Prove me wrong: there is no God

[Impenitent]

I didn't say ancient people didn't have speculations, or crafts, or accidental discoveries, or technologies of certain kinds, or magic, or superstitions...they even had mathematics, as Thales did. But the Scientific Revolution never happened for them, nor for their societies, because no systematic method of eliminating the false and focusing down on the scientifically accurate existed. For that, one had to have Bacon.

Can you give an example of something that is "scientifically accurate", and what makes it so?

Einstein in the cross-hairs?

-Imp

[Will Bouwman]

Although Newton didn't write that specific quote...

Here's Sir Isaac Newton, on that subject...“He who thinks half-heartedly will not believe in God; but he who really thinks has to believe in God.”

...it probably does reflect his thinking.

It's a slippery slope, phyllo. If you allow batshit crazy creationists to support their batshit crazy agenda by attributing words to scientists that don't appear in the work, batshit crazy creationists end up talking batshit crazy bollocks. Ray Mad As A Box Of Frogs Comfort wrote in 'God doesn't believe in atheists' 2002: "A little science estranges men from God, but much science leads them back to Him." and attributed it to Louis Pasteur. There is no record of Pasteur writing or saying it. Clearly emboldened by his fruitloopery, Comfort went on to the unhinged claim that a banana is the atheists nightmare: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/LAkfdL7KF9k

[Will Bouwman]

You know the scientific method, I'm sure. It was probably taught to you by your 8th grade science teacher -- phenomenon, questioning, hypothesis, test design, selecting of subjects, finding of a control group, assemblage of equipment, test running, recording of observations, repeatability, criticism and hypothesis revision, retesting, submission to a scientific community, publication...and, of course, epistemic humility throughout, wherein the experimenter does not go beyond the parameters of his test or his data. That's what the scientific method requires.

How much of that is included in Bacon's method? Where is the measurement and calculation?

[phyllo]

Although Newton didn't write that specific quote...

Here's Sir Isaac Newton, on that subject...“He who thinks half-heartedly will not believe in God; but he who really thinks has to believe in God.”

...it probably does reflect his thinking.

It's a slippery slope, phyllo. If you allow batshit crazy creationists to support their batshit crazy agenda by attributing words to scientists that don't appear in the work, batshit crazy creationists end up talking batshit crazy bollocks. Ray Mad As A Box Of Frogs Comfort wrote in 'God doesn't believe in atheists' 2002: "A little science estranges men from God, but much science leads them back to Him." and attributed it to Louis Pasteur. There is no record of Pasteur writing or saying it. Clearly emboldened by his fruitloopery, Comfort went on to the unhinged claim that a banana is the atheists nightmare: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/LAkfdL7KF9k

It's true that one ought not accept statements which are falsely attributed to someone.

On the other hand, one shouldn't take any statements about gods too seriously.

Hmm, I wonder what Comfort would say about fellatio.

[Immanuel Can]

You know the scientific method, I'm sure. It was probably taught to you by your 8th grade science teacher -- phenomenon, questioning, hypothesis, test design, selecting of subjects, finding of a control group, assemblage of equipment, test running, recording of observations, repeatability, criticism and hypothesis revision, retesting, submission to a scientific community, publication...and, of course, epistemic humility throughout, wherein the experimenter does not go beyond the parameters of his test or his data. That's what the scientific method requires.

How much of that is included in Bacon's method? Where is the measurement and calculation?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

[Immanuel Can]

On the other hand, one shouldn't take any statements about gods too seriously.

Why not?

[Will Bouwman]

Hmm, I wonder what Comfort would say about fellatio.

I doubt that cocksucker has heard of them:
https://www.fellatio.band

[Will Bouwman]

How much of that is included in Bacon's method? Where is the measurement and calculation?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Well, if that's an answer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method

[Immanuel Can]

How much of that is included in Bacon's method? Where is the measurement and calculation?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

Well, if that's an answer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method

It's all the information you asked for. And it's not coming from me, because you don't seem to believe me anyway.

As I said, the scientific method is a probabilistic method, not an absolute method. It reduces, rather than aims to eliminate, the chances of a hypothesis turning out to be wrong. But constant revision and retesting is a feature of the method itself, so that's not as much of a concern as you appear to suppose.

So I suggest that Feyerabend's criticisms, while interesting, don't carry much water when pitted against the subsequent real-world success of the method, which led not only to the Industrial Revolution, but to the subsequent Technological Revolution, and now to the Information Revolution, in which we now live -- although all of these could as easily be seen as one long scientific revolution produced by the Baconian method.

I would suggest that Polanyi's critique in Personal Knowledge is much better. It does not attempt to do away with the method, but rather expounds the residual human and faith element in scientific knowledge.

[MikeNovack]

No, the question is whether you know even one case of polytheism that can be shown to be rational. And you don't, apparently.

Here's the simple problem: if I play your game, and try to list this or that polytheism, you'll just say, "Well, that's not real polytheism." Then you'll assure me there's another that's rational, but you'll leave it up to me to go and find it for you. And I'll end up playing "whack a mole" with every form of polytheism in the world, at which point, the game will continue forever.

