Why do I do this??? (guy's reply to Harris article)

[MaxWeiss]

Sam Harris has another article out, and the second commenter on it had a lot to say, quoted below. I of course had to e-mail him (a heated e-mail of course) and he kindly replied and said why don't I send him my critiques so we can discuss them. Of course I'm going to. Ugh, I don't know if I just like arguing or if it's just that I really care about the truth. (Actually, I do know, it's the truth, but I do enjoy the arguing, and every now and then I find an agnostic I can convert.)

The Harris article is here, and here is the guy's response:

[ QUOTE ]


Sam,

I've read your first book...working on the second. I've read some stuff on your site and watched the
"Beyond Belief" videos.

One answer to "atheism" that you have not mentioned and has been out for quite some time is Clarkian presuppositionalism.

Nothing that I have read in your writings so far would come even close to addressing the issues Gordon Clark had raised in a number of his books.

In my opinion, he has logically demolished not only your framework, but even the Christian "empiricism" held by the vast majority of Christendom. (intelligent design arguments, evidentialism, classical Thomistic arguments, etc.)

Here's to name a few of the arguments:

1) Observation is unreliable. Scientists do not perform an experiment only once. Experiments are always repeated, and the results most always differ in some way. Why? Because the senses tend to deceive us; they are not to be trusted. Hence, numerous readings are taken in an attempt to guard against inaccurate observation. So much is this the case in science, that tests with unrepeatable results are never taken seriously. But if observation is unreliable, if the senses are so easily deceived, if the results frequently differ, why should one ever believe that he has discovered truth through observation?

(2) All scientific experiments commit the fallacy of asserting the consequent. In syllogistic form this is expressed as: "If p, then q. q; therefore, p." Bertrand Russell, certainly no friend of Christianity, stated it this way:

All inductive arguments in the last resort reduce themselves to the following form: "If this is true, that is true: now that is true, therefore this is true." This argument is, of course, formally fallacious. Suppose I were to say: "If bread is a stone and stones are nourishing, then this bread will nourish me; now this bread does nourish me; therefore it is a stone, and stones are nourishing." If I were to advance such an argument, I should certainly be thought foolish, yet it would not be fundamentally different from the argument upon which all scientific laws are based.

In the laboratory scientists work with a hypothesis. In this case the hypothesis is: "If bread is a stone and stones are nourishing, then this bread will nourish me." The scientist then attempts to deduce the predicted results that should occur if the hypothesis is true, such as "this bread nourishes me." He then performs an experiment to test the hypothesis to see if the predicted results occur. So he sits down at the table and eats the bread, and wonder of wonders, the bread does nourish him. The hypothesis, he concludes, is confirmed: "This bread is a stone and stones are nourishing." Silly you say? Yes! Yet, as Russell has asserted, it is not "fundamentally different from the argument upon which all scientific laws are based." That is to say, all scientific laws are based on fallacious arguments.

(3) Science commits the fallacy of induction. Induction is the attempt to derive a general law from particular instances. Science is necessarily inductive. For example, if a scientist is studying crows, he might observe 999 crows and find that they all are black. But is he ever able to assert that all crows are black? No; the next crow he observes might be an albino. One can never observe all crows: past, present, and future. Universal propositions can never be validly obtained by observation. Hence, science can never give us true statements.

(4) Equations are always selected, they are never discovered. In the laboratory the scientist seeks to determine the boiling point of water. Since water hardly ever boils at the same temperature, the scientist conducts a number of tests and the slightly differing results are noted. He then must average them. But what kind of average does he use: mean, mode, or median? He must choose; and whatever kind of average he selects, it is his own choice; it is not dictated by the data. Then too, the average he chooses is just that, that is, it is an average, not the actual datum yielded by the experiment. Once the test results have been averaged, the scientist will calculate the variable error in his readings. He will likely plot the data points or areas on a graph. Then he will draw a curve through the resultant data points or areas on the graph. But how many curves, each one of which describes a different equation, are possible? An infinite number of curves is possible. But the scientist draws only one. What is the probability of the scientist choosing the correct curve out of an infinite number of possibilities? The chance is one over infinity, or zero. Therefore, all scientific laws are false. They cannot possibly be true. As cited above, the statement of Karl Popper is correct: "It can even be shown that all theories, including the best, have the same probability, namely zero."

