1. HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU KNOW? Or at least what you think you know?

2. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has
called me to the ministry.
Two things that people pretend are knowledge, but they really aren’t:
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know this bone is from an ape-man.
5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

3. WHAT CAN YOU BE ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN OF?
If someone tells you “There is no such thing as absolute truth,” ask them:
Are you absolutely sure that’s true?
The concept that each observer creates his own reality is not scientific, but religious!
The question of whether absolute truth exists is not part of science; it is a matter of religion or philosophy.
There could be absolute truth –
but we can’t find it through science.

4. How can you be absolutely sure about ANYTHING?
1. While your senses are at least somewhat reliable, there is always some uncertainty.
2. Logic can lead to incorrect conclusions.
3. Your intuition can be wrong.
The only way to reach absolute certainty would be if you had an absolutely reliable authority to tell you what’s really true.
The question of whether such an authority exists is NOT part of science.

5. (Could you be living in “The Matrix”?)
HOW CAN YOU BE SURE YOU REALLY EXIST?
(Could you be living in “The Matrix”?)
Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.”
If you didn’t exist, there would be no one to ask the question!
Did you make yourself?
Either (1) you have always existed, or (2) you made yourself and forgot about it, or (3) something outside yourself – either your concept of God or random chance -- made you.
Would whoever or whatever made you take the trouble to make you and then completely deceive you about reality?
If not, maybe your senses are at least partially reliable. There really is a universe out there!

6. They know that bus is really real!
Though Eastern philosophy says the universe is just an illusion, those who claim to believe it still look both ways before they cross
the street.
They know that bus is really real!

7. WHERE DID SCIENCE COME FROM?
Eastern Philosophy
Western Philosophy
1. The physical universe
is an illusion.
1. The physical universe
is real.
2. There is no such thing
as objective reality.
2. There is such a thing
as objective reality.
3. Because of this, it is
not possible to accu-
rately measure the uni-
verse or know things
about it with certainty.
3. It is possible to accu-
rately measure the uni-
verse and know things
about it with varying
degrees of certainty.
RESULT:
There is no point in studying nature.
RESULT:
The Scientific Method.
Science owes its very existence to
Western philosophy.

8. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has
called me to the ministry.
Two things that people pretend are knowledge, but they really aren’t:
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know this bone is from an ape-man.
5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

9. REASONS TO BELIEVE OTHERS WHO TRY TO PERSUADE US OF WHAT THEY “KNOW”
IS IT BECAUSE:
(1) They claim to have personal experience, OR
(2) They appeal to an authority we trust, OR
(3) We have checked out their logic and
found it trustworthy?
OR are we willing to trust their (4) intuition,
(5) wishful thinking, or (6) bluffing?

10. THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD 1. Define the problem. What do you want to know?
(E.g. “Does music affect how plants grow?”)
2. Gather information about the subject.
(AUTHORITY)
3. Formulate a hypothesis.
4. Devise a way to test the hypothesis.
5. Observe the results of the test. (EXPERIENCE)
6. Draw a conclusion (INDUCTIVE LOGIC) and report
your results so others can repeat the test.

11. Present +
Repeatable +
Observable
= SCIENCE
Past +
Non-Repeatable +
Eyewitness Account
= HISTORY
Past +
Non-Repeatable +
No Eyewitnesses
= BELIEF

12. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has
called me to the ministry.
Two things that people pretend are knowledge, but they really aren’t:
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know this bone is from an ape-man.
5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

13. REASONS TO BELIEVE OTHERS WHO TRY TO PERSUADE US OF WHAT THEY “KNOW”
IS IT BECAUSE:
(1) They claim to have personal experience, OR
(2) They appeal to an authority we trust, OR
(3) We have checked out their logic and
found it trustworthy?
OR are we willing to trust their (4) intuition,
(5) wishful thinking, or (6) bluffing?

