"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
“It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.” - Carl Sagan
"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan
"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
"Nullius 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
"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." - Thomas Henry Huxley
“A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.” Albert Einstein
"Science is empirical. Knowing the answer means nothing. Testing your knowledge means everything." - Lawrence Krauss
"Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism - and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency." - Stephen Jay Gould
"Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work." - James Randi
“Wonders of the Universe is a 2011 television series produced by the BBC, Discovery Channel, and Science Channel, hosted by physicist Brian Cox. Wonders of the Universe was first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC Two on 6 March 2011. The series comprises four episodes, each of which focuses on an aspect of the universe and features a ‘wonder’ relevant to the theme. It follows on from Cox’s previous series for the BBC, Wonders of the Solar System, which was first broadcast in 2010.” [1] Read the rest of this entry »
What is the difference between a soothsayer and an accurate prediction and forecasting foretelling the future weather and climate? Methodology and accuracy of results. First let’s define the terms.
A predictionis a statement or claim that a particular event will occur in the future in more certain terms than a forecast. The etymology of the word is Latin (præ-, “before,” and dicere, “to say“). Howard H. Stevenson writes: “Prediction is at least two things: Important and hard.” Important, because we have to act, and hard because we have to realize the future we want, and what is the best way to get there.
In a scientific context, a prediction is a rigorous, (often quantitative), statement forecasting what will happen under specific conditions, typically expressed in the form If A is true, then B will also be true. The scientific method is built on testing assertions which are logical consequences of scientific theories. This is done through repeatable experiments or observational studies.
A scientific theory whose assertions are not in accordance with observations and evidence will probably be rejected. Theories that make no testable predictions remain protosciences until testable predictions become known to the community.
Additionally, if new theories generate many new predictions, they are often highly valued, for they can be quickly and easily confirmed or falsified (see predictive power). In many scientific fields, desirable theories are those which predict a large number of events from relatively few underlying principles.
A soothsayeris a person who claims to speak sooth (truth or reality, smooth (political savy, gift of the gaff, able to smoothly con), or soft (the soft sell)): specifically one who predicts the future based upon personal, political, spiritual, mental, or religious beliefs rather than scientific facts.
Making up scientific facts or playing “tricks” with them to fit your theory disqualifies one from being a scientist as one is “soothsaying” and very likely committing fraud especially when claims are made that people act upon or when money is involved.
As we are learning from Climategate, clearly the AGW alarmist crowd would rather fudge the data than let the chips fall where they may. Phil Jones, Michael Mann et. al. have a lot to learn from those who accurately predict the weather and climate!
“What is their [Phil Jones Climate Research Unit's] success rate [at predicting the climate using their hypothesis of Anthropogenic Global Warming Climate Change (AGW)]?” – Corbyn
Let’s see. Here below is their infamous hockey stick graph and as the graph below it shows the actual data their success rate is, oh dear worse than zero since they faked the data… as proven with the Climategate revelations.
It seems clear that the CRU forecasts of extreme climate warming of ten years ago have been falsified (i.e. they failed) due to the FACT that the last decade has seen a decline in temperatures. When predicting weather or climate it’s not just your “hypothesis” that is important it’s the actual predictions that you make that succeed or fail to predict the future. You’ve got it wrong Phil Jones, Michael Mann et. al. as anyone can see by looking at the temperatures, and you admit it privately in the Climategate emails, have the guts to be men and publicly admit that your AGW predictions have failed!
The purple line is the rising CO2 levels and as you can see from the blue temperature graph the last decade has declined and not followed the rise in CO2. Funny that. Oh wait, that's direct evidence that the AGW hypothesis failed to predict the last decade and thus falsifies the hypothesis. Oops, darn Nature not cooperating with the hypothesis.
Well it’s the evidence shows it’s conclusive, Phil Jones, Michael Mann et. al. are soothsayers as their Hockey Stick AGW forecasts failed to predict accurately the last ten years.
It’s conclusive Piers Corbyn is on to something significant using the Solar Weather Technique to with high accuracy predict the future weather and climate. Not a soothsayer but a true scientist working his craft.
Let’s explore the Solar Weather Technique of Weather and Climate Forecasting that seems to achieve remarkable results.
“A verification of UK gale forecasts by the ‘solar weather technique’: October 1995–September 1997
In recent years the ‘solar weather’ technique of weather forecasting which takes into account of the influence of the sun has received much attention. No attempt has hitherto been made to determine the success, or otherwise, of elements of these forecasts, which include solar predictors and are prepared 6–11 months in advance of the events they predict. This paper conducts an evaluation of these forecasts but confines attention to the prediction of gales. Skill levels are assessed over different seasons. The results, whilst differing greatly between the seasons, reveal a degree of success that cannot readily be accounted for by chance and suggest that this system of forecasting continues to be assessed over a longer time period to further investigate these findings.“
Further detailed successful results are found on the linked page above.
