A Dragon in my Garage - Questions

[A Christian Sceptic]

So I read A Dragon In My Garage by Carl Sagan.

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Dragon.htm

Am I correct in concluding that what Carl Sagan was saying is this:

"In the absence of scientific evidence that there is __________ don't believe in _________"?

Anyone know of anywhere where he talked about this selection?

[Hokulele]

Personally, I think think his main point is in this phrase:

If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists?


Sure, he is also stating that it is reasonable to come to the tentative conclusion (his qualifier) to not believe in the dragon. But his larger point, I think this is from The Demon Haunted World, is that the real question is not so much whether or not the dragon is real, but to determine what has so utterly convinced the believer.

This is why when approached by a theist who wants me to believe that their version of god is real, my first question is always, "Why do you believe?" The answer could be some type of concrete evidence (footprints in the flour), or other reasoning. Please do not take offense, but as of today, I still haven't had an answer that I personally find compelling.

[Halcyon Dayz]

So I read A Dragon In My Garage by Carl Sagan.

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Dragon.htm

Am I correct in concluding that what Carl Sagan was saying is this:

"In the absence of scientific evidence that there is __________ don't believe in _________"?

Anyone know of anywhere where he talked about this selection?


It's not so much the lack of evidence, but the impossibility to either proof or disproof it.
See falsifiability (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability).
Any statement that isn't falsifiable is useless.

The skeptics attitude is indeed pretty much to only believe in what you know.
The things you don't know, you don't know.
No point in believing either way. We want to know for sure.
And for reliable knowledge you need evidence.

[Big Les]

It is indeed in "Demon Haunted World", and as I posted in another thread, the key phrase for me is this;

...the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

So whilst being (quite rightly) careful to qualify his opinion with the words "tentatively" and "be open", there's little doubt that I can see that he is saying it is not sensible to believe in an unfalsifiable thing. As you know this ended up being the crux of my argument on the other thread vis scepticism and religious belief.

If I had to sum up the piece in one sentence, it would be that "things that are impossible to dis/prove might as well not exist".

[Jekyll]

So I read A Dragon In My Garage by Carl Sagan.

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Dragon.htm

Am I correct in concluding that what Carl Sagan was saying is this:

"In the absence of scientific evidence that there is __________ don't believe in _________"?

Anyone know of anywhere where he talked about this selection?
Bertram Russell was one of the first to argue this. If you want a justification of it, read his essays.

I wish to propose a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell4.htm

[e-sabbath]

If you had a Dagon in your Garage, I rather think you'd notice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagon

[Jekyll]

If you had a Dagon in your Garage, I rather think you'd notice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagon

Unless he's an invisible, intangible fish god.

[articulett]

Unless he's an invisible, intangible fish god.

In my belief system invisible dragons can turn into intangible fish gods.

Prove me wrong.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

"In the absence of scientific evidence that there is __________ don't believe in _________"?
I'd say that's pretty good. Remember not to confuse belief with faith. Belief is when you hold something to be true due to evidence; faith is when you hold something to be true without evidence. Certainly you can have faith in whatever you like.

And don't forget what Yahzi said:

If the existence of a thing is indistinguishable from its nonexistence, we say that thing does not exist.


~~ Paul

[tkingdoll]

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. This is important to remember because sometimes there is no evidence for something...yet. And that's what inspires people to keep looking for the evidence. This is science. "I have observed that this flower grows. I think it may be something to do with water but there's no proof". A few months and some hard work later...there's the proof. And anyone can go and get the same proof for themselves with experimentation. Of course, that particular proof was made ages ago.

However...if a thing continually defies attempts to prove its very existence, then what is the difference between it existing and not existing? None. For all intents and purposes (other than religious worship), it is a useless thing.

Now, what you must further factor in is the motives and behaviour of those making the claim.

"I have an invisible dragon in my garage and sometimes he grants wishes. You can come and sit in my garage and talk to the dragon directly from your mind. He may or may not grant your wish. In return I would like some money. Oh, also, there are some rules for living which people who talk to the dragon have to live by. No gays."

Does the claimant have anything to gain in this scenario?

[Roboramma]

So I read A Dragon In My Garage by Carl Sagan.

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Dragon.htm

Am I correct in concluding that what Carl Sagan was saying is this:

"In the absence of scientific evidence that there is __________ don't believe in _________"?

Well I don't know what Sagan would say - he's not here anymore.

But if by that you mean "don't think you know the answers to questions that you don't know the answer to", then yeah, I think Sagan woud have agreed with that.

That doesn't mean that in absence of evidence you know that the thing doesn't exist - as teek pointed out absence of evidence is not evidence of absence (I think that phrase is actually even attributable to Sagan, but anyway, he certainly said it a lot). All it means is you don't know, and again, as teek says, you might consider trying to find out. How? By looking for evidence.

[T'ai Chi]

Belief is when you hold something to be true due to evidence; faith is when you hold something to be true without evidence.


That's pretty silly even if it is the standard accepted definitions.

I don't know anyone ever to have faithed without any evidence whatsoever. They may be interpreting evidence differently, however.

[Hokulele]

That's pretty silly even if it is the standard accepted definitions.

I don't know anyone ever to have faithed without any evidence whatsoever. They may be interpreting evidence differently, however.


Or entirely redefining that word.

[Tricky]

The concept of falsifiability is a little tough for non-scientists to grasp. I read a post on another board today where a person claimed evolution wasn't falsifiable because every time they found some new evidence that hadn't been covered by evolution, they simply rewrote the theory to include it. That is not what it means at all.

Here is the question that you should ask yourself as to whether your belief is falsifiable or not:

What would it take to make you change your mind?

For every positive belief I have, I can concieve of some piece of evidence, however unlikely, that would disprove it. If you cannot think of anything that would cause you to lose belief in a thing, then your belief is not rational because it is not conditional upon evidence.

[TX50]

In my belief system invisible dragons can turn into intangible fish gods.

Prove me wrong.

That smells fishy to me.

[hgc]

That's pretty silly even if it is the standard accepted definitions.

I don't know anyone ever to have faithed without any evidence whatsoever. They may be interpreting evidence differently, however.


One man's evidence is another man's fancy. For instance, it's evident to me that you fancy your wishes are evidence of .. something. To the empiricist, faith is knowledge without evidence. Now, if you want to go about redefining empiricist, we're swirling ad absurdum.

[Achán hiNidráne]

Unless he's an invisible, intangible fish god.

All this talk of Dagon has put me in a festive holiday mood! Let's sing a song:

XFo4jbqe_2Y

[Gord_in_Toronto]

In my belief system invisible dragons can turn into intangible fish gods.

Prove me wrong.

I have here in my hand this HOLEY BOOK. It says you are wrong.

Oh. Wait!


holey
One entry found.

holey

Main Entry:
hol·ey Listen to the pronunciation of holeyPronunciation:
\ˈhō-lē\ Function:
adjective Date:
13th century
: having holes


My bad. Sorry. :confused:

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I don't know anyone ever to have faithed without any evidence whatsoever. They may be interpreting evidence differently, however.
Like all things in real life, the belief/faith thing is a spectrum. So is the quality of evidence.

~~ Paul

[Cactus Wren]

I have here in my hand this HOLEY BOOK.

No doubt it tells about the God of the Gaps?

[FireGarden]

"In the absence of scientific evidence that there is __________ don't believe in _________"?

Not believing in something is a different opinion to believing its opposite.

EG: I'm going to toss a coin. I don't believe it will land heads up. Does that mean I believe it will land tails up?

No.
I have no belief either way.


And Sagan's advice makes sense. Because the list of things without evidence can get very long.

[A Christian Sceptic]

Not believing in something is a different opinion to believing its opposite.

EG: I'm going to toss a coin. I don't believe it will land heads up. Does that mean I believe it will land tails up?

No.
I have no belief either way.


And Sagan's advice makes sense. Because the list of things without evidence can get very long.

I've been re-reading that story and there is one thing Carl Sagan never pointed out. Why should I care whether there was an invisible dragon? I can think of many reasons why I would care and if I did care I wouldn't stop looking for him even if science couldn't prove he was or wasn't there. I'd try to find other ways to find out.

[articulett]

But caring about a god means that you have to assume that whatever ways you are learning what it is he does and wants is as subject to fault and delusion and confirmation bias as every other god belief past and present. There is no reason to imagine the knowledge you have or the god that you believe in to be more real or more worth exploring than Zeus or Allah or Xenu. You are imagining someone who wants you to believe in them and get to know them--but they've left no clear rubric and tons of people are sure they know the truth and none of them believe the same thing. The majority of god believers past and present must be wrong by virtue of the fact that the beliefs are in conflict and no believer has access to any more measurable evidence than any other believer and all believers are human-- who are very prone to these kinds of beliefs when indoctrinated young.

So you can never ever know if the god you believe in is more true or real or right than any other god and you still will be going to hell according to most religions because they all seem to be certain different things are required for heaven and different things land a person in hell. And if you believe in such things, then you have to either assume you have somehow gotten "the truth" knowing that most of humanity has been deceived... or you have to wonder if you may be screwing up your eternity for a wrong belief.

I think non-belief makes the most sense. I don't understand the confidence people get in their myths. If your god was as much of a myth as gods you find mythological and/or if there were no gods and you were fooling yourself, would you want to know?

