Do you agree, or do you not agree, that “you can’t prove a negative”?
Sure. Let’s take “there is such a thing as a meta-empirical realm.” Using the scientific method, how would you go about disproving this claim? Please be precise, and please make an effort to avoid insults.
Like this one. No need for that kind of language. Please retract and apologize.
Boko Haram stands for forbidding western education.
Western education is the mechanism through which the promotion of science combats persistence of belief in the supernatural.
I assure you, Boko Haram welcomes arguments that promote acceptance of the supernatural, and opposes science.
What is a “meta-empirical realm”? It sounds like something someone made up in their imagination.
For science, there is no such thing as the supernatural.
Philosophers interested in expanding their significance have long argued that it’s not that science disproves the supernatural; science simply does not speak to it. They like to take the inference (or at least leave the implication) that therefore the supernatural might be a possible thing.
In the fanciful imaginations of the human mind, thousands upon thousands of constructs, with millions of individual variants, have been created for how the supernatural works. They have universally been shot down by science. Deities have come and gone; miracles; imaginary creatures; whatever. Not one of these fanciful paradigms or postulates invoking a violation of natural law survives the test of science.
If we assume that most of the 100 billion or so anatomically modern minds which have existed in the last 200,000 years believed in the supernatural in some sense, we can say that all 100 billion have been wrong. Pick a lower number if you like, but whatever specific thing they postulated regarding evidence for the supernatural is wrong.
So now you are left with a pretty hollow statement: But what there IS a supernatural; we just can’t address it because it’s outside our reach.
That’s the part that’s bullshit. It’s called make believe. Imaginary.
All evidence that the supernatural exists goes away when said evidence is tested against science. It isn’t that science knows everything; it’s that it is universally correct when the natural principles underlying phenomena are uncovered.
To suggest that universally demonstrating the supernatural to be bullshit is not sufficient evidence to deny its existence is like saying just because planes have been able to fly so far does not mean any fundamental natural principles make them fly. Maybe they have just been magically elevated so far, because you can’t prove it’s not magic keeping them in the air.
Anyway, to get the thread back on track, assuming Boko Haram and its followers do not win the day, Islam and other religions will be going away as western education slowly roots out superstition and replaces it with science.
No, the scientific method has proved its worth as an epistemological tool. Any claim to knowledge or claim about the world that you want to make , the burden is on you to prove its effectiveness and to avoid the ‘bullshit’ tag. If you want to make statements that cannot be empirically verified and want them to be taken as more than bullshit, the burden is on you to do the work.
This notion that, because “you can’t prove a negative” makes any old fanciful whimsy ungrounded in science somehow possible is a very silly notion. If ungrounded in science there is no sense in which it is even infinitesimally possible.
It is one thing to imagine what is yet to be discovered as a function of the world in which we find ourselves.
It is yet another to make shit up regarding a “meta-empirical world” and argue that it is somehow (at least remotely) possible because science can’t prove it’s not.
It’s a consequence of the latter argument that young men, persuaded there will be big-titted virgins they can boink at will, blow themselves up in the name of religion so they will arrive in a meta-empirical Paradise.
Chief Pedant: Perhaps you would care to explain what your understanding/concept of the scientific method is?
Actually; no.
It’s been discussed ad nauseam elsewhere on the Board.
The genesis of this discussion loop is whether or not science makes religion go away. It does.
Science keeps us from accepting as possible fact the idiotic twitterings of nitwits, including those who want to take refuge behind the patently incorrect idea that “science can’t prove a negative” and therefore does not speak to religion–thus giving any particular religious belief a shot at being correct.
Science does teach us how the world works, and what to accept as fact; what to reject as fantasy.
Here’s an example of fantasy, from the Qur’an and various hadith writings:
When a female believer dies, she gets a single man who satisfies her.
When a male believer dies–and especially should he die in defense of Islam–he gets a boatload of servants, and 72 virgins.
Attributes of the virgins include:
White skin
Un-aging
Big, round tits that don’t sag
No pubic hair
Appetizing vaginas
Do not menstruate, defecate, or urinate
Childfree
L.O.L.
