ob1sr: "The destruction of Pompeii, Sodom, Gamorrah, God claimed that he did these thing, for various reasons, and the ways he told us about on how he destroyed them were also true when these places were uncovered and studied."
Uhh...not quite correct- 1st where in the Bible or the Qur'an did God/Alah state that he was going to destroy Pompeii & why?
That argument comes off as Jerry Fallwel saying that God caused hurricane Katrina because "He" was mad at the U.S. for allowing abortion & tolerating gays. Why then was Las Vegas spared? Why not other countries too? Why not a more obvious message? It's not like a hurricane is much of an argument that God was trying to be subtile. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/8/31/0836/62623
Also, why would God/Alah kill so many innocent childern in the process? Doesn't sound like a very nice guy to me....
Let's also accept the position that we can't see Allah. No one of here can actully see atoms or gravity either, but the effects are testable, measurable, and predictable. If God/Allah is real, then why is there just stories that have been crafted to fit past events? Where is the clear cut Divne intervention? Where is the big booming voice going.... "OK I SAID STOP DOING THAT, OR ELSE!" ?
If I wrote a book saying that the Flying Spagetti Monster was real and wrapped it around current day events...does that make the Flying Spagetti Monster real 2,000 years from now?
Sigh...still waiting for just one logical argument that doesn't resort to a fallacy.
So, you'd rather give credence to ancient "studies" that might or might not be valid and philosophies that have nothing tangible to support them rather than theories that evolved from measured observations?
Some of those ancient studies still make sense, are useful, and provided many of the same conclusions as science is verifying today. I personally like Plato, but Cicero is good.
How are norms any different from the cultural phenomenon between any other intelligent species (i.e. ravens, dolphins etc.)? What makes them so special and unmeasurable?
I don't know if a dolphin or raven debates whether or not they have rights, whether civil liberties are preferable over security, how laws are to be applied, how justice is to be administered, and what is right or wrong. I don't know many scientists that debate these things either in terms of their research, and I can cite many cases of unjust conduct in the name of scientific advance.
How can any sequence of characters "show" consciousness?
I was under the assumption that you were using that string of characters in terms of a nucleic base sequence, so it is a representation of something physically observable, and my argument is that for whatever science has done, it has provided no proof of a physical structure that is responsible for consciousness.
A lot of the works in history were before mankind had a grasp of his surroundings; no level of self-inspection can derive physical principles reliably, unless it does so by logic and the knowledge of empirical results. Why? Because unless something is verifiable by our senses, it might or might not be true. Even if consistency is shown in a historical work, the axioms must be considered and the fact that there is no empirical evidence to support them.
You'd be suprised at how much these people had before Bacon. The Romans didn't need to understand chemestry and adopt empirical rigor to create the strongest concrete up until the 20th Century. They did it anyway, and probably tested, compared, and researched what worked, without ever reading Bacon.
I can point to several examples of things that are considered scientifically and logically acceptable these days, that have no basis in observation, and cannot be tested, because they cannot exist. I don't see many scientists saying that a Klein Bottle isn't a valid solid. Yet I have yet to see one, because this great creation of logic and broad mathematical validity has the small problem of requiring another dimention that we cannot experience or know, because we are limited to three spatial dimentions.
So you see, secret mysteries, obscure languages, untestable theories, and truth based on faith is not limited to religion, or the humanities. Mathematics too is an almost mythic process when taken to its logical conclusions.
The problem is that we are an inductive race: Some of the norms that existed millennia ago still exist as laws, but for what reason? You have to ask yourself if the concept of right and wrong is any more intelligible than the inductive fanaticism in Islam, passed from family to child and so on. Maybe we would be better off if we were to take a scientific approach to the development of norms? Prove me wrong.
If we found a series of genes that show a high correlation with violent crime later in life (and there are some that argue that we have), and we want to reduce crime, then wouldn't logic and science agree that the best course of action would be to remove, restrict, or eliminate those who possess these genes?
Don't think of the answer in terms of anecdotal references to rights, or equality, or a government for the sake of the governed. Those are opinions and unscientific concepts that are just the same as those in Christianity, or Islam.
All science has are the facts concerning the cause of crime, and a problem to solve. To not solve it in the most efficient way possible is letting anecdotal notions get in the way of what hard logic says must be done.
For the very same reason it is fallacious to think that historical reasoning is any more valid than statistical modeling: Inferences drawn from events without mathematical rigor are simply the regressions without the consistent background. Why should such results be taken seriously if the axioms it relies on are so weak? Why wouldn't the ramblings of a child be any less valid?
I'm not saying that historical, anecdotal, theological, quantitative, or qualitative reasoning is inherently more valid than any other method when it comes to what we should believe. Bad science is not only bad, its dangerous (and for fear of satisfying Godwin's Law, I won't provide an example). Good theology is applicable to those who not only believe the religion, but even non-believers and atheists can see that there is some truth, provided its reasonably argued, and consistent.
The reliance on weak axioms is precisely why theology isn't taken seriously by most scientists: How much easier it would be for all of us if we could assume that some omnipotent being created the universe and the earth! What makes one set of religious assumptions more valid than the other and what do we do with all of the inconsistencies between them when neither of them has empirical evidence?
To me at least, what theology, philosophy, and science all share is the ability to ask important questions, answer them as completely as possible, with whatever method is appropriate to the subject matter. Validity is something that all fields based on abstract knowlege must contend with, and science is no exception.
I'm sure if you ask the biologists, the geologists, the chemists, the astronomers, and physicists, you'll get five different answers to any question all of them have in common. They speak the same language, but they have different schools of thought, different conceptions of the nature of things, etc.
Same thing with human things like religion, and history. I may not have much in common with a muslim, but if I talk about faith, hope, and charity, he and I understand what these things mean.
Philosophy and theology are not needed to keep science in check: Science keeps itself in check by the need to constantly proof itself consistent. How would a verse in the bible be more effective than testing a hypothesis than an attempted proof by contradiction? For that matter, how couldn't all of the different ways to interpret a statement be less effective than assuming an entire set of new weak axioms?
If these things found in religion, philosophy, and history are so wrong, what is the reason people pursue it, and ascertain that it does matter? Yes, you may believe that its all bunk and a waste of time, but its better to say that some of it is bunk, and some of it is a waste of time. Otherwise, scientists become just as close minded and false as the religious zealots they despise.
I mean, what do you want me to say here? That if its scientific, it can't be wrong? If its mystical, it can't be right? I won't say either, and I'll only say that the method has no bearing on the validity of the work, or the work as a sham.
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
the problem is that people are throwing things and say it's in Islam, while it doesn't even have anything to do with it.
Family traditions have nothing to do with Islam, even if that family were muslims, please understand that Islam doesn't hold anything accountable for the doings of some tribal traditions.
Originally posted by ob1sr Originally posted by //\//\oo .. People usually view creation beliefs as something boolean: Either you accept Darwinism or you're a creationist. I don't accept 100% of evolution, but I totally reject creationism. There is empirical evidence to suggest the verity of Darwin's theory, but the whole adaptation thing.. it's too much conjecture without proof: If he had shown mathematically that systems that consist of organic molecules have that property, then I would take it seriously. However, accepting as far-fetched an idea as religion without proof; that is nothing short of insanity. What is faith? My definition of faith is: Faith is the axiomatic acceptance of a weak theory due to the inability and/or (desire not) to reason logically and empirically. If everybody had had faith in the bible and never tried to refute it, then we would still be plowing fields by hand and dying off to the plague.
All Hail, King of the thinkerers.
I applaud you for making up your own theories and definitions and trying to make us believe them.
Ummm, may i ask what kind of degree you have in science? math? scholarship? or maybe anything related?
I don't know if a dolphin or raven debates whether or not they have rights, whether civil liberties are preferable over security, how laws are to be applied, how justice is to be administered, and what is right or wrong. I don't know many scientists that debate these things either in terms of their research, and I can cite many cases of unjust conduct in the name of scientific advance. Indeed you don't. So you cannot prove that they don't have a similar social structure. What we have learned from these intelligent animals is that they do propagate traditions as we do, communicate through frequencies and possess a social hierarchy; ravens have even been seen to use "tools" for problem solving and teach their young to do the same. Yes, cite them. How are they any more unjust than the Witch trials in Salem? What about the people that are getting killed in Afghanistan today for converting to another religion? Compare the two cardinalities and take heed of the similarities: The atrocities were done in "the name of" some set of beliefs.
I was under the assumption that you were using that string of characters in terms of a nucleic base sequence, so it is a representation of something physically observable, and my argument is that for whatever science has done, it has provided no proof of a physical structure that is responsible for consciousness. No it hasn't. That's a good thing too, since the human brain is not yet understood. Also, the defitinion would have to extend to other animals as well...
So you see, secret mysteries, obscure languages, untestable theories, and truth based on faith is not limited to religion, or the humanities. Mathematics too is an almost mythic process when taken to its logical conclusions. In the example you cited, the romans must have had empirical evidence (otherwise how did they create it?); however, if a theory or philosophy is proposed that has absolutely no empiric evidence to suggest or logic to prove it.... (is an independent axiom) then why should it automatically be accepted? No, mathematics is not mythic, it deals with specific implementations of logic; systems of statements that possess the necessary conditions for consistency. Yes, some of the results in mathematics by the acceptance of certain axioms that might agree with our intuition are fantastic (i.e. The Axiom of Choice), but math by itself does not propose anything.
If we found a series of genes that show a high correlation with violent crime later in life (and there are some that argue that we have), and we want to reduce crime, then wouldn't logic and science agree that the best course of action would be to remove, restrict, or eliminate those who possess these genes? No, science would not agree with that course of action (given that information), since it would still need to be proven that it is optimal. That is a good problem with statistical inference that you propound: The fact that statistical inference is an accepted probability with an alpha (error) that depends on an ASSUMED distribution! Even if the distribution holds, there is still no absolute causality implied by a low p-value and even if that were a fact: Maybe the genes of the criminals are absolutely necessary in our gene pool to develop resistances against future diseases? That precise lack of projection and depth calculation associated with biology and medicine is why it is so tentative. If these things found in religion, philosophy, and history are so wrong, what is the reason people pursue it, and ascertain that it does matter? Yes, you may believe that its all bunk and a waste of time, but its better to say that some of it is bunk, and some of it is a waste of time. Otherwise, scientists become just as close minded and false as the religious zealots they despise. I realize that this is arrogant, but it is possible that it is attributable to a lack of education; most people of the world are not given the opportunity to study science to the degree that we have taken for granted. Again, your assertion is a matter of opinion... so we disagree ;pI mean, what do you want me to say here? That if its scientific, it can't be wrong? If its mystical, it can't be right? I won't say either, and I'll only say that the method has no bearing on the validity of the work, or the work as a sham. I don't want you to say anything. I'm just explaining my beliefs to you and why I think that the same rigor in science should be extended to everything else. It is entirely possible that we were wrong all along and religion was right, but I don't think that we should simply accept intuitive ideas without subjecting them to same sort of trying analysis that we do hypotheses in science.
I don't want you to say anything. I'm just explaining my beliefs to you and why I think that the same rigor in science should be extended to everything else. It is entirely possible that we were wrong all along and religion was right, but I don't think that we should simply accept intuitive ideas without subjecting them to same sort of trying analysis that we do hypotheses in science.
This is a sequence of characters intended to produce some profound mental effect, but it has failed.
You keep mentioning God but right now I am not arguing the evidence for an intelligent designer I am arguing about macroevolution (the majority of the evolutionary theory). I am specifically, at this time, arguing about similarity which is apprently a very big part of the evolutionary theory. Like you said with your courtroom example they compared the dna and through that assumed that he was the father. Now they compared two creatures of the same species and got matching results. You say that 98% of humans and chimps DNA is identical and because of this we had a common ancestor.
This is all assuming of course that there is no possible other explaination for similarity or commonality. I could say something as extreme as this. We were created in a labratory by aliens who invented DNA and varied the genetic code for the various major lifeforms on this planet. You would probably scream immediately this is faulty and unproven. You however said that the comparitive DNA means that we came from a common ancestor. If there is any possible explaination for similarity,however remote, or plausible, then you must come up with another independent source of evidence that can be varified that establishes that all life came from a common ancestor. It must also show that we came from no other origin. Why must science do all of this? That is because to call something a scientific fact you must have non-refutable evidence. Through your post and others I am still seeing that a lot of evolution takes similarity of whatever it is 98% DNA being identical etc. You then assume there is no other explaination and you talk about faith. However, If you are asserting something based on an observation and you cannot prove it 100%; you are guessing even if you are stating it in scientific terminology. Again you are taking compariative anatomy,physiology,biology,homology,embryology, genetics, etc and saying because of this similarity that we all came from a common ancestor. This doesn't change the answer to this guess, it is still an assumption based on something you are seeing, it is still a guess.
Before you respond I do want to let you know I know this is not the only thing that scientists use to try and prove evolution true. The reason I am not addressing the other proofs is we are not done with this one. Similarity is a big part of evolution and I am seeing as well, if you would agree that if similarity was all evolution had it would not be enough proof to have evolution. As in if similarity was the ONLY proof evolution had the only standing proof would you still thing all life evolved or would you say of course more evidence would be needed.
You make the claim that I am full of dogmatic assertions, because I'm not willing to see faith healing as false on its face, simply because medicine and science doesn't accept that prayer has any validity.
Nowhere do I say that faith healing is genuine. However, if there is an illness, a prayer occurs, and the illness disappears, a true scientist will be open to the possibility that perhaps the prayer did cure the illness, just as much as he or she is open to the possibility that there was an cause other than the prayer.
You list three possible alternative explainations to why faith healing works.
The first reason has to do with the setting causing a series of physiological changes that causes a temporary relief of the symptoms, but no actual cure. Interesting theory, but then how does one explain when faith healing does cure the ailment?
The second reason has to do with the fact that the person is not really suffering at all, and is person with psychological problems. I'm sure that this is a common enough assumption amongst religion haters, and it avoids the problem by saying its not really a problem. Yet it does not explain those cases where there was a real ailment, and a real cure.
The third reason is the assertion that yes, a few people spontaneously cure themselves (which is just a cop out), but an assertion that it was definately not the prayer that cured it, but rather, random chance. The only reason I can see how this works in the mind of anyone who is approaching this phenomenon is that they want to discredit religion so badly, they are willing to use any sort of rationale just to discredit it.
Yet you accuse me of being dogmatic in my assertions?
I'm open to the possibility that faith healing is bunk. I'm also open to the possibility that these people are telling the truth, and the burden is on me, and science, to provide irrefutable evidence that they are not being truthful. The problem I see is that you want faith to go through your litmus test, and not the other way around. Which is problematic because the faith healers don't have any reason to care about your litmus tests, and convincing someone who is already convinced its a sham.
If you saw a miracle in the woods sk3ptic, are you insane, ignorant, or pysiologically disrupted? Or is it proof that miracles exist?
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Shalak1989: I have no problem with answering your questions about evolution (and in fact I don't mind answering serious questions)...Why do you seem to have so much trouble answering mine about so called intelligent design? So far you haven't even tried to answer a single one. Why do you only focus on the weak attempt to discredit establishing lineage, while still ignoring all of the other edivence that comes along with it? Evidence that I noticed just happens to contradict your position.
You talk about science needing "non-refutable evidence" but tell me where is yours? You and the other belivers all keep talking about refuting evolution, but when asked for any credible evidence you all suddenly ignore the request. Why is that? Please answer.. if there is so much support for I.D. and if it's so sound, then why are the religous organizations supporting/funding it not spending one cent on trying to provide credible evidence to present to the scientifc community? Why to do they spend the money on elections, pseudo-documentaries that misrepresnt geology, and psudeo-educational materials designed to misinform the public?