(5) All scientific laws describe ideal situations. As Clark has said, "At best, scientific law is a construction rather than a discovery, and the construction depends on factors never seen under a microscope, never weighed in a balance, never handled or manipulated."3 Clark uses the law of the pendulum as an example:

The law of the pendulum states that the period of the swing is proportional to the square root of the length. If, however, the weight of the bob is unevenly displaced around its center, the law will not hold. The law assumes that the bob is homogeneous, that the weight is symmetrically distributed along all axes, or more technically, that the mass is concentrated at a point. No such bob exists, and hence the law is not an accurate description of any tangible pendulum. Second, the law assumes that the pendulum swings by a tensionless string. There is no such string, so that the scientific law does not describe any real pendulum. And third, the law could be true only if the pendulum swung on an axis without friction. There is no such axis. It follows, therefore, that no visible pendulum accords with the mathematical formula and that the formula is not a description of any existing pendulum.

From our study of these five logical difficulties, it can be readily seen that science is not capable of giving us any truth. And if the scientific method is a tissue of logical fallacies, why should Christians seek to argue from science to the truth? Simply stated, they should not. Science is useful in accomplishing its purpose, i.e., subduing the Earth. But that is all it is useful for, nothing more.

The question arises, "If science never gives us truth, how can it be so successful?" It all depends on how one defines success. We are now able to put a man on the moon; we are also able to destroy our fellow man with one push of a button. Are these measures of success? Scientific theories are always changing (whereas truth is eternal). Is constant change a measure of success?

Science is successful when one understands its purpose, and when one understands that false theories sometimes work. Newtonian science, for example, worked for years. It has been replaced by Einstein’s theory. But even though he believed his theory to be a better approximation of the truth than Newton’s, Einstein declared that his own theory was false.

Science has its place in a Christian philosophy, an important place. But science is never to be seen as a means of learning truth. Truth is found in the Scriptures alone; the Bible has a monopoly on truth. It is God’s Word that must be believed, not the experiments of men. As Robbins has said: "Science is false, and must always be false. Scripture is true and must always be true. The issue is as clear, and as simple, as that."


[/ QUOTE ]

[vhawk01]

tl; dr

However, I did like his 'example' of asserting the consequent.

If bread is a stone, and stones nourish me, then this bread will nourish me. The bread does nourish me, therefore stones nourish me.

This is not an example of what he is arguing, its simply horrible and unsupported premises.

[arahant]

I'd pick a better target to argue with. This is just skidoo with better references and more honesty.

Gordon Clark is a joke. Many philosophers are jokes, but Clark in particular hardly even qualifies as a philosopher. His style of argument is essentially ancient, ignoring any modern work in philosophy. He's really just a theologian; his work is the philosophical equivalent of ID in science.

That said, this guy will 'argue' with you by repeating by Clarks arguments until he grows tired, accidentally contradicts himself, or reaches a point where his semantics break down. Standard fare.

I would just say "LOL@Gordon Clark"

Edit: Arguing is a kick. Be sure to update this thread with your correspondence [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[MaxWeiss]

For the three or four people that even care, here's what I said. The second e-mail I sent was "I forgot to run the spell check, sorry!" and the first was:

[ QUOTE ]
Alright! Let's get started! I will be unavailable for the next week or so, so if you want to respond, I won't be available to reply back for a bit. In this e-mail, it is only important to me to show the flaws in the five or six numbered assertions you made. I am guessing it is a waste of my time to try and do any more than that, though I am hoping I might by accident, if you reply and we have continued correspondance. So here we go!...


