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Quote (Stu @ May 31 2010,22:47) I never said it was as drastically large as 0.05%, so no retractions here, only consistency. Does it not occur to you that reserving a tiny sliver of a chance that your Imaginary Friend is actually not imaginary is exactly what agnosticism involves?
I think my figure was “less than 0.000000000000001%”, from memory.
Much less.
Stuart
See you unashamedly display your bias and prove to everyone that you are not using science at all.At least on the outset there is a 33.333% chance of it being one of: God, nothing, or something.
Being Agnostic (now) and saying that God is not provable means that it should sit at 33.333%. But the fact that your figure is so low just shows how unscientific you are.
Unless you have some proof that everything came from nothing or something non-intelligent, you should put up or shut up and give a one third chance for each.
However, I fully expect you to spout of your unscientific rantings for some time to come and that is at least entertaining to some degree. It is also interesting when you boil down your thinking processes to see how illogical you are. And for this reason, I have very little respect for your findings if you can call it that. It is also interesting to see that you are not really that different to most Atheists and as such you pose no intellectual threat whatsoever.
Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable
Quote (Stu @ May 12 2010,19:48) Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable
Except that God can be experienced. So those who know God have experienced him and such are not agnostic, but are believers. I am no talking about dead religion which we both know exists.Quote (t8 @ Sep. 26 2010,00:02) Quote (Stu @ May 31 2010,22:47) I never said it was as drastically large as 0.05%, so no retractions here, only consistency. Does it not occur to you that reserving a tiny sliver of a chance that your Imaginary Friend is actually not imaginary is exactly what agnosticism involves?
I think my figure was “less than 0.000000000000001%”, from memory.
Much less.
Stuart
See you unashamedly display your bias and prove to everyone that you are not using science at all.At least on the outset there is a 33.333% chance of it being one of: God, nothing, or something.
Being Agnostic (now) and saying that God is not provable means that it should sit at 33.333%. But the fact that your figure is so low just shows how unscientific you are.
Unless you have some proof that everything came from nothing or something non-intelligent, you should put up or shut up and give a one third chance for each.
However, I fully expect you to spout of your unscientific rantings for some time to come and that is at least entertaining to some degree. It is also interesting when you boil down your thinking processes to see how illogical you are. And for this reason, I have very little respect for your findings if you can call it that. It is also interesting to see that you are not really that different to most Atheists and as such you pose no intellectual threat whatsoever.
Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable
You do spend a fair amount of time trying to come up with counterarguments t8. But you appear not to appreciate the level of intellectual challenge you are responding to. I'm no genius, but you can't even answer my simple points with anything relevant.As for the 33% thing,this is a classic creationist logical fallacy. If we were to list all the different creation myths believed in by humans, then you should only give a 0.1% chance of it being the one you believe.
Of course once you appreciate epistemology, that number goes down to much less than the 1 in 10^15 that I generously grant your Imaginary Friend in my acknowledgement of my agnosticism.
The hypocrisy of christians insisting others acknowledge their possibility while they do not acknowledge other's possibilities…isn't that megalomania?
Stuart
Quote (t8 @ Sep. 26 2010,00:05) Quote (Stu @ May 12 2010,19:48) Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable
Except that God can be experienced. So those who know God have experienced him and such are not agnostic, but are believers. I am no talking about dead religion which we both know exists.
Drugs can be experienced too, and those on LSD really do believe in what they are seeing. You cannot account for the possibility that these “god experiences” are not just some other effect of brain chemistry, perhaps not a crudely induced as with LSD but caused by genetic effects.That is what research appears to be showing, although it is early days yet.
Stuart
Quote (t8 @ Sep. 26 2010,00:02) At least on the outset there is a 33.333% chance of it being one of: God, nothing, or something.
Now tell me more about these nothing or something options that together you rate more likely than your god?Stuart
Quote (Stu @ Sep. 26 2010,08:45) Quote (t8 @ Sep. 26 2010,00:02) At least on the outset there is a 33.333% chance of it being one of: God, nothing, or something.
Now tell me more about these nothing or something options that together you rate more likely than your god?Stuart
Hi Stuart,He offers those merely as generous counterparts for your anti-God bias pacifications,
Not that they are really a consideration, but only to illustrate you don't have any other options!God bless
Ed J
http://www.holycitybiblecode.orgHefty physicist says Global warming is 'pseudoscientific fraud'
Quote It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS [the American Physical Society] before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare … I don't believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/11/lewis_resignation_letter/
Quote (t8 @ Oct. 12 2010,15:25) Yeah Stu. It shouldn't even need to be explained.
And indeed it never is.Stuart
You need to crawl before you can walk Stu.
It is understandable that you might want to walk, but you need to at least take baby steps first.In the meantime, you might do better to stick with things that you are knowledgeable about, and give up those things that make you answer “na, it isn't true coz I said so”.
Quote (t8 @ Oct. 14 2010,15:16) You need to crawl before you can walk Stu.
It is understandable that you might want to walk, but you need to at least take baby steps first.In the meantime, you might do better to stick with things that you are knowledgeable about, and give up those things that make you answer “na, it isn't true coz I said so”.
A non-religious platitude!t8 you may have forgotten in the rush to make another inappropriate analogy, but it was me who asked you a question.
Can you answer it, or is it something about which you are not knowledgeable?
Stuart
Quote (Stu @ Oct. 12 2010,19:27) Quote (t8 @ Oct. 12 2010,15:25) Yeah Stu. It shouldn't even need to be explained.
And indeed it never is.Stuart
Hi Stuart,T8 has already explained that for you. (Click Here)
God bless
Ed J (Joshua 22:34)
http://www.holycitybiblecode.orgHI Stuart,
It is you who refuses to answer my questions to you. (Click Here)
God bless
Ed J (Joshua 22:34)
http://www.holycitybiblecode.orgOn Google today
Washington, Oct 12(ANI): An American professor has branded global warming as “the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud” he has ever seen. Professor Harold Lewis claimed that man-made climate change has become a “scam” driven by “trillions of dollars” which has “corrupted” scientists. Lewis made the remarks after formally resigning from the American Physical Society (APS).
He compared the APS now to the organization he joined 67 years ago which he said was “much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood”. “How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth and the money flood has become the raison d'etre of much physics research,” the Daily Express quoted Lewis, as saying “It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist,” he added.
APS President Professor Curt Callan however dismissed the allegations of “pseudoscience”. “The use of the word 'scam' is ridiculous. To dismiss the work of large numbers of honest, hard-working scientists as a scam is just silly,” Callan said.
Quote (Stu @ April 24 2010,21:20) You are welcome to your opinion. Good science is not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of robustness. The absurdity you linked to is not robust, as I have shown.
Like saying, there is no God because there isn't.
That is your scientific proof.Change that to life on other planets.
There is no life on other planets because there isn't.You would be laughed out of any scientific forum for the latter, and the former is why I am laughing at your evidence for no God.
Good to know that you have no proof. Keep it up.
You are helping the cause.First problem: Monkton claims that it is nonsense to think a 1/2000th change in the atmospheric composition of the atmosphere could produce a change in the effectiveness of the greenhouse effect. I wonder if he would agree to sit in a room where I was at liberty to change the composition of the air around him by 1/2000th? I could use hydrogen cyanide gas at about that level to kill him within 10 minutes, and he would quickly begin to suffer serious health effects if I substituted carbon monoxide. Of course with greenhouse gases we are not talking about toxicity, but this does disprove his assertion that small meddlings are inconsequential.
Second problem: global warming is not the millennium bug. It is not any kind of flu. This is a conspiracy theory that science is fabricating this for political reasons. All you need is one similar example where it was obviously not a conspiracy theory, to show the absurdity of Monkton's claims. Let's choose the effects of CFCs on the ozone layer for our example. If we had used the Monkton argument we would still be puzzled at the continuing rapid rise in our skin cancer rates.
