If you want to be taken seriously you really need to quote authoritative sources.
How about a respectful religious vs non-religious discussion?
- Thread starter TrickyDickie
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So, if it's in a book it must be true? Not the best way to approach a subject.
What are his qualifications? What peer reviewed journals has he put these ideas in?
I found an interview on YouTube he did with someone who does radio shows on paranormal topics.
This is his one and only book, that apparently took about 25 years to "research" and about 4 years to write.
Oh, and regular archaeologists apparently all believe and teach that Columbus discovered America, and he refers to them as "Archeopriests."
And according to the author, astrology is a science.
This is his one and only book, that apparently took about 25 years to "research" and about 4 years to write.
Oh, and regular archaeologists apparently all believe and teach that Columbus discovered America, and he refers to them as "Archeopriests."
And according to the author, astrology is a science.
I'm sayimg read it yourself and then give an opinion. Don't condemn it beforehand. He makes a very good case and critics have not presented convincing refutation.
So it would seem that he totally disregards the fact that regular archeologists exavated the Viking site at L'Anse aux Meadows?
Archeologists do not believe that Columbus was the first European to reach the Americas.
Archeologists do not believe that Columbus was the first European to reach the Americas.
What are his qualifications in the field? What peer reviewed journals are his ideas in? You, still, have not answered those questions.
And according to the author, astrology is a science.
He says that it was to the ancients....not in the sense of the modern Nancy Reagan-type situation.
Oh well, I'm not going to lose any more sleep tonight on people who insist on being arrogant, snobby, condescending, snide, etc....
Oh, dear, so no qualifications, then.
How can asking for the qualifications of someone who is making a scientific claim be regarded as 'arrogant' or 'snobby' etc? It is a legitimate question to ask.
He makes reference to the work of Barry Fells of Harvard where he was a professor of invertebrate zoology. While respected in his field his efforts in archeology have been far less successful since he couldn't substantiate any of his claims with any credible archeological methods or rigor for the field. In short, being a PhD in one field has no guarantee of expertise in another.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Fell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Fell
In this thread you consistently present sciences as just another claim to absolute truth, a doctrine akin to a fundamentalist religion dictating from "the mainstream" what is and isn't true. This is a straw man, and I suspect one built from reading pseudoscience like your posted book.
Some points:
1. There is no such thing as "mainstream science". There is science, which is experimentation using the scientific method and critical analysis of the results, and there is not doing that. Which isn't science. All scientific endeavour conducted properly and with appropriate academic rigour, and humility as to the accuracy of one's work, is "mainstream". Generally, those who talk in disparaging terms about it are those with an axe to grind - normally an idea or a pet project which has little or no scientifically valid evidence, or involved a radical and unwarranted interpretation of the evidence, which is unscientific and therefore by definition is rejected by the 'mainstream'.
2. 'Flukes' may be the wrong word, but it is important to understand that, in experimentation, not every experiment you run will produce results which are reliable, hence repetition being part of the method. As an example, a couple of years ago, a team published results which, to the best of their abilities, appeared to show a particle traveling faster than light. To their credit, they expressed doubt in their paper and asked others to look for the mistake in their work. It only took about 4 months for the results to be debunked. So now, big picture, I have one study which appears to show FTL travel versus hundreds which suggest it isn't possible. What is the scientific conclusion to draw at this stage? That we should focus on the one anomaly and try to attribute it to some supernatural force? Or that we should conclude it was most likely in error as it cannot be repeated?
Let's move on to reported supernatural events. There are thousands of anecdotal reports of 'inexplicable' events, sightings, abilities, abductions, etc etc. And just as many supernatural explanations for them. And not one of such an explanation being demonstrated in laboratory conditions. So to some the best working conclusion is some variant of 'science can't explain it!' rather than 'scientific experimentation has not found any evidence at all for supernatural intervention'. The most logical conclusion to draw is that the phenomena are best explained by things which do present themselves under laboratory conditions - Newton's laws of motion, psychology, psychiatry, optical illusion, cognitive bias, and plain simple error.
My college major was anthropology, and one of my Canadian history projects involved the L'Anse-aux-Meadows archaeology site. Even my Grade 7 social studies teacher, in our unit on Canada, pointed out in the very first paragraph that the Vikings made it here around the year 1000 AD. I took that class in 1974.