I think your answer is no. And that just isn't very skeptical. You believe in your god and you don't want to know that you might be wrong. That is the opposite of skepticism and science.

Why should you care about a god that you've invented in your head and not other gods or other powers or demons? I think you care because you are afraid you'll be punished by this invisible guy for doubting and you'll feel embarrassed that you fooled yourself into accepting common mental illusions as special messages for the magical creator of all giving special messages to you via signs and telepathic good feelings.

You wanted to see a shoot star and you saw one? Perhaps you saw one subconsciously out of the corner of your eye and hoped to see another one. And there happened to be a meteor shower that night... or the invisible guy in the sky could have altered physics for one of billions 0f humans in a speck of a planet to push photons in such a way as to give you a special sign.

And learn why we perceive flowers as beautiful and why they evolved with the colors and designs they have... it's not magic or god.... and flowers aren't "beautiful" to anyone outside of the earthly critters who evolved to prefer the site of some things and not so much others.

[A Christian Sceptic]

So you can never ever know if the god you believe in is more true or real or right than any other god and you still will be going to hell according to most religions because they all seem to be certain different things are required for heaven and different things land a person in hell.


I'm not sure what heaven or hell have anything to do with just trying to find if he exists and going from there. But yes, those would also be things one would have to consider once they come to that point.


I think non-belief makes the most sense. I don't understand the confidence people get in their myths. If your god was as much of a myth as gods you find mythological ... would you want to know?

Absolutely.


and/or if there were no gods and you were fooling yourself, would you want to know?


I think it wouldn't be me fooling myself unless I was following a religion I created.



You believe in your god and you don't want to know that you might be wrong.

If you can prove to me there is no God that would be helpful. That's what these posts are meant for - to see why people don't believe. But so far they don't show me anything that make me think I'm wrong that there is a God or even that there might be a God. I definitely don't know how I could say that I know there is no god.


Why should you care about a god that you've invented in your head and not other gods or other powers or demons?

I only care about the god not a god or any other god. I don't really care about following any sub-god if there is such a thing.


I think you care because you are afraid you'll be punished by this invisible guy for doubting and you'll feel embarrassed that you fooled yourself into accepting common mental illusions as special messages for the magical creator of all giving special messages to you via signs and telepathic good feelings.


Well - the God I follow doesn't punish people for doubting.


You wanted to see a shoot star and you saw one? Perhaps you saw one subconsciously out of the corner of your eye and hoped to see another one. And there happened to be a meteor shower that night... or the invisible guy in the sky could have altered physics for one of billions 0f humans in a speck of a planet to push photons in such a way as to give you a special sign.


Possibly either way. This happened after I was already a Christian, so I never saw it as more than anything but nice of him to do if he did it. Never proof for anything. I would hope no one else would consider that proof of anything. But it's what happened so I add that to my life's experience and compare it to everything else I know and experience and measure it's importance and adjust my beliefs accordingly if need be. Go by your own life's experience - not mine.

[articulett]

No... I go by common life experiences. If you visited a tribal community at the same time as a natural disaster they might think you brought the disaster. If they killed you and never had the disaster again they might think of that as confirmation that they were right. If they had the disaster again, they would look for the next person that needed killing. I think humans look for "signs" to confirm the beliefs they've come to. I don't want to be making up signs. I've been there and done that... but it still didn't make it any more likely to be true. The feelings that felt truest and best to me were more Eastern-- reincarnation... god never made sense... but even though those beliefs felt good and I found signs affirming that belief to me... I was also aware that other people were equally sure and seeing signs for stuff I knew they had to be fooling themselves on. I decided that I was more interested in whether I was fooling myself than whether I could feel the truth. And I came to the conclusion, that I was--and all theists are. They cannot know what they claim to know... they can only "feel" like they know something... and then confirm that something via confirmation bias like "shooting stars" as signs. It's exactly what mentalists are doing... it's so easy to see once you've thought your way out of it...

I do go by my own experiences. But I am trying to understand how people of assorted beliefs who come here so certain of some proposition are able to see other woo as "woo" but not subject their own "woo" beliefs to the same scrutiny. Why do you imagine other people believe such different things. They can't all be right, right? It just sounds weirdly arrogant to me the way everyone is sure that they've achieved some "subjective truth"-- but reality isn't subjective and god isn't supposed to be. Nobody thinks of their god as imaginary. So I just think that people that believe in gods are the same as people who believe in rain dances or psychics or demons or all the other things people believe in that have never been demonstrated to exist. It's a fake answer. A non-answer. You believe because you "feel" there must be a god because someone indoctrinated you with that belief and told you it was bad not to believe... so you've spent a lifetime spinning that truth in your head.

I think your belief started much the same way Bart Ehrman's did-- he became very religious as a teen because someone told him he had a jesus sized hole in his heart...

Michael Shermer was once an evangelical Christian too. I just hear their words echoed in yours. They are not believers any more. The reasons they use to explain why they believed before sound like yours... it just sounds so normal and human and faulty in reason to me. And I feel like you would know this if someone believed a very different thing like reincarnation or something and gave you similar anecdotes as to why.

[e-sabbath]

Unless he's an invisible, intangible fish god.

It's the smell, man, the smell.

[CFLarsen]

I think non-belief makes the most sense. I don't understand the confidence people get in their myths. If your god was as much of a myth as gods you find mythological and/or if there were no gods and you were fooling yourself, would you want to know?

I think your answer is no. And that just isn't very skeptical. You believe in your god and you don't want to know that you might be wrong. That is the opposite of skepticism and science.

You still leave out the evidence. Do they claim evidence of their beliefs, or do they refer to their myths as myths that make sense to them?

People didn't just believe in Zeus for the sake of believing in a god. They believed because it also gave them an explanation of the world, and a sense of meaning.

Even today, when Zeus believers are somewhat hard to find, we can still derive meaning from myths. They can tell us a lot about ourselves.

When you ignore that aspect, you ignore a large part of our understanding of ourselves. So maybe it is not so strange that you have such a hard time understanding believers.

No... I go by common life experiences.
...
I do go by my own experiences.

That is precisely the same argument that people use to argue that Sylvia Browne has psychic powers.

"But my personal experience tells me so!"

Instead of your own "common life experiences", you should try evidence.

[athon]

Instead of your own "common life experiences", you should try evidence.

Which is precisely what evidence is. Observations which are held in account of a belief.

Theists commence with a proposition - their version of a deity exists. Religion is a social paradigm which then extends around it, based on the shared faith that said deity exists.

Many theists (I might even be persuaded to think all) search for observations which compete with their reasoning that says their deity does not exist. For instance, Christians see it as a test of their faith to address the dissonance of their faith with observations that they can attest to their view of the truth.

We all have the capabilities to do this. While science itself is a method, we being people will often accept a view out of a social conditioning and accept evidence which accounts for it. Afterall, evidence in the empiricist sense is simply an observation which can be accounted for by a model we believe in.

Critical thinking is a tool which can be applied to evidence to gauge a level of confidence in whether our model is the only one which could account for that observation. Science is superior to theology in creating models of the universe because it allows us to assess observations much more efficiently than any other system.

A theist could quite honestly and truthfully say that their faith is enforced by evidence, such as a loved one recovering rapidly from an illness. Afterall, this is seriously evidence for a deity. It is also evidence for many other things...most of which are much, much more likely than supernatural intervention.

We must take care when defining evidence in such a way. Skeptics are quite quick to denounce others as not having come to a conclusion based on evidence, which is not exactly true. Often, people have arrived at a weak conclusion because they have poorly connected evidence with an unlikely cause.

Athon

[Lonewulf]

I've been re-reading that story and there is one thing Carl Sagan never pointed out. Why should I care whether there was an invisible dragon? I can think of many reasons why I would care and if I did care I wouldn't stop looking for him even if science couldn't prove he was or wasn't there. I'd try to find other ways to find out.

So, how many other things would you expend resources to find?

I make a claim there are elves in my back yard. How long are you going to look for them until you find them?

I claim there's a dragon in my garage. How long are you going to look for him?

I claim there's an invisible god that tells me what to do.

I claim there's an invisible monster in my body.

I claim there are aliens visiting me nightly.








Are you going to follow up on every single claim I just made, and if not, then why not?


As for why should you care... I dunno. Why should I care that there is an invisible bearded man in the sky watching down on us? If you care, that's fine... but as long as the catholic church and neocons try to tell me what to do according to their religion... or as long as religious "values" keep getting in the way of good science... well... there ya go.

If religion had no power over me or mine at all, or the future of mankind, I'd be cool with it. So far, though, it's been a waste of resources and human life.

[CFLarsen]

Which is precisely what evidence is. Observations which are held in account of a belief.

No, that's experience - not evidence. Evidence is a little more than merely believed observations.

If you experience a fairy does not mean you have evidence of a fairy. You have an observation, which is somewhat dubious, and is probably something else. But unless more observations are made, independently, or verifiable evidence like fairy bodies are found, there's not much more we can do about it. It's just an unverifiable anecdote.

Theists commence with a proposition - their version of a deity exists. Religion is a social paradigm which then extends around it, based on the shared faith that said deity exists.

