quote:In October, for example, George Deutsch, a presidential appointee in NASA headquarters, told a Web designer working for the agency to add the word "theory" after every mention of the Big Bang, according to an e-mail message from Mr. Deutsch that another NASA employee forwarded to The Times.
Anyone want to defend this one?
Posted by sarcasticmuppet (Member # 5035) on :
1. What does this have to do with ID?
2. It *is* a theory, is it not?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Ah, I see you did not read the link. After the bit I quoted, comrade Deutsch goes on to say
quote:The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."
It continued: "This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most."
And yes, it is a theory. So is gravity a theory.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
Considering the fact that scientists are continually reevaluating the big bang, and that scientists have other theories other than the big bang (such as a continually expanding/contracting universe without any needs for bangs), I don't see why it would bother anybody to call it a theory.
Posted by SoaPiNuReYe (Member # 9144) on :
I think that they should use theory after it because there are some of us who believe in God (Me being one of them). Also there may be other theories which may form as technologies advance and such. All you have to do is look at what Arthur C. Clarke has done with his works. He uses his imagination to spectulate new ideas which may not have been discovered yet. So we have no proof, only assumption, that there was a Big Bang and not God or something else's influences on the creation of the Universe.
Posted by Irregardless (Member # 8529) on :
I don't see how the Big Bang "discounts intelligent design" anyhow.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I think you are missing the point, which is that a Bush-appointed political hack is trying to discredit real science for religious-political reasons.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by SoaPiNuReYe: I think that they should use theory after it because there are some of us who believe in God (Me being one of them).
And would you also argue that people should refer to the 'Round Earth theory because some people believe in a flat one?
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:I think you are missing the point, which is that a Bush-appointed political hack is trying to discredit real science for religious-political reasons.
It seems to me that anybody who understands what the word "theory" means in science wouldn't view calling the Big Bang a theory as discrediting at all.
Posted by Friday (Member # 8998) on :
I think there are valid scientific reasons for the use of the word "theory", notably the fact that there are other scientific theories about the life cycle of the universe. What confuses me is why did the guy have to bring ID into the picture.
quote: It continued: "This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most."
I don't see how it is NASA's responsibility to comment on any religious issue, and in this instance it seems like the person who ordered the alteration was making a political statement rather than recognizing the scientific issues at hand.
Posted by Tarrsk (Member # 332) on :
I'm with Friday. Okay, call it a theory, 'cuz that's what it is. But the reasoning behind the guy's decree is specious at best, and the fact that there's a presidential appointee with the capability to enforce compliance with the Bush Administration's religious party line is freakin' scary.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
The more I think about it, the more this is a smart political move.
The religious people who want to marginalize this science are happy, because they think the word "theory" is discrediting, but the people who actually understand what the word "theory" means in this context don't really mind because, duh, it is a theory.
It's about the closest to a win-win I can think of.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head:
quote:I think you are missing the point, which is that a Bush-appointed political hack is trying to discredit real science for religious-political reasons.
It seems to me that anybody who understands what the word "theory" means in science wouldn't view calling the Big Bang a theory as discrediting at all.
True; I am asserting that this political guy does not, in fact, understand it at all, and is doing his best to discredit the Big Bang theory. And he'll succeed, too, because most people don't know what 'theory' means.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
I don't worry about it too much. The theory ain't going away*. I don't see this influencing many people who didn't already actively disbelieve in the Big Bang.
edit: *Actually, it very well may if evidence is found which supports one of the competing theories and not the big bang.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Does it really need to influence any scientists? They are not the ones in power. The point here is that the 'active disbelievers' - and not on scientific, but on religious, grounds - have already got their people in a position to order the real scientists around.
Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
I'm curious what other theories you mention. I don't think the one you offered (a continually expanding/contracting universe) is in direct conflict with the Big Bang theory. I think the "without any need for bangs" is you own addition. The way I understood the expanding/contracting model was that each collapse was followed by another Bang, which fueled a new expansion, etc. In your "without any need for bangs" model, what fuels the new expansion after collapse?
What are the other theories that seriously compete with the Big Bang?
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
.... umm separation of chruch and state.... NASA is an organization dedicated to trying to find out information both abstract and practical from the cosmos based upon the scientific method, untestable theories such as intelligent design or other religious origined.... stuff.... is not within the realm of science and thus NASA has no ethical responsibility towards that matter in my divine opinion.
Like I-D might be able to make a valid point in certain inconsistencies in the Theory of Evolution , but they're a far cry from disproving it, and thus should leave NASA alone.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:What are the other theories that seriously compete with the Big Bang?
A Brief History of Time describes a universe with a finite but unbounded time dimension with no big bang.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:I'm curious what other theories you mention. I don't think the one you offered (a continually expanding/contracting universe) is in direct conflict with the Big Bang theory. I think the "without any need for bangs" is you own addition.
No, that is not my own addition -- that was pretty the entire point of the theory I am talking about. The idea is that the universe contracts, but does not come together into a singularity. The various pieces of the universe come close to each other, but keep sailing past each other and the universe starts expanding again.
This is in opposition to the multiple big bangs theory of the expanding and contracting universe, where the universe pretty much starts all over with each bang.
This is a really dumbed-down version of the theory, because I don't remember much more about it. I don't know where I read about it.
Posted by littlemissattitude (Member # 4514) on :
The October 2005 e-mail from Mr. Deutsch reported in the linked article makes it obvious that there is a religious agenda behind his rewrite attempts. That is stated quite overtly in quoted portions of the e-mail. If that is being supported by the Bush administration - if Mr. Deutsch is not just a loose cannon in a job that he apparently does not have the credentials to handle (and why would I be surprised if that is the case, given recent examples) - I have a big problem with that.
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
This explains President Bush's plans for getting men to Mars, without spending a large amount of money on research.
He plans a NASA designed trip to Mars via Prayer Circle Power.
Posted by Advent 115 (Member # 8914) on :
What about the theory of the reaccuring universe? It is a theory I read about a while back, it suggested that the big bang has been happening forever. That it reaccurs every, well I can't remember how long they said. But the theory involved that our dimention colapses with another lower one and that the universe starts over again. So I think I took it to mean that the big bang has happened many times
Sorry if I may some of this wrong. I read the article a long time ago. Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
Advent -- that sounds right, and that's what KarlEd thought I was talking about.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
It is a fine theory not contradicted by any known facts, whose only problem is that it also doesn't explain any facts. We know there was one Big Bang; that is required to explain what we see of the universe. The need for additional cycles is exactly equivalent to the need for a god.
Posted by Advent 115 (Member # 8914) on :
Hmmm. I guess so. But I thought that you were an atheist KoM?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Indeed I am. 'Equivalent to the need for a god' was intended to imply 'equal to zero'.
Posted by Advent 115 (Member # 8914) on :
Okay. I was just confused for a second there. Good to know we atheist Hatrackers have an eductated person on our side.
Posted by Joldo (Member # 6991) on :
Please, why is this always the point where someone tries drawing a line and insulting a bunch of people?
The fact is, this move is similar to Newt Gingrich's "liberal Democrat" idea. You see, our dear Newt insisted that Republicans never use the word Democrat in their speeches without preceeding it with liberal. At this time, liberals were very unpopular, and tying the word to Democrat created enough of a stigma that Clinton had to run as a "new Democrat". This in turn slowly discredits theories similar to evolution. In short, it is a foundation on which to pervert our scientific institutions for a political viewpoint.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
King of Men -- you seem to assume that any theory that doesn't have a big bang is formulated for religious reasons. This is not the case.
From A Brief History of Time:
quote:Another attempt to avoid the conclusion that there must have been a big bang, and therefore a beginning of time, was made by two Russian scientists, Evgenii Lifshitz and Isaac Khalatnikov, in 1963. They suggested that the big bang might be a peculiarity of Friedmann’s models alone, which after all were only approximations to the real universe. Perhaps, of all the models that were roughly like the real universe, only Friedmann’s would contain a big bang singularity. In Friedmann’s models, the galaxies are all moving directly away from each other – so it is not surprising that at some time in the past they were all at the same place. In the real universe, however, the galaxies are not just moving directly away from each other – they also have small sideways velocities. So in reality they need never have been all at exactly the same place, only very close together. Perhaps then the current expanding universe resulted not from a big bang singularity, but from an earlier contracting phase; as the universe had collapsed the particles in it might not have all collided, but had flown past and then away from each other, producing the present expansion of the the universe that were roughly like Friedmann’s models but took account of the irregularities and random velocities of galaxies in the real universe. They showed that such models could start with a big bang, even though the galaxies were no longer always moving directly away from each other, but they claimed that this was still only possible in certain exceptional models in which the galaxies were all moving in just the right way. They argued that since there seemed to be infinitely more Friedmann-like models without a big bang singularity than there were with one, we should conclude that there had not in reality been a big bang. They later realized, however, that there was a much more general class of Friedmann-like models that did have singularities, and in which the galaxies did not have to be moving any special way. They therefore withdrew their claim in 1970.
So, I remembered the theory right. I just forgot that it hasn't been a current theory during my entire lifetime.
Still, it shouldn't surprise anybody if some day other scientific theories come out that elimiate the need for a big bang.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
There can certainly be non-religious competing theories. But the particular one you mentioned multiplied entities un-necessarily; so does the theory 'God set off the big Bang'. The objection I made is the same, but I don't think I implied that the two are the same in other ways.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
MPH, there's another one in the book that has not been withdrawn (in the book - it might have been withdrawn since) that does not posit a big bang and does not multiply entities.
Edit: Look in the place where he talks about his audience with the Pope.
Posted by Tarrsk (Member # 332) on :
MPH, I really don't think anyone has any issue with the idea that there are credible alternative theories to the Big Bang. The only thing that's getting people riled up is Deutsch's explicit statement that his motivation was purely religious in nature. In this particular instance, no serious harm done, since there *are* scientific theories for the origin of the universe besides the Big Bang, and so it's useful to keep that in mind, but do you understand why, say, evolutionary biologists or developmental biochemists might find the intrusion of an openly religious agenda into scientific research to be disturbing? This isn't a case of a single whacko boss stepping out of line... the article makes it quite clear that this is a growing trend of Bush Administration appointees with the power and inclination to enforce a religious orthodoxy.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: The more I think about it, the more this is a smart political move.
The religious people who want to marginalize this science are happy, because they think the word "theory" is discrediting, but the people who actually understand what the word "theory" means in this context don't really mind because, duh, it is a theory.
It's about the closest to a win-win I can think of.
Interestingly too, non-scientists frequently interject with the idea that "all theories are equal." Therefore if I call my religious idea a theory, its as good as your scientific theory. This further muddies the distinction between belief, theory, conjecture and opinion. As anyone with any sense knows, there is a huge distinction between a religious belief and a scientific theory; and though there are MANY people who are willing to treat theories like beliefs and beliefs like theories, the two things really don't equate on any level.
Why can we not seperate these two concepts in our minds and in public debate? Scientific understanding doesn't even attempt to trump religious beliefs, and faith has little to do with the scientific observations we make of our universe. DUh!
Posted by JennaDean (Member # 8816) on :
quote:"This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA.
This is just weird. It seems to imply that people should be getting religious information as well as scientific information from NASA. I don't get the point ... I get my religion from church, and from NASA I expect to get what science has discovered. I have no problem with calling it a theory, but why would they imply that we should be getting both halves of the debate from one source? They don't demand that churches teach the "big bang theory" along with the "creation theory" in their Sunday-School classes.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:do you understand why, say, evolutionary biologists or developmental biochemists might find the intrusion of an openly religious agenda into scientific research to be disturbing?
Yes I do. Absolutely. Even though the reasons behind are silly, I don't think that calling it the big bang theory should be a big deal to anybody, unless you see it as the first step in a slippery slope.
If the worst thing that Bush did to stifle science was to force NASA to call the Big Bang a theory, the scientific community would be pretty darn happy.
[ February 05, 2006, 11:00 PM: Message edited by: mr_porteiro_head ]
Posted by ambyr (Member # 7616) on :
Umm, and this web designer is supposed to do this how, exactly?
I've worked on a portion of NASA's website. It's a wonderful source of information, and it's also about as well organized, documented, and administered as an abandoned landfill.
Posted by Raventhief (Member # 9002) on :
Yes, the Big Bang is a Theory. But no one is forcing everyone to add the word "theory" after every mention of the word "god". I mean, the existence of god is a theory in the scientific sense of the word. It is not proven in any way to society as a whole. No one is forcing the use of "intelligent design theory". These things should not be forced. They are understood or misunderstood, but that should not be a political issue.
Posted by sarcasticmuppet (Member # 5035) on :
FYI KoM, I *did* read the link. I fail to see how two paragraphs penned by a journalist in an otherwise non-religious story show that ID is behind the 'theory' label. It sounds a lot like spin, especially when the way you present it tries to put ID-ers on the defensive.
I could be wrong, but I thought ID was strictly a biological theory. Just like Evofreakinglution is strictly a biological theory.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:Yes, the Big Bang is a Theory. But no one is forcing everyone to add the word "theory" after every mention of the word "god".
In scientific parlance, theism doesn't even rise to the level of of theory, and doesn't deserve to be called a theory.
Posted by Tarrsk (Member # 332) on :
quote:Yes I do. Absolutely. Even though the reasons behind are silly, I don't think that calling it the big bang theory should be a big deal to anybody, unless you see it as the first step in a slippery slope.
There's no reason to call slippery slope on this one, because there's no indication that this move is an attempt to "get the foot in the door," as it were. It's symptomatic of the Administration's general disregard for and ignorance of science, and demonstrates the frightening status quo of today's government research program, but I don't expect Bush to try to use it as precedent. He doesn't need to... as far as his administration is concerned, Deutsch is just doing what he should be doing. And that is extremely disturbing.
quote:If the worst thing that Bush did to stifle science was to force NASA to call the Big Bang a theory, the scientific community would be pretty darn happy.
No kidding. Does anyone really think that this is the worst that's going to happen, though?
Posted by littlemissattitude (Member # 4514) on :
It has always been my understanding that science doesn't consider theism as rising to the level of a theory because the scientific establishment doesn't consider it falsifiable. Now, I know that there are folks who believe that the existence of God can be proven, but I'll be darned if I can think of a non-subjective, falsifiable, scientific way to do it.
I think the problem comes because some (and please note that I said some, not all) scientists think that because God can't be proven scientifically, that means God does not exist. Conversely, some religious believers (and please note that I said some, not all) think that because they believe God exists, that constitutes all the proof necessary that God does exist and everyone must just take their word for it. In my opinion, neither one of these positions is tenable.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by sarcasticmuppet: FYI KoM, I *did* read the link. I fail to see how two paragraphs penned by a journalist in an otherwise non-religious story show that ID is behind the 'theory' label.
Um, those weren't penned by the journalist, they were quotes from the memo.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by littlemissattitude: I think the problem comes because some (and please note that I said some, not all) scientists think that because God can't be proven scientifically, that means God does not exist.
How many other entities do you know of that exist, but which cannot be proven scientifically to exist?
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
The only reason for objecting to this is political. The Big Bang *is* a theory. It's definitely the way to bet, but it's not as firm a theory as gravity, or evolution, or relativity. Although I think it's getting there.
When I was in college, I didn't like the way science was taught: it was taught as though the things in it were fact, rather than theory; as though there were no reason to call them into question. This was true even for theories that are no longer current, such as classical mechanics. It's easier that way, I suppose; but students do need to see that science is uncertain. It isn't evil to let them.
Still, once or twice is enough. Requiring qualification after every mention turns a readable document into an unreadable mess.
Posted by littlemissattitude (Member # 4514) on :
*sigh*
First of all, science does not "prove" anything. It simply collects evidence that does not falsify a particular idea. If repeated experiments do not show that an idea is false, then evidence accumulates that it is probably a valid idea.
However, to answer your question (I think), it very well may be that life exists elsewhere in the universe besides on Earth. See the Drake Equation for probabilites on that (although it pretty much depends on how optimistic or pessimistic the numbers are that you plug in). Presently, there is no technology available to disprove that life does exist elsewhere. So, we cannot presently say scientifically that it does exist. That does not mean that it does not exist.
I don't know if God exists or not. But I certainly cannot conclude that because science currently cannot prove the existence of God, God categorically does not exist.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Classical mechanics is a fact within its domain.
Posted by Bob the Lawyer (Member # 3278) on :
It's ridiculous because it's obviously religiously motivated. Everything science has to say is a theory, but we only bother to tack the word "theory" on to the ones that religious people are free to ignore.
Now I'll happily agree that science is a subject that is often not taught well, and is even more often misrepresented in the media. And that's the real problem here is that people don’t understand what a theory is, or how science is performed, or how what it has to say can be used. Ultimately, that's what Deutsch should be pushing for, if he really isn't pushing his own religious agenda.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:Classical mechanics is a fact within its domain.
No it's not. Any time you have two objects at a relative velocity to each other, there will be some relativistic effects.
It's not a fact, but it's close enough for most practical purposes.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
Had the people at NASA decided on their own, or in response to a request for clarity from the scientific community, to add "theory" behind "Big Bang," I'd have no problem. It's accurate, and accuracy should be strived for.
It's the fact that it was ordered as a concession to religious voters that's grating, and should be. Not what is being asked for, but why.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:It's the fact that it was ordered as a concession to religious voters that's grating
What is it that bothers you -- that it is a political move to appease voters, or that it is a political move to appease religious voters?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I seem to recall an equal uproar when the 'theory' in question was global warming.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
What is it that bothers you -- that it is a political move to appease voters, or that it is a political move to appease religious voters?
That it's a political move to weaken the concept of scientific theory. Any move that weakens science solely to appease voters -- any voters -- is short-sighted and wrong.
What confuses me is even if the Big Bang theory was somehow a proven fact how this would in any way invalidate the possibility of a creator. Even if there was a designer he/she/they would have had to do the job somehow, why not with this process?