[Piers] Corbyn’s predictions are based on what is called “The Solar Weather Technique.”[8] The technique “combines statistical analysis of over a century of historical weather patterns with clues derived from solar observations.”[1] He considers past weather patterns and solar observations and sun-earth magnetic connectivity. Conventional meteorology claims that such influences cause minimal impact on the Earth’s atmosphere[9].
“It’s said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is false and tragically false. Look for yourself, this is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people where turned into numbers. … It was not done by gas… It was done by arrogance… it was done by dogma… it was done by ignorance. When people believe they have absolute knowledge with no test in reality this how they behave. this is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of the gods. … Science is a very human kind of knowledge… we are always at the brink of the known… every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute power.” – Bronowski‘s The Ascent of Man
Continuing Dr Bronowski’s personal view of mans major discoveries and the evolution of his thought; this programme highlights the achievement of twentieth century physics in proving that absolute certainty inside or outside science is beyond our grasp.
1) The Method of the Artist.
2) The Invisible Waves.
3) Karl Friedrich Gauss and Göttingen.
4) Max Born and Heisenberg.
5) The Principle of Uncertainty.
6) Leo Szilard.
7) The Tragedy of Scientists.
“Religion puts your mind in a straight jacket.” – Dr Death aka Doctor Jack Kevorkian
“Creeds are a weakness of the will. All religions are to make you conform to a different way of thinking than you feel naturally.” – Doctor Death aka Doctor Jack Kevorkian in part quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson.
“America fits all Fourteen Principles of fascism.” – Doctor Jack Kevorkian
The 14 Defining Characteristics Of Fascism: here and here.
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause.
4. Supremacy of the Military..
5. Rampant Sexism.
6. Controlled Mass Media.
7. Obsession with National Security.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined.
9. Corporate Power is Protected.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption.
14. Fraudulent Elections.
The tantalizing signs of a possible medieval Norse presence in Nunavut were found at the previously examined Nanook archeological site, about 200 km southwest of Iqaluit, where people of the now-extinct Dorset culture once occupied a stretch of Hudson Strait shoreline.
A UNESCO World Heritage site at northern Newfoundland’s L’Anse aux Meadows — about 1,500 km southeast of the Nanook dig — is the only confirmed location of a Viking settlement in North America. There, about 1,000 years ago, it’s believed a party of Norse voyagers from Greenland led by Leif Eiriksson built several sod-and-wood dwellings before abandoning their colonization attempt under threat from hostile natives they called “Skraelings.”
But over the past 10 years, research teams led by the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s chief of Arctic archeology, Pat Sutherland, have compiled evidence from field studies and archived collections that strongly suggests the Norse presence in northern Canada didn’t end with Eiriksson’s retreat from Newfoundland.
At three sites on Baffin Island, which the Norse called “Helluland” or “land of stone slabs”, and at another in northern Labrador, the researchers have documented dozens of suspected Norse artifacts such as Scandinavian-style spun yarn, distinctively notched and decorated wood objects and whetstones for sharpening knives and axes.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also described as the Eastern Garbage Patch or the Pacific Trash Vortex, is a gyre of marine litter in the central North Pacific Ocean located roughly between 135° to 155°W and 35° to 42°N estimated to be twice the size of Texas. The patch is characterized by exceptionally high concentrations of suspended plastic and other debris that have been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre. Despite its size and density, however, the patch is not visible from satellite photography.
Vessel KAISEI is a brigantine, a two-masted vessel square rigged on the foremast, with fore-and-aft sails on the mainmast Over the years she has visited 15 nations with crews from 26 countries and covered 40,000 nautical miles (around 80,000 km) Purchased and operated in 1991 by the Sail Training Association of Japan and renamed KAISEI, which means “Ocean Planet”.
In 1992 sailed with the Columbus fleet, flying the UN flag. KAISEI’s maiden voyage lasted 16 months throughout Europe, East Coast US, Caribbean, Panama Canal, West Coast US and Pacific Islands covering 57,000km. During this time period, the vessel flew the United Nations flag. Under Japanese flag she traveled throughout the Pacific and Asia. Carried over 10,000 trainees during the 14 year period.
