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Proof Quotes

“Why do people that ask for “evidence” never ask for rational explanation? What is more reliable? – analytic reason, or the unreliable, fallible, limited, frequently delusional human senses where it is guaranteed that they are showing us only phenomena and never noumena (i.e. things in themselves). You cannot understand reality as a phenomenon, although this is in fact exactly what science tries to do. You can understand reality only as a noumenon – as an intelligible thing in itself – and that’s exactly what ontological mathematics is all about. Anyone that obsesses over phenomenal evidence is an opponent of noumenal truth, which is never subject to phenomenal evidence.”

ReasonPhilosophyScienceEvidenceProofSensiblePhenomenalRationalismOntological MathematicsNoumenal
Book:Extra Scientiam Nulla Salus: How Science Undermines Reason
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“Empirical evidence is not what counts. Rational proof is the only acceptable criterion of truth. If you cannot provide a sufficient reason for an argument you make, you do not have an argument. Sensory evidence is not a sufficient reason. It is not an argument. Sensory evidence is simply raw data. A million people could provide a million different ways of interpreting it, hence it’s meaningless. It has nothing to do with proof. “Evidence” concerns an appearance from which inferences may be drawn. It concerns that which is obvious to the eye. Yet what does “obvious” mean? What is obvious about sensory data? Color blind people don’t know what “blue” is. Tetrachromats, with four cone types in the eye (cone cells are responsible for color vision, while rod cells code for monochromatic vision) see color radically differently from normal people (i.e. trichromats with three cone types). People with synesthesia have drastically different sensory experiences from normal people. So, everything about the senses is mired in ambiguity, uncertainty and subjectivity. These are no organs for truth, i.e. organs that show us the truth of a thing, exactly what it is and everything about it. We see things in our dreams even though our eyes are closed. How can we see without eyes, how can we sense without sense organs? What’s for sure is that scientific empiricism and materialism won’t be furnishing any answers.”

ReasonPhilosophyScienceEvidenceProofSensesMaterialismEmpiricismPhenomena
Book:Extra Scientiam Nulla Salus: How Science Undermines Reason
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“Reasonableness is a matter of degree. Beliefs can be very reasonable (Japan exists), fairly reasonable (quarks exist), not unreasonable (there's intelligent life on other planets) or downright unreasonable (fairies exist). There's a scale of reasonableness, if you like, with very reasonable beliefs near the top and deeply unreasonable ones towards the bottom. Notice a belief can be very high up the scale, yet still be open to some doubt. And even when a belief is low down, we can still acknowledge the remote possibility it might be true. How reasonable is the belief that God exists? Atheists typically think it very unreasonable. Very low on the scale. But most religious people say it is at least not unreasonable (have you ever met a Christian who said 'Hey, belief in God is no more reasonable than belief in fairies, but I believe it anyway!'?) They think their belief is at least halfway up the scale of reasonableness. Now, that their belief is downright unreasonable might, in fact, be established empirically. If it turned out that not only is there no good evidence of an all-powerful, all-good God, there's also overwhelming evidence against (from millions of years of unimaginable and pointless animal suffering, including several mass extinctions - to thousands of children being crushed to death or buried alive in Pakistan earthquake, etc. etc. etc.) then it could be empirically confirmed that there's no God. Would this constitute a 'proof' that there's no God? Depends what you mean by 'proof'. Personally I think these sorts of consideration do establish beyond any reasonable doubt that there is no all-powerful all-good God. So we can, in this sense, prove there's no God. Yet all the people quoted in my last blog say you cannot 'scientifically' prove or disprove God's existence. If they mean prove beyond any doubt they are right. But then hardly anything is provable in that sense, not even the non-existence of fairies.”

ReasonScienceSufferingExistenceDoubtAtheismEvidenceAtheistProofJapanBeliefsRationalityUnreasonableFairiesOmnipotenceEmpiricismProblem Of EvilAtheist ArgumentQuarksEmpiricalOmnibenevolence
Author:Stephen Law
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“Tanrı için kanıt aramayın. Sadece olun, risk alın ve yaşamınızdan haz alın. Önemli olan budur. Hayır demek istediğinizde hayır deyin. Evet demek istediğinizde evet deyin. Sizin kendiniz olmaya hakkınız var. Ancak yapabileceğinizin en iyisini yaptığınızda kendiniz olursunuz. En iyisini yapmadığınızda, kendiniz olma hakkını elinizden alıyorsunuz.”

GodProofBe YourselfKnow ThyselfTaking Risk
Book:The Four Agreements
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“All discourses and disciplines proceed from commitments and beliefs that are ultimately religious in nature. No scientific discourse (whether natural science or social science) simply discloses to us the facts of reality to which theology must submit; rather, every discourse is, in some sense, religious. The playing field has been leveled. Theology is most persistently postmodern when it rejects a lingering correlational false humility and instead speaks unapologetically from the the primacy of Christian revelation and the church's confessional language.”

TruthChristianityDisciplineProofTheologyRevelationPostmodernismReligious Claims
Book:Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church
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“Everyone had believed Cadsuane Melaidhrin dead somewhere in retirement until she reappeared at the start of the Aiel War, and a good many sisters probably wished her truly in her grave. Cadsuane was a legend, a most uncomfortable thing to have alive and staring at you. Half the tales about her came close to impossibility, while the rest were beyond it, even among those that had proof.”

