Sir:
I respond only to make it clear that I did not exhibit
unchristian behavior in publicly speaking so bluntly. My post was to you
alone, not to the ASA list. Making private posts public is considered
improper if not unethical.
David F. Siemens, Jr.
On Wed, 3 Jan 2001 09:11:39 EST SHinrichs9@aol.com writes:
> In a message dated 1/2/2001 7:22:33 PM Pacific Standard Time,
> dfsiemensjr@juno.com writes:
>
> << Since ad ignorantiam is a fallacy, which you overlook or deny,
> and since
> my second post on the topic showed that you demand impossible
> standards,
> I have to classify you in the "true believer" category, that is,
> one
> immune to any evidence against your view. Hence I see no point in
> continuing the discussion. I regret that this is the case.
> Dave >>
>
>
> Again you did not show any flaw in the basic logic I presented. You
> pointed
> out that I demand impossible standards, but this is a point that I
> acknowledge in the past and most recent notes that in most cases all
>
> hypothesis except one cannot be ruled out. I did not consider it a
> critic of
> the logic just an acknowledgment that it is often impossible to meet
> this
> standard.
>
> A problem is there are critics that will just claim this standard
> can never
> be met so all arguments for the supernatural are not valid. Then
> there are
> critics who will claim any argument that does not use this standard
> is not
> valid Becuase it is not based on logic because PE is the really
> required to
> make a logical argument for a truth claim about reality. So if I
> don't
> mention this PE standard or I do either way critics have comments
> they can
> make to appear to dismiss any argument, valid or not.
>
> I think it is evident that PE is a key logical principal science
> attempts to
> use as scientist go through the process of eliminating hypothesis
> getting
> closer to the correct hypothesis. There are some issues as I
> mentioned where
> the argument can be reduced to finite number of hypothesis which can
> be dealt
> with. You did not address this point specifically but just broad
> brushed them
> all into to many hypothesis. I am aware that according to Godel
> incompleteness theorem much of mathematics cannot be completely
> proved true
> logically. I suspect you agree that scientist have had great success
> in
> understanding reality with using math that was not completely proven
> true but
> can be proven true assuming the fundamentals of set theory which
> cannot be
> proven true according to Godel incompleteness theorem.
>
> Rather than just complaining that there are many cases where this
> perfect
> standard cannot be met, I think it is more constructive to
> investigate if
> there are cases where this perfect standard can be met. Also, it is
>
> reasonable to consider unbiased assumptions such as the fundamentals
> of set
> theory or others. Scientist do this all the time when they
> investigate the
> natural world and it is just as justified for scientist that are
> interested
> in the supernatural world. So I think scientist that are genuinely
> interested
> in determining the truth about the supernatural world if it can be
> done would
> move on from bickering about the many cases where the perfect
> standard cannot
> be met, to discussing practical unbiased criterion. For example,
> discussing
> appropriate criterion for falsifying natural hypothesis, procedures
> for
> determining all possible hypothesis and identify types of issues
> where the
> number hypothesis are few enough to possibly address all of them.
> This would
> be more constructive than dead ended criticism.
>
> You called my position one that is immuned to evidence but my
> articles
> present valid criterion for falsifying my positions and you have not
> even
> been willing to carrying on the discussion to get to these points so
> I think
> my articles make it evident that your discussion deserve this
> criticism more
> than my articles do.
>
>
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