Radorth

Oh my, my my.

And that's why we have at least 21 distinct Jesus-myther theories.

So thought Darwin.

Heh

Rad

Radorth

Blah blah.

Yeah with the likes of Durant, Muggeridge and Peck.

Tell us your theory without asserting the story "must" have changed back and forth, without torturing scriptures, without resorting to obscure wild-eyed scholars and pedantic argument, asserting there were 50 plots to cover up the lies, a major search and destroy mission which prevented you from having any evidence, and which explains negative details mere inventors would have covered up.

In other words, let Occam have a look inside your Pandora's box as Asha'man at least dared to do.

Rad

pz

That's right, no one ever says that, because that's not what Occam's Razor is for. Did you understand what I meant when I said it was a methodological tool that is not used to establish truth or falsity?As you've phrased it, it wouldn't occur to a biologist, either.You have completely lost me. Parsimony is the same thing as 'intuition'? Scientists 'concoct' theories and experiments with intuition? Boy, you make me glad I'm not a physicist if that's the way they think.

Starboy

pz, calm down. Do you own stock in Ockham's razor or something? I said a scientist may use intuition. They can use anything they want. They can use dreams, ouija boards, what ever. Of course the more successful scientists are much more deliberate. And the reason for this is simple. The actual theory itself is not as important as the comparison of the predictions of that theory with experiment on nature. This is why, pz, theories that have little or no predictive power or cannot be tested are called unscientific. That is not to say that every theory ever concocted that had predictive power got the attention it deserved. Science is after all a human activity, and humans have their biases and idiosyncrasies and sometimes like to dress these foibles up as something more important than they actually are by giving them high falutin’ philosophical names like parsimony.

Starboy

pz

My objection is that parsimony and intuition are not the same thing in any way, although you keep equating them. It's as if you are saying "humans like to give their peanut butter high falutin' names like oscilloscope"...what you're saying makes no sense, and leaves me wondering if you understand what peanut butter and oscilloscopes are.

Starboy

Are you saying that there are 21 distinct theories for how the Jesus myth came to be? And that parsimony had something to do with it? Or was it the lack of parsimony?

To be frank with you, I think all supernatural religions are nonsense and not because of the bible or anything in the bible. I could care less about the bible. I have yet to see anything in the universe that indicates that anything other than natural processes are taking place, have ever taken place or ever will take place. Until evidence is provided that supernatural events occur in the past, present and future, the whole thing is just another wacky idea.

The inconsistencies and contradictions of the bible are very small potatoes. And if in the unlikely event such evidence was found, the last thing I would conclude is that the bible has any bearing on it, since humanity has a long tradition of concocting such documents and ideas. No matter how it turns out, my bet is that Christianity is as inconsequential for understanding how we got here and why we are here as "Alice in Wonderland".

Starboy

seanie

This may not be a good example and I'm shakey on the history, but as I understood it the first experimental proof that the earth rotated was Foucault's pendulum in the 1850's. But the fact of the earths rotation was accepted long before. It's in situations like that that Occam's razor is a useful tool. It's used in the absence of direct confirmation.

Going back to crop circles how do you explain them? If you've seen the locals at closing time pile out the pub, link arms and wheel through the fields then you don't need to posit any theory.

You know what's made them.

But in the absence of such direct evidence what provisional conclusion do you come to?

Well we could suspend judgement completely. Take an agnostic position. Just as we could be agnostic about leprechauns and tooth fairies. But if you're gonna take a position how do you choose between aliens and rural drunks?

Well one is a considerably simpler proposition than the other. It has nothing to do with intuition. Maybe aliens did do it. But the alternative explanation is far simpler. It's more plausible, less improbable. It takes fewer leaps and fanciful conjectures.

That doesn't make attributing crop circles to pissed young farmers right. But it is the the most sensible working proposition.

Starboy

Arg! pz, PLEASE READ MY PREVIOUS POSTS.

Okay pz. Let us assume you are correct. Lets assume that parsimony is as important to science as the concept of volume. There are clear cut, well-understood and well-accepted definitions for volume, its units, methods of measure and so forth. If parsimony were so important to science, please point me to a similar set of scientific knowledge regarding parsimony. I have not been able to find a single well accepted definition let alone methods of application. Unless you can supply these what do you have that should convince anyone that it is important to science?

Starboy

Radorth

If it were visible, provable and commonly happening, it would be called "natural" anyway.

I think if you saw a stone deaf boy healed, or the actual glory of God as I have, you still would not believe. You would set out to prove to yourself it was all in your head. As some atheists have said, you cannot prove the supernatural has never been witnessed, nor can you prove God does not exist. Therefore it is irrational and somewhat hypocritical to make the declarations you do in the rest of your post. You are saying "Well I've never seen it, so I conclude other people are just lying, making up stories, blah blah."

I don't suppose you think such accusations need any proof either. Right?

I have no evidence for evolution because I've never seen one of these mutations we are assured happened by the millions nor have I ever seen the "equilibrium" punctuated. I am told "but we know it happens, because blah blah blah." Am I merely being naive to believe there is something to evolutionary theory? It's the same thing Starboy, except I am not going to call evolution a bunch of lies just because I've never observed it in action. You haven't either. You just believe it because the alternatives are not particularly rational, or they don't explain the phenomena as well, or you are just too intellectually lazy to come up with a theory that is complex enough to explain all the data, whille surviving Occam's test. ( I suspect the latter).

Now if you said "I don't believe it because there hasn't been a verifiable incident reported for 30,000 years," then you might have a logical leg to stand on.

Rad

Starboy

Radorth, you do appear to be a bitter supernaturalist. In any case you have hit the nail on the head. There is no test for supernatural phenomena. It is claimed by the supernaturalists to exist yet when investigated all such claims evaporate and can be explained as either frauds or natural phenomena. The ball is in the supernaturalist court, put up or shut up. What amazes me is that this ground has been picked over so many times over history and repeatedly has shown how empty is the notion of the supernatural. It surprises me that any rational person would ever consider supernatural explanations for one moment. We live in a time where so much of our daily lives depend on our understanding of a natural world that works completely within itself. Common every day objects such as microprocessors that by merely existing and operating show billions of times a second in billions of machines scattered all over the world and in our solar system and beyond how completely the universe is within the bounds of natural phenomena. Our understanding of natural phenomenon doesn’t stop at the evolution of humanity. We just don’t get to say, oh, we will stop here because we want to hold ourselves above nature. Radorth, we have learned that existence is all natural, all the time, everywhere! This is a fact of the twenty first century, one that I don’t expect religionists mired in the first century to understand.

Now, let me be very clear on this Radorth, I don’t give a rat’s ass what you believe. And as long as you and the other religionists in the world keep it your business, it is your business. Don’t put your sentiments on our currency, on our public buildings, in our anthems and pledges or in our public schools or incorporate your beliefs into our government. You are welcome to form your churches and keep it within your own families but don’t expect me or any other atheist to embrace your delusions. Do not proselytize the rest of the world and piss them off so that they want to send terrorists here to destroy our cities. Just go off and live in your little world and try to be a productive member of society.

Starboy