mooeypoo

...and this is science..... how? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged This method is required if your want any hypothesis to be accepted in any sort of scientific group or institution. No one will accept subjective results in science, tar. If you treat reality as completely subjective, then that means that what is true to you is not necessarily true to me. Hence, whatever result or hypothesis you are making about reality is - by definition - true to only SOME people. That is an excellent philosophical argument, and a very interesting one, probably, but it's not science. We treat reality as objectively existent because otherwise we would have no business researching it and reaching conclusions that affect others. Everything we've done so far in science showed us that even if reality has some subjective cases to it, the absolutely "big stuff" are completely objective. If they weren't, you'd have no medicine, no engineering, no mathematics and no physics. If you throw a ball from the top of the Eifel tower it will fall to the ground. That will happen no matter who throws the ball or at what time. That is an objective claim, which ahs been objectively proven. When I play tic-tac-toe with my friend online, it helps me relax. That is a subjective claim, and it was proven on ME, not on anyone else. If I were to make the claim that all tic-tac-toe playing helps relaxation, I am transforming from a subjective personal claim to an objective claim and now I need to prove it - OBJECTIVELY. That's what you're trying to do; Prayer may help you, or those you know, or it has helped you before, and now you search for ways to logically explain why it helped you. That's fine. But when you claim that prayer helps everyone, or that prayer helps in general, you are making an objective claim about objective reality and you need objective testing for this. You should be careful to start with a hypothesis and follow its tests to the logical course rather than start with a conclusion and try to forcefully fit reality into it. Or you may claim that you have another idea as to what may help here, and you will test for it. In that case, you're shifting from claiming it was "PRAYER" that helped to a claim that it was "POSITIVE THINKING" that helped. You can test this and reach a conclusion. Which is exactly the problem, tar. Instead of researching reality and seeing where the evidence lead you, you are taking a conclusion you wish to be true and look for how to fit reality into it. That's backwards, it's not science, it's a logical fallacy, and it also will not result in representing reality, it will result in making hundreds of excuses for the sake of FORCING reality into what you want it to fit. Do you see the problem here? The hypothesis isn't the problem, the mechanism you're using to prove this hypothesis is the problem. Keeping an open mind means you should go by what reality dictates - hence, if repeated experiments show no affect on anything at all, the conclusion is that there's no effect on anything at all. If you think of other options that the tests have missed, then you need to test for these options and follow the results. As the old saying goes, tar, you should keep an open mind, but not so much as to have your brain fall out. If you want to do apologetic theism (which is an interesting philosophical endeavour, though tending to be quite a dangerous one to one's logic) , you are more than welcome to, but you need to be aware that it is absolutely not science. If you intend to discover reality and the machanisms that govern it, then your method should be as objective as possible, so you can get objective results. Otherwise, youre results will be subjective, which is great for you, but irrelevant for everyone else. ~moo

I agree, bombus, but that's more because of the humans DOING the science than it is because of the scientific method itself. The self-correctiveness of science, the method of experimentation, the critical nature of peer review -- all those serve as checks and balances to try to make science results as empirical as possible *DESPITE* human innate tendency towards subjectivity. So I think I agree with you on the broad idea, bobmus, I just think we should separate the people from the method.

I completely agree. This is also why the existence of ghosts or anything else "supernatural" is testable by science, and can be judged scientifically. I don't know if I would say those are things science "can't explain", I would say those are things taht aren't really in the realm of science. Those aren't empirical questions per say, those are more philosophical questions that can be answered subjectively on the most part. Since there's not a lot of ways to separate the subjective answers from any possible objective truth in these questions, they don't belong in the realm of science, and fall under philosophy. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I know some in the forum will disagree with me, but here's my take on it: Some things are not a matter of logic, they are a matter of belief. If the belief in God is something you find rewarding, and if it doesn't hurt anyone else or makes you follow archaic rules that have the potential of harming others or society as a whole, then I don't see anything wrong with it at all. We all do subjective things and we all have a subjective "part" in us that defies logic. It can be certain beliefs or certain actions we choose to do, and whatever it is, we sometimes do them just because we like doing them. The only situation where the belief - in God, in ghosts, in supernatural abilities, etc - comes to a clash with science is when you try to think about those scientifically. *IF* you consider these issues under the scientific method, critically, many of them have a physical problem. They are either not proven or proven not to exist. So, if you insert them into scientific operation, you will run into a problem. If you follow these beliefs while knowing they might not be "rational" or fully "logical" but choose to do so regardless (and, again, while you do not hurt or harm others) then by all means, who's business is it? Science as a whole does not go by beliefs. Scientists might, because they're human. The scientific method is meant to strip off any biases (or at least as many as possible) from the human component, that is prone to biases, and deliver an empirical methodology to judge reality. That's why when you do science, you follow the scientific method, and when you practice faith, you don't. The only important point here in all of this, is to make sure you separate the two completely. Do science when it's science, and faith when it's faith, but do not mix the two, that's a recipe for fallacies and confirmation bias. ~moo

