Author Topic: God of little things

The Glue Man

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Re: God of little things
« Reply #32 on: March 22, 2006 »
It was a play on this 'Bards. Doh you got me explaining my gags now.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/u/uncertai.asp

pcolbeck

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Re: God of little things
« Reply #33 on: March 22, 2006 »
Quote
Not wishing to take the fun out of rationalist fundamentalism but it can look like a narrow church sometimes. What other things do people fill their god-shaped gap with?

The same thing that fills my Tooth Fairy and Father Christmas shaped holes :)

redshift

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Re: God of little things
« Reply #34 on: March 22, 2006 »
There's an undeniable thread on this board and as a theist I'm bound to speak up.
Okay my God looks like the Archbishop of Canterbury with a personal trainer in a Ray Harryhausen movie but yon Godless also like:

computers,
photography
and high tech bike parts.

Not wishing to take the fun out of rationalist fundamentalism but it can look like a narrow church sometimes. What other things do people fill their god-shaped gap with?

Assumption on your part: The existence of a gap
Assumption on your part: That the gap, if it exists, is 'god-shaped' (whatever that means)
Assumption on your part: That the gap, if it exists, is in need of filling

'Rationalist fundamentalism' is what, exactly?  Is there a particular text/interpretation/set of rules you have in mind?  Or is it just another assumption that somehow, removing 'god' requires that it be replaced by another belief system?  Describing it as a 'narrow church' merely emphasises that you seem to see 'absence of belief' as a statement of ...er belief, which isn't necessarily so.

The only narrowness I see, lies in the need to interpret things through a 'god-shaped' filter.

The Glue Man

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Frenchie

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The Glue Man

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Re: God of little things
« Reply #37 on: March 22, 2006 »

scaglifr

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Re: God of little things
« Reply #38 on: March 22, 2006 »
It was a play on this 'Bards. Doh you got me explaining my gags now.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/u/uncertai.asp

Never forget the heisenburg theory of NHS funding

Frenchie

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Re: God of little things
« Reply #39 on: March 22, 2006 »
See if this one opens up okay.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Guide_For_The_Perplexed

Interesting, but still a lot of negative words used in there! And I for one like Descartes whose integral volume (one part at least) sits on my shelf...

The Glue Man

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Re: God of little things
« Reply #40 on: March 22, 2006 »
It seems a legitimate criticism.

There was a good bit of trash telly a few weeks back, Psychic Challenge on C5.
A range of experiments whittled down the cold readers and self deluding until one lady, a Welsh woman you wouldn't argue with, showed a serious hit rate across various tests including finding a dug in SAS soldier and a hidden child with B-line accuracy.

A panel of professional skeptics did what they do best but were left increasingly incredulous.
She unravelled an old murder case without knowing it was anything of the sort giving information way beyond anyone other than forensics could have known. All of it was confirmed.
Finally she provided a detailed description of the killer who hadn't been caught that was accurate or convincing enough for police to re-open the case.

Now this kind of thing deserves serious attention by the scientific community imo. It may well have a legitimate scientific basis but instead it gets swept away as anomalous and unworthy of serious study.
It's the unwillingness to contemplate such things in case they don't yield to scientific method that is worrying.

Of course it takes us no nearer to small gods.

Mal Volio

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Re: God of little things
« Reply #41 on: March 22, 2006 »

It's the unwillingness to contemplate such things in case they don't yield to scientific method that is worrying.

It was TV.

Such things have been investigated many times, and when this is done by proper method, with controls and blinding, they evaporate.  I don't think there is any "unwillingness", just a slight weariness in some quarters as permanent  ghostbusting.


Mal Volio

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Re: God of little things
« Reply #42 on: March 22, 2006 »
In the end there is the use of your intellect to describe the world, development of world models by testable, verifiable and modifiable hypotheses.  And then there is faith. 

Faith is orthogonal to rationality, can't be subject to rational analyses and can't be challenged by rationality.  Fine.

But it is ultimately arrogant to expect others automatically to tiptoe around ones beliefs and faiths.

The Glue Man

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Re: God of little things
« Reply #43 on: March 22, 2006 »
In cases that operate in the margins of probability the  scientific method assumes that the conclusions are impossible. That's just bad science.

 

pcolbeck

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Re: God of little things
« Reply #44 on: March 22, 2006 »
No thats just not understanding probability. If you get something that shows a 1% deviation from what you would expect by chance then it is not significant unless you have a large sample set (ie you can get this 1% difference 100s of times) since chance is very lumpy in small sample sets. Consider tossing a coin, its a 1 in 2 chance that you get a head but if you toss it ten times you usually don't get five heads and five tails you get two heads and eight tales or four heads and six tales and no one thinks thats anything special. Even ten heads in a row is not that suprising. If you tossed in 1000 times and got 55% heads though then that would be a significant result as you have a big enough sample.

The Glue Man

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Re: God of little things
« Reply #45 on: March 22, 2006 »
Probability may be the wrong definition.

The woman was taken to a rural location. She was given no indication of an any event as the 'tests' were getting harder.
She made a straight line for a lane in one particular direction describing the last steps of a schoolgirl in an obscure murder on the other side of the country in the 80's.
As the killer hadn't been caught most of the information had not been released. She went to a concealed pond and described the path the body was dragged to the extent that it was found only partly in the water and the girl died of drowning not the head injury she had suffered which was also described in detail.

She talked of the heavy fog that covered the district on the night of the murder. At no point was she given nods or assurances. The sound had to be muted as the description became more graphic and went into a detail on the killer. One was left with the impression the man was known to the police and the case was being re-opened.

If and it's a big if, the woman had a means of ascertaining this information without being told it, something unusual and interesting was going on. It's incumbent on the scientific community to provide an explanation other than 'it's impossible' or demean it as occluded and irrational.


Mal Volio

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Re: God of little things
« Reply #46 on: March 22, 2006 »
If and it's a big if, the woman had a means of ascertaining this information without being told it, something unusual and interesting was going on. It's incumbent on the scientific community to provide an explanation other than 'it's impossible' or demean it as occluded and irrational.



I agree

So what is needed is a proper double-blind trial, with prior-established statistical power.

This isn't science trying to discredit, it is a logical approach t ascertaining whether occurence is better than chance.

And when this is done, the anecdotes evaporate and what is left moves into the corpus of knowledge.    This is how understanding develops, by testing, and by subsequent modification of world model when indicated.

The problem in the case you cite is that this scenario has popped up so often, has been investigated and has found not to stand up.  Maybe this time is different, maybe, and if it is then the world will change.

But the other thing to consider is the unicorn question*.  The context.  If there is a corpus of knowledge, a functional and rational world-model, then something which is not in conflict with that doesn't require a paradigm shift.  If the acceptance of something requires our accepted worls model to be thrown out then you can expect that it will be subject to a great deal of scrutiny.

*If I tell you there's a horse in my garden you night not be too surprised, if you knew I lived in the country.  If I told you it was a unicorn you might seek clarification, at the very least

The Glue Man

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Re: God of little things
« Reply #47 on: March 22, 2006 »
Quote from: Mal Volio
And when this is done, the anecdotes evaporate

An a priori conclusion and spoken like a scientist.

'It (scientism) implies a reliance on science unbalanced by, and therefore susceptible to, unconscious influence by other life factors such as experiences, emotions, values, dogmas, beliefs, and motive. These influences, and necessarily, the resulting science, are unscientific to the extent that they are unexamined in connection with the development of the science'.