Third problem: he admits that there is a measured decrease in the amount of infrared radiation escaping from the earth because of greenhouse gases, then plays that down to an effect of perhaps 2 degrees of change or less. So, on what does he base that revised temperature change calculation, and what does he say to the science that shows 2 degrees of change is going to be devastating?
Fourth problem: The University of East Anglia did not fabricate climate data: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/25/science/earth/25noaa.html?_r=1
…he even uses the word “conspire”!Fifth problem: While it is true that you cannot pin two specific events of extreme weather / loss of ice to a general warming trend, the wider picture is that the predicted increase in the incidence of extreme weather events around the world is happening.
Sixth problem: He claims that temperatures have been increasing for 300 years, “280 of which we could not have had anything to do with”. The lie of omission in that is most of that warming has happened in the last 20 years, but the sudden increase in CO2 emission actually began over 200 years ago. The clear trend is that the warming has been significant for the last 110 years, and that coincides exactly with increases in industrial output of CO2. Even if the climate had been warming, there is a clear and massive extra effect overlying that which coincides with human industrial activity.
Seventh problem: He refutes the “90% of warming due to human activity” claim partly by citing a paper that claimed the sun was responsible for 69% (14-C data shows the sun has been stable for the time period he is discussing) but then retracts that. So he doesn’t answer the science at all.
Eighth problem: he is claiming that the effect of CO2 is very small according to modeling. Without saying what modeling he means, he is saying nothing. It remains a fact that CO2 is a very effective absorber of IR radiation, and he even admitted there was satellite evidence of that as a real effect. Worse, his suggestion is dangerous because it does not account for the possibility that the CO2 will have just enough warming effect to cause the melting of the Siberian permafrost, which contains huge amounts of trapped methane gas, which is an even more effective greenhouse gas.
Ninth problem: As with the first problem, the biofuel problem is not the same thing as the question of anthropogenic climate change. He confuses the two dishonestly. Growing biofuels on agricultural land and causing starvation is not a good answer.
Tenth problem: He awards Richard Lindzen the accolate of most knowledgeable about how the atmosphere will behave. He goes on to talk about bets, which is part of Lindzen’s rhetoric too. But this is the appeal to authority, not to evidence. Science doesn’t work that way, and even the person who knows most may not know enough. Collectively the rest of the world knows orders of magnitude more than Lindzen knows as an individual.
Eleventh problem: Climate change skepticism is not scientific skepticism. If it was, he would have answers to the whole body of evidence, not just the bits he has cherry-picked, about which he is wrong in any case.
He might have a point about democracy in Europe, although he did not provide a balanced argument there either. But that has nothing to do with the reality of climate change.
So, eleven problems in 12 minutes.
Does the guy have any credibility?
Stuart
Quote (t8 @ Aug. 06 2011,11:57) Quote (Stu @ April 24 2010,21:20) You are welcome to your opinion. Good science is not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of robustness. The absurdity you linked to is not robust, as I have shown.
Like saying, there is no God because there isn't.
That is your scientific proof.Change that to life on other planets.
There is no life on other planets because there isn't.You would be laughed out of any scientific forum for the latter, and the former is why I am laughing at your evidence for no God.
Good to know that you have no proof. Keep it up.
You are helping the cause.
No, there is no god because that is my provisional scientific conclusion based on the complete lack of any unambiguous evidence for any of the claims of tens of thousands of gods made over many millennia.I am open to such evidence. If you have none for your claims then I shall carry on with my reasonable conclusion about them all, which by the way you appear to share concerning all but one of those gods. We differ in view by perhaps 0.01% then. Why do you stop at one god when on the same basis I follow the trend to its logical, and evidential, conclusion?
There is no evidence for life on other planets. That does not mean there is no life there, but we cannot know anything about that life if it is there until there is evidence. To move the analogy back to gods (and I must commend you on coming up with an analogy that actually does have some application – did you think of it yourself?) we are both agnostic about life on other planets, and we are both agnostic about gods. So, presuming you agree we cannot know about life on other planets, on what basis do you know what your god wants you to do?
I never claimed any evidence for no god, although I could if you wanted. You would have to tell me what a god is, first.
Stuart
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