Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to re: Shame on you...back at 'ya!

How do you spell "raspberry"?
Hank — (archived)

EVERYTHING is a possibility. I can't PROVE there is no Santa Clause or Easter Bunny. Those things which can be conceived always vastly outnumber those which are actually true. It goes without saying that most of those things we can think of are simply not true. In the law, suspects are innocent until proven guilty, because it is better for every villain to go free than for one innocent to be condemned. In science, all the suspects are guilty until proven otherwise, because it is better for many things to remain unknown than for one lie to be accepted as truth.

The lie is not only evil in itself, it pollutes and confuses all truth around it. In both science and law we rely on precedent and procedure and on the process itself to arrive at the truth. Amendment and change and even a total paradigm shift are possible, but only by adherence to a principle and discipline which has been demonstrably successful for the last four hundred years. No other system of human inquiry has come even remotely close to science's record of telling us how the world works and what it's really like. Just because something is reasonable or desirable or interesting does not mean it can be trusted, especially since we know scoundrels deliberately and maliciously exploit this for their own ends.

Accepting this kind of nonsense uncritically would degrade science to the same sorry and pathetic state as economics, philosophy, politics, and religion. Science does not guarantee truth, as we all know, it makes mistakes. But what you are talking about does guarantee falsehood.

By the way, you are misusing the term "pseudoskeptic". A pseudo-skeptic is not someone with a closed mind who refuses to accept anything new, as you imply I am doing. It is someone who pretends to be skeptical, but isn't, who accepts everything because they feel that is a sign of an open mind, which is what I imply you are doing.

"It is the mark of a fool to embrace anything which cannot be immediately disproven."
Hank

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