Re: Planet X Sighting Efforts 1

Greg Neill wrote:

> Science does not comment on things it can't measure. It cannot.
> If it is a real, demonstrable, repeatable phenomenon, if it is
> amenable to experiment and measurement, then science will embrace it
> and labor to quantify and explain it. Otherwise, it's in somebody
> else's domain (religion, psychology, metaphysics, parapsychology, etc.)

Bullshit. Science and scientists CONSTANTLY comment on things that have
not been measured. New theories make bold dramatic predictions about
the outcome of experiments that have not yet been made. Some of these
predictions go down in laughable flames and others stand brilliantly
against the data of the resulting experiments. Still others languish in
ambiguity. Some predictions fail to be verified simply because WE DO
NOT KNOW HOW TO MAKE THE MEASUREMENT. However, this does not mean the
measurement cannot be made, only that we do not know how.

You state that there is somehow a difference between "science" and
"religion, psychology, metaphysics, parapsychology, etc.". While I
understand the point you are trying to make, your statement is simply
wrong, they are in fact, all the same.

When people talk about religious beliefs, they usually mean
"unquestioned acceptance". The preacher talks about original sin, the
redemption of Christ, and how one must be saved and "born again". The
supplicant accepts all of these without (serious deep) question. Those
who question the meaning of original sin or what it means to be redeemed
by Christ or why halfway through the Judeo-Christian tradition the rules
suddenly had to change to the concept of being saved are either called
philosophers or heretics, depending on your viewpoint. However, none of
this implies that there is not an objective reality or that these
questions can not in fact be answered. Either there was a man named
Jesus of Nazareth or not and if he existed, either he was the Son of God
or not. While all of this is subject to debate, there are three types
of people, those who do not bother to think about such things at all
because they feel it is not relevant, those who blindly accept the
precepts and teachings being handed them by the authorities, and those
who question the assertions and attempt to discern a higher truth. 
There is a higher truth, but to find it, you have to learn how to make
the right kind of measurements in order to run "religious experiments".

When most people talk about science, they usually mean "my college
physics/chemistry/quantum mechanics classes". Here they sat and were
presented the results of experiments they had never seen, fed the
conclusions they never made, AND THEY ACCEPT IT BLINDLY. Now tell me,
how does this differ from religion in principal?

Have you ever seen an electron? What does it MEAN to say that the
electron exists? So you run experiments on electrons and develop
theories and run more experiments to validate predictions, etc. None of
this proves the existence of the electron, it only adds to the
circumstantial case that your theory is supported by all of the
experiments you know how to run.

And just what the heck is an electron anyway? Is it a particle, a wave,
a complex of other particles? Is it a little bit of something, and if
so, what? I have read everything I can understand about quantum
mechanics (and much more I cannot understand) and all I can say is any
book about QM is about as religious as it gets, I mean some of this
stuff is just mystical. The deeper you get the weirder it gets.

So let me ask you, how have *you* come to accept the electron? How do
YOU know it exists? Or do you just believe in it because people you
respect told you so? Have you ever spent *any* time at all attempting
to come up with another theory as to why the experiments that have been
described to you might have given those results? In other words, how
much scientific method have you *actually* applied to your "science"?

So what about the soul or telepathy or astral projection or whatever. 
Obviously they cannot exist or be "science" because we cannot measure
them? Did lightening suddenly move from the mystical to the scientific
one day because Benjamin Franklin flew a kite? I can see it now, the
raging debates on sci.astro in the pre Benjamin days about whether or
not lightening was a physical or mystical phenomenon or whether or not
it was worthy of discussion as a scientific phenomenon. After all,
nobody knew how to MEASURE IT.

Until Ben.

Well, you say that lightening is a natural phenomenon, that anybody can
witness, right? Whereas astral projection isn't? What about people who
claim to have astrally projected? Do you believe them or do you
discount them because you have no shared experience? Would you do the
same about lightening? If not, why not? What is the difference pre
Ben? Neither could be measured.

Sorry! Bzzzt. It is *all* the same puzzle.

The Small Kahuna