bombus, I see what you're saying but my only contention with that would be that when something is explainable by science, it is no longer "magic". It's science. We tend to define things we don't understand as "magic" but that doesn't mean they're supernatural or out of our realm of knowledge.. when we do explain them, they stop being "magic" and start being science. If that's the case, then the entire thinking of "magic" as a separate entity is flawed, isn't it? If eventually all "magic" turns science, then instead of calling it magic, we can just say it is, indeed explainable by science and actually take the steps to attempt that explanation. ~moo

Maybe, but willpower isn't magic and positive thinking isn't prayer. We need to be specific when we define the claims we want to test, otherwise we're being too broad and subjective, and can easily fall into the trap of confirmation bias. Positive thinking may be what is behind the actual effect of (if it has any) prayers, but that does not mean prayers in themselves are the effective thing. Willpower and imagination may be the effective source behind some magic practices but that is not to say magic itself is real. It's very important to keep the claim itself accurate and concise exactly for this reason. When you test, you want to know the actual underlying reason, and not just to confirm a pre-existing bias for or against the claim you're making. ~moo

WHAT? Where did you get this? Where are you taking these things from? This isn't physics. Maybe you should share your resources with us ..? It is possible you're just misunderstanding them. Adrian, those are untrue claims. They're not "inaccurate", where we can discuss how to adjust so they fit your theory, they are absolutely false. You should seriously read more about basic physics and the differences between electromagnetism and gravity. ~moo

Yes, it was, it just failed. Good. Provide evidence. Specifically in light of the fact that evidence were produced *AGAINST* your own statement, which means you now are in dire need of providing evidence to support your claim. You are moving the goal post and changing the issue at hand. We are discussing the effect of prayer, not the effect of someone taking care of you next to bed. Of course someone taking care of you is helpful, but that does not mean prayer is helpful, or all people who pray take care of you, or that all those who take care of you pray. Don't change the subject,tar. You speak of prayer, stick with prayer. Read iNow's post, it seems you are proven wrong with that assessment. Moreover, check this site out: http://whatstheharm.net/ it showcases real instances (quite a lot, sadly) of people that not only did prayer and other "holistic" medicine/treatment/phenomena/whatever did not help, but actually caused HARM to. You have a simple claim: That prayer is efficient. You can test this claim empirically. Tests WERE conducted about this claim, all failed. Not just one test, many tests. All failed. As far as empirical science is concerned, this is a moot issue. If you think otherwise, you will not convince us by reiterating what you *THINK*, you will only convince us by showing a proper scientific experiment. And watch out from these goal-post shifts you do there. This above claim is *NOT* the claim in question. You are being unfair. No one said that a person at your bedside is not effective. We are saying that PRAYERS are not effective. By changing the claim slightly, you're forcing it to fit your conclusion. That's not science. The correlation will only be accepted if it's logical (hence, do not shift the goal post, stick with the claim) and if it's properly supported by evidence. Until that happens, you claim is not supported by science, and since the counter-claim (taht prayers do NOT help) actually IS supported by science, the counter claim "wins" the argument here. Realistically, it was SHOWN that prayer does not work. If you think otherwise, you need to prove it. ~moo

Minor contention here.. while *my* terms are often misused (I admit, as an ESL, these proof/evidence usages are sometimes getting mixed for me), that's not ENTIRELY accurate. If one makes a claim about the existence of something, that person is in need of providing evidence of the existence of that something. In that aspect, science does "prove stuff". And that was also my point in the above post. If I were to make a claim about the existence of some phenomenon, it would be unscientific of me to expect everyone to assume its existence until they are capable of proving me wrong. That's not the way science works. I will need to provide ample evidence. However, once a claim is "proven true" (math or no), it is true that science is acting as "disproving" things, as we conduct experiments and find where the claim might be invalid and then try to expand the theory or change it. That's not to say science must disprove everything first, yes? tar is making a claim, tar has the burden of proof in providing evidence for the claim. This is the way science is done. Good luck. ~moo