Now the canard that science cannot–or does not–disprove that is bullshit.
Among other things, science says the capacity for consciousness is a product of the human brain. When the brain is dead, consciousness is dead. In fact, a state of artificial unconsciousness, or injury, or aging, all affect the brain in such a way that we can test for certain that when the physiologic processes are disrupted, consciousness is disrupted. We can conclude from this that consciousness after death of the brain does not exist since the mechanism to sustain it has been destroyed.
Now look; you can yearn for those big tits and hairless pussies all you want (btw; they are gigantic virgins, but the good news is that you get a permanent hard on with which to boink them) but the scientific fact (aside from the obvious hilarity) is that said virgins are the cumulative product of some sexually repressed fantasizers.
Not science. Not fact. And not even remotely possible.
As an aside, it’s cruel to get young men to march off for the Cause by promising them this, and even crueler to set forth a pretense that science can’t disprove the existence of those virgins (who, by the way, have eyes only for their one dead believer).
L. O. L. again
Alas; science can and does distinguish some idiot’s masturbatory fantasy from reality.
Do you understand that there is a third option between “proven possible” and “proven not possible?” That is “not proven either way.” Most religious claims fall into that third category.
You are blundering into the most titanic form of error since Aristotle said that women had fewer teeth than men do, by leaving out this vital third category in the “terms of art” of verification theory as practiced by scientists today.
No, “You can’t prove a negative” does not offer support for the positive. You simply don’t get the scientific method.
That’s right. So, then, what’s your excuse for getting it so incredibly wrong?
You simply don’t get that because the scientific method exists and has proven itself to be the only viable method of learning useful details about the world around us, any claim that does not permit itself to be examined by the scientific method can be dismissed out of hand as bullshit, because the scientific method would discard it as nonsense. The filter(grossly simplified) works thus -
What is your claim?
How will it be tested?
Is there support for your claim when tested by multiple people independently in verifiable ways?
Any claim that cannot make it through ALL these filters is classified as unworthy of being useful knowledge. You do NOT get to say that just because a claim is untestable, it somehow magically becomes useful or has a chance of being true. You’re free to believe it, but if someone calls it bullshit, you don’t have a leg to stand on.
I understand that it is your claim that “not proven either way” for “religious” claims" seems to have a status beyond “scientifically disproved.”
That’s bullshit, and I gave you some helpful examples of religious claims above wrt to the Islamic dead enjoying amenorrheic giant white virgins with hairless, appetizing pussies. Using this particular religious claim as an example, what weight do you think “not proven either way” gives it an increased likelihood of not being pure masturbatory fancy?
You have lapsed into a common flaw, which is that use of language in an effort to strictly define what we mean by “proof,” and how we would define “science,” can then be extended to any statement as a means of testing its potential validity. Your “third option” might apply to speculative statements which are grounded in science, but it does not apply–even a little–to this particularly fantasy about virgins, nor to any imagination-based claims in general (religious or otherwise) not based on science.
Were a scientist to parse out the distinction for you, I think she might begin by explaining (as I have tried to do) that our consciousness is demonstrably dependent on the physical platform of the brain. When the brain is dead, the ability to perceive anything at all is dead. Were you object that she cannot “prove” there isn’t some sort of “meta-physical realm” I suspect she might explain that science has shown us how the world works and that examination of such ideas shows them to be diametrically opposed to physical principles.
Trying to add weight to claims of the supernatural by by beginning with the postulate that they are outside the reach of science–and therefore have a possibility of being correct–completely misunderstands science. Science helps us distinguish what to believe as correct and what to ignore as make-believe.
Labeling an imaginary virgin friend with a giant hairless pussy as “not proven either way” may help you masturbate, but it does not help you give an iota of credence to the possibility the idea might be correct.
Titanic (white, hairless, non-defecating) virgins getting boinked by the dead with their permanent giant erections are the “titanic error” here, and science is exactly what helps us know that.
