Proof of the supernatural

The whole enterprise of science is based on a philosophy of materialism: that only material things are real. That's its fundamental working assumption. Thus any suggestion that there are other realities, or at least that materiality is NOT ultimate reality, must be rejected by scientists outright. You can't have ghosts sneaking around doing things that interfere with physical cause and effect. It's called causal closure--the principle that everything is explainable by physical processes. Consciousness thus cannot be anything separate from the operations of your brain. It can have no causal power itself, and certainly could never move objects or divine extrasensory information. This raises the question: is paranormal phenomena even the proper field for science, since it must confine itself to physical processes alone to draw its conclusions? Perhaps not. Maybe like we hire hunters to find deer, and fishermen to find the fish, we need paranormal investigation to be a basically intuitively-guided and experience-based field of study. I certainly wouldn't call a physicist in if I suspected my basement to be haunted.

 

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Can the scientific method ever be wrong?

 

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
The scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge.[2] To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry is commonly based onempirical or measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.[3] The Oxford English Dictionarydefines the scientific method as "a method or procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification ofhypotheses."[4]
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The scientific method is not perfect, nothing is...Still it is a well proven system based on logic, sensibility, and reason.
The scientific methodology and peer review helps sort the wheat from the chaff, and real science from nonsensical beliefs, delusions, illusions and plain old stupidity crap like ghosts, goblins, ghosts etc.

I wonder how many people and who are making money out of spreading and polluting the Internet with such crap.

 

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If the scientific method is so reliable, why is physics nowadays resorting to mathematics instead to confirm its theories? Are there theories in science that are not justifiable by the scientific method? Is mathematics more certain than the scientific method?

 

That is total crap. Science is based on evidence, both observational and experimental results that can be reproduced, as well as reason, and logic.
We have not seen DM, but experimental evidence tells us its there...We have not seen DE, but we observe its effects.
We make logical assumptions re homegenity and Isotropy, based on what we observe as standard elswhere.
Science has reasoned and shown that although some things may be unexplained, it does not mean its supernatural.
Supernatural events cannot be reproduced on demand.
Supernatural events are generally observed or concluded by "individuals" that have some manner of befuddled thinking processes in their brain.

Science has dragged mankind out of the mire where he once viewed rivers, mountains, the Sun, the Moon etc, as supernatural.
Science has, does and will always benefit mankind and steer him away from such nonsensical unevidenced, unnatural happenings.

 

Mathematics is the language of physics.
Mathematics is part and parcel of the scientific method.

 

Wow, you're really grasping at straws to try and discredit science.

Remember, even if you do somehow manage to get the entire scientific paradigm to come crashing down, woo-woo still doesn't win by default.

 

I don't believe scientists even use a scientific method. I think they use whatever they need to get their ideas published and their research funded by grants. The mythic stature of the scientific method is long gone since the dominance of mathematics took its place long ago.

 

By 'nowadays', I assume you mean the last 500 years or so?

 

It's not.
Please learn something about science.

Nope. And no one has claimed that it is.

In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is – if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.
R. P. Feynman.

 

You mean like the LHC in Switzerland? It's just that basic particle physics requires very large energies.

 

Couldn't the same thing be said in reverse?

The reason why you spend so much time thinking about ghosts is because they give you hope of life after death, and because they seem to you to discredit the physicalistic view of reality, a view that you seemingly find oppressive for some reason.

That's why I've said that despite all your rants against religion, you are one of the most religious people that I've ever encountered. It's why you favor idealistic philosophies. You're a born seeker, MR. You're searching for transcendence.

I kind of like that.

 

From the point of view of laymen, there isn't a great deal of difference.

Seen from the street, both science and religion are arguments from authority.

There's lots of grand talk about "The Scientific Method" and "reason", but whatever justifications that scientists possess for the counter-intuitive things they tell the public are largely opaque to those who lack specialized training.

