Some will rape you, others will kill you…

Along those lines, I've been under the impression of something in the scientific community all my life. When a challenge is made to something that is new and not the norm, the burden of proof has lied with the person proposing the challenge. When a challenge has been made to something old and accepted, the burden of proof lies with the challenger. All in all, the burden of proof, trying to prove or disprove, has lied with the person challenging the norm. This is because you need to convince the mass of the scientific community.

Yet, when it comes to the supernatural, the opposite has been true. Claims have been made...Actually challenges have been made, and their recourse has been, "prove me wrong." Sadly, people have bought into that. Sadly, people have come to buy into this cowboy science, and have felt they had to defend their stance without any strong scientific stance refuting them.

So not I have a challenge for you. I have a theory that I challenge you to prove false. The burden of proof is on you. I make this statement, and I challenge you to prove it wrong. If you cannot, then I can safely assume it is correct.

Spamandham is a bot programmed by either Microsoft or some other major corporation to convince people their beliefs are incorrect so the corporation can successfully take over the planet without these New World Order claims being leveled against it.

Prove me wrong. Know that any photo is subject to scrutiny, any argument was probably programmed, any audio could be one of the programmers, and if you choose to search extensively to find my address and visit me, there is no reason for me not to believe you're an underling from Microsoft trained to convince me you're real. Now prove me wrong. Prove to me you're not a bot.

Originally posted by junglejake
So not I have a challenge for you. I have a theory that I challenge you to prove false. The burden of proof is on you. I make this statement, and I challenge you to prove it wrong. If you cannot, then I can safely assume it is correct.

Spamandham is a bot programmed by either Microsoft or some other major corporation to convince people their beliefs are incorrect so the corporation can successfully take over the planet without these New World Order claims being leveled against it.

Prove me wrong. Know that any photo is subject to scrutiny, any argument was probably programmed, any audio could be one of the programmers, and if you choose to search extensively to find my address and visit me, there is no reason for me not to believe you're an underling from Microsoft trained to convince me you're real. Now prove me wrong. Prove to me you're not a bot.

Nope, it doesn't work that way, JJ. If you are claiming that your theory that Spamandham is a M$ bot is the truth, then it is up to you to prove that claim. The burden of proof is on the one making the assertion or putting forth the theory. THE TRUTH [tm] is only true if it can be proven to the satisfaction of whoever it is being presented to.

No? Ok. Then I say that on the eighth day, God divided himself into an infinite number of seperate pieces so that he might have friends. Prove me wrong... How do I know? Well, another piece of God and I sat on my front porch last night, had a couple of beers, got to talking, and... we just figured it out through...uh...oh yeah, divine inspiration. Uh huh. Not as glamorous as burning bushes and shining people with wings, but it's a different and shabbier time, isn't it?

See? By logic, and by the standards of the scientific method, your Religion is false unless proved to be true. And no, 2000 year old hearsay isn't proof. 10 million people who believe the same as you isn't proof of anything either except maybe mass brainwashing. Well, I guess you believe it is in your book, but I don't trust the power-hungry people that wrote your book, nor the hypocrites who edited it afterwards.

It might surprise you JJ to learn that I do in fact believe in a higher spiritial power. However, this belief does not originate with anyone's Dogma or Myths. This belief is not based on fear. This belief is from my own scientific observations and experiences of the Universe. I feel this belief is more honest (if not nessissarily correct) than many because I arrived at it not by being told what to believe by someone, but by doing the hard deep thinking about it in my own head. I do not equate my belief with knowledge. I don't try to convence others that my belief is correct, because I am the very first to admit that I may be wrong in what I believe. Most of all, I don't abdicate responsibility for my own spiritial self to some remote, absentee father figure. It's not God's will. It's my will, as imperfect as it might be. I take the blame for the Evil I do and credit for the Good.

Here is my rule for assessing Religion:

Any Religion or Belief that does not at least acknowledge the possiblility that it may be wrong and/or incomplete is certainly wrong and/or incomplete.

The surest way to assure me that you do not possess THE TRUTH [tm] is to claim that you do.