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:Originally posted by littlemissattitude: I think the problem comes because some (and please note that I said some, not all) scientists think that because God can't be proven scientifically, that means God does not exist.
How many other entities do you know of that exist, but which cannot be proven scientifically to exist?
I sometimes have my doubts about you. Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
So to be clear, what bothers people is the specific inclusion of a scientific term, properly used in this context, because the person including it wanted to make sure that the statement was scientific and did not venture into the bounds of religious thought?
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:What confuses me is even if the Big Bang theory was somehow a proven fact how this would in any way invalidate the possibility of a creator. Even if there was a designer he/she/they would have had to do the job somehow, why not with this process?
There are who believe in a completely literal and infallable Bible who believe the universe is less than 10,000 years old. A big bang trillions of years ago directly contradicts this.
While the big bang is compatable with many religious beliefs, it's not compatable with all of them.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: So to be clear, what bothers people is the specific inclusion of a scientific term, properly used in this context, because the person including it wanted to make sure that the statement was scientific and did not venture into the bounds of religious thought?
Given that he equated the state of being a theory to being a matter of opinion, I don't think it's at all clear that that's what he wanted.
After the change is made, I'd be willing to look over the NASA website and see if "theory" is also used when the text mentions gravitation, relativity, or electromagnetism.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
Dag, What bothers me is the inclusion of a scientific term for the purpose of painting a theory as conjecture. That it's properly used isn't the problem, but that it's used to leave space for the injection of religious ideas.
quote:The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
While the big bang is not incompatable with many religious beliefs, it's not compatable with all of them.
I didn't say religious belief. I was asking how the Big Bang invalidates intelligent design. Should I assume they are synonymous?
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
Actually, you didn't say intelligent design either - you talked about the possibility of a creator. I incorrectly assumed you were talking about religion.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator."
What, exactly, is wrong with this statement. I assume everyone agrees that NASA should basically only be making scientific declarations (not counting announcements about what NASA is, has, or wil be doing, etc.).
Whether or not there is an intelligent design by a creator is not, according to pretty much every thread we have on the subject, a scientific question.
Therefore, NASA should not be making declarations about whether or not there is such a creator. The "or not" is just as important as the "whether."
Seems to me people are upset because he purposely didn't leave the impression that science was competent to say there is no designer.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
Fair enough. But I intentionally did not specify a creator, as I am led to believe that Intelligent Design is science and not a particular religious doctrine.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Given that he equated the state of being a theory to being a matter of opinion, I don't think it's at all clear that that's what he wanted.
There are non-big bang scientific explanations of the origins of the universe. It's clearly not a fact.
quote:After the change is made, I'd be willing to look over the NASA website and see if "theory" is also used when the text mentions gravitation, relativity, or electromagnetism.
If the word theory is necessary to avoid confusion about the extent of the claim science is making, then I'd support such usage. If, as people insist over and over, whether or not there is a creator is not proper subject matter for science, then making correct use of scientific terms to prevent giving the impression that science is making a statement about the existence of a creator is not only accurate but necessary.
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
Because it is more than opinion, Dag. There is a fair amount of evidence that supports the Big Bang (red shifts, and the microwave background radiation, for instance). It might be the complete answer for the creation of the universe, but there is plenty of evidence that it constituted a part of it. More than just the opinion of some astrophysicists.
I personally have not heard of any competing theory that can account for the background radiation evidence.
-Bok
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
Dag, if you can ensure that the reader's of NASA's web site use the scientific and not the popular definition of theory, I'm all for putting it on the web page.
-Bok
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
Dagonee, the Big Bang theory does not make a declaration about a creator or lack of same. It really doesn't. It seeks to describe the event, not any possible motivation that may have been involved.
As said, I don't have a problem with the word theory being used with it (I do myself). I don't have a problem with scientists deciding to add the word to make the description more accurate. I have a problem with the intent behind the decision. "The Big Bang is 'not proven fact; it is opinion,'" puts the theory into the Big Bag of Opinion where everyone's guess holds equal weight.
The outcome is the same whether done by NASA on their own or by the PR guy, but as a lawyer you know that intent changes the perception of events. This, to me, is another example of an anti-science agenda that disturbs me quite a bit.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
So if any scientific finding discredits a religious belief it should have to come with a warning, maybe a footnote or two?
quote:Whether or not there is an intelligent design by a creator is not, according to pretty much every thread we have on the subject, a scientific question.
This is exactly why the subject shouldn't have to have been brought up at all. Read the quote again. He's saying that, to study the big bang scientifically, it is also necessary to study the idea that there could have been a creator.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:So if any scientific finding discredits a religious belief it should have to come with a warning, maybe a footnote or two?
Who do you think believes this?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:the Big Bang theory does not make a declaration about a creator or lack of same. It really doesn't. It seeks to describe the event, not any possible motivation that may have been involved.
Of course. Therefore, using a word, correctly within the context, that can help prevent creating the impression that it somehow resolves a religious question is a good thing.
quote: I have a problem with the intent behind the decision. "The Big Bang is 'not proven fact; it is opinion,'" puts the theory into the Big Bag of Opinion where everyone's guess holds equal weight.
This was not a public statement, and it is half right. It is not a fact - not even in the way evolution is said to be a fact.
quote:as a lawyer you know that intent changes the perception of events.
Yep. And the intent by some here (not you) seems to want to defend the borders of of science from intrusion in one direction (a good motive) but allow science to expand its own borders beyond its proper subject matter 9a bad motive).
Just as some people want to exploit on the confusion created by the word theory to make science less certain than it is, some people want to exploit the confusion created by the lack of the word to make science appear more certain than it is.
quote:So if any scientific finding discredits a religious belief it should have to come with a warning, maybe a footnote or two?
I didn't say that.
quote:This is exactly why the subject shouldn't have to have been brought up at all. Read the quote again.
The quote was in a private message to the web designer. It's not posted on the NASA web page.
The public statements made by NASA are accurate and use the term "theory" correctly within the scientific context.
The "subject" was brought up because of someone trying to make an accurate use of the word theory into something it's not.
quote: He's saying that, to study the big bang scientifically, it is also necessary to study the idea that there could have been a creator.
No, he's not. He's saying that the question of how the universe came to be is not solely a scientific question - as everyone here seems to have agreed. He's also saying that NASA should not present information in such a way as to imply that it is resolving the religious question.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
EDIT : This was in response to mph.
Comrade Soap, for one :
quote:I think that they should use theory after it because there are some of us who believe in God (Me being one of them).
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:He's saying that the question of how the universe came to be is not solely a scientific question - as everyone here seems to have agreed.
Then he's wrong. "The Universe began in this manner" is a statement of historical fact; it is no less scientific, and no more religious, than "Napoleon won the battle of Austerlitz." It may be mistaken, for some particular value of 'this manner'; but it is not religious.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:"The Universe began in this manner" is a statement of historical fact; it is no less scientific, and no more religious, than "Napoleon won the battle of Austerlitz." It may be mistaken, for some particular value of 'this manner'; but it is not religious.
You yourself have said the existence of a creator is not the proper subject of science.
"The Universe began in this manner" cannot be wholly answered with[out] answering the question, "Was the Universe created by a Creator?"
You're right that it's a historical question. But it's not one subject to scientific proof.
This is exactly the kind of overreaching I was talking about in my previous post.
[ February 06, 2006, 02:14 PM: Message edited by: Dagonee ]
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:"The Universe began in this manner" is a statement of historical fact.
<nitpick> It is many things, but it is not historical, as it predates the written word by over a trillion years. It is most definitely prehistorical. </nitpick>
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
I don't see what is wrong with requesting that NASA be more clear in distinguishing between scientific theory and certain fact, when dealing with issues that are controversial.
It's okay to complain when religious groups pressure the government into wrongly distorting science. But, there's no sense in complaining when religious groups pressure the government into presenting scientific claims in a more accurate fashion. No matter how much you dislike the motives of any given political group, it's only worth opposing them when they are actually doing wrong - not when they do right for the wrong reasons.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:You yourself have said the existence of a creator is not the proper subject of science.
Then I was mistaken. "There exists an extremely powerful being, who predates the Big Bang, and has thus-and-so qualities" is an assertion of checkable fact. That makes it the domain of science.
quote:"The Universe began in this manner" cannot be wholly answered with answering the question, "Was the Universe created by a Creator?"
I think you mean "without answering the question". On that assumption : Yes, I agree, and that is a question that is in principle answerable by science.
quote:It is most definitely prehistorical.
'Historical' in the sense of 'stuff that happened in the past', not 'things that were written down'. It is historical in the same sense that evolution is a historical fact.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
If we're nitpicking... Try a few billion years - certainly not more than two dozen - instead of a trillion.
quote:"The Universe began in this manner" cannot be wholly answered with answering the question, "Was the Universe created by a Creator?"
The question, "what came before the universe began" cannot be answered without answering the question, "was the universe created by a creator?" Saying that the universe began with a rapidly expanding field of particles says nothing about what came before it and how it got there.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Then I was mistaken. "There exists an extremely powerful being, who predates the Big Bang, and has thus-and-so qualities" is an assertion of checkable fact. That makes it the domain of science.
Not if the Creator or the effects of the creator cannot be repeatedly (not more than once, but in a repeatable manner) detected by physical senses.
quote:I think you mean "without answering the question".
Yes, I do.
quote:Saying that the universe began with a rapidly expanding field of particles says nothing about what came before it and how it got there.
Techinically that tells us what was the universe like immediately after it began, not in what manner did it begin.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Not if the Creator or the effects of the creator cannot be repeatedly (not more than once, but in a repeatable manner) detected by physical senses.
And if this is true, in what sense does the creator 'exist'? You might as well claim existence for the IPU, praise be upon her. She's not detectable by physical senses either.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
Here, more or less, is what's bothering me. Not prefectly parallel, but...
Say a teacher's biography is posted on a school's website and includes "Mrs. Jackson is a mother of three."
However, one of the administrators of the school who does not like Mrs. Jackson sends a memo to the web designer asking to have it changed to "Mrs. Jackson is a single mother of three" so that, according to his memo, "parents will know how sinfully immoral she is."
Seen from the outside, no problem. The revised bio is accurate. Mrs. Jackson would agree with it and parents most likely wouldn't notice or care. But the motive of the administrator provides an insight into his own biases and his competence for the position.
In this situation, the motive bothers me a lot where the actual change bothers me not at all.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:And if this is true, in what sense does the creator 'exist'? You might as well claim existence for the IPU, praise be upon her. She's not detectable by physical senses either.
1.) Because not everything important in the world is detectable by physical senses, even if the effects of those things are.
2.) Because the Creator does intervene in a time, place, and manner of His choosing.
quote:Say a teacher's biography is posted on a school's website and includes "Mrs. Jackson is a mother of three."
However, one of the administrators of the school who does not like Mrs. Jackson sends a memo to the web designer asking to have it changed to "Mrs. Jackson is a single mother of three" so that, according to his memo, "parents will know how sinfully immoral she is."
Seen from the outside, no problem. The revised bio is accurate.
But there are many people who would object to the description "single mother" being on the web page even without that memo, whereas the inclusion of the word theory here would raise no eyebrows without the memo.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee:
quote:Given that he equated the state of being a theory to being a matter of opinion, I don't think it's at all clear that that's what he wanted.
There are non-big bang scientific explanations of the origins of the universe. It's clearly not a fact.
"Not a fact" does not relegate it to the realm of "opinion" in the common understanding of the term.
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee:
quote:After the change is made, I'd be willing to look over the NASA website and see if "theory" is also used when the text mentions gravitation, relativity, or electromagnetism.
If the word theory is necessary to avoid confusion about the extent of the claim science is making, then I'd support such usage. If, as people insist over and over, whether or not there is a creator is not proper subject matter for science, then making correct use of scientific terms to prevent giving the impression that science is making a statement about the existence of a creator is not only accurate but necessary.
There's a difference between "Is there a creator?" and "Is the Bible literally true?" Theories like the Big Bang or evolutionary theory are silent on the first question, but implicitly answer the second with a negative. Going out of your way to use the word "theory" in this context implicitly grants equal weight to Big Bang theory and Young Earth Creationism, which is not valid given the firm evidential support for the former and lack thereof for the latter.
If the statement had read "Big Bang theory is one of several competing scientific theories," I would share your position and be fine with it.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
quote:Techinically that tells us what was the universe like immediately after it began, not in what manner did it begin.
Exactly. I'm talking about describing the beginning of the universe, not naming the cause for the universe beginning.
quote:But there are many people who would object to the description "single mother" being on the web page even without that memo, whereas the inclusion of the word theory here would raise no eyebrows without the memo.
Isn't the memo, and the permeation of NASA by pseudo-scientists that it indicates, what we're arguing about here? That, and how it's indicative of how IDists are highjacking the word "theory?"
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:"Not a fact" does not relegate it to the realm of "opinion" in the common understanding of the term.
No, it does not. It does mean it's not a fact, though.
quote:There's a difference between "Is there a creator?" and "Is the Bible literally true?" Theories like the Big Bang or evolutionary theory are silent on the first question, but implicitly answer the second with a negative.
This is true.
quote:Going out of your way to use the word "theory" in this context implicitly grants equal weight to Big Bang theory and Young Earth Creationism, which is not valid given the firm evidential support for the former and lack thereof for the latter.
This is not true.
quote:If the statement had read "Big Bang theory is one of several competing scientific theories," I would share your position and be fine with it.
Is the usage incorrect?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Because not everything important in the world is detectable by physical senses, even if the effects of those things are.
But you specified that the effects should also not be repeatably detectable. If neither the Unicorn nor the effects of the Unicorn can be seen, is it sensible to say the she exists? Conversely, if the effects, but not the Unicorn itself, is detectable - then that is again within the domain of science. Nobody has ever seen an electron, either, but I am working with their effects as I write.
quote:Because the Creator does intervene in a time, place, and manner of His choosing.
Which, as I noted, places it within the domain of science again. The actions of human beings are unpredictable, but you would hardly classify them as theology for all that.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Exactly. I'm talking about describing the beginning of the universe, not naming the cause for the universe beginning.
And it doesn't describe the beginning - except to say "we don't know how to scientifically describe the singularity that was at the beginning."
The expanding field of particles happens after the beginning.
quote:Isn't the memo, and the permeation of NASA by pseudo-scientists that it indicates, what we're arguing about here?
The memo instructed a web designer to use an accurate word in order to avoid having the web site imply something outside the proper subject matter of the web site.
The memo was private, not a public statement. The usage in the public web site was correct.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
I'm not questioning the usage; I'm questioning the motivation and intellectual honesty behind the decision to apply the usage selectively.
Added: And since the memo's author made his motive clear, I'm even less concerned about the correctness of the usage -- particularly since if the memo is implemented "to the letter," the usage will be selectively confined to scientific theories that conflict with a literal reading of the Bible.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:But you specified that the effects should also not be repeatably detectable.
Where did I say that?
quote:Which, as I noted, places it within the domain of science again. The actions of human beings are unpredictable, but you would hardly classify them as theology for all that.
I have repeatedly been told that testimony of the witnessing of such events is not scientific. If we can't predict when it will happen, either naturally or because of our intervention, then we can't verify it scientifically.
If you want to permit the testimony as scientific evidence, then that changes the whole discussion. We can revisit every topic we've ever discussed, then.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:I'm not questioning the usage; I'm questioning the motivation and intellectual honesty behind the decision to apply the usage selectively.
Added: And since the memo's author made his motive clear, I'm even less concerned about the correctness of the usage -- particularly since if the memo is implemented "to the letter," the usage will be selectively confined to scientific theories that conflict with a literal reading of the Bible.
Once again, the motive was to make it clear that only science was being discussed, not religion.
Please point out where it says it will only be applied to those theories which conflict with a literal reading of the Bible?
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:However, one of the administrators of the school who does not like Mrs. Jackson sends a memo to the web designer asking to have it changed to "Mrs. Jackson is a single mother of three" so that, according to his memo, "parents will know how sinfully immoral she is."
Seen from the outside, no problem. The revised bio is accurate. Mrs. Jackson would agree with it and parents most likely wouldn't notice or care. But the motive of the administrator provides an insight into his own biases and his competence for the position.
But Mrs. Jackson would have both a right and a good reason to hide the fact that she is a single mother. I don't think science should desire to hide the fact that its theories are, in fact, theories. And I think the motive of the administration, in this case, is to highlight that fact, to avoid stepping on religions that disagree.
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
Dag, to your last question: Yes, because he man betrays his motives. I'm willing to add "theory" to any reference of the Big Bang, but only if using the more scientifically rigorous definition. This guy clearly is trying to apply the more popular definition, and I would _never_ support that definition applied to the Big Bang. Further, IMO, using the popular usage IS incorrect. I would suspect most people decrying this decision feel similarly. It's a nuance you are apparently not willing to concede, or perhaps you haven't noticed it, I don't know.
BTW, I think you sidestep some issues by pointing out other "theories" that a) look more like hypotheses, and b) don't try to explain things like the cosmic background radiation.
-Bok
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Where did I say that?
Right here :
quote:Not if the Creator or the effects of the creator cannot be repeatedly (not more than once, but in a repeatable manner) detected by physical senses.
quote:Once again, the motive was to make it clear that only science was being discussed, not religion.
How do you know this?
quote:I have repeatedly been told that testimony of the witnessing of such events is not scientific. If we can't predict when it will happen, either naturally or because of our intervention, then we can't verify it scientifically.
Well, I don't know. We can't predict or cause earthquakes, either; is it therefore unscientific to study them? We can't predict when somebody will decide to go on a killing spree, but I don't think it is unreasonable to study such a thing. So the study of god-interventions is not necessarily unscientific; but eyewitness testimony isn't even considered reliable in a court of law, much less a scientific journal.