You talk about science needing to provide independant evidence to support a common origin. Actually many of the forms of evidence are independant of one another. Treating them as that same just because they happen to mostly agree with one another doesn't meant that they aren't independant. I sited not just overal genetic similarites, but marker sites (while they both use genetics, they test for differnt things) , the fossil record, the geological strata, biochemistry, physiology, radiometric dating, etc. Even ignoring that, I notice that you have yet to provide ANY evidence of independant origins. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
Please tell me EXACTLY what would you consider to be sufficent independant evidence that life evolved? Please be specific about precisly what would be good enough to convince you, not just somthing like "Oh well the evidence had to be you know...independant". Telll me...would anything short of a time machine to actually go back and watch it be enough for you?
As to your example that if aliens made humans in a laboritory we couldn't tell. I'm afraid that in fact there would be ways to test for the likelyhood of such a event. First of all, why the slow change from ape-like creatures, to less ape-like, to human. There are a lot of steps in between over several million years, why did it take them so long? Maybe they like to take really long siestas? Next, why did they leave so many vestigial organs especiailly the one that can be harmful (like the appendix). Why did they leave in so many design flaws, even ones that any amature enginer could spot? Why did they go to the extra trouble of replicating extraneuos genetic material and flaws? Curiously you never answered these questions in my last post, I wonder why not?
This evidence makes it rather improbable that any remotely intelligent designer was involved in human development. Does it prove that humans weren't designed? No...but then again it's almost impossible to prove a negative.
If you think that I'm not being reasonable about how it's nearly impossible to prove a negative, then try to disprove the existance of Santa Claus. For every argument you'll be able to offer I'll be able to provide an illogical counter argument to support the existance of Chris Cringle, even while not offering a shread of credible positive evidence to support the position. Just like you guys are doing with creationism/intelligent design.
Beatnik59: I applogise for perhaps not making things a little more clear to you...I never accused you of being dogmatic for regectiing faith healing "on it's face". Actually, I claimed that you are full of dogmatic assertions because you use your groundless belief in souls to then prop-up your equally groundless belief in a divine creator, apparently not questioning the claims of prayer's healing power. You also then proceded to then use prayer healing and "anecdotal evidence" (your own words) to then futher prop-up your still groundless belief in a creator. I apologise if I read your statement "science can ascertain what is the cause of spontaneous healing through prayer, or what causes ghosts and hauntings, or what causes a lot of the mystically phenomenon we experience." as meaning that you belive in the phenomina that you just implied were real.
You also said... "I'm no advocate of using prayer to heal. Certainly the American Medical Association isn't either. That doesn't mean that people haven't been ill, prayed, and were no longer ill after praying. Did the prayer cure the illness? Maybe not, but if it did not, what did?" While I'm glad that you don't actually advocate the use of prayer in healing. You demonstrate in here what I earlier pointed out is called the POST HOC FALLACY, in plain english it means that you belive that just because event "A" preceded event "B" then A must have caused B. That is false logic and leads to unsubstantiated claims. For example...If I told you that earlier in the day I put too much postage on a letter and then latter in the day I had a car crash, does that prove that putting too much postage on a letter causes car accidents? Yet you're willing to make the same logical leap when it comes to the idea of "healing through prayer".
When you then state "However, if there is an illness, a prayer occurs, and the illness disappears, a true scientist will be open to the possibility that perhaps the prayer did cure the illness, just as much as he or she is open to the possibility that there was an cause other than the prayer." It not only shows your willingness to fall for the post hoc fallacy, it also shows your lack of understanding on the scientific research of such alleged phenomina that I was trying to point out earlier. As I already tried to point out, in fact scientists have researched such claims and the only studies that supported prayer as being any better than a placebo were poorly designed (and therefore useless as a test) or were later proven to be deliberate frauds (some studies even purport to show that you're slightly worse off! but that may also be due to flaws in their methodology). http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-09/miracle-study.html http://www.csicop.org/si/2005-03/miracle-study.html
As I also tried to explain earlier, science would have no trouble accepting that prayer works for "some reason" if it could be proven that people that were prayed for actually had a better than placebo success rate. Unfortunately, after centuries and hundreds of studies after studies, there is still no evidence that prayer really does anything more than a placebo could (at best). Like I also stated before, long before scientists had even a theory of how gravity works they had accepted it's existance, measured it's effects, & learned to use it to make predictions. Why? Because gravity was a proven force that could be tested. The power of prayer can be tested, and already has over and over, and it has FAILED the tests.
Tell me...can you show us even one scientifically credible test that proves that prayer works? When you've been tallying the success stories, have you even tried to measure the failures? When you are looking at "proof" of healing through prayer, are you asking...Did they use a control group? What was the sample size? How random was the sample of the test subjects? Were Double Blind protocols followed? What about a long term study of the results? These are questions that any truely open mind should be asking (and good science does). Are you?
As to your reply that people healing themselves is a "cop out"...Really so if you get the Flu and then get better is that divine intervention, or did your body defend itself form what it detected as a threat? When a broken bone heals is that divine intervention as well? Actually, I rather doubt that you would belive that..so then why is it that hard for you to accept that sometime seriously ill people do in fact get better on their own (even if no ones praying for them)? As I've already stated were is your credible proof that people that use prayer has any better rate of healing than people who don't?
Your attempts to refute my earlier post still fail because...
You have yet to prove that any healing greater than chance is occuring. Asserting that something happens without proving that it in fact happens doesn't prove your point.
You then have to resort to making accusations about my motives while attempting to avoid the point entierly that you have yet to prove that anything is happening at all due to prayer.
So yes... I still accuse you of being dogmatic in your assertions because you have yet to provide any reason to accept your position while rejecting out of hand contrary evidence.
Finally, as to your statement.... "I'm also open to the possibility that these people are telling the truth, and the burden is on me, and science, to provide irrefutable evidence that they are not being truthful. The problem I see is that you want faith to go through your litmus test, and not the other way around. Which is problematic because the faith healers don't have any reason to care about your litmus tests, and convincing someone who is already convinced its a sham."
Spoken like a true beliver...you've got your logic all backwards again. Just like most belivers you're falling back to the old logical fallacy of REVERSING THE BURDEN OF PROOF and hoping that someone won't catch it...
The burden of proof isn't upon science to prove that prayer doesn't heal because science has no intrest in proving that prayer doesn't work, only in trying to prove that it does work (which so far it still hasn't). Science can no more "prove" that prayer doesn't work than you can prove that there is no Santa Claus (see above). That is why it is usually ridiculus to try and PROVE A NEGATIVE. Rather, it is up to each position's supporters to try and positively support their own position.
Your comments about a "litmus test" also beg the question: that if faith healers don't want to prove themselves, then why do they always seek so much publicicty? Why wouldn't it be in their best intrest to finally prove to the world that what they claim, is in fact real? They seem to be more than willing to "treat" people when no one is actually checking the long term results. Wouldn't a faith healer that could prove their ability not only have greater success at their goals but do far more good? If faith healing could be scientifically proved then think of all the good it would do for the world. In point of fact many faith healers have participated in tests to prove their abilites, they always fail under any sort of proper test. Of course the ones with more to lose, the ones with bigger names & bigger profits, never let then selves be tested even when they get to help decide what would be a fair test. I wonder why that is? Sounds to me like your the one using a "cop out".
"It must also show that we came from no other origin. Why must science do all of this? That is because to call something a scientific fact you must have non-refutable evidence." Again you're trying to get the side of science to PROVE A NEGATIVE while failing to provide even one single iota of evidence to support your own side (nor even an argument that isn't a logical fallacy). By the way, has it ever occured to you that the reason that science doesn't presently consider any alternates to evolution is because nobody has yet come up with a better theory that has all that pesky evidence stuff that you keep demanding, but never offer? If someone could provide a better theory and back it up with credible positive evidence that it would become accepted by science. Granted it maybe slowly at first but with moire evidence it would be better accepted, just like what happend with evolution. Any scientist that could actually come up with a better theory than evolution would be in the history books, bigger than Darwin ever was, not to metion the Nobel prize and all of the grants for more research. Maybe if the I.D. groups would just stop trying to buy elections, and spend the money on real research to provide real evidence, then you might get your alternative theory. But, I wouldn't hold my breath on that....
So on that note...in all seriousness I really would like to read any credible postive evidence for your position that you can offer, as long as you don't have to keep resorting to logical fallices to support your position. I used to be a beliver too (when I was much younger), but then I learned the basics of critical thought/analysis and realised that the world if full of B.S.. Some of it is spread by people with good intentions, some by people with bad, some by people that are nuts, some by people that are just ignorant/confused, and some by people that are trying to fulfill some emotional need. The trick is learning to re-evaluate your own beliefs (rigorusly and objectively) and to see though the nonsense and misdirection of others. I'm always open to re-reevaluate my position I'm just still waiting for good argument backed by credible positive evidence.
So on that note...in all seriousness I really would like to read any credible postive evidence for your position that you can offer, as long as you don't have to keep resorting to logical fallices to support your position. I used to be a beliver too (when I was much younger), but then I learned the basics of critical thought/analysis and realised that the world if full of B.S.. Some of it is spread by people with good intentions, some by people with bad, some by people that are nuts, some by people that are just ignorant/confused, and some by people that are trying to fulfill some emotional need. The trick is learning to re-evaluate your own beliefs (rigorusly and objectively) and to see though the nonsense and misdirection of others. I'm always open to re-reevaluate my position I'm just still waiting for good argument backed by credible positive evidence.
I don't think you do sk3ptical, I really don't.
I think you use rhetoric and things you pull off the internet to make yourself seem smart, and paint people who don't fall in lockstep with your position as ignorant, agenda-laden, or deceptive.
I'm sure if you were a believer at one time, you argued just as strongly for your previous position. In fact, people like you can argue any side of any argument just as convincingly.
Rhetoric is no substitute for truth though. That is something that was shown long before science was formalized by Bacon and Descartes. Nor does truth depend on how well argued it is. I'm sure if some event that was miraculous happened to you in the woods (like seeing bigfoot), no amount of argument would convince people like you that it really happened, even though it did.
They would probably say you were insane, or ignorant, or harboring an agenda just like you accuse those who bore witness to the phenomenon that the majority does not accept.
However, does that mean that your knowledge is false, simply because others refuse to accept it? It doesn't matter if you are Joan of Arc who hears commandments from God to free France, or Copernicus who thinks the heavenly bodies rotate around the Sun. Personal experience doesn't need to be acceptable to others for it to be true.
This sort of mindset can come from science, philosophy, or religion, and can lead to bad ends. Too many people see life as a quest to prove our sanity and open mindedness by accusing everyone who doesn't agree that they have a hidden agenda, or is crazy, or suffering from psychological disorders.
In fact sk3ptica1, I really don't think you are as skeptical as you like to say you are. You are certain, or at least you try to be, and you are so troubled by people raising questions that it upsets you.
I do not think that I, nor you for that matter, are qualified to say that someone who has bore witness to a miraculous circumstance is a liar. Life is full of mystery, and its not limited to theology. There is the mystery of the Klein Bottle, of dark matter, or the Vendian extinction. I try to point out this mystery not to condemn it, but to point out that anything can be argued to be crazy thinking when we refuse to entertain the possibility to see it. To you, mentioning the “soul” is a crazy thing. However, I don’t see how knowledge of the facts we have acquired can explain consciousness, or replace religion, philosophy, art, and mysticism; all of which are done, and cannot be explained unless hard science delves into a sort of mysticism of its own to make these biologically pointless things fit with biological constraints.
One more thing about the “soul.” First of all, I can’t take credit for the idea of a soul that governs our physical form, so it is not “my assertion.” I used it because scientific theory has not to this point described in full detail the essence of consciousness, personality, will, and all of those characteristics that have been attributed to the soul, and that are central to our lives as sentient and rational human beings, and still be scientific.
When they have attempted to do so, in the case of those like Dawkins, Pinker, and Dennett, what I see is less of a true explanation of the phenomenon, and more of a misappropriation of biological theory to support non-biological and non-scientific normative assertions. It would be as if I used theology to describe physical things. I can do it, but as people like you point out, science is a better method to arrive at true knowledge of physical things.
I’m not sure hard scientific theory can replace the methods by which we arrive at normative knowledge (knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, just and unjust). I can cite articles on the web that will show how wrong it is logically to derive moral knowledge from empirical facts, but if you are such a logical expert, I’m sure you understand what I am talking about.
Nor can it explain miracles, or put in statistical language, outliers in the distribution. Science can explain the typical very well, but it has difficulty in explaining the exceptions. Miracles are exceptions that defy convention, and yes, faith healing defies conventional wisdom.
Suffice it to say though that it is like beating up a straw man to say that faith healing is bunk, or that there is no soul. You don’t even need to be a scientist to do that, and you are not the first one or the last one to argue that it is bunk. Its so obvious that anyone who hasn’t experienced angels coming down to heal think such ideas are crazy and absurd, that its not worth talking about.
However, if the subject is suffering from a real illness, is actually cured of the ailment, and the only thing we can find is a prayer or other ritual done in between the disease and the cure, it is not unreasonable to entertain the notion that the prayer may have cured the illness. In fact, it is actually quite reasonable to assume that it did in lone, particular circumstances where another cause cannot be found, but perhaps not in all circumstances when other, more plausible causes can be found.
So while I’m not going to give up my insurance to Blue Cross, and hang out at the church; I am at least going to say “good for you,” and maybe hope that miracles like that can happen to me if I need it. What does it hurt to hope, provided you don’t rely on miraculous phenomenon to substitute for sound, reasonable practices? If there is one thing people agree upon about miraculous phenomenon (even you, sk3ptica1), is that the occurrence is not predictable, and both science and theology can agree that one shouldn’t depend completely on miracles.
However, what makes miraculous phenomenon miraculous is not that they occur every day, and for reasons we can understand. Miracles are miracles because they occur unpredictably, and for reasons we cannot understand.
You too entertain miracles, sk3ptica1 when you say this:
Next, sometime people do get better on their own (the body does have a lot of defences & repair mechanisims after all). For example, nearly every one on the planet will get cancer at least and usuall several time it their life, but usually our body destroys it before we even know it. It the cancer that our body can't/fails to stop that's the problem, but sometimes our body's defences make a come-back. if some does get better on there own around the time they see a faith healer, then "Halleula it must have been a marricle". This it what's called the "Post Hoc Fallacy" meaning that just because event "B" happened sometime after event "A", it doesn't necessarily prove that event "A" caused "B". This is also called "being lucky".
The point is, this “come back” you refer to is, in fact, a miracle, and you are engaging in a kind of theology when you admit to it. Nor do I think its crazy for the person to thank God and call it a miracle. From your own example, science and medicine cannot explain what caused this case to be different than all the other cases of terminally ill patients that are diagnosed with malignant cancer. There is no reason why this person should be different except to say that he or she is special. I agree that the person is special, but then, what caused the "specialness?"
It was not a theologian who stated, “God does not play dice,” and it doesn’t help the cause of naturalism to see special cases like these that break the validity of their models. Science and statistics break down at the level of the miraculous, which is why theology is still relevant. Unless there is something else that caused this person to be lucky, I think that the faith and the prayer is about as good of a cause as any other.
Not to say of course that a cause can in fact be found that doesn’t rely on mysticism. There may be a gene, or a dietary component that caused the atypical case to be atypical. But as long as there is generalizable theory, there will always be cases that break the generalization. We will always be in the presence of miracles, no matter how much the men of logic and reason say that there are no miracles.
The problem here is that science, for as good as it is, cannot deal with the miraculous. Theology can, and we need it to explain the miraculous in a way that makes sense in accordance with logic.