It is important to note that they share it based on two kinds of observations: The personal observations ("Jesus came to me in a light, when I was in bed") and the shared observations (Multiple sightings of angels, or pareidolia like nuns-in-buns and jesus-in-a-cheese-sandwich).

The first kind is hard to do anything about, other than come up with natural explanations (dream, hallucination, etc). The second is far more interesting: Now we have something tangible to investigate - but we can still come up with natural explanations.

Many theists (I might even be persuaded to think all) search for observations which compete with their reasoning that says their deity does not exist. For instance, Christians see it as a test of their faith to address the dissonance of their faith with observations that they can attest to their view of the truth.

We all have the capabilities to do this. While science itself is a method, we being people will often accept a view out of a social conditioning and accept evidence which accounts for it. Afterall, evidence in the empiricist sense is simply an observation which can be accounted for by a model we believe in.

An observation that can be independently verified, yes. Otherwise, you end up as a new Blondlot.

Critical thinking is a tool which can be applied to evidence to gauge a level of confidence in whether our model is the only one which could account for that observation. Science is superior to theology in creating models of the universe because it allows us to assess observations much more efficiently than any other system.

Science is superior to theology in creating models of the universe that are better at explaining it. The models are far better supported.

A theist could quite honestly and truthfully say that their faith is enforced by evidence, such as a loved one recovering rapidly from an illness. Afterall, this is seriously evidence for a deity. It is also evidence for many other things...most of which are much, much more likely than supernatural intervention.

We must take care when defining evidence in such a way. Skeptics are quite quick to denounce others as not having come to a conclusion based on evidence, which is not exactly true. Often, people have arrived at a weak conclusion because they have poorly connected evidence with an unlikely cause.

That's where skepticism comes in, in the form of Occam's razor. Is it really evidence in favor of a god, when we have natural explanations?

If everything can be called evidence of anything, then "evidence" loses its meaning.

"Hvis alt er lige gyldigt, så er alt ligegyldigt"
(Danish pun: If everything is equally valid, then everything is indifferent)

[FireGarden]

I've been re-reading that story and there is one thing Carl Sagan never pointed out. Why should I care whether there was an invisible dragon? I can think of many reasons why I would care and if I did care I wouldn't stop looking for him even if science couldn't prove he was or wasn't there. I'd try to find other ways to find out.

I think Sagan has been clever in illustrating the chain of thoughts you'd have to go through. So it's invisible, "Does it leave footprints?" So it floats, "what about the draft from its wings beating?" It doesn't fly, it just floats. And so on.

All methods of finding evidence for the dragon are attempts to answer: "what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all?"

btw,
Do you think that forming a belief would help in the search for evidence?

[A Christian Sceptic]

So, how many other things would you expend resources to find?

I make a claim there are elves in my back yard. How long are you going to look for them until you find them?

I claim there's a dragon in my garage. How long are you going to look for him?

I claim there's an invisible god that tells me what to do.

I claim there's an invisible monster in my body.

I claim there are aliens visiting me nightly.

Are you going to follow up on every single claim I just made, and if not, then why not?


That's a great question, Lonewolf. I would have to honestly answer that if I felt any of those claims mattered to my life I would search for them. But me personally, I don't really care if any of those claims are true (except the god one). All I care about is whether there is an ultimate god out there - anything less for me isn't really worthy of my time. For other people, apparently it is. Now if any of those claims impact my life somehow then I would look into them. For example: If I felt the invisible dragon was a threat to me or people I care about I'd investigate until I felt he wasn't there or that he wasn't a threat. If I thought the invisible dragon was god, then I suppose I'd investigate that too. But if he's just an invisible dragon then if he's there then strange, might be interesting how he is invisible, but really - I don't care.


As for why should you care... I dunno. Why should I care that there is an invisible bearded man in the sky watching down on us? If you care, that's fine... but as long as the catholic church and neocons try to tell me what to do according to their religion... or as long as religious "values" keep getting in the way of good science... well... there ya go.

I totally agree. Don't believe in something simply because some "expert" tells you to.

[articulett]

I think forming beliefs ensures you'll see things as evidence and draw incorrect inferences, because science shows us people do exactly this.

I have Claus on ignore, but if his tangential question was towards me, I was merely answering Christian Skeptics claim that one most look for their own evidence. Subjective experiences and inferences are not useful evidence for understand the truth as one can readily see when looking at the evidence claimed for things one does not believe in... those who look at their horoscope or visit psychics. And the idea that one should believe or seek evidence if the proposition is important is similar to telling someone that buried treasure is buried in their back yard... it would be a pain to believe it if it wasn't so, and you could waste a lot of time and energy looking for it if you thought there was a good reason to believe it. The same goes for Atlantis.

My house has a floor safe in the floor of a closet which I didn't discover until years after I bought it. The house was an older house in foreclosure. I've tried various ways to open the safe or find the combination, but so far I've been unsuccessful. It would cost be a hundred dollars to have someone come out at do it for me. But so far, the chance for there to be something worthwhile in there feels less likely than any effort I want to spend.

With god, I figured there IS no way to know if there is a god or if you are accessing the right one and doing the right thing to please him if he is conscious or whatever. It seems like a cruel mind game... like telling people there is treasure buried in their back yard and they must keep searching, and it's their fault if they don't find it. I can't even imagine how consciousness can exist without a body--or sensory organs for input... how could a god want, think, remember, know-- without a brain... and why should I care if I won't have a brain after I die. You can't even make new memories without a brain organ called the hippocampus... and there is a genetic disorder that makes it impossible to feel pain... so how can we be anything without a brain? How could a god? How can anyone "know" anything about invisible undetectable entities or forces? And if they assume they do... how can they assume they are correct when others are clearly wrong with the same "types" of "sources" and "evidence".

I think it's all an appeal to ignorance--someone must be in charge... someone somewhere must understand... and egotism "I'm here for a special reason"-- "I'm chosen".

I just don't think faith and feelings and anecdotes and cryptic signs and coincidences are a very good foundation to build an objective view of the reality we all share. To me, all gods are invisible dragons... there is nothing to distinguish them from such--they all have assorted traits that are wholly invented in the mind of the assorted believers as far as I can tell... and they pretend they all believe in the same thing though the details are very different as are the wants and the rubric of these gods--what he does and why and when and who he gives "special signs" too.

How can any god envisioned by a human be any more truer than any other god envisioned by a human. How could anyone actually "know" there was a god and that their "evidence" meant what they've inferred it to mean?

[Lonewulf]

Y'know, I may not agree with Christian Skeptic on the whole sky-daddy thing, but I like 'im so far.

Can we keep him? Plz?

I'd prefer a hundred Christian Skeptics to one Claus.

[-Fran-]

Y'know, I may not agree with Christian Skeptic on the whole sky-daddy thing, but I like 'im so far.

Can we keep him? Plz?

I'd prefer a hundred Christian Skeptics to one Claus.

I agree, I haven't agreed with almost a single thing he has said (about religion), I think, but he seems like a genuinly nice guy... ACS that is, not Claus :)

[Halcyon Dayz]

I make a claim there are elves in my back yard. How long are you going to look for them until you find them?
There are those pesky elves again. :D


So far, though, [religion has] been a waste of resources and human life.
QFT!

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

I've been re-reading that story and there is one thing Carl Sagan never pointed out. Why should I care whether there was an invisible dragon?
What if people tell you you can't be a good person because you don't believe there was an invisible dragon? What if people were making decisions on how the nation should be run because they believe there was an invisible dragon? etc.

I can think of many reasons why I would care and if I did care I wouldn't stop looking for him even if science couldn't prove he was or wasn't there. I'd try to find other ways to find out.
Like what?

[A Christian Sceptic]

What if people tell you you can't be a good person because you don't believe there was an invisible dragon?


You can be a good person without a dragon.


What if people were making decisions on how the nation should be run because they believe there was an invisible dragon? etc.


I would only care about the decisions being made. If they are good decisions I wouldn't care.

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

You can be a good person without a dragon.
But that may, or may not, be the way things are. There are people who state, and act upon, the opposite of what you stated. You recognize that one doesn't need the IPU (or dragon, etc) to be good; other people are not that way.

I would only care about the decisions being made. If they are good decisions I wouldn't care.
But what if they are not good decisions.


You asked why you should care if someone claims there is an invisible dragon. I have provided answers. That those answers are not applicable to you as an individual does not mean they are not valid answers.

[Roboramma]

That's a great question, Lonewolf. I would have to honestly answer that if I felt any of those claims mattered to my life I would search for them. But me personally, I don't really care if any of those claims are true (except the god one). All I care about is whether there is an ultimate god out there - anything less for me isn't really worthy of my time. For other people, apparently it is. Now if any of those claims impact my life somehow then I would look into them. For example: If I felt the invisible dragon was a threat to me or people I care about I'd investigate until I felt he wasn't there or that he wasn't a threat. If I thought the invisible dragon was god, then I suppose I'd investigate that too. But if he's just an invisible dragon then if he's there then strange, might be interesting how he is invisible, but really - I don't care. When I was a kid, for a short period of time (a few weeks) I had the idea that I had been kidnapped by aliens. I remember thinking that my whole family were aliens, that I wasn't really on earth any more, I was just in a small "city" that included only the places I usually go, and that if, for instance, my family went on vacation to somewhere that was supposedly another city I'd be taken (while sleeping in the car) to some other manufactured city made to look like what I expected that place to be.
I was very frightened of this. I remember thinking that my brothers had some sinister ulterior motives when we were playing together. I didn't know why I had been kidnapped, but I was sure there was some evil reason. I even worried that i had been kidnapped at birth and my whole life had been lived with aliens.
I'm not sure if I came up with this scenario myself, or if my older brothers told it to me to scare me.

