http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/message/15980


Aparthib can answer this more succinctly, but here's
my stab.

http://www.faithfreedom.org/debates/sina40329.htm

> Last night a friend who is following our debate
> called and asked me to watch a TV documentary
> called Unsolved Mysteries. This documentary
> was about Energy Healing. The good thing about
> it was that it was not anecdotal.

This appears to be a problem with the scientific
process. The process should go something like this:

1. Someone makes a claim, e.g. "I can cure brain
tumours on 50% of patients with a technique I call
'energy healing'".

2. The burden of proof immediately falls on the person
making the claim.

3. The ability must be reproducible.

4. A scientific experiment is set up to test the hypothesis,
e.g. getting 200 people, 100 of which get tested by a
placebo drug, the other 100 by energy healing. This then
gives some indication of whether the claim looks correct.

5. If the claim looks correct, then further investigation is
done, to try to get a better understanding of what is causing
it, e.g. can the person be in another room and still have the
same effect?

This is normal scientific technique. Just watching
"Unsolved Mysteries", which would probably be better
titled "Untested Claims" on TV is not "adequate science".

> Now these stories for you are just anecdotes. I could
> be lying after all. However, it is not really difficult
> to verify all these claims by interviewing the doctors
> and seeing their medical records.

It requires much more than this to ensure that it wasn't
a placebo effect, or e.g. if the medical records were
mixed up. That's what reproducibility is about. If
this effect can be reproduced, then we would love to
have this new technique available to science. There
are lots of sick people around. Scientists don't have
any desire to see them remain sick. The CIA is not
suppressing it.

> The energy therapy is one of them. The responsible
> thing for the scientific community is to study the
> latter cases. Verify them and regulate them.

See, you just used the word, *VERIFY*. Until the claim
has been verified, it cannot be accepted as being true.
It MAY be true. But you are insisting it is true before
you have even verified it. This is not science, therefore
you are not being a rationalist.

Now onto the next article:

http://www.faithfreedom.org/debates/sina40328.htm

First of all, you missed out one important one, which
is:

argumentum ad back teeth

Argument by lying through your back teeth. Examples of
this including stating that people said xyz, when they said
no such thing. Example of xyz recently was "you said that
there was no possibility that the paranormal or spirits
can exist", despite the fact that we have told you repeatedly
that none of us made any such claim, which is wise, since
it isn't possible to prove a negative.

> argumentum ad numerum

Correct. So all those who believe in gods and other spirits,
which is the majority of the planet, are not necessarily
correct. In fact, all evidence to date suggests they are most
likely wrong.

> Argumentum ad populum

No-one from our side relied on this. See argumentum ad
back teeth.

> Argumentum ad verecundiam

No-one from our side relied on this. See argumentum ad
back teeth.

> Argumentum ad logicam

No-one from our side relied on this. Someone did write
some of the most witty prose I have witnessed, not to
dismiss your ridiculous arguments, but as a parody of
religion, similar to the "Life of Brian", and building up
to the punchline, "orange balls will be a goldmine of
knowledge".

> Argumentum ad nauseam

Yes, you used this one, in conjuction with "argumentum ad
back teeth", to make repeated claims that we were denying
the possibility, despite the number of times we patiently
(some more patient than others) attempted to correct this
bald-faced lie.

> If James Randi was honest, he should pay that money
> to the American Veterinary Medical Association that
> has evidence that acupuncture works even on animals
> or he should convince them that animal acupuncture is
> fraud.

You are attempting "reverse burden of proof" here. It is
up to the AVMA to make a specific claim and then prove
it. Even now, it is not possible to answer this properly
without understanding the specific claim. Is the claim:

1. A dog's feelings are affected by a mysterious Qi force.

2. Relieving blood pressure to the brain by pricking
various veins has some therepeutic effect?

Number 1 would be eligible for Randi's challenge, if
a suitable test could be devised to prove that it was Qi,
not just mundane physiology. Number 2 would simply
be a new medical observation, nothing paranormal.

> Non Sequitur

More Argumentum ad back teeth. We are not automatically
dismissing claims as hocus pocus. We are suggesting that
there is a strong likelihood that there was no paranormal
occurrence, and that if you wish to persist with a claim,
then you need to subject it to scientific scrutiny. This is
not an unreasonable demand.

> dicto simpliciter

No-one from our side relied on this. See argumentum ad
back teeth.

> Red herring

"I am a mentalist and I can fool people that I can do cold reading."

In actual fact, this is the subject of your $10,000 challenge
which you thought no-one could do. The $10k remains
claimed, but unacknowledged, after I showed you that
other cold readers had met your $10k challenge already,
doing the same thing that Praagh did.

"The art of magicians and mentalists has nothing to do
with psychic power or paranormal."

How do you know? What test did you do to determine
that the information Praagh provided was more likely to
be from the dead talking than from Randi who does
exactly the same sort of thing, but admits it is a hoax
afterwards?

