Is It Correct to Say There is “No” Evidence For the Supernatural Part 2

[AllenWitmerMiller (Semi-Expired Professor & Minister.)]

I almost face-palmed myself several times during this extended thread—but Dr. Fauci tells me I’m supposed to avoiding touching my face.

I will await a CDC-authorized “all clear” before resuming my usual face-palms. (Meanwhile, chronic violations of the no face-touching guidelines continue in Facebook groups and the White House press corps.)

Discussion threads which provoke face-palms are a threat to public health during this COVID-19 crisis. (At all other times they simply threaten public sanity.)

(@Dan_Eastwood, perhaps a pre-emptive quarantine notice should be posted accordingly.)

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@Jim

Exactly the point I was making. I totally agree. Relevant evidence, relevant knowledge, and careful analysis, that’s what’s important.

Now, please apply what we agree is important to the actual evidence for evolution instead of offering creationist hearsay.

[Dan_Eastwood]

@AllenWitmerMiller

(#Dan_Eastwood, perhaps a pre-emptive quarantine notice should be posted accordingly.)

Are the guys playing rough again?? Settle it down already - I’m lazy and don’t want to be made to do work that can be avoided

[AllenWitmerMiller (Semi-Expired Professor & Minister.)]

I’ve decided to resume face-palming—but only after carefully washing my hands while singing at least two verses of:

Believe it or not, this was a Top 40 radio hit back in 1966 when Lyndon Johnson was still President. I used to leave 50,000-watts WOWO radio playing from sunrise to sunset in the hog barn in order to cover up any water bucket noise I might make while tending the sows and their new litters. (A quiet barn is a dangerous thing when there are nervous mothers with piglets. They will attack you and leave a big gash in your leg at the slightest noise, so I made sure that there was rock music playing all the time to de-sensitize the defensive mothers. If they get startled, they also tend to step on their days-old pigs.)

This was a song that definitely disturbed me more than the pigs.

[Jim]

@T_aquaticus

Scientific models are abstract concepts. If you picture the idea of a rock in your head, that is an abstract object. A painting of a flower is an abstract object.

So is mathematics an abstract concept? And are numbers abstract objects?

[Jim]

@Rumraket

All the rest of my posts have shown that to be a catastrophe, however. So much so that you gave up and stopped responding.

The reason I stopped responding to them is because they were mostly weak objections and I didn’t want to derail the conversation by answering a host of weak objections. That is why I asked you to list a few of what you considered your most compelling objections.

I think the one we addressed of a physical cause for the first physical event was dealt with sufficiently. If you want to deal with another one of your objections I’m more than happy to oblige, but one at a time.

[Jim]

@T_aquaticus

From what I have seen, your version of abductive inference is whatever you subjectively think is likely. It is nothing more than a reflection of your own bias.

Well, I believe an abductive inference is subjective. So depending on whether you want to say something is or isn’t observable would be the difference between whether it’s an objective observation or a subjective abductive inference. And that is one reason why it’s less reliable than an objective observation, it’s suspect to bias, which we all have, even you.

[Faizal_Ali]

Simple question: If one says “The temperature outside is 12 degrees Celsius” based on reading a thermometer, is one reporting an observation, or making an abductive inference?

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@Jim

The reason I stopped responding to them is because they were mostly weak objections

When I show that your argument rests on unnecessary premises based on no good evidence (which I did), that isn’t a weak objection. That’s about as good an objection as it is possible to get, just short of proving that your argument entails a contradiction.

If in the privacy of your own head, having it demonstrated that your arguments rest on baseless premises, is a “weak objection”, then your opinion on what makes objections weak or not is patently irrational and self-serving.

You seem to have nothing but bad excuses for not wanting to actually address my objections, which makes it difficult to resist the interpretation that you just don’t know how to. You also appear to prefer to ignore substantive corrections to your misunderstandings about science, and what ideas have evidence for or against them.

That is why I asked you to list a few of what you considered your most compelling objections.

Such a list was provided. I even reminded you of it again in this post. You didn’t respond to it, all you did is what you’re doing here now. To mindlessly regurgitate some weak excuse for not wanting to actually deal with the objections, and then ask for a list of “main” ones.

This latest recursion of yours is no different from the rest. This half-arsed distraction game you’re playing now is transparently obvious.

I think the one we addressed of a physical cause for the first physical event was dealt with sufficiently.

Where was that dealt with specifically? You mean in the posts where you keep declaring without argument that it is impossible?

If you want to deal with another one of your objections I’m more than happy to oblige, but one at a time.

You can pick them one at a time from my above linked posts, and then make a post for each of them at whatever pace you happen to find comfortable. For example you could respond to the post where I explain that there is actually no evidence for anything coming into existence from nothing, and that you appear to have misunderstood the evidence from big bang cosmology.

