Religious/Spiritual Places

I used to believe in fairy tales, like heaven and god, but when I grew up I stopped. Unfortunately, it seems many people still believe in these fairy tales… I even found Santa more believable than god!

Heaven has changed my life in so many ways that I can only hope that it shall do magical wonderous things to all who might be lucky enough to experience it. It’s not a cheap ticket though, and infact I heard that you can’t even buy a ticket of any amount of money to get there. The only way there now is by knowing the difference between good and bad, making choices based upon goodness, having goodness present in all of your actions and by being accountable for your choices and actions.

Oh, and one other thing. I also heard that while there are many paths to this destination, there is only one divine source which will assist you in getting there. That source also is said to be something much like the holy grail too, but not only does it live in heaven but it is a “Latent Miracle Power” that resides within all human beings.

Good Luck in your travels and I hope to see you there!!

Gentle Warrior

I heard this place doesn’t exist

Baloney Detection Kit Warning signs that suggest deception.

Based on the book by Carl Sagan “The Demon Haunted World”. The following are suggested as tools for testing arguments and detecting fallacious or fraudulent arguments:

Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the facts.

Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.

Arguments from authority carry little weight (in science there are no “authorities”).

Spin more than one hypothesis – don’t simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.

Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours.

Quantify, wherever possible.

If there is a chain of argument every link in the chain must work.

Occam’s razor – if there are two hypotheses that explain the data equally well choose the simpler.

Ask whether the hypothesis can, at least in principle, be falsified (shown to be false by some unambiguous test). In other words, it is testable? Can others duplicate the experiment and get the same result?

Additional issues are:

Conduct control experiments – especially “double blind” experiments where the person taking measurements is not aware of the test and control subjects.

Check for confounding factors – separate the variables.

Common fallacies of logic and rhetoric

Ad hominem – attacking the arguer and not the argument.

Argument from “authority”.

Argument from adverse consequences (putting pressure on the decision maker by pointing out dire consequences of an “unfavorable” decision).

Appeal to ignorance (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence).

Special pleading (typically referring to god’s will).

Begging the question (assuming an answer in the way the question is phrased).

Observational selection (counting the hits and forgetting the misses).

Statistics of small numbers (such as drawing conclusions from inadequate sample sizes).

Misunderstanding the nature of statistics (President Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence!)

Inconsistency (e.g. military expenditures based on worst case scenarios but scientific projections on environmental dangers thriftily ignored because they are not “proved”).

Non sequitur – “it does not follow” – the logic falls down.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc – “it happened after so it was caused by” – confusion of cause and effect.

Meaningless question (“what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?).

Excluded middle – considering only the two extremes in a range of possibilities (making the “other side” look worse than it really is).

Short-term v. long-term – a subset of excluded middle (“why pursue fundamental science when we have so huge a budget deficit?”).

Slippery slope – a subset of excluded middle – unwarranted extrapolation of the effects (give an inch and they will take a mile).

Confusion of correlation and causation.

Caricaturing (or stereotyping) a position to make it easier to attack.

Suppressed evidence or half-truths.

Weasel words – for example, use of euphemisms for war such as “police action” to get around limitations on Presidential powers. “An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public”

(excerpted from The Planetary Society Australian Volunteer Coordinators Prepared by Michael Paine )

for a split second, the universe makes sense and everything feels ‘right’... but then it’s gone just as I was trying to figure out what just happened, never to return when I want it to, but only when its ready to… Alas…

Life is a funny game! :)

dreamworld, i’d love to control my dreams, would be like being a director in your own wee movie, every night