Originally posted by junglejake
Along those lines, I've been under the impression of something in the scientific community all my life. When a challenge is made to something that is new and not the norm, the burden of proof has lied with the person proposing the challenge. When a challenge has been made to something old and accepted, the burden of proof lies with the challenger. All in all, the burden of proof, trying to prove or disprove, has lied with the person challenging the norm. This is because you need to convince the mass of the scientific community.

The scientific world does not buy into this 'burden of proof' business very much. Everything on all sides has to be provable and repeatable in a test-tube.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Eh, I get carried away in law, sometimes

To delve into that a little more, though, is that to say that every time I say, "gravity exists," I have to demonstrate that it is true, even though that's an accepted scientific concept? What if I say, "the temperature is 78 degrees F"? Do I then need to prove that by proving that a mercury thermometer can measure temperature, that this thermometer is accurate in it's scale for temperatures as it relates to the thickness of the tube in which the mercury rises, etc?

For that matter, if everything has to be reproducable, how does chaos theory work and how is it a generally accepted scientific concept? Why is entropy accepted when we see matter and energy being formed into more organized states every time an animal is born? roger_pearse, generally what you say is true, but there are exceptions, I believe.

Ambient Sound, thanks for making my point

Originally posted by junglejake
In my case, it lies in those who would state they know the supernatural doesn't exist, for your's, it would be on those who say that it does.

Before you attempt to shift the burdon, it's up to you to define what "supernatural" means and then explain how it can exist in consistent terms. Every attempt I have seen at defining "supernatural" results in a contradiction of terms. Based on that, I can conclude it is an impossibility. No further proof is required beyond this linguistic analysis. We can safely conclude "supernatural" does not exist, because it is not a coherent concept.

Originally posted by junglejake
Could you cite some examples of the default position that it is false?

Every hypothesis in science is assumed to be false. Experiments are designed to attempt to prove the hypothesis is false, not to attempt to prove it is true. If the hypothesis withstands repeated attempts at falsification, it eventually is judged to be true (or at least approximately true).

Originally posted by junglejake
It would make more sense from a scientific standpoint, in my understanding, to assume the possibility until it was proven false.

There are an infinite number of false statements that can be made, but a limited number of true ones. It isn't possible to assume things are true and then attempt to disprove them, because it would require an infinte amount of time and energy to do so. This is why all claims are assumed false by default. For ordinary and inconsequential claims, the word of another person tends to suffice as sufficient proof, but the more unusual the claim, or the greater the potential consequences, the greater the evidence required to overcome this default assumption.

So, if someone tells you it's hot outside, and it happens to be summer, it's reasonable to simply accept their word as sufficient evidence. In fact, you might simply assume it's hot outside without anyone even telling you, based on your own experience of the weather.

But suppose it's the middle of summer and they tell you it's snowing. Now their word is no longer sufficient evidence. You will first assume they're joking, but if they persist, you'll go check it out.

Likewise, if they tell you it's hailing, you'll check that out too. Even though it might not by unusual to get hail in the middle of the summer, hail can cause property damage, and so your standard of evidence increases due to the potential consequences.

But if after looking out the window and not seeing any hail they insist that you can't see it because it's invisible hail, and that you won't notice the consequences of the invisible hail until 20 years from now, you are justified in brushing them off as insane, because invisible hail with delayed consequences makes no sense and is clearly contrived soley for the purpose of being impossible to disprove.

Suppose they then tell you that they learned about the hail in an ancient book, and as we all know, in ancient times invisible hail was common knowledge, because that's what the book says. Plus, there's this one obscure passage in the book where this guy tells the other guy that the book is usefull, and I take that to mean that the book has no errors in it, therefor invisible hail is true.

Besides that, over 4 billion people believe in invisible hail of some form and are all taking appropriate measures to prevent the delayed damage. Surely they can't all be wrong.

Besides that, people who eat the invisible hail have been healed by it. I know that's true because some guy on TV said he knew someone who knew this guy in Nigeria whos death was cured by eating invisible hail, and there's a story just like it in the book about invisible hail.