---Quote----
1) Observation is unreliable. Scientists do not perform an experiment only once. Experiments are always repeated, and the results most always differ in some way. Why? Because the senses tend to deceive us; they are not to be trusted. Hence, numerous readings are taken in an attempt to guard against inaccurate observation. So much is this the case in science, that tests with unrepeatable results are never taken seriously. But if observation is unreliable, if the senses are so easily deceived, if the results frequently differ, why should one ever believe that he has discovered truth through observation?
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First off, observation is not unreliable. You would have to expand on what you mean by saying that if you want to debate me on this point. When I see something, and you confirm to me that you see it too, as does everybody else, we can be fairly sure we are all in fact seeing something and not sharing in a hallucination. After all, it is technically possible that you are hallucinating your entire life and nothing is real. But given what we know about how the brain works and given technological advances, this is highly improbable to the point where it is virtually impossible. There are an infinite number of things which are POSSIBLE but just not likely. I'm sure you've heard of the Flying Spaghetti Monster; he falls in this category (as does God).

Observation itself is at a basic level, just that, seeing (or in some other way observing) something. You then ask somebody else, do you see this, and if you get a bunch of people who do, then you can reasonably assume you aren't hallucinating and that you are in fact observing. After enough times of people saying "yeah, I see that too" you begin to rely on what you see as being "real" because you observe and others have already continually told you that you are seeing what they are, so it becomes truth. In that sense, you can "trust" your senses, even if they are impulses from the brain, and you have a blind spot in your eye, etc.

In the quote above, you clearly understand how many tests must be done before a theory is validated, but what you don't understand is WHY it is validated, even if results differ. You are testing PREDICTIONS made by a theory, and atest of that theory may include many different things or ways of doing things and even if the results differ, as long as they fit with the predictions made (and many mroe tests also pass) the theory becomes bascially validated. The theory that "rocks fall to the ground when dropped" is a scientific theory which can be tested. It can never be "proved" true--it can only continue to pass all the tests we make. The "theory" of gravity and teh "theory" of evolution are both unprovable in that sense---they simply continue to pass every test and prediction made by them. Admitadly, theory is a misunderstood word. "Theory" in the scientific sense could be substitued for the words "The encompassing body of knowledge surrounding" since that's what it means. It's like saying "The Thoery of Numbers". Math is true; it's not a "theory" in the sense of a hypothesis. A theory may be right or wrong, but the title "theory" has no relevance.


---Quote---
(2) All scientific experiments commit the fallacy of asserting the consequent.
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Asserting the consequence is not a fallacy; it is simply the next step up from observation. Let's say you come to me and say your jaw hurts, and we can go back and time and see everything you have done for the past.. week, for example. We record everything you did and then either do those things ourselves or watch otehr people do them and then see which of them ends up going to a doctor saying their jaw hurts. If only the people who were punched in the (lower part of their) face recently have the problem, we can make the statement "When I observe a person get punched, he usually goes to the doctor and says his jaw hurts." There is SOME kind of connection. That is not a faulty assertation. Thanks to statistics, we can know that with enough people claiming this, a coincidence becomes a cause/effect relationship. All scientific assertations are this type of argument at their basic level. (They linked chains have just grown so long that's it's hard to imagine this is so, but it is.) At this point in time we think and we think and we develop a hypothsis, a theory, as to WHY punching a face makes a jaw hurt. That hypothesis is a statement which has some (possibly many) testible predictions, including the one that punching the face makes the jaw hurt. With a logical understanding of nature and the many laws and correct theories we have, we can usually come up with a few good hypothesis, and then we test all the predictions they make and the one that continues to pass the tests shows itself that it is better at predicting things because its foudnation of WHY is correct. All it would take to prove evolution or gravity or any number of thigns wrong is ONE time, one thing which the theory predicts wouldn't happen, for the theory to be either tossed out, or more likely, ammended. Newtonian Mechanics is true, but not at the really big, really small, or really fast levels. It's still true and we understand how and why it doesn't work as well at the other levels. In your example you use "If bread is a stone and stones are nourishing, then this bread will nourish me." In science, before that hypothesis would be tested, all its elements are tested. We would first make sure that bread is in fact a stone, and we would then also make sure stones are nourishing. (We must makes observations and assert consequences.) That quoted statement is typical of much pseudoscience found in modern culture, much of which is often wrongly thought of as actualy science. And without an understanding of the scientific process, many people such as yourself fall for it. When you don't understand why things work, you cannot possibly defend yourself against illogical attacks on them because the logical foundation is missing.



---Quote---
(3) Science commits the fallacy of induction. Induction is the attempt to derive a general law from particular instances. Science is necessarily inductive. For example, if a scientist is studying crows, he might observe 999 crows and find that they all are black. But is he ever able to assert that all crows are black? No; the next crow he observes might be an albino. One can never observe all crows: past, present, and future. Universal propositions can never be validly obtained by observation. Hence, science can never give us true statements.
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You're right, science can never give a "true" statement, in the absolute sense. Nor can anything else. All we can do is have statements (theories) which have gone for long periods of time without being proved false, and hence the probability of being true approaches, but never reaches, 100 percent. And when you observe a crow that isn't black, you pipe up because you will have DISPROVED the theory ENTIRELY, with just one observation. Similarly, I cannot completely disprove God, but nor can I disprove the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Invisible Pink Unicorn. I could also say lobsters fly to Mars every night undectable by humans and human technology, and you can't prove me wrong. I have stipulated in that statement that we can never disprove it, but that doesn't make it likely or reasonable to believe. It is technically possible, but the "truth" is that the statement is almost certainly wrong. (See my next response, below, for more on induction.)


---Quote---
(4) Equations are always selected, they are never discovered. In the laboratory the scientist seeks to determine the boiling point of water. Since water hardly ever boils at the same temperature, the scientist conducts a number of tests and the slightly differing results are noted. He then must average them. But what kind of average does he use: mean, mode, or median? He must choose; and whatever kind of average he selects, it is his own choice; it is not dictated by the data. Then too, the average he chooses is just that, that is, it is an average, not the actual datum yielded by the experiment. Once the test results have been averaged, the scientist will calculate the variable error in his readings. He will likely plot the data points or areas on a graph. Then he will draw a curve through the resultant data points or areas on the graph. But how many curves, each one of which describes a different equation, are possible? An infinite number of curves is possible. But the scientist draws only one. What is the probability of the scientist choosing the correct curve out of an infinite number of possibilities? The chance is one over infinity, or zero. Therefore, all scientific laws are false. They cannot possibly be true. As cited above, the statement of Karl Popper is correct: "It can even be shown that all theories, including the best, have the same probability, namely zero."
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I don't even know where to begin with this one! It displays a fundumental misunderstanding of probability and statistics. And mean, mode, and median are all different things---he can take each one if he wants! The mean is the average, the mode is the most frequent value, and the median is the point which half the data points are above and half below. In the series [1, 1, 2, 3, 100] the mean is 21.4, the mode is 1, and the median is 2. If you are measuring the boiling point of water, all three terms will be the same number because water only boils at one temperature. There won't be a curve on the graph, there will be a circle of dots somewhere very near 212 degrees. The rest of the paragraph is just dazzingly horrible and if you have understood what I have said thus far, you should be able to see all the problems.

I looked up Karl Popper and I did not find that quote; please tell me your source. I did find much interesting stuff about him though, including much about induction and faslifiability. He is correct is saying that a valid theory must in principle be falsafiable, and that's a really good criteria for theories to need to pass, I must say. I stated earlier that it's possible for lobsters to be flying to Mars and I also stipulated that it's impossible for us to detect them. This cannot be faslified, it cannot be tested. It is not a valid theory. The same goes for the Invisible Pink Unicorn, the FLying Spaghetti Monster, and God.

