Sam...there was a time when almost everyone alive on the planet...from every culture, context, and experience...would have "offered testimony" that the Earth was a pancake flat object in the center of the universe and that the sun, moon, and stars circled 'round it. There was a time, ONLY A HUNDRED YEARS AGO...when most scientists would have offered testimony that our galaxy was the entirety of the universe. — Frank Apisa
↪Rank Amateur Of course it does, silly. Sheesh, your denialism is a real problem. You said that the analogy is a poor analogy, and the reasons you gave for this were bad reasons, so I set you straight. The analogy is a good analogy if you look at it in the right way, use it right, draw the right conclusions from it. Russell's teapot was being referenced and the lesson from that is a good one, so it's a good analogy if used right. You don't get to shift the burden of proof to others if you make the assertion that there exists a celestial teapot. Or rather, if you do, then you're not being reasonable. — S
Much of this depends on what it means to know, so it's an epistemological question. As such, it depends on what you count as good evidence. Many people limit their knowledge to science, but there are plenty of ways of knowing apart from what science tells us. In fact, one of the main ways of attaining knowledge is through the testimony of others. And while it's true that testimony is the weakest way of knowing, it can also be very strong depending on the number of people making the claim, the consistency of the claims, whether the claims are taken from a variety of cultures, contexts, and experiences, etc. The way we evaluate the claims is similar to the way we evaluate a good inductive argument. — Sam26
God is not everything, if that's what you're suggesting. Everything is everything. I call things what they are in the clearest way. I gave you two options to turn a seeming falsehood into a truth: which is it? Illusion or trivial? Or are you sticking with a falsehood? — S
And I hang out with Frodo down in The Shire. We dance around for hours on end, and then explode into a million pieces, and Gandalph stares at us intently. Good old Gandalph. Aren't we a good wizard, Gandalph. Yes we are. Oh yes we are. — S
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiigggghhhtt. — S
Ah, so you were trying to make the trivial appear profound. Yes, God is a thing. But a thing much more like an imaginary wizard than a dog named Sonny. — S
Who, other than Bitter Crank, can tell me where that pop culture reference comes from. — T Clark
In my dotage I've been going back (with the help of YouTube) to fill in some holes I don't have enough years left to fill them all in, so a lot of the holes will just stay empty. — Bitter Crank
Mother's Day - Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake — T Clark
The only thing any scientist would say about anything that lacks empirical evidence is that is lacks empirical evidence, that is it, that is the only judgment real science would make. Any other judgment you all make about the lack of empirical evidence for anything is not scientific, it either philosophy or theology. — Rank Amateur
It's always a huge and dangerous risk to reveal what one thinks is really, really funny or really, really outrageous. Did you see Pink Flamingoes, by any chance? — Bitter Crank
Scientists aren't going to be agnostics about the idea of, say, there being tranvestite ballerinas orbiting some distant star just because there's no evidence of the same. If the idea is clearly bonkers, with absolutely nothing to support anywhere near the notion of something so implausible, they'll just dismiss it until they run across any sort of evidence that suggests it might have some merit. — Terrapin Station
Sure. I wouldn't say that nothing stupid is forwarded in the name of science. Scientists don't actually have a monobrain. — Terrapin Station
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