Absolute nonsense. By this argument if a single woman were to invent a working device based on sound scientific principles, that device woudl not be ebase don evidence despite being based on science.
Imagine for example if Stalin had imprisoned a scientist in some secluded location Siberia, provided her with equipment and ordered her to make a nuclear bomb. She succeeds, including detonating several test devices. She manufactured the devices based entirely on scientific knowledge, in full accordance with the most rigorous scientific method. And yet using your standard she did so based on absolutely no evidence. That she in fact built the most advanced scientific and technological device in the world based entirely on faith. In fact according to you she has no absolutely evideince at all that the bombs even exploded despite seeing them do so with her own eyes and having the data fom countless peices of equipment that all say they exploded.
That is so clearly a load of dingoes kidneys that I don’t think I even need to elaborate further. All else aside it demands that we accept that science itself can operate absent any evdience whatsoever and based entirely on faith.
Your position also demands that we accept that no matter how good the evdience is it isn’t evidence while it is universally rejected as being evdience. Hence if the first copy of “Origin of Species” were distributed to a group of 1000 YECs it would contain no evidence whatsoever of natural selection. Yet as soon as it was read by a single person who accepted the evidence it would suddenly become chock full of evdience for natural seletcion.
That is silliness on par with transubstantiation. Either Darwin was cataloguing his evidence for natural selection as he was writing, which is certainly what Darwin himself claimed he was doing, or else he had no evdence for natural selection.
Your claim that Darwin was cataloguing experience of natural selection that transubstantiated into evdience only when someone read and agreed with it is either baseless semantic nonsnese or silly mystical guff. It certainly isn’t rational, logical or suportable by evidence.
Come on now. Diogenes isn’t saying that evidence has to have actually been seen by other people; it just has to be potentially able to convince other people. He’s saying this specifically to demarcate how personal experiences, at least in themselves, fail to meet such a criterion of evidence, by virtue of their non-transmittability. You don’t have to agree with that either, but it’s not as transparently silly as the view you’re ascribing to him.
Darwin’s evidence was evidence Because it COULD be demonstrated to others. It’s not the demonstration per se that matters, but that the evidence was empirically accessible in the first place.
Evidence that CAN’T be demonstrated to others is no evidence at all, and I defy you to name one scientific journal which accept evidence that CAN’T be demonstrated, but only asserted as “revelation.”
Maybe there’s a communication problem here, but you seem to be having a difficult time grasping a childishly simple and plainly self-evident concept. Your analogies have no reference to anything I’m saying. Neither does anyone’s willingness to “accept” anything.
Quite frankly I have no idea what Diogenes is saying. I read it literally and pointed out how silly it was. You then said I shouldn’t read it literally, I should read it that he meant that at least one other person has to accept it. I pointed out that reading was even sillier than the first. And now you give me yet another reading, which is almost just as silly as the first two.
Firstly, how the heck can anyone determine whether evidence is potentially able to convince other people? If Semelweis’ evidence couldn’t convince anyone in his entire lifetime. And 1000 years work with fossils and genetics hasn’t been able to convince the majority of people on this planet that evolution is real? Yet you and I think it obvious that the evidence in those cases is able to potentially convince other people. So what is the practical test to allow someone to determine whether evidence such as Lekatt’s can potentially convince other people? If you can not produce such a test then you are simply using one of the above definitions and playing pointless semantic games with it.
Without some practical test of whether evidence could convince other people then there are only three ways to judge whether Lekatt’s evidence is evidence.
1)We accept his word for it when he says it could potentially convince other people, in which case Dio has no actual dispute that it is evidence.
We try it on everyone on earth to see if it will convince someone. But this is just phrasing the initial, literal reading in the negative and is silly for precisely the same reasons, with the added bonus that it is totally impractical.
We require that it actually convince someone. But this is just rewording your original re-wording and silly for the same reasons.
To prove apoint I will play Devil’s (or Lekatt’s) advocate.
I claim to have had my own personal experience of God and that this evidence based on my personal experince is potentially able to convince other people. I do not claim that it has ever convinced anyone else. Just that it potentially could.
Does that mean that you and Dio now accept that my experience of God is evidence for the existence of God? After all it meets your own standard in that it could potentially convince others, right?