Also, there was talk of inductive inference. As I understand it, this is a statistics issue, the same as any other science theory. If I see a white swan and it's the only swan I've seen, it's unreasonable to say all swans are white. If I see ten thousand and they're all white, it beomces more reasonable. After a while, it's a safe bet that the statement is true, but it is still falsifiable and can (and has been) proven to be wrong. That doesn't mean you cannot infer things though. I inferred that all things fall when dropped, and (as long as I'm not in space!) it's a true statement simply because it continues to pass all the tests by making accurate predictions since the theory was started. All it would take is one legitimate example of it being wrong to completely destroy it.



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(5) All scientific laws describe ideal situations.
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No, the laws simply state the conditions in which the laws work. Gravity doesn't work well on the subatomic level. That doesn't mean it's a flawed theory. We have just revised it.



---Quote---
......it can be readily seen that science is not capable of giving us any truth. And if the scientific method is a tissue of logical fallacies.....
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Clearly you have misunderstood what science is. Science is not a "thing" or a field of study, it is a PROCESS of observation, hypothesis, tests, and revision. It is self-correcting. Nothing can ever be "proved" 100% true, all it can do is continue to not be false and get us closer to "absolute" truth by continuing to self-correct and update.


---Quote---
Scientific theories are always changing (whereas truth is eternal). Is constant change a measure of success?
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Yes, but scientific theories are always changing is a specific direction towards truth. There may be bumps, missteps, and occasional backtracks, but it heads towards truth in the only manner possible via the scientific method. "Truth" is like the limit in a math equation... it is what everything is headed towards, even if it ahsn't reached it. Einstein's thoery isn't false. It is just not "absolute truth." It described MORE than Newton's theory, and is therefore better, and that's really all we can do in science is create more accurate theories which make more and mroe predictions and which are more encompassing, as we understand more and more about the universe.

And yes, change (scientific) is (usually) a measure of success, as you can (hopefully!) by now understand.


---Quote---
But science is never to be seen as a means of learning truth. Truth is found in the Scriptures alone; the Bible has a monopoly on truth. It is God’s Word that must be believed, not the experiments of men. As Robbins has said: "Science is false, and must always be false. Scripture is true and must always be true. The issue is as clear, and as simple, as that."
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If you have understood where you misspoke previously, you should be able to see how this statement is just complete [censored]. "God" is not a testable hypothesis; he's not a valid statement! What evidence is there of him which can only be attributed to him and not by man???

And if you are a literal in the scripture, how in the world do you reconcile all the terrible things in the bible with modern living??? Killing back-talking kids and women whoa ren't virgins when you marry them, etc. What about tolerance?? What place does that have when the bible tells you to kill people of other faiths. Wait it says other gods. I worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster, so feel free to kill me. I know it says to do good stuff too, but I mean, the word of God can't contradict itself can it??? So clearly you do have to kill me, right???? Or at the very least burn my house???




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So there you have it! I would be happy to discuss this further with you if you want to spend the time, but as I said, I'll be gone for a week or so.


-CK

[/ QUOTE ]

[vhawk01]

Solid response, although I personally would probably have just glazed over the last part about truth only being found in the Bible. Seems like you would be much more likely to sway him (say, 1 in 100 compared to 1 in 1000) if you didn't reveal your evil, heathen ways.

[LooseCaller]

very well argued. even though he's kind of an easy target, making people like this look foolish never gets old.

[KeysrSoze]

I would have just mentioned how batguano-crazy it is to type 5000 words explaining how absolutely nothing can be verified as true then say the Bible is verified as true. But I'm a man of few words.

[kingneb]

Max,

I want to thank you for the response. Responses like yours help affirm that I am on the right path and make me even more grateful that God saved me from the "[censored]" you and the godless propose.

"Let's get started!" ( :

1) You say that "observation is not unreliable."

Gordon Clark:

"Let us start with the red of a rose and the blue of a violet. First, a description of sensation will show that it does not give knowledge so readily as common sense imagines. Not everybody sees roses as red and violets as blue. There are some people who we say are color blind, and there are degrees of color blindness. It is difficult to tell what is color blindness and what are color illusions. The real color is very hard to settle upon. The condition of the organ, the eye, a disease, temporary sickness, a headache or extreme sensitivity change our color sensations.

"Let me give you one little example. If you would take a course in art, oil painting, you might take a square of canvas and put some color paint on the top half of it and another color on the bottom. It could be red and blue or any two colors you wish just so long as they're different. And then after they have dried, take a brush full of gray paint and just bring it down vertically over the two parts of the square and you will see that that one stroke of brush has put two different colors on the canvas, the color of the gray at the top is not the color of the gray at the bottom half of the canvas. So the color that you see depends on the background against which you see it. And since there is always a background, you never see anything as it is all by itself.

"I could also mention some optical illusions: the Texas rancher who was sure he was seeing a mirage and drove his pick-up truck into a lake. Some of my friendly opponents try to meet my argument against empiricism by claiming that I merely parrot the ancient skeptics. I'm afraid of two things: The ancient skeptics didn't know anything about Texas, and, in the second place, if I am parroting the ancient skeptics, that is not a sufficient answer to their arguments.

"Take one thing that certainly the ancients didn't know. Get a nice piece of bristle-board cardboard and paint one-half of it with black India ink. Leave the other half white and then put little swiggles of black on the white half. Then get something that will rotate at about 500 revolutions a minute, and what color will you see? Will you see black? Will you see gray? Well, if you haven't done this experiment I'm pretty sure you just don't know. I'll tell you: You'll see purple; you'll see red; you'll see green; you'll see some sort of brown. You will see all these colors just from a mixture of black and white, and this gives you considerable difficulty in trying to say that you see the color of anything at all or to paraphrase a little bit from Augustine, there is nothing given (das Gegebenes, if you know the German technical term), nothing given in sensation without intellectual interpretation."

"…In the second place, this empirical theory, after making such a poor beginning with sensation, requires a theory of images to account for the retention of knowledge after the sensation has stopped. When you talk about the sensation, when it is gone, and you have an image that is retained, there are other difficulties. If perception is an inference from sensation, and images follow the perception, how can one determine when the inference is valid?

"At one time, I inferred that I saw a truck. Another time, a few minutes later, I inferred that I saw a mailbox. But how do you tell whether either inference is valid? And then in the second place, some people, especially scientists, not artists, but especially scientists, don't have any images. And that's a difficulty I don't see how the empirical philosophy can ever overcome. They seem never to have thought of the existence of such people. Thomas Aquinas and David Hume, best known for their theories of images, just seem to believe that all people have images. But that isn't so. There are some people, and I know one fairly well, who have no images at all."
Does that help "expand" on the meaning?

Furthermore, you support your claim that observation is reliable because "After enough times of people saying "yeah, I see that too" you begin to rely on what you see as being "real" because you observe and others have already continually told you that you are seeing what they are, so it becomes truth."

No it doesn't Max. Max, are you a big supporter of formal logic? Seriously. Because I always hear how "rational" you non-religious people are yet you make the most awful, fallacious arguments I have ever seen.

Your example is begging the question. Max, hello? You can't appeal to sensation to argue for the reliability of sensation. Just because 10 other people see what you see, doesn't now mean that all of those sensations are accurate. Furthermore, it doesn't explain how perception is an inference from sensation. 200 people can collaborate and write a book explaining how 2+2=6, but unless you are a complete moron, then you know that's not true. You do know it is 4, right?

Furthermore, you state, "this is highly improbable to the point where it is virtually impossible."

Which is it Max? Impossible and maybe impossible are two different things. You need to make up your mind.

2.) You say, "Asserting the consequence is not a fallacy; it is simply the next step up
from observation."

And here we go…the "rational" empiricist reveals his love for logic. Max, I should not even continue with you past this point because you've just admitted to being irrational, but since I'm bored at the moment, we'll continue.

