"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
The Government doesn’t have the right to stop people from expressing themselves in non-violent ways regardless of where they are. Read the USA Constitution, doesn’t say anything about the rights of citizens being suspended in the Rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial.
U.S. Park Police Jump The Shark on people expressing their rights under the Thomas Jefferson memorial statue. Jefferson weeps.
“Five people were arrested for dancing at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, in defiance of a ban on demonstrations at the site.” – Digital Journal
Arrest the police offices for assault and false arrest and for wasting the public money, which is fraud on their part.
Charge this officer with: Physical assault by U.S. Park Police Office against Man in White Shirt: the body slam assault #1:
Charge this officer with: Choking Physical Assault by U.S. Park Police Office against Man in White Shirt: the choking assault assault #2:
Two videos capture many more assaults by the U.S. Park Service Offices on their Rampage of Violating Rights, plus analysis and cautionary advice on filming police.
Sorry Sir Paul Maxime Nurse, PRS (President of the Royal Society), in science funded by the public purse you’ve got to show your work when asked for it. If there are any scientists who refuse to show their work they can expect to get Freedom Of Information Requests. All they have to do is put their work with all the full details fully documented so that their entire paper including all data and details of experiments can be replicated step by step up on their research lab’s web site so that their work can be verified, corrected or refuted in part or in whole. It’s all very easy if they have already done their science carefully!
“Show and justify your work”: If you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen, and if you can’t stand skepticism about your methodology, assumptions, and analyses get out of science — go into religion. – Indur M. Goklany, Science and technology policy analyst, United States Department of the Interior, Represented the United States at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and during the negotiations that led to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
But no Sir Paul Maxime Nurse, the all mighty and all powerful President of the Royal Society wants scientists to abandon and give up the scientific method. If you hide data or details of your papers that are required to replicate the alleged claims then expect to be challenged on it especially when the alleged claims have a significant impact upon the public purse or policy.
“Freedom of information laws are being misused to harass scientists and should be re-examined by the government, according to the president of the Royal Society.” – Guardian
Woops, can’t do that as it’s in violation of the rules of the scientific method and you should know better than that Sir Paul Maxime Nurse. Heck your own Royal Society says:
These climate scientists bust a move violating the scientific method and the philosophy of science with their CO2 Climate Doomsday Rapture Prophetic rhetoric.
The amazing thing is that they seem to be utterly oblivious to the ethical violations of the scientific method they are committing against the philosophy of science. Their smug arrogance isn’t even he worst part.
We need to start asking those making the wild claims what they actually mean by “climate change”. What constitutes “climate change”? What defines “climate”? Is it just the range of limits of weather during some period of time? What the heck do they actually mean?
What are they actually freaked out about? 1c warmer?
If one looks at climate as being the range of weather over the last ~10,000 years then it’s clear that not much has changed at all and in fact it’s a wee bit cooler by something like -2c to -3c or there abouts. Damn the Romans had it warmer. Read the rest of this entry »
In the 60 minutes interview Obama states his notion of “revenge justice”. What was more disturbing though is his self justifying attitude that anyone who disagrees with his style of “revenge eye for an eye justice” has to “have their heads examined”. Using the methods of Osama bin Laden doesn’t make you a better man Obama, it just makes you another terrorist and murderer. That’s the problem with the revenge notion of justice, you become what your enemy is.
Justice: “Theory of the morally appropriate way of resolving social differences. There is no one theory of justice. Read the rest of this entry »
“Nullis in verba. Take no one’s word for it.” – Motto of the Royal Society
In a FREE society people are free to “believe” or “not believe” any claim of science, however BOTH are making a mistake!!!
Belief: taking as true (or false) that which you have no evidence for; basing your belief upon faith or trust (another form of faith).
Belief has NOTHING to do with science, belief is a process of the mind that takes things on faith rather than evidence that can be verified, preferably by each person or in a basic science class room. Read the rest of this entry »
Paths To Knowledge (dot Science) 