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Part of the reason I didn't mention anything about ID was I didn't want the topic shifted to I.D while I was talking about evolution its not that I don't have proof for I.D. Earlier in my posts I wanted to talk about evolution, not intelligent design. After we were done with discussing evolution and some flaws in the theory would have been more then willing to discuss ID. Actually if you want we can continue about evolution here and you can email me at jazz642@gmail.com or I can email you at whatever email address or we can use a messanger so we can just talk in real-time about ID and or evolution too if you want. My arguing about evolution wasn't going to be done by using ID as the reason why evolution couldn't happen. I believe evolution is flawed in its tests/proofs. I believe there is a lot of assumptions based on observations which are in depth no doubt but still point to similarity. Its not that I am afraid of answering your ID questions nessicarily although the proofs of ID you would argue with somewhat especially if you were going to still accept evolution at the same time. However I feel that now I could provide you with ID proofs and let you think on it your not intellectually lacking obviously:). By the way the reason I was addressing similarity alone at first and not the fossil record etc, was I was going through the evidences one at a time. Like after I was done with similarity I would move on to fossils.
Still, I do not mind providing these evidences in an email although I would prefer to have a conversation in a messanger type program. I would still like to continue the topic of evolution here devoid of ID because I believe I do not need to say well God did it to disprove evolution. So if you want to talk about ID and or evolution in real-time instead of on the forums I would prefer that. I can use xfire,yahoo,msn, or aol email me your messanger ID/email(my emails listed above) that you want to use to talk to me. This is of course if you want to obviously you may not feel like it but you said you were open so I figured I would give it a shot. If I start talking about ID on this forum the topic could go from me talking about evolution/darwinism to me talking about God etc when I wasn't finished with evolution. I would rather stay on this topic here and talk about ID in another topic or to you in a messanger. I don't want to be backpedaled into simply defending ID here when im not done with evolution. I said earlier in some post that I was talking about evolution because like I said I do not believe God is what I need to use to disprove evolution. As in the evidence for simply the existence of God does not disprove evolution. Its also nice that you like to discuss in a civil manner:) If you do email me please tell me what state you live in/when your going to be on so I can try and catch you at a convienent time whether it be weekends etc. I find messanger programs to be more effective for discussion because you can talk instead of posting and waiting for the person to respond but whatever works best for you. Anyway, I hope to discuss this more with you perhaps in a chat program type setting talk to you later... and good morning:P 6:19 A.M. here
On the contrary Beatnik59...just pointing out someone's lack of proof & logical fallices is rather boring to me. There is no real intelectual challange to it, because it just comes down Logic & Critical Reasoning 101, something that is sorely lacking in the schools today.
Why is it so unreasonable that when someone says in an affirmative manner that either God is real/God made humans and that evolution has been proven false, that you then provide a logical reason for your belief & any supporting evidence for it? The belivers in a divine creation have no problem insisting on evidence & logic from those who suppprt evolution after all. Why shouldn't go both ways? If you are using an unproven assumption (healing through prayer to use your example) in order to provide "evidence" for a belief (exisitance of God), then why is it so unreasonable to provide evidence thet you make sure that you phenomina in question is in fact real?
As to my posting links to the other sites to "make yourself seem smart"...Actually my intent was to provide other sources in order to make it clear that I wasn't just making these rules of logic up and to prove supporting evidence for my positions. Did you really want my posts to be even longer? If I hadn't posted links to sites that support my position, I suspect that you would instead be challenging me to site some sources (which I notice that you still haven't done to support your own belief in healing by prayer). I just thought that I wouldn't give you the oportunity to make such an attempt (but was still expecting you to then later complain about my posting some sources, I know how your side plays the game after all).
One thing that that we both apparently agree on is, to quote you... "Rhetoric is no substitute for truth though". In fact I couldn't agree with you more, but you see that is precisely the problem, with your side. In the end the only thing that you have to offer is rhetoric & unsubtantiated assumptions.
Actually, if had seen "Bigfoot" in the woods, my first attempt would be to get some real proof of what I saw, while staying open to the possiblity that I might be mistaken. In fact, just as any scientist that could provide proof of healing by prayer or an alternative to natural selection, providing some proof of Bigfoot would not only be good for myself (money, women, etc.), but it would also help to expand human knowledge. I don't see a downside to such a discovery, but considering the lack of credible evidence for Bigfoot I don't see such event as being very likely in my future.
If I couldn't provide proof of my seeing Bigfoot, then I would at least have the courtesy to realise that I'm not giving the other side any reason to belive me. I would at least have the decency to not call them dogmatic or closed-minded when I never gave them a good reason to believe me in the first place (hence the trying to get proof).
On the contrary Beatnik59, I'm not troubled by people posing questions, as you assert. I'm troubled by people making defenitve statement as though they are facts, when that person has no logical or coroborating evidence at all for their position. I'm also troubled when people (specifically fundamentalist groups of all kinds) then go and use such claims to justify promoting ignorance & religous dogma! It bothers me when people who are confronted with the questions that their own position raises don't even try to answer the questions then asked by the opposite position. Tell me, if someone goes around trying to promote the idea that the Earth is actually flat, because it's their theology. Should we just not oppose thier position, or should we ask them to prove their statement. Google the "Flat Earth Society" if you don't think that there are people like that out there.
If you came out and said "I know that there is no proof of God or devine creation, but I like to belive it because I feel that way" (as opposed to trying to make it a factual statement). I would at least respect your intellectual honesty about the position, even if I don't share it. We could then just agree-to-disagree on the subject. Making it into a debate over what is true or not...well that is another matter.
If someone claims to have seen a miracle, I wouldn't necessarily call them a liar, but I would at least consider that is a possibility, as I would also consider halucination (not uncommon for the dying), and self-delusion (why don't you?). There maybe lots of reasons why someone percieves there to have been a miracle, but just because they belive it doesn't mean that it was in fact a miracle.
The only way to realy seperate those who were fortunate from the true miracles is to look for evidence that there is a real tendency for people who are prayed for to get better, and that the effect is greater than for the non-prayed for population. You have yet to provide such, nor have you shown that any of the people to whom your refer to as miracles could only have gotten better by divine intervention. When a doctor states that someone will "probably die" it still means that there is a chance that they'll live even if it's a very longshot. This also refers back to the "Law of Large Numbers" that I earlier mentioned to you. I'm still waiting for your insight on to how many people that were prayed for didn't survive. If everyone survived, then it should be easily tested and proven, or is it just more talk?
I also noticed that you still never answered my question about why if prayer actually caused people to get better, then how come all of the attempts to prove it have failed? You also have yet to explain why is it that people who don't pray are just as likely to heal as those that do. You keep insisting that prayer heals, but you have yet to provide any evidence that it's any better than a sugar pill. Instead you just use more rhetoric that "life is full of mysteries". Well goody... but that doesn't really prove anything does it? In fact, that is the entire problem with the Argument from Ignorance, just beacuse you feel that there may not be a non-supernatual explantion for whatever event now, doesn't mean that someone else won't find a reasonable one later.
Next: actually you did earlier invoke the soul as justification for your beliefs, to quote one of your ealier posts... "However, that does not say much about how the brain, in the ordinary course of living, produces these chemicals for no apparent cause that can be observed. To do that would require that you go to the soul, or something mystical that governs the physical brain." By the way, science actually does have explanations for many the chemicals that the brain produces, it's called Biochemistry and Neurochemistry (the study into some of the others is still ongoing, obviously). Scientists have been tracing the chemical pathways of production of various biochemicals inorder to treat a wide range of disorders & boost human perforance. It's usually slow difficult work, but a great deal of progress has been made, and much greter breakthroughs are being researched as we argue back and forth.
You also stated... "However, if the subject is suffering from a real illness, is actually cured of the ailment, and the only thing we can find is a prayer or other ritual done in between the disease and the cure, it is not unreasonable to entertain the notion that the prayer may have cured the illness. In fact, it is actually quite reasonable to assume that it did in lone, particular circumstances where another cause cannot be found, but perhaps not in all circumstances when other, more plausible causes can be found." More rhetoric...showing what I earlier explained as the Post Hoc Fallacy. Even the TV show "The Simpsons" was able to expain that point. If someone does a daily ritual to "make the Sun come up", and claims that it works because his family has been doing it for as long as everyone remembers and the Sun still comes up, does that prove that the ritual works?
Lets, try another example...it will be a hypothetical one, since I don't want you to complain about trying to make myself look smart again. Lets say that they do a clinical trial on people recieving treatment for terminal cancer (lets say about 500 people). All of the people recieve medical treatment, but half of them are also prayed for. Now lets say that of those treated with medicine alone about 20% get better, of those with medicine and prayer about 20% get better (compaired with say a 5% survival rate w/o any medical treatment). Does that prove that prayer works? Of course not...I don't doubt that many of the prayed for group who got better would call it a miracle and sincerely believe that is was. But, that doesn't mean that it was actually a miracle (unless you are just putting fortunate and miracle in the catagory). Study after study has been unable to show prayer's effectiveness, if it really works better than a placbeo (or medicine) then why can't your side offer anything more than words?
Perhaps part of the problem lies in differing definitions of the word "miracle". In my book a "miracle" should be something that...
Truely defies natural laws...say for example the State of California rising up and floating in midair w/o any apparatus or force that can be explained by an extemely advanced technology. Please note that this would involve more that just a story in an old book that it happened, it would still need some sort of reasonable proof.
Or while it may not violate physical laws perse, something that is so truely inexplicable that it can't be expained by just "being lucky". For example, if someone falls in to chipper or get cremated, and still manages to come back to life (again without some "super technology" that doesn't exist yet)...well that is far more likely to be divine intervention than getting over cancer or surviving a plane crash. Another example would be in a recent comercal for a movie I recently saw on TV, a car getting blown apart by hitting a truck and then coming back together through "magic" with the driver completely unharmed.
The fact of the matter is that the human body has many defences & repair systems. Some of them we a lot know about, others are still being researched and not fully understood yet, some others we may not even know about yet. For example, a small part of the population can apparently grow back their finger (if it's cut off before the last knuckle) it's rare & it seems to be genetic, but it still being researched as to the biological mechanisim which is only partially understood at this time. Saying that just because someone is unlikely to survive still doesn't mean that they won't without devine intervention. Probabilty sometimes come down in your favor. Maybe a person's immune system finally managed to find the right spot to attach an antibody, maybe you have a mutation that give your body slightly better repair/defence systems (it's a documented fact that some people do). Maybe the virus/bacteria mutated to a less harmful version, also proven to happen in nature...a virus/germ doesn't want to kill it's host (not in it's best intrest) it's more of an unfortunate side effect. The virus that causes A.I.D.s for example has long since evolved in being non-lethal in the animal species that had it before humans (bovines, lions, etc). But, you would be correct if you pointed out that unless we could look inside every person that recovers cells.... before during and after healing, it's still speculation. It just means that a miracle isn't the only explantion, as you imply and therefore it doesn't prove that it's a devine intervention. Unless of course, you would also call winning the Lottery a "miracle" as some people do.
Finally getting back to theology, for all the faith you put in it you still can't provide any evidence about whose theology (if any) is correct, can you? The fact of the matter is that the human race has been around long before any of the current major religions were invented, and none of the earlier beliefs seem to have survived (at least not in any recognizable form). The world has plenty of peolpe that would like to torture and kill you because your theological belifes are different. In fact it's their theological belief that they MUST kill you or torture you into converting. From your logic, their position is just as equally valid. Can you prove them wrong?
That is the other problem with accepting the supernatural as fact without any credible positive evidence or logical arguments, you enter an area of "anything goes" and "my belief is just as valid as yours". Tell me where is the truth in that case? That is why science & skepticism is about using logic & evidence to sort truth from non-truth (or at least plausable from implausable at least). That is why concepts like the "Burden of Proof" exist, it is more that just rhetoric to ask that you meet it when you make a factual statement, especially when it has an impact on the future of society.
Shalak1989: I do applogize for perhaps not understanding your position a little better earlier. I will be sending you an email shortly. Perhaps I didn't explain the subject well enough, or I just misunderstood exactly what it is in the evidence that you have the question about. Yes, similarities are involved but at the same time it goes deeper than that. It's more like trying to piece together a crime scene to figure out what happened earlier. I'll try to go over more with you later, but I suppose that the method of communication primarily depends on our respective schedules.
In the meantime, I would like to suggest to anyone else that has serious question about the subject, might want to check out the Talk Origins Archive and usenet group on their home page. Many of your questions are probably in the archive, if not there is the usenet. That one reason why some of my earlier posts liked to some of thier pages. I'll gladly attempt to answer questions on natural selection, but I don't have any illusion about being a professional biologist (biology is just something that I've always been "into") on the talk origins network you can have your questions answered, possibly by a profesional who is more up to date on the latest findings than I am. I hope that this helps....
Originally posted by sk3ptica1 On the contrary Beatnik59...just pointing out someone's lack of proof & logical fallices is rather boring to me. There is no real intelectual challange to it, because it just comes down Logic & Critical Reasoning 101, something that is sorely lacking in the schools today.
It is apparently lacking in the skeptic and atheist community too Sk3ptica1, as I will show.
Perhaps if I talk like you, you’ll understand where I am coming from. The reason I don’t quote evidence is because pure logic will show that your intent here is not genuine.
My statements on this score seem to have been misrepresented by you, but let me ask you a question.
What do you believe my "position," or "my side," looks like? I'm not arguing for a flat earth, I don't practice a religion, and I read the Bible only out of curiosity, not obligation.
Just as you are skeptical about religion though, I am skeptical about this sort of science from an epistemological perspective. It may go somewhere, but nothing I have seen (and I have seen a lot) is able to fully explain what you need it to explain for it to prove that religion and mysticism is bogus.
I could say more on the grounds that the naturalism you purport has been given a cold shoulder by the philosophers, but suffice it to say that it only has the capacity to explain behavior, and not belief. That is to say, a purely naturalistic conception of human beings without reference to the metaphysical can only explain why someone acts a certain way, but cannot yet explain why someone believes a certain way unless they delve into the realm of the metaphysical, speculative, theological, and untestable.
Be that as it may, I don't know how you can get the idea that I am arguing for the soul from this statement of mine you enjoy:
"However, that does not say much about how the brain, in the ordinary course of living, produces these chemicals for no apparent cause that can be observed. To do that would require that you go to the soul, or something mystical that governs the physical brain."
Read the statement carefully, and see how the two qualifications are implied:
a) If there is no apparent cause that can be observed in the ordinary course of living (material), then the cause must be in something that cannot be observed (something mystical). Therefore, a comprehensive theory of materialism that can produce no apparent material cause needs some concept of a soul, or another construction that cannot be observed, for materialism to explain all that we know about human consciousness.
b) Conversely, if there is an apparent cause that can be observed, then the cause is in something actual, and one would not need a soul or another mystical explanation to model consciousness. Now since no apparent cause can be observed, and there is nowhere that a researcher can point to and say, "this is where consciousness is located," there is still a lot of work left to do for science.
How you get from that heavily qualified statement that I am arguing for the soul? Rather, I am trying to show what naturalism “would require” to fully explain a causal theory of human consciousness at this time, but perhaps not for all time. Let's go to the next statement you seem to like from me:
"However, if the subject is suffering from a real illness, is actually cured of the ailment, and the only thing we can find is a prayer or other ritual done in between the disease and the cure, it is not unreasonable to entertain the notion that the prayer may have cured the illness. In fact, it is actually quite reasonable to assume that it did in lone, particular circumstances where another cause cannot be found, but perhaps not in all circumstances when other, more plausible causes can be found."
