On Saturday, October 27, 2018 at 12:56:35 AM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter wrote:

That is quite natural when people like you are over exploiting this
thin set of experimental data, claiming e.g. "this is PROOOOF that a
human soul exists" when it's not that at all.

He will quite rightly reply that he never claimed it was *proof*.

What he is claiming, though, is this:

that since it's the only experimental data we have, even *though* it's thin,
until such time as further experiments along this line are done to get better
data, we should be basing our thinking on what data there is, not our personal
prejudices.

So the _default_ assumption, until more evidence comes along, should be that
there is a human soul, and it has mass.

That instead people are just rejecting the experimental data as bad or unworthy
of consideration shows that they're biased.

This is, of course, wrong, but I have found it difficult to explain exactly
_why_ it is wrong. Basically, for science to function, it needs to take a fair
amount of evidence to move what it works on.

Plus, most religions don't claim the soul should have mass, so there is no
pressure to be more fair to this idea, or the trouble of repeating the
experiment might have been taken.

John Savard