You are COMPLETELY reversing this (probably intentionally, to avoid having to confess "I find model A7 to be polytheist but can't explain why I find it incoherent"). It would not be I saying "that's not real polytheism" but YOU. I am not asking you to come up with these models, I'll do that, and then ask YOU whether polytheism, whether coherent (what has changed since the last model to make it n longer coherent)

But RATIONAL, I never proposed showing THAT. We are just discussing coherence, not rationality. I wouldn't attempt to present ANY RELIGION as "rational". You don't think any polytheism "coherent" and I don't think any religion "rational" << I'd consider "rationality" inappropriate to apply to religious beliefs >> Coherence has to do with internal consistency, not TRUTH.

Again, is the Yazidism like model (A1) monotheism or polytheism? << do you consider Yazidis monotheists >> Is it coherent?

[Immanuel Can]

No, the question is whether you know even one case of polytheism that can be shown to be rational. And you don't, apparently.

Here's the simple problem: if I play your game, and try to list this or that polytheism, you'll just say, "Well, that's not real polytheism." Then you'll assure me there's another that's rational, but you'll leave it up to me to go and find it for you. And I'll end up playing "whack a mole" with every form of polytheism in the world, at which point, the game will continue forever.

You are COMPLETELY reversing this

No, I'm asking you a very simple question you can't seem to answer.

We are just discussing coherence, not rationality.

Fair enough. Then let's use that wording: give me one that's coherent.

[Will Bouwman]

Well, if that's an answer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method

It's all the information you asked for. And it's not coming from me, because you don't seem to believe me anyway.

I don't believe you because your opinion that scientists follow Bacon's method is not true. As far back as 2013, better informed people than yourself have tried to get through:

Immanuel Can...
3. Francis Bacon invented science...all on his own. Surely you don't believe that. Galileo's 'Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems' (1632) - demonstrated the superiority of hypothetico deductive method over classical thought, but I wouldn't claim Galieo alone 'invented science' either.

As I said, the scientific method is a probabilistic method, not an absolute method.

And as I have said countless times, that is a feature of underdetermination.

It reduces, rather than aims to eliminate, the chances of a hypothesis turning out to be wrong.

There are plenty of instrumentalist scientists who do not care whether an hypothesis is right or wrong. Isaac Newton for example.

So I suggest that Feyerabend's criticisms, while interesting, don't carry much water when pitted against the subsequent real-world success of the method...

Then either you haven't read Feyerabend, or you haven't understood.

...which led not only to the Industrial Revolution, but to the subsequent Technological Revolution, and now to the Information Revolution, in which we now live -- although all of these could as easily be seen as one long scientific revolution produced by the Baconian method.

Feyerabend's criticism is that dogmatic adherence to any one method stunts scientific progress. Bacon's method was a response to the dominant Scholastic philosophy of his time, which was stunting science. Bacon's method was an improvement; but when, inspired by Bacon's fictional Salomon's House, the Royal Society was founded, it adopted the hypothetico deductive method, rather than Bacon's inductive method.
For nearly 13 years the truth has been placed under your nose, but you are a man of such twisted humility that looking like an idiot is less painful than admitting that anyone might know better than you. Again, Bacon called it: Can prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.

[Immanuel Can]

It's all the information you asked for. And it's not coming from me, because you don't seem to believe me anyway.

I don't believe you because your opinion that scientists follow Bacon's method is not true.

That's not what I said. I said Bacon invented the scientific method. He did. I did not say that subsequent scientists have slavishly adhered to it. They've made some modifications, of course; but the fact remains that the very concept of a scientific method begins with Bacon.

Feyerabend's criticism is that dogmatic adherence to any one method stunts scientific progress.

Imagine! How surprising! Give the man a medal.

But let's see what science WITHOUT any method yields...

Oh. We already have. It's called, "supersitition," or "speculation," or "magic," or "alchemy." Good luck with it.

[Will Bouwman]

It's all the information you asked for. And it's not coming from me, because you don't seem to believe me anyway.

I don't believe you because your opinion that scientists follow Bacon's method is not true.

That's not what I said. I said Bacon invented the scientific method. He did. I did not say that subsequent scientists have slavishly adhered to it. They've made some modifications, of course; but the fact remains that the very concept of a scientific method begins with Bacon.

Are you sure you have the right rasher? Roger Bacon (c. 1220–1292)
"...is credited as one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method, along with his teacher Robert Grosseteste. Bacon applied the empirical method of Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) to observations in texts attributed to Aristotle. Bacon discovered the importance of empirical testing when the results he obtained were different from those that would have been predicted by Aristotle."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Bacon

Feyerabend's criticism is that dogmatic adherence to any one method stunts scientific progress.

Imagine! How surprising! Give the man a medal.

But let's see what science WITHOUT any method yields...

Oh. We already have. It's called, "supersitition," or "speculation," or "magic," or "alchemy." Good luck with it.

You missed out religion.

[MikeNovack]

Fair enough. Then let's use that wording: give me one that's coherent.

IC, I don't know if you re being willfully obstructive, or just so blinded by your Christianity as to be unable to discuss comparative religion issues.

I need YOU to judge models monotheist or polytheist (and coherent or incoherent)

You are a fool if you want MY monotheism or polytheism distinction. Have you never encountered anybody who considered CHRISTIANITY to be polytheist? << been required to defend to this person that "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are really one, not three" or that Satan was not another deity, although weaker >>

BTW, before we go further, I would like to make clear that poly-polytheism (actually poly polytheisms and monothesms) is incoherent to us. These are the result of POLITICAL merging of once were once separate religions. The incoherence didn't bother the people of such cultures as they were usually interaction only with one god or a few, of them, not the entire "official pantheon".