14. WHERE DID PHYSICS COME FROM?
Ancient people such as the Greeks were trying to explain the motion of the stars and planets. They made up explanations that made sense to them. However, they had no way to test them.
For example, they decided the earth was completely still and everything else in the universe revolved around it in perfect circles.

15. “Standard Deviants” video on astronomy.

16. “SCIENCE” UNTIL THE MIDDLE AGES:
Based on the deductive logic of the ancient Greeks,
who believed that logic always leads to truth.
Testing was unimportant to them.
Most famous Greek philosopher:
Aristotle (inventor of the logic still used today),
whose ideas were taught as fact for about 2,000 years throughout Europe, west Asia, and Africa.
(Aristotle said it, I believe it, that settles it!)

17. DOES MEMORIZATION HAVE A PLACE IN SCIENCE (and science classes)?
Yes! It is part of the knowledge we have by authority. It would be a great waste of time if you had to continually look up how much two plus two adds up to, or if you continually had to rediscover Newton’s Laws ( f = m a, etc.)
But if all we did was memorize, we would never gain new knowledge that did not exist before.

18. THE TWO TYPES OF LOGIC 1. INDUCTIVE.
Look at many phenomena and try to discover a pattern that points to a general principle. Inductive logic tries to determine the most reasonable (most likely) conclusion.
This is the heart of the scientific method.
2. DEDUCTIVE.
Start with general principles accepted as true and apply them to specific cases.
Deductive logic tries to establish absolute truth, i.e., the conclusion MUST be true.

19. CONTRASTING LOGIC The conclusions of inductive logic result
from examination of observable phenomena
(a posteriori). They are testable.
The premises of deductive logic may come from inductive conclusions, or they may
just be statements accepted as
self-evident (a priori). They are
not necessarily the result of testing.

20. Two things are necessary for deductive logic to yield reliable conclusions:
1. Correct structure.
2. True premises.

21. DEDUCTIVE LOGIC AND SYLLOGISMS
If P is true, then Q is true. (Major premise)
P is true. (Minor premise)
Therefore, Q is true. (Conclusion)
live on earth
then Q
live in U.S.
live in La.
if P
if live in New Orleans
To represent a syllogism graphically, anything inside the inner circle (“if”) is automatically
inside the outer circle (“then”).
Syllogisms can also be
chained (transitive logic).

22. CONVERSES IN LOGIC If I am at Mount Everest,
then I am at the highest mountain in the world.
TRUE.
THE CONVERSE:
If I am at the highest mountain in the world,
then I am at Mount Everest.
ALSO TRUE.
A converse is reliable ONLY
if there is an exact one-to-one match
between the “If” and “Then” parts - a biconditional (“if and only if”).

23. A COMMON FORM OF INVALID LOGIC
If I am at Victoria Falls,
then I am at one of the largest waterfalls in the world.
TRUE.
THE CONVERSE:
If I am at one of the largest waterfalls in the world,
then I am at Victoria Falls.
FALSE. (not reliable)
A converse is NOT reliable
if there is more than one possibility.

24. AT ONE OF THE LARGEST WATERFALLS
PROPER LOGIC FLOW
AT ONE OF THE LARGEST WATERFALLS
IF AT NIAGARA FALLS
IF AT VICTORIA FALLS
IF AT ANGEL
FALLS
IF AT KAIETEUR FALLS
IF AT OTHER
LARGE WATER-
FALL

25. A COMMON EXAMPLE OF INVALID LOGIC
If I am at Victoria Falls,
then I am at one of the largest waterfalls in the world.
TRUE.
THE CONVERSE:
If I am at one of the largest waterfalls in the world,
then I am at Victoria Falls.
FALSE. (not reliable)
If evolution is true, then the universe and life would exist.
TRUE.
THE CONVERSE:
If the universe and life exist, then evolution is true.
FALSE. (not reliable)
All teaching of “evolution only” in schools rests on the
invalid use of a logical converse.

26. POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS FOR THE UNIVERSE
UNIVERSE EXISTS
THEISTIC EVOLUTION CORRECT
YOUNG-EARTH CREATION CORRECT
ATHEISTIC EVOLUTION CORRECT
OLD-EARTH CREATION CORRECT
SOMETHING
ELSE CORRECT

27. EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a
dog, then it barks.”)
Snoopy is a dog.
Therefore, Snoopy barks.
Not if
Snoopy is a
Basenji!
Basenjis do
not
bark.
If any one of our premises is wrong, then our conclusion is unreliable.

28. POSTULATES - Statements that are taken as self-evident and accepted without proof.
Euclid’s Parallel Line Postulate says that for any line, there can be only one parallel line through a point not on the first line.
Point not on the first line
Only one parallel line
First line
BUT IS IT REALLY SELF-EVIDENT?
Lobachevskyan and Riemannian geometry say that space is curved,
so there is no such thing as an infinitely long straight line in the
sense that we understand “straight.”
One says space is negatively curved so that there are an infinite number of parallel lines through a point not on a line.
The other says space is positively curved so that there are no parallel lines. All lines intersect at infinity.
EACH OF THE THREE IS THE BASIS OF A DIFFERENT
VERSION OF GEOMETRY, BUT NONE CAN BE PROVEN.

29. ARISTOTLE’S MOST BASIC MISTAKE IN LOGIC:
1. He reasoned that if the stars were different distances, they should display parallax.
2. He could not detect any parallax.
3. He decided “If I cannot see parallax then it does not exist.”
He started with the false assumption that there was no parallax. This led him to be wrong about EVERYTHING ELSE!

30. EXAMPLES OF INCORRECT CONCLUSIONS BASED ON FAULTY DEDUCTIVE LOGIC
“Scientific” ideas of Aristotle TAUGHT AS FACT in European Universities for 2000 YEARS:
1. The earth is the center of the solar system.
Falsified by Copernicus.
2. Heavier objects fall faster.
Falsified by Galileo.
3. All objects possess an innate tendency to come to rest.
Falsified by Newton.
4. There is no such thing as an atom.
Falsified by many modern scientists.

31. SKEPTICISM! ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT CHARACTERISTICS OF A SCIENTIST:
While most scientific progress occurs as we build on the work of others, the great leaps forward usually happen because someone doubted what almost everybody else thought.
There is NOTHING in science that is above question. (Even gravity!)

32. “SCIENCE” UNTIL THE MIDDLE AGES:
Based on the deductive logic of the ancient Greeks,
who believed that logic always leads to truth.
Testing was unimportant to them.
Most famous Greek philosopher:
Aristotle (inventor of the logic still used today),
whose ideas were taught as fact for about 2,000 years throughout Europe, west Asia, and Africa.
(Aristotle said it, I believe it, that settles it!)

33. ARE YOU WILLING TO “UN-LEARN” SOME OF THE THINGS YOU HAVE LEARNED?
Aristotle was wrong because he started with the assumption that if he could not see something then it did not exist. This has happened in later years too.
Wiedersheim and “vestigial organs” (function of appendix identified in peer-reviewed 2007 article from Duke University Medical School)
2. Schrödinger with his “quantum cat” related to radioactive decay (radioactive decay rates found to vary predictably every month -- Stanford Univ. 2010)
3. Many segments of DNA formerly called “pseudogenes” now have a known function. They are not “junk DNA” after all.
THERE MAY BE MANY OTHER THINGS WE DON’T KNOW YET.

34. Don’t rely on logic alone. Test everything!
HOW TO TELL SCIENCE FROM STORYTELLING
4. HOW could
I test this
to see if
it’s true?
1. WHO said
they saw it?
Can I trust
them?
WHAT NOT?
HOW?
WHAT?
2. WHAT
did they
actually
see?
WHO?
Don’t rely on logic alone. Test everything!
HOW DO YOU
KNOW THAT?
3. WHAT are they
NOT telling me?