Ghosts

[Big Brother]

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, ever. That is illogical. Straight up.

It's your opinion that ghosts don't exist. I still think it's very much a belief, considering there is no evidence for or against ghosts and, you are already saying they do not exist. I do understand you. You are saying that there is no reason for you to believe in ghosts because you never experienced a ghost, or there is no evidence. To you they may not exist, but that is not necessarily indicative of reality itself.

You seem to see things as either existing or not existing but fail to recognize that a majority of the stuff that exists isn't observable. The reality is that the existence of ghosts is an untestable hypothesis currently and therefore a matter of belief much like God.

I'm sorry but you're wrong and we're really just going to have to agree to disagree. I maintain that absence of evidence is evidence of absence until proven otherwise. Because there is no evidence of ghosts in the real world, there are no ghosts. Until proven otherwise, it's perfectly reasonable to make such a statement while maintaining factuality. For all intensive purposes, what has not been proven does not exist.

You're also wrong about the majority of stuff that exists isn't observable, modern science has made us able to observe far more than what we would be able to without it, only using our meager senses. Even dark matter and dark energy is observable, dark matter making up around 27% of the mass and energy in the observable universe and dark energy making up 68% of the energy in the observable universe. Every scientific certainty we have, and thus every solid fact our race possesses is a result of observation and confirmation of our observations through experimentation. God does not exist either, there is no evidence that god exists and thus no reason to deny the fact that as far anyone knows, as far as our scientific understanding of the universe has taken us, god does not exist. It seems you would have us live in a world tempered by the uncertainty of endless possibilities, but I prefer certainties, no matter how temporary they are. What we know for sure, what has been and can be proven, is the foundation of our understanding of the world around us and we have no choice but to accept the reality which is proven to us as it is in this very moment.

 

[Ernsters]

-snip-

Why do you care about their messages? What does it matter what these ethereal beings have to say about our existence? We should not seek affirmation or validation of our existence outside ourselves. We are independent, intelligent, thinking beings with free will. Why do we need any answers other than those we can provide for ourselves through the means that we possess?

He chooses to care about messages, because he is an independent, intelligent, thinking being with free will.  

 

[Big Brother]

He chooses to care about messages, because he is an independent, intelligent, thinking being with free will.  

But why? Surely you don't consider that sufficient reasoning, that's only half an answer. Why does his thoughts, his independence, intelligence and free will make him care about the messages? I suppose it's probably not something you can answer.

 

[RoboMonkey]

I'm sorry but you're wrong and we're really just going to have to agree to disagree. I maintain that absence of evidence is evidence of absence until proven otherwise. Because there is no evidence of ghosts in the real world, there are no ghosts. Until proven otherwise, it's perfectly reasonable to make such a statement while maintaining factuality. For all intensive purposes, what has not been proven does not exist.

You're also wrong about the majority of stuff that exists isn't observable, modern science has made us able to observe far more than what we would be able to without it, only using our meager senses. Even dark matter and dark energy is observable, dark matter making up around 27% of the mass and energy in the observable universe and dark energy making up 68% of the energy in the observable universe. Every scientific certainty we have, and thus every solid fact our race possesses is a result of observation and confirmation of our observations through experimentation. God does not exist either, there is no evidence that god exists and thus no reason to deny the fact that as far anyone knows, as far as our scientific understanding of the universe has taken us, god does not exist. It seems you would have us live in a world tempered by the uncertainty of endless possibilities, but I prefer certainties, no matter how temporary they are. What we know for sure, what has been and can be proven, is the foundation of our understanding of the world around us and we have no choice but to accept the reality which is proven to us as it is in this very moment.

First of all: science does not prove anything. There is no "proof". There is no certainty in this universe. If you want to pretend you are certain of something, go ahead. But science is only capable of vaguely pointing you towards the truth, and will never be able to give you the truth. But this is delving into philosophy, of which I am very well educated thanks to my Jesuit university roots.

Second of all: dark matter has not been directly observed, and your numbers are way off, dark matter makes up far more than just that percentage of matter in the universe. We don't even know what dark matter is. We have never even observed it, ever. EVER. We know that something has to exist to fill in the gap in our knowledge, but we just made up the term dark matter for the moment.

Also, we have no evidence of free will, at least I think we don't.

Best explanation for why absence of evidence is not evidence of absence: 

I wouldn't place all my faith in science if I were you, and this is coming from someone who holds science to a very high standard and from someone who has studied it intensely and knows very much about it. I take evidence very seriously. There are just so many unknown unknowns for me to be living off of what we know now.

 

[Big Brother]

First of all: science does not prove anything. There is no "proof". There is no certainty in this universe. If you want to pretend you are certain of something, go ahead. But science is only capable of vaguely pointing you towards the truth, and will never be able to give you the truth. But this is delving into philosophy, of which I am very well educated thanks to my Jesuit university roots.

Of course science proves things. It's almost ridiculous to say that it doesn't, every scientific inquiry and experiment with conclusive and verifiable evidence proves something. Sure, this may all be some dream or a very advanced simulation, but we have no choice but to accept it for what it is and science is the tool we have to build certain knowledge of the world around us. It's the only truth we have.
 

Second of all: dark matter has not been directly observed, and your numbers are way off, dark matter makes up far more than just that percentage of matter in the universe. We don't even know what dark matter is. We have never even observed it, ever. EVER. We know that something has to exist to fill in the gap in our knowledge, but we just made up the term dark matter for the moment.

And why does it matter if it has been directly observed? Many things that we know exist and that are part of the observable universe (which includes everything that in principle can be observed from Earth) cannot be directly observed by human beings. This doesn't mean that such phenomena cannot be observed indirectly through other means and conduits. As for my numbers, I got them from NASA and I trust them to know the numbers more than I trust you to know them. Here:

"The newly estimated expansion rate of the universe, known as Hubble's constant, is 67.15 plus or minus 1.2 kilometers/second/megaparsec. A megaparsec is roughly 3 million light-years. This is less than prior estimates derived from space telescopes, such as NASA's Spitzer and Hubble, using a different technique. The new estimate of dark matter content in the universe is 26.8 percent, up from 24 percent, while dark energy falls to 68.3 percent, down from 71.4 percent. Normal matter now is 4.9 percent, up from 4.6 percent."

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/planck/news/planck20130321.html#.V6CI2aKK-ck

As for free will, the only evidence I need to believe in its existence is the proof my own psyche provides by exercising free will in practice. We are responsible for our own actions.

Absence of evidence is evidence of absence, you still haven't shown me anything that disproves my line of reasoning and it's more or less a futile effort at this point.

I don't put faith in science, faith and science is something I don't like to mix. Science is knowledge, science is what we know. You don't need faith to believe it what has been proven to be real and true. There are many unknowns, but there are many "knowns" as well and as far as I'm concerned, we have no choice but to accept what we know now to be certain because not doing so would be akin to choosing insanity. Without the accumulated knowledge we have today, certainties built on certainties, we would still be banging rocks together and sucking marrow out of bones.