Enjoy, kids. It’s Russell and Don on the show this coming Sunday.
Subject: Tracie Harris is wrong!
The Argument from Ignorance is completely False. Why do Atheist need scientific proof to prove every event that happens or is not true. Thus why believe in any historical History events that can’t be proven. Tell me if Washington crossed the delaware, if gold was discovered in california, Did Billy the Kid actually exist ? Give me 100 percent validation( You can’t ) See you can’t pick and choose what you can’t prove. I really don’t understand what your organization stands for , if you don’t believe in god then why do you care about anyone else beliefs. What our your organization goals other than spewing CRAP out of your mouth. have you FED the homeless , Shelter the Poor, give hope to the Dying. Don’t Tell me what you done in the name of jesus, Tell me what your organization has accomplished ! Do you believe the SUN will Rise in the Morning, Scientist don’t know why this happens everyday, other than A hypothesis. It can’t be explained . open your eyes know the TRUTH.
Good luck.
Yeah, looks like we’ll need it.
I disagree with this guy. Martin, tell us. What HAVE you done in the name of Jesus lately?
…. tilts head…. did he just say we can’t explain why the sun rises every morning o.0
Awww, it’s a little Bill O’Reilly in training! Just wait ’til he finds out about the tides!!
Fun Fact: yes, Washington did cross the Delaware, but he didn’t chop down a cherry tree. That story was made up by Parson Weems in 1800, shortly after Washington had died.
The more you know…
I guess if we went to California and looked at some maps of old gold mines and went to the abandoned mines and found gold in them, that wouldn’t count for anything. Satan probably just put it there to trick us.
Sun goes up, sun comes down. You can’t explain that.
Well, except for the rotation of the earth and … ah, fuckin’ tides.
The sun DOESN’T rise in the morning, it is a perceptual illusion moron.
“Give me 100 percent validation( You can’t )”
This person has an amazing talent for missing what Tracie was saying. Things aren’t true by default. Some things are question marks and some things don’t really matter that much if we’re off on what “really happened”. (We can still strive to be accurate in our knowledge and beliefs.)
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury… this is Chewbacca.”
F@#king planetary rotation, how does it work?
There was even an episode where Jen explained very clearly how Historians determine what most likely happened in the past. It obviously differs from the way science works as essentially none of it is recreatable. No, no one knows %100 perfectly what happened 200 years ago, but we have a pretty good idea with the evidence we have.
@ troelsjkobsen :
Here onErath, very wellthankyou! On tidally locked exoplanets such as Bellopheron (51 Pegasi b), Osiris (HD-string of numbers I can’t right now recall) and Gliese 581 b,c,and e toname a few not quite so well! (Such exoplanets still turn but in lockstep with one side always facing to or from their star.)
Incidentally, our daytime Star (aka Sun) doesn’t rise each morning, Earth’s rotation shifts the terminator* at a regular predictable rate so that the Space facing hemisphere becomes the Sun facing hemisphere and, yes, basic science explains this very well.
* Yes that’s what the line separating sunlitand starlit hemispheres is called.
“The Argument from Ignorance is completely False. ”
Translation: “How DARE you tell me I can’t wallow in my own ignorance!”
Step 1. Evidence-based methods can’t offer 100% certainty.
Step 2. People have claimed to reach 100% certainty somehow.
Step 3. ???
Step 4. Prophet!
My poe detector is going off…
I don’t know that that’s the point:
I say that George W. Bush crossed the Delaware, you can’t prove Washington did – therefore George W. Bush did.
I say they found aliens in California, you can’t prove they found gold – therefore aliens.
I say Billy the Kid didn’t exist, you say he did – no evidence? Therefore I’m right.
That’s what rational people do. If you make an absurd claim, we’re going to ask for evidence. I don’t know why this is complicated. Furthermore, it’s not that we say it isn’t true as much as that it’s not demonstrated yet, so we don’t accept it.
Uh, we don’t. If the qualifier is “can’t be proven”, then yeah, that would be silly to “believe in”.
Most of those events aren’t extraordinary, and are corroborated by sufficient evidence to qualify as demonstrated – thus not in the “unproven” category.
What is with this OCD frothing-at-the-mouth obsession with absolute certainty? We don’t need 100% validation to accept something as true.
You see, when we say “prove”, we don’t mean the mathematical absolute esoteric sense. What we mean by “prove” is essentially “demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt”. I wouldn’t say that anything can be “100 percent validated”, but validated sufficiently so that we’re safe to conclude it’s true.
Well, no, but we’re not doing that. Everything is “unproven” until justified by sufficient evidence. Some things in history are, some aren’t. A lot of that depends on how extraordinary the claim is.
Pizza
Beliefs inform one’s actions, and if their beliefs morph into thinking that atheists are demonspawn are about to destroy the world, we could be looking at another holocaust.
It’s kind of important what people believe, if it has the potential to harm others. Most of the time, it’s on the scale of making sure that their beliefs aren’t destroying science education, legislating their “morality” onto others, etc.
Please review these other reasons
Why does it seem like anyone who asks this kind of question is just completely and utterly oblivious to the harms religious belief does? Oh wait, that’s why.
How did we switch over from standards of evidence to charity? Let’s say the ACA hypothetically did no charity/volunteer work at all. That doesn’t invalidate their discussions about religion. Is this an ad hominem I smell?
Does helping deconvert people count?