You are so determined to prove you can get one up on Beatnik59, that you refuse to even see where I'm agreeing with you, because I agree with most of your research, if you choose to actually read what I wrote, and not be so quick to show how smart you are. I'll list out all the ways I agree with you:
a) If the subject is not suffering from a real illness, then faith healing cannot be seen as valid.
b) If the subject only appears to be cured, but not actually cured, then faith healing cannot be seen as valid.
c) If the subject does other things to cure the illness besides prayer and mysticism, then it is not reasonable to cite something so convoluted like faith healing as the cause of the cure (Occam's Razor).
d) Even if the case cannot be explained away by a, b, or c, then it is unreasonable to say with certainty that faith healing was the proximate cause. The only way it can possibly be approached is to say that faith healing and prayer may have caused the cure, understanding full well that it is just as likely that faith healing may not have anything to do with the cure.
e) The examples that we can find which cannot be explained by other, non-mystically based theories are so rare, and so uncommon, that in no way can we recommend faith healing as a substitute for other, non-mystically based cures.
Now do you see, given everything that I have explained to you, how the above statement implies all five of the qualifications I have listed? If my "position," or "my side" is that faith healing is a valid cure, I am a poor advocate, yes?
So then, if I am not arguing against your evidence for faith healing, what is the reason you and I attack each other so much on this issue?
I think it is because somewhere along the line, you try and explain more than you can possibly explain, and should possibly explain, given your evidence, and I think it has to do with this:
"I'm troubled by people making defenitve statement as though they are facts, when that person has no logical or coroborating evidence at all for their position. I'm also troubled when people (specifically fundamentalist groups of all kinds) then go and use such claims to justify promoting ignorance & religous dogma!"
Of that I have no doubt, Sk3ptica1. But if you are so troubled by it, what are you doing accusing poor agnostic Beatnik59 here as some holy roller that wants to force you to check your brain and hormones at the church door? I don't want to do that. I also don't want people marching with their jackboots around the world doing eye color tests, but for fear of satisfying Godwin's Law, let me say right now that I really do not think you personally think of science as a tool to push a fascist agenda.
However, while you may not think of scientific reasoning as a tool to promote a fascist agenda, scientific theory, like religion for that matter, can be used to promote very unscientific purposes. Things like that can happen when we read into the facts not only what is there, but also, what we want to be in there for purposes other than advancing our understanding.
First off, you pose a conjunct between two alternatives that resist mutual exclusion. For you, no evidence for faith in God is a complete proof for faith in biological determinism, rather than considering the more reasonable claim that no evidence for faith in God is no affirmation for faith in biological determinism. Your position as applied to faith healing goes like this:
If you are healed by faith, then you cannot have been healed naturally.
We cannot prove that all cases of faith healing are mystically caused, but we can prove that many cases of faith healing are naturally caused.
Therefore, all cases of faith healing must by default be naturally caused.
Now compare that with a more reasonable statement, like the types I make:
If you are healed by faith, then you cannot have been healed naturally.
We cannot prove that all cases of faith healing are mystically caused, but we can prove that many cases of healing are naturally caused.
Therefore, many cases of faith healing are naturally caused, and the remaining cases may be mystically caused if no natural cause can be found.
Another problem is that you give your own question, and you answer it in a way that the only response you will consider is the response that answers it in the way you deem fit. It is what we call in, as you say, “Logic and Critical Reasoning 101,” as circular logic, and I’ll attempt to summarize the basis of it with regard to faith healing:
The human body has natural repair systems that we do not understand, and therefore, there is no divine cause in cases where we do not understand.
There are some patients that are cured in ways that we do not understand (growing back fingers, etc).
Therefore, these patients are cured by these natural repair systems we do not understand, and not by divine causes.
Compare that with a more reasonable statement:
The human body has natrural repair systems that we do not understand, and there is not necessarily a divine cause in cases where we do not understand.
There are some patients that are cured in ways that we do not understand (growing back fingers, etc).
Therefore, while there is not necessarily a divine cause, we still do not understand how natural repair systems caused the cure.
The difference is that logic cannot help but leave open the possibility of faith, which is the possibility you assert is not worth considering. What compounds it is that you are using that as the proof that faith shouldn't be considered, when you make no provision for faith in your premise.
You see sk3ptica1; you are under two assumptions that I have found in many skeptics that ultimately undermine skepticism and atheism for any theologian worth his or her salt. Assumptions the more careful skeptics and atheists do not make:
1) If it uses scientific methods and concepts, then it is logical.
2) If it does not use scientific methods, then it cannot be logical.
You see, the ones who do this sort of thing for a living know that bad scientific theory may use good scientific methods, and statistically may show some explanatory power for a given model. However, if the model is logically flawed, or the model is used to explain the entirety of things that it is not capable of explaining, then while it succeeds on methodological grounds, the use of it fails in terms of logical grounds.
However, science is not the only field that uses principles of logic and reason. In fact, it was philosophy and theology that invented principles of logic and reason to understand phenomena both observed and unobserved. It is useful not only to refute the unexplained, but understand exactly what we have explained, what we have yet to explain; as well as what we can claim, and what is beyond our ability to claim.
You state the following things that by your own criteria cannot be anything other than faith-based reasoning. While faith-based reasoning isn't necessarily illogical, it isn't something that is available to someone who argues that only real, observable criteria should be considered in any argument:
1) just beacuse you feel that there may not be a non-supernatual explantion for whatever event now, doesn't mean that someone else won't find a reasonable one later.
This is what we call a “millennial hope.” That is to say that it is a stretch to claim that there is even a reasonable explanation to be found. It is not unreasonable to make “millennial hopes,” but it is not scientific.
2) The fact of the matter is that the human body has many defences & repair systems. Some of them we a lot know about, others are still being researched and not fully understood yet, some others we may not even know about yet. For example, a small part of the population can apparently grow back their finger (if it's cut off before the last knuckle) it's rare & it seems to be genetic, but it still being researched as to the biological mechanisim which is only partially understood at this time.
There is no “fact of the matter” that can be discerned here that supports naturalism over mysticism. Only speculations as to the cause couched in your understanding of metaphysics, which are at this point just as valid as any other speculation. Perhaps it is logical to make these speculations, but its just as logical as any other speculation until there is proof to support your faith in naturalism.
3) Probabilty sometimes come down in your favor. Maybe a person's immune system finally managed to find the right spot to attach an antibody, maybe you have a mutation that give your body slightly better repair/defence systems (it's a documented fact that some people do). Maybe the virus/bacteria mutated to a less harmful version, also proven to happen in nature...a virus/germ doesn't want to kill it's host (not in it's best intrest) it's more of an unfortunate side effect. The virus that causes A.I.D.s for example has long since evolved in being non-lethal in the animal species that had it before humans (bovines, lions, etc).
Probability and the “law of large numbers,” while a statistical property, is actually a logical fallacy when it is used to make absence of knowledge look like real knowledge. What you basically do here is to state that “we don’t know why you are lucky, but we do know that your luck has nothing to do with God.” Again, it’s an error based on the assumption that “if its scientific, its logical,” and, “if its not scientific, it cannot be logical.”
4) Finally getting back to theology, for all the faith you put in it you still can't provide any evidence about whose theology (if any) is correct, can you? The fact of the matter is that the human race has been around long before any of the current major religions were invented, and none of the earlier beliefs seem to have survived (at least not in any recognizable form). The world has plenty of peolpe that would like to torture and kill you because your theological belifes are different. In fact it's their theological belief that they MUST kill you or torture you into converting. From your logic, their position is just as equally valid. Can you prove them wrong?
Theologians have been proving such murderous tendencies as wrong and logically inconsistent for as long back as people are alive. Whether they are read and listened to is another matter. Just because the world religions of today were not practiced earlier does not mean that their conclusions cannot possibly be universal. However, I’m a bit concerned at your assertion that torture and murder are the exclusive domains of the theological, but I will not go into the specifics on how people were murdered and tortured on the basis of their different natural properties, for fear of breaking Godwin’s Law, and ending this rational discussion. Suffice it to say though that theology determines correctness and incorrectness by the same methods we all use: logic. At least, the good theology does.
That’s all I am trying to argue here, sk3ptica1. Just like science can be bad and misleading, philosophy and theology can be bad and misleading. All of it can be dangerous to the future of society, and its up to us to ascertain if it is reasonable or not. It seems to me that you and I can agree that bad philosophy, and bad theology is what brought you here (those “fundamentalist groups who promote dogmatism” you mention). However, what I am trying to tell you is that you are starting to sound like a scientific and atheistic dogmatist, which is just as bad, just as irrational, and just as illogical.
You might say that I am playing skeptic to your religious skepticism. I’m not trying to convince you that the soul and faith healing exists, but rather, trying to point out that the crimson robes will eat you for breakfast if you try and argue this way as some “proof” that God doesn’t exist.
Logically speaking, it doesn’t hold.
__________________________ "Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it." --Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints." --Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls." --Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Beatnik59: I think that perhaps we both need to take a deep breath and relax here... First of all I never said that you belive in a flat earth, only that there are people using similar logic & arguments (that you seemed to be using) to support such a position. My problem was never with wether you practice religon or not, but rather with the logic that you had apparently been using to support a belief in the supernatural (perhaps I could have made that more clear earlier).
You state that while science may "go somewhere" but that it has failed to provide any evidence that proves religon or mysticism is "bogus". As I've tried to make clear before, it's not up to science to prove that religon is bogus. That gets back to whole problem of demanding the other side to prove a negative. It's up to someone that supports religon to prove their own case (just as science is expected to) if they want it to be accepted as a factual statement, otherwise it's just opinion. As to why someone may belive in something...There are lots of possible mechanisims involved including the possiblity that people are wired by natural selection to have a tendency to belive in a god(s). I'm not sure yet how much "stock" I'd put in that theory, but there has been research that it developed as a mechanisim to moderate social behavior. In the end it's not really relevant because belief still doesn't actually prove anything.
If I misinterpreted your intention about neurochemicals in the brain I aplogize, but your original statement does seem to imply the belief in a soul when you state "produces these chemicals for no apparent cause that can be observed". It seem as though you are stating that there is no apparent cause for the observed chemicals. That is why I came to the inital conclusion that you were supporting the belief in the soul.
As to your position that you were supporting my position about a lack of proof that prayer results in healing...please tell me how I'm I supposed to have not come to that conclusion from statements like the following? "The third reason is the assertion that yes, a few people spontaneously cure themselves (which is just a cop out), but an assertion that it was definately not the prayer that cured it, but rather, random chance. The only reason I can see how this works in the mind of anyone who is approaching this phenomenon is that they want to discredit religion so badly, they are willing to use any sort of rationale just to discredit it."
My assertion was that if prayer had a real effect than it should be provable, but that has yet to be demonstrated. Also, I was pointing out that just because someone that was prayed for and happend to get better is not a reasonable conclusion that it was due to devine influence. I will certainly agree with positions "a" through "d" (although I've yet to see a truely good example that would pass for position "e". Yes, you can argue that it is technically possible (if unproven) that the prayer caused the healing (as in your point "d"), but my point was that you can also argue that it is possible the healing was done by space aliens, Santa Claus, or faries too. Perhaps I should have made that more clear.
"So then, if I am not arguing against your evidence for faith healing, what is the reason you and I attack each other so much on this issue?" An excelent question...it would seem to me that perhaps niether of us have been suffecently clear on our positions, apparently maybe we both should have been a little more careful in our choice of words.
"First off, you pose a conjunct between two alternatives that resist mutual exclusion. For you, no evidence for faith in God is a complete proof for faith in biological determinism, rather than considering the more reasonable claim that no evidence for faith in God is no affirmation for faith in biological determinism." On the contrary, my postion was that no proof in the existance of God means that it is unreasonable to assert that God in fact does exist & to insist that humans were created. I'm quite well aware that science can never disprove the existance of "something out there", but even if questions can be rasied about the naturalistic explanation it doesn't prove the supernatual position either. My point about faith healing is that to conclude that it is result of supernatural phenomina is therefore unwarranted, because it is ultimately based on conclusions derived from logical fallacies (post hoc, etc.) and lacking in corroborating evidence.
As to the use of circular logic..my intention wasn't to prove that the healing in question was caused by natualistic methods, but to show that it is possible that it might have a natural cause, and therefore it is unwarranted to conclude that the only answer was supernatual in origin.
I was already in complete agreement with your statement "The human body has natrural repair systems that we do not understand, and there is not necessarily a divine cause in cases where we do not understand.
There are some patients that are cured in ways that we do not understand (growing back fingers, etc).
Therefore, while there is not necessarily a divine cause, we still do not understand how natural repair systems caused the cure." In fact it was the point that I was trying to get to, perhaps if I had worded it more clearly as you just did....
As to your statement that I seem to belive that if something doesn't use scientific method then it isn't logical, that is not my intent either, but rather to point out that if you want to support a position as logical then it shouldn't be based off of unwarranted assumptions and fallacies. Although I concede that I might have given that impression. Of course it's possible for a theory to sound good from a scientific viewpoint and later be proven false. The nice thing about science is that when contrary evidence done come in, the false theory does eventually (if sometimes slowly) get rejected. This is of course in contrast with fundamentalist belief systems, which I didn't belive that you actually subscribed to.
Your comments about "millenial hope" are of course correct, but my intetion wasn't to prove that an answer will be found, only that it might, and therefore it is unwarranted to conclude that it won't be found. If you read my statement more closely I think that you'll see that accusing me of millenial hope was in fact unwarranted.
My statement that "The fact of the matter is that the human body has many defences & repair systems." wasn't about excluding supernatural explanations. Rather it was about what I percived to be your postion that people healing on their own was a "cop out" as you put it. The way you worded your statement seemed to imply that you were ruling out that possiblity.
My comment about the "Law of Large Numbers" was preceisely that since it is a statistical property that a certain number of people will sometimes get better when you have a large enough sample over a long enough period of time. Therefore, it is an unwarranted conclusion that just because someone got better that it must be due to devine intervention (as you seemed to have been positioning yourself, again we seem to have been misunderstanding each other).
As to theologians stating that killing and war in the name of God is wrong..I'm quite well aware of such positions. Just as I am also aware of other religous leaders & followers that belive that killing for their God is required. One of the problems with most religons is that either position can be defended within it's own context.
My position was never that torture & war are exclusive to religous beliefs. In fact if you read my statement again I think you'll see that I never stated nor implied that. The Nazis for example may have used religon, in part, but they were hardly a religous organization. My position was only that if you allow yourself to be fooled by logical fallacies and unwaranted assumptions, that it can lead you down that path of religous dogmatisim and violence.
In the end I never asserted that logic or science is proof against sometype of supreme being. Only that such beliefs are unjustified from a logical standpoint. I'm quite well aware of how unlikely it is to prove a negative (as I posted earlier). Even though you can point out flaws in beliefs of the world's religions, they are ulitmately not falsifiable. But then religons usually try to avoid defining themselves in a way that is falsifiable, don't they?
The most you can hope for is trying to disprove certain stories in religous texts (The Flood for one), but that only calls into question what else might be false rather than disprove religion perse. Of course the belivers will then say that "It's God testing our faith" or something, so even those aren't truely falsifiable either.
Finally, I'm glad to see that we may not have such differences in opinion after all, even if we both may apparently have to work on our communication skills a little more...
GeneralWick: I'm going to assume for the sake of this discussion that you are being serious...but maybe you're not...
"If not...where do you think everone will end up when there dead then?" Simple...In my opinion when you die, you as a person (your mind) ceases to exist and that's all. Of, course I can't prove that any more that you can prove that when you die you'll go to heaven/hell. But there is no good reason to belive otherwise.
"I believe if you get saved (as am myself) you go to heaven and spend the rest of your life with the ONE TRUE GOD.." OK..so how do you really know that your "ONE TRUE GOD" is the correct one? How do you know that it's not Budda,or Zeus, or Odin, or something that no one has a name for? How do you know that you haven't "backed the wrong horse" so to speak (and won't wind up in Hell anyhow)?
