Magical Realist
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Then I guess it doesn't matter if I believe in the unicorn evidence or not. Case closed.
Magical Realists Magical Reality
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Then I guess it doesn't matter if I believe in the unicorn evidence or not. Case closed.
Exactly. The evidence is there, and you can't refute it. According to your own standards for what you consider to be acceptable evidence to prove the existence of something, unicorns must exist. Case closed.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
LOL! But it doesn't matter what I believe to be acceptable evidence. You said so yourself. Apparently for you "the evidence is there, and I can't refute it." Enjoy your unicorns then!
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Then you have missed the point of the exercise entirely... it's called good debating tactics. A person who is true to science and honest discussion is fully capable of arguing for an idea or concept they do not believe in - it's called intellectual integrity.
The fact that you are unable to understand such a concept speaks volumes....
And here you double-down yet again on your double standard... you are a fascinating creature who seems utterly incapable of honest discussion...
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
That's just the thing, it isn't really unicorn evidence. Certainly nothing direct. If what was found isn't a modern forgery, it's a stone inscription entitled 'unicorn lair' that may or may not date from the Koryo dynasty roughly 1,000 years ago, contemporary with the medieval period in the West. The North Koreans need evidence that connects the site (their capital Pyongyang) and its elaborate Tongmyong's Tomb domestic tourist attraction to the historic (if he ever was historic) King Tongmyong who seems to have been the partly-mythical semi-divine founder of the important Goguryeo dynasty and its northern Korean state that was roughly contemporary with the Roman empire. So the discovery of a stone from a later dynasty 1,000 years later with 'unicorn lair' inscribed on it is being spun as evidence connecting the site with Tongmyong's legend, since Tongmyong is associated in legend with unicorns.
None of this is direct evidence for the existence of unicorns.
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Yazata
Valued Senior Member
Please see my post #785 that deals with the North Korean noise. Other than that, what is there? Kittamaru posted some photos that he seems to have just pulled off Google Images or someplace. At least one of those seems to be a photo of a statue of a unicorn. (The animal's eye is the same white material as the rest of its form.) Others appear to be posed photos of horses dressed up for renaissance faires or something. But there is something interesting among Kittamaru's red-herrings. It's the photo that seems to show mummified remains of something that looks like a fetal unicorn. I think that the zoologists really should look at that one. I'd like to know what it is.
So you ARE claiming the photos are fake?
well, prove it. Prove they are fake.
(in case you were unaware - this is what MR does - he provides sketchy "evidence", then claims the onus is on us to disprove it is authentic rather than on him to prove it is authentic. What I am doing is not a red herring - rather, it is an example to show how ridiculous MRs strategy has been, and how defunct and improper, not to mention dishonest, it is. Turnabout is fair play and all that)
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
I would too. What's the background story on that photo unicorn-believers?
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Not to mention the possible existence of unicorns in the past doesn't prove they still exist today. So it's all a red herring anyway. To be honest, I'm not so sure there WASN'T some creature in the past that fit the bill for being called a unicorn, at least in its having one horn:
"Unicorns are not found in Greek mythology, but rather in the accounts of natural history, for Greek writers of natural history were convinced of the reality of unicorns, which they located in India, a distant and fabulous realm for them. The earliest description is from Ctesias who, in his bookIndika ("On India"), described them as wild asses, fleet of foot, having a horn a cubit and a half (700 mm, 27 inches) in length, and colored white, red and black.[2] Aristotle must be following Ctesias when he mentions two one-horned animals, the oryx (a kind of antelope) and the so-called "Indian ass".[3][4] Strabo says that in the Caucasus there were one-horned horses with stag-like heads.[5] Pliny the Elder mentions the oryx and an Indian ox (perhaps a rhinoceros) as one-horned beasts, as well as "a very fierce animal called the monoceros which has the head of the stag, the feet of the elephant, and the tail of the boar, while the rest of the body is like that of the horse; it makes a deep lowing noise, and has a single black horn, which projects from the middle of its forehead, two cubits (900 mm) in length."[6] In On the Nature of Animals (Περὶ Ζῴων Ἰδιότητος, De natura animalium), Aelian, quoting Ctesias, adds that India produces also a one-horned horse (iii. 41; iv. 52),[7][8] and says (xvi. 20)[9] that the monoceros(Greek: μονόκερως) was sometimes called cartazonos (Greek: καρτάζωνος), which may be a form of the Arabic karkadann, meaning "rhinoceros".
Cosmas Indicopleustes, a merchant of Alexandria who lived in the 6th century, made a voyage to India and subsequently wrote works oncosmography. He gives a description of a unicorn based on four brass figures in the palace of the King ofEthiopia. He states, from report, that "it is impossible to take this ferocious beast alive; and that all its strength lies in its horn. When it finds itself pursued and in danger of capture, it throws itself from a precipice, and turns so aptly in falling, that it receives all the shock upon the horn, and so escapes safe and sound."[10][11]
A one-horned animal (which may be just a bull in profile) is found on some seals from the Indus Valley Civilization.[12] Seals with such a design are thought to be a mark of high social rank."===https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Unicorn
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How do you know what I do and don't believe in - I haven't stated one way or the other whether or not I believe unicorns are real.