Anyway, it could have been true. It could still be true. Why shouldn't I worry about this as much as the existence of god?
There are things I could do to try to expose my position as someone kidnapped by aliens. I might try to stop them from doing whatever it is that they're doing. All of this (if true) should matter to me very much.

Why is the idea of god more important?

[scotth]

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

That doesn't mean that in absence of evidence you know that the thing doesn't exist - as teek pointed out absence of evidence is not evidence of absence (I think that phrase is actually even attributable to Sagan, but anyway, he certainly said it a lot). All it means is you don't know, and again, as teek says, you might consider trying to find out. How? By looking for evidence.

This doesn't really apply to the dragon in the garage scenario. The absence of evidence quote only holds in an unlimited search space particularly when the evidence could anything at all. This seems always forgotten. The majority of times I hear this line trotted out, it is in an inapplicable situation. When you have reasonable expectations that the existence of anything would leave evidence where you can find, and you look, and find nothing, it is indeed evidence of absence. Please consider a few scenarios...

You are my boss, and I sweep the floor at your warehouse. You ask me what I was doing all day yesterday. I answer, "Right here sweeping the floors all day." But you’ve noticed that my time card wasn't punched, the floors don't look swept, and I don't appear on the surveillance tapes at any time during the day yesterday. I'd say you have pretty solid grounds for firing me. Case one, absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

If you tell me that you have a dog and he lives at your house with you, I would expect there to be some evidence. Let’s say that I come over and have a look. I find no leashes or toys. No hair on the carpet or furniture. No scat in the yard or any place the dog might reasonably be walked. I look all about and don't see any of the signs that are familiar to anyone that has ever owned a dog. If I was confronted with this, I'd have to conclude that you are daft or a liar.... unless there were some remarkable extenuating circumstances. Case two....

Let’s consider the case of the American Sasquatch, or Bigfoot if you prefer. While I can't strictly say there hasn't been any evidence at all, there hasn't been any that stands up to scrutiny or couldn't be readily faked. The United States is a pretty large place, granted. But, unless the Bigfoot breaks nearly every biological rule typical an animal that size, there must be more than a couple for the population to survive. A Bigfoot is large and large animals leave large tracks, trails, prints, scat, and most importantly corpses. So, we have large animals, leaving large evidence and no one can find any. We've had park rangers, hunters, lumber and woodsmen, and of course a legion of dedicated big foot hunters crawling all over this country, for decades, and no un-fake-able evidence. Why is there no hair collected from brush or trees (hair that doesn’t match the style, color, and/or DNA of known animals)? Why have there been no reliable traces at all? With modern biology and other forensic sciences, it doesn't take much to conclusively prove that there exists type of previously undocumented large animal, at the very least. Case 3......

In all three, reasonable searches have been conducted that would genuinely be expected to uncover some evidence if the purported event or phenomena really occurred/existed. Even in cases like a Bigfoot, where the search area is very large, it can be searched. Do any of these examples make for an iron clad indisputable case against? Nope, not a one. But every one does represent real evidence. Not just evidence, but fairly compelling evidence. In spite of it all, one good un-fake-able piece of positive evidence would be enough revive any those cases. If someone said they saw a Bigfoot, brought in (even a few) hairs that that yielded some DNA, and that DNA indicated an animal with plausible relation to anything could be a Bigfoot, my calculations concerning the its likelihood would be radically shifted.

Until some evidence is brought forward, I'll consider that the likelihood approaches zero in each of those cases. And has been said elsewhere in this thread, I remain completely open to any evidence that the future might uncover. My conclusion that Bigfoot probably doesn’t exist is always just once piece of evidence away from being overturned. But, I’m not holding my breath.

As the above example shows, absence of evidence often is evidence of absence. When the search space is finite and the kinds of evidence are reasonably known, that unqualified quotation “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” is completely demolished. It doesn't apply to the dragon in the garage scenario at all.

Bringing up the "absence of evidence" bit in the context of the dragon story only misdirects. The real point is exactly the one that tkingdoll makes herself (in the vary same post, no less), about there being functionally no difference between a thing which could not be detected, even in principal, and that thing not existing at all (that, and the curious oddity of human nature that allows people to make analogous claims with all sincerity). Can such an ephemeral thing even right be claimed to exist, and even if can, does it matter? It seems not in either case.

And along a similar line of thought, that which can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. I know I've heard Hitchens say essentially that recently. I am almost equally sure that someone said it before him. It wouldn't surprise much to find that Sagan was linked to that phrase as well.

And now addressing specifically A Christian Sceptic.... since all this dovetails so nicely into another point in which you've expressed interest lately, I'll carry it on a bit further here. This relates to your thread title "Show me that Science proves there is no go".

It is pretty tough, if not impossible, to disprove a generic unqualified definition of a god. In the generic god instance, the absence of evidence idea is very much true. It could be anywhere, with any properties at all, with no defined interactions at all. You could never know when you've exhausted the search space, or even if you had searched the space properly. But, the god that you are interested in is not a generic god. You, even by proclamation of your forum name, are interested and believe in a particular god, a well defined god, the God of the Bible. I've got some news for you. That God, the one described in the Bible, isn't a god that should be impossible to find. That God, if the Bible is to believed, should be pretty obvious. The search space is not unlimited and the properties and evidence are not unknown. The Earth is big, but there are many of us, and we've had a long time to gather the data.

I am presuming that I don't need to quote to you everything the Bible has to say about your God and the way he is purported to interact with us, the people of the Earth. With that, here are some things for you to think about.....

The Bible is purported to be the word of God, either written or inspired by him. It is the only reason someone would be Christian. There would be no Christian church and you would not believe what you do, were it not for the Bible. Let’s consider some things that would be true, if the Bible were correct.

Christians should be statistically healthier, have fewer accidents, and have fewer disasters befall them than atheists or believers of other faiths if the Bible and what is parroted in church each Sunday is to be believed. This is not true. Not only are Christians not statistically ahead in any of these categories, the correlation is quite the reverse when it comes to health. It doesn't matter if what size group you consider: family; community; or even nation..... Strength of religious affiliation is correlated with greater child and infant mortality, lower life expectancy, higher rates of STDs, etc etc...

Additionally, what the Bible says about prayer utterly demands that there exist a law of probabilities for Christians and a different law of probabilities for the rest of us. This simply is not born out by research. In things that are random (weather disasters and freak accidents), Christians are "cursed and blessed" at the same random rates as the rest of us. In categories of misfortune that might be avoided by proper use of knowledge and reason, Christians markedly lag behind. Besides the health related examples quoted above, virtually every measure of societal health follows the same pattern. Things like teen pregnancy rates, homicide rates, other violent crime rates, incarceration rates, right on down the list, the USA lags behind our more secular European brothers. The US doesn't even rate a spot in 10 best countries to live in any more.

Admittedly, correlation doesn't prove causation. But, it is a big problem for Christians when places to live are statistically ranked by secularist tendency (or conversely religiosity) and the lists sort out exactly the opposite of what Christian should expect by what they are taught and what is written in the Bible. This seems to be the case regardless of scale considered whether it be done internationally, nationally between the states, or even locally. Try to tell me that Christians, who supposedly have a sky buddy who’s got their back, don't expect the faithful to be better off in all those ways. What church doesn't preach that very idea?

A study that showed that people who received intercessory prayer (that wasn't a total fraud) did better during hospitalization would be evidence of your kind of god. It is the kind of evidence that should be expected. Apparently many Christians agree. That’s why they do these kinds of studies all the time. And they all come up with diddly. Case four....

Sorry for spewing that last bit in here, rather than in the proper thread. If you need to be dragged though all the gory detail in order to back all this up, we can do that in the proper thread.

[ImaginalDisc]

I've been re-reading that story and there is one thing Carl Sagan never pointed out. Why should I care whether there was an invisible dragon?

Because religious beliefs can be, and often are harmful. Must I post a picture of the Twin Towers ablaze? I hope not, that would be tacky. Do I have to remind you that for centuries the Roman Catholic Church had a policy of abducting Jewish children (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgardo_Mortara) from their families if anyone claimed that the child had ever been baptized by anyone, including laypersons, even the family's own maid? That is an evil that is solely due to religion. Even in the instances where a person's nonsensical beliefs, in dragons, gods, or homeopathy, has no obvious harm, it subverts their reason and decision making capability. We live in a world full of problems, some small and some that seem insurmountable. We will never solve them by appealing to invisible friends.

I can think of many reasons why I would care and if I did care I wouldn't stop looking for him even if science couldn't prove he was or wasn't there. I'd try to find other ways to find out.

