[extropy-chat] Re:John Wright Finds God

[Dirk Bruere]

John K Clark wrote:

> -<john-c-wright at sff.net>
>
>> The scientific method is concerned with measureable aspects of our
>> sense-impressions.
>
>
> If by "supernatural" you mean a person having an unusual, even bizarre,
> subjective experience then I have absolutely no difficulty believing you;
> but usually something like a burning bush is also involved and rapidly
> oxidizing vegetable matter is measurable.
>
> Whenever a famous person gets assassinated you can be certain that in the
> next few day dozens of people will come forward and say that they had a
> vision it would happen the night before; but for reasons not entirely 
> clear
> they never bother to tell anyone about it until after the poor man was 
> dead.
> Odd don't you think?
>
> "Dirk Bruere" <dirk at neopax.com>
>
>> That's why chemistry developed out of alchemy.
>
>
> Isaac Newton, the greatest scientist who ever lived, was an alchemist and
> there was nothing wrong with that; at the time there was no reason to 
> think
> you couldn't turn lead into gold if you just used the right chemicals. 
> Today
> we know better.
>
> > As for psi phenomena, there is plenty of experimental evidence.
>
> The compelling evidence was not gathered using good scientific methods 
> and
> the evidence that was gathered using good scientific methods is not
> compelling. Don't you think that's odd?

Like PEAR?
Seems like people have been running in circles trying to convince 
professional 'sceptics'. If the evidence is good, the expt must be bad, 
and vice versa.

> f fortune tellers, psychic healers,
> and Taro card readers didn't have such stellar reputations for moral
> rectitude I might almost think fraud was involved .
>
> We could have had this exact same conversation 100 years ago and not 
> change
> one word; in fact people back then did have such conversations, and in 
> the
> next century despite huge advances in science and technology there is not
> one more bit of evidence that psi is real than there was back then. Do 
> you
> find that odd?  I find that odd.
>
>
I don't find it any more odd than that the same conversations about the 
nature of qualia were taking place.
It would seem likely that it's an aspect of Nature that is still beyond 
our science.

-- 
Dirk

The Consensus:-
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