OCEAN VOYAGES INSTITUTE Currently operated by Ocean Voyages Institute (Sausalito, Calif.) a non-profit 501(c)3 organization formed in 1979 by a group of international sailors, educators and conservationists whose mission is to teach maritime arts and sciences through the researching and preservation of the world’s oceans.
KAISEI has been operated to promote the preservation of the world’s oceans and maritime arts and sciences and has been involved in variety of educational and awareness projects over the past years which has seen her sailing in British Columbia, Canada, along the West Coast of the United States and Mexico.
Project Kaisei will utilize the vessel Kaisei as the figurehead and focal point in an innovative research expedition to the North Pacific Gyre.
Ocean Voyages Institute in conjunction with a team of international innovators, ocean lovers, sailors,scientists and environmentalists collaborated to launch Project Kaisei. Project Kaisei is seeking viable solutions for the problems associated with plastic waste in the Pacific Ocean’s “Plastic Vortex”, in area estimated to be twice the size of Texas.
This initial expedition will document and systematically examine refuse materials for identification while testing the best catch methods which can be utilized in collecting the waste in the Plastic Vortex for future reprocessing while at the same time maintaining the integrity of the ocean environment and without endangering sea life.
Project Kaisei has been Recognized by the United Nations – Environment Program and recently selected as one of less than ten global “Climate Heroes” in the lead up to the Copenhagen talks on climate change this December. Project Kaisei also has been endorsed by National Geographic who will be collaborating on the distribution of the documentary film. Project Kaisei is currently looking to continue the ground swell of support from individual donations, family foundations and corporations to further this necessary goal.
Many of the sentences in the bible and beliefs uttered at church are in fact designed to be rules that the congregation – aka cult members – can use to identify members of the cult and to more importantly identify those who are not members of the cult and to whom they can treat differently, often harshly differently with torture, murder, rape, death and nasty killing methods. The koran does this with us heathen atheists and anti-theists. The bible does it with the quote above and many others.
Actually what it is giving is a practical and effective rule for keeping members of a cult, any cult, in the cult when their family comes to attempt to save them from their doom as a member of the cult. The cult makes it ok to murder your own family members if they try to extract you out of the cult or to not follow the leadership of the cult “lord”, whomever that might be: jesus, hitler, stalin, bush, jones, the pope, … the list is essentially endless although groups without this don’t count.
Thanks, I’ll be using to in a very important letter to my evangelical young earth creationist zombie jesus death cult focused preacher sister to put into her own “literal” taking of the bible how and why she obliterated my relationships with over eighteen people in my family. It’s her faith that destroyed our family of eight siblings, a still living mother, and all the inlaws and their offspring. Very sad situation which this passage clarifies directly to the heart of it. Thanks. Peace.
If you like history this is an awesome documentary of the battle of Crete and the insurgent resistance that took hold during the Nazi occupation of the island. Nasty stuff which shows that the invaders are never in the right from the perspective of those they occupy. A lesson the USA should learn before it bites them hard again.
The problem with conspiracies is that there can be truth to them even while they are stitched together in paranoid delusions. How do you tell if they are really occurring or not? Hmmm…
“The not-so-good news is that in a “compromise,” the board also voted to require that students “in all fields of science, analyze, evaluate and critique scientific explanations… including examining all sides of scientific evidence of those scientific explanations, so as to encourage critical thinking by the student.”
Excellent! Science is all about the pursuit of the truth of objective reality. Every assumption needs to be questioned otherwise it’s not science but rather it’s dogma if you’re not allowed to question the science.
“Score one for the Discovery Institute.”
Utter NONSENSE. These and other anti-science and anti-science-education crowds LOST in Texas: Discovery Institute, Intelligent Designer proponents, Creationists, Religionists, Our-Science-is-Correct-and-we-Don’t-Have-to-Prove-It-And-If-You-Ask-Questions-You’re-Automatically-A-Denier and Delusionals of all sorts had a huge loss.
Asking questions leads people to give up their delusions if they get the power of asking questions. Sure some imaginary friend delusionals will use that to attempt to push their religious agenda but in the end what will happen is that the battle ground shifts to critical thinking skills where it belongs!
Sharpen your pencils girls and boys and get ready to educate people who don’t know about science, about your field of science, in the ways and means of science, the scientific method and critical thinking skills.
The fostering of asking questions and learning to think that my Roman Catholic parents encouraged in me helped me deprogram their attempts to bring me into their faith. Thank ERG (pardon the expression) for all those science books at home and at school.
Without getting the power of critical thinking anyone is lost in today’s world of magical claims, weird fake science, television, government, bogus medical claims, con men of all kinds, parents, friends and family who are constantly attempting to pull you into their delusions.