Science is just a method for learning about reality. Scratch that, science is the only reliable method for learning about the world. Using rigorous science, we can move beyond the limitations of our very fallible minds and actually accomplish things, like going to the moon, curing polio, and building the internet you're using to downgrade the importance of science right now. There is more worth in a microscope than a church, and more potential to do good in a physics textbook than in any hymnal.

[boojum]

When I was a kid, for a short period of time (a few weeks) I had the idea that I had been kidnapped by aliens. I remember thinking that my whole family were aliens, that I wasn't really on earth any more, I was just in a small "city" that included only the places I usually go, and that if, for instance, my family went on vacation to somewhere that was supposedly another city I'd be taken (while sleeping in the car) to some other manufactured city made to look like what I expected that place to be.
I was very frightened of this. I remember thinking that my brothers had some sinister ulterior motives when we were playing together. I didn't know why I had been kidnapped, but I was sure there was some evil reason. I even worried that i had been kidnapped at birth and my whole life had been lived with aliens.
I'm not sure if I came up with this scenario myself, or if my older brothers told it to me to scare me.


Had you recently read Robert Heinlein's "They", by any chance? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_%28short_story%29

[Big Les]

Great post scotth! I first came across the "absence of evidence" line back when I was an archaeology student, and it seemed like a major cop-out even then. Basically it's used to allow for "creative" or phenomenological interpretations of the past - the idea that we can't actually know what was going on at a given site, so let's make some stuff up and use the above get-out to evade criticism...

[Roboramma]

This doesn't really apply to the dragon in the garage scenario. The absence of evidence quote only holds in an unlimited search space particularly when the evidence could anything at all.In all three, reasonable searches have been conducted that would genuinely be expected to uncover some evidence if the purported event or phenomena really occurred/existed. Even in cases like a Bigfoot, where the search area is very large, it can be searched. Do any of these examples make for an iron clad indisputable case against? Nope, not a one. But every one does represent real evidence. Not just evidence, but fairly compelling evidence. In spite of it all, one good un-fake-able piece of positive evidence would be enough revive any those cases. If someone said they saw a Bigfoot, brought in (even a few) hairs that that yielded some DNA, and that DNA indicated an animal with plausible relation to anything could be a Bigfoot, my calculations concerning the its likelihood would be radically shifted.

Hey, good post, but I have to slightly disagree. I agree, actually with pretty much everything you said, except it's applicability to the dragon in the garage.
Obviously absence of evidence for a dragon in your garage is evidence of it's absence. If it were there, you'd see it.

But for Sagan's invisible dragon? Absence of evidence is only evidence of absence when you would expect to find evidence if it were there. I look at my hand, but I don't see any microorganisms. That doesn't mean they aren't there - I have to understand what sort of evidence to expect.
Similarly, the fact that we didn't find evidence of micro-organisms until the advent of the microscope wasn't evidence that they didn't exist.

The problem, though, with this is that, as you said, claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Why? There are some claims that can be made for which we wouldn't expect evidence. If the invisible dragon exists, we wouldn't expect to see it. So why don't we believe in it?
Because we have no reason to, and because the number of similar claims, from which we cannot reasonably differentiate it, are infinite or near enough that they might as well be. They can't all be true, so which ones are, and how can we find out?

One way I like to think of it - before we had evidence for it - before newton's theory of gravity, if someone had said, "There's this thing called the gravitational constant of the universe, guess what it is." someone could have guessed. They could even have guessed right, and we'd have no way of knowing (because we wouldn't understand gravity or how to find out). But chances are pretty damn good that they'd have guessed wrong. So good as to be virtually certain.
Ditto with gods and invisible dragons.

To clarify what I'm saying - there are probably some things that are true but unfalsifiable, at least now. Things that are true but for which we couldn't currently find evidence. The lack of evidence for them isn't evidence that they are true. But the fact that there are so many more false unfalsifiable things than true ones means that we can't find the true ones without that evidence. This is unsatisfying because it means there may be some things we will never know. But the hard truth is that pretending that we do know won't change that.

[Roboramma]

Had you recently read Robert Heinlein's "They", by any chance? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_%28short_story%29
No, but I'll be looking for it now! :D

[scotth]

But for Sagan's invisible dragon? Absence of evidence is only evidence of absence when you would expect to find evidence if it were there. I look at my hand, but I don't see any microorganisms. That doesn't mean they aren't there - I have to understand what sort of evidence to expect.
Similarly, the fact that we didn't find evidence of micro-organisms until the advent of the microscope wasn't evidence that they didn't exist.

Again, you miss the point.... micro organisms are not deliberately defined in such a way as to make them impossible to test for. The dragon in the garage story is about defining phenomena such that they are impossible to test. Your argument simply doesn't apply. Have you actually read Demon Haunted World?



The problem, though, with this is that, as you said, claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Why? There are some claims that can be made for which we wouldn't expect evidence. If the invisible dragon exists, we wouldn't expect to see it. So why don't we believe in it?
Because we have no reason to, and because the number of similar claims, from which we cannot reasonably differentiate it, are infinite or near enough that they might as well be. They can't all be true, so which ones are, and how can we find out?

uh, with evidence......

One way I like to think of it - before we had evidence for it - before newton's theory of gravity, if someone had said, "There's this thing called the gravitational constant of the universe, guess what it is." someone could have guessed. They could even have guessed right, and we'd have no way of knowing (because we wouldn't understand gravity or how to find out). But chances are pretty damn good that they'd have guessed wrong. So good as to be virtually certain.
Ditto with gods and invisible dragons.

Your argument seems to be completely without point.

There was plenty of evidence of gravity before Newton came along
The gravitational constant is only meaningful in the context of the equations of Newton's gravity, to ask about before hand would simply be meaningless
And this applies to god and dragons how exactly?
To clarify what I'm saying - there are probably some things that are true but unfalsifiable, at least now.

Care to offer a single example? And, why would we care?

Things that are true but for which we couldn't currently find evidence.

But that is an entirely different animal than not falsifiable, even in principle.

The lack of evidence for them isn't evidence that they are true. But the fact that there are so many more false unfalsifiable things than true ones means that we can't find the true ones without that evidence. This is unsatisfying because it means there may be some things we will never know. But the hard truth is that pretending that we do know won't change that.
Again, what does it even mean to be true and unfalsifiable?

[Roboramma]

Again, you miss the point.... micro organisms are not deliberately defined in such a way as to make them impossible to test for. So? The reasons for which they are defined don't change any of their characteristics.

The dragon in the garage story is about defining phenomena such that they are impossible to test. Your argument simply doesn't apply. Have you actually read Demon Haunted World? I've read it several times.

uh, with evidence...... That was my point.

Your argument seems to be completely without point.

There was plenty of evidence of gravity before Newton came along
The gravitational constant is only meaningful in the context of the equations of Newton's gravity, to ask about before hand would simply be meaningless
And this applies to god and dragons how exactly?A: Yes, there was plenty of evidence of gravity before newton, but not universal gravity, nor newtonian gravity.
Maybe I should have been more explicit. Imagine I go back in time 1000 years and tell someone, "in the future, we develop a theory that explains why things fall, why the moon moves the way it does, and many other things. This theory will include a 'constant' a number that defines the reationship of one thing to another. Guess what that number is."

My point is that it's possible for them to guess right, but it's not likely. Similarly if we start guessing about other properties of the universe, and that's all that god is, a bunch of guesses about the universe, we're likely to be wrong.

Care to offer a single example? And, why would we care? You don't have to care. You can also suppose that there are no things that we can't ever learn about. That's fine, but I don't see any reason to believe it. Certainly there are things that we can't test now or any time in the near future.
For instance, how many planets are there that are orbiting some particular star (pick one), and what are their compositions?
Those questions necessarily have answers. But we can't answer them now. (And there will always be a distant star for which that is true). If I were to guess the answer at random, it would likely be wrong. But not necessarily. Similarly if I were to come to the answer by invalid arguments.

But that is an entirely different animal than not falsifiable, even in principle.

Again, what does it even mean to be true and unfalsifiable?
It means it's true but we can't ever find out. There are some galaxies that are so distant from us that they are recending from us at an increadible rate. At some point they will be receding faster than the speed of light and we'll never be able to see them again. In those galaxies are stars. Now, the galaxies that reach that point before we have the ability to see them clearly still have stars, and some of those stars have planets. We can never falsify the statement "Star X has a planet with mass Y orbiting it." Yet it is either true or not true. It could be true, and yet is unfalsifiable. Or do you suggest that the fact that we can't see or learn anything about it mean that it isn't actually there?

[apmason]

Bravo scotth. The reasonable expectation of evidence is the point of the dragon scenerio. As we make evidence more and more difficult to obtain so should we make a belief in anything based on such evidence less and less reasonable. ASC might still believe in his diety in spite of a lack f evidence. He is imposing an extraordinary belief on himself without demanding a corrosponding extraordinary bit of evidence. In and of itself, we ought not care. It is the societal implication of such a belief/faith that we should care about.

[scotth]

Roborama, you clearly don't understand what "impossible to falsify even in principle" means.

It doesn't mean that for which we can't gather evidence. Your statement:We can never falsify the statement "Star X has a planet with mass Y orbiting it." Yet it is either true or not true. It could be true, and yet is unfalsifiable. is exactly wrong and is the source of your confusion.

