I like how physicist Lawrence Krauss speaks about "more likely" and "less likely" in a short video than "true" and "false."
Our knowledge about reality is on a fuzzy continuum, not a sharp dividing line. Rarely, if ever, can we say that this is absolutely 100% true, and that is absolutely 100% false.
Still, I don't totally understand Krauss' statement that "Science doesn't prove anything... science can only prove things to be wrong, not right... the Earth isn't flat, we can go around it, so that's wrong."
This might have to do with one popular view of the scientific method, that of falsifiability. To refute a claim that all swans are white, it would only be necessary to find one black swan. So scientific truths are provisional, since they always are open to falsification.
But if something is 99% likely, that makes it a hell of a lot more truthy than something that's only 1% likely.
In life we've got to play the odds. Sure, it's possible I'm hallucinating that the traffic light I'm coming to is red, while it really is green. Yet if it looks like it is red, I'm well-advised to stop before I enter the intersection.
Same logic applies to supernaturalism. Sure, it's possible there are godly unseen realms beyond the physical. How likely is this, though?
Here's the two and a half minute video, along with the description that accompanies it.
Can spiritual experience be proven? No, things can only be falsified... validated? well...
Lawrence Maxwell Krauss (born May 27, 1954) is an American theoretical physicist and cosmologist who is Foundation Professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University and director of its Origins Project. He is known as an advocate of the public understanding of science, of public policy based on sound empirical data, of scientific skepticism and of science education and works to reduce the impact of superstition and religious dogma in pop culture. He is also the author of several bestselling books, including The Physics of Star Trek and A Universe from Nothing.
Recorded at Vic Skeptics event late August 2014 : http://vicskeptics.wordpress.com/even...
Video picked up by 'The Raw Story' - Physicist Lawrence Krauss: God is a byproduct of your hard-wired narcissism: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/10/la...
At the Melbourne skeptic’s meeting in Australia last month, theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss was asked whether spiritual experiences could ever be scientifically validated.
“The spiritual things — the exotic phenomena people experience — in general violate the things we know to be correct on the basis of experiment, so they’re highly likely to be wrong,” Krauss answered.
“I can’t say to someone who’s heard God in their ears that they’re not hearing God,” he continued. “But I can say that it’s much more likely that they’re hallucinating, based on what we know.”
As for the existence of extraterrestrial life, he said that accounts of alien encounters are “much more likely to be due to the irrationality of humans than the rationality of aliens.”
“When you think about the likelihood that a space-craft would come here,” Krauss said, “almost anything you can think about is more likely. And what science deals with is not ‘true’ and ‘false,’ it’s ‘likely’ and ‘less likely.’ And some things are so unlikely, you just chop them off.”
“So I can’t tell someone that what they’ve heard, or what they’ve seen, or [have had] some mystical experience — I can only say that it’s likely a coincidence,” he concluded.
“But none of us like to believe that things that happen to us are coincidences. We’re all hard-wired to believe that things that happen to us are significant.”
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