Huh? I honestly have no idea what you are trying to say here or what argument you are attempting to construct.
In what way are personal experiences special in their non-transmittability? And what does that have to do with whether they are evidence? Any way look at that statement it is so clearly nonsensical that I know I must have misunderstood you, but I can’t think of any alternative reading that makes a lick of sense.
So let me ask you to consider simple hypothetical and answer a couple of questions:
A man holds another man hostage at gunpoint while stealing his basketball souvenirs. During this time the hostage fears for his life.
Two questions:
Is that fear a personal experience?
Is that the person allowed to give evidence that he felt fear in some courts on Earth?
I honestly can’t see how anyone would answer could answer in the negative to either of those questions. Yet if you answer in the affirmative to both then your claim that personal experiences fail to meet the criteria of evidence is obviously untrue.
Yeah, it is. It requires us to deny that a man can give evidence about personal experience in court. That is so easily proved to be untrue that it is even sillier than my original readings.
First off this is radically different to your original claim that evidence needs to be accepted by others. In fact it is totally unrelated. It is simple point of fact that evidence can be simultanously empirically accessible to others and totally unable to convince others, as Drs Smelweis or Marshall would be able to tell you. Conversely evidence can be totally empirically inaccessible to others an capable of convincing almost everyone, as religion proves. So you haven’t done a damn thing to address my original criticism.
Secondly none of this has any bearing at all on your claim, supported by several others, that evidence has to be able to convince others. Whether evidence is empirically accessible or not has no relationship at all to on whether it is convincing or not. Your original claim that evidence has to convince others remains silly and provably false and would like you to retract it.
And now you are either attempting to move the goalposts or you are attempting to construct a blatant strawman. You have just attempted to restrict the restrict the term “evidence” to mean “empirical evidence. But Critical1 never mentioned empirical evidence, nor did Lekatt in his response to him. So why do you think it is legitimate to suddenly start using evidence in a sense that refers strictly to empirical evidence? Nobody else agreed to that, nobody else used it in that sense prior to you and you never informed your opponent that that was the sense that you were retsricting the discussion to.
It is an unfair and dishonest tactic. You can carry this debate without needing to resort to such low tricks as moving the goalposts and overstating your case with silly declarations.
This is blatantly moving the goalposts.
I challenge you to demonstrate that either Critical1 or Lekatt ever said that they were referring to evidence that would be accepted by scientific journals.
If you can not do so then you are quite obviously moving the goalposts. That is not acceptable in a debate and lowers my opinion of you greatly. I had thought that you were guilty only of overstating your position with sweeping declarations. But moving the goalposts in this way is totally invalid logically and a dishonest tactic.
No reference? WTF? I quoted exactly what you have posted and have demonstrated in painful detail why what you have posted is provably wrong. You have been totally unable to address that proof because you know that it is unassailable. Instead you attempt to move the goalposts away from your silly and indefensible assertion that evidence has to convince someone else. Not that you are willing to admit that it was erroneous and retract it. Instead you have simply moved the goalposts via the
The dishonest strawman assertion that Lekatt was referring to empirical evidence., something that he never did.
So what precisely do you think he meant?
That personal experience is not evidence and has never been able to be used as evidence, which seems to be what Indistinguishable is saying? Because it seems trivially easy to produce countless examples of where personal experience has been used as evidence.
Or do you think he meant that objective evidence has to be able to convince other people? Because that also seems trivially easy to disprove by citing Semelweis and Marshall.
Or do you think he meant that non-objective evidence is unable to convince people? Because that position is so out of place on the Straight Dope that it doesn’t even bear commenting on.
Seriously, what was Dio saying when he said that evidence needs to convince others? Because no matter how I look at it seems to be provably a crock. I can not possibly see how anyone can contend that it evidence needs to be able to convince others. I have provided countless examples here of evidence that has not been able to convince others and even of evidence that could not be able to convince others.
At this stage it’s up to you to demonstrate that there is any truth in the claims that evidence needs to be able to convince others, or else explain clearly precisely what relevance convincing others has to whether something is evidence. It seems that every time I punch gaping holes through Dios’ claims I get yet another interpretation that is just as easy to punch holes through. Nobody has yet posted any interpretation that isn’t either so illogical as to be silly or a blatant strawman.