[Jim]

@Rumraket

For example you could respond to the post where I explain that there is actually no evidence for anything coming into existence from nothing, and that you appear to have misunderstood the evidence from big bang cosmology.

Oh, sorry I missed that. So your claim is that you cannot infer a beginning of the universe from those pieces of evidence?

[Jim]

@Faizal_Ali

Simple question: If one says “The temperature outside is 12 degrees Celsius” based on reading a thermometer, is one reporting an observation, or making an abductive inference?

Before I answer I would like to know how you would answer that.

[Faizal_Ali]

It’s an observation. Obviously.

[T_aquaticus]

@Jim

So is mathematics an abstract concept? And are numbers abstract objects?

If you write the number “2” on a piece of paper, it is an abstract object. If you think of the number 2, that is an abstract concept.

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@Jim

So your claim is that you cannot infer a beginning of the universe from those pieces of evidence?

My claim is that you have no evidence to substantiate the claim that the universe was ever non-existent. As in there is no evidence that there was ever a time at which the universe did not exist. There just isn’t. That’s an extrapolation, it is not implied by the evidence. It is not even weakly suggested.

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@AllenWitmerMiller

Believe it or not, this was a Top 40 radio hit back in 1966 when Lyndon Johnson was still President.

I guess I’m too young to remember that. I seem to recall it from Dr. Demento.

[dga471 (Daniel)]

@T_aquaticus

@Jim

Exactly. It’s a mathematical formula, i.e., an immaterial abstract object, that describes the behavior of a quantum particle. It’s descriptive, not prescriptive. In other words it’s not meant as an explanation, only as a description. And the observation it describes isn’t even the actual entity itself, but rather the behavior of that entity.

Then you reject the scientific method. There’s no way around it.

I would say he’s a strict instrumentalist (or anti-realist). I suspect he’s not consistent about it if you interrogate him though.

[Faizal_Ali]

@dga471

I would say he’s a strict instrumentalist (or anti-realist).

Hmm. I thought just the opposite.

[Jim]

@Faizal_Ali

It’s an observation. Obviously.

OK. I’m fine with that.

@T_aquaticus

If you write the number “2” on a piece of paper, it is an abstract object. If you think of the number 2, that is an abstract concept.

Hmm. My understanding is that mathematics is an abstract concept, and the number 2 would be an abstract object within that concept.

Platonism is the view that there exist such things as abstract objects — where an abstract object is an object that does not exist in space or time and which is therefore entirely non-physical and non-mental. Platonism in this sense is a contemporary view.
It is more accurate to say that on the platonist view, numbers exist (independently of us and our thoughts) but do not exist in space and time.
Numbers, propositions, and universals (i.e., properties and relations) are not the only things that people have taken to be abstract objects.
There is a great deal of agreement about how to classify certain paradigm cases. Thus it is universally acknowledged that numbers and the other objects of pure mathematics are abstract (if they exist), whereas rocks and trees and human beings are concrete.

I’m not sure where it’s defined in the way you have defined it?

@Rumraket

My claim is that you have no evidence to substantiate the claim that the universe was ever non-existent.

Umm, if the universe began to exist it follows logically that in the absence of physical existence the universe could not exist. So either physical existence is past eternal, or it began to exist and therefore did not always exist. And I believe it’s well within reason to infer from the evidence I provided that it began to exist.

@dga471

I would say he’s a strict instrumentalist (or anti-realist).

What makes you say that?

[Dan_Eastwood]

@AllenWitmerMiller

This was a song that definitely disturbed me more than the pigs.

DEVO could have covered this and it would have fit right in!
https://play.google.com/music/m/T4uj3nd5ijbqakl2qydlh5l4bg4?t=I_Cant_Get_No_Satisfaction_-_Devo

[dga471 (Daniel)]

@Jim

What makes you say that?

My perception is that you have emphasized that only the empirical data matters and all the interpretation is more subjective “philosophical speculation”. You seem to have a less firm belief in things that you can’t see directly with your own eyes. All of this points to an anti-realist view. But I suspect that you are mainly anti-realist with respect to scientific theories which have uncomfortable philosophical consequences.

At the same time, you don’t seem to have a clear and robust criterion for what counts as a “direct observation” and what doesn’t, so it’s hard to pin your views down. As I said, you don’t seem familiar enough with the science to articulate your views coherently. You know bits and pieces, like “I once read that scientists can see atoms”, but you don’t know what that means from a technical view nor how that happened, as @Rumraket explained to you. The technical details actually matter a lot in interpreting the philosophical meaning of “seeing” atoms.

I’m saying it once again: all this talk of abductive inferences is just a waste of time if there are awareness of the relevant cases, i.e. the science.