In fact the only thing I have asked you to do is offer your opinion, which you have thus far refused to provide.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
I was told my belief doesn't matter. That the evidence is clear and irrefutable. So it seems the matter is settled for you who are presenting it.
So now you accept that the photographic evidence and videos are sufficient to claim unicorns are real? Make up your mind.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
I haven't indicated anything about my belief since I was told belief doesn't matter. I was told the evidence for unicorns was clear and cannot be refuted. Oh friggn well!
Hi there MR......
You of course know my thoughts on the aspects of the supernatural, the paranormal, the Bigfoots, and Alien origin UFOs, but one thing and one thing alone, really turned the tide for anyone that had any doubt re your credibility or lack thereof.
That of course was the totally innane, irrational and stupid suggestion that science has never benefited human kind.
That particular thread was started for one purpose, and your continuing stone-walling in the face of total refutation in all threads since, just continues that same purpose.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Science is just value-neutral information about the natural world, along with some methods on how to acquire it. If it has been of any value, it is due to people who apply it as such. A serial killer could just as easily apply science towards horrific ends. So obviously it's how the science is USED that is of value, or of disvalue, and not the science itself. It's how it is used by creative and imaginative human beings.
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I didn't say "believe", I said "accept" - you can accept something without believing (or even agreeing with) it.
Or, at least, a rational, honest, and level-headed person can
So you are claiming that knowledge is inherently worthless... that the very act of knowing is not worth something?
Interesting... tell me, did you go to school? Do/did you or your family pay for that education (either secondary or thru taxes for primary schooling)?
Why? I mean, obviously you seem to think knowledge (and thus education) is worthless unless it is going to be used for some specific ideal...
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
I didn't say "believe", I said "accept" - you can accept something without believing (or even agreeing with) it.
Or, at least, a rational, honest, and level-headed person can
believe
verb be·lieve \bə-ˈlēv\
: to accept or regard (something) as true
: to accept the truth of what is said by (someone)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/believe
You can believe in something without accepting in (belief in your circumstances), just as you can accept something without believing in it.
It is, in essence, along the same lines as learning to argue the case for something you are against, a critical component of any persuasive speaking course.
I am enjoying watching MR squirm and wiggle uncomfortably as his own criteria are applied to him.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
No, they are real photos of what appear to me to be at least one statue, horses dressed up in costume, and a very peculiar fetus thing.
I think that my saying that I'm unconvinced, and giving some reasons why, is sufficient.
I've been arguing with MR a lot longer than you have. We go back at least ten years on another discussion board before we both came here.
What happens is that he commits the inexcusable crime of starting threads in the 'UFOs, Ghosts and Monsters' forum about UFOs, ghosts and monsters. He's interested in those things. Then some of the dimmer people on the board seem to think that they can defeat the heresy by flaming it to oblivion. (Not unlike the inquisition except the flames here aren't literal.) So a torrent of insults are directed at MR, he fights back and everybody gets angry and extremely hostile. That's just stupid.
All that people need to do to respond to MR is say that they aren't convinced. That subtly puts the ball back on his side of the court, because if he wants to convince people then he needs to give them more. But it doesn't trigger all the anger, hostility and defensiveness.
Calling somebody 'dishonest' is an insult. Many of your posts contain similar emotional provocations. That's bad rhetoric. You need to try to avoid doing that.
I have to say that I have quite a bit of sympathy for MR. Part of that is because I've communicated with him almost daily for so many years. Since the 1990's, probably. I think of him as a friend, despite the fact that we disagree profoundly about many things. I don't care a whole lot whether people always agree with me, provided that they are humane, friendly and likeable.
And part of it is because both of us are starting out with a similar intuition, so to speak. That's the intuition that reality is a lot stranger and more mysterious than most people think it is. We differ on where evidence of that mystery is to be found, but we both share the intuition that it exists. MR seeks out reports of anomalies like ufos, ghosts and cryptozoological animals. I find evidence of mystery in countless unsolved philosophical questions concerning things like time, logic, the nature of mathematics, the orderliness of physical reality and in being itself. (None of those things is truly understood.) That sense of pervasive omnipresent mystery is what motivated me to study philosophy at university level.
That puts both of us on a collision course with Sciforums, which sadly has evolved into being something of a scientism-fundamentalism board. There's an implicit faith around here that everything is already figured out, if not in fact then at least potentially. If we don't already know the answer to a question (about any subject) we do already possess the means to answering it (the wonderful "Scientific Method") and we know what the answer will look like in principle. So "Science" expands into being a total and absolute philosophical world-view with a strong missionary thrust, an all-inclusive system of faith, knowledge and reality in which everything that is real supposedly finds its proper place and where nothing that doesn't fit can possibly be real.
On the other hand, I'm inclined to think that reality probably contains a great deal that isn't captured by mankind's current understanding. Science is probably humanity's greatest intellectual achievement, but it's limited by our human condition and it's always a work in progress. It's possible that what we don't know far exceeds what we do know. And what we do currently know might start to look rather different in broader context. What people (or their descendants) might know 1,000 years from now, or in 100,000 years, might bear little resemblance to today's confident pieties, which might have come to look to our successors something like the confident assurance of the medievals look to us.
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