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Are all mediums con artists then?

Ian seems so utterly annoyed that somebody contributed that is more skilled at philosophy than he is.

*Adds psychic to cv*
 
blutoski said:
...In the case you mention above, Newton disproved the theory that heavier objects fall faster in a mental exercise long before he did his public demonstration. He reasoned that if a heavy object fell faster than a lighter object, there was no good way to model what would happen when a light and heavy object were tied together. It led to contradictions, and so the hypothesis had to be discarded.

But that's different than proving that differently-weighed objects fall at exactly the same speed (maybe objects fall at random speeds?), and also, all the reasoning in the world was academic to ordinary people, so a public demonstration was warranted...
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Historical quibble - Galileo demonstrated that heavy and light objects roll down an inclined plane at the same rate. This experiment predated Newton.
 
Jeff Corey said:
Historical quibble - Galileo demonstrated that heavy and light objects roll down an inclined plane at the same rate. This experiment predated Newton.
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Duly noted.

I guess my point was that the rate proportional to mass theory can be nixed without experimentation, and Newton did some good work formalizing this disproof.
 
blutoski said:
Not to defend Ian, but I think he's right: in some cases, you can eliminate an hypothesis because it is logically unsound, without doing any experiments.
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No no! Heaven forbid!

It should be pointed out, though, that this is pretty limited to the task of disproof, although you can sometimes prove something by showing its opposite is unsound. You need to have mutually exclusive conclusions for this to work.

In the case you mention above, Newton disproved the theory that heavier objects fall faster in a mental exercise long before he did his public demonstration. He reasoned that if a heavy object fell faster than a lighter object, there was no good way to model what would happen when a light and heavy object were tied together. It led to contradictions, and so the hypothesis had to be discarded.
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Well . . . yes. I should mention though that I wasn't just talking about arguments pertaining to empirical facts. But now we're on the topic, what about Berkeley's and Leibniz's arguments showing that the concept of absolute space was flawed?

BTW I apologise about my rudeness. I'm just feeling in a certain mood. You're certainly more reasonable than a good majority on here.
 
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Jeff Corey said:
Historical quibble - Galileo demonstrated that heavy and light objects roll down an inclined plane at the same rate. This experiment predated Newton.
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And a completely unimportant and irrelevant quibble to boot. But please don't let me deter you from contributing your worthless posts :rolleyes:
 
Ian, let me ask you an honest question, if you can be bothered: why do you keep returning here, after claiming you 'can't be bothered' to post here any more? You keep claiming you're not going to waste your time here, but you return anyway. You even avoided getting banned by leaving for a brief period, only to return later on, after most of the mods appear to have forgotten you were one warning away from another ban. The evidence suggests you have some psychological need to enter the fray, again and again, yet you continue to get frustrated to the point of 'leaving' again and again. What's in it for you? It's not to be the forum fool - we have Iacchus firmly rooted in that role. It's not to show your blazing intellect off - If you're right, the people you're showing off for cannot appreciate it, and if I'm right you lack any such creature anyway. So why do you persist?

Mind you, I don't mind you being here any more - as long as you can remain civil - but your hypocracy is amazing. Look in this very thread, for example:

I'd like to express what I think about that, but I've already been reprimanded by some individual called . .umm . . ."Lisa Simpson" for saying ****load of accurate detail.

Youy know it's funny isn't it. Some retard is allowed to suggest I commit sucide on here, yet I'm not allowed to say ****load. Perish the thought it has anything to do with me not being a skeptic though

It rhymes with clucking bell.

I can't be bothered to contribute on here if I am to be prohibited from expressing myself properly.
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Yet you're bothering to contribute... why?

Thanks!
 
Originally Posted by Bodhi Dharma Zen :
Poor soul!!!! Just go away and you will be happier. Go away.

Ashless
You left off another comment by Ian:

Originally Posted by Interesting Ian :
I would hate to break this civility rule. Politeness costs nothing and makes debate that much more pleasant for all concerned.
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:( It was tongue in cheek my dear friend :(

It's undoubtedly more "pleasant" in a sense, but perhaps more boring too.

But vastly more pertinently there are real issues here which are desperately important. The materialists/skeptics try to rob the world of all that is true and real. An embracement of the skeptic/materialist philosophy is ultimately dispiriting and might well lead to despair in many people.

If they have very good reasons to suppose their worldview is correct then, despite the bad consequences, it would not be something I would kick up a stink about.

But they don't have such good reasons. Or at least so far as I am able to tell they don't, and I consider myself to be a fairly intelligent guy. I want people to be skeptical of the skeptics, and that requires a forthright honest attitude and criticism of their beliefs.

I might be hated and despised, even amongst some non-skeptics. But I'm not trying to win a popularity contest here. I'm trying to do what is right. If just one person reads my contributions and thinks, "well he's really passionate about these issues, maybe there is a grain of truth in what he says. Maybe what the skeptics say is not so straightforwardly obvious after all". If it raises a question of doubt regarding the skeptical/materialist Weltanschauung, then that is surely to be desired. This requires careful dispassionate rational argumentation. But passion is also an important element.
 
Interesting Ian said:
And a completely unimportant and irrelevant quibble to boot. But please don't let me deter you from contributing your worthless posts :rolleyes:
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And don't let me deter you from contibuting yours. As if anything could. I guess a polite request for you to sod off wouldn't work.
 
Ashles said:
I don't understand - you make clear and well elaborated cases for why post death existence appears unlikely according to observable evidence, and then simply state that "the evidence and reasons for subscribing to the survival hypothesis (life after death) significantly outweighs the evidence against it."
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I simply state it on this occasion, but I have mentioned the reasons before in the past on many occasions.
 
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