Max, is this a valid argument?

* If you eat many puppies, you will get full.
* You are full.
* Therefore, you must have eaten many puppies.

You claim this is "not a fallacy", but simply "the next step up from observation."

So, empiricism is taking us to the next step by being able to prove that when people are full, this means they have eaten puppies…hmmm….Max, I hope you don't ever invite dog lovers to your thanksgiving festivals.

See, this is the problem with you empiricists. You so desperately want to be thought of as "rational", "reasonable" people, yet you know that your empiricism will not get you far, "rationally" speaking. You don't stick to the rules of valid argumentation because you know that empiricism can't, so instead of changing your argument, you make up new rules. You create a new logic. What was considered fallacious reasoning is now valid. What used to be undeniable, like the law of contradiction, is now merely a tool that we can take or leave. What nonsense!

Max, I noticed you and others have mocked the example of stones and breads, but Max…hello…that was a direct quote of Bertrand Russell. Again, RUSSELL says,

"All inductive arguments in the last resort reduce themselves to the following form: "If this is true, that is true: now that is true, therefore this is true." This argument is, of course, formally fallacious. Suppose I were to say: "If bread is a stone and stones are nourishing, then this bread will nourish me; now this bread does nourish me; therefore it is a stone, and stones are nourishing." If I were to advance such an argument, I should certainly be thought foolish, yet it would not be fundamentally different from the argument upon which all scientific laws are based."

Your beef is not with me, but with a fellow atheist. Take it up with him.

3.) You say, "You're right, science can never give a "true" statement, in the absolute
sense. Nor can anything else. All we can do is have statements (theories)
which have gone for long periods of time without being proved false, and
hence the probability of being true approaches, but never reaches, 100
percent."

You know, until now, I would not have thought that a "reasonable", grown man could make such a ridiculous statement; however, when you despise logic, as you have demonstrated in (2), then I guess I can understand why you argue this way.

Max, you admit that not only science, but NO ONE can ever make a "true" statement, right? But then you turn right around and try to argue that over long periods of time, if we don't prove our hypothesis false, we increase the "probability of being true".

Max…hello…what is "true"? How do you know you're getting closer to something you can't know?

That's like asking my four year old what 235x320 equals.

She says, "I don't know".

I then say, "well, take a guess."

She then responds, "ummm…5?"

And then I respond back with the question, "Are you close to the true answer?"

Max, how in the world does she know she's close if she doesn't know the answer? Yet, here you are trying to argue that we have gotten close to "truth", even though we don't know "truth".

Another reason to stop correspondence with you, but hey, I'm still bored.

4) You say, "The mean is the average, the mode is the most frequent value, and the median is the point which half the data points are above and half below. In the series
[1, 1, 2, 3, 100] the mean is 21.4, the mode is 1, and the median is 2. If
you are measuring the boiling point of water, all three terms will be the
same number because water only boils at one temperature. There won't be a
curve on the graph, there will be a circle of dots somewhere very near 212
degrees."

Max, I don't know what is worse – you typing such nonsense or the fact that you have a few supporters on a forum calling your response "Solid " and "very well argued". It's a sad day. I don't even have to know a single thing about water to point out the glaring problem with this paragraph.

You said, "If you are measuring the boiling point of water, all three terms will be the
same number because water only boils at one temperature."

Then you said, "There won't be a curve on the graph, there will be a circle of dots somewhere very near 212 degrees."

Hahaha…man, is this even worth responding to? That sounds like a line off of the latest movie "Idiocracy".

Let me quote you again, seeing that your supporters at 2+2 may be slow too and have a hard time seeing it:

1. same number…one temperature
2. circle of dots…somewhere very near 212

On Pooper, ask your friend arahant, since he's the philosophy expert.

You go on to say, "If I see a white swan and it's the only swan I've seen, it's unreasonable to say all swans are white. If I see ten thousand and they're all white, it beomces more
reasonable."