Posted by Bokonon (Member # 480) on :
Dag, actually, you're wrong on the point about "the beginning". Before the expansion, there was no Time (capital-T), so saying "before" is nonsensical. This is all in light of current theories and evidence.
Now, there may be a cause that created the universe, but it didn't happen before, it just happened.
-Bok
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
The instructions in the memo were confined to Big Bang theory with the express intent of reminding everyone that it doesn't conflict with the notion of a creator, but Big Bang theory does not conflict with the concept of a creator itself. Putting "theory" after it doesn't change that.
However, it does conflict with many of humanity's creation stories, including a literal reading of the Genesis account of creation. That's the conflict that the memo is aimed to resolve, and in this context the selective appelation of "theory" is invalid because it implicitly attachest he same tag to Young Earth Creationism, among other things.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
quote:Once again, the motive was to make it clear that only science was being discussed, not religion.
And adding the word, "theory" does this how, exactly?
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
quote:And it doesn't describe the beginning - except to say "we don't know how to scientifically describe the singularity that was at the beginning."
The expanding field of particles happens after the beginning.
That's fine, I can work with your definition of beginning if you insist. In that case, the Big Bang theory doesn't make any claims as to the beginning of the universe, but the events immediately following the beginning of the universe. It still has no bearing on the question of a creator.
Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
But there are many people who would object to the description "single mother" being on the web page even without that memo, whereas the inclusion of the word theory here would raise no eyebrows without the memo.
Sure it would. Just as "single mother" means different things to different people -- did you automatically read it to mean "unwed mother" or "widow" or "foster mother"? Single mother covers them all but they invoke different reactions from some people -- "theory" means different things to scientists and nonscientists. Not the point.
As I said, not a perfect analogy by any means. It's there to hopefully demonstrate where my point of contention lies; the motives of the PR man and, by extension, his employers.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
I agree, Chris.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Since Dag is posting again, bumpified for great justice!
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Sure it would.
The word "theory" as used in the public site is accurate within the scientific use of "theory." Why, exactly, would it raise eyebrows?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
KoM, if you think the existence of a Creator is valid subject matter for science, I'll pose the same question being used to browbeat IDers: propose an experiment about it.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
And KoM, there's no need to bump something from the second page.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Well, hey, it made you post three times in a row, yes?
But as for experiments, why, one might try to pray for cancer victims. Now it's true that such an experiment could not prove or disprove all creators, but it could test one with the distinguishing characteristic of 'answers prayers'. The existence or not of a Desit-type creator, completely uninterested in human affairs, is really not that interesting, being more on the order of a IPU.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:But as for experiments, why, one might try to pray for cancer victims. Now it's true that such an experiment could not prove or disprove all creators, but it could test one with the distinguishing characteristic of 'answers prayers'.
It's doubtful that prayers made under such conditions could be considered "prayers."
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Fair enough; how about counting the number of sincere prayers made? You don't have to make them up artificially, there must be lots of variation on this.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Many people believe they are not supposed to be public with their prayers.
Also, how do you measure "sincere"?
Posted by JennaDean (Member # 8816) on :
Also, how do you define "answers prayers"?
What if the answer is, "No, sorry, it's your turn to die?"
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
With a Sincerometer™.
Duh!
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
That's a Sarcasmo-counter with a phase inverter, right?
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Nope. I just reversed the polarity.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
By crossing the streams?
Posted by clod (Member # 9084) on :
quote: What if the answer is, "No, sorry, it's your turn to die?"
Well, I give 'em the other die, and tell 'em it's their turn to shut up and roll.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
*gives Dags an odd look*
No, I just pulled out that piece, turned it 180 degrees, and popped it back in.
It worked for Dr. Klein.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by JennaDean: Also, how do you define "answers prayers"?
What if the answer is, "No, sorry, it's your turn to die?"
Then what is the use of that god in the first place? Presumably, people who pray believe that this somehow increases the survivial chance of the one prayed for.
The objection that prayer is private is the sort of thing that sociologists compensate for all the time. This is what the concept of 'systematic uncertainty' was invented to deal with. Read any physics paper and you'll see in the abstract, "We find the ratio is n.nnn +- a.aaa +- b.bbb where the uncertainties are statistical and systematic."
As for sincerity, in this context I think "Not asked for by the researcher" would be good enough. Presumably, nobody prays without wanting the thing prayed for, and believing that the prayer will do some good. If you believe prayer is a useless activity, why would you do it?
Posted by JennaDean (Member # 8816) on :
quote:Then what is the use of that god in the first place?
Well, no one would ask "What's the use of a father who won't give me everything I ask for?" Actually, a child might ask that, but most of us understand that everything a child asks for is not good for them, even if they don't understand why; and that if we as the parents love them we won't just give them everything they want.
But it doesn't hurt to ask; perhaps there are things we're not in the right position to receive until we've exercised enough faith to ask. It's like a parent who watches their child struggle, but doesn't step in and help until the child is willing to ask for help; and then doesn't always help exactly the way the child asks but instead helps in the way the parent knows is needed.
quote:Presumably, nobody prays without wanting the thing prayed for, and believing that the prayer will do some good. If you believe prayer is a useless activity, why would you do it?
I don't think it's useless. I don't think it's going to guarantee I'll always get the answer I want, but I don't think it's useless to communicate with my Father. I think He's willing to give us what we ask for as long as it's not the wrong thing for us (or for someone else, such as when we pray for Him to do something that would take away someone else's free will). I may get what I ask for; or I may only get a better understanding of why I can't have what I ask for right now. If what I get is communion with God and an assurance that His decision is the right one, it's worth praying for, for the peace that brings.
Posted by clod (Member # 9084) on :
JennaDean,
What do you think of the "Bratz" dolls?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Right. So what you're saying is that prayer is sometimes answered with what you were asking for, and sometimes with 'inner peace'. Now, the latter is a bit subjective, but one could perhaps compare it to, for example, the effects of meditation, prayers to other gods (by people who believe in those gods), prayers to gods the subject knows do not exist, and drugs. If your prayer turns out to be measurably more effective, then that is certainly worth knowing, even for an atheist.
And if the prayer is sometimes answered with what you were asking for - then the effect should be statistically measureable. It doesn't have to be 100% effective. Medicine measures things that work in 5% of cases all the time; I myself am investigating a decay chain that occurs about once in a million decays. It's only a question of getting enough statistics.
Posted by JennaDean (Member # 8816) on :
True. Haven't they done that? I mean haven't some hospitals done studies and found that people who prayed or had faith were more likely to recover, or recovered faster?
Sorry I'm a little vague, I'm just going on some memory of old PBS Religion and Ethics Newsweekly shows here.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
You are correct that the study was done; several, in fact. You mis-recall the results and more results. You will probably be able to find some studies claiming to have found statistically significant effects; I am prepared to bet that for each such study, there will be a debunk of the methodology somewhere. Oddly enough, this field seems to attract a fair number of charlatans.
EDIT : I realised I'm laying myself open to a charge of 'no true Scotsman', here. Let me rephrase. I am aware of several studies claiming significant effects for prayer, all of which have really glaring flaws in the methodology which have been exposed by other scientists. I am not aware of any such study which has survived scrutiny. Also, you should note that even if one were found, the sheer number of negative studies means it has to be a really strong effect. It's like coin-flipping studies : If you do several hundred studies, then sure, you're going to find one where the subject was able to get the coin to show heads 600 out of 1000 times. But you have to look at the whole picture of all the studies. That's what review articles are for.
[ February 07, 2006, 02:40 AM: Message edited by: King of Men ]
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Oh, and by the way : Why is it that no modern miracles seem to regrow limbs? We certainly have plenty of amputees, what with all the wars around; you would think some of them would be Christians. Yet there seems to be a remarkable lack of healings of this sort of wound. Now, again, you could argue that these people do not really need a new limb, they need the inner fortitude to deal with their tests; but you should then explain why, say, the guy with cancer does need a remission.
I am reminded of the cult of Om (I think) in Discworld, whose priests had "quickly learned that a prayer, say, for Om to pull a stone down to earth, followed by a quick push over a cliff, was usually answered quite reliably."
Posted by JennaDean (Member # 8816) on :
Those were good sites, thanks, KoM. You may be right about my mis-recalling the results. I may be remembering surveys they've done where people of faith tended to live longer and be healthier. But those were surveys that asked people to describe their own level of faith, which wouldn't qualify as scientific studies, if I understand correctly. These researchers came up with about what I expected; I personally don't think you can randomly test God like you would ask a performing dolphin to do his tricks. Some people had objections to the tests that seemed silly to me, but this one objection I agree with:
quote:The 12 prayer groups were composed of strangers to the patients. Prayer might be more effective if it is done by family or loved ones of the patients -- people who know the patients and are concerned about their recovery. A posting on the Good Fig web site suggested that: "God doesn't want our vain repetitions; He wants sincere, heartfelt prayer. Some group of people that has never even met the patient in person and doesn't really know the person can't do that."
I also think it's difficult to have an accurate double-blind study done when 1) many of the patients in the "no-prayer group" probably have family and friends who are praying for them anyway; and 2) prayer is supposed to be at least a little bit dependent on the faith of the one being prayed for, so if you don't know you're being prayed for, how can you have faith that it'll work? And if it's missing that component, how could you consider that a valid result?
I think it's going to be hard to do a study that will simultaneously be a fair, controlled, blind scientific study of the effects of prayer on healing, and ALSO be a real measure of sincere prayers by people of faith on behalf of people they really, sincerely care about. I don't see how that could be done. If you only used people in your study who normally have faith and would be praying for themselves and have family sincerely praying for them, that won't be considered impartial evidence, because the researchers wouldn't get to randomly select who gets prayed for and who doesn't, and it wouldn't be in any way double-blind; yet those are the only kinds of people who are REALLY praying the way we want to test. Kind of a Catch-22. I guess all you'd end up with is anecdotal evidence. Which is what we already have!
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I do think I dealt with this already. You would count the number of prayers; the sincerity and love of the ones doing the praying is a systematic uncertainty, which can be estimated for a large-enough sample. There are plenty of statistical means of dealing with this kind of problem. In effect, it's like checking a correlation between smoking and lung cancer : You don't get to choose who does the smoking, either, but that doesn't mean the study is unscientific! It just means you have to be careful to account for all the confounding variables. Double-blind is a fine method, but it's not the alpha and omega of all science.
Posted by JennaDean (Member # 8816) on :
Cool. So not a controlled study, more like a survey? For every heart patient, you note whether they died or not, how long it took for them to heal, how many complications they had, and then you ask them or their family whether or not they prayed for them? Do you also ask if it had any emotional effect on them - lowered their stress levels, etc? (That was noted in the studies you linked to - that the actual rates of healing may not have increased, but the stress levels appeared to be lower.)
I guess you'd also have to ask what was prayed for - it's possible some would pray for the person to be comfortable and not to linger. Or those who pray for God's will to be done and for us to accept it. But most of them would probably be prayers for healing.
So when are you going to do this study? Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
Of course, this study would have the failing of all correlational research. It fails to identidy a causal relationship.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
That is certainly true, but you could hardly argue that people getting better causes their loved ones to pray. I think I did mention that there would be a lot of confounding variables you'd have to account for.
Posted by JennaDean (Member # 8816) on :
"... people getting better causes their loved ones to pray"
Hmm ... that's a thought. Someone getting better could cause a loved one to develop or increase faith, and begin to pray. But it wouldn't have caused the prayer that happened before the person got better, so for the purposes of this study, no.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Right. I should have added a 'retroactively' in that sentence.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Dag, I wouild be most interested in your perspective on this.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
You also seem to be operating under the premise that God has to answer the prayers offered in this experiment. I don't know if this idea makes sense but say you did a statistical study on prayer and found a perfect method for measuring it. Lets say you actually proved beyond a doubt that prayer is beneficial to any patients condition. What now?
How would there then be any element of faith within prayer? People now would all be praying because they had read the study and had faith in that same experiement not because they had faith that God would help them.
I am one of the subscribers to the idea that prayer does not change the will of God but merely secures the blessings he desires to grant us, but are contingent on us asking for them. It is impossible to know God's will concerning any group of sickly people and therefore how can any percent of patients getting better mean anything? People cannot agree on how people ougth to pray. Are we invoking the favor of Jesus? Allah? Buddha? Who? What if by asking the wrong God on the first try we incure God's wrath and all the patients die? (not that I think that would happen, but how would we know if it did? What if in order to emphasize the role of faith within prayer God refuses to take part in our experiment? We would conclude scientifically that there is no correlation between prayer and recovery and we would be wrong.
I just don't see any experiment on the power of prayer working at all.
Posted by suminonA (Member # 8757) on :
[*warning* non-theist person speaking]
Trying to scientifically prove the existence of “God” (or any other widely supported deity) is equivalent to proving the existence of the IPU (which I take as a known example of ad-hoc invention).
Here’s why:
quote: Originally posted by : JennaDean “prayer is supposed to be at least a little bit dependent on the faith of the one being prayed for, so if you don't know you're being prayed for, how can you have faith that it'll work?”
JeenaDean was giving this as a second point of a list of reasons why “studying prayers results” can’t be validated at face value.
This little quote contains for me all the “power of Religion”. If you actually believe in a deity, and have faith that your prayers are listened (and answered when it’s ok with that deity to do it) then I’d say that the name of that deity is irrelevant. It all comes down to personal beliefs and faith. When it works for a given individual, it’s the most beautiful fulfilment of Religion.
The thing is that IMO a lot of people need to have some deity to believe in, and there the traditions come in. Christians would teach their children to believe in a particular deity, Muslims would teach their children to believe in some other particular deity. But that is OK!.I myself am a non-theist (by choice, as a result of free will), but I don’t see Religion as bad. In the context above it’s quite admirable.
As long as the teachings of that deity say that “good” is preferable to “evil”, that peace and love are preferable to war and hatred, then the name of that deity might be whatever the tradition you follow says it is. Yet, when your deity “commands” you to eliminate any non-true-believers (see Inquisition), or to fight a “holy war”, then the whole idea of Religion is gravely misunderstood and misused.
But let’s get back to our present topic: “proving” the existence of “God” through scientific study. It’s useless! Every believer truly believes in the chosen/traditional deity, beyond any scientific proof. Any non-believer (in any one particular deity) might find “evidence there is not such a deity”. And there is no way to prove either way scientifically (and here the term “scientific theory” comes in, for no such theory proves anything at all). I even think that the day science claims to have found proofs against all deities, it would be a sad day of ultimate destruction of all that we call Humanity.
Remember that all scientific theories are accepted to “hold true” as long as there are no known facts to prove them false (or partially wrong). And our IPU can “choose” to never give out any way for us to prove it (doesn’t) exists.
Trying to scientifically “(un)prove” Religion, or to religiously assert that science is “overrated” (or even “evil”) are the two positions that are not only useless but also non-beneficial to anyone.
Keep Religion in Church and Science in School. It’s all called Education! (and I also seem to recall an Amendment about that...)
A.
PS: NASA’s site should be a scientific tool and act accordingly.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
It does seem to me that you have not been reading the thread closely, of late. One cannot prove or disprove the existence of some far-off, uninterested god, true. But that is not a very interesting problem. Who cares if the IPU exists? She never interacts with humans, anyway. The question is, do the gods actually asserted by believers exist? And they have testable qualities, one of them being answers for prayer, and other intervention in human life. And I do believe I have dealt with the sincerity issue twice or thrice over, now : You would not pray to see if it worked, you would ask others, perfectly sincere believers, if they had already prayed, and then you would see if that had worked.
Once again : We hear of miracles on the order of 'cancer remission' and 'life turned around'. Why not, then, 'limb restored' - which, oddly enough, is outside what modern medicine, sheer willpower, or the human immune system can do?
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Well I had a reply and the forums deleted it now I am not too eager to type it all out again.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Heh. Getting back on the original topic, Commissar Deutsch is now resigning, and it also turns out that he did not, in fact, have the college degree that he claimed to have when he applied for the job. It seems there is still justice in the world. Linkie. Posted by suminonA (Member # 8757) on :
quote: Originally posted by: King of Men Once again : We hear of miracles on the order of 'cancer remission' and 'life turned around'. Why not, then, 'limb restored' - which, oddly enough, is outside what modern medicine, sheer willpower, or the human immune system can do?
“Oddly” enough, the answer is contained in the question itself.
A.
[/derailment]
Posted by narrativium (Member # 3230) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: By crossing the streams?
No. That would be bad.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad?"
Posted by narrativium (Member # 3230) on :
Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: How would there then be any element of faith within prayer? People now would all be praying because they had read the study and had faith in that same experiement not because they had faith that God would help them.
Hang on, though. It seems you are saying that your god would refuse to grant any of the prayers I was studying, lest people's faith be destroyed. But then, what if I decided to study all prayers, everywhere? Are you really saying that I can completely destroy the power of prayer, merely by systematically asking people what they've been praying for lately? That seems rather odd behaviour for a god who is not influenced by human pleadings.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Honestly, KoM, when are you going to figure out that God is smarter than you are. You insist on imaging God as a fairy-tale genii that can be tricked with technicalities.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
So what do you think would happen, precisely? And also, I am merely exploring some avenues that the theist posters' assertions are opening up, here. Certainly, rather than deny all studied prayers, it would be easier for a god to smite the researcher with lightning (or, ok, some more subtle distraction). You'd get into all kinds of free-will issues, of course. But that's not the point. I am trying to figure out what kind of god we can confirm or deny the existence of by scientific means. So far, the ones that could not be studied in this manner are turning out to be rather tricksy sorts.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I don't think that God is at our beck and call. There isn't some kind of a formula for making God grant our wishes. That is superstition rather than faith.
I think that prayer is a way to invite God to work in us, to show our devotion, to help us to focus on doing God's will.