ImpossibleProofUncomfortableRetirementLegendaryLegendWheel Of TimeWotAes SedaiCadsuane
Book:New Spring
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“This is how these people work! They made the Canterbury look like Mars. It wasn’t. They made the Donnager look like the Belt. It wasn’t. Now it looks like the whole damn thing’s Earth? Follow the pattern. It probably isn’t! You never, never put that kind of accusation out there until you know the score. You look. You listen. You’re quiet, fercrissakes, and when you know, then you can make your case.”

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Book:Leviathan Wakes
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“For Commander Ripley Jones, it was becoming more and more troublesome. It had been said that nothing is infallible, Antares apparently being the proof. After hastily recalling all crew and leaving Spacedock 7 thirty hours ago, there had been nothing but problems. Breakdowns in the sensors and telemetry, system failures of a wide variety and finally – the Last Straw: a coupling seal in the stardrive engine failed. Fortunately the cut-out worked, or the whole of engineering would’ve disappeared in a flaming ball of anti-matter. Five crewmen were seriously injured as it was. Commander Smith, the Chief Entech, had the offending unit stripped down and under repair. They were currently on conversion drive - which could only propel them at sub-light speeds – and Ripley was currently in an elevator with a very pissed Captain Falconer.”

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Book:Blachart
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“Ah, but it is an interesting thing, that these things can so seldom be proved. If I were to perform some piece of, hrmf, magic for you, here in this room, you would claim a thousand ways it could have been done. Indeed, those ways might be exceedingly unlikely, but you would cling to them rather than accept the, mmn, the chance that magic, the eternal inexplicable, might be the true agent, and if you were strong enough in yourself, unafraid, unthreatened, here in your own chambers, well perhaps there would be no magic worked at all. It is a subjective force, you see, whereas the physical laws of the artificers are objective. A gear-train will turn without faith, but magic may not. And so, when your people demand, mmn, proof, there is none, but when you have forgotten and dismissed it, then magic creeps back into the gaps where you do not look for it.”

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Book:Dragonfly Falling
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“Now, if the writers of these four books [Gospels] had gone into a court of justice to prove an alibi, (for it is of the nature of an alibi that is here attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by supernatural means,) and had they given their evidence in the same contradictory manner as it is here given, they would have been in danger of having their ears cropt for perjury, and would have justly deserved it. Yet this is the evidence, and these are the books, that have been imposed upon the world as being given by divine inspiration, and as the unchangeable word of God.”

EvidenceCourtProofWord Of GodResurrectionSupernaturalContradictoryDivine InspirationAlibiResurrection Of Christ
Book:The age of reason
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“The system loves resistance. Resistance is often creative and it feeds on creativity until the subversive becomes just another pre-packaged lifestyle on special offer. So Cease to Resist. Relax and enjoy the PandaemonAeon. Believe everything and anything. Seek not proof, but take pleasure in your choice of belief. Wipe that superior sneer of your face and try smiling (if only inwardly) at the people/institutions/beliefs that you've waged your personal war against. Wouldn't it be more fun if you didn't run around quite so hard trying to be an individual, or fighting to prove or uphold your chosen belief-system?”

BeliefProofResistanceMagickNonconformityChaos Magick
Book:Rebels & Devils; A Tribute to Christopher S. Hyatt
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“In the vestibule of the Manchester Town Hall are placed two life-sized marble statues facing each other. One of these is that of John Dalton ... the other that of James Prescott Joule. ... Thus the honour is done to Manchester's two greatest sons—to Dalton, the founder of modern Chemistry and of the atomic theory, and the laws of chemical-combining proportions; to Joule, the founder of modern physics and the discoverer of the Law of Conservation of Energy. One gave to the world the final proof ... that in every kind of chemical change no loss of matter occurs; the other proved that in all the varied modes of physical change, no loss of energy takes place.”

ScienceHonorProofPhysicsChemistryAtomic TheoryConservation Of EnergyDaltonJames JouleJames Prescott JouleJouleJohn DaltonManchester Town HallVestibule
Author:Henry Enfield Roscoe
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“I am now convinced that we have recently become possessed of experimental evidence of the discrete or grained nature of matter, which the atomic hypothesis sought in vain for hundreds and thousands of years. The isolation and counting of gaseous ions, on the one hand, which have crowned with success the long and brilliant researches of J.J. Thomson, and, on the other, agreement of the Brownian movement with the requirements of the kinetic hypothesis, established by many investigators and most conclusively by J. Perrin, justify the most cautious scientist in now speaking of the experimental proof of the atomic nature of matter, The atomic hypothesis is thus raised to the position of a scientifically well-founded theory, and can claim a place in a text-book intended for use as an introduction to the present state of our knowledge of General Chemistry.”

MatterNatureTheoryEvidenceProofChemistryAtomsJustificationHypothesisScientific TheoryAtomic TheoryBrownianJ J ThomsonJ Perrin
Book:Grundriss Der Allgemeinen Chemie...
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“The great masters of modern analysis are Lagrange, Laplace, and Gauss, who were contemporaries. It is interesting to note the marked contrast in their styles. Lagrange is perfect both in form and matter, he is careful to explain his procedure, and though his arguments are general they are easy to follow. Laplace on the other hand explains nothing, is indifferent to style, and, if satisfied that his results are correct, is content to leave them either with no proof or with a faulty one. Gauss is as exact and elegant as Lagrange, but even more difficult to follow than Laplace, for he removes every trace of the analysis by which he reached his results, and studies to give a proof which while rigorous shall be as concise and synthetical as possible.”

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Book:A Short Account of the History of Mathematics
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