If you still don't believe all this overwhelming evidence, then you will be particularly damaged by the hail because you didn't take any precautions. You have no-one to blame but yourself because the choice of whether or not to believe is yours and you are simply rejecting the consequences of invisible hail because you love the invisible supercells that cause it.

I'm telling you all this because I'm concerned for your well being, and not because I'm infected with an invisible hail meme that requires that I spread the meme. You really need to stay indoors when there's invisible hail, and warn everyone else about the dangers of invisible hail. You have been warned!

How can you claim that invisble hail isn't true? The burdon of proof is on you to prove that.

Originally posted by junglejake
Spamandham is a bot programmed by either Microsoft or some other major corporation to convince people their beliefs are incorrect so the corporation can successfully take over the planet without these New World Order claims being leveled against it.

Prove me wrong.

You don't need to be proven wrong. That's the default assumption.

Anyone who reads what you wrote here is justified in assuming you are either lying or insane, with no further evidence required, because your claim is outrageous and you have not substantiated it.

Invisible hail = funny!

Originally posted by spamandham
You don't need to be proven wrong. That's the default assumption.

And that was my point. I made a claim and shifted the burden of proof on you. If I were to back up that claim with reasoning (not sure how one could do that in this case), you shouldn't be able to shift the burden of proof back on me by making a sweeping charge, even if you said, "40 Helens agree, your reasoning is false and I am not a bot." You would have to back those claims with evidence of your own.

That's why I find it so...Well, impossible to accept claims when you say, "the supernatural does not exist," without supporting that claim. The supernatural does not exist because there could be a natural explanation would be the same as me saying you are a bot because one could be programmed to respond as you have.

Originally posted by junglejake

Originally posted by spamandham
You don't need to be proven wrong. That's the default assumption.

And that was my point. I made a claim and shifted the burden of proof on you.

Actually, you didn't. You'll notice that I never refuted your claim. I don't need to.

Originally posted by junglejake
That's why I find it so...Well, impossible to accept claims when you say, "the supernatural does not exist," without supporting that claim.

I don't need to support it. The term "supernatural" is nonsensical, and thus refutes itself, just as does your claim that I'm a M$ bot.

These are consistent positions. Until you provide substantiation for your fantastic claims, I am justified to ignore them, or call you liar/insane. The first step toward substantiation would be to define your terms of course.

And what of a statement like this:

It would be more interesting if it were actually written in the first century rather than the third/early fourth.

Why would you expect me to just accept that as gospel truth because you said it?

As for defining supernatural, I define it as a phenomenon that present scientific and naturalistic research does not have the ability nor means to explain.

In the past, a solar eclipse was considered a supernatural event, a sign, if you will. Solar eclipses have a scientific explanation, but at the time, it was only seen as either a sign of something to come or a sign of displeasure of some sort for something that already took place. Certain attributes were assigned to the solar eclipse, and people reconciled them through the only means they could. "We were praying for a sign to tell us if we should attack this land, and then the sun was blotted out of the sky! Surely we must/must not attack!"

Yet by your reasoning, were they to have written of this solar eclipse, you would summarily dismiss it because of the supernatural attributed to it.

Am I saying things like faith healings could be some natural phenomenon and people have attributed various actions to cause it to happen because that's the way it happened when they experienced it? You bet I am! Does that mean that science can explain every occurrence? No, it doesn't. Today we can measure things we never even knew existed 60 years ago. Yet, there they are. Did they just not exist 60 years ago, and the effects they have on matter never really happened? No, they were as active before we knew what they were or that they existed as they are today.

Originally posted by junglejake

It would be more interesting if it were actually written in the first century rather than the third/early fourth.

Why would you expect me to just accept that as gospel truth because you said it?

I don't. Investigate for yourself. What method did Finegan use to determine the date of the writing?

Originally posted by junglejake
As for defining supernatural, I define it as a phenomenon that present scientific and naturalistic research does not have the ability nor means to explain.

Natural research can explain anything as "we don't know everything". Thus, while something might be outside the bounds of explanation, it is not beyond the ability. We always have the ability to say "this is not understood, but yet, there is no reason it can't be natural nonetheless". By your definition, I am justified in concluding the supernatural does not exist.

