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4th December 2012, 03:12 PM | #321 |
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It is the same reason Carl Sagan gave for people who thought Ghost were real or UFOs were real. They are irrational to believe in ghosts and UFOs because there is no evidence that they exist. Not that there is anything wrong looking for them but without evidence they cannot claim it is true.
Carl Sagan violated his own rules of scientific skepticism. He looked for ETI and found they do not exist. There is no proof of their existence. So he too started on an irrational belief in their existence. Now you can say ETI have not been found yet. They might be found down the road. But so too can UFOs and Ghost. Who is to say after he fails to call others irrational. |
4th December 2012, 03:12 PM | #322 |
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René Descartes goes into a fish and chips shop and says to the man behind the counter "I'd like a cod and chips, please". "Certainly sir," replies the man, "would you like salt and vinegar?" René replies "I think not," and vanishes.
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4th December 2012, 03:15 PM | #323 |
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4th December 2012, 03:16 PM | #324 |
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Ahh but you are trying to apply the same rules of paranormal activity to the very simple concept of life existing on one of trillions of planets. The two are not compatible logically.
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4th December 2012, 03:18 PM | #325 |
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no, they claim they are skeptics, but just as i can claim I am Jesus Christ and dare you to prove I'm not, they aren't following the principles of skepticism and are actually deniers (in a similar vein as those people who claim the Holocaust didn't happen, yet with a lot less evil intent )
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4th December 2012, 03:19 PM | #326 |
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Keep your questions terse, and your answers terser. Wait, "terser" is a word, right? |
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4th December 2012, 03:20 PM | #327 |
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Keep your questions terse, and your answers terser. Wait, "terser" is a word, right? |
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4th December 2012, 03:22 PM | #328 |
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Not true. What it shows is someone pointed to climate change skeptics emitting fear signals. I reviewed his analysis and found it could be applied to other areas and sources of fear that Skeptics are exposed to. Someone might come after me and further broaden the scope. This is not an exhaustive list of all the fears Skeptics suffer from.
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4th December 2012, 03:26 PM | #329 |
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and you have no evidence to support your hypothesis (well none you have presented anyway) so you are using the scientific method rather poorly. and frankly, we are starting to grow weary with your silly,pointless banter and soon we will start smiting you.
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4th December 2012, 03:27 PM | #330 |
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As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities. - Voltaire. |
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4th December 2012, 03:29 PM | #331 |
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At least you don`t have to worry about my analysis.
I first defined the Skeptic and then provided cause for his fears (doubts, uncertainty and insecurity) which built the case for panic and fear. For good measure I even located the seat of fear in the Skeptic brain. |
4th December 2012, 03:36 PM | #332 |
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As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities. - Voltaire. |
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4th December 2012, 03:43 PM | #333 |
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Yes, you did make unfounded assumptions and sweeping generalisations. This is why you're not being taken seriously by anybody.
Of course, if you'd like to start saying something sensible, which you can provide evidence and reasoning for, people might start viewing your posts as something other than to laugh at. |
4th December 2012, 03:46 PM | #334 |
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One problem. There is life in the universe. We have incontrovertible proof of this. We've never had the slightest empirical evidence for the existence of an alien spacecraft or a ghost, but we know of a planet that is positively crawling with life. We also know that the elements that life is made up from are among the most abundant in the universe. We know that these elements make organic molecules that spontaneously arrange themselves into more complex arrangements. We know that the universe is teeming with the organic molecules that life as we know it is composed of. We also know that there are an unimaginably vast number of worlds in the universe. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey allows us to estimate that there are between 10 sextillion and 1 septillion stars in the observable universe. That's 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars! Each one likely to have at least several planets. So even if the odds of life evolving on any given planet are extremely low, there are a staggering number of chances of it happening. Even if the odds of any given star harboring life are a trillion to one, there could be ten billion to one trillion worlds with life in the universe.