That belief is about as reasonable as your other beliefs.
What do you think the evidence claimed for these things are? Is your statement due to you deliberately not looking at evidence, or not understanding it? Are you aware that the reason that cosmic background radiation was important is that the Big Bang Theory (and I use the word theory proudly) predicted it? How do you feel about the DNA evidence for evolution, and how it comes out as evolution predicts it should?
I didn’t say that evidence needs to be accepted by others. You’re wasting a lot of bandwidth responding to stuff I never asserted. I’ll try to make is as simple as possible. It’s not evidence unless you can show it to somebody else. I’m not talking about because you’re in a bunker or something, I’m saying you have to be able to show it to someone who’s standing right next to you. You can’t show somebody a personal revelation. Evidence has to be empirical – something which is accessible to the senses.
I didn’t say it needs to convince others. I’m just saying they have to at least be able to SEE it.
Is there some other kind of evidence? (As in “Thanks for submitting your paper, you really have some solid evidence supporting your position, this is a real eye opener, unfortunately (and we don’t want to sound bigoted), but we don’t accept that kind of evidence here. However, our sister publication is a little more lenient, a little more liberal, some say a little more open minded, and just might be willing to to accept that kind of evidence, good luck then!”)
:rolleyes:
Dio there is no point denying what you said when I can quote exactly where you said it. Behold
Emphasis mine of course.
There it is. In black and white. Indistinguishbale states that you are saying “if no one else accepts something as evidence, it should not count” as evidence. You respond with the emphatic agreement of “Exactly”.
I honestly don’t know why you bother denying that you said this when it is so easy for me to prove that you did say so. I can only guess it’s desparation.
So how do you account for the fact that in courts all over than land, every day, people are giving evidence under oath about their perosnal experience?
Or do you deny that people i compensation cases routinely give evidence about the pain and suffering they have experienced? Or perhaps you deny that pain and suffering are personal experiences? Or maybe you think that courtroom is “a bunker or something”?
Dio, if I can offer some advice: now would be a good time to admit that you overstated your position with that comment and retract it. That is all that I want. Well actually I want you to stop doing this in almost every thread you participate in. It is however all that I require to let it sink in this thread.
You can’t possibly come out ahead on this one because the statement is so obviosuly ridiculous and so patently untrue. By attempting to defend it you are weakening your own position and by extension the position of all those of us who find ourselves on your side. Please just admit you overstated and let it slide. Because if you don’t I will keep going because it has now become the lynchpin of this debate.
By all means argue that Lekatt’s evidence isn’t empirical or that it isn’t convincing. But so long as you hang your argunment on this ridiculous claim that it’s not evidence if you can’t show it to someone else I am going to have to keep pointing out how absurdly untrue that is.
So what are you saying? That the jury can see the plaintiff’s past suffering in compensation cases? Or that plaintiffs in compensation cases don’t give evidence about their past suffering?
Because one of those statements has to be untrue for your position to be other than totally ludicrous. If others have to be able to see something for it to be evidence, as you claim, then jury’s must be able to see past suffering for the court to accept it as evidence. Because if other can’t see it then it can’t be evidence.
Come on Dio I know you are capable of much better than this. Just admit that this is a crock, retract it and move on. When I can punch holes in your claims this quickly and easily we both know you’re arguing a losing case.
I notice that you have seem to have backed away from the strawman that Lekatt and Critical1 were referring to empirical evidence. No actual retraction, just a failure to adress it altogether.
Of course there is.
Are you honestly ignorant of the fact that that courts routinely accept subjective, anecdotal and completly unreplicable evidence, such as evidince about past pain?
Or are you arguing that subjective, anecdotal and completly unreplicable evidence would be accepted by scientific journals.
Because unless you really are adopting one of those positons then you must know there are other kinds of evidence than the objective, replicable evidence acceptable to scientfic journals.