No it doesn't. Unless of course you redefine "reasonable" in such a way as to avoid formal logic; which is what you do, of course. It would only appear "reasonable" to people who don't place a high premium on formal logic.

"After a while, it's a safe bet that the statement is true, but it is still falsifiable and can (and has been) proven to be wrong. That doesn't mean you cannot infer things though."

I never said you can't infer things. I can infer things all day long. I can infer that you're a transvestite midget with four legs. The problem is not inferring things, the problem is that inferences must follow sound, logical reasoning.

To infer that that 100th swan will be white because the first 99 were white is an invalid conclusion. It is not a sound, logical argument.

Again, wrestle with Bertrand Russell if you have a problem with it.

(5) You say, "Nothing can ever be "proved" 100% true, all it can do is continue to not be false and get us closer to "absolute" truth by continuing to self-correct and update."

Then you say, "scientific theories are always changing is a specific direction towards truth. There may be bumps, missteps, and occasional backtracks, but it heads towards truth in the only manner possible via the scientific method. "Truth" is like the limit in a math equation... it is what everything is headed towards, even if it ahsn't reached it."

Once again Max, if you don't know the answer to 235x320, then you could never say that your "guess" is close to the "true" answer or not.

Either you know or you don't. If you have no idea whatsoever where Timbuttohawk is, then how can you tell your family in the car that you're getting closer?

You want to have your cake and eat it too. Instead, you should grow some chest hair and accept the logical end to your empiricism – you can't know anything at all.

Lastly, you say "If you have understood where you misspoke previously, you should be able to see how this statement is just complete [censored]. "God" is not a testable hypothesis; he's not a valid statement! What evidence is there of him which can only be attributed to him and not by man???"

Hmmm, for a man that can't know any certainty, you sure do sound certain here.

Max, of course you're not going to see "God" as a "testable hypothesis" because you are an empiricist – you limit yourself to only that which is observable.

You assume that empiricism is true and then build your entire worldview on it. The problem is not with God but with your limited, weak, bankrupt, self-contradictory theory of knowledge. You've ruled God out from the start with presuppositions that are complete non-sense.

You say, "And if you are a literal in the scripture, how in the world do you reconcile
all the terrible things in the bible with modern living??? Killing back-talking kids and women whoa ren't virgins when you marry them, etc. What about tolerance?? What place does that have when the bible tells you to kill people of other faiths. Wait it says other gods. I worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster, so feel free to kill me. I know it says to do good stuff too, but I mean, the word of God can't contradict itself can it??? So clearly you do have to kill me, right???? Or at the very least burn my house???"

Max, I've been studying the Bible for around 14 years now. There is not a day that goes by when I am not chewing on something in there. I've taught it (been on staff at three churches) and written on it many, many times. If you want to debate interpretations of Scripture, then let's have a debate. But if you're going to treat the Bible as mere "[censored]", probably having spent very little time in it at all and I seriously doubt that you have attempted any systematic study of it, then don't pretend to tell me what it teaches and try to argue from it.

Your questions simply reveal the ignorance you have of what it actually teaches…if you want to debate interpretations, let's have a formal debate. Let's see your hermeneutical method at work, but I'm not playing these 100-questions games with you.

Jason

[MaxWeiss]

Sorry everybody, I know everybody hates all caps, and so do I, but the poster "kingneb" is the person who wrote the quoted reply in my OP, and I was oh so sure that SMP would want to read his reply. If I was wrong, then the mods can give me a star.

Well, now everybody knows my name is Max. Oh well, I suppose I'll learn to live with it!

But you Jason.... you.... you have now entered onto the 2+2 forums!!!

(**Scary music**)

I want to wait a bit before I respond to see what others have to say first.

Again, I really appreciate your taking the time to respond and also for calmly beginning our conversation in the face of my original heated e-mail!

[vhawk01]

If this was any other forum I'd be flaming you endlessly, Max.