Actually, it should be the other way around, tar, a claim needs to be supported to be accepted, not shown to be false to be discarded. If you want to show that prayer has any merit, you need to show us the experiments that prove it has, not the other way around. Asking it the other way around, quite frankly, is equivalent to me requesting you show me all the experiments that proved the invisible pink unicorn does not exist.. it's irrelevant - if I want to show it exists, I need to show you the evidence of its existence, not expect you to accept its existence unless you can prove me wrong. As for the experiments - incidentally, in terms of prayers, there were some that were conducted, but I will need to remember where exactly and how to find the results. Maybe iNow can help... iNow? ~moo

Actually, there is a perfectly good reason for this comparison. It's called "Doing Science". In scientific terms, these two cases are perfectly similar in the fact they are utterly baseless. In science. If you choose to believe in any of them out of a personal reason and in the full understanding that they are entirely unsupported (and, in fact, were both proven to *not* help), that is absolutely your prerogative. However, since we are discussing science, we are evaluating these under the light of the scientific method and scientific evaluation, facts, evidence, experimentation, predictability and mathematics. Under all of the above, prayer has failed to produce result just as much as lint picking has, or as much as worshiping Zeus or Mythra has. The claim is perfectly acceptable in science, because it is true. This isn't a subjective opinion, tar, it is an objective fact judged by many experiments, and as such it is absolutely perfectly acceptable to compare any and all methods that have the same nonexistent effect. ~moo

Eric, you're the one making claims, stop pretending we're the ones needing to prove anything here.

He expects a logical answer, Nimit.. you claim A, you were shown A to not be true, and the next step is for *YOU* to state what you claim that is actually realistic and follows the laws of physics, as well as explains phenomena and allows for proper predictions. I will remind you that since you are the one making a claim, the burden of proof is on you, not on us. ~moo

Because that sells more?

... The above statement is blatantly untrue, and shows a bit of a poor understanding of the physics of the solar system. This still didn't have math or predictions or actual physics. It is NOT science. Don't pretend it to be, and don't pretend you answered the question. Where's the science? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedPlanetary movement is absolutely energy preserving. The planets are moving in an elliptical orbit *because* their energy is preserved. The "simple" version: An individual planet is moving in a certain circular velocity around the sun, without "wasting" energy. But other planets "tug" on it by their gravity, and the planet then increases its speed - which causes its orbit to be slightly bigger, and it now travels on to a bigger circle around the sun. HOWEVER, at some point, the planet's speed can no longer support such large orbit and the planet "falls back" to its original, smaller orbit. The result is an elliptical orbit. Now the actual physics: http://www.go.ednet.ns.ca/~larry/orbits/kepler.html As you can see, the math adds up. There is no excess energy. Energy doesn't just "pop out of nowhere" or is "free energy". Energy is preserved. If you want to claim otherwise, you will need to supply the math for it, as well as a proper *scientific* case for it for us to analyze. Nothing else will be sufficient, AdrianB. ~moo

Adrian, do you have actual proof or are you going to go 'round-an'round in circles until everyone grows so tired they stop arguing with you? You are making a physical claim (IE, About physics). You need to use physics to prove it. You will not be able to convince us of its validity without physical proof (IE, about physics). Where is your math that shows "free energy"? Where is the experimentation that can be *REPEATED* by others for the sake of peer review? Where are your predictions? You can post huge posts all your want, but until you give us actual science, all you do is "BLABLA" your way onwards. Give us science, not empty claims. ~moo

You are the one making the claim, therefore the burden of proof is on you. Either give us proof or stop posting ridiculous claims, AdrianB. This forum isn't your soundboard, it's a science forum, and in science we go by mathematics, experimentation and predictions. Until you have these, you are teh one who is failing to prove your claim, not the other way around. We are not supposed to "unprove" you, you are supposed to prove yourself. Now, can you? If you avoid answers and laugh ("ha ha ha ha"? really?) when people tell you they see no evidence in a post you posted no evidence in, then you are trolling. I really recommend you go read our rules, AdrianB. Also, you should read about what exactly constitutes as evidence in science and what doesn't, and start giving us some SERIOUS science and not random "BUT I WANT IT TO BE TRUE!" pdfs with pictures. ~moo

Trolling has nothing to do with who started the thread, AdrianB.