Disappointing perhaps, but perhaps also useful in the battle to prevent young men from blowing themselves up in hopeful pursuit of them under the misguided notion that existence of the virgins “has not been proven either way,” and that science cannot address the absurdity of them.
Been using those white, hairless, non-defecating virgins with unsaggy big boobs to self-pleasure, have we? 
If so, I completely understand your need to cling to the hope that it’s “incredibly wrong” to think science banishes those appetizing vaginas to the bullshit realm instead of leaving them alone in the “meta-physical realm.”
If that’s your fantasy, just enjoy it and don’t worry about science messing around with your playtime.
Carry on, and pardon the disruption.
That’s unacceptable. Warning issued and don’t do it again.
But it’s OK for Monty to sneer at me about what my excuse is for getting it so terribly wrong?
Monty did not sneer at you.
You, on the other hand, broke two rules. First with an insult and second the specific rule against claiming another poster derives sexual gratification from their posts.
I repeat: don’t do it again.
“Not proven either way” is the proper assessment of any claim that cannot be examined evidentially. Russell’s Teapot is not a “religious” claim, merely a claim that cannot be tested and verified.
(So far, you have refused even to define the word “bullshit,” no matter how many times you’ve used it. Is “bullshit” the same as “false?” I’ve asked this several times, and you won’t – or perhaps can’t – answer.)
Leaping to the conclusion that an abstract claim is “false” is every bit as foolish as leaping to the conclusion that it is “true.”
Is God “one” or “three?” If I say, “God is three,” and you leap to the conclusion, “Bullshit!” then you are siding with those who say “God is one.” You’re taking sides, by leaping to concrete conclusions about premised claims.
At this point, you, at least, seem to be using “bullshit” as a synonym for “nonsense,” in the Popperian sense, and this is quite correct.
Until now, you and Chief Pedant have been using “bullshit” as a synonym for “false,” and this is fallacious.
I asked him (my previous post) to clarify this explicitly, and I’m asking you the same.
Does “bullshit” mean “false?” Or does it just mean, “Not of any useful meaning in scientific terms, and uninteresting to science.”
I agree with the latter, but disagree very strongly with the former. Leaping to the conclusion that any proposition about God is “false” is not logically valid.
Bullshit means shit that someone made up that there is no good reason to think is true, with the added implication that it is a valueless and easy to produce claim, the kind of stuff that just spews forth from the bullshitter, without novelty. This list is full of examples.
Why don’t those arguing that these types of fanciful claims aren’t bullshit try giving an example of what they would consider bullshit? I would love to see the example.
A made up story does not have to be proven false to be bullshit, in fact it does not even have to be impossible. If I tell you I am sure that it is going to snow in Houston next July 4th, at noon, and I don’t share any good reasons for my certainty, and instead claim that it’s because Santa Claus told me it is for a research project involving raindeers, you can conclude that this is bullshit, regardless of the fact that such a snowstorm is not completely impossible.
I disagree with your characterization, but, so long as you aren’t equating “bullshit” with “false” (or, worse, “proven false”) I don’t really give a damn.
It was the “Religious claims are proven false” point of view I was taking the greatest issue with.
Well…I’ve never been asked to define bullshit, but in the context at hand, I mean “completely, demonstrably false.”
In medieval times, an important-looking bearded guy with a religious title might be able to persuade the masses that upon their death for the Islamic cause, gigantic white virgins with firm big tits, dingleberry-free perineums, and appetizingly tight vaginas awaited the pleasure of their permanent, firm erections.
Along comes science, which stands in opposition of that sort of bullshit. Science does not say, “well, that proposition about God is not logically valid.” Science says it’s bullshit. Make-believe. Mistaken. Wrong. Incorrect. Demonstrably false. Has absolutely zero chance of being correct.
I’m not sure how to make that more clear.
I am embarrassed for those who think science is unable to weigh in on the topic. Science has proved where consciousness resides, and the physical requirements to house it. Those go away when the brain that supports it is gone.
Not to mention the sniff test (no pun intended).
You can’t, because your claim is, itself, bullshit.
(Science, by the way, has established that your claim is bullshit.)
:rolleyes: