NOGO

The act of looking for Gods on mount Olympus proves nothing according to your logic.

Don't you know that Zeus is invisible. I supose that if we go beyond the firmament where the throne of Yahweh is supposed to be according to the OT we would find no Yahweh either. This however never bothered Christians.

Can we trust our senses?

As you stated instruments can amplify our sense and make us discover things which we though did not exist.

Basically the problem is this.

We can observe and continue to do so with better and better instruments and believe what we see or even start to speculate what can come up. All this is acceptable.

We should not start with an assertion not founded on any observation.

LDC: There's no evidence that stem cells will cure alzheimers. Therefore, stem cells do not cure alzheimers. Right?

No! This is acceptable speculation because there is reason to believe that it may be possible but also we know that eventually we will be able to say for sure whether stems cells can or cannot cure alzheimer.

In the case of God there is simply no possibility of answering the question. No new data nor new technology will help. There is no point asking a question which cannot be answered.

The idea that life on earth was created by extraterrestial beings may be answerable. But notice how it resembles the God issue. If it is true then the question may be answerable. We may look and find these people. If it is false then there is no way to answer it for sure. There is no evidence for even speculating about it. This is an example of an assertion not based on any evidence. Also if the answer is yes then the question becomes who created the creators and we are back on square one.

Generally speaking we should let our senses (aided when necessary) guide us to the truth.

We should not proceed by the religious/mythological model of divine inspiration where the truth is revealed to us by magic. We then proceed by instantaneous speculation and get trapped in questions which cannot be answered.

It is a given that an infinite number of things cannot be proven not to exist but some of us will live without these proofs.

Cheers!

[ November 14, 2002: Message edited by: NOGO ]</p>

Living Dead Chipmunk

If part of the definition of Zeus is that he lives on Mount Olympus, and he's not on Mount Olympus, the definition is falsified. Invisibility, etc. was never a part of the original Greek definition, and as I understand the mythology, Zeus LIKED to have his presence known in the most dramatic, flashy way possible, in general. Thus, Zeus would have certainly been evidenced as every climber to the summit of Mount Olympus got struck down by nasty bolts of lightning.

What observation led to the development of Superstring Theory?

Exactly my point: There is no possibility of answering the question. That means it cannot be answered EITHER in the affirmative OR in the negative with any degree of certainty, at least not in regards to the general concept. Specific examples can be falsified, but the general concept is an unanswerable question. Which means you can't say "No, it doesn't exist" anymore than you can say "Yes, it exists". Providing an answer to an unanswerable question is an exercise in dogma no matter which way your answer is aimed.

Which would mean there's no point in answering said question, either.

However, I disagree. Most philosophy is about asking questions that are effectively unanswerable.

That was really my entire point. Can Ronin say "no aliens exist" with the same certainty he says "no gods exist"? That's what I was trying to determine.

Yes. It's no different from many other, more scientific questions. Posed in the past or in the present. "Do atoms exist?" Yes, because we found them. If we hadn't found them, we could never answer the question. "Do 32-dimentional sub-atomic strings in excited stated exist?" If true, we may find them. If false, we may never know. So why is the most active (and convoluted) field of theoretical physics trying to answer a question that may or may not be answerable?

Well, some might point to the Drake Equation... but it's way too vauge to make good speculation material, imho. Lots of unexplained sightings over the decades... some more credible than others, certainly. Still, it's obviously enough for scientists to think it's worth investigating. Anyone running SETI @ Home on their computer?

But are they the be-all and end-all? As in, does something (and you know I'm using the word "something" in a referrential hypothetical sense, not an assanine semantic existential sense, right?) exist if we can't percieve it? Does our perception of a thing begin its existance, or do things exist independantly of whether or not we can sense them? If I have no way to see the other side of a wall, is there anything on the other side of that wall? Should I say "Well, the existance of a thing on the other side of that wall in unanswerable at the moment, therefore it's pointless to consider it one way or the other"? If you have no evidence of anything existing on the other side of the wall, is it justified to waste human resources to try and find a way to percieve the other side? There's not even any evidence for speculation.

Are you justified in saying "There's nothing on the other side of that wall" with the same certainty Ronin uses to assert there are no aliens and there are no gods?

[ November 14, 2002: Message edited by: Living Dead Chipmunk ]</p>

NOGO

The question really comes down to this. Why are you speculating about something on the other side of the wall?

If the speculation is based on something (ie evidence however small) then you have something to go on otherwise why ask?

The problem is that you can raise an infinite number of questions most of which cannot be answered. Questions based on evidence can be answered, eventually.

The planet pluto was hypothesized before it was sighted. The irregular Uranus orbit indicated the possibility of another planet. They looked and found it.

All that I am saying is that we should not look for the tenth planet unless some evidence points to it.

Is there a tenth planet?
But why are you asking?
Should we spend any time on questions which do not suggest themselves from observed evidence?

You asked about string theory and asked what evidence suggested this. Frankly I don't know. But whoever came up with this theory surely wants to explain something which is observed. Any hypothesis however fanciful must be to explain something observed. If Pluto was not sighted then another explanation would be required to account for the deviations in Uranus' orbit. The hypothesis is either verified or abandoned. There is no point creating hypotheses which you cannot be verify.

I would not bother stating that something does not exist however seeing that so many people believer in the strangest things ... we do say that such and such does not exist simply to demarcate ourselves from believers.

Given this, I do call myself an agostic. By agnostic I do not mean that I am neutral in the theist/atheist debate.

Living Dead Chipmunk

So, in short, no, we shouldn't waste our time trying to find out what's over the wall, since we have no evidence whatsoever suggesting there's anything on the other side.

Thank goodness scientists don't generally think like that.

Cipher Girl

Ronin, nice story of Sagan. Isn't it funny how many religious people are so unable to get that particular analogy. They can apply the same logic of demanding proof from other religion's gods (ie the invisible dragon, gods on Mt Olympus), but are unable to see that their own religion suffers from the same fault.

[spelling sux]

[ November 15, 2002: Message edited by: Cipher Girl ]</p>

Living Dead Chipmunk

Yes, indeed.

It'd also be nice if it applied in any way to any of the questions I asked.