steve wrote:Using your circular Descartian logic, we wouldn't know, even 5000 years in the future, that something had been disproved. We would only know that we perceived it to be disproved.
yes. i believe that we as humans are always sorely lacking in our lock on "truth". we are inclined to believe what we believe, and believe it to be fact, and i can't imagine a single person or collection of people who were never wrong about a single thing. this, to me, is "fact".
steve wrote:If all it takes for a belief to have credibility is that it can't be disproved, then I am requesting that belief in Elves, sentient plants, reincarnation and telekenisis be given the same moral, political and cultural weight that Christianity has. Until you disprove them.
i have no interest in disproving any of these things. the Elves thing is cute. the other things, i believe are likely.
sentient plants? the venus flytrap sits and waits for an insect to land near its *sensor*, and it then acts in response to its perception of "food here". plants grow toward light. you can say these are examples of dumb, animal-type behavior. 50 years ago, suggesting that dolphins were self-aware, or that a primate could extensively learn ASL and communicate its thoughts and feelings with humans, you'd be laughed at, just like you laugh at me now. and both of these are documented "fact" at this point.
reincarnation? i have no problem with this notion. it seems entirely sensible to me. i have no proof one way or the other, but my gut tells me this is a sensible notion.
telekensis... i like the idea. if you look at how physics works these days, science tells you that virtual particles are a reality. if you look at that link to the darpa website i put up a week or two ago, uncle sam is working hard to produce computer products that respond purely to *thought*. i personally have no experience with TK, other than a friend who once claimed to have made something move an inch simply by willing it, but i would say that with humans using whatever percent of our brain that science tells you we use (what is it, 10-12% or something?), it would not even begin to surprise me if at least one guy out there was capable of unlocking another 10 or 20 percent of his brain, in a way that allowed him to interact with particles in a way such that it caused motion of objects in the physical world. don't forget, science will tell you that matter is not actually "stuff", but it's really energy vibrating in certain fashions. thinking about that makes it seem like even less of a stretch.
steve wrote:If I have a choice between clinging to an irrational, supernatural belief because it cannot be disproved, or reading the world with my senses and common sense as it makes itself plain, then I chose the latter. There are too many competing sets of nonsense for the former.
i do the same. only my common sense is real weird. common sense also tells me that the likelihood of a living force beyond our understanding is just as plausible, if not moreso, than what your common sense tells you, namely, a series of astoundingly unlikely events all lined up absolutely perfectly in a fashion such that energy just so happened to turn into the right "stuff", which then settled in just the right corner of the giant mess of "stuff", and had the exact unlikely conditions arise such where life just spontaneously happened in a way that, by the way, science can't begin to describe. can it? has science told you in a clear and plausible way how LIFE ITSELF spontaneously comes into being? how does that work out?
LVP wrote:If, say, 10% of lions tried to kill gazelles, compared with 10% of savannah animals in general, I think that gazelle would be a lousy racist jerk.