Try to wrap your brain around a number like 1 septillion. If you had a lottery where the odds of winning with any individual ticket was 1 in a trillion, but you had 1 septillion tickets, you'd win the lottery about 1 trillion times over. And remember, we do have proof that life exists in the universe. |
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Counterbalance in the little town of Ridgeview, Ohio. Two people permanently enslaved by the tyranny of fear and superstitution, facing the future with a kind of helpless dread. Two others facing the future with confidence - having escaped one of the darker places of the Twilight Zone. |
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4th December 2012, 03:50 PM | #335 |
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I'm nominating your post Foster Zygote. It's concise, well written, to the point and will probably be completely ignored or hand waved away by you know who...
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4th December 2012, 03:50 PM | #336 |
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I see you misunderstood Foster Zygote's question. He asked what was irrational about believing extraterrestrial life may exist.
You are also making a false analogy. For life evolving on a planet, we have one example of it happening, so we know it's possible. For ghosts and alien spacecraft visiting the earth, we have zero examples. |
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4th December 2012, 03:53 PM | #337 |
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Foster Zygote you are disappointing me.
Let us try again. Definition of Scientist: A person having expert knowledge of one or more sciences, especially a natural or physical science. Scientific method : Mathematical and experimental techniques employed in the natural sciences. Natural science definition:A branch of science that deals with the physical world, e.g., physics, chemistry, geology, and biology. Is a mechanic a scientist. I don`t think so by that definition. |
4th December 2012, 03:57 PM | #338 |
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That's one of the dumbest things i have ever seen, and YOU SIR ARE NOMINATED FOR A STUNDIE!! congrats!
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4th December 2012, 04:01 PM | #339 |
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Baseball analysis is using a branch of mathematics. Statistics, probability etc. Scientific method also used some of that. But that is just a part of the scientific method. Just like marketing and population projections all use mathematics and other techniques that were developed for the natural sciences. But they are not natural science and they are not scientific methods.
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4th December 2012, 04:03 PM | #340 |
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LOL, YES THEY ARE!
dude, seriously, you should just stop, you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. unless you care to list some of the unnatural sciences for us to consider? |
4th December 2012, 04:06 PM | #341 |
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Originally Posted by justintime
Quote:
As an aside, are you aware of how dictionaries define words? I think you really aught to look that up sometime. It'd be extraordinarily educational for you.
Quote:
Quote:
Of course, I doubt you'll even read that. You're locked into your world-view, it seems. |
4th December 2012, 04:08 PM | #342 |
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Well of course you don't. You've resorted to the semantic game that you apparently believe is so clever.
You certainly don't disappoint. Scientific method. 1. Formulate a question Why won't the car start? 2. Hypothesis The car won't start because the battery is dead. 3. Prediction If a charged battery is installed, the car will start. 4. Test Replace battery or use jumper battery and attempt to start car. 5. Analysis Car still won't start. Dead battery is not cause of failure to start. 6. Go back to step 2 ---------- 2. Hypothesis Car will not start because coil is burned out. And so on. Remember that originally, all scientists were amateurs. |
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Counterbalance in the little town of Ridgeview, Ohio. Two people permanently enslaved by the tyranny of fear and superstitution, facing the future with a kind of helpless dread. Two others facing the future with confidence - having escaped one of the darker places of the Twilight Zone. |
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4th December 2012, 04:09 PM | #343 |
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Once more, I need to point out that this thread doesn't really seem to have anything to do with religion or philosophy. Perhaps a move is in order?
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Counterbalance in the little town of Ridgeview, Ohio. Two people permanently enslaved by the tyranny of fear and superstitution, facing the future with a kind of helpless dread. Two others facing the future with confidence - having escaped one of the darker places of the Twilight Zone. |
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4th December 2012, 04:14 PM | #344 |
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4th December 2012, 04:15 PM | #345 |
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some fields (like herpetology) rely greatly on amateur hobbyists for information. They have the time (and the animals) to do lots of studies about reptile genetics, behavior...etc
They use the scientific method. well, they did.... now I guess we will have to call it the "amateuric method" eh? lol |
4th December 2012, 04:16 PM | #346 |
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Non sequitur. Carl Sagan searched for ETI and did not find it. This does not mean it does not exist. Nor does it even prove he believed that it did exist. Sagan believed that extraterrestrials could exist, and could be sending signals which we might detect. That's an entirely rational position to take.