In addition, I ask you if Praagh comes on TV and admits
that he was a hoax, and that he was just using cold reading,
and he looked up an old newspaper to find out how Larry
King's father died and where, would you accept that you
were a complete and abject idiot and then issue apologies
to all those you dismissed as "pseudo-rationalists"?

> Straw man

"No one said predicting the lottery number is one of the
functions of the psychics or that psychics are omnipotent."

No-one said you did. They said that if psychics were
able to predict the future, how come they never seemed
to predict anything of any value? Why didn't you save
that maid's life, for example?

> argumentum ad ridiculum

Ah yes, let's go back to your original and see some
of this in action:

http://www.faithfreedom.org/debates/sina40226.htm

"A pseudo rationalist reader of mine tried to dismiss
this logic and wrote"

Ok, so calling a rationalist a "pseudo rationalist" before
the debate has even started, not even considering the
possibility that you might have been the one who was
wrong, and keeping the language scholarly.

"This is the typical irrational and dogmatic reasoning
we can see in religionists. As you can see even the
self-proclaimed rationalists are not immune to
irrational thinking."

Even though you happen to be wrong, you decide to
issue a string of adjectives about the person, instead of
concentrating on where you think the logic is incorrect.

"Secondly, all the believers in God think that their God
is omnipotent."

Here you made a sweeping generalization about the
majority of the people in the world, and how they view
God. See above for what category that comes under.

"We can dismiss God as a being, logically."

First of all, you will have a lot of trouble even just
defining a God. And nor can you prove a negative.

"A society of some self -proclaimed skeptics has
offered a million dollars"

Randi has already asked you, "who would you like
to proclaim him as a skeptic?". Inflammatory language,
anyway.

"As a non-dogmatic rational thinker, I cannot dismiss
this as coincidence. My dogmatic pseudo rationalist
friend was unable to admit that there could be something"

Argumentum ad back teeth - I claimed no such thing
about *could*.

"that could defy the conventional logic of the materialistic
rationalism. He insisted that it must have been coincidence,"

Argumentum ad back teeth - I insisted no such thing, just
that it could have been.

"even though the odds are extremely low."

In actual fact, I insisted that you needed to line up 1000
people with 10 died-in-fire-in-warehouse people in it,
and see how many Praagh got right, and compare it to
the placebo/control, e.g. Randi.

"I told him that many police departments use the services
of some good psychics to solve crimes."

Yes, you offered this unsubstantiated claim.

"If they did not have any result they would not do such thing."

This is argumentum ad all people behave rationally.

"He had no answer to that."

That's because I was using "argumentum ad limit to how much
my stomach can handle".

"People like him can always bring the example of a charlatan
posing as a psychic to prove that psychic power does not exist."

Argumentum ad back teeth again. You can't prove a negative.
It was only meant to show you that other frauds have been
exposed, this one might be too, so make sure you test him
very, very carefully.

You only the other hand, presumably decided he had an
honest face, and that was "good enough for you".

"I told him about a strange incidence ... intelligent orange balls"

Actually you didn't tell me that story. Which shows that
you are not perfect, you are human just like everyone else,
and thus you should be more careful about boasting of
your certainty in things. If you seem to find yourself
believing something extraordinary, ask your friends if
you might be missing something. E.g. on the "died in
fire in warehouse", you even missed the fact that it was
Larry King's father, not just a random caller.

"I shook my head over the irony that this dear friend calls
himself a skeptic."

Yep, the wise old man dismissing a foolish child. This
method of debating looks very stupid when you make so
many mistakes and are wrong so often.

"science evolves enough and is able to explain how the
Prophet Muhammad split the moon"

This is part of the argumentum ad ridiculum for sure,
and probably a couple of others as well. The scientific
explanation for Muhammad splitting the moon is that
he was lying, and the scientific answer for how Praagh
knew about Larry King's father probably has something
to do with old newspapers, orbituary section.

"Until then, keep believing. There is a great reward for
those who believe."

I'm still expecting an apology for all these argumentum
ad ridiculum. I mean, you're a decent guy, you'll admit
that you shouldn't have used such provocative language,
won't you? Even if you were right, you shouldn't have
done that. Given that you are wrong, so very wrong,
you'd better make that an apology with sugar on top.

By the way, there's one more:

Argumentum ad hypocrite

ie, not taking your own advice. Not questioning your
beliefs like you demand as others. Not using all these
Argumentum ads. Hell, I even came up with a great
suggestion for how you could start to question your
beliefs - by each of us taking the opposite side to that
that we actually have. You could argue against Praagh
and I would argue in favour. Just like at school, you
can take any side in a debate on any topic, as required.
You didn't seem to like that idea. You couldn't bear
to question your blind faith in Praagh. God forbid this
cretin ever admits his hoax on TV or in a book, as some
of them do. I wonder if you'll be his last fan, insisting
that he is the "real thing", and that the CIA forced him
to falsely confess?

What can I say? The CIA has a lot to answer for.

BFN. Paul.