"The meaning of the world is the separation of wish and fact." - KURT GÖDEL
"According to Peirce's doctrine of fallibilism, the conclusions of science are always tentative. The rationality of the scientific method does not depend on the certainty of its conclusions, but on its self-corrective character: by continued application of the method science can detect and correct its own mistakes, and thus eventually lead to the discovery of truth".
A guiding principle for accepting claims of catastrophic global events, miracles, incredible healing, invisible friends, or fill in the blank is:
“extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” - Carl Sagan
"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable." - H. L. Mencken
I would add irrational and highly delusional to the mix when faith requires one to accept magical violations of the well known, well tested or easily demonstrated laws of Nature. - PWL
"Science is Progress and the Future. Faith is regression to the Dark Ages." - PWL
"Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness." - Alfred Korzybski
"Science is a search for basic truths about the Universe, a search which develops statements that appear to describe how the Universe works, but which are subject to correction, revision, adjustment, or even outright rejection, upon the presentation of better or conflicting evidence." - James Randi
"Hypotheses are nets: only he who casts will catch." - Novalis
"Nullis in verba. Take no one's word for it." - Motto of the Royal Society
"I'm trying to find out NOT how Nature could be, but how Nature IS." - Richard Feynman
“Adnan Oktar (born Ankara, February 2, 1956), also known by his pen name, Harun Yahya, is a Turkish proponent of Islamic creationism, anti-Zionism,[1] and, more particularly, supports Old Earth creationism.[2][3] Oktar denounces Zionism as racism and Freemasonry, and Darwinism as the source of terrorism.[4] He has created controversies in the past few years by sending out thousands of unsolicited texts advocating Islam and creationism to schools and colleges in several European countries and USA.[3][5] Oktar had defended his views by litigation; he is responsible for the blocking of numerous, high-profile Web sites in Turkey. Read the rest of this entry »
”Faith is belief in the absence of evidence, science is belief in the presence of evidence.” ‘When the evidence disagrees with a scientific proposition, the proposition is discarded. When the evidence disagrees with a religious proposition, the evidence is thrown out’. – Victor J. Stenger
I work to eliminate belief and faith from my life, now I’m not talking about the “belief” that I left my car parked in it’s spot and whether or not it’s still there, I know I left it there but it’s possible that it is no longer there for a variety of reasons all possible within the known limits of objective reality. I’m talking about the kind of belief and faith that asserts “truths” or “facts” or “aspects” of the objective reality of Nature, about the very nature of Nature itself without any evidence to stand on. That is the kind of belief and faith that is the most pernicious and dangerous. I prefer knowledge that can be verified or proven with hard evidence or even better, proven with experiment done by yourself.
The problem is that the word “belief” has SO many meanings and people often don’t mean the same thing by the word. In addition when talking with “believers” it’s a huge pile of dogma that you’re taking about when you use the word “belief”, it’s not just one belief.
The point Stegner is making is which determines what you accept as real, the faith based beliefs and dogma, or the hard evidence? If the beliefs and dogma determine what is real, that is religion, that is highly dangerous, that is what leads to delusions. If the evidence determines what is real that is science, that is rationality, that is being connected with the objective reality of Nature where we actually exist.
Of course it all hinges on what the evidence is. There is good evidence and then there is bad evidence and faulty proofs. Read the rest of this entry »
“Scientists from around the world are providing even more evidence of global warming. ‘A comprehensive review of key climate indicators confirms the world is warming and the past decade was the warmest on record,’ the annual State of the Climate report declares. Compiled by more than 300 scientists from 48 countries, including Canada, the report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said its analysis of 10 indicators that are ‘clearly and directly related to surface temperatures, all tell the same story: Global warming is undeniable.’” – Slashdot.org article “Global Warming ‘Undeniable,’ Report Says”
Yikes, start packing for doomsday for the soothsayers are out and about using The Force to intensify propaganda after their self inflicted Climate Gate revelations of their Alarmist Scientist Core Cult members improprieties. Pack light though, it’s going to be a scorcher, allegedly. Hawaii at the North Pole. I really am beginning to wonder if all these alarmist scientists are just rapture christians firing things up for the coming end times? Nostradamus still beats any climate scientist with soothsaying doomsday predictions. Hands down, and he’s been dead a long time. Now how can that be? Let’s explore the science that prevents predictions of complex systems. Read the rest of this entry »
CARGO CULT SCIENCE by Richard Feynman
Adapted from the Caltech commencement address given in 1974.