However, your definition is contrived anyway. There was a time when the orbits of the planets were not understood. Your definition amounts to "everything we don't have a pat answer for right now is supernatural".

Originally posted by junglejake
In the past, a solar eclipse was considered a supernatural event, a sign, if you will. Solar eclipses have a scientific explanation, but at the time, it was only seen as either a sign of something to come or a sign of displeasure of some sort for something that already took place.

Are you arguing my point or yours?

Originally posted by junglejake
Yet by your reasoning, were they to have written of this solar eclipse, you would summarily dismiss it because of the supernatural attributed to it.

By my reasoning, I would recognize that eclipses are not supernatural events, whereas they were by your definition (rolling the clock back some hundred years). Some hundred years ago there was no natural explanation for them, right? How many cases must be sited of the god of the gaps being filled in before we can conclude a trend?

Originally posted by junglejake
Am I saying things like faith healings could be some natural phenomenon and people have attributed various actions to cause it to happen because that's the way it happened when they experienced it? You bet I am! Does that mean that science can explain every occurrence? No, it doesn't..

By your own definition of supernatural, science does not need to explain every occurance, it merely must provide a possible explanation (ability). Lying and insanity are possible explanations no matter how well documented a case may be. In the end analysis, even if every person on earth were to attest to a specific case other than me, I could not rule out my own insanity. By your definition, these cases are thus not supernatural, because I have the ability to attribute them to natural causes.

You have one, and only one hope of making a coherent point with the definition you provided, and that is to identify an actual violation of the axioms of logic in nature. Science would have no ability to explain that, since science rests on the axioms of logic. Anything else, no matter how amazing it might be, is not beyond the ability of science to explain.

Perhaps you should revise your definition. Why is the supernatural dependent on our understanding of the natural?

Because

Investigate for yourself to get the reasons behind that answer

Originally posted by junglejake
Because

Investigate for yourself to get the reasons behind that answer

Now that I'm not moments from going to bed, I can flesh this out a little bit, although it probably won't be as clear as that initial post I just quoted

I don't know if you realize how circular your argument is, spamandham. I've found myself at times, usually when someone pointed it out to me, doing the same thing without even realizing it. Your arguement seems to revolve around, "I don't have to back my statements up, you have to back yours up and provide sufficient evidence against the comments I make." This is not an accusation or fact, just how I'm perceiving your argument. When I make a comment that is either a contradiction to something you said or a response to a question you pose, even if I source it, you tell me I need to back it up with more evidence, and go into the nitty gritty. Don't get me wrong, that's understandable and reasonable. However, when you come out and just dismiss the claim with a single authoritative statement without any sources or reasons to believe it, you tell me I need to find out the information supporting your claim then refute it with other information I must dig up. This is not reasonable.

In the case above, there must be a reason you believe that slip of paper was written in the second or third century. I doubt you made it up on the fly, because I've heard similar claims against the gospels and other things from the Bible. What makes you believe it? Where did you get your information? In short, why should I believe you? What is your mental reasoning for thinking that? You place the burden of answering those questions on me when I make statements such as the one you made, but you also place the burden of answering those questions on me when you make statements such as the one quoted in a previous post. Why do you expect me to do your research for you, and back your claim for you?

Originally posted by junglejake
In the case above, there must be a reason you believe that slip of paper was written in the second or third century.

You presented it as evidence, so it is up to you to validate the integrity of the evidence you presented. But since you don't want to...

The evidence you refered to is a marble fragment recovered from a synagogue in Caesarea Maritima by Michael Avi-Yonah. The fragment references the Hadrianic war (135 CE) and can not possibly be from the first century for that reason. The archaeological consensus is late 3rd/early 4th century.

Originally posted by junglejake
Why do you expect me to do your research for you, and back your claim for you?

I don't. I expect you to do your research for yourself and not present crappy evidence cut and pasted off apologetic sites like ichthus.info. I use the internet as much as the next guy, but you have to be critical about what you see, particularly if you find some vague reference with no details. I suspect you didn't even know where this fragment came from or who discovered it (or that it was marble not paper) until I told you, yet that didn't stop you from uncritically claiming it as evidence and declaring it was from the first century. If you force me to spank you in public, I'm willing to do so.