Of course, God is smarter than I am, too.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Ah, it seems you have a slightly different perspective on prayer than what has been discussed so far. If I understand you correctly, then you do not believe that praying for a sick relative is going to make any difference to their chances of survival? That is certainly a kind of god that my proposed study would not touch; but it's also rather new to this thread, hence the confusion.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
You do not understand me correctly - but that isn't your fault. It isn't an easy question. I think that prayer is effective in all sorts of ways that we can't even imagine - and some that we can. But I do take issue with the idea of prayer as a way to control God. That by using the correct magic words we can force God to do our will rather than the other way around.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Well, look you. There are two options. Either prayer is correlated with real, physical effects, or it isn't. If such a correlation exists, then it is measurable; this would be extremely strong evidence for some kind of force responding to will. (Not necessarily a god, it could just as well be a psychic force field; but at any rate, something which is currently not known to science.) The opposite does not disprove the existence of a god, but it does disprove the existence of a god who grants requests for real, measurable things. Is this a fair statement of the problem? You seem to be crying "false dichotomy, it's not that simple", but I haven't seen you give a third option.
You will note, right now I am not trying to prove or disprove the existence of any gods; I'm just trying to show that for some kinds of god, which in my opinion are the only interesting ones, their existence or otherwise is a question that science can investigate.
Posted by Mabus (Member # 6320) on :
KoM> I think what the detractors are saying is that attempting to run tests on the behavior of a single individual can produce misleading results, especially when that individual is aware that he is being experimented on.
One would presume that God--like all the other intelligent beings I have encountered--has a wide variety of complex motivations that can interfere with attempts to study his behavior. The situation is further complicated by the fact that no two religions agree on exactly what those motivations are, so that there are an immense array of possible explanations for any result, positive or negative.
I don't mean to entirely disagree with you, to tell the truth. (It hasn't been that long since some of my church's preachers offered cash rewards to anyone who could document a genuine, verifiable miracle of healing and were lambasted for materialism by charismatics.) But the problems involved are still real, as can be seen from all manner of studies on ordinary human psychology.
Posted by JennaDean (Member # 8816) on :
I wonder how you would interpret the data? If people said they'd prayed for their loved one, and they recovered, that could count toward the existence of that God. Or it could mean they were going to recover anyway. If they said they'd prayed for their loved one, but they died, that could count against the existence of that God; or it could mean it was God's will for that person to die at that time. If people said they hadn't prayed at all, then their recovery or lack thereof says nothing whatsoever about the existence of God.
I'm not trying to be obtuse here, I just don't see how you could make a study that would be accepted as scientific. I guess you could count those who'd been prayed for, and see how many recovered; and count those who hadn't been prayed for, and see how many recovered; but what would the results mean? The answer will be interpreted differently by everyone.
If the prayed-for group had a higher rate of recovery than the other, theists will see that as evidence of what they already know, and atheists will see it as "the power of positive thinking" or something. If there was no difference in the rates of recovery between the two groups, what would that prove? I think to an atheist, it would be, "It didn't make any difference, your God must not be real because He's not answering your prayers." To a theist, it will be, "God cannot be controlled by our prayers, and he did answer them, but some of them were answered with 'No.'" Subjective things like the family members feeling comforted in their time of loss, or the sick person feeling at peace with it being his time to die, cannot be objectively counted, and would have no place in the study - although those things may be the answers to the prayers. In other words, the scientist may not even recognize whether a prayer has been answered or not. So we'll be back where we are right now - unable to prove God exists, except to those who are willing to put their own faith into the test.
I'd be interested in seeing the study, actually, but it wouldn't change my faith. I doubt it would change an atheists' lack of, either.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
The 'power of positive thinking' is a known factor that can be controlled for; it has been rather effectively measured. (Google for 'placebo effect' and you'll see what I mean.) There are fairly sharpish limits to how much it can account for.
As for proving anything to a theist, well, that's not what I'm trying to do. I'm only attempting to answer Dag's challenge by showing that there exist gods for which we can do scientific testing. Who would believe in what is highly irrelevant to that purpose. After all, there are plenty of people who believe in literal, young-earth Creationism; that doesn't make geology useless.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
I'm only attempting to answer Dag's challenge by showing that there exist gods for which we can do scientific testing.
Perhaps, Horatio* honey, but my God isn't one of them.
*Unable to resist the Hamlet allusion.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
I have yet to see you explain why.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Perhaps, Horatio* honey, but my God isn't one of them.
Why not? Is your God capricious and random? If so, why do you worship Him, since that makes it just as likely that He'll smite you?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
The Harris study has serious problems : It is not clear that the randomisation was done properly.
quote:1013 patients were randomized, 484 to the prayer group and 529 to the usual care group. After removal of those patients who spent less than 24 hours in the CCU (prayer was not started until 24 hours after admission), 524 remained in the usual care group and 466 in the prayer group.
quote:The much higher dropout rate in the first 24 hours in the prayer group is a very serious criticism of the study. The statistical probability that this finding would appear by chance is (.001), or 1 chance in a 1000, a statistically very significant finding. This higher dropout rate, since the mortality rate in the two groups was the same, suggests that the prayer group, for unknown reasons, was not quite as ill as the control group since the patients discharged within a day often turn out not to have serious problems. If they were a little liess ill at the start, we would expect them to have a more favorable course.
And in any case,
quote:There was no statistical difference in the days in the CCU, days in the hospital, or mortality.
All from here. Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:Perhaps, Horatio* honey, but my God isn't one of them.
Why not? Is your God capricious and random? If so, why do you worship Him, since that makes it just as likely that He'll smite you?
How does not able to be controlled equal "capricious and random"? Do you do everything anybody asks of you. Do you do some things and have good reasons for not doing others. Even if they say please? Does the fact that you don't grant all of your children's wishes mean that you are just as likely to smite them?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
As I said, not proof of anything. It isn't really relevant to what I am saying. But you seemed to want to see some sort of study, so...
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
KOM I think I mentioned earlier something along the lines of "Prayer does not change the will of God in anyway, rather it secures blessings he is already willing to give us but are contingient on our asking" If you go look at the gist of the Lords prayer as written in the Bible its merely a list of fundamental things any individual would desire from God, but still needs to be requested.
From that point of view you would need to somehow find a group of people where somehow you knew it was God's will that all of them be healed from various maladies and then see which ones were healed after praying. Of course thats impossible.
I suppose you could work out some formula to compensate for a complete lack of knowledge as to God's will concerning your test subjects but again could you fully account for it? I dont think you could.
Then there is the problem of who prays? If a person is in a coma they can't pray for themselves so others pray for them. A person who is in a car accident and is angry at god will certainly not pray, and you may need somebody to pray that somehow their heart is softened (people who pray are not just concerned with healing of the physical variety). And lets say in order for that humbling process to happen the accident victim has to lose a loved one. Well now we have prayer killing another human being.
From my own perspective as a Christian, being healed is a relatively minor thing to ask for. That makes it easy to accomplish but also not often neccesary. Life for a Christian is so transitory. Its more important that a person spend their time wisely rather than asking for an extension from God.
As for limbs being restored. Getting a limb back is even less important than being saved from cancer. It is also worthy of note that we have even less knowledge about all that has happened in the human race than we do about all possible chemical combinations (I think its something like 3%) I find it quite possible that somebody had a limb restored and we simply do not know about it in any historical context.
Posted by password (Member # 9105) on :
quote:Originally posted by narrativium: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Important safety tip, thanks.
Tell him about the twinky...
Posted by password (Member # 9105) on :
On subject, I remember reading a book saying that one of the subtleties about Jesus as God was that the miracles attributed to Him, directly, are all examples of thing that happen naturally-- Water turns to Wine, people are healed of disease, a fig tree dies, wheat and fish multiply etc. The author specifically pointed out that Jesus refused to turn stones into bread, though He did boast that God could raise up Sons of Abraham from the rocks. Since He didn't actually do it, though, I don't know where that fits in.
In the case of Lazarus, that prefigures His own, and, with hope, our own ressurections.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
quote:Does the fact that you don't grant all of your children's wishes mean that you are just as likely to smite them?
Do you believe that God grants any prayers? If so, prayer should have a measurable statistical effect.
Posted by camus (Member # 8052) on :
quote:Do you believe that God grants any prayers? If so, prayer should have a measurable statistical effect.
But that doesn't mean that we would know when and what to measure or that we could represent it with some mathematical formula. In any case, I think that the margin for error would render any result meaningless.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Why? How would we measure that? How do we know if our prayers only clarify our own thoughts or if God speaks to us? How do we know if when we do good in the world and the prayers of other people are answered whether that is the Holy Spirit or just our wanting to do good. And what is the difference? How would we know if someone praying to get well is effected by God or by her own faith.
I know that my life is better when I pray how do I measure how much of that is God?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:From that point of view you would need to somehow find a group of people where somehow you knew it was God's will that all of them be healed from various maladies and then see which ones were healed after praying. Of course thats impossible.
No, BlackBlade. All I have to do is assume that there exist some people whose healing is the will of your god, but whose healing must also be requested. Look : If the prayer makes a change at all, then that change is measurable. If it doesn't - why, that is a very interesting datum in itself.
quote:But that doesn't mean that we would know when and what to measure or that we could represent it with some mathematical formula. In any case, I think that the margin for error would render any result meaningless.
Do you have a specific objection to the method I outlined? If not, you seem to be just saying "Well, that can't possibly work, la-la-la."
quote:How would we know if someone praying to get well is effected by God or by her own faith?
I think I did mentioned that the placebo effect has been very well quantified.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
How do you know that God isn't causing the placebo effect?
Posted by camus (Member # 8052) on :
quote:All I have to do is assume that there exist some people whose healing is the will of your god, but whose healing must also be requested.
1. What determines an answered prayer? Does the person have to be completely healed, healed enough to prove a point, enough to enable the person to accomplish God's will for him, or just enough to for the person to gain some profound understanding of himself?
2. How do you differentiate between correlation and causation? Was the person healed because of God, because of some unique natural ability, or did God cause the unique natural ability?
3. How do you know that you're studying the right people?
4. What if God's reasons can't be fit into a mathematical model? For example, let's say that for some reason God only answers one prayer each month. Well, how do you know that you didn't pick the wrong month to conduct the study?
My objection is that there are so many possible areas for error that any result is going to contain an unkown amount if inaccuracy. So, no, I am not simply plugging my ears and shouting "la-la-la." I just don't see how your test could produce useful results, unless I missed a better detailed test somewhere earlier in this thread. (I checked and didn't see much of a better one, but I'll check again)
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
All right, these are detailed objections, fair enough. The response is pretty much the same for all of them, though :
Right now, any statistically significant difference in healing rates will do. For this preliminary study, I am sticking to things that are easy to put numbers to; again, recall that I am not trying to prove or disprove any existences, but merely to put some bounds on what does exist.
Let me expand a little on this. Consider unicorns; imagine for a moment that we do not know whether or not unicorns exist. Well, the first thing to do is look around, rather exhaustively : All over America, say. Do you see any unicorns? Nope. Now this does not prove anything one way or the other about their existence. But it does prove that there are no unicorns with the quality of being
a) In America at this time. b) Detectable by visual examination.
There might be invisible unicorns, certainly. There might be unicorns in Europe. There might have been unicorns a thousand years ago. None of that is relevant : Our study has established that unicorns do not have the properties of existing today in visible form.
Now let us consider prayer. Suppose I have the entire population of America pray for rain in Sahara, but the Sahara continues dry. This does not prove the non-existence of gods; but it does prove the non-existence of gods who are
a) Willing to be swayed by the population of America. b) Capable of affecting the weather in Sahara.
Nothing more, nothing less. Likewise, if I find that prayers do not affect the survival rates of cancer, then I know that there are no gods who answer such prayers in the positive. Again, do not read too much into this. The point is not the existence but the qualities of gods. After all, we all agree that there are no gods who manifest themselves daily by creating a cross-shaped light in the skies over each city. We can see that there are no such gods.
Likewise, I trust we all agree that there do not exist gods who restore lost limbs; there do not exist gods who protect children from being abused; and there do not exist gods who intervene to stop wars. The existence of gods who intervene in human minds is still disputed; it is a much more difficult measurement; but it is possible in principle to measure it.
My study, then, cannot prove the existence of gods in general. But it can say something about the qualities of any gods who do exist. In particular, we can learn whether prayer has a measurable effect on cancer survival rates. If not, then we have learned something about any gods who do exist. The reasons for not healing cancer victims are completely irrelevant; they may even be good reasons; the point is, cancer victims are not, in fact, healed. (Or they are, as the case might be.) I think this is valuable knowledge.
Once again. If your god exists, then he is not interfering on a large scale with what is happening in Darfur. I am not making a moral judgement; there can certainly be good reasons for such non-interference; I am merely observing the fact. My study is not different in principle from this observation of fact; it just studies a rather subtler form of intervention.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote: Now let us consider prayer. Suppose I have the entire population of America pray for rain in Sahara, but the Sahara continues dry. This does not prove the non-existence of gods; but it does prove the non-existence of gods who are
a) Willing to be swayed by the population of America. b) Capable of affecting the weather in Sahara.
or C) willing to be swayed by the population on that particular occasion.
or D) willing to play along with your little experiment.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Yes, you are correct, but I also feel you are missing the point. These are perfectly respectable qualities to establish the gods as not having. You all seem to think that 'the gods do not participate in experiments' is a negative results; it's not, it is very useful information. In any case, I can get around that in the way I've outlined before : Just measure the effect of pre-existing prayers, not requested by the experimenter.
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
Is there any evidence at all that God (or gods) answer prayers?
I pray for rain, and it rains. Meanwhile 1000 people have prayed that it not rain. Does God answer prayers?
What criteria would one use to determine if, in fact, prayers are answered? Or is it all to be anecdotal, like The Weekly World News (tm) reporting another sighting of Bat Boy in the dark, hidden jungles of Guatemala?
Posted by Dan_raven (Member # 3383) on :
They say that prayers can move mountains. But God put that mountain there for a reason. Who are we to ask that it be moved? Who are we to expect God to move it?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
KoM darling, you are just not imagining a big enough God. Not your fault, we aren't really set up to imagine infinity. If you want to understand me, stop thinking about Zeus or even the descriptions of Jehovah. Keep reminding yourself that God is infinite. You can't measure infinity.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Yes, you are correct, but I also feel you are missing the point. These are perfectly respectable qualities to establish the gods as not having. You all seem to think that 'the gods do not participate in experiments' is a negative results; it's not, it is very useful information. In any case, I can get around that in the way I've outlined before : Just measure the effect of pre-existing prayers, not requested by the experimenter.
Because an infinite and omniscient God couldn't figure that out?
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
JennaD,
You ask the question,
quote:Well, no one would ask "What's the use of a father who won't give me everything I ask for?" Actually, a child might ask that, but most of us understand that everything a child asks for is not good for them, even if they don't understand why; and that if we as the parents love them we won't just give them everything they want.
I'll ask another question; I'll paraphrase:
"What good is a father who won't give me anything I ask for?"
What if, after an exhaustive study of "pre-existing" (or otherwise sincere) prayer vs. their effect on the natural world, it is determined that 1) no miracles have occured (alleged "miracle cures" having no real basis in fact), and 2) what small benefits that have been observed, that supposedly correlate with prayer, are actually no more common than random statistical distribution?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Yes, you are correct, but I also feel you are missing the point. These are perfectly respectable qualities to establish the gods as not having. You all seem to think that 'the gods do not participate in experiments' is a negative results; it's not, it is very useful information. In any case, I can get around that in the way I've outlined before : Just measure the effect of pre-existing prayers, not requested by the experimenter.
Because an infinite and omniscient God couldn't figure that out?
Certainly, and is then faced with the choice of not answering perfectly sincere prayers due to the actions of a third party - oops, a mere human just influenced the actions of a god - or else answering them as before, and revealing itself in the process.
And kmbboots, you have yet to specify how the size of the god is relevant. Either it has physical effects, or it doesn't. Whether or not it's capable of stopping a supernova in progress is completely irrelevant to the question of whether it actually does resotre lost limbs : We know that it does not.
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
km,
I may not be able to measure "infinity," but I can measure 1, and 2, and 3, and 3,654,294,238,234, etc.
So far, except for the definition of God having created "everything" (except, of course, himself), the things we can measure about God are a null set. That's quite a far cry from "infinite."
But I may be wrong. Please list the things that we may measure about God.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Actually, we can measure a lot of things about any hypothetical gods. For example, we can measure their number of chopped-off limbs restored : Zero. Number of miraculous, city- or nation-wide manifestations : Zero. Number of evil American presidents struck down by divine lightning : Zero. And so on.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Or is faced with an infinite number of chices that we don't know about. Or God has physical effects that we can't even imagine. Or God is all physical effects.
The "size" is relevant because it is (are you listening?) infinite. Not just really big; really big wouldn't be any different that smallish. I'm not talking about Superman.
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
km,
Or, it's all pretend, and the reason we cannot measure anything at all about "God" is that there really is nothing there to measure.
And you're missing the point about "infinite." Unless you are positing a God that exists everywhere...except for right here.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Or is faced with an infinite number of chices that we don't know about. Or God has physical effects that we can't even imagine. Or God is all physical effects.
How is a god that is 'all physical effects' different from a god that doesn't actually exist at all? And please, I am not interested in physical effects we can't even imagine; that's just completely irrelevant to human life, so who cares? I want to know what the effects are right here on earth. Either they are measurable or they aren't. If they're measurable, that's one thing. If they're not - then we've proved that any gods do not have measurable physical effects.
You are trying to bite off way more than you can chew; you have to crawl before you can fly. Consider closely : Does your god manifest physically as a cross of burning light above each city in the world? Yes or no.
Posted by password (Member # 9105) on :
One could argue that "immeasureable" has long been part of the definition of "God" to most theists.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Yes, and I'm saying they're wrong.
