfalsifiable, you have to show how they predict every outcome (which they don't).

If souls are claimed to be responsible for giving life to things, for example, and they're supposed to go to heaven or hell after death, that is sufficient to falsify souls. An experiment which can medically resurrect someone after a day or two, shows that either souls can be pulled out of heaven and hell against God's will (which religion doesn't teach) or else a body can be alive without a soul, falsifying this definition of souls.

Souls would be unfalsifiable if, despite our experiment, they predicted that a person can be alive with and without a soul (which they don't)

This is rich.  Your denomination teaches soul sleep.  That people who die and are resurrected - by medicine or by god come the day, were just sleeping. Seems like it's got both bases covered to me.

[possibletarian]

I'm aware that John does not believe in souls, but his claim seems to be that if they did exist they would not be unfalsifiable.

Hence my clarification on what he believes that other people believe a soul is, that his denomination refutes exists. Frankly I've never had such a strange conversation where two people agree on something, but the waters are still muddied somehow !

So far as i can tell there are two mainstream thoughts on what a soul is, as i understand it the Greeks defined it as essentially 'all that makes a person up' it does not really delve into the spiritual.  This is i understand how many people still use it.

In religion however the soul is often referred to as a spiritual, none material form that either informs us, or in fact is us, this is i suspect what John means when he says we don't have a soul. To me you cannot falsify the soul, simply infer that we have much better idea's about what consciousness could be etc, in other words make an unprovable soul unnecessary.

My position being that should a soul exist, there is no way to prove/disprove (unfalsifiable)  

I find myself in this back to front conversation where people it seems can make any claim, that the scale of what's extraordinary is subjective, and John seems to think the responsibility is on those who doubt it to refute it rather than the person who makes the claim to prove it.

I'm trying to understand why John under these circumstances would reject a alien abduction claim out of hand.  In other words where does  does healthy scepticism kick in in the mind of John given that all claims must be disproven rather than proved ?

Things aren't unfalsifiable simply because you want them to be or you feel they are too vague. They are unfalsifiable because they predict every outcome of an experiment. Vagueness is measured by this fact alone. If you want to claim souls are unfalsifiable, you have to show how they predict every outcome (which they don't).

If souls are claimed to be responsible for giving life to things, for example, and they're supposed to go to heaven or hell after death, that is sufficient to falsify souls. An experiment which can medically resurrect someone after a day or two, shows that either souls can be pulled out of heaven and hell against God's will (which religion doesn't teach) or else a body can be alive without a soul, falsifying this definition of souls.

Souls would be unfalsifiable if, despite our experiment, they predicted that a person can be alive with and without a soul (which they don't)

This is rich.  Your denomination teaches soul sleep.  That people who die and are resurrected - by medicine or by god come the day, were just sleeping.  Seems like it's got both bases covered to me.

I think they teach that the soul (all that we are) is kept in the mind of god, then we are re-created.

[The Grand Nudger]

The location of the soul is irrelevant, and the state of the body as living or dead doubly so if soul is held elsewhere - such as the mind of god.

This entire thread has been an exercise in trolling the boards with lies, half truths, and positions of convenience.

[John 6IX Breezy]

We don't believe in souls. This notion of "soul sleep" is what happens when you google about a religion lol.

[The Grand Nudger]

If you say so, John.

[Mister Agenda]

A hypothesis is not mere conjecture, it is a proposed explanation for available evidence, and that explanation has to be falsifiable. Guess what ghosts aren't.

No, that is what theories are, they explain the available evidence. Hypothesis are predictions about the outcome of an experiment. Conjecture aligns more with the nature of theories.

Sigh.

hy·poth·e·sis
/hīˈpäTHəsəs/

noun
noun: hypothesis; plural noun: hypotheses
a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.



A proposed explanation IS a prediction, if it's potentially falsifiable by experiment. A scientific theory is based on evidence supported by hypotheses that survive attempts to falsify them. Neither a hypothesis nor a theory is a mere conjecture.

Though even scientists aren't strict about their wording, theoretical physics ought to be more properly called hypothetical physics since it's got so many hypotheses that we don't have the means to test yet, IMHO.

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A scientist doesn't come up with ghosts, demons, fairies, leprechauns, or other anthropomorphic imaginings to explain nature.  Because its never worked, ever, and is usually defined in a way that can't be falsified.  It is a bad probability bet.

I think it's important to remember that, although ghosts aren't theorized by scientists, there are plenty ghost-like conjectures in science. For example, in the early days of neuron research, Cajal argued for the existence of dendritic spines, even though it was almost universally rejected as an artefact of staining techniques. He stood by his argument, and only with future developments in staining could the opposing artefact conjecture be falsified in support of the dendritic spines.

So his evidence for the existence of dendritic spines was the Golgi staining method which showed them (reproducibly), and there was an alternative explanation that also explained the images but eventually the method was proven reliable for this purpose. This is like ghosts how?

Proposing an explanation that might turn out to be wrong but is based on reproducible evidence is not like proposing ghosts at all, IMHO. When science has been applied to the existence of ghosts, it has only ever found evidence for alternative explanations for the claimed phenomena, never for anything that could reasonably described as 'ghostly', just nature, usually human nature or normal artifacts of photography. I think you're reaching, for some reason.

[Mister Agenda]

Magical, invisible, unprovable universe creating beings extraordinary enough for you  ?

No; provide a way to measure extraordinariness. If you cannot measure it, then it is not science.

An extraordinary claim is one that has no testable evidence and would require what we've learned of nature so far to be wrong if true.

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1. God and religious beliefs go hand in hand; stated another way, it is as if God was the theory and religious beliefs were it's hypothesis: If my particular God exists, then man shouldn't have a soul. Therefore, if man is found to have a soul, my particular God does not exist.

2. There's nothing inherently unfalsifiable about souls. When things aren't falsifiable it is usually because they predict every possible test outcome, not because you haven't figured out a way to test it.

3. Seventh-Day Adventist.

*bold mine*
Sorry John I have no idea what that means, can you expand and explain it for me ?
Then how would you tell if there was a soul, what about a soul would we be able to test ?

Remember when people thought souls weighed something until it was proven that a dead body weighs exactly as much as a live one, provided you prevent decomp gas from escaping? And remember how many times something similar happened with claims about God and the response was to change the claim or deny the evidence? There's a trend, I think. A good one, I suppose, better people believe in a God that doesn't do anything than one that demands they write legislation establishing their religious views.

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If you don't know how to test for a soul, simply say so, if you claim their presence (should they exist) is testable then simply say how.

I see; you misunderstood me then. My denomination doesn't believe in souls. That's why I gave the formula: "If my particular God exists, then man shouldn't have a soul." Meaning that if man does have a soul, my particular God does not exist.

I don't know how you would test for souls, since you wish to falsify my beliefs. I just know souls aren't defined in an unfalsifiable manner.

An unfalsifiable hypothesis is one that cannot be contradicted by an observation or experiment. Since people who believe souls are real (defined as the part of a human being that is a spirit) define them as immaterial spirits, they are unfalsifiable in principle since we can't distinguish between things that are immaterial from things that don't exist. If you COULD falsify the existence of a human soul that lives on after death, you could potentially scientifically validate or disconfirm at least one belief of your sect.

[The Grand Nudger]

There's a trend, I think. A good one, I suppose, better people believe in a God that doesn't do anything than one that demands they write legislation establishing their religious views.

They didn't have to choose, so they went with both.