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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 5525985" data-attributes="member: 18280">Of course you have no doubt, but equally true, that knowledge is not actually sure.  Because you can assume another causation based on statistics doesn't actually mean that there is another causation, or that the odds of the causation occurring are not vanishingly small.In terms of world model, that the odds are vanishingly small makes going to Lourdes a bad bet, unless you also imagine that there is another factor, such as "those 4 guys were extremely faithful" or something like, which changes the statistics (in your view).The scientific/rational models are extremely useful because they create models offering predictable results.  Expectations that the world will react as the model predicts are extremely deep-seated, but are nonetheless not sure.....and, as Hume pointed out, derived from something other than strict logic or rationality.Overall, I agree with you.  I just go one step farther -- that they are not related is also open to question, as is any causation.  We can know what we observe, we can make models that seem to offer a high degree of predictability of many observations, but we cannot know that the model is correct, we cannot know that our understanding of causation is correct, and we cannot model will withstand tomorrow's observations regardless of how many times it has proven correct in the past.Moreover, the scientific method cannot answer questions about any observation that cannot be repeated.......and, often, does not answer questions about any observation that cannot be repeated under controlled circumstances.  It also relies fundamentally on the ability to create controlled circumstances (so that the result of your experiments is not, say, actually caused by something happening half a galaxy away), which must be accepted a priori as it cannot be proven.So, while I accept and endorse that the scientific/rational models are superior to quasi-magical thinking, and certainly regard logic as the key to determining what is actually known about anything, I don't feel that people who fail to use these methods are not using their brains any less than I am (some cases, obviously, aside), but rather either (a) don't have the same toolset or (b) don't have the same base assumptions, or (c) both.And the value of the scientific/rational models is not that my conclusions are more likely to be right (for, as Hume demonstrated, they are not) but that they create a more useful model despite being, as far as we can tell, equally likely to be wrong.Indeed!In conclusion, all worlds are likely to be rife with superstition, and those people holding said superstitions are not less intelligent for doing so.  Some very smart people have drawn some very questionable conclusions about the nature of the universe.RC</blockquote>

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