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To: Quix
I’ve noted the more than 3000 cases of landing evidence impacts on the environment scientifically collected and analyzed.

Where are these notes?

I’ve observed no serious good faith effort on your part to understand this phenomena.

I am an engineer. When somebody comes to me with a claim I ask them to prove it, whether in professional or in personal life.

Study the topic for 48+ years yourself and get back to me—convincingly.

In other words, you cannot prove your claims and wish for me to disprove them.

112 posted on 07/10/2010 9:16:23 AM PDT by MarkBsnr ( I would not believe in the Gospel if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so.)
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To: MarkBsnr
A metaphysical point: no such thing as a rigorous, objective proof exists, nor can exist.

All statements we can make about reality are based upon two assumptions:

1) that a reality external to the self exists, and

2) that the impressions we receive from our senses are related to this assumed external reality in some meaningful way.

Rational people make these assumptions as a matter of course -- but we should never forget that they are assumptions, or statements of belief. No way exists to objectively prove that they are true.

Furthermore, the "scientific method" (i.e. Baconian inductive reasoning) by itself cannot conclusively prove anything. The scientific method, in basic terms, is nothing more than the process of collecting data by observation, followed by the formulation and testing of hypotheses based upon this data in order to construct a working model of some aspect of reality. This would seem to be a completely objective means of determining truth. However, upon examination, it becomes obvious that the scientific method is at its root a subjective process. For example: what exactly is "data"? We have no objective means of discriminating meaningful sensory impressions from others. One man's data is another man's irrelevancy. The very definition of data is, therefore, subjective. And how can we know that our observations are meaningful? What guarantee have we that the phenomena we observe are intrinsic to the scientific question we are asking? For all we know, our observations of a given phenomenon are entirely unrelated to the question we seek to answer. We rank observations as being meaningful or irrelevant based upon subjective choices. Finally, a hypothesis is not a fact; it is a "best guess", accepted or rejected by te scientific community base upon subjective reasons. A widely-accepted hypothesis may in fact be partially or entirely wrong.

And of course the entire Baconian scientific method rests upon one fundamental and unproveable assumption: that matter, energy, space, and time are all that exist, have ever existed, or that ever can exist. In other words, "If I cain't poke it with a stick, it ain't real." This is a statement of faith, not of fact — yet it lies behind the entire Western scientific enterprise.

To sum up: the scientific method is based upon unprovable assumptions and sensory impressions that may be false. But this is all Philosophy 101. Descartes made the basic point years ago: that all we can truly know is that which we experience directly, without use of the senses, i.e. our own existence (and that of God). We do not "sense" ourselves; we are ourselves. We cannot observe or analyze God; we experience His presence numinously. (Any God that could be quantified as data would of course be unworthy of the name.)

A conscious but anesthetized person floating in a darkened, soundproof tank of blood-temperature saline receives no sensory data of any kind, and can therefore make no meaningful statements about the world external to his or her own self. What, then, can such a person know to be true? Only one thing: such a person can know for certain that they themselves exist (and, by extension, that they did not create themselves). Descartes was wrong about a lot of things, but on this point his logic remains unassailable.

The scientific method works great in practical situations. Without it, bridges don't get built, lasers don't shine, medicine doesn't fight disease. It can be a useful map for navigating reality. But let's not make the mistake of confusing the map with the territory.

135 posted on 07/10/2010 1:55:16 PM PDT by B-Chan
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