Merged The razor of Hitchens and the Spirits!

@Calderaro It's not enough to say that we can't prove spirits don't exist. You have to show that they do exist.

Eta: I trust Google to be able to clearly translate that post to you. It translates for me accurately in two other languages.

See "Russell's Teapot" for the long version
 
Last edited:
Calderaro said:
Appeal to ignorance: Arguing that spirits do not exist because there is no conclusive evidence of their existence, ignoring that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
Click to expand...
This is the standard lazy rhetorical counter-claim, and it's false. I know because it was my go-to crutch response back when I was a hardcore woo-peddler. Not sure if it's a language barrier thing with you, or you're just trolling, but you don't understand science, and how skeptics apply science, and reason to this topic. Here's how it works:

Person makes a claim of the fantastic, i.e. spirit contact, or activity.

What skeptics can do is ask detailed questions, and offer more grounded explanations. In some cases the explanations are based on physical investigations, while many can be done with applied deductions.

What skeptics can't do is tell the person they didn't see it. This is due to the scientific method of observation; the skeptic wasn't there.

What the person making the claim (the claimant) can't do is declare that their experience qualifies as empirical evidence of the existence of spirits.

As a ghost-hunter I had to swallow that last pill. I turn 61 this year, and a key life-lesson I've learned is I don't know what I don't know. This means that while I cannot explain a few encounters I've had over the years it doesn't mean there is no explanation, or that there will not be an explanation that solves the mystery with a non-paranormal answer.

Just because Cindy Crawford is not in my bedroom doesn't mean she has never been in my bedroom...which is what I hear when people whip that phrase out in a weak attempt to save their argument.
 
If we want to phrase the question as a standard-of-proof exercise, I think @Calderaro owes us his answer to two questions:
  1. What evidence could he present that Tolkien's balrogs do not exist?
  2. What specific evidence would he accept that spirits do not exist?
Absent a cogent answer to these questions, I think we can confirm that his attempts to reverse the burden of proof are not in good faith, as we suspect.
 
A manifestation of pseudo-skepticism is the rejection of personal experiences reported by individuals who claim to have had contact with spirits.
 
Calderaro said:
A manifestation of pseudo-skepticism is the rejection of personal experiences reported by individuals who claim to have had contact with spirits.
Click to expand...
We've seen this distortion before as well.

The experiences aren't being rejected: your interpretation of the experiences is being rejected.
 
Last edited:
Calderaro said:
A manifestation of pseudo-skepticism is the rejection of personal experiences reported by individuals who claim to have had contact with spirits.
Click to expand...
Straw man. You're not engaging with anything that's being said to you. You're simply hurling slogans. This increases the chances that you will simply be written of as a crank and ignored.

The straw man you're relying upon now was already dispelled in this post https://internationalskeptics.com/f...hitchens-and-the-spirits.373363/post-14475918 , and the key sentiment has been underscored by other contributors. No one is rejecting the experiences claimed by others. However, the undisputed effect portion of the claim has nothing to do with attributed cause portion of the claim, which can be separately questioned. Skepticism properly realizes that how one interprets an experience—including attributing it to various possible causes—is independent of the experience itself.

Citing the effect as evidence of a cause to which it has merely been attributed is classic circular reasoning. Identifying it as such is proper logical analysis, not pseudo-skepticism. You must provide separate evidence of the causation, which is where deduction can play a proper role in devising testable hypotheses.
 
Calderaro said:
A manifestation of pseudo-skepticism is the rejection of personal experiences reported by individuals who claim to have had contact with spirits.
Click to expand...
You had a pain. It went away. Has anybody rejected your claim that happened? No, they haven't.
 
I see it now: we have a new definition of the word "debate", to mean "spout a nonsensical phrase, refuse to engage in any discussion of said phrase, rinse and repeat".

I'm not even sure this is worth the energy of coming up with half-decent mockery: outright abuse seems more appropriate.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom