h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"If we cannot
observe an event scientifically, or if we do not predict it using
derivation from scientifically accepted axioms, then it does not
happen." And if it does happen, it can bloody well be ignored 'cos I
don't want to see it."

Could you elaborate on this a little? I find all of this fascinating and am looking at scientific tools and their fitness as a basis for atheism very hard. Do you know of anything that we know or need to know that the null hypothesis and the burden of proof will never be able to satisfy? Can you think of any better way to discriminate between different explanations for what's "out there"?

"[Acupuncture..], in accordance with a corollary of the laws of evolution,
surely a method of illness prevention and cure would not have
survived and even thrived for the last five millennia by a population
so huge if it did not possess some pretty potent value for the
practitioners and the patients."

Close. Acupuncture, as you quite correctly point out, has been subject to a process of evolution. It is memetic evolution, though, and it is the meme's fitness to replicate from mind to mind that is, by definition, it's criterion for selection. Now you might say that to be fit to replicate in this way, it must be effective, but that is not so. All it has to be is 'attractive' (there is a better word, but it escapes me) to minds for whatever reason. Memes are not required to have any positive effect on the carrier at all in order to propagate.

BillyMac for your forthright comments about Religon I am entering you on my homepage in the list of people who have helped progress mankind. I take Si's comments about acupuncture of course it doesn't have to work it just has to be an attractive idea. It probably does work though.

"If we cannot observe an event scientifically..."

Science is of no use in observing the phenomena, but discribing them in rather small terms. Actually, all I know, there's nothing you are able to know, "that the null hypothesis and the burden of proof will never be able to satisfy". That's why, I guess, you're a small scientific believer. Of course there isn't "any better way to discriminate between different explanations". As long as your comprehension of science runs the business, that's a rhetoric question. Why - e. g. - do you take the alternatives of description for explanations?

What?

Certainly, those people who classify themselves as scientists seek to take themselves out of the phenomena that they happen to be observing scientifically, through hypothesis, repeatable results, conclusions.

But what is it that caused the scientist to ask the "Why?" question in the first place?

"Why does an apple fall down instead of up?"

In a rational society, people accept the world with which they are presented. They would not think to ask this type of question. But there is no such thing as a rational society because we are made up of individuals who, by the questions that we ask, shape our perception of reality.

So there can be no reality without someone to perceive it. Reality is all in our minds. And if we accept the world only as we see it, that's it, nothing else, then the collective "we" is quite flat, dull, and might as well be dead already.

There is a God, because I say so.

> But what is it that caused the scientist to ask the "Why?" question in the first place?

Curiosity.

> In a rational society, people accept the world with which they are
> presented. They would not think to ask this type of question. But there
> is no such thing as a rational society because we are made up of
> individuals who, by the questions that we ask, shape our perception
> of reality.

Not true. Individually, scientists will have biases and preconceptions and they'll make assumptions. It is in the very nature of the scientific endevour, through peer review and testing of published hypotheses, to ensure that those biases and assumptions have not corrupted the results.

The emergent property of a distributed scientific methodolgy is a *common* body of knowledge.

> So there can be no reality without someone to perceive it.

Pseudo-metaphysical twaddle.

> Reality is
> all in our minds.

A virtual model of reality is in our minds.

What use would a mind be if there was no common reality for it to descibe?

How would we have evolved a language if we couldn't agree on what a real predator was?

A plant has no mind, yet it needs to fix real nitrogen in order to survive. Before any organisms had evolved the capacity to consider the nature of reality, how did they avoid real predators and find real food and mates?

> There is a God, because I say so.

You have a god because you say so. I have little green maggots in my shoes that control all of *your* actions because *I* say so.

>You have a god because you say so. I have little green maggots in my shoes that control all of *your* actions because
*I* say so.

Truer words were never spoken. Unless you were joking, and even then I still hear the Truth in the spirit of your jest.

It is the quest for quality, for goodness, that is what makes scientific methodology beautiful. Not knowing what this "eureka" will be is what makes the quest scientific, versus... oh, an example I can think of is this Creation Science thing that has a "Fact" that they gather "evidence" to support.

It's what you do with the unbiased data that creates your reality.

The universe doesn't go away when someone stops believing in it, it just becomes "something in the background." =) And that which I call *reality* - THAT is the point in which the objective world and the subjective mind coalesce into beauty. Observable beauty. As humans we are called to be the eyes of the universe and to enjoy the wonders of creation.

Unless the dolphins beat us to it. That "eyes of the universe" thing.

Do dolphins recognize themselves in a mirror?

>>You have a god because you say so. I have little green maggots in my shoes that control all of *your* actions
>>because *I* say so.

> Truer words were never spoken. Unless you were joking, and even then I still hear the Truth in the spirit of your jest.

Truer words? Do you believe that there are such maggots in my shoes? If I were to invite you to look, what would you do and how would what you saw affect your beiefs?

> It's what you do with the unbiased data that creates your reality.

No. It's the data that creates my opinion of reality - an opinion that is subject to change. It is the collaborative collection of data that shapes the *common* opinion of reality. Both of these things, however, describe a reality that is *not* subject to change.

Our opinion of reality describes it; it does not define it. Reality is not subjective, only our opinion of it.

> Truer words? Do you believe that there are such maggots in my shoes? If I were to invite you to look, what would you
>do and how would what you saw affect your beliefs?

If I were to see maggots in your shoes, and you told me that they controlled all of my actions, I would definitely respect them, because to respect the maggots is to respect you and your beliefs. And hey, you never know when a maggot might decide to *show* me that he controlled my actions. You just never know.

Anyways, If you believed something with all of your heart, such as this, and those little green maggots helped you navigate your reality by giving you the ability to do more constructive than destructive things with your life, then I'm right there with you, letting the maggots control my actions when I am in communion with you (all forms of communication).

As far as the "common" opinion of reality, I have a saying. Rational people adapt themselves to the world. Irrational people adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on irrational people.

Observing data does not increase our enjoyment of it. And progress, granted, is not the Holy Grail - but it is something that as an American is totally ingrained in me. To progress is to help mankind. Maybe we'll progress so much that we'll finally stop living like viruses - when the population is too full, we move to another place, fill it up, til we choke the planet. I'd like to hope we'd progress to this point.

Only our opinion is subjective, this is what you say. Yes, but why the ONLY? Like it's not important. Okay, bzzt, you have the mind of Omnicience, your own worldview, your upbringing is invalid to *REALITY*. That's what it sounds like you're saying.

> Only our opinion is subjective, this is what you say. Yes, but why the
> ONLY? Like it's not important.

The "only" was to differentiate between our opinion(s) of reality (which are important) and the reality that they attempt to describe.

Okay, so reality, in your opinion, only means The Universe? That which is created? The stuff "out there?"

What if there were no difference between "out there" and "in here". What if the world was your mind was the world? As above, so below?

I think someone would have called it "nondualism." But you'd have to ask the dolphins to be sure.

Reality *is* in fact subjective in some ways. Take Shroedinger's cat experiment. There Reality is that the cat is both dead *and* alive at the same time until someone looks at it.
Quantum Mechanics is a bizarre beast but after 6 months of it I don't want to see it again.