The interesting thing is that evolutionists argue about the truth of the existance of God, while we try so hard to present the evidence and they reject it.
but let's do it the other day, what is the proof that we evolved ?
did we ever see anything evolve? no ( if you say yes you're lying, no one saw anything evolving into anything, all what we've seen is that new born babies look different than their parents, which is just normal, sometimes children look exactly the same, or they have great resamblance to their parents, so where's evolution ? )
evolutionists fail to prove their theories about the same thing they believe in, and their theories are always argueable and are easily rejected, and are easily refutable, or however you can say that.
the last thing being said, where will my mind go when i die? it will cease to exist? what was it before it became what it is ? i hope you can understand this question mr. evolution.
Originally posted by Slickinfinit Anyone with any scientific knowledge most likey will to and all religion really does is provide ignorance and intollerance for the most part. Some peacful religions are good for developing a good personality but logicly its just a belief that someone invented to explain the unknown and that applies with every single form of faith. I assume by observation of my life and events around it that we are no more than spontanious chemical reactions that managed to become sentient.
Originally posted by ob1sr The interesting thing is that evolutionists argue about the truth of the existance of God, while we try so hard to present the evidence and they reject it. but let's do it the other day, what is the proof that we evolved ? did we ever see anything evolve? no ( if you say yes you're lying, no one saw anything evolving into anything, all what we've seen is that new born babies look different than their parents, which is just normal, sometimes children look exactly the same, or they have great resamblance to their parents, so where's evolution ? ) Go look up darwin's finches. They evolve different beaks every year depending on their environment.
evolutionists fail to prove their theories about the same thing they believe in, and their theories are always argueable and are easily rejected, and are easily refutable, or however you can say that. No, you just refuse to hear it. Evolution has nearly been proven as fact. The reason they are "easily rejected" and "easily refutable" is due to the fact that it goes against the bible/quran/torah. It is not actually easily refutable, you just flat out reject it out of ignorance.
the last thing being said, where will my mind go when i die? it will cease to exist? what was it before it became what it is ? i hope you can understand this question mr. evolution. Sure, why not? What, you think that people are more special than any other animal on earth? Where do their minds go when they die? More than likely it is just emptyness, blackness, and hollowness. When you die it is likely that you go into similar blackness as if you are sleeping heavily, or under sleeping medication.
But you go on ignorant, it effects me very little. As someone said before, "you can only lead a horse to water."
Evolution is proved through the fossil record. They (scientists) show links in biology between certain animals (living and extinct), this then allows them to be sorted into species/families. The fossil records show, for instance, that modern man only apeared around two million years ago (relatively recently in terms of life on Earth, and pretty much insignificant in terms of geological time).
Before that there were similar animals, it is suggest that over a period of time these animals gradually changed (and by gradually I mean very little, think about it, take our nearest relative in the great apes the chimpanzee. How different are we really? We are taller and walk on two legs, have a slightly different face and our feet no loger fuction as grasping limbs. Not really that different after all, and our family tree split from the chimps a lot longer than two million years ago).
Similar trends have been found in other fossils, this is why evolution is very close to becoming a Law (as in Law of nature/physics, not as in common law). The sticking points are more along the lines of how to define Evolution, how to sort the species and how/when certain species existed/changed.
Creationism cannot by default be proved, as the believer must rely on faith alone. This means that those that follow it feel no need to 'prove' it and simply scoff at those who do not believe.
Oh and for all you god botherers a few things need cleared up.
Dinosaurs and pre-history in general? Weren't all animals created at once? If not why would a perfect Being NOT create everything at once?
Our Earth, hell even our solar system is no where near the centre of the universe, and nothing revolves around us. If we are the pinacle of your Gods creation why are we not at its centre?
Starlight. Most of the stars we see at night are BILLIONS of light years away, even the loosest of creation stories doesn't give enough time for the starlight to actually reach us.
Comments
these thing, for various reasons, and the ways he told us about on how
he destroyed them were also true when these places were uncovered and
studied."
Uhh...not quite correct- 1st where in the Bible or the Qur'an did God/Alah state that he was going to destroy Pompeii & why?
That argument comes off as Jerry Fallwel saying that God caused hurricane Katrina because "He" was mad at the U.S. for allowing abortion & tolerating gays. Why then was Las Vegas spared? Why not other countries too? Why not a more obvious message? It's not like a hurricane is much of an argument that God was trying to be subtile.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/8/31/0836/62623
As to Sodom And Gamorrah, while it true that the site of two runined cities have been found, saying that the manner of their destuction matches the Bible is a bit of a stretch...
http://www.archaeology.org/9607/newsbriefs/sodom.html
http://home.att.net/~nathan.wilson/sodom.htm
Also, why would God/Alah kill so many innocent childern in the process? Doesn't sound like a very nice guy to me....
Let's also accept the position that we can't see Allah. No one of here can actully see atoms or gravity either, but the effects are testable, measurable, and predictable. If God/Allah is real, then why is there just stories that have been crafted to fit past events? Where is the clear cut Divne intervention? Where is the big booming voice going.... "OK I SAID STOP DOING THAT, OR ELSE!" ?
If I wrote a book saying that the Flying Spagetti Monster was real and wrapped it around current day events...does that make the Flying Spagetti Monster real 2,000 years from now?
Sigh...still waiting for just one logical argument that doesn't resort to a fallacy.
and you are the type of people i do not need to reply to.
but just to inject your brain with one thought.
we have been created to be tested, and you always see your test results when it's too late to correct any wrong answers you have wrote.
and there will be no one to correct them for you except your good deeds of life and believing in Allah alone.
we are not the children of Allah because he never said so, even in the bible.
and you are the type of people i do not need to reply to.
but just to inject your brain with one thought.
we have been created to be tested, and you always see your test results when it's too late to correct any wrong answers you have wrote.
and there will be no one to correct them for you except your good deeds of life and believing in Allah alone.
we are not the children of Allah because he never said so, even in the bible.
In other words, he provides logical arguments that you can't refute so you don't want to reply anymore.
I've never seen that before
This is a sequence of characters intended to produce some profound mental effect, but it has failed.
So, you'd rather give credence to ancient "studies" that might or might not be valid and philosophies that have nothing tangible to support them rather than theories that evolved from measured observations?
Some of those ancient studies still make sense, are useful, and provided many of the same conclusions as science is verifying today. I personally like Plato, but Cicero is good.
How are norms any different from the cultural phenomenon between any other intelligent species (i.e. ravens, dolphins etc.)? What makes them so special and unmeasurable?
I don't know if a dolphin or raven debates whether or not they have rights, whether civil liberties are preferable over security, how laws are to be applied, how justice is to be administered, and what is right or wrong. I don't know many scientists that debate these things either in terms of their research, and I can cite many cases of unjust conduct in the name of scientific advance.
How can any sequence of characters "show" consciousness?
I was under the assumption that you were using that string of characters in terms of a nucleic base sequence, so it is a representation of something physically observable, and my argument is that for whatever science has done, it has provided no proof of a physical structure that is responsible for consciousness.
A lot of the works in history were before mankind had a grasp of his surroundings; no level of self-inspection can derive physical principles reliably, unless it does so by logic and the knowledge of empirical results. Why? Because unless something is verifiable by our senses, it might or might not be true. Even if consistency is shown in a historical work, the axioms must be considered and the fact that there is no empirical evidence to support them.
You'd be suprised at how much these people had before Bacon. The Romans didn't need to understand chemestry and adopt empirical rigor to create the strongest concrete up until the 20th Century. They did it anyway, and probably tested, compared, and researched what worked, without ever reading Bacon.
I can point to several examples of things that are considered scientifically and logically acceptable these days, that have no basis in observation, and cannot be tested, because they cannot exist. I don't see many scientists saying that a Klein Bottle isn't a valid solid. Yet I have yet to see one, because this great creation of logic and broad mathematical validity has the small problem of requiring another dimention that we cannot experience or know, because we are limited to three spatial dimentions.
So you see, secret mysteries, obscure languages, untestable theories, and truth based on faith is not limited to religion, or the humanities. Mathematics too is an almost mythic process when taken to its logical conclusions.
The problem is that we are an inductive race: Some of the norms that existed millennia ago still exist as laws, but for what reason? You have to ask yourself if the concept of right and wrong is any more intelligible than the inductive fanaticism in Islam, passed from family to child and so on. Maybe we would be better off if we were to take a scientific approach to the development of norms? Prove me wrong.
If we found a series of genes that show a high correlation with violent crime later in life (and there are some that argue that we have), and we want to reduce crime, then wouldn't logic and science agree that the best course of action would be to remove, restrict, or eliminate those who possess these genes?
Don't think of the answer in terms of anecdotal references to rights, or equality, or a government for the sake of the governed. Those are opinions and unscientific concepts that are just the same as those in Christianity, or Islam.
All science has are the facts concerning the cause of crime, and a problem to solve. To not solve it in the most efficient way possible is letting anecdotal notions get in the way of what hard logic says must be done.
For the very same reason it is fallacious to think that historical reasoning is any more valid than statistical modeling: Inferences drawn from events without mathematical rigor are simply the regressions without the consistent background. Why should such results be taken seriously if the axioms it relies on are so weak? Why wouldn't the ramblings of a child be any less valid?
I'm not saying that historical, anecdotal, theological, quantitative, or qualitative reasoning is inherently more valid than any other method when it comes to what we should believe. Bad science is not only bad, its dangerous (and for fear of satisfying Godwin's Law, I won't provide an example). Good theology is applicable to those who not only believe the religion, but even non-believers and atheists can see that there is some truth, provided its reasonably argued, and consistent.
The reliance on weak axioms is precisely why theology isn't taken seriously by most scientists: How much easier it would be for all of us if we could assume that some omnipotent being created the universe and the earth! What makes one set of religious assumptions more valid than the other and what do we do with all of the inconsistencies between them when neither of them has empirical evidence?
To me at least, what theology, philosophy, and science all share is the ability to ask important questions, answer them as completely as possible, with whatever method is appropriate to the subject matter. Validity is something that all fields based on abstract knowlege must contend with, and science is no exception.
I'm sure if you ask the biologists, the geologists, the chemists, the astronomers, and physicists, you'll get five different answers to any question all of them have in common. They speak the same language, but they have different schools of thought, different conceptions of the nature of things, etc.
Same thing with human things like religion, and history. I may not have much in common with a muslim, but if I talk about faith, hope, and charity, he and I understand what these things mean.
Philosophy and theology are not needed to keep science in check: Science keeps itself in check by the need to constantly proof itself consistent. How would a verse in the bible be more effective than testing a hypothesis than an attempted proof by contradiction? For that matter, how couldn't all of the different ways to interpret a statement be less effective than assuming an entire set of new weak axioms?
If these things found in religion, philosophy, and history are so wrong, what is the reason people pursue it, and ascertain that it does matter? Yes, you may believe that its all bunk and a waste of time, but its better to say that some of it is bunk, and some of it is a waste of time. Otherwise, scientists become just as close minded and false as the religious zealots they despise.
I mean, what do you want me to say here? That if its scientific, it can't be wrong? If its mystical, it can't be right? I won't say either, and I'll only say that the method has no bearing on the validity of the work, or the work as a sham.__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
the problem is that people are throwing things and say it's in Islam, while it doesn't even have anything to do with it.
Family traditions have nothing to do with Islam, even if that family were muslims, please understand that Islam doesn't hold anything accountable for the doings of some tribal traditions.
All Hail, King of the thinkerers.
I applaud you for making up your own theories and definitions and trying to make us believe them.
Ummm, may i ask what kind of degree you have in science? math? scholarship? or maybe anything related?
Thinkerers hurts to say.
It still hurts to say, oww.
I don't want you to say anything. I'm just explaining my beliefs to you and why I think that the same rigor in science should be extended to everything else. It is entirely possible that we were wrong all along and religion was right, but I don't think that we should simply accept intuitive ideas without subjecting them to same sort of trying analysis that we do hypotheses in science.
This is a sequence of characters intended to produce some profound mental effect, but it has failed.
You keep mentioning God but right now I am not arguing the evidence for an intelligent designer I am arguing about macroevolution (the majority of the evolutionary theory). I am specifically, at this time, arguing about similarity which is apprently a very big part of the evolutionary theory. Like you said with your courtroom example they compared the dna and through that assumed that he was the father. Now they compared two creatures of the same species and got matching results. You say that 98% of humans and chimps DNA is identical and because of this we had a common ancestor.
This is all assuming of course that there is no possible other explaination for similarity or commonality. I could say something as extreme as this. We were created in a labratory by aliens who invented DNA and varied the genetic code for the various major lifeforms on this planet. You would probably scream immediately this is faulty and unproven. You however said that the comparitive DNA means that we came from a common ancestor. If there is any possible explaination for similarity,however remote, or plausible, then you must come up with another independent source of evidence that can be varified that establishes that all life came from a common ancestor. It must also show that we came from no other origin. Why must science do all of this? That is because to call something a scientific fact you must have non-refutable evidence. Through your post and others I am still seeing that a lot of evolution takes similarity of whatever it is 98% DNA being identical etc. You then assume there is no other explaination and you talk about faith. However, If you are asserting something based on an observation and you cannot prove it 100%; you are guessing even if you are stating it in scientific terminology. Again you are taking compariative anatomy,physiology,biology,homology,embryology, genetics, etc and saying because of this similarity that we all came from a common ancestor. This doesn't change the answer to this guess, it is still an assumption based on something you are seeing, it is still a guess.
Before you respond I do want to let you know I know this is not the only thing that scientists use to try and prove evolution true. The reason I am not addressing the other proofs is we are not done with this one. Similarity is a big part of evolution and I am seeing as well, if you would agree that if similarity was all evolution had it would not be enough proof to have evolution. As in if similarity was the ONLY proof evolution had the only standing proof would you still thing all life evolved or would you say of course more evidence would be needed.
Okay, now its time to deal with sk3ptical.
You make the claim that I am full of dogmatic assertions, because I'm not willing to see faith healing as false on its face, simply because medicine and science doesn't accept that prayer has any validity.
Nowhere do I say that faith healing is genuine. However, if there is an illness, a prayer occurs, and the illness disappears, a true scientist will be open to the possibility that perhaps the prayer did cure the illness, just as much as he or she is open to the possibility that there was an cause other than the prayer.
You list three possible alternative explainations to why faith healing works.
The first reason has to do with the setting causing a series of physiological changes that causes a temporary relief of the symptoms, but no actual cure. Interesting theory, but then how does one explain when faith healing does cure the ailment?
The second reason has to do with the fact that the person is not really suffering at all, and is person with psychological problems. I'm sure that this is a common enough assumption amongst religion haters, and it avoids the problem by saying its not really a problem. Yet it does not explain those cases where there was a real ailment, and a real cure.
The third reason is the assertion that yes, a few people spontaneously cure themselves (which is just a cop out), but an assertion that it was definately not the prayer that cured it, but rather, random chance. The only reason I can see how this works in the mind of anyone who is approaching this phenomenon is that they want to discredit religion so badly, they are willing to use any sort of rationale just to discredit it.
Yet you accuse me of being dogmatic in my assertions?
I'm open to the possibility that faith healing is bunk. I'm also open to the possibility that these people are telling the truth, and the burden is on me, and science, to provide irrefutable evidence that they are not being truthful. The problem I see is that you want faith to go through your litmus test, and not the other way around. Which is problematic because the faith healers don't have any reason to care about your litmus tests, and convincing someone who is already convinced its a sham.
If you saw a miracle in the woods sk3ptic, are you insane, ignorant, or pysiologically disrupted? Or is it proof that miracles exist?