This discussion started as you asking me how I got to where I am. I mentioned Nazareth not to start a new debate, but to answer your question fully.

Originally posted by spamandham

Originally posted by junglejake
Why do you expect me to do your research for you, and back your claim for you?

I don't. I expect you to do your research for yourself ...

One reason I could never be an atheist is that all of their posts seem to consist of attempts to manoeuvre the discussion so that they assertions are right by default, and everyone else has to prove them wrong.

It is tedious. Discuss the facts or get out of the way.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Originally posted by roger_pearse
One reason I could never be an atheist is that all of their posts seem to consist of attempts to manoeuvre the discussion so that they assertions are right by default, and everyone else has to prove them wrong.

Roger, the reason for that is that nothing that an atheist believes conflicts with the observable physical characteristics of the Universe. The atheist dosen't make assertions about this subject that conflict with known fact.

However, the religious not only want the rest of us to accept their version of non-substanciated reality (often resorting to force), but they want us to make life decisions based on non-factual, and in many cases just plain incorrect information.

It's a big difference. An insurrmountable void for many. It's the rational vs. irrational. Logic vs. Emotion (most often Fear, IMO). It's provable fact vs. 2000+ year old fantasy later edited for political purposes to control people (by the same type of people who are screwing over and screwing up our country right now, BTW).

:shk:

Hi here's a claim for someone to try and prove wrong.
It is claimed that the Devil/Satan is the greatest trickster so my claim is that Christianity is actually Devil worship as Satan has tricked the world into thinking that he is God. Strangely enough there is actually scriptural evidence to back this up (not much but hey I've got Faith and Faith is all you need right?) So prove me wrong !

G

Originally posted by shihulud
Hi here's a claim for someone to try and prove wrong.
It is claimed that the Devil/Satan is the greatest trickster so my claim is that Christianity is actually Devil worship as Satan has tricked the world into thinking that he is God. Strangely enough there is actually scriptural evidence to back this up (not much but hey I've got Faith and Faith is all you need right?) So prove me wrong !

G

Plagarism!!!

Satan's conspiracy thread

Just kidding.

Originally posted by Ambient Sound

Originally posted by roger_pearse
One reason I could never be an atheist is that all of their posts seem to consist of attempts to manoeuvre the discussion so that they assertions are right by default, and everyone else has to prove them wrong.

Roger, the reason for that is that nothing that an atheist believes conflicts with the observable physical characteristics of the Universe. The atheist dosen't make assertions about this subject that conflict with known fact.

I'm afraid that I am not sure what you mean, or how this relates to my comment. But I'll try to respond.

You see, I routinely see atheists assert all sorts of things which are factually wrong. And I usually find that atheists believe some subset of the societal values fashionable in their age and country -- today, usually some version of US values of the last quarter of the 20th century. I don't see how any of this can be described as 'not conflicting with the physical characteristics of the universe' -- merely as conformity.

However, the religious not only want the rest of us to accept their version of non-substanciated reality (often resorting to force), but they want us to make life decisions based on non-factual, and in many cases just plain incorrect information.

I think all you're saying here is that you think they are wrong (which is your right); that you are right (which is your right); that those you disagree with are not entitled to propagate their views (which is unreasonable) and that you are, because you're right.

Pardon me, but this all seems rather unreasonable. Does everyone have this position; or only atheists?

It's the rational vs. irrational. Logic vs. Emotion.

So atheists often say. They read it in atheist polemic, and believe it. But I don't notice any perceptible increase in rationality or logic among atheists. I do notice a perceptible increase in credulity in whatever they wish to believe.

It's provable fact vs. 2000+ year old fantasy later edited for political purposes to control people.

Here is an example of what I had in mind. Precisely what is meant by the latter comment? And, (without offence) do you know it or are you merely repeating hearsay?

Please beware of the endless flattery atheists heap on each other, that believing in atheist is 'rational', 'scientific', etc. It isn't. Reason is something you have to do.

All the best,

Roger Pearse