Posted by camus (Member # 8052) on :
KoM, First of all, good job on your post (5:52). I thought it was very respectful and insightful.
Now, in regards to...
quote:a) Willing to be swayed by the population of America. b) Capable of affecting the weather in Sahara.
I think there is another option that is being missed. Suppose that God does answer the request for rain, but in a manner that we don't readily perceive. For instance, He could cause certain weather patterns to change, which would have an effect on the rainfall at a much later time, perhaps, after our study has already been completed. Thus, any causal relationship would not necessarily be ascertained.
It's possible that we just don't understand how God answers prayers because the answer is never as direct as we think it should be.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
But again, an effect indistinguishable from natural causes is really not much of an effect, is it? Such a god is a rather un-necessary hypothesis. Anyway, you could always use the west half of the Sahara for a control, and pray for rain only in the eastern half. I defy any natural weather pattern to manage that.
EDIT : And, once more, the bit about 'not understanding how god answers prayers' is really quite irrelevant. That wasn't the question. The question was, 'does there exist a god who answers prayers in this particular way?'
Posted by camus (Member # 8052) on :
quote:But again, an effect indistinguishable from natural causes is really not much of an effect, is it? Such a god is a rather un-necessary hypothesis
Well, if God were to alter weather patterns, perhaps like a large scale flood, I think that would definitely be an effect. The fact that we can't distinguish it from other natural effects isn't relevant. But then, that's why I don't think a test for a Divine "effect" is going to be too useful. I wouldn't say it's an unnecessary hypothesis, just an unprovable one.
To ask God to answer a prayer and then require Him to answer it in the way that we see fit, isn't that kind of expecting a lot? But yes, I suppose that would answer the question of "does there exist a god who answers prayers in this particular way?" But then, I don't really see how the answer to that question is useful either.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Because, if such were true, then that would be an extremely useful thing to know, don't you think? Imagine if you could just pray away cancers! Anyway, the point I'm making is two-fold :
1. Some kinds of gods can indeed have their existence or non-existence scientifically investigated. I think I have shown this rather exhaustively.
2. The kind of god that this is not true of, is of no possible interest. This is opinion, not provable. But really, do you care whether or not there is an invisible, intangible dragon, breathing heatless flames, in my garage?
Posted by camus (Member # 8052) on :
quote:Because, if such were true, then that would be an extremely useful thing to know, don't you think? Imagine if you could just pray away cancers!
Yes, it would be important to know, but there are ways to answer a prayer that do not necessarily involve simply erasing the cancer. Unfortunately, your test cannot address that, which is why I don't think the test is very useful.
quote: 1. Some kinds of gods can indeed have their existence or non-existence scientifically investigated. I think I have shown this rather exhaustively.
I agree.
quote: 2. The kind of god that this is not true of, is of no possible interest. This is opinion, not provable. But really, do you care whether or not there is an invisible, intangible dragon, breathing heatless flames, in my garage?
Here I disagree that it is of no interest. Take, for example, the thread about free will. Do we have free will? Well maybe, it's not really provable or measurable. But that doesn't mean the concept or belief in it isn't important.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I don't think so, actually. If we don't have free will, what would we do about it? I don't see how a concept is important if you would act the same whether it was true or false.
As for the ways of answering prayers that do not involve removing the cancer : Well, either they are real and measurable, or they aren't. I don't object to interventions of the form 'makes the victim at peace with his death'; this is certainly something you could evaluate, psychologists do that sort of thing all the time. Anything that has an effect on humans can be measured in principle; it may be subtle enough that our current tools can't catch it, sure, but if it's there we can find it eventually.
It did occur to me as I was bicycling home that a god who did not intervene physically, but did provide an afterlife, might be of some interest even if we couldn't detect it. But then, as with free will, the truth or falsity of this wouldn't affect anybody's actions; for how could you know that you were following the correct god, unless you had some kind of physical intervention for proof? And anyway, the afterlife must have some kind of physical manifestation; at some point, we could find the place where the dead go, which would be a splendid proof.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: But then, that's why I don't think a test for a Divine "effect" is going to be too useful.
I think it's ENORMOUSLY useful. For example, you might expect the following:
If God grants ANY prayers as asked, those who follow the right God and pray in the right ways should be expected to be statistically: 1) Healthier 2) Wealthier 3) Happier 4) Wiser (i.e. more correct)
If God does in fact grant wisdom and advice, we can expect that His followers, on average, make better investment decisions, divorce less, suffer fewer accidents, are less discriminated-against, etc.
Now, God could of course DELIBERATELY skew these results. Perhaps when He grants a prayer to cure a believer's cancer, He ALSO deliberately cures a non-believer's cancer to keep the rates equivalent. Perhaps He deliberately refuses to answer certain TYPES of prayers, either because He thinks a degree of suffering is good for His chosen or because He doesn't want anyone to think that He can be "controlled."
But in that case, He CAN be controlled; His actions are actually just as predictable in that event, but are harder to measure.
--------
Frankly, the arguments on behalf of an "infinite" and thus "unpredictable" God strike me as both ignorant and frightfully passive. If God exists, of course His effects can be detected; if they can't be detected, what possible argument can be made for His existence?
As KoM points out, the only possible merit of such a God might lie in an afterlife, but of course that's so hypothetical as to be wishful thinking.
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
Camus,
quote:Well, if God were to alter weather patterns, perhaps like a large scale flood, I think that would definitely be an effect
But God did create a flood, and recently, too. It killed over 250,000 people.
I think about 245,000 of those people were praying, "Oh, God, please don't let me die." And the other 5,000 were infants.
What are we to make of that "measurable" God?
A quick, and serious question about something else you said in a later post: What do you mean by "free will"? Please define. Really, I'm serious.
Posted by camus (Member # 8052) on :
quote:If God grants ANY prayers as asked, those who follow the right God and pray in the right ways should be expected to be statistically: 1) Healthier 2) Wealthier 3) Happier 4) Wiser (i.e. more correct)
See, and I don't think God would usually grant any prayers requesting these types of things, or at least in the way that we might view them. It reminds me of what Stephen prayed for as he was being stoned to death. "And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge"
Either way, I'm not saying it's not useful to know such a thing, just that any test that has thus far been suggested is going to be rather useless because either side will have plenty of room to argue the results because of the overwhelming degree of complexity and margin for error.
quote:Well, either they are real and measurable, or they aren't.
Yes, they may be measurable, but is it clear what or whom to attribute that to? Unexplainable things happen all the time. Sometimes it is explained away as a mere coincidence or fluke, sometimes a whole new theory is created for the one unexplainable exception. Sometimes it is attributed to prayer or God. How can you tell what the source or cause actually was? Until you can definitively know the source, any test is going to have at least that much room for error.
quote:If God exists, of course His effects can be detected
No. Lacking the knowledge, science, and technology to detect something does not mean that it cannot exist. It just makes it less likely to believe.
quote:I think about 245,000 of those people were praying, "Oh, God, please don't let me die." And the other 5,000 were infants.
What are we to make of that "measurable" God?
Hmm, you took my quote out of context and completely missed my point, but I'll humor you with a response. Maybe God took their souls to a higher plane of existence, thus granting their wish that they (their souls) did not die. Maybe the people that did survive were given just the right provision at just the right time to ensure their survival.
(Their was a thread on free will. That's why I referred to "the thread on free will")
edit: grammar (at least what I could catch)
[ February 11, 2006, 01:38 AM: Message edited by: camus ]
Posted by camus (Member # 8052) on :
quote:His actions are actually just as predictable in that event, but are harder to measure.
Actually, I think I would probably agree with this statement. But I think the term "controlled" carries different connotations.
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
Camus,
The last thread on free will that I attended never got anywhere (typical of all these religious threads), but in large part due to the fact that no one can really explain what they mean by "free will."
And regarding the exchange:
quote:
quote:If God exists, of course His effects can be detected {TD}
No. Lacking the knowledge, science, and technology to detect something does not mean that it cannot exist. It just makes it less likely to believe
If a thing exists, then it can be detected. If it does not exist, then it cannot be detected. TD never said (as it would be incorrect to do so) that "If a thing cannot be detected, then it does not exist."
G2G, my son is kicking me off my computer...
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Boothby, if the statement "If a thing exists, then it can be detected" is true, then the statement "If a thing cannot be detected, then it does not exist" must also be true.
To see why, look at the statements in their generic form:
A: If X then Y. B: If not Y then not X.
If statement A is true, then every time X occurs, Y occurs.
Therefore, if Y has not occurred, then X has not occurred (because we know that had X occurred, Y would have).
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Frankly, the arguments on behalf of an "infinite" and thus "unpredictable" God strike me as both ignorant and frightfully passive. If God exists, of course His effects can be detected; if they can't be detected, what possible argument can be made for His existence?
As KoM points out, the only possible merit of such a God might lie in an afterlife, but of course that's so hypothetical as to be wishful thinking.
I think I finally figured out what my problem is with the whole idea. "His effects" is almost impossible to define meaningfully.
Most members of the traditional monotheist religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) believe that everything that exists is a result of God. Some believe that the mere existence of the Universe requires the constant maintenance of the will of God. This is a clear scenario where God has merit outside of an afterlife.
In addition, since KoM has already excluded from consideration specific testimony of events wherein God had a direct effect, KoM is demanding a particular form of detection - one that is repeatable and that yields the ability to make predictions.
There is no particular reason that a measurable statistical difference should appear amongst any particular category of believers in God or non-believers in God unless we have evidence that the starting point between the two groups is constant. There's no basis fo making that assumption.
The question here isn't "Can God's effects be detected?" The question is, "Is the existence of God the proper subject matter of science?"
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
I disagree. The question is pretty basic and it's not what you are making it out to be.
There is a claim made that God answers prayers. Since many of these prayers and in fact many of the testimonies given as to God answering prayers are centered on observable, material effects, the hypothesis "Does God answer prayers concerning material matters by affecting those things?" is available for scientific testing. Any time a claim is made that changes in the materially observable world are made on a semi-consistent basis because of some reason, that claim can (assuming that we're talking on a managable scale) be tested.
This can be confounded by the fact that God is theoretically non-deterministic and could, for some reason, choose whether or not to answer the prayers under study while still answering other ones. However, that doesn't invalidate a potential finding of no statistical difference, but rather gives a possible alternative explanation. In which case, we've still learned something.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Minor error, Squicky: there's nothing that can be tested that shows who/what is causing the answering of prayers. The only thing that can be tested is if prayers are associated with benefits.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:I disagree. The question is pretty basic and it's not what you are making it out to be.
The claim I originally asked for an experiment about is not "God answers prayers." The question I posed which started this line of discussion is "if you think the existence of a Creator is valid subject matter for science, I'll pose the same question being used to browbeat IDers: propose an experiment about it."
The question is as I made it out to be here, although I made it a little more specific the second time around. If the existence of God cannot be investigated by experience, then it is not the proper subject of science.
I know because this is the original question because I am the one who posed it. KoM has insisted on my presence in this thread repeatedly, and I am returning at his request. But I'm not going to follow every twisting path of discourse which has moved the question being discussed from the question which I originally posed.
Whether God answers prayers is not the subject of science any more than whether God exists, for the reason cited by fugu, but the ongoing discussion about experiments to determine whether God answers prayers is quite separated from the topic for which I originally requested an experiment.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
I was approaching it from a falsifying standpoint, but yes, it would be at best difficult and most likely impossible to ascertain how the prayers actually worked in the positive case.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
I'd like to amend mine: theoretically, something could be tested regarding who or what answers prayers, but that its God doing it (as generally postulated) does not fall into that category. I mean, there could be a person who goes around and tries to answer prayers where possible, and that would be very testable. But what's being asked for is specifically a test of benefits that are otherwise unconnected from the physical/scientific world, and that cannot have a cause scientifically tested for.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
But even so, you can still test the prayer->material effect relationship while treating the actual causal chain as a black box. Showing a positive would suggest that there is something in that black box, while showing a negative would suggest either nothing in the box or suggest something about the qualities of whatever was in the box.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: I think I finally figured out what my problem is with the whole idea. "His effects" is almost impossible to define meaningfully.
And yet, you believe, (if you follow Catholic doctrine, as I assume you do) in a whole panoply of quite well-defined effects : Transubstantiation, afterlives, and miracles, to mention jsut three. The last, at least, is certainly detectable.
quote:In addition, since KoM has already excluded from consideration specific testimony of events wherein God had a direct effect, KoM is demanding a particular form of detection - one that is repeatable and that yields the ability to make predictions.
Well, you did say 'suggest an experiment'. There is in any case a large amount of testimony to the effect that the most whole-hearted, desperate prayer has not been answered as Christians say it will be.
quote:There is no particular reason that a measurable statistical difference should appear amongst any particular category of believers in God or non-believers in God unless we have evidence that the starting point between the two groups is constant. There's no basis fo making that assumption.
Well, Dag, I think I did mention the confounding effects. Scientists measure this all the time.
quote: The question here isn't "Can God's effects be detected?" The question is, "Is the existence of God the proper subject matter of science?"
Right, and I proposed an experiment to detect a particular kind of god. You have yet to show that this kind of god is either uninteresting, or not claimed to exist by anyone.
One more time : There are some kinds of gods that we can see do not exist. There are no gods who restore amputated limbs. We all agree to this, right? And we all agree because of the same actual evidence : To wit, we do not see any restored limbs. So the existence of this kind of god is a scientific question, and we all agree on the answer, because it is a vary easy one to find evidence for. Do you disagree with this, Dag?
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
Dag,
Yeah, I screwed the logic up on that one.
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
Is the existence of the Coelecanth a proper subject of science? Or the existence of heretofore undiscovered species?
How would science go about proving the existence of an undiscovered bird species in a New Guinea forest?
So, what do we mean when we say that something "exists?" What criteria can we use to prove the existence of a physical thing? What criteria are sufficient to prove the existence of a concept or a thought?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:And yet, you believe, (if you follow Catholic doctrine, as I assume you do) in a whole panoply of quite well-defined effects : Transubstantiation, afterlives, and miracles, to mention jsut three. The last, at least, is certainly detectable.
Transubstantiation is specifically said to be not detectable. Miracles, almost by definition, aren't detectable as miracles. Certainly, they are undetecable as being caused by God, especially according to standards you keep insisting on.
quote:Right, and I proposed an experiment to detect a particular kind of god. You have yet to show that this kind of god is either uninteresting, or not claimed to exist by anyone.
No you haven't - at least, not without qualifying the type of God out of existence. The only type of God you could prove does not exist by that experiment is the type of God who would be willing to be proven by such an experiment. No one I know posits such a God as existing, although many people might posit that the God who does exist is such a God.
quote:One more time : There are some kinds of gods that we can see do not exist. There are no gods who restore amputated limbs. We all agree to this, right?
One more time: No. I don't know why you would think I would agree with this.
quote:And we all agree because of the same actual evidence : To wit, we do not see any restored limbs.
I believe there's a God who has raised at least three people from the dead, and I don't see that happening, either.
quote: So the existence of this kind of god is a scientific question, and we all agree on the answer, because it is a vary easy one to find evidence for. Do you disagree with this, Dag?
As I stated above, yes, I do disagree with "this."
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Ah so. So where are these restored limbs, then?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
If someone had written account of it 200 years ago you wouldn't believe it anyway, so why ask?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Well, look, I'll even grant you two hundred years ago, just for the sake of the argument. Do you see any today? Has, perhaps, whoever was doing that two hundred years ago stopped doing it now? That would be an interesting datum, to be sure.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
But anyway, it doesn't even have to be miraculous healings. Take the other example I did, of crosses of light manifesting over every city, sharpish at 0900 Greenwich time every morning. Does there exist a god who does that?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Could we agree that the kind of God who routinely restores amputated limbs in order to satisfy the doubts of his detractors, does not exist?
By there very nature, miracles are things which are outside of the realm of ordinary human experience. Everytime I get a paper cut, it heals. No one considers that a miracle because it is routine. Because it happens all the time, we can study it scientifically and come to understand how the finger heals but no amount of scientific study can determine why the finger heals. We can postulate that it heals because healing is an important survival trait and so evolution has selected for it, or we can postulate that it heals because a benevolent creator thought we would be happier if our paper cuts healed. Both of which are interesting philosophical hypotheses, but they will never be science. Science is simply unable to address questions about purpose.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Could we agree that the kind of God who routinely restores amputated limbs in order to satisfy the doubts of his detractors, does not exist?
Absolutely.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:But anyway, it doesn't even have to be miraculous healings. Take the other example I did, of crosses of light manifesting over every city, sharpish at 0900 Greenwich time every morning. Does there exist a god who does that?
I'm not sure I understand the point of such a question. For thousands of years the existance of the earth was considered to be proof of the existance of God in virtually every human culture. Atheism was obsurd because no one had an explanation for how the earth and all creatures in it could have come into existence without the existence of one or more creator. The scientific method has allowed us to better understand how the world works and therefore to postulate ways that the earth and the existence could have come into being without the need for an intelligent creator.
If crosses of light manifested themselves over every city sharpish at 0900 GMT every morning, we would have a reproducible phenomena. If people could detect this crosses, scientist could study the physical phenomena behind the crosses and eventually people might postulate ways they could be formed besides intelligent design.
The fact that there are no reproducible phenomena that are not being studied by science and which people are not seeking to explain by natural means says more about the nature of man than it does about the nature of God.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Yes, Rabbit, but you're kind of missing the point there. If such crosses existed, we could certainly go looking for an explanation. But since they do not, we can conclude that no supernatural cause for them exists, either. It's non-existence, not existence, that's the interesting part.
Dag, thank you. You agree, then, that the existence of that particular kind of god is a scientific question that can be settled by reference to physical evidence?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Dag, thank you. You agree, then, that the existence of that particular kind of god is a scientific question that can be settled by reference to physical evidence?