My poe detector spidey sense is tingling.
Why is the theistic thought process so incoherent and unintelligible? They can barely string together sentences, let alone make a cohesive point.
The truth? About the sun? Have you cracked open a science book? Or is this a meta-observation about us in general?
See there? That’s what Parson Weems did for Jesus. What have you done?
Yet another mind turned into mush by religion. So sad.
Was that email from Mohegon Broadfoot?
Sun goes up, sun goes down. Can’t explain that.
If you’re ever frustrated by such a deliberate ignoramus throwing about the word “proof”, remember that it’s not a particularly useful concept in an adversarial debate, because proof is a subjective standard.
It means “enough evidence to convince me“. And if I’m sufficiently stubborn, you can pile evidence in front of me until I can’t see over it and I can carry on insisting “not enough evidence to convince me!”
The point of that stunt in the Dover trial was, of course, to convince the judge.
“Enough evidence for any rational person” isn’t a useful standard when debating someone irrational.
To summarise:
You cant prove anything, all knowledge is faith based, therefore god exists. Oh and you atheists don’t give a shit about anyone, why would you if there’s no supervisor watching you, it’s only Jesus people who help children.
Scientists are only guessing how the sun comes up in the morning, they don’t really know and couldn’t prove it anyway. The true scientists at geneisiscreationyahew.org.god have an expiation that makes more sense, it’s called god and he moves the sun round the earth so that it creates morning and night. Disprove it atheists
This email is too stupid to even comment on. It was either written by a poe or a 12 year old child of fundamental xtian parents. Weeding through garbage emails must be a full time job for you guys and gals.
Any idea when the hunting licences for these will be issued.
Mine too. Singularisation and capitalisation of atheist and comic sans font just screams Poe.
This. I don’t get it. It’s like they think that if you can’t get to absolute certainty, then the only other option is to just make shit up.
Reasonable provisional conclusions? Evaluation of available evidence? Any of this ring a bell?
Just like “logic” means “whatever I agree with”.
Um, to be fair, MARTIN put the email in comic sans. It’s a common joke which I’ve seen used mostly on Pharyngula, where the intent is to deliberately make the writer look stupid. Not that the help was required in this case…
I only wish I knew how to include PZ’s little Gumby icon.
Uh… I think you completely missed the joke. Read this blog post and you might get the humor here: http://freethoughtblogs.com/axp/2010/10/09/in-which-insane-clown-posse-reveal-themselves-to-be-in-fact-insane-clowns/
This is proof positive that home-schooling does not work. It is obvious that he was not taught about anything resembling logic, making an argument, and so on. I think this is also proof-positive of the ignorance of bible-based teaching.
Just say everyone one else has to wake up to the pile of truth he has presented. Oh it just seems so easy to him. I think mom graded on a significant curve for this guy to pass. Even worse, the person responsible for providing this guy a little reality testing shows their ignorance quite well. To let him continue to believe he is doing a good job and to think he knows knows what he is talking about is proof positive of a lack of teaching credentials.
Sun goes down? Hmmm, well that DOES explain that burning sensation.
Never. Ignoramus Americanus is a protected species, prized by preachers, politicians and other con artists.
My friend, you are a winner.
I don’t think Poe’s are as prevalent as we would like them to be. I think that Hanlon’s razor is an fine rebuttal to the application of Poe’s Law. It is my life’s philosophy.
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
“This is proof positive that home-schooling does not work.”
No. It isn’t. Home-schooling done properly actually works and it’s a much better way to learn for many children. I would’ve loved to have been home-schooled since public school was too slow for me and my parents wouldn’t let me skip grades. Children who are home-schooled properly turn out to have better social skills, manners, and they’re more knowledgeable in general.
It’s absurd to claim home-schooling doesn’t work based on this email, aside from the fact that you don’t know if this was a product of home-school or public school(or private school), without showing how this is typical of home-schooled upbringing.
Here are some studies on home-schooling: http://www.hslda.org/research/
“Proof positive” it is not (redundancy check), but it is hard to fathom how this fella could have received a formal education.
“Children who are home-schooled properly turn out to have better social skills, manners, and they’re more knowledgeable in general.”
So, basically, when it works it’s the best and when it doesn’t it doesn’t count?
Hehe, I was giving the emailer the benefit of possibly just pulling a goof, but sadly, I’m sure it’s a sincere email.
It’s sad that someone would be so ignorant of the scientific method or historical methodology. Most scholars in my field of music will readily admit that there are things we don’t know and may never know. If they don’t admit that some other scholar who has also studied the same subject will not hesitate to point out the weakness or inaccuracy of the claim. I would assume that the same goes for other fields. Not knowing something isn’t a weakness of the rest of knowledge. It’s just a truthful accounting for the current state of knowledge. Who knows what scientists or historians or other scholars will discover tomorrow? Altering what we have assumed or believed based on new evidence is a strength, not a weakness.
No. Schooling done properly actually works, whether done at home or at an actual school. The whole point of home schooling is that people can do it no matter how horribly unqualified they are.
The problem is that there’s no oversight to ensure that the children are actually being schooled, rather than just occupied and indoctrinated.
Sure, if your parents are college professors who pull in their colleagues to tutor you, your home schooling will be great. However, that’s hardly the norm.
All too often home schooling is just about allowing bigoted, ignorant people to teach their children to be bigoted and ignorant.