Path: utzoo!hoptoad!cpsc6a!rtech!mtxinu!unisoft!gethen!farren
From: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Newsgroups: alt.flame
Subject: Re: Christmas Celebration
Message-ID: <534@gethen.UUCP>
Date: 7 Jan 88 15:13:23 GMT
References: <3445@ihlpl.ATT.COM> <7706@eddie.MIT.EDU> <5409@sol.ARPA> <4079@uwmcsd1.UUCP>
Distribution: alt
Organization: There's Unix there in Oakland
Lines: 84
Keywords: Pseudo-science, Convergence

In article <4079@uwmcsd1.UUCP>, markh@csd4.milw.wisc.edu (Mark William Hopkins) writes:
>In article <512@gethen.UUCP> farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren) writes:
>>And here I thought that Mark might be going to give us an example of
>>where science and religion coincide, rather than an example of where
>>pseudo-science and religion happen to touch on the same subjects.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> 
>      Perhaps you ought to read the journals before hastily coming to such 
> conclusions about the nature of these investigations.

Which journals are you talking about?

>I also believed it
>was pseudo-science until curiousity compelled me to look (which so few ever
>bother to do).  That the experiences exist is not in question.

Oh?  Last time I checked, there was CONSIDERABLE question.  The question
isn't, by the way, whether or not people believe that they've experienced
these phenomena, but whether or not the phenomena themselves were real
ones.  Even Elizabeth Kubler-Ross admits that these are spiritual questions,
not scientific ones.

>But people do experience these experiences.

Maybe so, maybe not.  This says nothing about whether or not this is
scientific evidence, though.  Generally, it is not.

>       About Pre-Birth experiences, this is something YOU CAN VERIFY OR REFUTE.

Bull.  This is something you can accept or reject, but there is no possible
way to scientifically verify or refute it.  Therefore, it isn't science,
and you shouldn't try to maintain that it is.

>     It is time that we realise that when dealing with the sciences of the mind
>or with sciences concerning people, testimony becomes a valid form of evidence
>until something better comes along.

And as long as this is true, then the 'sciences' you are talking about are
NOT sciences, but only speculation.  If, and only if, the testimony of
human beings is not the sole evidence of the existence of a phenomenon,
then it may be possible to start to investigate those phenomena scientifically.
Remember, testimony would have it that astrology is a scientific discipline;
at least, a majority of people seem to believe that astrology works.  That
does NOT mean that it is science!

>Read the research journals about these topics, then tell me what you think.

Again, what research journals?  Just because they exist does not make them
authoritative or scientific.  You can print up a 'research journal' for
any damn thing you feel like.  That doesn't make that belief truth.

>     You did not say anything about my examples concerning Quantum Theory or
>Cantor's theory of transfinite Cardinals and Ordinals.  I recommend a book by
>Rudy Rucker called "Infinity and the Mind."  You do not mean to say that any
>of these are pseudo-sciences do you?

No, I didn't say anything about them.  The difference between them and the
various Pre-Birth and Post-Death experience theories is, simply, that
they, at least, are verifiable by means outside of the vagaries of the
individual human mind.  Various tenets of quantam theory have been
PROVEN true - not by people asserting that they are true, but by
experimentation.  The same is NOT true of any of the 'research' you
describe.

The reason I describe things like the Near-Death Experience research
as 'pseudo-science' is simply because the proponents of those theories
(along with many, many others), insist that their theories be taken
as truth, with no attempt at any methodical justification of them outside
of the theories themselves.  This is NOT science.  I'm not claiming that
they are, necessarily, invalid observations, but neither am I claiming,
as so many of the proponents of those types of beliefs do, that they
are Truth.  They are no more Truth than are any other observations of human
behavior.  When you get right down to it, they are more religious in
nature than scientific.

And would you PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE stop screwing up your News
headers?  I KNOW it's you - the software doesn't do those stupid things
automatically!

-- 
Michael J. Farren             | "INVESTIGATE your point of view, don't just 
{ucbvax, uunet, hoptoad}!     | dogmatize it!  Reflect on it and re-evaluate
        unisoft!gethen!farren | it.  You may want to change your mind someday."
gethen!farren@lll-winken.llnl.gov ----- Tom Reingold, from alt.flame