No. My reasons for thinking that the kind of God who routinely restores amputated limbs in order to satisfy the doubts of his detractors doesn't exist aren't scientific.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Will you accept that mine are?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
If you can tell me how you quantify and measure "in order to satisfy the doubts of his detractors" I might.
But right now, no.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Oh, now I see the objection. Well, let me instead say 'a god who always repairs every amputated limb, within 24 hours of the injury.'
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Yes, Rabbit, but you're kind of missing the point there.
Perhaps that's why I started by saying that I didn't understand the point of the question.
I have to disagree with Dag's basic contention here. Suppose I postulate that there is a supernatural force which will cause the penny on my desk to come up heads everytime I flip it. This is a postulate which can be tested by the scientific method because I can design an experiment that has the potential to disprove it. If I flip the coin and it ever comes up tails, then I have effectly disproven my postulae. Of course I can never truly prove the postulate because no matter how many times the penny comes up heads, it is still possible that there is some other explanation other than a supernatural force. If however, I flipped the coin enough times and never got tails, I could promote my hypothesis that a supernatural force existed which forced my penny to land heads up everytime from a hypothesis to a theory.
That exercise is however very academic since such an experiment is only possible if I postulate the existence of a very narrowly defined supernatural force. No one who believes in God actually defines God in such a narrow way their beliefs could be easily disproven by the scientific method.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I am starting out with extremely simple, extremely narrow definitions because, if we start with the complicated stuff, we'll not get anywhere. Same reason you do idealised cases in physics. I'll add the friction back in afterwards.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:I have to disagree with Dag's basic contention here.
I think you misunderstand my basic contention. It is that the existence of a creator is not the proper subject of science. Not the existence of some construct created by KoM that can be scientifically studied.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
As I said, I'll begin adding back the complicated stuff once we agree on the simple things.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Poor analogy King of Men. The law of conservation of momentum exists and governs motion with or without friction. When you include "friction" in the analysis, it becomes too complex to use conservation of momentum to solve common problems but momentum is still conserved.
This is fundamentally different from what I have claimed. What I claimed is that the scientific method can only used to disprove a very precisely and narrowly defined God. It is not simply that it is too complicated to use the scientific method to disprove the existence of a God that is not precisely and narrowly defined, it is that the scientific method can not be applied in such a case.
For example, if I were to postulate that a supernatural force exists which has the ability to cause the penny on my desk to turn up heads everytime I flip it, no one can use the scientific method to disprove this hypothesis. It is not simply more difficult to design a scientific experiment to test this hypothesis, it can not logically be done.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote: It is that the existence of a creator is not the proper subject of science.
That contention I agree with whole heartedly.
If we were to follow King of Men's logic to the end he intends, we would conclude that my car was created by a random evolutionary process. No intelligent being would have positioned the oil filter so that oil would spill on the CV boot every time the filter is changed.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Well, actually, we have good evidence that intelligent beings do, in fact, make such mistakes. And as for your supernatural force with the ability to affect coin flips, yes, I cannot disprove its existence. I can, however, investigate whether it actually uses its ability. If it never does, then its existence is as utterly irrelevant to me as the Invisible Pink Unicorn. Honestly, who could possibly care? A god with properties of the slightest interest to humans is indeed a scientific subject.
quote:Poor analogy King of Men. The law of conservation of momentum exists and governs motion with or without friction. When you include "friction" in the analysis, it becomes too complex to use conservation of momentum to solve common problems but momentum is still conserved.
Of course it is, but that's not the complexity I was referring to. I was speaking of the kind of idealisation done by Galileo, in order to discover conservation of momentum in the first place. You don't start out by investigating whether momentum is conserved in a sheet of paper in a high wind - no human could possibly keep track of all the variables, starting from scratch. You begin with a ball rolling down an inclined plane.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:You begin with a ball rolling down an inclined plane.
Exactly. And you can't put God on an inclined plane. There's no way to simplify Him.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Certainly there is. Among others : "An entity which, among its many properties, heals all amputated limbs within 24 hours of the original injury." Does that entity exist, or not? If not, is that a scientific statement, or not?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
You're not studying God at that point. You're studying something else.
Certainly, there's no particular reason to associate "an entity which, among its many properties, heals all amputated limbs within 24 hours of the original injury" with the Creator.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I'm not studying your god, perhaps. Are you now claiming to define all possible gods, everywhere?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
And, by the way, I also do not see any particular need to associate the property 'makes bread and wine into flesh and blood' with a creator.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:I'm not studying your god, perhaps. Are you now claiming to define all possible gods, everywhere?
Nor are you studying the existence of a Creator. I'm talking about determining the existence of a Creator.
Get me to something that allows you to scientifically determine if the Universe was created by an entity.
I'm not going to let you rework the conversation. If you want to create an entity that you can then detect scientifically, be my guest. If you want to talk about the actual subject of discussion - whether the Universe was created by a creator - let me know.
quote:And, by the way, I also do not see any particular need to associate the property 'makes bread and wine into flesh and blood' with a creator.
There's certainly no scientific need to do so. You are limited to scientific associations. I am not.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Get me to something that allows you to scientifically determine if the Universe was created by an entity.
As I have repeatedly said, I am starting with simple things, and working my way up. This is how science works. You don't set off investigating the possibility of sending a rocket to the Moon. You begin with a simple black-powder thing that goes three feet off the ground. Then you beat the skeptics over the head with that until they admit that yes, things can fly without wings. In this case, in all honesty, I do feel the skeptics are going out of their way to be obtuse. If you would please agree that the god I've suggested is a kind of god, and is scientifically investigable, we could move on.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Let me know when you get there, KoM.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Dag, you have me nearly in tears of frustration, here. Are you really discussing this in good faith? You are asking me to climb Everest, and then when I start by buying a plane ticket to India, you mock me for my lack of snow gear! I'll buy that when I get to India, curse it. But can we at least agree that I have to get to India first?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:And as for your supernatural force with the ability to affect coin flips, yes, I cannot disprove its existence. I can, however, investigate whether it actually uses its ability.
No, you can not investigate such a question scientifically. In any experiment in which I flip this coin n times, I will get some numbe of heads which is less than or equal to n. I can compare that number to the number I would expect to obtain if the flipping of the coin were a completely random process and obtain a probability that my distribution of heads arose from a completely random process. The probability will always be less than 100% unless the I flip the coin an infinite number of times. In short, in any experiment in which I flip a coin any finite number of times, there will always be a finite possibility that the process was not completely random. That means that we will never be able to rule out the possibility that a supernatural power caused the penny to come up heads at some point in the experiment. The scientific method can not be used to either disprove the existence of such a god or to even identify whether such a god has used the power.
As I said before, your analogy between simplification in the field of physics and what you are trying to do here does not work. What you are trying to do here is build a straw man. I'm sorry, but your arguments simply do not apply.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Um, Rabbit, you don't seem to be actually reading my words, there. I did say, 'I cannot disprove its existence'. But I can put an upper bound on how often the ability is used. And if it mimics a random distribution, then honestly, who cares whether it exists or not? Such an entity would affect my life as much as the gravity elves who, or might not, mimic the bending of space-time in every posisble way.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Get me to something that allows you to scientifically determine if the Universe was created by an entity.
As I have repeatedly said, I am starting with simple things, and working my way up.
Perhaps it would help if I were to rephrase the debate.
KOM has claimed that it is possible to imagine a god whose existence could be disproved by scientific investigation.
DAG has claimed, that KOMs argument is irrelevant to whether the scientific method can be used to investigate the existence of a Creator.
I have argued that although KOMs postulate is correct, it is not a sufficiently general result to have any bearing on the argument at hand.
If I may make an analogy, suppose DAG had argued for the existence of two integers whose ratio was the number pi. KOM has then asked DAG to agree that 6 divided by 2 is not pi. DAG has then insisted that this rational can not possibly be relevant in disproving his original postulate.
KOM, it is not sufficient to claim that you are trying to build from the specific to the general. You need to show us how this specific detail has any relevance to the general.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
If I may continue your analogy, the six-over-two bit would be to see whether it is possible to agree on a procedure for testing whether a given rational is pi. In mathematics this would be trivial, but this is a rather more emotional subject. So far I do not see anyone agreeing that we can indeed test whether n / m = pi for specific n and m.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
No KOM, You said you could investigate whether such a God ever used this power by the scientific method. I claim you can not. The scientific method demands that you be able to design an experiment which could disprove the hypothesis.
Suppose I were to hypothesize that everytime I flip a coin, the outcome is determined by the coin flipping god. Show me how you could investigate that hypothesis scientifically.
The fact that you can find an equation which can accurately predicts what happens when I flip the coin many times has no relevance to why those things happened. You cannot rule out the possibility that the coin flipping God chooses to follow statistical equations. Unless you create an artificially narrow definition of God, such as "There is a coin flipping God which will cause the flipped coin to fall in the specific pattern X." It is impossible to use the scientific method to determine whether such a god exists or acts.
What you seem to be saying is that if by using the scientific method, you can develop an equation which accurately describes the behavior of the Universe, then it is irrelevant to you whether that behavior is caused by a Creator God or by random processes.
What I am saying is that whether the Universe can be completely described by scientific investigation and whether the Universe has a purpose which was chosen by an intelligent God are entirely different questions. Both questions are important but the second question is outside the realm of science. Science can seek to understand what happens, it can never determine whether what happens has value, meaning or purpose.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:If however, I flipped the coin enough times and never got tails, I could promote my hypothesis that a supernatural force existed which forced my penny to land heads up everytime from a hypothesis to a theory.
A better example: you could demonstrate the effectiveness of prayer at affecting the laws of probability by praying for the coin to turn up heads and flipping ten thousand -- or a hundred thousand -- times.
Because -- and I know you know enough statistics to concede this -- a result outside the expected deviation would be considered statistically significant. If the result was NOT outside the expected deviation, it would NOT be considered statistically significant, and our conclusion would be "the effect of prayer is statistically insignificant."
Do you agree?
Can we agree that if any religion in the world correctly believes that God answers prayers for His faithful, we should be able to see some statistical deviation among that group of faithful unless God specifically seeks to conceal that data? If not, why not?
[ February 11, 2006, 10:56 PM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
You are quite right, I do not care whether random chance really exists, or is just mimicked very cleverly. I do think you'll find me saying this from the very start, even though it's been rather overshadowed by the definitions issue on this page. A difference that makes no difference, is no difference; if your creator is not distinguishable from chance, then its existence is a point of airy philosophy, signifying nothing. And the same applies to purpose, value, and meaning : If I do not know, and cannot even in principle find out, what these values are, then as far as I'm concerned they might as well not exist.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Because -- and I know you know enough statistics to concede this -- a result outside the expected deviation would be considered statistically significant. If the result was NOT outside the expected deviation, it would NOT be considered statistically significant, and our conclusion would be "the effect of prayer is statistically insignificant."
Do you agree?
No I would, conclude that effect of prayer within that experiment was statistically insignificant, which does not imply that the effect of prayer in some other context would be insignificant.
One could, and in fact many have, postulated that God would not respond to prayers involving coin flipping as part of an experiment to prove the validity of prayer yet would respond to prayers uttered under other circumstances. It is this kind of postulate which makes investigating God scientifically impossible.
KOM, You make the brazen assumption that because something can not be investigated scientifically, it can not be studied by any means. What religion and philosophy claim is that there are ways of knowing about god even if those ways are not scientific.
Whether or not something can be measured or proven scientifically says nothing about whether or not it is important. Demonstrate to me scientifically that you feel love for your family members. Demonstrate to me scientifically that wild flowers are beautiful. Demonstrate to me scientifically that kindness is a good character trait. All of those things make a significant difference in my life even though I can not study them with science.
BTW: A friend of mine who is a religious statistician performed the prayer and coin flipping experiment and was convinced that God had answered his prayer. His study still wasn't scientific because it wasn't done with the proper controls and blinding.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:No I would, conclude that effect of prayer within that experiment was statistically insignificant, which does not imply that the effect of prayer in some other context would be insignificant.
In which context do you believe that prayer could be found to be significant? Statistics are available for health, mental fitness, marriage, family, financial security, etc. Which one of these categories do you think might gainfully demonstrate proof of prayer's effect on a subgroup?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I should also note that it is important not to confuse whether something is statistically insignificant with whether or not it is significant in some other respect. The chances that you will win the lottery are statistically insignificant. This does not imply that winning the lottery is an insignificant event.
One can imagine a coin flipping God who only deviated from random statistics 1 time in a million, but selected those non-random flips in such a way that they had a dramatic impact on peoples lives. Suppose that the coin flipping God chooses to follow a random flip distribution unless someones life depends on the outcome of the flip. This of course is a very rare occurance and so it is extraordinarily unlikely that a scientific study would be able to detect the pattern. The pattern would none the less be very significant.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:But here's a more important question: what is the value of something with no perceptible effect?
quote:A difference that makes no difference, is no difference; if your creator is not distinguishable from chance, then its existence is a point of airy philosophy, signifying nothing.
Both these have the same answer. The only reason I'm involved with this discussion is this weird insistence that having a perceptible effect is sufficient to make something the subject of science.
I've repeatedly given the examples of effects of God which are evidenced only by testimony. It's clear that, if those events happened, they had perceptible effects. Yet they cannot be studied scientifically. Even if we had perfect recording equipment and measuring equipment on hand at those events, we couldn't prove it was God creating those effects.
quote:And the same applies to purpose, value, and meaning : If I do not know, and cannot even in principle find out, what these values are, then as far as I'm concerned they might as well not exist.
Good thing science isn't the only means of of knowing or finding things out.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Which one of these categories do you think might gainfully demonstrate proof of prayer's effect on a subgroup?
You miss my point. I don't think that scientific method can be used demonstrate the significance or insignificance of prayer. I can't pick one of your categories because prayer is something I believe to be outside the realm of scientific investigation.
Posted by clod (Member # 9084) on :
Another way to think of probability and the effect of any god is this:
Imagine an infinite number of divine beings (denominator). What is the probability that any one of them exist?
'Course that prolly depends on your belief in probability.
I do. I've been to Vegas.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:I can't pick one of your categories because prayer is something I believe to be outside the realm of scientific investigation.
So your argument is that prayer is answered so rarely or inconsistently as to be statistically insignificant and therefore unmeasurable? Seriously, is it your belief that God answers such a tiny percentage of His prayers that their effects cannot be detected as deviations from the expected result?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:If I may continue your analogy, the six-over-two bit would be to see whether it is possible to agree on a procedure for testing whether a given rational is pi. In mathematics this would be trivial, but this is a rather more emotional subject. So far I do not see anyone agreeing that we can indeed test whether n / m = pi for specific n and m.
KOM, you are missing the point. No one is questioning whether or not one can test whether n/m = pi for specific numbers n and m. We are questioning whether or not proceeding with such tests is a valid way to proceed in proving the point. If we proceed in that manner, then we have to test every possible pair of integers and show that their ratio is not pi. Since there are an infinite number of integers, this can never be accomplished. If we start with Dag's approach, all he has to do is find one example of integers whose ratio is pi.
(Of course I should note that it has been proven that pi is an irrational number by an entirely different approach. My point isn't that your conclusion is inherently wrong, but that your approach can not logical succeed in proving your point.)
If we are trying to determine whether the scientific method is a valid means for investigating the existence of a creator, it is irrelevant whether or not one can imagine a creator that could be investigated by the scientific method.
The relevant question is whether one can invision a creator that could not be investigated by the scientific method. If we start your way, we have to demonstrate that every imaginable God who could be relevant to us can be studied scientifically. All I have to do is come up with one example of a possible creator that can not be investigated meaningful through science and I've proven my point.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Whether or not something can be measured or proven scientifically says nothing about whether or not it is important. Demonstrate to me scientifically that you feel love for your family members. Demonstrate to me scientifically that wild flowers are beautiful. Demonstrate to me scientifically that kindness is a good character trait. All of those things make a significant difference in my life even though I can not study them with science.
I can certainly demonstrate that a threat to your family members causes agitation, changes in brain chemistry, a fight-or-flight reaction. That is observation. I can then correlate with your reported feelings, and say 'this looks like the traditional definition of love'. That is inference. Which part of this is unscientific?
quote:I've repeatedly given the examples of effects of God which are evidenced only by testimony. It's clear that, if those events happened, they had perceptible effects. Yet they cannot be studied scientifically. Even if we had perfect recording equipment and measuring equipment on hand at those events, we couldn't prove it was God creating those effects.
You can never prove a causal relationship, for anything. But you can assign some kind of probability.
As for testimony, you have yet to offer a means of choosing between them. Why take the word of Mark, Luke, and John, but not of Joseph Smith? On the face of it, the accounts look equally coherent and plausible. What is the value of a god that is indistinguishable from the ramblings of a deluded man?
It occurs to me, however, that I've been ignoring the most obvious way to investigate gods : Shoot some believers. If there is an afterlife, they come back and report on it.
...
...
Well, we learned at least one thing about the quality of the afterlife.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:All I have to do is come up with one example of a possible creator that can not be investigated meaningful through science and I've proven my point.
My assertion is that a Creator who cannot be investigated through science is, with the possible exception of effects in the afterlife, absolutely meaningless and unnecessary. You may as well posit that some Creator created the universe and then died immediately; it would be exactly as useful a theory.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:So your argument is that prayer is answered so rarely or inconsistently as to be statistically insignificant and therefore unmeasurable? Seriously, is it your belief that God answers such a tiny percentage of His prayers that their effects cannot be detected as deviations from the expected result?
No, my belief is that prayers are generally answered in ways that defy scientific observation. For example, I believe that one of the key ways God answers prayers is by giving people hope and joy. There are no objective measures of hope and joy all we can do is ask people if they feel joy when they pray. This can't be reduced to a scientific study for many many reasons.
