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Originally Posted by filtherton
I believe that there was an invisible dragon in Carl Sagan's hair.
500 years ago, "The Dragon in My Garage" would have applied to any number of assertions that we presently accept as scientific fact, probably including nearly all of the assertions Sagan explained in his Cosmos series.
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This is rather disingenuous in so many ways...
None of the "assertions that we presently accept as scientific fact" can be compared to "The Dragon in My Garage." The dragon in Carl Sagan's garage had no evidence to support it. Scientific theories, almost by definition, have evidence to support them. Certainly the ones we earnestly believe in have strong evidence to support them...
None of what we presently accept as scientific fact was even thought of 500 years ago. It's difficult to think of anything people of 500 years ago got right. The parable of Carl Sagan's dragon would have helped them a great deal!
If you're suggesting that if the people of 500 years ago adopted "The Dragon in My Garage" and we had a time machine and went back and told them of all the scientific things we believe that they would disbelieve us, that's only somewhat true. It's definitely false if we could tell them the whole story and use our current technology to demonstrate the principles to them. It's only arguably true if we were restricted to using their technology to demonstrate what we currently believe. Either way, it's irrelevant to the parable of Carl Sagan's dragon.
It's pointless to believe things without evidence even if they happen to be true. There are many different approaches to see why this is the case. Most pragmatically, most of the ideas people will concoct will be false and it's worth throwing out all the stupid ideas even if a couple gems get thrown out. You'll surely pick them up again with evidential reasoning. More philosophically, if there's no evidence for something, how can its truth affect you? Once its truth can affect you, that effect will be evidence and you're right back to evidential discovery...
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It is a parable about believing in things without "evidence." But everybody believes in things without "evidence". Even scientists. Anyone who currently believes in a unified field theory, or string theory, or any particular school of economic thought believes in things without "evidence".
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Can you expand on this? What do you mean?
At the very least, no one "believes" in, say,
string theory the same way that, say, Christians believe in Christianity. Proponents of string theory don't think that it has got to be true and there's just no way in can be false no matter what anyone says. The same thing can't generally be said for Christianity nor many other beliefs...
---------- Post added at 01:23 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:07 AM ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by filtherton
Things either exist or they do not and either way they do so with complete disregard for the existence of credible evidence.
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It may surprise you to hear that I don't actually agree with this statement although I do agree with the sentiment of the latter part of your statement; that there is a shared reality that's external to ourselves...
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I choose to have confidence when that confidence is justified. The lack of credible evidence supporting the existence of ghosts says nothing about whether they exist. Now, if someone were to demonstrate credible evidence that ghosts don't exist, well, that would be a different story.
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I too choose to have confidence (although I do wonder if it is a choice) when that confidence is justified.
The lack of credible evidence
does say something about whether ghosts exist. They may exist despite the lack of evidence but I don't find it likely.
Again, do you find it likely that there are still living
dinosaurs on Earth? Are you still holding out for
perpetual motion machines 'cause no one has proven that they
don't exist?