During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a method was discovered for separating the ideas–which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn’t work, to eliminate it. This method became organized, of course, into science. And it developed very well, so that we are now in the scientific age. It is such a scientific age, in fact that we have difficulty in understanding how witch doctors could ever have existed, when nothing that they proposed ever really worked–or very little of it did.
But even today I meet lots of people who sooner or later get me into a conversation about UFOS, or astrology, or some form of mysticism, expanded consciousness, new types of awareness, ESP, and so forth. And I’ve concluded that it’s not a scientific world.
As is evident in the first few frames of this security camera you can see the building (reportedly a shopping mall type structure) collapse. That’s extremely fast considering that it basically went down on the first few earthquake wave crests in the first few seconds of this 7.0 quake. It really shows the potent power of The BIG ONE! Imagine what that would do in your city.
At seven seconds into the video the building is standing. The camera starts moving at second 8. Smoke from the collapsing building is visible during second 10 and clearly the building falls by second 11. That’s about three seconds from first wave to catastrophic destruction of the structure. That’s not even enough time to comprehend what is happening if you’re standing in the structure before the roof comes down on your head. Yikes.
Cars driving down the road clearly divert from their lanes. At second 25 a truck appears on the left side of the video and attempts to turn left onto the main road and arcs left losing control – having just missed a car by a second or two – and comes to a stop before hitting the collapsing building. Double yikes.
As you can see from this Google Earth Satellite image below annotated with earthquake symbols, most of which have happened between Jan 10th, 2010 and today, Jan 18th, there is a massive cluster of aftershocks to the west of the hard hit area of Port-Au-Prince. What is of note though is the numerous numbers of low magnitude quakes just to the north of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Some of these are actually under Puerto Rico. Too close for comfort.
(Click image to enlarge).
This is quite the number of aftershocks and also reveals the underlying fault lines.
Do these sets of aftershocks under and to the north of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands provide a warning of dangers lurking or has the pressures on the underlying plates been relieved somewhat so that danger has been reduced? I wonder.
Update 20100119: Additional earthquakes: “It’s one week after the Haiti Earthquake and the World has seen earthquakes in Argentina, Venezuela and most recently Guatemala.” – San Francisco Gate (1). How likely are these additional quakes related to the Haiti quake and aftershocks? Could these be adjustments resulting from the Haiti quake? Hmm….
Update 20100120: The quakes continue in the region with another large one hitting Haiti (5.9 with some reports saying 6.1) today.
The profound deep arrogance of man is revealed in the self imposed delusional mythological belief systems from the Bronze Ages. Many people, purportedly the vast majority of people on Earth, believe that the universe was created for man. How arrogant. How sad. The cartoon above says it well.
Let’s get it through our thick skulls. The universe wasn’t created for human beings. We simple evolved here fighting and clawing our way from sub-cellular life to multi-cellular all the way up to human being. To say that the universe was created for us is so insulting to our ancestors that it isn’t funny- it does them a deep disrespect for it says that their struggle in the continuous chain of life from them to us was unnecessary and make believe just to suit the whims of some arrogant God that want’s to toy with us for his/her/it’s own designs.
Anyone who truly gets the notion of freedom and independence must reject the notions of arrogance implied and supported by the profoundly horrific self conceited notion that the universe was created for us.
“The natural state of the world for the last few million years is ice ages with intermittent warm periods lasting you know typically 10,000 years which we’re in now, year 10,000 now so logically there is an ice age due.” – Piers Corbyn
Regarding Piers Corbyn’s recent forecasts.
This graphic from NSIDC on the right side shows the “negative phase of the artic oscillation” weather pattern that seems to be happening now as Piers Corbyn forecast with the cold blowing (see the two black arrows labeled “cold” in the right side of the diagram) over northern Europe and Canada and the USA.
It sure looks like Piers Corbyn called it right using a forecasting model based upon the Arctic Oscillation Index and comprehension of the diagram you show above. Cold blowing across Europe and Canada/USA in the NO graphic as Piers forecast. Fascinating.
This interview occurred in October just before the whistle-blower released the Climategate Files which confirm many of the long suspected crimes against science and humanity by Jones, Mann, et. al..
