Debate Believers or skeptics

Kairos

Kairos

Senior Member
Messages
1,103
Harte said:
My point exactly. It is evidence of a crime, not proof that a crime occurred.


Which I would consider as evidence of paranormal activity, albeit admittedly weak evidence

But you have not determined that. You have made a conscious choice (and probably a correct choice) to give the latter evidence more weight.

Certainly. But I DID stipulate that it was blood. However, maybe someone spilled a bag of donated blood. With no body to examine, we can't even establish that a crime was committed. But that doesn't mean that empty cartridge shells and blood are not evidence of a crime.


That is completely different. If you examine the entire bucket of marbles, and find that it contains no red marble, you have PROVEN there are no red marbles in the bucket. Not the same idea at all, and not one of either of the two sorts of evidence you categorized.
You must admit that we cannot examine every cubic inch of South Florida for evidence of the Inuit though. Nor can we examine every bit of evidence for every suspected paranormal event.


People here seem to have the wrong idea of what is meant by the word "evidence."
Evidence is only an indication, not a assertion.

Okay, I agree with that. But you have to agree that all we can do is examine claims that are made, not claims that are not made. Once thousands of claims have been examined and dismissed for good reasons, an apparent conclusion is on the horizon.
Couching an argument in the way you have is a much better way to make the point of the post which brought me into this in the first place. Emphases are my own:


The bolded portions are simply not true. As you have stated, absence of evidence IS evidence of absence (but not proof of it.). I mean, you're not sitting here at my kitchen table with me are you? How do I know that?

Future predictions are successfully made every single day that are based on what has occurred in the past. The Sun will rise tomorrow. It's called inductive reasoning and allows for a false conclusion - obviously it's possible that one day the Sun will NOT come up tomorrow. We use inductive reasoning all the time. ALL. THE. TIME. Subconsciously even.

Nobody assumes that the knowledge we have of the universe is anywhere near complete. Or even true, for that matter.

Most of the time I see people incorrectly using the word "proof" when they mean "evidence." In this thread, that is reversed.

Harte
Click to expand...

You CANNOT have evidence supporting a false proposition. The evidence you think you have you are either mistaken about or comes from flawed measurement.

For instance, if for the sake of argument we assume there exist no bigfoot, then bigfoot foot print casts cannot therefore be evidence for the existence of bigfoot. The casts have to therefore be fakes or a mistaken identification with other animals.

Furthermore, you cannot consider your personally not having evidence of something as evidence in of itself that something does not exist. That's fallacious and has been shown why repeatedly here.

You should only make arguments based on evidence you actually have. Making an argument from your lack of evidence is foolish and fallacious.

You are literally arguing in support of a well-known fallacy here, dude. It's the same fallacy as confusing the no evidence of disease with a patient not having a disease. This is wrong. Very, very wrong; and dangerous if you apply it where human life is at stake.

It's better to just admit you personally do not believe something exists than to play this fallacious game. Any time somebody tries to drop that game on me I usually can sum them up pretty fast. These are people who haven't a clue. It's like those YouTube skeptics before they imploded who were just play acting at being intellectuals but had no fucking clue what they were even talking about half the time.
 
Kairos

Kairos

Senior Member
Messages
1,103
And with respect to just how dangerous this fallacy can be..

On 11 Sep 01 airport security personnel found no evidence of terrorist activity. But did that mean there were no terrorists on the passenger manifests that day? Of course not. The absence of evidence was not evidence of absence. Big time failure. That's how dangerous this fallacy can be.

It would be like your wife waking up in the middle of the night because she heard somebody rummaging through the house. You get up and only look outside the bedroom door. No evidence of intruders. Go back to sleep, babe. <-- bad idea.
 
DEATH OMEN

DEATH OMEN

Member
Messages
253
!st I have no proof of life after death and an 72 am pas the point of being concerned after having 3 NDE , 2 times during surgery and 1 time when in the hospital getting chemo/rads same day for cancer treatment. What I hope for is to become pure energy, pure thought, no physical body at any location. What others believe is their business and I for 1 don't see it's my "duty" to change their minds.
 
TimeFlipper

TimeFlipper

Senior Member
Messages
13,705
Iam concerned about our member Harte, who has not been seen on Paranormalis since June 23rd this year....I know he has had heart problems in the past, but i would hate to think anything bad has happened to him....I always enjoyed the encounters we had on various topics, neither of us giving away to the other.....However something is telling me we might not hear from him again, i sincerely hope iam wrong :cry:...
 
dimension-1hacker

dimension-1hacker

Active Member
Messages
834
Kairos said:
You CANNOT have evidence supporting a false proposition. The evidence you think you have you are either mistaken about or comes from flawed measurement.

For instance, if for the sake of argument we assume there exist no bigfoot, then bigfoot foot print casts cannot therefore be evidence for the existence of bigfoot. The casts have to therefore be fakes or a mistaken identification with other animals.

Furthermore, you cannot consider your personally not having evidence of something as evidence in of itself that something does not exist. That's fallacious and has been shown why repeatedly here.

You should only make arguments based on evidence you actually have. Making an argument from your lack of evidence is foolish and fallacious.

You are literally arguing in support of a well-known fallacy here, dude. It's the same fallacy as confusing the no evidence of disease with a patient not having a disease. This is wrong. Very, very wrong; and dangerous if you apply it where human life is at stake.

It's better to just admit you personally do not believe something exists than to play this fallacious game. Any time somebody tries to drop that game on me I usually can sum them up pretty fast. These are people who haven't a clue. It's like those YouTube skeptics before they imploded who were just play acting at being intellectuals but had no fucking clue what they were even talking about half the time.
Click to expand...

True, but sometimes know people don't understand something and want to feel good about a false model of reality. Which I define as evidence.
 

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