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
You talk about science needing "non-refutable evidence" but tell me where is yours? You and the other belivers all keep talking about refuting evolution, but when asked for any credible evidence you all suddenly ignore the request. Why is that? Please answer.. if there is so much support for I.D. and if it's so sound, then why are the religous organizations supporting/funding it not spending one cent on trying to provide credible evidence to present to the scientifc community? Why to do they spend the money on elections, pseudo-documentaries that misrepresnt geology, and psudeo-educational materials designed to misinform the public?
You talk about science needing to provide independant evidence to support a common origin. Actually many of the forms of evidence are independant of one another. Treating them as that same just because they happen to mostly agree with one another doesn't meant that they aren't independant. I sited not just overal genetic similarites, but marker sites (while they both use genetics, they test for differnt things) , the fossil record, the geological strata, biochemistry, physiology, radiometric dating, etc. Even ignoring that, I notice that you have yet to provide ANY evidence of independant origins.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
Please tell me EXACTLY what would you consider to be sufficent independant evidence that life evolved?
Please be specific about precisly what would be good enough to convince you, not just somthing like "Oh well the evidence had to be you know...independant". Telll me...would anything short of a time machine to actually go back and watch it be enough for you?
As to your example that if aliens made humans in a laboritory we couldn't tell. I'm afraid that in fact there would be ways to test for the likelyhood of such a event. First of all, why the slow change from ape-like creatures, to less ape-like, to human. There are a lot of steps in between over several million years, why did it take them so long? Maybe they like to take really long siestas? Next, why did they leave so many vestigial organs especiailly the one that can be harmful (like the appendix). Why did they leave in so many design flaws, even ones that any amature enginer could spot? Why did they go to the extra trouble of replicating extraneuos genetic material and flaws? Curiously you never answered these questions in my last post, I wonder why not?
This evidence makes it rather improbable that any remotely intelligent designer was involved in human development. Does it prove that humans weren't designed? No...but then again it's almost impossible to prove a negative.
If you think that I'm not being reasonable about how it's nearly impossible to prove a negative, then try to disprove the existance of Santa Claus. For every argument you'll be able to offer I'll be able to provide an illogical counter argument to support the existance of Chris Cringle, even while not offering a shread of credible positive evidence to support the position. Just like you guys are doing with creationism/intelligent design.
Beatnik59: I applogise for perhaps not making things a little more clear to you...I never accused you of being dogmatic for regectiing faith healing "on it's face". Actually, I claimed that you are full of dogmatic assertions because you use your groundless belief in souls to then prop-up your equally groundless belief in a divine creator, apparently not questioning the claims of prayer's healing power.
You also then proceded to then use prayer healing and "anecdotal evidence" (your own words) to then futher prop-up your still groundless belief in a creator.
I apologise if I read your statement "science can ascertain what is the cause of spontaneous healing through
prayer, or what causes ghosts and hauntings, or what causes a lot of
the mystically phenomenon we experience." as meaning that you belive in the phenomina that you just implied were real.
You also said... "I'm no advocate of using prayer to heal. Certainly the American
Medical Association isn't either. That doesn't mean that people
haven't been ill, prayed, and were no longer ill after praying. Did
the prayer cure the illness? Maybe not, but if it did not, what did?"
While I'm glad that you don't actually advocate the use of prayer in healing. You demonstrate in here what I earlier pointed out is called the POST HOC FALLACY, in plain english it means that you belive that just because event "A" preceded event "B" then A must have caused B. That is false logic and leads to unsubstantiated claims. For example...If I told you that earlier in the day I put too much postage on a letter and then latter in the day I had a car crash, does that prove that putting too much postage on a letter causes car accidents? Yet you're willing to make the same logical leap when it comes to the idea of "healing through prayer".
When you then state "However, if there is an illness, a prayer occurs, and the illness
disappears, a true scientist will be open to the possibility that
perhaps the prayer did cure the illness, just as much as he or she is open to the possibility that there was an cause other than the prayer."
It not only shows your willingness to fall for the post hoc fallacy, it also shows your lack of understanding on the scientific research of such alleged phenomina that I was trying to point out earlier. As I already tried to point out, in fact scientists have researched such claims and the only studies that supported prayer as being any better than a placebo were poorly designed (and therefore useless as a test) or were later proven to be deliberate frauds (some studies even purport to show that you're slightly worse off! but that may also be due to flaws in their methodology).
http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-09/miracle-study.html
http://www.csicop.org/si/2005-03/miracle-study.html
As I also tried to explain earlier, science would have no trouble accepting that prayer works for "some reason" if it could be proven that people that were prayed for actually had a better than placebo success rate. Unfortunately, after centuries and hundreds of studies after studies, there is still no evidence that prayer really does anything more than a placebo could (at best). Like I also stated before, long before scientists had even a theory of how gravity works they had accepted it's existance, measured it's effects, & learned to use it to make predictions. Why? Because gravity was a proven force that could be tested. The power of prayer can be tested, and already has over and over, and it has FAILED the tests.
Tell me...can you show us even one scientifically credible test that proves that prayer works? When you've been tallying the success stories, have you even tried to measure the failures? When you are looking at "proof" of healing through prayer, are you
asking...Did they use a control group? What was the sample size? How
random was the sample of the test subjects? Were Double Blind
protocols followed? What about a long term study of the results?
These are questions that any truely open mind should be asking (and
good science does). Are you?
As to your reply that people healing themselves is a "cop out"...Really so if you get the Flu and then get better is that divine intervention, or did your body defend itself form what it detected as a threat? When a broken bone heals is that divine intervention as well?
Actually, I rather doubt that you would belive that..so then why is it that hard for you to accept that sometime seriously ill people do in fact get better on their own (even if no ones praying for them)? As I've already stated were is your credible proof that people that use prayer has any better rate of healing than people who don't?
Your attempts to refute my earlier post still fail because...
- They all still rely on the POST HOC FALLACY.
- You have yet to prove that any healing greater than chance is occuring. Asserting that something happens without proving that it in fact happens doesn't prove your point.
- You then have to resort to making accusations about my motives while attempting to avoid the point entierly that you have yet to prove that anything is happening at all due to prayer.
So yes... I still accuse you of being dogmatic in your assertions because you have yet to provide any reason to accept your position while rejecting out of hand contrary evidence.Finally, as to your statement....
"I'm also open to the possibility that these people are telling the
truth, and the burden is on me, and science, to provide irrefutable
evidence that they are not being truthful. The problem I see is that
you want faith to go through your litmus test, and not the other way
around. Which is problematic because the faith healers don't have any
reason to care about your litmus tests, and convincing someone who is
already convinced its a sham."
Spoken like a true beliver...you've got your logic all backwards again. Just like most belivers you're falling back to the old logical fallacy of REVERSING THE BURDEN OF PROOF and hoping that someone won't catch it...
The burden of proof isn't upon science to prove that prayer doesn't heal because science has no intrest in proving that prayer doesn't work, only in trying to prove that it does work (which so far it still hasn't). Science can no more "prove" that prayer doesn't work than you can prove that there is no Santa Claus (see above). That is why it is usually ridiculus to try and PROVE A NEGATIVE. Rather, it is up to each position's supporters to try and positively support their own position.
Your comments about a "litmus test" also beg the question: that if faith healers don't want to prove themselves, then why do they always seek so much publicicty? Why wouldn't it be in their best intrest to finally prove to the world that what they claim, is in fact real? They seem to be more than willing to "treat" people when no one is actually checking the long term results. Wouldn't a faith healer that could prove their ability not only have greater success at their goals but do far more good? If faith healing could be scientifically proved then think of all the good it would do for the world. In point of fact many faith healers have participated in tests to prove their abilites, they always fail under any sort of proper test. Of course the ones with more to lose, the ones with bigger names & bigger profits, never let then selves be tested even when they get to help decide what would be a fair test. I wonder why that is? Sounds to me like your the one using a "cop out".
Shalak1989: You last post also tries REVERSING THE BURDEN OF PROOF . To quote you...
"It must also show that we
came from no other origin. Why must science do all of this? That is
because to call something a scientific fact you must have non-refutable
evidence." Again you're trying to get the side of science to PROVE A NEGATIVE
while failing to provide even one single iota of evidence to support
your own side (nor even an argument that isn't a logical fallacy). By
the way, has it ever occured to you that the reason that science
doesn't presently consider any alternates to evolution is because
nobody has yet come up with a better theory that has all that pesky
evidence stuff that you keep demanding, but never offer? If someone
could provide a better theory and back it up with credible positive
evidence that it would become accepted by science. Granted it maybe
slowly at first but with moire evidence it would be better accepted,
just like what happend with evolution. Any scientist that could
actually come up with a better theory than evolution would be in the
history books, bigger than Darwin ever was, not to metion the Nobel
prize and all of the grants for more research. Maybe if the I.D. groups would just stop trying to buy elections, and spend the money on real research to provide real evidence, then you might get your alternative theory. But, I wouldn't hold my breath on that....
So on that note...in all seriousness I really
would like to read any credible postive evidence for your position that
you can offer, as long as you don't have to keep resorting to logical
fallices to support your position. I used to be a beliver too (when I
was much younger), but then I learned the basics of critical
thought/analysis and realised that the world if full of B.S.. Some
of it is spread by people with good intentions, some by people with
bad, some by people that are nuts, some by people that are just
ignorant/confused, and some by people that are trying to fulfill some
emotional need. The trick is learning to re-evaluate your own beliefs
(rigorusly and objectively) and to see though the nonsense and
misdirection of others. I'm always open to re-reevaluate my position I'm just still waiting for good argument backed by credible positive evidence.
I don't think you do sk3ptical, I really don't.
I think you use rhetoric and things you pull off the internet to make yourself seem smart, and paint people who don't fall in lockstep with your position as ignorant, agenda-laden, or deceptive.
I'm sure if you were a believer at one time, you argued just as strongly for your previous position. In fact, people like you can argue any side of any argument just as convincingly.
Rhetoric is no substitute for truth though. That is something that was shown long before science was formalized by Bacon and Descartes. Nor does truth depend on how well argued it is. I'm sure if some event that was miraculous happened to you in the woods (like seeing bigfoot), no amount of argument would convince people like you that it really happened, even though it did.
They would probably say you were insane, or ignorant, or harboring an agenda just like you accuse those who bore witness to the phenomenon that the majority does not accept.
However, does that mean that your knowledge is false, simply because others refuse to accept it? It doesn't matter if you are Joan of Arc who hears commandments from God to free France, or Copernicus who thinks the heavenly bodies rotate around the Sun. Personal experience doesn't need to be acceptable to others for it to be true.
This sort of mindset can come from science, philosophy, or religion, and can lead to bad ends. Too many people see life as a quest to prove our sanity and open mindedness by accusing everyone who doesn't agree that they have a hidden agenda, or is crazy, or suffering from psychological disorders.
In fact sk3ptica1, I really don't think you are as skeptical as you like to say you are. You are certain, or at least you try to be, and you are so troubled by people raising questions that it upsets you.
I do not think that I, nor you for that matter, are qualified to say that someone who has bore witness to a miraculous circumstance is a liar. Life is full of mystery, and its not limited to theology. There is the mystery of the Klein Bottle, of dark matter, or the Vendian extinction. I try to point out this mystery not to condemn it, but to point out that anything can be argued to be crazy thinking when we refuse to entertain the possibility to see it. To you, mentioning the “soul” is a crazy thing. However, I don’t see how knowledge of the facts we have acquired can explain consciousness, or replace religion, philosophy, art, and mysticism; all of which are done, and cannot be explained unless hard science delves into a sort of mysticism of its own to make these biologically pointless things fit with biological constraints.
One more thing about the “soul.” First of all, I can’t take credit for the idea of a soul that governs our physical form, so it is not “my assertion.” I used it because scientific theory has not to this point described in full detail the essence of consciousness, personality, will, and all of those characteristics that have been attributed to the soul, and that are central to our lives as sentient and rational human beings, and still be scientific.
When they have attempted to do so, in the case of those like Dawkins, Pinker, and Dennett, what I see is less of a true explanation of the phenomenon, and more of a misappropriation of biological theory to support non-biological and non-scientific normative assertions. It would be as if I used theology to describe physical things. I can do it, but as people like you point out, science is a better method to arrive at true knowledge of physical things.
I’m not sure hard scientific theory can replace the methods by which we arrive at normative knowledge (knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong, just and unjust). I can cite articles on the web that will show how wrong it is logically to derive moral knowledge from empirical facts, but if you are such a logical expert, I’m sure you understand what I am talking about.
Nor can it explain miracles, or put in statistical language, outliers in the distribution. Science can explain the typical very well, but it has difficulty in explaining the exceptions. Miracles are exceptions that defy convention, and yes, faith healing defies conventional wisdom.
Suffice it to say though that it is like beating up a straw man to say that faith healing is bunk, or that there is no soul. You don’t even need to be a scientist to do that, and you are not the first one or the last one to argue that it is bunk. Its so obvious that anyone who hasn’t experienced angels coming down to heal think such ideas are crazy and absurd, that its not worth talking about.
However, if the subject is suffering from a real illness, is actually cured of the ailment, and the only thing we can find is a prayer or other ritual done in between the disease and the cure, it is not unreasonable to entertain the notion that the prayer may have cured the illness. In fact, it is actually quite reasonable to assume that it did in lone, particular circumstances where another cause cannot be found, but perhaps not in all circumstances when other, more plausible causes can be found.
So while I’m not going to give up my insurance to Blue Cross, and hang out at the church; I am at least going to say “good for you,” and maybe hope that miracles like that can happen to me if I need it. What does it hurt to hope, provided you don’t rely on miraculous phenomenon to substitute for sound, reasonable practices? If there is one thing people agree upon about miraculous phenomenon (even you, sk3ptica1), is that the occurrence is not predictable, and both science and theology can agree that one shouldn’t depend completely on miracles.
However, what makes miraculous phenomenon miraculous is not that they occur every day, and for reasons we can understand. Miracles are miracles because they occur unpredictably, and for reasons we cannot understand.
You too entertain miracles, sk3ptica1 when you say this:
Next, sometime people do get better on their own (the body does have a lot of defences & repair mechanisims after all). For example, nearly every one on the planet will get cancer at least and usuall several time it their life, but usually our body destroys it before we even know it. It the cancer that our body can't/fails to stop that's the problem, but sometimes our body's defences make a come-back. if some does get better on there own around the time they see a faith healer, then "Halleula it must have been a marricle". This it what's called the "Post Hoc Fallacy" meaning that just because event "B" happened sometime after event "A", it doesn't necessarily prove that event "A" caused "B". This is also called "being lucky".
The point is, this “come back” you refer to is, in fact, a miracle, and you are engaging in a kind of theology when you admit to it. Nor do I think its crazy for the person to thank God and call it a miracle. From your own example, science and medicine cannot explain what caused this case to be different than all the other cases of terminally ill patients that are diagnosed with malignant cancer. There is no reason why this person should be different except to say that he or she is special. I agree that the person is special, but then, what caused the "specialness?"
It was not a theologian who stated, “God does not play dice,” and it doesn’t help the cause of naturalism to see special cases like these that break the validity of their models. Science and statistics break down at the level of the miraculous, which is why theology is still relevant. Unless there is something else that caused this person to be lucky, I think that the faith and the prayer is about as good of a cause as any other.
Not to say of course that a cause can in fact be found that doesn’t rely on mysticism. There may be a gene, or a dietary component that caused the atypical case to be atypical. But as long as there is generalizable theory, there will always be cases that break the generalization. We will always be in the presence of miracles, no matter how much the men of logic and reason say that there are no miracles.