What you see as "arrogant, snobby, condescending, snide, etc" is merely normal adherence to the scientific method and proper procedure when studying archaeological sites.
I love Ancient Aliens, doesn't mean it is any less than 100% Bolognium.
I may only know about science what I recollect from Neil deGrasse Tyson's "Cosmos" and "StarTalk" TV shows (and some other TV documentaries), but even I am amazed at how little you apparently understand the concept of science, and sorry if that sounds harsh, but it's true.
Science does not deal with "absolute truths", but with probabilities. How probable is evolution? Probable enough to make it pretty much a certainty, but that's not an "absolute truth". It's not "this is", but rather "this is not", and enough "this is not"s point to a probable "this is".
I've heard or read this little joke analogy before, don't know where, but it illustrates the point:
A journalist, an engineer and a scientist are travelling by train through a foreign country.
Through the window, they see three black sheep.
The journalist says: "All sheep in this country are black."
The engineer argues: "No, we only know there are at least three black sheep in this country."
And the scientist points out: "Actually, we only know there are at least three sheep in this country which are black on the side they were facing our train with."
Okay, fair enough. There have been some very good points made and I am not the kind to remain standing on shaky ground when I've been shown that's what it really is. 
When I was in school, scientific laws were presented as infallible absolute truths.
I take it from what you are saying, then, that the word 'laws' in the case of science has a different meaning than in different contexts and different applications elsewhere?
I think I see now where a lot of people are under the wrong impression about science today.
Thanks for sticking with the thread and I apologize for the unkind words.
When I was in school, scientific laws were presented as infallible absolute truths.
I take it from what you are saying, then, that the word 'laws' in the case of science has a different meaning than in different contexts and different applications elsewhere?
I think I see now where a lot of people are under the wrong impression about science today.
Thanks for sticking with the thread and I apologize for the unkind words.
Science is only ever as good as the best evidence we have. Everything is potentially changeable, updateable, or falsifiable, if the right evidence were to come along. In fact, falsifiability is one of the hallmarks of a proper scientific theory. Most of the time this doesn't mean we were wrong before (although sometimes it certainly does), but perhaps we were too simple, or what we thought only holds true in certain conditions. As an example, Newton's laws of motion aren't wrong, they just don't apply on quantum scales, which he didn't know. So in the early twentieth century, the immutability of his calculations was challenged by the rise of quantum mechanics. Now we know that while his calculations are perfect for snooker balls, or planets, they don't work well for atoms.
It's important not to get lost in quasi-reflective thinking though - the mindset that because we might be wrong, we can't say anything with certainty. Down that road is the false 'balance' in which you give all ideas equal weight because we can't be certain which one is correct. But that's just as wrong as dogmatic adherence to one idea. Even when ideas are falsifiable, we can still say with a lot of confidence that when you let go of a cup in Earth standard gravity, it will fall to the ground.
There is the half-life of facts, where what we know now and accept as being true will be proven wrong in a decade or two. In medicine, half of what all medical students learn will become essential obsolete in 10-20 years time.
Obsolete isn't the same as being wrong though.
Some things start out wrong and shouldn't be acknowledged to begin with. Medicine has methods that will be replaced and improved upon, what we have now works and solves problems. It's not the best solution, but at least it is one, one that works and is proven.
Homeopathy and such is bullshit from the start. No half-life for something already at zero.
Some things start out wrong and shouldn't be acknowledged to begin with. Medicine has methods that will be replaced and improved upon, what we have now works and solves problems. It's not the best solution, but at least it is one, one that works and is proven.
Homeopathy and such is bullshit from the start. No half-life for something already at zero.
A scientific law describes a relationship between variables. It can usually be expressed as an equation. For example, the ideal gas law is PV = nRT. Those equations you've heard of: E = mc^2, F = ma, V = IR, all laws.
A scientific theory is the explanation that undergirds laws and shows WHY they likely work. A theory (and for that matter, all scientific knowledge) is tentative in the sense that if contradictory evidence arises, it can change. Atomic theory is a good example of something that has changed dramatically, from tiny spheres of Dalton to the plum pudding model, to the Bohr model, to the quantum mechanical model. Each model brings us closer and closer to the truth of an atom, but we can never say that we are 100% there.
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