Strange

We can measure a magnetic field. How do you suggest I measure this "spirit effect"? What instruments do I need?

You are selective in your gullibility, then? Not without corroborative evidence. Will that include evidence, by any chance?

As you so rightly say, the two myths are almost exactly equivalent. Therefore I believe them both equally.

So we can leave it there with the conclusions that: a. You will believe anything someone says as true, provided they are sufficiently famous (and you must therefore believe David Icke's lizard stories) b. I require some minimal level of evidence before accepting something. OK? Done.

So what. They have no evidence. (This is getting tedious.) Do you believe there is a unicorn in my garden? If not, why not? Are you saying I am not a fine upstanding gentleman?

There is no body or blood, that is my point.

If there was no body, no murder weapon, no sign of any violence, no victim, no blood, in short no evidence that a murder had occurred then I imagine it wouldn't even get to court. So, do you believe I have a unicorn in my garden? If not, why not?

Where does the "inflow" come from?

And for minor details, that may be enough (e.g. a person was at home on a particular day). But when it comes to more serious matters, then objective evidence is required: fingerprints, DNA tests, etc. If a witness stood up in court and said that the murderer was riding a unicorn, then I suspect their evidence would be discounted. Unless the forensic team came up with some pretty extraordinary evidence because, as I have said before, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. On the other hand: I have a unicorn in my garden. There, that must be true because I say so and it is a witness statement and therefore evidence.

It is extremely inconvenient for me to watch videos so I have to be certain there is something worth watching. Having a bunch of people telling me about their unsupported beliefs doesn't meet that criterion. Produce some evidence and I will consider it. If there is no evidence, why are you so convinced by these stories? If I told you I have a pet unicorn in my garden, would you believe me? If a Nobel Prize winner told you she had a pet unicorn in her garden (but was unable to provide any photos, hoofprints, dung, hair, blood samples, etc) would you believe her?

Famous names mean nothing. Evidence? Evidence? Evidence? (None, none, none.) It was on the web page you linked to (along with a lot of other batsh*t crazy stuff). Do you give it all equal credence?

What evidence do they have?

I don't know about him, but that web page is insane! Until someone has some evidence, rather than tales about what they "believe". I see no reason to take any of it seriously. I didn't make the comparison to the crazy views of David Icke before, because I thought they were too ridiculous even for this thread. But now you have brought it up, do you also believe that the British royal family are baby-eating lizards in disguise?

And that is the key point: there are multiple, independent (at least partly) sources describing Dionysus (as well as a much older oral tradition) while for Jesus there is a single uncorroborated source.

So you have no evidence, then. You made it up.

https://astro.uni-bonn.de/~uklein/research/dm.html http://web.mit.edu/redingtn/www/netadv/specr/012/node7.html http://arxiv.org/abs/1308.1703 http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2001MNRAS.323..285B http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=distribution+of+dark+matter+in+galaxies

Then it is NOT a "matter of opinion", is it. It is an idea (a hypothesis) which has been falsified by the evidence.

Why are you sure Dionysus was a myth but Jesus isn't? They are both equally well documented.

Any evidence for that? Or did you just make it up as a joke?

Well, yes. But that doesn't explain why it is also called a calorie ...

This terminology is used informally, even by scientists. There is an excellent BBC radio program called The Life Scientific, where Jim Al-Khalili interviews various scientists about their life and work. They will often talk about an idea and say something like, "of course that is purely theoretical". Very occasionally, they will catch that and clarify what they mean.

Do you realise, you didn't answer any of my questions? Do you feel enriched by the feedback system showing that you often make irrational or otherwise poor quality posts?

As the subject of the thread was the meaning of various terms, then it is explicitly about semantics. You quote this, despite the fact it contradicts what you have said. When was it ever a "theory" that Earth was round? It is an observational fact that has always been known to a large number of people (some people who were not in a position to observe it, may not have known this fact). Absolutely not. You can see (i.e. it is a fact) that there are frequently attempts made to test (falsify) even the most well-established theories. And there are often observations made which show that long established theories are wrong.

On another forum there is (was) a "like" mechanism, which showed the names of those who liked a particular post. Even though there was no negative voting, some people (you know the type ) would sneer when "your gang of cronies" supported a particularly cogent post. Some people will never be happy with any system.

If you mean (and it isn't at all clear what you mean) that theories are never "true" or final, and are only ever based on the current best information we have, then yes. But that is not a limitation of science; it is what science is. What is the point of worrying about things we don't know, may never know, and may never be able to know. That is not science.