The problem here is that science, for as good as it is, cannot deal with the miraculous. Theology can, and we need it to explain the miraculous in a way that makes sense in accordance with logic.__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
Still, I do not mind providing these evidences in an email although I would prefer to have a conversation in a messanger type program. I would still like to continue the topic of evolution here devoid of ID because I believe I do not need to say well God did it to disprove evolution. So if you want to talk about ID and or evolution in real-time instead of on the forums I would prefer that. I can use xfire,yahoo,msn, or aol email me your messanger ID/email(my emails listed above) that you want to use to talk to me. This is of course if you want to obviously you may not feel like it but you said you were open so I figured I would give it a shot. If I start talking about ID on this forum the topic could go from me talking about evolution/darwinism to me talking about God etc when I wasn't finished with evolution. I would rather stay on this topic here and talk about ID in another topic or to you in a messanger. I don't want to be backpedaled into simply defending ID here when im not done with evolution. I said earlier in some post that I was talking about evolution because like I said I do not believe God is what I need to use to disprove evolution. As in the evidence for simply the existence of God does not disprove evolution. Its also nice that you like to discuss in a civil manner:) If you do email me please tell me what state you live in/when your going to be on so I can try and catch you at a convienent time whether it be weekends etc. I find messanger programs to be more effective for discussion because you can talk instead of posting and waiting for the person to respond but whatever works best for you. Anyway, I hope to discuss this more with you perhaps in a chat program type setting talk to you later... and good morning:P 6:19 A.M. here
On the contrary Beatnik59...just pointing out someone's lack of proof & logical fallices is rather boring to me. There is no real intelectual challange to it, because it just comes down Logic & Critical Reasoning 101, something that is sorely lacking in the schools today.
Why is it so unreasonable that when someone says in an affirmative manner that either God is real/God made humans and that evolution has been proven false, that you then provide a logical reason for your belief & any supporting evidence for it? The belivers in a divine creation have no problem insisting on evidence & logic from those who suppprt evolution after all. Why shouldn't go both ways?
If you are using an unproven assumption (healing through prayer to use your example) in order to provide "evidence" for a belief (exisitance of God), then why is it so unreasonable to provide evidence thet you make sure that you phenomina in question is in fact real?
As to my posting links to the other sites to "make yourself seem smart"...Actually my intent was to provide other sources in order to make it clear that I wasn't just making these rules of logic up and to prove supporting evidence for my positions. Did you really want my posts to be even longer? If I hadn't posted links to sites that support my position, I suspect that you would instead be challenging me to site some sources (which I notice that you still haven't done to support your own belief in healing by prayer). I just thought that I wouldn't give you the oportunity to make such an attempt (but was still expecting you to then later complain about my posting some sources, I know how your side plays the game after all).
One thing that that we both apparently agree on is, to quote you... "Rhetoric is no substitute for truth though". In fact I couldn't agree with you more, but you see that is precisely the problem, with your side. In the end the only thing that you have to offer is rhetoric & unsubtantiated assumptions.
Actually, if had seen "Bigfoot" in the woods, my first attempt would be to get some real proof of what I saw, while staying open to the possiblity that I might be mistaken.
In fact, just as any scientist that could provide proof of healing by prayer or an alternative to natural selection, providing some proof of Bigfoot would not only be good for myself (money, women, etc.
If I couldn't provide proof of my seeing Bigfoot, then I would at least have the courtesy to realise that I'm not giving the other side any reason to belive me. I would at least have the decency to not call them dogmatic or closed-minded when I never gave them a good reason to believe me in the first place (hence the trying to get proof).
On the contrary Beatnik59, I'm not troubled by people posing questions, as you assert. I'm troubled by people making defenitve statement as though they are facts, when that person has no logical or coroborating evidence at all for their position. I'm also troubled when people (specifically fundamentalist groups of all kinds) then go and use such claims to justify promoting ignorance & religous dogma! It bothers me when people who are confronted with the questions that their own position raises don't even try to answer the questions then asked by the opposite position. Tell me, if someone goes around trying to promote the idea that the Earth is actually flat, because it's their theology. Should we just not oppose thier position, or should we ask them to prove their statement. Google the "Flat Earth Society" if you don't think that there are people like that out there.
If you came out and said "I know that there is no proof of God or devine creation, but I like to belive it because I feel that way" (as opposed to trying to make it a factual statement). I would at least respect your intellectual honesty about the position, even if I don't share it. We could then just agree-to-disagree on the subject. Making it into a debate over what is true or not...well that is another matter.
If someone claims to have seen a miracle, I wouldn't necessarily call them a liar, but I would at least consider that is a possibility, as I would also consider halucination (not uncommon for the dying), and self-delusion (why don't you?). There maybe lots of reasons why someone percieves there to have been a miracle, but just because they belive it doesn't mean that it was in fact a miracle.
The only way to realy seperate those who were fortunate from the true miracles is to look for evidence that there is a real tendency for people who are prayed for to get better, and that the effect is greater than for the non-prayed for population. You have yet to provide such, nor have you shown that any of the people to whom your refer to as miracles could only have gotten better by divine intervention. When a doctor states that someone will "probably die" it still means that there is a chance that they'll live even if it's a very longshot. This also refers back to the "Law of Large Numbers" that I earlier mentioned to you. I'm still waiting for your insight on to how many people that were prayed for didn't survive. If everyone survived, then it should be easily tested and proven, or is it just more talk?
I also noticed that you still never answered my question about why if prayer actually caused people to get better, then how come all of the attempts to prove it have failed? You also have yet to explain why is it that people who don't pray are just as likely to heal as those that do. You keep insisting that prayer heals, but you have yet to provide any evidence that it's any better than a sugar pill. Instead you just use more rhetoric that "life is full of mysteries". Well goody... but that doesn't really prove anything does it? In fact, that is the entire problem with the Argument from Ignorance, just beacuse you feel that there may not be a non-supernatual explantion for whatever event now, doesn't mean that someone else won't find a reasonable one later.
Next: actually you did earlier invoke the soul as justification for your beliefs, to quote one of your ealier posts... "However, that does not say much about how the brain, in the ordinary
course of living, produces these chemicals for no apparent cause that
can be observed. To do that would require that you go to the soul, or
something mystical that governs the physical brain." By the way, science actually does have explanations for many the chemicals that the brain produces, it's called Biochemistry and Neurochemistry (the study into some of the others is still ongoing, obviously). Scientists have been tracing the chemical pathways of production of various biochemicals inorder to treat a wide range of disorders & boost human perforance. It's usually slow difficult work, but a great deal of progress has been made, and much greter breakthroughs are being researched as we argue back and forth.
You also stated...
"However,
if the subject is suffering from a real illness, is actually cured of
the ailment, and the only thing we can find is a prayer or other ritual
done in between the disease and the cure, it is not unreasonable to
entertain the notion that the prayer may have cured the illness. In
fact, it is actually quite reasonable to assume that it did in lone,
particular circumstances where another cause cannot be found, but
perhaps not in all circumstances when other, more plausible causes can
be found." More rhetoric...showing what I earlier explained as the Post Hoc Fallacy. Even the TV show "The Simpsons" was able to expain that point. If someone does a daily ritual to "make the Sun come up", and claims that it works because his family has been doing it for as long as everyone remembers and the Sun still comes up, does that prove that the ritual works?
Lets, try another example...it will be a hypothetical one, since I don't want you to complain about trying to make myself look smart again. Lets say that they do a clinical trial on people recieving treatment for terminal cancer (lets say about 500 people). All of the people recieve medical treatment, but half of them are also prayed for. Now lets say that of those treated with medicine alone about 20% get better, of those with medicine and prayer about 20% get better (compaired with say a 5% survival rate w/o any medical treatment). Does that prove that prayer works? Of course not...I don't doubt that many of the prayed for group who got better would call it a miracle and sincerely believe that is was. But, that doesn't mean that it was actually a miracle (unless you are just putting fortunate and miracle in the catagory). Study after study has been unable to show prayer's effectiveness, if it really works better than a placbeo (or medicine) then why can't your side offer anything more than words?
Perhaps part of the problem lies in differing definitions of the word "miracle".
In my book a "miracle" should be something that...
The fact of the matter is that the human body has many defences & repair systems. Some of them we a lot know about, others are still being researched and not fully understood yet, some others we may not even know about yet. For example, a small part of the population can apparently grow back their finger (if it's cut off before the last knuckle) it's rare & it seems to be genetic, but it still being researched as to the biological mechanisim which is only partially understood at this time.
Saying that just because someone is unlikely to survive still doesn't mean that they won't without devine intervention. Probabilty sometimes come down in your favor. Maybe a person's immune system finally managed to find the right spot to attach an antibody, maybe you have a mutation that give your body slightly better repair/defence systems (it's a documented fact that some people do). Maybe the virus/bacteria mutated to a less harmful version, also proven to happen in nature...a virus/germ doesn't want to kill it's host (not in it's best intrest) it's more of an unfortunate side effect. The virus that causes A.I.D.s for example has long since evolved in being non-lethal in the animal species that had it before humans (bovines, lions, etc).
But, you would be correct if you pointed out that unless we could look inside every person that recovers cells.... before during and after healing, it's still speculation. It just means that a miracle isn't the only explantion, as you imply and therefore it doesn't prove that it's a devine intervention. Unless of course, you would also call winning the Lottery a "miracle" as some people do.
Finally getting back to theology, for all the faith you put in it you still can't provide any evidence about whose theology (if any) is correct, can you? The fact of the matter is that the human race has been around long before any of the current major religions were invented, and none of the earlier beliefs seem to have survived (at least not in any recognizable form). The world has plenty of peolpe that would like to torture and kill you because your theological belifes are different. In fact it's their theological belief that they MUST kill you or torture you into converting. From your logic, their position is just as equally valid. Can you prove them wrong?
That is the other problem with accepting the supernatural as fact without any credible positive evidence or logical arguments, you enter an area of "anything goes" and "my belief is just as valid as yours". Tell me where is the truth in that case? That is why science & skepticism is about using logic & evidence to sort truth from non-truth (or at least plausable from implausable at least). That is why concepts like the "Burden of Proof" exist, it is more that just rhetoric to ask that you meet it when you make a factual statement, especially when it has an impact on the future of society.
Shalak1989: I do applogize for perhaps not understanding your position a little better earlier. I will be sending you an email shortly. Perhaps I didn't explain the subject well enough, or I just misunderstood exactly what it is in the evidence that you have the question about. Yes, similarities are involved but at the same time it goes deeper than that. It's more like trying to piece together a crime scene to figure out what happened earlier. I'll try to go over more with you later, but I suppose that the method of communication primarily depends on our respective schedules.
In the meantime, I would like to suggest to anyone else that has serious question about the subject, might want to check out the Talk Origins Archive and usenet group on their home page. Many of your questions are probably in the archive, if not there is the usenet. That one reason why some of my earlier posts liked to some of thier pages. I'll gladly attempt to answer questions on natural selection, but I don't have any illusion about being a professional biologist (biology is just something that I've always been "into") on the talk origins network you can have your questions answered, possibly by a profesional who is more up to date on the latest findings than I am. I hope that this helps....
Yeah I meant 1:00PM to 12:00AM (it just feels lately like 1:00PM-12:00PM
So your saying you dont believe in GOD...
Do you believe in heaven or hell?
If not...where do you think everone will end up when there dead then?
I believe if you get saved (as am myself) you go to heaven and spend the rest of your life with the ONE TRUE GOD...
Evolution is a bunch of non-sense...believe in the ONE TRUE GOD
-General Wick
-General Wick
It is apparently lacking in the skeptic and atheist community too Sk3ptica1, as I will show.
Perhaps if I talk like you, you’ll understand where I am coming from. The reason I don’t quote evidence is because pure logic will show that your intent here is not genuine.
My statements on this score seem to have been misrepresented by you, but let me ask you a question.
What do you believe my "position," or "my side," looks like? I'm not arguing for a flat earth, I don't practice a religion, and I read the Bible only out of curiosity, not obligation.
Just as you are skeptical about religion though, I am skeptical about this sort of science from an epistemological perspective. It may go somewhere, but nothing I have seen (and I have seen a lot) is able to fully explain what you need it to explain for it to prove that religion and mysticism is bogus.
I could say more on the grounds that the naturalism you purport has been given a cold shoulder by the philosophers, but suffice it to say that it only has the capacity to explain behavior, and not belief. That is to say, a purely naturalistic conception of human beings without reference to the metaphysical can only explain why someone acts a certain way, but cannot yet explain why someone believes a certain way unless they delve into the realm of the metaphysical, speculative, theological, and untestable.
Be that as it may, I don't know how you can get the idea that I am arguing for the soul from this statement of mine you enjoy:
"However, that does not say much about how the brain, in the ordinary course of living, produces these chemicals for no apparent cause that can be observed. To do that would require that you go to the soul, or something mystical that governs the physical brain."
Read the statement carefully, and see how the two qualifications are implied:
a) If there is no apparent cause that can be observed in the ordinary course of living (material), then the cause must be in something that cannot be observed (something mystical). Therefore, a comprehensive theory of materialism that can produce no apparent material cause needs some concept of a soul, or another construction that cannot be observed, for materialism to explain all that we know about human consciousness.
b) Conversely, if there is an apparent cause that can be observed, then the cause is in something actual, and one would not need a soul or another mystical explanation to model consciousness. Now since no apparent cause can be observed, and there is nowhere that a researcher can point to and say, "this is where consciousness is located," there is still a lot of work left to do for science.
How you get from that heavily qualified statement that I am arguing for the soul? Rather, I am trying to show what naturalism “would require” to fully explain a causal theory of human consciousness at this time, but perhaps not for all time. Let's go to the next statement you seem to like from me:
"However, if the subject is suffering from a real illness, is actually cured of the ailment, and the only thing we can find is a prayer or other ritual done in between the disease and the cure, it is not unreasonable to entertain the notion that the prayer may have cured the illness. In fact, it is actually quite reasonable to assume that it did in lone, particular circumstances where another cause cannot be found, but perhaps not in all circumstances when other, more plausible causes can be found."
You are so determined to prove you can get one up on Beatnik59, that you refuse to even see where I'm agreeing with you, because I agree with most of your research, if you choose to actually read what I wrote, and not be so quick to show how smart you are. I'll list out all the ways I agree with you:
a) If the subject is not suffering from a real illness, then faith healing cannot be seen as valid.
b) If the subject only appears to be cured, but not actually cured, then faith healing cannot be seen as valid.
c) If the subject does other things to cure the illness besides prayer and mysticism, then it is not reasonable to cite something so convoluted like faith healing as the cause of the cure (Occam's Razor).
d) Even if the case cannot be explained away by a, b, or c, then it is unreasonable to say with certainty that faith healing was the proximate cause. The only way it can possibly be approached is to say that faith healing and prayer may have caused the cure, understanding full well that it is just as likely that faith healing may not have anything to do with the cure.
e) The examples that we can find which cannot be explained by other, non-mystically based theories are so rare, and so uncommon, that in no way can we recommend faith healing as a substitute for other, non-mystically based cures.
Now do you see, given everything that I have explained to you, how the above statement implies all five of the qualifications I have listed? If my "position," or "my side" is that faith healing is a valid cure, I am a poor advocate, yes?
So then, if I am not arguing against your evidence for faith healing, what is the reason you and I attack each other so much on this issue?
I think it is because somewhere along the line, you try and explain more than you can possibly explain, and should possibly explain, given your evidence, and I think it has to do with this:
"I'm troubled by people making defenitve statement as though they are facts, when that person has no logical or coroborating evidence at all for their position. I'm also troubled when people (specifically fundamentalist groups of all kinds) then go and use such claims to justify promoting ignorance & religous dogma!"
Of that I have no doubt, Sk3ptica1. But if you are so troubled by it, what are you doing accusing poor agnostic Beatnik59 here as some holy roller that wants to force you to check your brain and hormones at the church door? I don't want to do that. I also don't want people marching with their jackboots around the world doing eye color tests, but for fear of satisfying Godwin's Law, let me say right now that I really do not think you personally think of science as a tool to push a fascist agenda.