Laypeople are in no position to question anything said to them in the name of 'science'. Their doing so is totally unwelcome. It gets people labeled "deniers" and flamed into smoking lumps of charcoal.

The analogy with "heathen" and "heretic" should be obvious.

 

Well you have that partially right--that I'm a seeker of transcendence. I'm even an idealist in the buddhist sense in that I think that we are basically consciousness and that reality is largely a mental construct. But my belief in ghosts isn't really tied to that. I simply accept the evidence I've seen for paranormal phenomena. Do I think ghosts prove there's an afterlife? Yes, but I'm not sure about what that afterlife is like. If we are to take hauntings seriously, these are souls trapped in some sort of limbo state that they can't escape from. I'm not hoping anything like that for anyone. But from an event that occurred when my mother passed, and other events I've heard of, I'm now assured our consciousness DOES pass on to some higher reality. Ghosts? Who knows WHAT they are? Vestiges of some events etched on spacetime? Projections of our collective unconscious? Left over fragments of splintered psyches? Who knows really?

 

"The notion that a common series of steps is followed by all research scientists must be among the most pervasive myths of science given the appearance of such a list in the introductory chapters of many precollege science texts. This myth has been part of the folklore of school science ever since its proposal by statistician Karl Pearson (1937). The steps listed for the scientific method vary from text to text but usually include, a) define the problem, b) gather background information, c) form a hypothesis, d) make observations, e) test the hypothesis, and f) draw conclusions. Some texts conclude their list of the steps of the scientific method by listing communication of results as the final ingredient.

One of the reasons for the widespread belief in a general scientific method may be the way in which results are presented for publication in research journals. The standardized style makes it appear that scientists follow a standard research plan. Medawar (1990) reacted to the common style exhibited by research papers by calling the scientific paper a fraud since the final journal report rarely outlines the actual way in which the problem was investigated.

Philosophers of science who have studied scientists at work have shown that no research method is applied universally (Carey, 1994; Gibbs & Lawson, 1992; Chalmers, 1990; Gjertsen, 1989). The notion of a single scientific method is so pervasive it seems certain that many students must be disappointed when they discover that scientists do not have a framed copy of the steps of the scientific method posted high above each laboratory workbench.

Close inspection will reveal that scientists approach and solve problems with imagination, creativity, prior knowledge and perseverance. These, of course, are the same methods used by all problem-solvers. The lesson to be learned is that science is no different from other human endeavors when puzzles are investigated. Fortunately, this is one myth that may eventually be displaced since many newer texts are abandoning or augmenting the list in favor of discussions of methods of science."===http://amasci.com/miscon/myths10.html

 

I'll repeat the remarks I posted in the poltergeist thread, since they apply equally to ghosts.

In my opinion they most likely are are folktales.

But the Fortean in me acknowledges that there might conceivably be some unknown anomalous phenomenon at work in some of these cases. I'm rather doubtful about that, but can't rule it out entirely.

If that's what's happening, then I don't know what ghosts are.

 

I agree with that.

I don't believe that there is any single methodological algorithm that's unique to science, that all examples of science display, that serves to demarcate science from non-science, and explains science's extraordinary success.

It looks to me to be a modern myth.

One of the reasons why 'the Scientific Method' is so deeply entrenched in the popular mind, apart from the fact that it's still widely taught in secondary schools and universities, is that for many people it's assumed to be the demarcation criterion between science and bullshit. If they lose their faith in The Scientific Method, then they fear that they will be reduced to 'anything goes'.

 

The voice is recorded from a policeman's body cam! "Why won't someone help?" Policeman even responds to voice. The voice occurs at the 1:58 increment. Note audio is always going to be less clear and loud than really being there. Obviously the voice and what it said was clear to the rescuers. Audio analysts should clean up the background noise and amplify the voice to really hear it. Solid proof the voice was REAL!

http://www.reddit.com/r/Paranormal/comments/2zbwga/can_someone_isolate_the_audio_from_158205_its/