Every CULTure you interact with has it’s own delusions and often those are the very ones that people use to justify their killing of others one way or the other. Do you even know how many different CULTureS you’re embedded within? How many? How can you tell? What are the beliefs of your CULTure? How do they blind you?
The Human Belief Engine we call the brain-mind is the culprit not what is in a book and the sooner that people realize that the better. Critical thinking skills are the only path to knowledge devoid of delusions, or at least with minimized delusions, about objective reality.
“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
Sagan’s Principle applies to ALL FIELDS OF SCIENCE as well as ALL wacko claims by non-scientists. To say differently is to assert that any part of science should not be questioned! Asking questions is the fundamental core of science.
“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
Steven Pinker charts the decline of violence from Biblical times to the present, and argues that, though it may seem illogical and even obscene, given Iraq and Darfur, we are living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence.
This is one of the most enlightening talks that I’ve seen on the topic of violence and war.
“If the death rates in tribal warfare had prevailed in the 20th century there would have been two billion deaths rather than a hundred million.” – Steven Pinker
Yes, we still have a long way to go as one hundred million deaths due to war is unacceptable. Holding political leaders personally responsible for each death that occurs on their watch under their orders will take humanity to the next level of peace by increasing the decline of violence even faster. How? Which politicians will go to war when they know that if they do they’ll be automatically brought up on charges of crimes against humanity! Let’s start by bringing the previous USA administration to justice for their unspeakable crimes against humanity.
TRUTH, FAITH AND REASON: POPE BENEDICT XVI’S LECTURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF REGENSBURG
By Gerald E. Marsh
The Stupid Delusionals with Invisible Friends, it burns. Cartoon by Plognark dot com - Thanks...
Pope Benedict XVI interleaved two themes in his lecture at the University of Regensburg on September 12, 2006.1 These will be discussed here in two separate parts: Truth, Faith, and Reason and The Dialogue of Cultures. The first addresses the Pope’s proposal to expand scientific reasoning to include the “rationality of faith”; and the second with the threat of radical Islam, and whether a “dialogue of cultures” is possible if the West persists in its belief in what the Pope calls a “reason which is deaf to the divine”.
PART ONE: TRUTH, FAITH AND REASON The essence of the Enlightenment, as put by Isaiah Berlin in his essay The Counter-Enlightenment, “is the proclamation of the autonomy of reason and the methods of the natural sciences, based on observation as the sole reliable method of knowledge, and the consequent rejection of the authority of revelation, sacred writings and their accepted interpreters, tradition, prescription, and every form of non-rational and transcendent source of knowledge”. Notice that Berlin does not say that this approach is the sole method of obtaining knowledge, only that it is the sole reliable method, meaning that knowledge obtained in this way can be confirmed by experiment. This form of knowledge is increasingly coming into conflict with beliefs based on divine revelation.
Knowledge based on reason and the methods of natural science is threatening to many of those who hold conventional religious beliefs because the implications of such knowledge raise the fear that their lives may lose meaning and direction, and that they will no longer have an ethical basis for behavior. They especially abhor a future bereft of personal immortality. If the origin of life, and humanity in particular, has a natural explanation, how can one believe in the immortal soul, or that humanity is central to God’s creation? Belief in the findings of science about our origins will not only destroy the creation myths of humanity, but will also force the acceptance of the proposition that impersonal and indifferent forces were behind its creation, along with that of all other living creatures.
On January 22, 2008, in Gatineau, Quebec, the fourth in a monthly series of lectures on scientific exploration and discovery entitled “Out of the Cold: The Roy Koerner Lectures” featured Archaeologist Dr. Patricia Sutherland (Canadian Museum of Civilization). These lectures have been organized in recognition of International Polar Year and the 50th Anniversary of the Polar Continental Shelf Project. Dr. Sutherland examined the nature and extent of contact between the Norse and the Aboriginal occupants of the Eastern Arctic.
“Jared Diamond is the author of “Guns, Germs and Steel” and the current New York Times’ best selling “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.” This lecture examines the factors that caused great civilizations of the past to collapse and what we can learn from their fates. Series: “Voices” [4/2005] [Humanities] [Show ID: 9390]“
On January 22, 2008, in Gatineau, Quebec, the fourth in a monthly series of lectures on scientific exploration and discovery entitled “Out of the Cold: The Roy Koerner Lectures” featured Archaeologist Dr. Patricia Sutherland (Canadian Museum of Civilization). These lectures have been organized in recognition of International Polar Year and the 50th Anniversary of the Polar Continental Shelf Project. 