For example, if we were to find that people report feeling joy when they pray, it could be because they have been socially programmed to feel joy when they pray, or because are programmed to lie about whether they feel joy when they pray or because praying triggers the release of endorphins. And if praying triggers the release of endorphins and we could measure that response we still couldn't determine whether that release of endorphins was caused by social programming, innate biological mechanisims or devine intervention. Even if we could determine that it was do to biological mechanisms that all are encoded in our genes, that wouldn't eliminate the possibility that god put those mechanisms in our genes in answer to our prayers.
It would also be impossible to do a controlled study of such effects because you couldn't randomly select people and have one group pray and the other group not pray and expect to get valid results. One of the key postulates in most religions is that prayer must be sincere and faithful to be heard. There is no way you can randomize and get sincerity.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: KOM, you are missing the point. No one is questioning whether or not one can test whether n/m = pi for specific numbers n and m. We are questioning whether or not proceeding with such tests is a valid way to proceed in proving the point.
The first question to ask is whether we can even agree on terms, in order to have a meaningful discussion. I do not intend to proceed by systematically shooting down an infinite sequence of gods. I am merely trying to see if we can agree on what 'scientific' and 'testable' mean. Thus far, the answer appears to be no.
quote:The relevant question is whether one can invision a creator that could not be investigated by the scientific method. If we start your way, we have to demonstrate that every imaginable God who could be relevant to us can be studied scientifically. All I have to do is come up with one example of a possible creator that can not be investigated meaningful through science and I've proven my point.
Right, which is the point where we investigate whether such a creator is interesting or not. You can certainly imagine a particle that doesn't interact with anything, but to assert its existence is as meaningless as the sentence 'Racist bananas chase invisible smileys'. I want it established, before we begin any discussion, that the qualities 'creator' and 'investigable by science' are not mutually exclusive. You people are jumping far ahead in the discussion : We have yet to come to an agreement on what the terms mean, and you are already drawing conclusions!
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:As for testimony, you have yet to offer a means of choosing between them. Why take the word of Mark, Luke, and John, but not of Joseph Smith? On the face of it, the accounts look equally coherent and plausible. What is the value of a god that is indistinguishable from the ramblings of a deluded man?
Irrelevant to the reason I brought it up in this thread. (BTW, this illustrates the reason I wasn't participating before - you're inability to refrain from the same tired arguments that have been discussed to death when they are not at all relevant to the discussion.)
The reason I brought it up was simply as an illustration of a way in which God could have a perceptible effect and yet not be scientifically studiable.
Suppose the strong-wind theory of the sea of reeds parting is accurate. There's no way to know from scientific measurements if the reason the wind blew and the water parted was because God wanted Moses and his followers to escape or because Moses was a lucky guy. None. Zero. Zilch.
If natural processes can be used by God to accomplish a purpose which is inherently unknowable to us without revelation, then revelation will be needed to study the cause of such events.
Since you have said revelation is not scientific, then anything which requires revelation to understand cannot be understood by science alone.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:My assertion is that a Creator who cannot be investigated through science is, with the possible exception of effects in the afterlife, absolutely meaningless and unnecessary.
Do you consider your love for your daughter meaningless and unnecessary? Yet love can not be meaningfully quantified in any scientific sense. There is no way we can prove that what you feel when you feel love is the same as what I feel when I feel love. We can measure the effects the love has on your behavior, but that is not the same as measuring the love itself.
Do you consider beauty meaningless and unnecessary? It also can not be measured by science.
Although I can not measure or study God in any scientifically valid way, I can sense his influence in my life. The influence is as real as the influence your love has on your actions. It is more real than the influence a piece of beautiful music has on me.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:For example, I believe that one of the key ways God answers prayers is by giving people hope and joy.
I don't want to get too narrow of a focus here, but aren't things like priesthood blessings more specific than that? While I have no problem with the "God answers prayers in undetectable ways," isn't the whole argument behind things like priesthood blessings, garments, and -- to switch religions -- those little notes written on scraps of paper and wrapped around candles that they are intended to address specific issues?
-------
quote:We can measure the effects the love has on your behavior, but that is not the same as measuring the love itself.
I'm not entirely sure that "love" as a THING exists. It's a construct, but I think it's an assembled construct that we refer to as something real for the sake of convenience. (But, like I've said in another thread, I'm not entirely sure that human sentience isn't a convenient fiction, either.)
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:The first question to ask is whether we can even agree on terms, in order to have a meaningful discussion. I do not intend to proceed by systematically shooting down an infinite sequence of gods. I am merely trying to see if we can agree on what 'scientific' and 'testable' mean.
I think that we agree fairly well on what scientific and testable mean. What we disagree on is whether there are things which have an observable influence on people which are not scientific and testable. I posit for you that beauty is one such thing.
If you go to any extensive discourse on philosophy, you will find a wide acceptance of the idea that the scientific process is only one of many ways of gaining knowledge.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I would argue that beauty is ABSOLUTELY testable.
Posted by clod (Member # 9084) on :
The funny thing about Vegas and the majority of folks who go there:
They all win! Everybody wins! It's incredible! It is the most manifest non-zero-sum game cultural phenomenon I've ever witnessed. And, nevermind the shows!
vegas, baby. everybody wins.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:I would argue that beauty is ABSOLUTELY testable.
How?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
We recognize that beauty is a sliding value, of course. We can then test for what things appeal to which people in which quantities, and thus identify both components and overall attributes which represent "beauty" for any given category.
This isn't merely conjecture; there are ongoing studies on this very topic right now, evaluating things like our biological assessment of "cuteness" and our attraction to scenic vistas.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:If natural processes can be used by God to accomplish a purpose which is inherently unknowable to us without revelation, then revelation will be needed to study the cause of such events.
Very well; revelation is certainly a measurable effect on the world. We can decide that from some particular point onwards, we will be recording all the revelations people say that they have. I trust you'll concede that at least some of them will be fakes? Then we can see whether there is any correlation between the religion people say these revelations support, and their happiness, the truth of their revelations (for those cases that have a particular, testable outcome, like 'the end of the world will be in 2009'), and their agreement with other revelations of the same religion.
Incidentally, in a different thread, you said you would pray for mph's baby. Do you believe this will have a beneficial effect on the outcome? If so, then again, this is a measurable effect.
As for love, why, there certainly exists an emergent state of sufficiently complex neural networks, resulting in a particular set of behaviours that we identify as 'love'. I don't see where this is in the least unscientific.
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
KoM,
Dag has invoked Sywak's Second Rule of Theological Debate:
quote:RULE 2: Never actually define what it is you mean by "God" or "Heaven," etc. If you define it, then it can be refuted. After all, you've already established that He exists (see RULE 1). Also, if challenged, you can always say, "That's not what I meant," or "I never said that He could do that..."
You are caught in the outer circuit of a large, infinite loop.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Incidentally, in a different thread, you said you would pray for mph's baby. Do you believe this will have a beneficial effect on the outcome? If so, then again, this is a measurable effect.
How is this measurable? It's too small a sample for your weak statisitcal methods to work.
quote:Then we can see whether there is any correlation between the religion people say these revelations support, and their happiness, the truth of their revelations (for those cases that have a particular, testable outcome, like 'the end of the world will be in 2009'), and their agreement with other revelations of the same religion.
Only if one makes at least one shallow assumption: that revelation leads to measurable happiness.
Boothby,
I asked KoM for a very specific thing to back up a claim he made: an experiment that would test whether a Creator exists. It seems to me he is the one avoiding coming to a conclusion here.
Also, it seems to me that Sywak's Second Rule is really just a whining defense of the common practice of Making up Stupid Strawgods.
See "Why Does God Hate Amputees" for the perfect example.
Anyway, this is supposed to be a scientific discussion, not a theological one. My entire contention is that theology and science are separate - something the strawgod brigade is usually happy to insist on in other contexts.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: See "Why Does God Hate Amputees" for the perfect example.
Actually, I don't see a problem with this example. It tells us that, for whatever reason, any God that presently exists does not see fit to restore lost limbs. No matter what.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
If they limited it to that conclusion, it would be fine. But they don't - they are a classic example of setting up a strawgod and then "proving" their strawgod doesn't exist as "proof" of atheism.
Edit: The title makes that obvious.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
The problem with their "strawgod," Dag, is that I think it's far more popular in American society than your very narrowly-defined God. So while it might not be an effective argument against your God, which has been carefully delimited so as to be impervious to any application of observational logic, it's an effective argument against the God most Americans believe in.
While any "universal" argument against God is fairly impossible given the wide variety of individual gods worshipped in this country, arguments that apply broadly to a wide swath of gods should not be rejected merely because they do not apply to, say, Vishnu.
[ February 12, 2006, 01:40 PM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Who, exactly, believes in the god who will make a series of coin flips result in all heads? Or thinks that because God doesn't perform a miracle for someone He hates them?
No one believes in any god KoM has described in his proposed experiments.
quote:So while it might not be an effective argument against your God, which has been carefully delimited so as to be impervious to any application of observational logic
It's more accurate to say that both you and KoM carefully delimit observational logic so as to make it inapplicable to my God.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I do think there are many people who believe that prayer will beneficially affect the health of the one prayed for; you, apparently, among them. I have yet to see you explain why, if the effect exists, it could not be studied. I would note that the effect must be a fairly subtle one; if it were on the order of, say, 50% increase in survival rates, we would not be having this discussion.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
1. Because you can't determined who is prayed for.
2. You can't differentiate between "acceptable" prayers (whatever that means for whatever religion is involved) and "unacceptable" prayers.
3. You can't differentiate between effects of prayer and effects of other things.
4. The beneficial effect of prayer covers too wide a range of possibilities to be reliably categorized.
5. You can't measure sincerity of prayers.
6. You can't know if someone was or wasn't prayed for - i.e., you can't determine for patient X if anyone prayed for patient X.
7. etc.
8. etc.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
These are all objection to the experimental method. I do not deny that it is a difficult experiment to run; but I also do not see that any of these are in principle un-overcomable. Indeed, even without running the experiment we can set an upper bound : It is clear that not all prayers are answered (in this case meaning 'by the healing of the one prayed for'); I think you'll agree that the number is not even close to 10%.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Who, exactly, believes in the god who will make a series of coin flips result in all heads? Or thinks that because God doesn't perform a miracle for someone He hates them?
Let's tone down the rhetoric. I think MANY people believe in a God who affects sporting events and gambling results, as well as a God who responds to requests for health and well-being because He loves His people.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Tone down the rhetoric? Tom, you are the one who insisted that the God hates Amputees example was valid.
So how would you determine if more people prayed for the Steelers or the Seahawks to win?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Could you please explain how science would fail to either detect, or put an upper bound on, the effect of prayer on the health of one prayed for? I don't care about other kinds of answer at the moment. I'll investigate them later. Can we please just stick to one thing at a time?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
I haven't heard how you would detect such an effect. I gave 6 specific things and all you did was assure me you could account for them. I have yet to hear how.
In fact prayer is so ubiquitous that you can't even determine a "natural" baseline to see if prayer is having an effect.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:1. Because you can't determined who is prayed for.
But I can determine how much each person is prayed for, on top of whatever the baseline is.
quote:2. You can't differentiate between "acceptable" prayers (whatever that means for whatever religion is involved) and "unacceptable" prayers.
I don't need to; of all prayers, some particular percentage is acceptable. Therefore, 100 prayers will have twice the number of acceptable prayers that 50 do.
quote:3. You can't differentiate between effects of prayer and effects of other things.
I most assuredly can. This is like saying of a new drug "you can't distinguish between the effects of this and of other things". If it's true, we may as well give up on all scientific studies right away.
quote:4. The beneficial effect of prayer covers too wide a range of possibilities to be reliably categorized.
I don't care, I'm only interested in one particular effect.
quote:5. You can't measure sincerity of prayers.
Same as objection 2.
quote:6. You can't know if someone was or wasn't prayed for - i.e., you can't determine for patient X if anyone prayed for patient X.
Same as objection 1.
I only count four, and they are all rather easily dealt with.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:I don't need to; of all prayers, some particular percentage is acceptable. Therefore, 100 prayers will have twice the number of acceptable prayers that 50 do.
You have no basis for saying this at all. Unless you differentiate by every possible denomination, sect, and religion you will not be able to determine this.
quote:I most assuredly can. This is like saying of a new drug "you can't distinguish between the effects of this and of other things". If it's true, we may as well give up on all scientific studies right away.
There's a reason we don't approve drugs based on survey data. We know which patients received a drug, how much, and when.
You can't do the prayer study double-blind.
quote:But I can determine how much each person is prayed for, on top of whatever the baseline is.
Unless you have some reason to believe that you can determine who knows a given person, the profile of people likely to pray for them, and the amount of prayers a given person (whose acquaintences will be different mixture of religions, etc.) you can't possibly come up with a meaningful way to measure this.
Look up "wiring codes," powerlines, and childhood leukemia some time to see why this is futile.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I declare myself dictator of the world. I require anyone who is going to pray to fill out a form, in triplicate, specifying the words and recipient of the prayer. I have a secret thought police watching everyone to make sure there are no unreported prayers. I require, by law, that everyone whose mouth is not otherwise occupied say 'om-om-om' at all times, in order to ensure that there can be no internal, secret prayers except the approved ones.
quote:You have no basis for saying this at all. Unless you differentiate by every possible denomination, sect, and religion you will not be able to determine this.
Yes, well? Why shouldn't I?
quote:There's a reason we don't approve drugs based on survey data. We know which patients received a drug, how much, and when.
Well, prayer is already on the market, and completely unregulated. I'm just studying the effects; I don't have to get FDA approval.
Look, do you disagree that if 10% of all prayers for recovery were granted, we would know about it?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Yes, I disagree with that.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Very well; how about 100%?
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
KoM,
You have to ask the defining questions:
1) What is prayer?
2) What is it supposed to do?
3) How do we know if prayer works?
You don't need to know the mechanism of prayer, since, for instance, we're not entirely sure about the mechanism of gravitational attraction.
And, Dag, re. "Sywak's Second Rule," it's actually a plea to BYPASS strawman arguments.
I say, "Cold Fusion works"
You say, "What do you mean 'Cold Fusion'?"
I say, "Cold Fusion is..." and I defne it fully. Then we see if it works, or if it doesn't.
What we seem to be discussing here is:
Millions of people say, "God exists,"
I say, "What do you mean, 'God'?"
You say, "There he goes again, trying to play tricks!"
Substitute "Prayer" for "God," and you get the rest of the thread. But for every definition and refutation that KoM or TD, or anyone else put forth, you (or otheres) immediately say, "But that's not the God we're talking about!"
All Im asking is for you to tell us just what IS the God (or prayer response) you're talking about?
No straw men involved.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:All Im asking is for you to tell us just what IS the God (or prayer response) you're talking about?
I'm not capable of completely answering that question - certainly not within the storage capacity of UBB.
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
All right, then; what about a little definition?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Unlike Boothbyte, though, I'll settle for an answer to this question : If all prayers for the health of another were answered (by which I still mean, 'the pray-ee recovers fully), would we know about it? That's yes or no; I'm sure UBB can manage that much.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
Short answer definition: God is the ground of being – the beingness without which even the property of existence would not exist.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
The thing is, that sentence makes just as much sense with 'my consciousness', 'the Internet' or 'the Invisible Pink Unicorn' substituted for 'God'. It doesn't say anything.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
No, I'm pretty sure I remember existence before the Internet, and before your consciousness. Mine, no, so everything could be an artifact of my own consciousness (or illusion of consciousness) but I don't believe that it is.
If you choose to argue that God is an invisible pink unicorn, that would be a discussion about the nature of God, not the definition of God, but you could make that argument within this definition.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Short answer definition: God is the ground of being – the beingness without which even the property of existence would not exist.
I'd be willing to accept this, Dana, if people did not also make other ancillary arguments about the nature of that God which, by their nature, should be falsifiable.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
So? Some of the claims probably are falsifiable, although designing an experiment to test them would be complicated.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:So?
I'd argue that it's pretty relevant, since very few religions have as their solitary doctrine the existence of a God that underpins the universe.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
You are trying to bite off way more than you can chew;
Honey, I'm not the guy trying to measure God.
Nice to see you all had a busy weekend!
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Honey, I'm not the guy trying to measure God.
In KoM's defense, I think he's trying to measure the effects of God, which certainly should be measurable if they exist.
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
well, there have been a few controversial studies about the power of prayer
quote:Honey, I'm not the guy trying to measure God.
In KoM's defense, I think he's trying to measure the effects of God, which certainly should be measurable if they exist.
Well, so far we have the known universe...
What I am trying to say is that you can't reduce God or God's effects and still have it be a meaningful conversation. Once you do that, you are talking about something else entirely. By limiting the conversation to what appears to be supernatural, you are excluding natural phenonema which also has its source in God. Again this reduces God to some kind of wish granting genii. (I keep typing "wich" instead of "wish" - must be lunch time. I could use a "wich" granting genii who specializes in cheese steaks.)
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:By limiting the conversation to what appears to be supernatural, you are excluding natural phenonema which also has its source in God.
Which is why we're limiting the conversation to wishful prayer, which arises when people are dissatisfied with natural phenomena and would like it to change.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
If you're going to try to compare the predictions of certain stripes of theism with the predictions of a non-theistic "control," then there isn't much point in attempting to compare phenomnea for which the predictions are the same.
Saying that we can't talk about god without talking about the entire universe and everything in and beyond it is saying that we can't have this discussion. You and others have essentially said that the universe could not and would not exist in the absence of god; not only do I disagree simply by virtue of being an atheist, I disagree with your statement that this assertion implies that natural phenomena cannot be discussed without reference to the divine.
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
dkw's God, then, does not answer prayers. Nor does it love us. Nor did it send its only begotten son to die for our sins, etc., etc.
It's just your basic, creating entity. Nothing more. Roughly equivalent to "the Big Bang" (or, at least, the theory of the Big Bang).
