Ok, it is good that you are making this effort, but that is way too safe. In the near future, we wouldn’t even notice if there were such extraterrestrial life. A better answer should constrain your anticipated experience.
Thanks for noticing my effort. ;3 I know it’s weak; I’m working my way up. Umm… the dissolution of the state of Israel, the administrative dissolution of the Church...
I know that these are non-terminating tests. x_x I’ll look for one that constrains my present experience, but that’ll be pretty difficult. One of the tenets of Christian religions, as you should know to your dismay, is that God’s not going to give us any hard proof during our time here. At least, until the Second Coming, at which point Christianity should be pretty well into the 90% range. :P
You seem to be looking for one big decisive test, which as you note, your religion protects itself against. It may help to instead use lots of smaller test, and accumulate evidence. Ask of the things you observe, not if your religion allows it to happen, but how likely your religion says it is, and how likely other theories say it is.
One issue that can frustrate such a project is that if you have not assessed the relative probabilities in advance of your observation, it is tempting to skew them in favor of your favorite theory. So one thing I keep in mind when attempting this sort of thing is Conservation of Expected Evidence. The way I apply this is when I notice I want to call some observation evidence for my theory, I will imagine the observation going the other way and consider how indignant I would be if someone were to declare that evidence against my theory.
:3 Sounds complicated. I’ll work on that, thanks. In fact I have been, slowly, but it sounded like you were asking for a decisive test, so that’s what I tried to provide for you.
Ok, it is good that you are making this effort, but that is way too safe. In the near future, we wouldn’t even notice if there were such extraterrestrial life. A better answer should constrain your anticipated experience.
Thanks for noticing my effort. ;3 I know it’s weak; I’m working my way up. Umm… the dissolution of the state of Israel, the administrative dissolution of the Church...
I know that these are non-terminating tests. x_x I’ll look for one that constrains my present experience, but that’ll be pretty difficult. One of the tenets of Christian religions, as you should know to your dismay, is that God’s not going to give us any hard proof during our time here. At least, until the Second Coming, at which point Christianity should be pretty well into the 90% range. :P
But yes, I’ll keep looking.
You seem to be looking for one big decisive test, which as you note, your religion protects itself against. It may help to instead use lots of smaller test, and accumulate evidence. Ask of the things you observe, not if your religion allows it to happen, but how likely your religion says it is, and how likely other theories say it is.
One issue that can frustrate such a project is that if you have not assessed the relative probabilities in advance of your observation, it is tempting to skew them in favor of your favorite theory. So one thing I keep in mind when attempting this sort of thing is Conservation of Expected Evidence. The way I apply this is when I notice I want to call some observation evidence for my theory, I will imagine the observation going the other way and consider how indignant I would be if someone were to declare that evidence against my theory.
:3 Sounds complicated. I’ll work on that, thanks. In fact I have been, slowly, but it sounded like you were asking for a decisive test, so that’s what I tried to provide for you.