You both should try to steer clear of generalizations. I am not going to pray for anyone no matter how ill they are because I don't believe that will help. Whatever point was attempted by saying "some atheists do" was just turned moot.. I would also have no problem whatsoever doing any sort of "wiccan" ritual. If the settings are right it might scare me but not because of the fact I'm doing a ritual. Maybe because of the dark and the occasional "boo" and creep-the-heck-out-of-you effects those tend to have (I've been present in some). Human beings have some weird quirks in us; we tend to see shapes in the dark that aren't there (might have to do with our EXTREMELY poor eyesight and poor night vision), we have an innate tendency to see patterns where those don't exist, and we scare easily. My first instinct when I see something moving in my room at night is to clutch my blanket and cover myself. That's instinctive. When I get over it, though, my rationality returns and I spend a bit more time checking it out. Most times it was nothing more than a random shade dancing around -- does that make monsters real? no. It makes my instinctive reactions real, and it makes the fact humans need to WORK THEIR MINDS beyond their quirks to get to the truth real. Claims are measured by their validity and teh validity of their evidence, not by how spooked they make us feel or by the possible faint-hearted irrational moment some atheists (and non atheists, really) might have. ~moo

Thread moved to the Speculations forum. Also, kevinmorais, I took off your email address at the end, as it is against our rules. Please debate on the forum and not through email. In any case, this is a speculation (admittedly so, by the postulates at the end), and the most suitable location for it is the Speculations forum. ~moo

I must remind the people of the thread that the topic here is whether or not Intelligence Design has any scientific case. That is, can we provide any scientifically valid evidence for Intelligent Design. Please stay on topic and please stop avoiding the issue that is the scientific discussion. We are not discussing theology or mythology or the philosophical possibility of a designer. We are discussing the scientific case of a designer. And we have been for 140 posts. Keep up. It is by no means a place to throw random ad-hoc assertions at one another or to counter each others claims without evidence. This is a science forum and not a theology discussion board. As much as some assertions may *FEEL* as if they really can't be true, feelings have no bearing on science. Evidence does. Can anyone in this thread point to a valid, substantial scientific evidence as to the merit of such theory as "Intelligent Design" without resorting to empty claims? If so, now is the time, people. We are a science forum, and we are scientifically rigorous because that's what we do. We have always been scientifically rigorous in any sort of hypothesis that was ever raised in this forum, and this is no different. We've been discussing this "hypothesis" for seven pages, and every now and then a new member decides to jump in without reading the actual thread or, it appears, the question the OP is raising, and claim there is proof in design without supplying the actual proof. The bottom line, people, is that you can claim there is a scientific case all you want but without providing us with one, the claims are moot. Please stay on topic, please don't insult everyone's intelligence by ignoring a seven-page-long thread and pretending nothing was said in it, and please - please - read about the meaning of a "scientific case" and what actually constitutes one. So far the vast majority of the claims here were utterly non scientific, baseless and repetitive. That's not making any sort of case - specially not a scientific one - for Intelligent Design. ~moo

The general consensus about the Aether is that it's just not needed in the observations, as far as I could understand. That is, you can explain and predict everything we see either with or without the consideration of Aether, which makes it irrelevant. That is, I can also predict everything exactly the same if I include an invisible pink elephant that is unaffected by gravitational forces and is invisible to our instruments. There would be no difference in my results between including it into the calculations (it would have no effect) and not including it into the calculation. So, that said, in order to "return" to the idea of the Aether, there's a need to show that the Aether is relevant.. Do you have any mathematical models that include the Aether and can explain phenomena better than the current theory that does not consider the Aether? ~moo

There are a few links, but this one has the math right into the first page: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1968SoPh....3..598T Tidal Forces are the product of gravity. The moon has a STRONGER effect on the Earth because it's a lot closer, but there's absolutely an effect from the sun - as well as form the other planets. It's just a lot smaller.

