Greetings!
I am a professional scientist, a rather good one, according to evidence gathered by the citation statistics people. I understand that my rate of favorable citations per publication is already in the top .001 percent, and is steadily increasing, year by year, although I retired from professional science 25 years ago. These statistics are important to me because I used myself and my scientific success as a guinea pig for studying a new, but little used philosophy of science, called the Bayesian, Hypothetico-deductive method. This is described as I use it in a monograph published by Princeton Univ Press in 1972, in the preface. The monograph is titled Populations in a Seasonal Environment. So you can look it up.
The result of my experiment with this method is that it works very well.
The question is, how do we use evidence to assess the plausibility of an idea. In particular, it has been long proposed that there are in this universe, and in our ecosystem, higher living beings, higher in the usual biological scale of number of senses, intelligence, and so on. These putative living beings are like us (have acquired all or most of our advances over creatures lower than us), but have added many other characteristics. Is our world as populated by such living beings, as, say, an earthworm's world in inhabited by moles, robins, fishermen, organic gardeners, and (importantly) ethologists? Are there heavens out there for us, just as there are seas and stratosheres out there for earthworms? What evidence speaks to this idea? What does it say?
Now, the historical problem with evidence and plausibility of ideas is that there is a relationship, but it is complicated. Anyone working with someone in denial knows what I am talking about. And then, there is a major problem with lying.
For three thousand years now, great thinkers have noted that "all men are liars." (google anything in quotes for the reference.) This is so well known that Robert Trivers has a recent book trying to explain the fact with evolutionary theory.
Most people, drowning in hubris, respond to this by silently denying it applies to them. ( I imagine a New Yorker cartoon, with a Diogenes character with a lantern, etc, facing a threatening bad guy cowboy, who is saying, "You calling me a liar?") Others, wishing it were otherwise for them, set about trying to get the problem fixed. That was me, and when I learned, back in 1966, about Bayesian Hypothetico-deductive methods, I hoped it would work. My scientific test of this scientific method confirmed that it was a good bet.
I dabbled for awhile, as a professional scientist, in scientific theology. I eventually became persuaded that biblical theology was true beyond reasonable doubt, using Bayesian methods. Applied elsewhere, in conventional ecology, these methods were so successful that I decided to apply the hypothesis. It predicts, for example, that the rare truth lover in the human condition is even rarer among atheists, not because of any defect of character on their part, but because the spiritual forces that make people lie have an easy go at atheists. Actually, at any -ist. Being caged up, so to speak, with such people made getting at the truth very difficult for me. So, I left all religion (extremely mind warping) and professional science (almost all atheists), and became an amateur scientist. Bad company does, in fact corrupt good morals.
But, there are some in religion (very few) and some atheists, who are honestly interested in the truth. (Atheism, cold, is theologically better than religion, luke-warm.) So here I am.
There is plenty of evidence, even public evidence, proving biblical theology is true beyond reasonable doubt. But, there are those who just want to confirm what philosophy of science has proved, that any and all evidence can be explained away (rationalized) by some ad hoc explanation. If that's the game you choose, you are beyond any human help. With heaven and hell at stake, that is such a stupid choice that nobody I know will be sad to learn, should it come to pass, that you ended up in Hell. We have three thousand years of philosophy warning you that choosing rationalization of wishful thinking is a bad choice, so it would serve you right!
Let me know if you are interested, and we can start at the beginning.