That statement is 100% falsifiable in principle. We may not be able to do so today, but we can imagine a way to do so. Even if it meant building a probe to go take photos and we have to wait a few million years, it is falsifiable in principle. We can imagine and describe a test that would indeed resolve the issue. Physical constraints do not make a proposition unfalsifiable. Logical constraints are the only thing capable.

ETA: Remember, the dragon in the garage was invisible, incorporeal, made no heat, no noise, left no tracks, and was thus impossible to falsify even in principle. Again, the entire point of that story was that no matter what test was suggested, there was always an excuse for why it wouldn't work.

[Hawk one]

That statement is 100% falsifiable in principle. We may not be able to do so today, but we can imagine a way to do so. Even if it meant building a probe to go take photos and we have to wait a few million years, it is falsifiable in principle. We can imagine and describe a test that would indeed resolve the issue. Physical constraints do not make a proposition unfalsifiable. Logical constraints are the only thing capable.

In fact, for the closer solar systems, we are right now in the middle of creating techniques in which we can detect much smaller planets (http://www.space.com/spacenews/businessmonday_061204.html)than we have so far been able to spot. If this had been "unfalsifiable in principle", this would of course have been impossible.

Science. Isn't it great what they can figure out?

[athon]

No, that's experience - not evidence. Evidence is a little more than merely believed observations.

Then what do you define 'evidence' as, if not an observation accounting for a belief or model?

If you experience a fairy does not mean you have evidence of a fairy.

If you see a fairy flying through the air, it is indeed evidence for a fairy. If a fairy exists, that would be evidence in favour of it. However, observing that fairy is also evidence for a score of other things. To support the 'fairy' hypothesis over the others, you'd need other observations and less assumptions. If you can falsify the fairy, it is then removed as a potential model you can use. Until then, the observation is still evidence for a fairy.

You have an observation, which is somewhat dubious, and is probably something else. But unless more observations are made, independently, or verifiable evidence like fairy bodies are found, there's not much more we can do about it. It's just an unverifiable anecdote.

Huh? Go look up 'anecdote'. It's a story you hear somebody else say. If you personally experience it, it ain't an anecdote.

It is important to note that they share it based on two kinds of observations: The personal observations ("Jesus came to me in a light, when I was in bed") and the shared observations (Multiple sightings of angels, or pareidolia like nuns-in-buns and jesus-in-a-cheese-sandwich).

The first kind is hard to do anything about, other than come up with natural explanations (dream, hallucination, etc). The second is far more interesting: Now we have something tangible to investigate - but we can still come up with natural explanations.

Of course. But in either case, the observations the individual makes is still evidence for that hypothesis. If Jesus did exist in some parallel dimension and could appear in dreams, then appearing in dreams would be evidence of it. However, there are far better explanations which account for that observation.

Science is superior to theology in creating models of the universe that are better at explaining it. The models are far better supported.

Agreed.

If everything can be called evidence of anything, then "evidence" loses its meaning.

No, not everything can be called evidence of anything. A cheese sandwich can't be called evidence of planets beyond Pluto. It must be logically consistent. If somebody says 'I've seen a bright light', and their description of God would appear as a bright light, then it is logically consistent evidence for their version of God. However, it is weak evidence at best, and using Occham's Razor we dismiss it in favour of far more superior explanations of the observation.

Again, where do you get your definition of 'evidence' from?

Athon

[CFLarsen]

Then what do you define 'evidence' as, if not an observation accounting for a belief or model?

I don't define evidence. Evidence is much more than what you describe. E.g.:

Evidence in its broadest sense, includes anything that is used to determine or demonstrate the truth of an assertion. Philosophically, evidence can include propositions which are presumed to be true used in support of other propositions that are presumed to be falsifiable. The term has specialized meanings when used with respect to specific fields, such as policy, scientific research, criminal investigations, and legal discourse.
Source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence)

And, in the sense we talk about evidence, namely scientific evidence:

Scientific evidence is evidence which serves to either support or counter a scientific theory or hypothesis. Such evidence is expected to be empirical and properly documented in accordance with scientific method such as is applicable to the particular field of inquiry.
Source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_evidence)

If you see a fairy flying through the air, it is indeed evidence for a fairy. If a fairy exists, that would be evidence in favour of it. However, observing that fairy is also evidence for a score of other things. To support the 'fairy' hypothesis over the others, you'd need other observations and less assumptions. If you can falsify the fairy, it is then removed as a potential model you can use. Until then, the observation is still evidence for a fairy.

But then, you are not talking about fairies, which we have other explanations for, but something entirely new, never observed before, and without a possible natural explanation.

Can you name just one thing that fits those criteria?

Huh? Go look up 'anecdote'. It's a story you hear somebody else say. If you personally experience it, it ain't an anecdote.

Rubbish. I can tell you an anecdote about a fairy I saw:

An anecdote is a short tale narrating an interesting or amusing biographical incident. It may be as brief as the setting and provocation of a bon mot. An anecdote is usually based on real life, an incident involving actual persons, whether famous or not, in real places. However, over time, modification in reuse may convert a particular anecdote to a fictional piece, one that is retold but is "too good to be true". Sometimes humorous, anecdotes are not jokes, because their primary purpose is not simply to evoke laughter, but to reveal a truth more general than the brief tale itself, or to delineate a character trait or the workings of an institution in such a light that it strikes in a flash of insight to their very essence. A brief monologue beginning "A man pops in a bar..." will be a joke. A brief monologue beginning "Once J. Edgar Hoover popped in a bar..." will be an anecdote. An anecdote thus is closer to the tradition of the parable than the patently invented fable with its animal characters and generic human figures— but it is distinct from the parable in the historical specificity which it claims. An anecdote is not a metaphor nor does it bear a moral, a necessity in both parable and fable, merely an illustrative incident that is in some way an epitome.
Source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdote)

Of course. But in either case, the observations the individual makes is still evidence for that hypothesis. If Jesus did exist in some parallel dimension and could appear in dreams, then appearing in dreams would be evidence of it. However, there are far better explanations which account for that observation.

See above.

No, not everything can be called evidence of anything. A cheese sandwich can't be called evidence of planets beyond Pluto. It must be logically consistent. If somebody says 'I've seen a bright light', and their description of God would appear as a bright light, then it is logically consistent evidence for their version of God. However, it is weak evidence at best, and using Occham's Razor we dismiss it in favour of far more superior explanations of the observation.

"Logically consistent"? Logical for whom? Consistent with what? If people believe that their communication with Plutonians goes through a cheese sandwich, is that evidence?

Again, where do you get your definition of 'evidence' from?

See above.

Where do you get your definitions of "evidence" and "anecdote" from?

[athon]

I don't define evidence. Evidence is much more than what you describe. E.g.:

And yet in your definitions it doesn't seem to indicate that it is more than an observation:

'anything that is used to determine or demonstrate the truth of an assertion.'

My case in point.

'Philosophically, evidence can include propositions which are presumed to be true used in support of other propositions that are presumed to be falsifiable.'

Again...nothing here which supports it is more than an observation.

'The term has specialized meanings when used with respect to specific fields, such as policy, scientific research, criminal investigations, and legal discourse.'

Of course...except here we're talking about scientific research.

And, in the sense we talk about evidence, namely scientific evidence:

'Scientific evidence is evidence which serves to either support or counter a scientific theory or hypothesis. Such evidence is expected to be empirical and properly documented in accordance with scientific method such as is applicable to the particular field of inquiry.'

Nice. Use a definition which uses the very words in question to support itself. :rolleyes: Is expected to be 'empirical' (which means essentially 'experiences') and 'properly documented'. Well, if that means it isn't evidence until you write it down or take a photo of it, I think we've got a problem here, and I'm sure a lot of people would disagree it is only evidence when it is translated into another text and put up for people to discuss.

But then, you are not talking about fairies, which we have other explanations for, but something entirely new, never observed before, and without a possible natural explanation.

Can you name just one thing that fits those criteria?

I have no idea what you're getting at here. My point is simple: assuming that fairies exist, seeing one would be evidence for it. I could write it down and put it into a journal for you if it helped. But it would be evidence.

The weight of evidence would be against the phenomena actually being due to a fairy, however, which is how we establish models. It goes on the weight of evidence versus number of assumptions to provide a model with is useful.

Rubbish. I can tell you an anecdote about a fairy I saw:

An anecdote is a story (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdote)you've heard. If it happened to you, it's not an anecdote. It's an experience. It becomes an anecdote when you tell somebody the story.

Where do you get your definitions of "evidence" and "anecdote" from?

Same place as you, it seems. Only I appear to be able to read it.

Now, try again. Please provide some definition for evidence which shows it is more than an observation which is used to account for a belief. If you seriously think the act of recording it is all that is required to turn an observation into a piece of evidence (which seems to be the only part of your definitions which differs to what I've said) then you're as balmy as you sound.

Athon

[Roboramma]

Roborama, you clearly don't understand what "impossible to falsify even in principle" means.

It doesn't mean that for which we can't gather evidence. Your statement: is exactly wrong and is the source of your confusion.

That statement is 100% falsifiable in principle. We may not be able to do so today, but we can imagine a way to do so. Even if it meant building a probe to go take photos and we have to wait a few million years, it is falsifiable in principle. We can imagine and describe a test that would indeed resolve the issue. Not if it is receding from us faster than the speed of light.