Visiting aliens in flying saucers are much less likely to be real, simply because of the vastness of space and the limit (so far as we can tell) of light speed. That doesn't mean it's irrational to think they might exist, but the 'evidence' believers cling to that they do exist appears to be garbage. So it's not unfair to call the insistence that "they're here" irrational. Similarly with ghosts, the 'evidence' is hopeless and, what's more, the claimed phenomenon appears to contradict what we already know about how the world works. So there's really no good reason at all to think it's a topic which will ever be legitimised 'down the road'. |
4th December 2012, 04:17 PM | #347 |
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Yes we do have life on planet earth. We also happen to be the only blue planet in out solar system that supports life. We know there are billion and billions of planets and million of galaxies like our Milky Way. So it is a speculation that with such large numbers the probability of life existing among those billions and billions of planets are quite reasonable. That is what the Drake Equation tries to calculate. That is what Carl Sagan used to support his search for ETI.
Today after 50 years of SETI. The number of planets scientist think are capable is reduced to a little over hundred tops. And even there is could be microbial and not the ETI Carl Sagan envisioned. Please don`t ask for link. I did not save it. |
4th December 2012, 04:19 PM | #348 |
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4th December 2012, 04:21 PM | #349 |
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Counterbalance in the little town of Ridgeview, Ohio. Two people permanently enslaved by the tyranny of fear and superstitution, facing the future with a kind of helpless dread. Two others facing the future with confidence - having escaped one of the darker places of the Twilight Zone. |
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4th December 2012, 04:23 PM | #350 |
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Quote:
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4th December 2012, 04:24 PM | #351 |
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Skeptic deniers are self absorbed sociopaths, here's a link to prove my point:
http://www.funnycatpix.com/ It's fairly obvious to all but the most confused of skeptic deniers that there behavior is driven by fear, and insecurity with their own intellect...... |
4th December 2012, 04:28 PM | #352 |
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yes astronomy (perhaps the field with the greatest amount of amateur involvement) heck armchair astronomers have discovered suns, planets, comets... lots of stuff!
(I used the herpetology thing cuz I used to be highly involved in it when I was younger) |
4th December 2012, 04:30 PM | #353 |
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Carl Sagan was challenged about the two way communication even if it was possible would take hundreds of years to get the messages across. The entire project was a scam.
1. First the ETI had to be contacted. 2. We would never know if they responded to our signal because it would take way longer than a lifetime. 3. It would take another lifetime for the ETI to receive out reply. You cannot get more irrational that this.
Quote:
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4th December 2012, 04:31 PM | #354 |
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Quote:
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4th December 2012, 04:34 PM | #355 |
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True, lots of evidence that Europa could possibly support simple forms of life under it's thick crust of ice (and even more evidence was recently gathered at the isolated lake in Antarctica where new forms of bacteria were discovered that had been isolated from the outside world for thousands of years)
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4th December 2012, 04:36 PM | #356 |
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4th December 2012, 04:38 PM | #357 |
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Get another mechanic. Why pay for a total analysis of the problem when all you only want it to have your car fixed and a mechanic who knows how to fix it. I am sure a scientist can also fix your car using his scientific method. How much are you willing to pay him to get it fixed.
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4th December 2012, 04:43 PM | #358 |
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It is no help to Sagan. It just shows the picture is not very rosy for people approximating large numbers of finds when it is extremely reduced. The fact NASA has stopped funding SETI should be evidence it is not the preferred way to look for ETI. Nor does Stephen Hawking recommend we look for them. They might not be all that altruistic.
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4th December 2012, 04:44 PM | #359 |
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Nonsense. SETI was a project to search for signs of life elsewhere in the universe. Nobody pretended that we could have real time two-way communication with a civilization hundreds of light years away. I'm afraid the irrationality being displayed is not coming from the source you fondly imagine.
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4th December 2012, 04:44 PM | #360 |
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so, what you are saying is, that a mechanic, when confronted with the age old problem of "car won't start" immediately leaps to his feet and solves the problem WITH NO HYPOTHESIS, OR EXPERIMENTING? That he just knows via osmosis, or psychic behavior that "it's the ignition coil?".
True with experience he can take a guess at the problem based on the owner's description, but even that is "gathering data" it's science. it's using the method to SOLVE PROBLEMS. sigh........... |
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