Confront23 and the burden of proof
by Chris Owen
| From | Chris Owen <chriso@lutefisk.OISPAMNOdemon.co.uk> |
|---|---|
| Subject | ESSAY: Confront23 and the burden of proof |
| Date | 2000/02/24 |
| Msg-ID | <QceenGAyCIt4Ewz3@lutefisk.demon.co.uk> |
| Newsgroups | alt.religion.scientology |
Confront23 has at last made an intelligent point in a post, which is such a noteworthy event that it's worth a thread of its own. He asks (in "Hey critics - only critical of one side?"):
Are you accepting on FAITH that the material universe is the only one
thats real?
Are you excepting on FAITH that you only live one life? What proof do
you have?
Are you excepting on FAITH that " remote viewing" doesnt work?
Are you accepting on FAITH that telepathy doesnt exist?
One could argue that the burden of proof is on me. If I was trying to prove something that would be true. But if the people ASSUMED that the material universe is all thats there, the proof would be hard, because they are asking for physical proof about non-physical things. Likewise if it was true to me that a non-physical universe is more real, it would be hard for YOU to prove to me that the physical universe was more real-because your using physical means of proof which isnt real to me anyway! So it depends on the premise or stable datem assummed.
Confront23 raises an important question here. How do we know that there isn't a Marcab invasion fleet skulking around Alpha Centauri right now? How do we know that there's no such thing as a body thetan? How do we know that OT powers don't exist?
Well, we don't.
The reason for this is the burden of proof. Let's take Confront23's example of telepathy. In order to prove that telepathy doesn't exist, I have to test everyone who might possibly be a telepath. This means the entire human race. In order to prove that it does exist, however, I merely have to perform scientifically valid tests on the people who claim to have telepathic abilities — a far smaller group. If it does exist, then at least one of those people will prove to be the genuine article. Clearly it's far easier to prove that some people are telepathic rather than prove that everyone isn't.
Another example: the body thetan. I can't think of a single scientific test that would demonstrate the existence of an incorporeal, physically undetectable psychic parasite. Scientology on the other hand claims to have detected irrefutable evidence of the existence of BTs. Very well! Are its methods and conclusions valid? Since the whole basis of Scientology is the physical detection and interpretation of bioelectrical activity via the E-meter, this is something which can readily be tested through experimentation.
What both these examples show is that when it comes to proving or disproving an idea, the onus is on whoever has the lightest burden of proof. If it's easier for me to prove my proposition than it is for you to disprove it, then it's up to me to prove it. That's also true if it's the other way round.
There's something else to consider. While it isn't possible to dismiss claims of OT powers out of hand, it is possible to judge their probability. One of the major powers of an OT is supposed to be telekinesis. Hubbard speaks in A History of Man of OTs being able to knock hats off from 50 yards away. By the time we get to the OT lectures in the 1960s, Hubbard speaks confidently of OTs being able to knock planets out of orbit. In the wacky "OT Wins" printed since the 1970s in Advance! magazine, Scientologists speak of being able to manipulate physical events, such as deflecting crashing cars.
Fortunately it's easy to work out how much power would be required to perform such feats. (For this I'm indebted to Lawrence M. Krauss' excellent book Beyond Star Trek). Moving a 100g pen a few feet across a table would require about 1 joule of energy. To do this in a second would require one watt of energy. That's not much, but the catch is that if the pen is pointed towards you it would present a cross-sectional area of only about 1 square centimetre. If it is one metre away, then the target represents only about 1/100000th of the surface area of a 1m-radius sphere. If you were radiating a telekinetic signal uniformly in all directions, you would have to expend a remarkable 100 kilowatts of power — enough to power a fair-sized radio transmitter!
Even if you could somehow narrow the focus of the beam, you would still need to expend a considerable wattage just to move a pencil. Imagine trying to move a heavy car or even a planet! It would be easy to tell which people were the OTs: their heads would glow red-hot from the huge amount of power being expended every time they used their telekinetic powers. In the case of planet-moving OTs, their fiery craniums would probably incinerate everything for miles around. The fact that Scientologists haven't reported their heads lighting up like searchlights suggests that they don't in fact have any telekinetic powers, despite their claims.
This is just a simple application of known and hitherto invariable physical laws to the claims made by Scientology. Another example is that of the "space wagons" used by the Marcabs and Helatrobans to travel at the remarkable speed of a trillion light years per day (sic). Since a century's worth of intense testing and experimentation has failed to uncover any possibility of faster-than-light travel, the likelihood of the "space wagon" claim being true has to be pretty low.
So, in short, while it's not possible in most cases to say absolutely positively that Scientology's claims for such things as OT powers, past lives and nonmaterial phenomena are untrue, it is possible to say that such things are most unlikely. Since Scientology itself is unwilling to put its claims to the test, the doubters have always managed to win their case by default.