However, while you may not think of scientific reasoning as a tool to promote a fascist agenda, scientific theory, like religion for that matter, can be used to promote very unscientific purposes. Things like that can happen when we read into the facts not only what is there, but also, what we want to be in there for purposes other than advancing our understanding.
First off, you pose a conjunct between two alternatives that resist mutual exclusion. For you, no evidence for faith in God is a complete proof for faith in biological determinism, rather than considering the more reasonable claim that no evidence for faith in God is no affirmation for faith in biological determinism. Your position as applied to faith healing goes like this:
If you are healed by faith, then you cannot have been healed naturally.
We cannot prove that all cases of faith healing are mystically caused, but we can prove that many cases of faith healing are naturally caused.
Therefore, all cases of faith healing must by default be naturally caused.
Now compare that with a more reasonable statement, like the types I make:
If you are healed by faith, then you cannot have been healed naturally.
We cannot prove that all cases of faith healing are mystically caused, but we can prove that many cases of healing are naturally caused.
Therefore, many cases of faith healing are naturally caused, and the remaining cases may be mystically caused if no natural cause can be found.
Another problem is that you give your own question, and you answer it in a way that the only response you will consider is the response that answers it in the way you deem fit. It is what we call in, as you say, “Logic and Critical Reasoning 101,” as circular logic, and I’ll attempt to summarize the basis of it with regard to faith healing:
The human body has natural repair systems that we do not understand, and therefore, there is no divine cause in cases where we do not understand.
There are some patients that are cured in ways that we do not understand (growing back fingers, etc).
Therefore, these patients are cured by these natural repair systems we do not understand, and not by divine causes.
Compare that with a more reasonable statement:
The human body has natrural repair systems that we do not understand, and there is not necessarily a divine cause in cases where we do not understand.
There are some patients that are cured in ways that we do not understand (growing back fingers, etc).
Therefore, while there is not necessarily a divine cause, we still do not understand how natural repair systems caused the cure.
The difference is that logic cannot help but leave open the possibility of faith, which is the possibility you assert is not worth considering. What compounds it is that you are using that as the proof that faith shouldn't be considered, when you make no provision for faith in your premise.
You see sk3ptica1; you are under two assumptions that I have found in many skeptics that ultimately undermine skepticism and atheism for any theologian worth his or her salt. Assumptions the more careful skeptics and atheists do not make:
1) If it uses scientific methods and concepts, then it is logical.
2) If it does not use scientific methods, then it cannot be logical.
You see, the ones who do this sort of thing for a living know that bad scientific theory may use good scientific methods, and statistically may show some explanatory power for a given model. However, if the model is logically flawed, or the model is used to explain the entirety of things that it is not capable of explaining, then while it succeeds on methodological grounds, the use of it fails in terms of logical grounds.However, science is not the only field that uses principles of logic and reason. In fact, it was philosophy and theology that invented principles of logic and reason to understand phenomena both observed and unobserved. It is useful not only to refute the unexplained, but understand exactly what we have explained, what we have yet to explain; as well as what we can claim, and what is beyond our ability to claim.
You state the following things that by your own criteria cannot be anything other than faith-based reasoning. While faith-based reasoning isn't necessarily illogical, it isn't something that is available to someone who argues that only real, observable criteria should be considered in any argument:
1) just beacuse you feel that there may not be a non-supernatual explantion for whatever event now, doesn't mean that someone else won't find a reasonable one later.
This is what we call a “millennial hope.” That is to say that it is a stretch to claim that there is even a reasonable explanation to be found. It is not unreasonable to make “millennial hopes,” but it is not scientific.
2) The fact of the matter is that the human body has many defences & repair systems. Some of them we a lot know about, others are still being researched and not fully understood yet, some others we may not even know about yet. For example, a small part of the population can apparently grow back their finger (if it's cut off before the last knuckle) it's rare & it seems to be genetic, but it still being researched as to the biological mechanisim which is only partially understood at this time.
There is no “fact of the matter” that can be discerned here that supports naturalism over mysticism. Only speculations as to the cause couched in your understanding of metaphysics, which are at this point just as valid as any other speculation. Perhaps it is logical to make these speculations, but its just as logical as any other speculation until there is proof to support your faith in naturalism.
3) Probabilty sometimes come down in your favor. Maybe a person's immune system finally managed to find the right spot to attach an antibody, maybe you have a mutation that give your body slightly better repair/defence systems (it's a documented fact that some people do). Maybe the virus/bacteria mutated to a less harmful version, also proven to happen in nature...a virus/germ doesn't want to kill it's host (not in it's best intrest) it's more of an unfortunate side effect. The virus that causes A.I.D.s for example has long since evolved in being non-lethal in the animal species that had it before humans (bovines, lions, etc).
Probability and the “law of large numbers,” while a statistical property, is actually a logical fallacy when it is used to make absence of knowledge look like real knowledge. What you basically do here is to state that “we don’t know why you are lucky, but we do know that your luck has nothing to do with God.” Again, it’s an error based on the assumption that “if its scientific, its logical,” and, “if its not scientific, it cannot be logical.”
4) Finally getting back to theology, for all the faith you put in it you still can't provide any evidence about whose theology (if any) is correct, can you? The fact of the matter is that the human race has been around long before any of the current major religions were invented, and none of the earlier beliefs seem to have survived (at least not in any recognizable form). The world has plenty of peolpe that would like to torture and kill you because your theological belifes are different. In fact it's their theological belief that they MUST kill you or torture you into converting. From your logic, their position is just as equally valid. Can you prove them wrong?
Theologians have been proving such murderous tendencies as wrong and logically inconsistent for as long back as people are alive. Whether they are read and listened to is another matter. Just because the world religions of today were not practiced earlier does not mean that their conclusions cannot possibly be universal. However, I’m a bit concerned at your assertion that torture and murder are the exclusive domains of the theological, but I will not go into the specifics on how people were murdered and tortured on the basis of their different natural properties, for fear of breaking Godwin’s Law, and ending this rational discussion. Suffice it to say though that theology determines correctness and incorrectness by the same methods we all use: logic. At least, the good theology does.
That’s all I am trying to argue here, sk3ptica1. Just like science can be bad and misleading, philosophy and theology can be bad and misleading. All of it can be dangerous to the future of society, and its up to us to ascertain if it is reasonable or not. It seems to me that you and I can agree that bad philosophy, and bad theology is what brought you here (those “fundamentalist groups who promote dogmatism” you mention). However, what I am trying to tell you is that you are starting to sound like a scientific and atheistic dogmatist, which is just as bad, just as irrational, and just as illogical.
You might say that I am playing skeptic to your religious skepticism. I’m not trying to convince you that the soul and faith healing exists, but rather, trying to point out that the crimson robes will eat you for breakfast if you try and argue this way as some “proof” that God doesn’t exist.
Logically speaking, it doesn’t hold.
__________________________
"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
You state that while science may "go somewhere" but that it has failed to provide any evidence that proves religon or mysticism is "bogus". As I've tried to make clear before, it's not up to science to prove that religon is bogus. That gets back to whole problem of demanding the other side to prove a negative. It's up to someone that supports religon to prove their own case (just as science is expected to) if they want it to be accepted as a factual statement, otherwise it's just opinion.
As to why someone may belive in something...There are lots of possible mechanisims involved including the possiblity that people are wired by natural selection to have a tendency to belive in a god(s). I'm not sure yet how much "stock" I'd put in that theory, but there has been research that it developed as a mechanisim to moderate social behavior.
In the end it's not really relevant because belief still doesn't actually prove anything.
If I misinterpreted your intention about neurochemicals in the brain I aplogize, but your original statement does seem to imply the belief in a soul when you state "produces these chemicals for no apparent cause that can be observed". It seem as though you are stating that there is no apparent cause for the observed chemicals. That is why I came to the inital conclusion that you were supporting the belief in the soul.
As to your position that you were supporting my position about a lack of proof that prayer results in healing...please tell me how I'm I supposed to have not come to that conclusion from statements like the following? "The third reason is the assertion that yes, a few people spontaneously
cure themselves (which is just a cop out), but an assertion that it was
definately not the prayer that cured it, but rather, random chance.
The only reason I can see how this works in the mind of anyone who is
approaching this phenomenon is that they want to discredit religion so
badly, they are willing to use any sort of rationale just to discredit
it."
My assertion was that if prayer had a real effect than it should be provable, but that has yet to be demonstrated. Also, I was pointing out that just because someone that was prayed for and happend to get better is not a reasonable conclusion that it was due to devine influence. I will certainly agree with positions "a" through "d" (although I've yet to see a truely good example that would pass for position "e". Yes, you can argue that it is technically possible (if unproven) that the prayer caused the healing (as in your point "d"), but my point was that you can also argue that it is possible the healing was done by space aliens, Santa Claus, or faries too. Perhaps I should have made that more clear.
"So
then, if I am not arguing against your evidence for faith healing, what
is the reason you and I attack each other so much on this issue?" An excelent question...it would seem to me that perhaps niether of us have been suffecently clear on our positions, apparently maybe we both should have been a little more careful in our choice of words.
"First off, you pose a conjunct between two alternatives that resist mutual exclusion. For
you, no evidence for faith in God is a complete proof for faith in
biological determinism, rather than considering the more reasonable
claim that no evidence for faith in God is no affirmation for faith in
biological determinism." On the contrary, my postion was that no proof in the existance of God means that it is unreasonable to assert that God in fact does exist & to insist that humans were created. I'm quite well aware that science can never disprove the existance of "something out there", but even if questions can be rasied about the naturalistic explanation it doesn't prove the supernatual position either. My point about faith healing is that to conclude that it is result of supernatural phenomina is therefore unwarranted, because it is ultimately based on conclusions derived from logical fallacies (post hoc, etc.) and lacking in corroborating evidence.
As to the use of circular logic..my intention wasn't to prove that the healing in question was caused by natualistic methods, but to show that it is possible that it might have a natural cause, and therefore it is unwarranted to conclude that the only answer was supernatual in origin.
I was already in complete agreement with your statement "The
human body has natrural repair systems that we do not understand, and
there is not necessarily a divine cause in cases where we do not
understand.
There are some patients that are cured in ways that we do not understand (growing back fingers, etc).
Therefore, while there is not necessarily a divine cause, we still do not understand how natural repair systems caused the cure." In fact it was the point that I was trying to get to, perhaps if I had worded it more clearly as you just did....As to your statement that I seem to belive that if something doesn't use scientific method then it isn't logical, that is not my intent either, but rather to point out that if you want to support a position as logical then it shouldn't be based off of unwarranted assumptions and fallacies. Although I concede that I might have given that impression.
Of course it's possible for a theory to sound good from a scientific viewpoint and later be proven false. The nice thing about science is that when contrary evidence done come in, the false theory does eventually (if sometimes slowly) get rejected. This is of course in contrast with fundamentalist belief systems, which I didn't belive that you actually subscribed to.
Your comments about "millenial hope" are of course correct, but my intetion wasn't to prove that an answer will be found, only that it might, and therefore it is unwarranted to conclude that it won't be found. If you read my statement more closely I think that you'll see that accusing me of millenial hope was in fact unwarranted.
My statement that "The fact of the matter is that the human body has many defences & repair systems." wasn't about excluding supernatural explanations. Rather it was about what I percived to be your postion that people healing on their own was a "cop out" as you put it. The way you worded your statement seemed to imply that you were ruling out that possiblity.
My comment about the "Law of Large Numbers" was preceisely that since it is a statistical property that a certain number of people will sometimes get better when you have a large enough sample over a long enough period of time. Therefore, it is an unwarranted conclusion that just because someone got better that it must be due to devine intervention (as you seemed to have been positioning yourself, again we seem to have been misunderstanding each other).
As to theologians stating that killing and war in the name of God is wrong..I'm quite well aware of such positions. Just as I am also aware of other religous leaders & followers that belive that killing for their God is required. One of the problems with most religons is that either position can be defended within it's own context.
My position was never that torture & war are exclusive to religous beliefs. In fact if you read my statement again I think you'll see that I never stated nor implied that. The Nazis for example may have used religon, in part, but they were hardly a religous organization. My position was only that if you allow yourself to be fooled by logical fallacies and unwaranted assumptions, that it can lead you down that path of religous dogmatisim and violence.
In the end I never asserted that logic or science is proof against sometype of supreme being. Only that such beliefs are unjustified from a logical standpoint. I'm quite well aware of how unlikely it is to prove a negative (as I posted earlier). Even though you can point out flaws in beliefs of the world's religions, they are ulitmately not falsifiable. But then religons usually try to avoid defining themselves in a way that is falsifiable, don't they?
The most you can hope for is trying to disprove certain stories in religous texts (The Flood for one), but that only calls into question what else might be false rather than disprove religion perse. Of course the belivers will then say that "It's God testing our faith" or something, so even those aren't truely falsifiable either.
Finally, I'm glad to see that we may not have such differences in opinion after all, even if we both may apparently have to work on our communication skills a little more...
GeneralWick: I'm going to assume for the sake of this discussion that you are being serious...but maybe you're not...
"If not...where do you think everone will end up when there dead then?" Simple...In my opinion when you die, you as a person (your mind) ceases to exist and that's all. Of, course I can't prove that any more that you can prove that when you die you'll go to heaven/hell. But there is no good reason to belive otherwise.
"I believe if you get saved (as am myself) you go to heaven and spend the rest of your life with the ONE TRUE GOD.." OK..so how do you really know that your "ONE TRUE GOD" is the correct one? How do you know that it's not Budda,or Zeus, or Odin, or something that no one has a name for? How do you know that you haven't "backed the wrong horse" so to speak (and won't wind up in Hell anyhow)?
The interesting thing is that evolutionists argue about the truth of the existance of God, while we try so hard to present the evidence and they reject it.
but let's do it the other day, what is the proof that we evolved ?
did we ever see anything evolve? no ( if you say yes you're lying, no one saw anything evolving into anything, all what we've seen is that new born babies look different than their parents, which is just normal, sometimes children look exactly the same, or they have great resamblance to their parents, so where's evolution ? )
evolutionists fail to prove their theories about the same thing they believe in, and their theories are always argueable and are easily rejected, and are easily refutable, or however you can say that.
the last thing being said, where will my mind go when i die? it will cease to exist? what was it before it became what it is ? i hope you can understand this question mr. evolution.
Evolution is proved through the fossil record. They (scientists) show links in biology between certain animals (living and extinct), this then allows them to be sorted into species/families. The fossil records show, for instance, that modern man only apeared around two million years ago (relatively recently in terms of life on Earth, and pretty much insignificant in terms of geological time).
Before that there were similar animals, it is suggest that over a period of time these animals gradually changed (and by gradually I mean very little, think about it, take our nearest relative in the great apes the chimpanzee. How different are we really? We are taller and walk on two legs, have a slightly different face and our feet no loger fuction as grasping limbs. Not really that different after all, and our family tree split from the chimps a lot longer than two million years ago).
Similar trends have been found in other fossils, this is why evolution is very close to becoming a Law (as in Law of nature/physics, not as in common law). The sticking points are more along the lines of how to define Evolution, how to sort the species and how/when certain species existed/changed.
Creationism cannot by default be proved, as the believer must rely on faith alone. This means that those that follow it feel no need to 'prove' it and simply scoff at those who do not believe.
Oh and for all you god botherers a few things need cleared up.
Dinosaurs and pre-history in general? Weren't all animals created at once? If not why would a perfect Being NOT create everything at once?
Our Earth, hell even our solar system is no where near the centre of the universe, and nothing revolves around us. If we are the pinacle of your Gods creation why are we not at its centre?
Starlight. Most of the stars we see at night are BILLIONS of light years away, even the loosest of creation stories doesn't give enough time for the starlight to actually reach us.
edit:spelling