pears

So you get to make all the points, I have to respond to them, but you don't have to respond to any of mine? Yes that seems a reasonable basis for a sensible conversation.

I'm talking about the passage YOU just quoted! Relating an action is not the same as condoning it.

Relating an action is not the same as condoning it.

By that reasoning you could say that subjective experiences don't exist because there is no evidence for them.

It's not empirical evidence. This is exactly the point I am making. Perhaps you missed my initial post on this.

The personal experiences ARE the evidence. Whether you find it credible evidence is another matter. OK fine, but you can give me Santa Claus and the tooth fairy can't you? Trolls weren't on the list

Are you saying all personal experience testimonies must always be discounted because sometimes some personal experience testimonies seem incredible? A form of evidence is not discounted because there are bad examples of it. OK - you can remove leprechauns from the list if you like then. I didn't know Pagans believed in them.

I can accept this statement more readily than the last, but I don't believe science deals in proof, only evidence.

Thanks! That site looks awesome!

That someone has an opinion that something is incredible doesn't make it untrue.

OK I see where I've gone wrong now. I started out talking about terminal velocity, and two opposing forces, then in my final sentence I am talking about free-fall (i.e. there is only one force in play - no air-resistance). So the last sentence in my first post ought to be ignored, as it's an entirely different scenario and completely wrong in this context. When an object falls through a fluid, such as something dropping through the air on earth, the terminal velocity depends on the two forces, as well as the mass of the object falling. So two parachutists at different weights, would indeed fall at different speeds (whereas in the absence of air-resistance they would reach the earth at the same time, and I presume, never reach terminal velocity but continue to accelerate all the way down.) How embarrassing to discover knowledge one thought one had remembered is all just a distant hazy jumble!

I just did. The problem here is that YOU don't find that credible. Others do. It's called a difference of opinion.

I'd be very impressed if science could prove that every religious experience any person has ever had, or ever will have, was as a result of a glitch in the brain. That science could provide evidence that some religious experiences were as a result of a glitch in the brain seems more feasible. Presumably you won't think the eye-witness accounts of say, Jesus miracles for example, credible but these are the kinds of evidences on which religious beliefs are often based.

There is ZERO scientific evidence for the existence of deities. You're dismissing personal and historical testimony including eye-witness accounts and personal experience. I don't think there is any evidence for leprechuans, unicorns, pegasus', SAnta Claus, the tooth fairy or the sandman which is probably why I've never heard anybody (save small children) profess to believe in them.

Are we just quibbling over semantics? It sounds like you are trying to get rid of time by equating it with something that has time as a hidden parameter. I'm afraid I no longer find this discussion productive.

Oh poo did I get it wrong? I had f1/m - f2/m = 0 which got rid of the mass from my equation. I will have another think about this.

And movement is a relationship between matter, space and time. For example something going round in circles. Like this discussion.

I infer it because it makes sense of the world. In the same way that I infer space exists because it makes sense of the world.

Your ipad doesn't perceive 2-D. You do.

As I understand it terminal speed is reached when two forces cancel each other out, so you have gravity in one direction (weight) and air resistance in the other. The object stops accelerating at the point when the force of gravity and air-resistence in the opposite direction acheive equilibrium. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_velocity The actual mass of the objects doesn't affect terminal velocity, so two objects with different masses would fall to the earth at the same time.

But you could apply the same argument to space, or anything. How do you know space exists outside the brain?

Haha, I'd like to see that too.

How and why would this be a valid demonstration of time?

But your sentence presupposes the existence of time by using the concept "at once". Time is a concept required to make sense of the world. As someone stated above we have a sense of time and perceive it with our minds in the same way that we have a perception of space and also perceive it with our minds. We perceive it visually. The rendering of it might somehow make the concept 'feel' more real to us, but it is still a perception. Why would it be any more real than our perception of time?

People keep bringing up the No True Scotsman in this thread. What is the piece of reasoning the No True Scotsman fallacy is being applied to here? My understanding of this fallacy is that someone makes a generalisation, a counter-example is shown, then the person who made the generalisation shifts their position to exclude the counter-example. It seems here that the ones shouting No True Scotsman are the ones making the generalisation, rather than the person alleged to have committed the fallacy.