It’s at least conceptually possible for a personal experience to demonstrate to you something, yet, for whatever reason, any testimony you could give regarding that personal experience will be unable to transmit that demonstrative force to others [perhaps because people routinely lie about such experiences, or whatever, in an indistinguishable way from their behavior in the genuine case; perhaps for some other reason]. In this case, what you have would not be classified by Dio as evidence. That’s all he ever meant from the beginning. He is not such an idiot as to suggest that evidence cannot ever include witness testimony (he is just pointing out that the testimony must, itself, carry demonstrative force to be evidence. The testimony is separate from whatever personal experience underlies it; if only the latter can be demonstrative in a way incommunicable through the former, then what you have is not evidence, per Dio).
Please, be a little more charitable in your interpretations; Grice’s cooperative principle, and all that.
Now that’s just silly. In a court of law, factual, material evidence trumps subjective every time. If Mr. Foo claims he remember seeing Mr. Bar at the scene of the crime, but it is proven Mr. Bar was somewhere else, Mr. Foo’s testimony is voided. All evidence doesn’t have the same weight.
They are attacking scientifical theories relying on strict, factual and observable evidence. Most of it can be replicated (or re-observed) at will, critically assessed and accepted by anyone, without any need for prior bias or predisposition to believe. At the very least, their counter arguments must be supported by evidence of the same caliber - the burden of proof is on them, not atheists or agnostics. We know science and the scientific process works, if it didn’t we wouldn’t be having this discussion for there would be no internet. Show me God works.
If all they can offer is “I had a personnal, direct experience of the divine”, all I have to do is find a convenient schyzophreniac to claim he had a personnal, direct experience with the absence of God to counter the “proof”.
Then you’re misguided, as there’s tons of evidence for both – just some starting points of the top of my head, for evolution, there’s the direct observation of mutating pathogens evolving a resistance to antibiotics, the existence of ring species that can mutually interbreed along the path of their distribution, but whose ends lack that ability, proves speciation happens, and endogenous retroviruses encoded in our DNA as well as in that of primates and other mammals proves the existence of a common origin. As for the Big Bang, we have the fact that the universe expands uniformly, which means that, in looking back, all matter must have been in an extremely small region from which it then rapidly started to expand, we have the cosmic microwave background as a direct afterglow of the Big Bang, and the ratio of elements in the universe is exactly what is predicted by the Big Bang model, plus the direct observation of star’s ages agrees pretty exactly with the indirect calculation of the universe’s age using the Hubble constant.
Actually, having faith in the non-existence of god is an anti-theist perspective, which isn’t equal to an atheist one; there is a possibility that god exists, it’s however far too small to ever seriously worry about. Building a worldview on evidence rather than faith is entirely possible, and the tenet that ‘everybody has faith in something’ doesn’t work to relativise all conceivable viewpoints. There is a set of axioms inherent in each view, yes, however, merely the requirement to keep that set minimal would favour atheism over any form of spiritualism (and also, over anti-theism), as would to require all of your assumption be rational – i.e. of the form that if I let a stone drop, and it falls to the ground, I’ll assume that that’s what it’s going to do the next time I let it drop.
That’s what one would expect from the truly faithful – observational evidence and scientific experiments cannot and will not impinge on their faith, because the existence of god/the spiritual is axiomatic to their world; and I respect that – I’m not out to change anybody’s mind on anything, I merely want to be able to present a picture of the world as reason paints it, and the truly faithful ought to have no problem with that, because it’s absolutely not threatening to them. However, the reality is very different: each new discovery, such as this one, that even might touch on the hallowed tenets of somebody’s faith is met with shrill shrieks and cries of foul; and that’s why I think that some people’s faith might not be as strong as they claim, and maybe themselves think. If the issue of religion over science were such a fait accompli to somebody, he wouldn’t care that yet another scientific prediction was proven true, yet another gap for god to hide in eliminated – his god would stand gloriously above all of it, untouchable by whatever little gizmos and doodads we think up. But most people’s god isn’t like that – it’s something that fearfully has to hide in the shadows of human ignorance, and thus, those people are deathly afraid whenever somebody shines a light into the last remaining cracks and crevices, because, deep down, they fear that once every dirty hidden corner had been looked into, they’d have to acknowledge there was never anything there in the first place.
The truly faithful have nothing to fear from science, only the self-deceivers do.