Yes. If someone *designed* it, then it was intentional - for a purpose. That means that the object - the Earth or Human beings - would be perfectly (or *almost* perfectly) designed for its purpose. Even if you would define the Earth to have a purpose - say, to rotate around the sun so it can support us - has a lot of flaws in doing what it's "supposed" to do. Flaws that are not all that hard to pre-emptively prevent. For instance, if you're designing a planet to go around to Sun in a circular orbit, you would put it on a PERFECTLY circular orbit, not on an orbit that shifts from almost-a-perfect-circle to slightly-closer-to-an-ellipse. You would either make it an ellipse, or a circle. If anyone intelligent created biological life, they didn't do a very good job. As I said before, a good example is our genitals. The fact that the penis serves as the "pipe" for both waste (urine) and propogation of the species (semen) is - quite frankly - a terrible design. It produces a bunch of possible complications and is just stupid. Even us "simple" humans figured out the meaning and importance of separating waste from everything else (SPECIALLY potential children..) in our design. So if we were designed, either the designer was careless, incompetent or the designer screwed the design up on purpose. Or we weren't designed. Whatever it is, it's DEFINITELY far from being "proof" of design. We know why most things are the way the are when we consider evolution. Most of our biology is *perfectly* explained using the theory of evolution, and is quite well proven. We didn't really require the notion of a "designer", since we can see how things were created naturally through the laws of nature. We can also see how planets are formed, and we *predict* those creations using the laws of nature and physics quite well. Biology, too, is a predictive science. The assumption of a designer was never really needed. Maybe not perfect, but we should be much more precise if we were designed. Continuing your analogy, let's take things we actually DO design. Like a clock, for example. Clocks aren't perfect, but they're very efficient in doing what they're doing. They don't have unnecessary parts, for example - we do (tail bone is only one of them). They don't have redundant responses or inefficient responses. We do (getting "goose bumps" is a good example. It has no purpose at all, unless you have fur. Which we did, a few million years ago). They don't have, built-in processes that can damage them. We do (read up about the "waste" pipes in our bodies as a good example). We designed clocks, so we built them in a way that might not be perfect, but is at least not severely reckless. Our bodies have redundant organs and weird instinctive reactions that make no sense unless you factor in the evolutionary process that transformed us - slowly - from Apes to Humans. That's not design. It's nature. And how does that add any sort of proof to an intelligent designer? This thread is about seeing whether or not there can be a scientific proof for an intelligent designer, and the answer - so far - is no. You're not changing much of the conclusion. If that's the case, then the designer was quite reckless and we are a mistake of creation. Interesting concept. In any case, other than an intriguing philosophical science fiction, it has no bearing on whether or not an intelligent design has any scientific case. That's what this thread is about, and the answer so far is an absolute no. Hang on a second, though. We have proof of many weird phenomena we only begin to understand; Things like quantum mechanics are only the tip of the iceberg in that aspect. We might not be able to explain everything, but we *DO* recognize when things don't add up. In terms of the design of humans or the earth, there is really nothing that doesn't add up. It all adds up *PERFECTLY* by our current knowledge of Physics, Astrophysics, Biology, Chemistry, and other subjects. We can EXPLAIN how things happen, we can PREDICT how things will happen and we can use those to better our lives and our understanding of the universe. There was never a need, in science, to declare things as "designed" by an external designer not because science is "anti" design, but because things are PERFECTLY WELL EXPLAINED by natural occurrences. .... what? There is no missing link in evolution, so that's a proof that we haven't found a missing link? How does that make any sense? If you want to propose a hypothesis, you need to understand that science doesn't just go on the base of logic, it goes on the base of predictions, as well. Evolution doesn't just rely on the fact that there are no missing links, it is validated CONSTANTLY and repeatedly by the fact that it is ABSOLUTELY predictable, and we are using it -- and have been using it without properly defining it, for centuries. Breeding dogs and horses is a direct consequence of evolution with human selection rather than natural selection. Creating vaccines is directly using evolution and predicting through it. You can say that everything is possible, even a pink invisible unicorn, but until you produce some evidence *AND* a predictive ability, the claim is not even considered a proper hypothesis yet. This thread is about whether or not Intelligent Designer has a scientific case. The answer so far is clearly no. ~moo

That's very similar to what Erich von Daniken wrote. I love this mythological story it's entertaining and interesting and it would make a heck of a good movie (as it did, with Stargate the movie and the series) but it makes very poor science hypothesis for the following reasons: There is no proof to even suggest this is so. I would assume that we would find *something* that would hint that this type of scenario is true, if it was. For instance, we would find a huge inexplicable leap in the evolution of certain animal types (which we do not see) or some sort of inexplicable event in our history. So far, all such "inexplicable events" have much better supported hypotheses to them than "aliens did it and called themselves god". It is unfalsifiable. Even if it were true, there's not only no proof but there is no way to OBTAIN the proof, and both having proof and NOT having proof "prove it", which makes it absolutely moot scientifically. So, in essence, if I claim that there's no proof, the proponents of this hypothesis can say that the reason I don't see any proofis because htis is how the "designers" designed things (for me not to see the proof) -- which means that whether I find a proof or DON'T - IE, regardless of reality - this hypothesis is always true. That's not science. The solar system, Earth and life in general are *FAR* from perfect In other words, if they *WERE* designed by something, that something/someone did a very lousy job. From our genitals (who the heck thought it was a good idea to mix the "waste" pipes with the sexual pipes? so many problems arise from this), to the orbit of the earth (it wobbles, and it is also tilted, and it is also not a perfect circles, and yet very close to one), and more and more. It's not just not perfect, there are certain things that you would expect to be COMPLETELY different if they were intentionally designed - specifically in the solar system. So, to summarize, if you're dealing with science-fiction, this is awesome. If you want science, this is moot. ~moo

Clearly you need to watch Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.