Thanks Agatha!
I see you skeptics want to keep the site only for yourselves!
Not at all. If that's what you took from my post, then I can only ask that you read it again, in conjunction with your previous post complaining that you can't "cancel your subscription" to JREF. All I was doing is explaining to you the process of becoming unregistered, since it appeared that you wished to do so. I was attempting to help you.
So it really becomes so boring when skeptics present easy topics, within the "provable realm".
Sure "critical" thinking is a way of thinking but not the only one!
You need "non critical thinkers" here to give you some "food" to crack down unto!
Certainly non-critical thinkers provide topics for discussion, though without them there would still be plenty to talk about.
And I am right: Skeptics cannot and should not enter an argument when something cannot be proved or disproved. It is beyond skepticism!
Who are you to dictate where someone should or should not post? Proof is for mathematics and whisky, evidence is what we seek.
Skeptics cannot talk about possibilities, or worse impossibilities. It has been hard for you to understand my example on the galaxy distances and the slowness of light travel.
You seem to ignore many inventions and scientific discoveries came out of refusing to accept what has been "proved" to exhaustion.
On the contrary, I think you failed to understand Pixel's point, and you are expecting certainty and proof where a sceptic looks at evidence. We know how fast light travels, we can therefore measure the distance to particular galaxies or stars. We cannot know with certainty that the galaxies are still there, but we can model the evolution of stars and so make assumptions about their current states. In science, everything is subject to further revision if new evidence comes along.
Physics and Quantum mechanics is a field where things constantly get disproved and proved oppositely. If physicists would be true skeptics there would be NO Quantum Mech.
Even Einstein skeptically rejected the "spooky thing" as he called it!
And Heisemberg sounds like a lunatic with his uncertainty principle!
Again, you are falling into error that sceptics believe only what is proved. This is not the case; a sceptic believes that which has the preponderance of the evidence. Everything is a presumption, everything we know and understand could be changed if new evidence came to light. As some things are so well supported by all the available evidence, in casual conversation and in everyday terms, we call such things proven. But what is really meant by "proven" is "so well supported by all the available evidence that it is to all intents and purposes proven, but if new evidence is found then we'll reassess it" But that is long and unwieldy, so the shorthand is proven as in gravity is proven to be true, evolution is proven to be true, water being H
2O is proven to be true. It's all provisional, and if new evidence is found it might be changed.
The "uncertain" is forbidden land for skeptics!
Forbidden by whom? Uncertainty means more to discover, so for sceptics and scientists the uncertain is by no means forbidden, it is an opportunity to find out more, a challenge. Sceptics embrace the idea of uncertainty; nothing is more exciting than "I don't know, let's try to find out". Uncertainty is how progress is made. Certainty is stagnant, certainty is where science would stop. But we don't have certainty.
I guess Randi could have the idea some non-skeptic might get in here, invading the "sacred" sanctorum of pure, unblemished, critically stiff thinking.
Maybe he has fun with it!
Sarcasm doesn't work well in a textual medium. And it's sanctum, not sanctorum.