And the thing that makes debate with **lekatt **so immensely frustrating is that he knows about this stuff. I personally challenged him in a debate last year to give a non-evolutionary explanation of atavisms(in particular, why whales are sometimes born with hind legs and feet) and, IIRC, endogenous retroviruses. Of course, he could not. The evidence has been pushed in his face time and time again; yet for whatever reason he continues to deny that it exists. He doesn’t deny that it is persuasive; he denies that it is even there.
And once she showed it to anybody else, they’d immediately agree with her observations, thus validating her evidence. However, look at the other case: say the woman works for years without telling anybody, and produces a wondrous amount of results, keeps meticulous journals, and one day, decides to go public – except none of her claims can be substantiated. She’s imagined it all. She’s simply insane.
Would you then say her works were based on evidence because in her mind, they were? That seems a rather ridiculous definition of evidence.
That you need to get people to agree with you to have your theories be based on evidence is a necessity of the scientific method, because, no matter how persuasive your evidence appears to you, you could always be deluded. Evidence requires external validation to be solid.
Frankly, I don’t get what you’re quibbling about, and by now it looks like you just need an admission of having been right no matter what, with the actual subject of the debate having been pushed into the background.
Quite simply, the thing is that “If it’s not evidence to anyone else, it’s not evidence” doesn’t have any plausible reading other than “evidence has to be verifiable to be solid”. You misread it. Move on.
If that is what he meant then why has he stated outright that what he meant is “It’s not evidence unless you can show it to somebody else.” That is wildly different to what you have just suggested. The two of you appear to be at loggerheads as to what he meant, and I trust you understand if will rely on him to tell me above you.
Now to address what you have posted.
Of course it is “conceptually possible for a personal experience to demonstrate to you something yet, … be unable to transmit that demonstrative force to others”. I is also “conceptually possible for a an objective experience to demonstrate to you something, yet… be unable to transmit that demonstrative force to others”. Of course it’s possible for any evidence at all to be able to demonstrate something to me that it can not demonstrate to you. That’s why we have debates about global warming, or the cause of gastric ulcers, or the reason for disease in maternity hospitals. In all of those cases the same evidence has demonstrated one truth to one person and been unable to transmit its demonstrative force to many others despite the fact that the evidence is objective and despite the fact that in at least two cases we now know that the truth the evidence transmitted was correct.
So bearing this in mind the only retort necessary or possible is “So what”. How does any of this demonstrate that Lekatt’s experience of God (or his testimony concerning it) is not evidence?
This is so clearly nonsense and so divergent from any definition of testimonial evidence I have ever heard that I am not sure how to respond. Perhaps the simplest route is simply to ask you for a reference to support this bizarre definition. IOW…
CITE!
In both common speech and in all the legal systems I am even passingly familiar with there is no requirement that testimony “carry demonstrative force to be evidence”. When a plaintiff gives testimony and thethe court did not accept his evidence about the pain he had the judge is not wrong in calling it his testimony evidence. Just because the testimony did not carry demonstrative force and the court didn’t accept it that does not stop it being evidence. It may be misleading evidence, it may be fabricated evidence, it may just be unconvincing evidence, but it remains evidence by every definition and usage I am aware of. And it is now up to you tor provide a cite to support your extraordinary claim that it is not evidence if it does not carry demonstrative force.
Alternatively you can simply explain to me what practical test we can apply that will allow us to distinguish between actual but unconvincing testimonial evidence, such as that of Semmelwies, and testimony that is not evidence at all.
If you can not do either rof those things then you are clearly simply moving the goalposts by making up definitions that nobody else in the entire world uses.
I am being charitable. The fact you seem to be forced to resort to constantly rephrasing the same assertion: that evidence needs to be convincing to others: is all the evidence I need of that. When something silly and illogical is repeated multiple times in different ways it isn’t uncharitable to state that it is silly and repeated multiple times.
Which is blatant strawman. Nobody here is discussing which evidence trumps what. I honestly couldn’t care. The question asked by RaftPeople was whether there was any kind of evidence that wasn’t factual, material evidence. You were quoting my answer to that bizarre question. Since your reply itself concedes the existence of subjective evidence you are in fact taking my part in this argument, while arguing against some position that nobody here has adopted or even cares about.
In future, it’s probably worth your while to make sure that your argument isn’t massive and blatant strawman that actually agrees with and reinforces my position before you start calling my position silly.
:rolleyes: By your defintion, anything and everything is evidence of anything and everything. Making the word absolutely meaningless. Not that it matters - even if we accept personnal revelation as evidence, it’s not compelling evidence and has zero weight on the discussion. You’re just wasting everyone’s time over an insignificant point of semantics. Knock it off. You’re right, you won, whatever floats your boat. Can we get back on topic ?
Even if that is the case, we both agree that it was still evidence before it was validated. So you agree with my position.
You are not being clear. Were there works or were there not works.?
If she did the works then they were obviously based on evidence, unless you are arguing that an insane person could build a nuclear bomb in 1943 from intuition.
If she didn’t do the works then there were no works done and they weren’t based on evidence because there was nothing actually done for the evidence to be a basis of.
I honestly don’t see what point you are trying to make here.
My example of the creation of the first nuclear bomb was selected as an example of something that we all accept requires evidence to accomplish. If the act of creation took place under a set of conditions then those conditions must also have allowed for the existence of evidence. If the woman could create the bomb in isolation from other humans then by definition evidence must be able to exist in isolation from other humans. It is a very simple, basic modus ponens argument that everyone could follow I thought.
I honestly don’t get what point you are trying to make with examples of where the bomb wasn’t created, or where it could be created without evidence. If either of those is true then it’s totally irrelevant to my position in this argument as far as I can tell.
Which is a blatant strawman because as I have noted umpteen times, niether Critical1 nor Lekatt nor myself ever said the evidence was relevant to the scientific method.
Now we have three options here:
Either you didn’t understand us when we all agreed that evidence used in courts is still evidence despite not being suitable for scientific publications. I which case I don’t think you have much to add to this debate.
Or you didn’t read the numerous times where this was mentioned or the numerous times where it was pointed out that neither Critical1 nor Lekatt nor myself ever said the evidence was relevant to the scientific method. In which case I can’t be bothered to address someone who can’t take the effort to read the thread.
Or you are knowingly constructing a strawman. In which case I have little inclination to discuss anything with you.
Either way I don’t see you bringing much to this thread, beyond wasting my time repeating the same arguments that I’ve already made that other’s have actual responded to much more eloquently. So don’t be surprised if I don’t address parts f your future posts if they are also strawmen or demonstrate an unwillingness to read the thread so far.
That you can’t follow the argument, my contributions or anybody else’s, is painfully obvious and doesn’t need to be highlighted in this way.
God grief. Please tell me that this is a joke and that you have better comprehension of the English language than this.
Because after all that bluster you just freakin’agreed with me and Lekatt and disagreed with everything Dio has said..
Lekatt’s testimonial evidence is verifiable. It is about as verifiable as any evidence can get. He has repeated it ad nauseum on these boards and I am sure he will happily verify it again for anyone who wants to ask.
So you’ve just said that Lekatt’s testimony is not only evidence of the existence of God, it’s solid evidence for the existence of God. You’ve gone a step further than even I would have gone. I think it’s shithouse evidence that should only convince the mentally deficient, but you have actually stated that it’s strong evidence.
You really aren’t keeping up with this debate are you? I suggest that you move on to another thread.
No, it isn’t. Would you care to explain that with some actual logic or references. you know, like I’ve done? Rather than just toss it out as a total non sequitur.
To keep it easy for you I’ll accept the definition of evidence used by any major dictionary or any legal systemon the planet as “my definition”. That’s what I’ve been using so far.
So with the bar set that low can you please explain how that definition would force us to accept that aperosn denying they are a giraffeis in fat evidnce that they are a giraffe?
I’'m taking bets that Kobal won’t be able to do this. Even money that he won’t even try. His position is a total non sequitur with no basis in anything.
Well once we’ve cleared up that it is evidence then Lekatt can debate you on how compelling it is or should be for various parties.
But as it is Dio and others are trying to argue that it isn’t evidence at all, which I;'e been doing a pretty damn good job of showing to be erroneous.
As for the rest of your post, it has been reported.