Physical constraints do not make a proposition unfalsifiable. Logical constraints are the only thing capable. That doesn't make any sense - if something is impossible to test, it's impossible to test.
In my post I made the distinction (perhaps not that clearly, I admit) between impossible to test in principle and impossible to test currently[i].

The problem, though, is that the two are very hard to tell apart. For instance, regarding:

ETA: Remember, the dragon in the garage was invisible, incorporeal, made no heat, no noise, left no tracks, and was thus impossible to falsify even in principle. Again, the entire point of that story was that no matter what test was suggested, there was always an excuse for why it wouldn't work.
We don't know if there isn't some other future test that we can do that [i]will reveal the dragon. If it does have some physical affect, even if it's not one that we are currently capable of testing, then it will be testable in the future.

The problem, however, with claims like the dragon is that if such a test came along, and still turned up empty handed, the claimants could (and would) just retreat another step. That's exactly what has happened with religion, for instance.

[CFLarsen]

And yet in your definitions

It's not mine.

it doesn't seem to indicate that it is more than an observation:

'anything that is used to determine or demonstrate the truth of an assertion.'

My case in point.

'Philosophically, evidence can include propositions which are presumed to be true used in support of other propositions that are presumed to be falsifiable.'

Again...nothing here which supports it is more than an observation.

'The term has specialized meanings when used with respect to specific fields, such as policy, scientific research, criminal investigations, and legal discourse.'

Of course...except here we're talking about scientific research.

Yes, we are. So unless you want to equate non-scientific "evidence" with scientific evidence, I don't see how your - and I do mean your - interpretation of what "evidence" is, is relevant here.

'Scientific evidence is evidence which serves to either support or counter a scientific theory or hypothesis. Such evidence is expected to be empirical and properly documented in accordance with scientific method such as is applicable to the particular field of inquiry.'

Nice. Use a definition which uses the very words in question to support itself. :rolleyes: Is expected to be 'empirical' (which means essentially 'experiences') and 'properly documented'. Well, if that means it isn't evidence until you write it down or take a photo of it, I think we've got a problem here, and I'm sure a lot of people would disagree it is only evidence when it is translated into another text and put up for people to discuss.

Of course it has to be properly documented. How else can you even begin to call it "scientific evidence"? You can't jot down a description today of something that happened to you 20 years ago and call that "scientific evidence".

Empirical does essentially mean experienced, yes. But when you talk about scientific evidence, it is much more than that:

"Empirical" as an adjective or adverb is used in conjunction with both the natural and social sciences, and refers to the use of working hypotheses that are testable using observation or experiment. In this sense of the word, scientific statements are subject to and derived from our experiences or observations.
Source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical)

If you think scientific evidence is something that is not properly documented, so it is verifiable and falsifiable, then you tell me where you get your definition of "scientific evidence" from.

I have no idea what you're getting at here. My point is simple: assuming that fairies exist, seeing one would be evidence for it. I could write it down and put it into a journal for you if it helped. But it would be evidence.

The weight of evidence would be against the phenomena actually being due to a fairy, however, which is how we establish models. It goes on the weight of evidence versus number of assumptions to provide a model with is useful.

Here's what I'm getting at.

.

Let's say you were the first to see a fairy. You see a small figure, human-like, funny ears, wings.

What's that? Is it evidence that you saw a fairy? Well, it's an observation of something that we haven't got any natural explanations for. If you record it properly, then we could say it was evidence, if we really stretch it.

.

Let's say you were not the first to see a fairy. You see a small figure, human-like, funny ears, wings.

What's that? Is it evidence that you saw a fairy? Well, it's an observation of something that we do have natural explanations for. Butterfly, dragonfly, whatever.

.

In the last example, you can't call it evidence of a fairy - because we have natural explanation of what it could be.

if you want to call it evidence of a "fairy", then everything is evidence of anything. Which renders the term "evidence" completely useless.

I know that you tried to argue against this, by saying that it had to be logically consistent. But if people say 'I've seen a bright light', because it is logically consistent with them thinking that their description of God would appear as a bright light, then people are also logically consistent when they believe that their communication with Plutonians goes through a cheese sandwich.

An anecdote is a story (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdote)you've heard. If it happened to you, it's not an anecdote. It's an experience. It becomes an anecdote when you tell somebody the story.

Can you post the paragraphs from that page that lead you to conclude that anecdotes have to be second-hand stories?

Same place as you, it seems. Only I appear to be able to read it.

Then, it's not "my" definition, is it?

Now, try again. Please provide some definition for evidence which shows it is more than an observation which is used to account for a belief. If you seriously think the act of recording it is all that is required to turn an observation into a piece of evidence (which seems to be the only part of your definitions which differs to what I've said) then you're as balmy as you sound.

No, I didn't say that it is all that is required. But it is the first step to even begin to call it scientific evidence.

[athon]

Yes, we are. So unless you want to equate non-scientific "evidence" with scientific evidence, I don't see how your - and I do mean your - interpretation of what "evidence" is, is relevant here.

I'm referring to the fact that the term 'evidence' refers to the observations we use in support of belief. We can use science to address the evidence - we can apply a variety of methods to reproduce an observation while manipulating variables, or find accounts of the observation where the variables naturally occur in conjunction with it (or not) - and if it remains strong, we can still call it evidence.

You seem to imply that it is only evidence after this has occurred. The problem is that there is no objective point at which an observation has been criticized sufficiently so it becomes offically declared 'evidence'. It is a subjective term people apply to an observation. It is why we have such discussions in science - some people think observation X can only be accounted for by event Y, while others feel that observation can only be accounted for by event Z. Science weighs the evidence in which regard. But objectively, they remain simply observations. We subjectively apply the term evidence in accordance with the model we feel best explains it.

Of course it has to be properly documented. How else can you even begin to call it "scientific evidence"?The subtle shift now to calling it specifically 'scientific evidence' has been noted. Previously we were talking about the term 'evidence', maintaining it could be open to scientific scrutiny. While it's a matter of semantics, I'd suppose if one made the distinction of it being specifically 'scientific' evidence, it would be evidence that was documented in order to be criticised as according to the scientific method.

In light of the discussion at hand, where it is evidence one seeks to support a world view, while it might well be more 'scientific' than 'legal', it is not necessarily being debated in scientific circles.

You can't jot down a description today of something that happened to you 20 years ago and call that "scientific evidence".I agree it isn't as valid as jotting down something that happened today, but according to what system is it no longer called scientific evidence? After what duration does the terminology change? Please refer to said system if there is one. If not, I suspect you're simply making a subjective judgement. While I agree with you it makes for poor evidence, it does not discount the term.

If you think scientific evidence is something that is not properly documented, so it is verifiable and falsifiable, then you tell me where you get your definition of "scientific evidence" from.I didn't. I referred to 'evidence'. Since you've moved the goalposts to be 'scientific evidence', it is your claim that in order to be considered 'scientific evidence', it must be written down.

Please show me a definition which says scientific evidence is evidence which is recorded. I concede it would be difficult for people to address it scientifically without an observation being somehow documented, but this does not make it integral to the definition.

The fact you find the need to now emphasise it precisely as 'scientific' evidence shows a shift in the focus. In order to call something evidence for a world view, it does not need to be scientific. It is more rigorous, certainly, but semantically not required.

Here's what I'm getting at.

Let's say you were the first to see a fairy. You see a small figure, human-like, funny ears, wings.

What's that? Is it evidence that you saw a fairy? Well, it's an observation of something that we haven't got any natural explanations for. If you record it properly, then we could say it was evidence, if we really stretch it.No. If we record it, others can discuss it in light of other variables. Prior to that it remains evidence for a number of inferences.

The fact it must be written down to be called 'evidence' is nonsense you've invented. If not, show again me precisely where 'evidence' needs to be written down in order for it to be called evidence.

In any case, you concede if I write down my observation of a fairy, it is technically scientific evidence. Therefore, before hand it isn't evidence? I swear you're making this up as you go along.

Let's say you were not the first to see a fairy. You see a small figure, human-like, funny ears, wings.

What's that? Is it evidence that you saw a fairy? Well, it's an observation of something that we do have natural explanations for. Butterfly, dragonfly, whatever.Nope. There is no proof it is not a fairy. A negative cannot be proven. Therefore it is a hypothesis that remains unfalsified and valid. However, Occham's Razor suggest what you saw could be better accounted for by other phenomena than a fairy.

If it really was a fairy, seeing one would be evidence for it. It is only determined as 'not a fairy' by the weight of evidence in interpretation of the observation in light of contrasting evidence. Which is precisely why evidence is accumulative.

This is all year 8 science, Claus.

In the last example, you can't call it evidence of a fairy - because we have natural explanation of what it could be.So? True, we have other explanations which are more likely to be true than the fairy explanation. But 'natural explanations' aren't divinely decreed absolute truths. They're simply explanations with sufficient evidence to be described as robust at a given moment.

if you want to call it evidence of a "fairy", then everything is evidence of anything. Which renders the term "evidence" completely useless.You've said that, and it is nonsense. But please, feel free to keep saying it. It will still be nonsense again later when you do.

I know that you tried to argue against this, by saying that it had to be logically consistent. But if people say 'I've seen a bright light', because it is logically consistent with them thinking that their description of God would appear as a bright light, then people are also logically consistent when they believe that their communication with Plutonians goes through a cheese sandwich.If you observe an event that can be described logically by a model, then it is evidence. If your model is 'Plutonians leave cheese sandwiches on kitchen benches', then that observation is evidence of Plutonians being in your house. I don't think I need to go into why it is poor evidence, or why the evidence moves no further towards establishing Plutnonian existence, but it is evidence.

Science does not start with a presumption of a hypothesis being wrong. It progresses from a neutral standpoint. Anybody is welcome to state that Plutonians make cheese sandwiches, fairies fly about in winter or that God appears to them in dreams. To establish it as having merit, it requires a balance of evidence. To start with the notion it is incorrect and therefore observations accounting for it cannot possibly be called evidence is putting the cart before the horse.

This might seem trivial with nonsense matters such as fairies and Plutonians, but it is significant when we explore hypotheses in fields which have few observations going either way.

Can you post the paragraphs from that page that lead you to conclude that anecdotes have to be second-hand stories?Sure, once you've shown me where I said they needed to be second hand.

(ETA to add: I retract the 'stories you've heard'. Of course anecdotes are simply stories. Simply experiencing it does not make it an anecdote. The communication of the event is what is described as one.)

No, I didn't say that it is all that is required. But it is the first step to even begin to call it scientific evidence.Is it? According to who?

Again, please point out where an observation must be written down to be called evidence.

Athon

[CFLarsen]

I'm referring to the fact that the term 'evidence' refers to the observations we use in support of belief. We can use science to address the evidence - we can apply a variety of methods to reproduce an observation while manipulating variables, or find accounts of the observation where the variables naturally occur in conjunction with it (or not) - and if it remains strong, we can still call it evidence.

You seem to imply that it is only evidence after this has occurred. The problem is that there is no objective point at which an observation has been criticized sufficiently so it becomes offically declared 'evidence'. It is a subjective term people apply to an observation. It is why we have such discussions in science - some people think observation X can only be accounted for by event Y, while others feel that observation can only be accounted for by event Z. Science weighs the evidence in which regard. But objectively, they remain simply observations. We subjectively apply the term evidence in accordance with the model we feel best explains it.

You are totally backtracking here.

At first, you started by saying that evidence was an observation accounting for a belief or model.

Now, you want to say that it is really a matter of subjectivity - we can never really call anything "evidence".

The subtle shift now to calling it specifically 'scientific evidence' has been noted. Previously we were talking about the term 'evidence', maintaining it could be open to scientific scrutiny. While it's a matter of semantics, I'd suppose if one made the distinction of it being specifically 'scientific' evidence, it would be evidence that was documented in order to be criticised as according to the scientific method.

In light of the discussion at hand, where it is evidence one seeks to support a world view, while it might well be more 'scientific' than 'legal', it is not necessarily being debated in scientific circles.

There is no subtle shift on my behalf. Evidence is always open to scientific scrutiny. And it sure isn't a matter of semantics whether something is scientific evidence or not.

I agree it isn't as valid as jotting down something that happened today, but according to what system is it no longer called scientific evidence? After what duration does the terminology change? Please refer to said system if there is one. If not, I suspect you're simply making a subjective judgement. While I agree with you it makes for poor evidence, it does not discount the term.

No?

You experience a hypnogogic hallucination 20 years ago: Aliens abduct you, right through the wall, and probe you with funny looking instruments. You don't record it in any way, but yesterday, you remembered it.

You call that evidence of an alien abduction?

I didn't. I referred to 'evidence'. Since you've moved the goalposts to be 'scientific evidence', it is your claim that in order to be considered 'scientific evidence', it must be written down.

I haven't moved any goalposts, and I didn't say it had to be written down. I said it had to be recorded.

We are skeptics, remember? As in scientific skepticism? And that we understand the world from natural laws and find natural explanations based on that?

What on Earth gave you the idea that we were talking about anything else than scientific evidence?

Please show me a definition which says scientific evidence is evidence which is recorded. I concede it would be difficult for people to address it scientifically without an observation being somehow documented, but this does not make it integral to the definition.

How the heck will you call it evidence unless it is recorded? A memory, never spoken, never written down, never recorded in any way, is evidence?

The fact you find the need to now emphasise it precisely as 'scientific' evidence shows a shift in the focus. In order to call something evidence for a world view, it does not need to be scientific. It is more rigorous, certainly, but semantically not required.

Nonsense. You stated that evidence was "observations which are held in account of a belief", and went right on to talk about how important it was to apply science, critical thinking and skepticism to theist beliefs.

Yes, post #28.

No. If we record it, others can discuss it in light of other variables. Prior to that it remains evidence for a number of inferences.

The fact it must be written down to be called 'evidence' is nonsense you've invented. If not, show again me precisely where 'evidence' needs to be written down in order for it to be called evidence.

In any case, you concede if I write down my observation of a fairy, it is technically scientific evidence. Therefore, before hand it isn't evidence? I swear you're making this up as you go along.

No, I don't, and I am not saying it is scientific evidence. It's a recorded observation.

Nope. There is no proof it is not a fairy. A negative cannot be proven. Therefore it is a hypothesis that remains unfalsified and valid. However, Occham's Razor suggest what you saw could be better accounted for by other phenomena than a fairy.

If it really was a fairy, seeing one would be evidence for it. It is only determined as 'not a fairy' by the weight of evidence in interpretation of the observation in light of contrasting evidence. Which is precisely why evidence is accumulative.

This is all year 8 science, Claus.

I'm not saying fairies are disproven. I am saying that when we have natural explanations for fairies, we don't need to posit supernatural explanations.

It certainly makes no sense to claim there is evidence of fairies, if we can give natural explanations. That makes "evidence" an empty, worthless term, then.

So? True, we have other explanations which are more likely to be true than the fairy explanation. But 'natural explanations' aren't divinely decreed absolute truths. They're simply explanations with sufficient evidence to be described as robust at a given moment.

You've said that, and it is nonsense. But please, feel free to keep saying it. It will still be nonsense again later when you do.

What is not evidence, then?

If you observe an event that can be described logically by a model, then it is evidence. If your model is 'Plutonians leave cheese sandwiches on kitchen benches', then that observation is evidence of Plutonians being in your house. I don't think I need to go into why it is poor evidence, or why the evidence moves no further towards establishing Plutnonian existence, but it is evidence.

You said the exact opposite here:

A cheese sandwich can't be called evidence of planets beyond Pluto

I think it is very clear who is making up his argument on the spot here.

Science does not start with a presumption of a hypothesis being wrong. It progresses from a neutral standpoint. Anybody is welcome to state that Plutonians make cheese sandwiches, fairies fly about in winter or that God appears to them in dreams. To establish it as having merit, it requires a balance of evidence. To start with the notion it is incorrect and therefore observations accounting for it cannot possibly be called evidence is putting the cart before the horse.

This might seem trivial with nonsense matters such as fairies and Plutonians, but it is significant when we explore hypotheses in fields which have few observations going either way.

I haven't seen anyone say that science starts with the presumption that a hypothesis is wrong.

Sure, once you've shown me where I said they needed to be second hand.

(ETA to add: I retract the 'stories you've heard'. Of course anecdotes are simply stories. Simply experiencing it does not make it an anecdote. The communication of the event is what is described as one.)

Good of you to retract your claim. Of course anecdotes are simply stories, told to someone else.

Is it? According to who?

Again, please point out where an observation must be written down to be called evidence.

I said recorded. Pay attention.

[scotth]

Not if it is receding from us faster than the speed of light.

That doesn't make any sense - if something is impossible to test, it's impossible to test.
In my post I made the distinction (perhaps not that clearly, I admit) between impossible to test in principle and impossible to test currently[i].

The problem, though, is that the two are very hard to tell apart. For instance, regarding:


We don't know if there isn't some other future test that we can do that [I]will reveal the dragon. If it does have some physical affect, even if it's not one that we are currently capable of testing, then it will be testable in the future.

The problem, however, with claims like the dragon is that if such a test came along, and still turned up empty handed, the claimants could (and would) just retreat another step. That's exactly what has happened with religion, for instance.

You obviously need to read it again. Despite your arm flapping, I'm sure nearly everyone else sees the same.

Despite the fact that our present understand of physics would make it impossible for something recede at greater than light speed, if you stipulated that, it would move it into the untestable in principle category.

The point of the dragon story was that the dragon was DEFINED to be untestable.

[Big Les]

Sorry CFL, but despite the old chestnut of anecdotes not amounting to evidence, they are still a form of evidence, and they are "recorded", imperfectly (to say the least) in the human mind. Hence the expression "to give evidence".

Unless you think that oral history projects, community reminiscence, and more crucially, court cases - do not concern themselves with "evidence". Not to mention most of history itself, which was written months, years, even centuries after the fact. And yet we still make use of it, mindful of its context and assessed reliability. Corroboration being the key usually.

It's not good quality evidence, in fact, it's the weakest possible form of it, for all the reasons you've listed and that we already know. But it is "evidence" nonetheless.

As I've said to you before, you can't simply redefine a word to suit your argument.