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by twinky: If you're going to try to compare the predictions of certain stripes of theism with the predictions of a non-theistic "control," then there isn't much point in attempting to compare phenomnea for which the predictions are the same.
Saying that we can't talk about god without talking about the entire universe and everything in and beyond it is saying that we can't have this discussion. You and others have essentially said that the universe could not and would not exist in the absence of god; not only do I disagree simply by virtue of being an atheist, I disagree with your statement that this assertion implies that natural phenomena cannot be discussed without reference to the divine.
I am saying that you can't reduce God to something that can be scientifically proved. Or proved at all. Not sure where I said that you can't talk about natural phenomena without talking about God. I was trying to say that you can't discount natural phenomena when talking about God. Perhaps I did that badly.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Boothby171: dkw's God, then, does not answer prayers. Nor does it love us. Nor did it send its only begotten son to die for our sins, etc., etc.
It's just your basic, creating entity. Nothing more. Roughly equivalent to "the Big Bang" (or, at least, the theory of the Big Bang).
Not to speak for dkw, but, huh?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
dkw defined her god as "God is the ground of being – the beingness without which even the property of existence would not exist". If that's all it does, then indeed, you could substitute 'the Big Bang' for 'God' and make just as much sense. If this is the complete definition, then it is an utterly un-interesting and frankly rather boring god she worships.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I am saying that you can't reduce God to something that can be scientifically proved. Or proved at all. Not sure where I said that you can't talk about natural phenomena without talking about God. I was trying to say that you can't discount natural phenomena when talking about God. Perhaps I did that badly.
I'm trying to say that this isn't a reduction. When we are looking to contrast two predictions, we compare where they differ, not where they're the same. Theism and atheism both postulate an observed universe of some sort, that goes without saying since we can both see it. Saying "but the whole universe is a result of god" isn't useful in this context because there's no way to contrast that prediction with the prediction of a theory that does not include god. This is particularly true since generally speaking theories that do not include god also do not exclude god.
If someone is looking for measurable effects exclusive to the divine, it makes perfect sense to refrain from considering those things (i.e. natural phenomena) that are the same regardless of whether or not their cause is divine.
In other words, I think KoM and Tom are only concerning themselves with varieties of theism that make predictions that are distinguishable from non-theistic theories via some sort of empirical test.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: dkw defined her god as "God is the ground of being – the beingness without which even the property of existence would not exist". If that's all it does , then indeed, you could substitute 'the Big Bang' for 'God' and make just as much sense. If this is the complete definition then it is an utterly un-interesting and frankly rather boring god she worships.
Two very big ifs. Neither of which I understood from what she said. And I would disagree if she had. Also you are making the assumption that creation was a one time event rather than an ongoing process.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by twinky:
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I am saying that you can't reduce God to something that can be scientifically proved. Or proved at all. Not sure where I said that you can't talk about natural phenomena without talking about God. I was trying to say that you can't discount natural phenomena when talking about God. Perhaps I did that badly.
I'm trying to say that this isn't a reduction. When we are looking to contrast two predictions, we compare where they differ, not where they're the same. Theism and atheism both postulate an observed universe of some sort, that goes without saying since we can both see it. Saying "but the whole universe is a result of god" isn't useful in this context because there's no way to contrast that prediction with the prediction of a theory that does not include god. This is particularly true since generally speaking theories that do not include god also do not exclude god.
If someone is looking for measurable effects exclusive to the divine, it makes perfect sense to refrain from considering those things (i.e. natural phenomena) that are the same regardless of whether or not their cause is divine.
In other words, I think KoM and Tom are only concerning themselves with varieties of theism that make predictions that are distinguishable from non-theistic theories via some sort of empirical test.
So who are they talking to? I don't think I know any of those theists. I'm certainly not one of them. I guess I'll just leave you guys to it.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Do you believe that prayer has an effect on the health of humans?
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:Originally posted by twinky: In other words, I think KoM and Tom are only concerning themselves with varieties of theism that make predictions that are distinguishable from non-theistic theories via some sort of empirical test.
So who are they talking to? I don't think I know any of those theists. I'm certainly not one of them. I guess I'll just leave you guys to it.
Really? I know a few personally, and am aware of a much greater number. The "intelligent design" movement is one example, but there are many others.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by twinky:
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:Originally posted by twinky: In other words, I think KoM and Tom are only concerning themselves with varieties of theism that make predictions that are distinguishable from non-theistic theories via some sort of empirical test.
So who are they talking to? I don't think I know any of those theists. I'm certainly not one of them. I guess I'll just leave you guys to it.
Really? I know a few personally, and am aware of a much greater number. The "intelligent design" movement is one example, but there are many others.
Honey, if they agree to that very narrow definition of God then their theism has very little to do with mine. I'll let you hash this out with them. With the disclaimer that whatever you decide implies nothing whatsoever about my God.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Again : Do you believe that prayer has a beneficial effect on the health of the one prayed for?
Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
To me God only has relevance as the definition narrows.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Honey, if they agree to that very narrow definition of God then their theism has very little to do with mine.
How does "narrow" apply here? Your definition of God is actually considerably narrower. That your God is less limited does not mean that your definition is. Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Honey, if they agree to that very narrow definition of God then their theism has very little to do with mine. I'll let you hash this out with them. With the disclaimer that whatever you decide implies nothing whatsoever about my God.
In addition to what Tom and Karl said, if you don't mind, I'd really rather not be called "honey" by anyone other than my girlfriend. Thanks.
Also, I don't think anyone specifically stated that they were attempting to address "kmbboots' brand of theism" in this thread... ...but I suppose I can't be certain since I don't have a clue about your conception of the divine or what, if any, religion you follow.
However, I think the vast majority of people on this planet believe in some sort of supernatural and/or divine agent(s) that affect the world in ways that should be empirically distinguishable from non-divine predictions. Therefore KoM's example of prayer positively affecting health is apt, though as Dagonee has noted it would be very difficult to devise a practical test that would yield concrete results.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Again : Do you believe that prayer has a beneficial effect on the health of the one prayed for?
Sure. Here is one possible way: Alice has a disease, easily cured by antibiotics. In response to the prayer of Alice's mom, God, in the beginning of time created the possibility of antibiotics and inspired scientists to find them. Yay! Billions of years later, Alice can be cured.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by twinky:
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Honey, if they agree to that very narrow definition of God then their theism has very little to do with mine. I'll let you hash this out with them. With the disclaimer that whatever you decide implies nothing whatsoever about my God.
In addition to what Tom and Karl said, if you don't mind, I'd really rather not be called "honey" by anyone other than my girlfriend. Thanks.
Sorry. It is meant as an attempt to keep my post friendly. I find in RL it takes the edge off my somewhat abrasive personality.
You have a girlfriend?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by twinky:
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Honey, if they agree to that very narrow definition of God then their theism has very little to do with mine. I'll let you hash this out with them. With the disclaimer that whatever you decide implies nothing whatsoever about my God.
Also, I don't think anyone specifically stated that they were attempting to address "kmbboots' brand of theism" in this thread... ...but I suppose I can't be certain since I don't have a clue about your conception of the divine or what, if any, religion you follow.
However, I think the vast majority of people on this planet believe in some sort of supernatural and/or divine agent(s) that affect the world in ways that should be empirically distinguishable from non-divine predictions. Therefore KoM's example of prayer positively affecting health is apt, though as Dagonee has noted it would be very difficult to devise a practical test that would yield concrete results.
That surprises me. I do know quite a few theologians and I don't know that any of them think that God submits to being tested. But as I said, if you can find those who do, knock yourself out.
edit: Catholic, BTW.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:Honey, if they agree to that very narrow definition of God then their theism has very little to do with mine.
How does "narrow" apply here? Your definition of God is actually considerably narrower. That your God is less limited does not mean that your definition is.
quote: Originally posted by twinky: In other words, I think KoM and Tom are only concerning themselves with varieties of theism that make predictions that are distinguishable from non-theistic theories via some sort of empirical test.
Seemed to me like that narrowed the field, God-wise.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: You have a girlfriend?
Yes. Hard to imagine, isn't it? Last I heard, KoM had a girlfriend as well. And Tom's even married!
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: That surprises me. I do know quite a few theologians and I don't know that any of them think that God submits to being tested. But as I said, if you can find those who do, knock yourself out.
I don't think a testable god must necessarily be one who "submits" to testing.
Having said all of this, I myself have no interest in attempting to evidentially support or discredit the existence of the divine. I do, however, fully support rebuttals of theistic theories that purport to be scientific (e.g. "intelligent design"), in addition to rebuttals of purported "proofs" of the divine.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Again : Do you believe that prayer has a beneficial effect on the health of the one prayed for?
Sure. Here is one possible way: Alice has a disease, easily cured by antibiotics. In response to the prayer of Alice's mom, God, in the beginning of time created the possibility of antibiotics and inspired scientists to find them. Yay! Billions of years later, Alice can be cured.
That is a possible way; but as I think you grasped perfectly well, I meant by direct causation. You pray for the recovery of someone; that someone gets better, which they would not have done if you had not prayed. Do you believe in such an effect?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by twinky:
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: You have a girlfriend?
Yes. Hard to imagine, isn't it? Last I heard, KoM had a girlfriend as well. And Tom's even married!
You do know I was teasing?
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: That surprises me. I do know quite a few theologians and I don't know that any of them think that God submits to being tested. But as I said, if you can find those who do, knock yourself out.
I don't think a testable god must necessarily be one who "submits" to testing.
Having said all of this, I myself have no interest in attempting to evidentially support or discredit the existence of the divine. I do, however, fully support rebuttals of theistic theories that purport to be scientific (e.g. "intelligent design"), in addition to rebuttals of purported "proofs" of the divine.
So do I.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Again : Do you believe that prayer has a beneficial effect on the health of the one prayed for?
Sure. Here is one possible way: Alice has a disease, easily cured by antibiotics. In response to the prayer of Alice's mom, God, in the beginning of time created the possibility of antibiotics and inspired scientists to find them. Yay! Billions of years later, Alice can be cured.
That is a possible way; but as I think you grasped perfectly well, I meant by direct causation. You pray for the recovery of someone; that someone gets better, which they would not have done if you had not prayed. Do you believe in such an effect?
Who is to say that antibiotics are not a direct response to the prayer of Alice's mom?
Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
So if Alice's mom hadn't prayed, (in your theoretical theology), then we might not have had antibiotics? I supposed I should feel grateful to Alice's mom . . .
. . . but I'm more inclined to feel grateful to the hardworking scientists who discovered germ theory and subsequently anti-biotics. Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
Boothby171, you asked for a definition of God. You did not ask for a list of everything I believe God has done/is doing. That would, as Dag pointed out, be much longer.
Dictionary.com defines human as "a bipedal primate mammal of the genus Homo" That doesn't tell us anything about whether or not humans eat lunch, surf the web, or bake chocolate chip cookies. But neither does it deny that they do.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by KarlEd: So if Alice's mom hadn't prayed, (in your theoretical theology), then we might not have had antibiotics? I supposed I should feel grateful to Alice's mom . . .
. . . but I'm more inclined to feel grateful to the hardworking scientists who discovered germ theory and subsequently anti-biotics.
Could additionally be in response to the prayers of billions of other mothers. And why wouldn't you still be grateful to the scientists? God working in them hardly detracts from their work.
My point is that without knowing the reasons and methods of God, the ways that God works aren't measurable.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I am asking a very specific question. I am not asking what 'could be', I am asking a question about what you believe. Does prayer work, without any indirect causation such as you suggest?
quote:God working in them hardly detracts from their work.
I strongly disagree.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
The type of "direct effect" you are describing would be magic, not prayer.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: I am asking a very specific question. I am not asking what 'could be', I am asking a question about what you believe. Does prayer work, without any indirect causation such as you suggest?
quote:God working in them hardly detracts from their work.
I strongly disagree.
My belief is possibly, sometimes. edit: And why would direct vs indirect causation matter?
Why do you think that working according to God's will detracts from the work?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by dkw: The type of "direct effect" you are describing would be magic, not prayer.
I don't think so. I ask a friend of mine to do me a favour; whatever it is, it would not happen without my asking, but it may happen if I do ask. Is this magic? I hardly think so.
quote:My belief is possibly, sometimes. edit: And why would direct vs indirect causation matter?
Because direct causation is much easier to study; I want to begin with the easy problems. Now, if there is sometimes a direct effect that does not proceed through other-explainable causes, why should that not be measurable?
About the indirect effects : It seems rather odd that prayers in 1950 should be so much more effective than those in 1930. Surely your god is timeless? Yet you seem to be asserting that he is a hundred times more likely to cure, say, pneumonia, after 1950. Bit odd, that.
quote:Why do you think that working according to God's will detracts from the work?
Well, that's not the way you phrased it at first. But even as you have put it now, I do think it rahter unpleasant to have some outside force making decisions for me.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:My belief is possibly, sometimes. edit: And why would direct vs indirect causation matter?
Because direct causation is much easier to study; I want to begin with the easy problems. Now, if there is sometimes a direct effect that does not proceed through other-explainable causes, why should that not be measurable?
About the indirect effects : It seems rather odd that prayers in 1950 should be so much more effective than those in 1930. Surely your god is timeless? Yet you seem to be asserting that he is a hundred times more likely to cure, say, pneumonia, after 1950. Bit odd, that.
KoM, you keep reminding me of the joke about a man who loses his keys on Main Street but insists on looking for them on 5th Avenue because the light is better.
quote:
quote:Why do you think that working according to God's will detracts from the work?
Well, that's not the way you phrased it at first. But even as you have put it now, I do think it rahter unpleasant to have some outside force making decisions for me.
Working according to God's will does not mean having giving up free will. But that is a very different discussion.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Yes.
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
kmbboots,
quote:Sure. Here is one possible way: Alice has a disease, easily cured by antibiotics. In response to the prayer of Alice's mom, God, in the beginning of time created the possibility of antibiotics and inspired scientists to find them. Yay! Billions of years later, Alice can be cured.
I really don't know how to respond to that. it allows you to see an undefined God in everything, while (at the same time) it allows me to see an ill-defined God in absolutely nothing at all. Amazing.
dkw,
quote:Boothby171, you asked for a definition of God. You did not ask for a list of everything I believe God has done/is doing. That would, as Dag pointed out, be much longer.
I'm not asking for you to tear a page from God's personal planner. I'm asking people who feel that they "know" what God is to tell me what he is. People say "God can do this, or he can do that," yet when we try to determine (by "we" I mean me, KoM, and TD, among others; if they don't mind the association) whether those statements are true or false, we're told, "well, we don't mean that God does it quite that way,"
So far, the one definition we've gotten for God is so general as to be meaningless. kmmboots has also presented that definition as being completely outside the realm of science (since it is not only the value being measured, but the very measuring stick, itself!).
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Not only is the light better on 5th, a large number of people have been known to lose their wallets there. I may not find what I originally wanted, but I'll almost certainly find something. That's how science works. As opposed to theology, which at least in this thread works by saying "well, that's not quite what I meant by 'keys'".
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
Well, yeah, the idea that God is outside the realm of science is what dag and kate have been saying all along.
And I don't find the definition I gave to be meaningless, although it certainly is outside the realm of science. But again, that's pretty much my point.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I find it is also outside the realm of meaningful discourse. What does it mean to say 'X is the ground of being'? What possible impact does this have on human life? Even if it were somehow true, how would it affect us?
Possibly we will have to settle the issue with a nice little war.
Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
What I get most out of these discussions is that God (as almost everyone seems to define him) is unrealiable. Most people wouldn't use that word, of course, but can any of those same people name one objectively observable thing that God can do and always does. (I should qualify that with "useful thing" to avoid answers like, "He reliably remains hidden", etc.)
He doesn't reliably heal the sick. He doesn't reliably comfort the needy. He doesn't reliably feed the hungry. He doesn't even reliably answer prayers except in some vague pseudo-zen "whatever follows the question is the answer" kind of way. And he doesn't give the same answers to different people even if the question is as straightforward as "Which church is Your True Church?"
He gets credit for everything good, but takes no blame for anything bad. He "works through his servants" except, of course, when his servants aren't doing what we think God wants, regardless of whether they think so or not. (and vice-versa, I'm sure.)
In short, He doesn't actually do anything that can be demonstrated. And for some, that's the beauty of him, I guess.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I suspect dkw and Dag would say that this has been their point all along. And I will reply that I completely agree, and that this is why I consider their god an utterly useless concept. Which, I suppose, more or less ends the discussion, at least until I come to power and can have people thrown in re-education camps. I must say I'm impressed : You've summarised a seven-page thread in one cogent post.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: KoM, you keep reminding me of the joke about a man who loses his keys on Main Street but insists on looking for them on 5th Avenue because the light is better.
Why would you say that, kmbboots? As far as I can tell, all your hypothetical example "proves" is that God didn't answer any prayers related to bacterial diseases until the '50s.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:. . . but I'm more inclined to feel grateful to the hardworking scientists who discovered germ theory and subsequently anti-biotics.
Antibiotics are a very interesting case and point in this debate because penicillin's discovery was the result of serendipity rather than hard work. For those of you who maybe unfamiliar with the story, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin when a petry dish he was using to culture bacteria in one of his studies, was accidentally contaminated with a mold that killed the bacteria. Alexander Flemings insight and hard work in identifying what had happened and pursuing shouldn't be neglected but the discovery itself would never have happened it unless that mold spore had landed on his petry dish.
So did the mold spore land on Alexander Flemmings petry dish because of random luck or did God cause the mold spore to hit the petry dish of someone who had the ability and inclination to identify the importance of the event?
I'm sorry to say that there is no scientific way to investigate that question.
quote:As far as I can tell, all your hypothetical example "proves" is that God didn't answer any prayers related to bacterial diseases until the '50s.
Wow, that's more than a bit of stretch. No one has suggested that antibiotics are the only way God has answered prayers related to bacterial disease. kmboots example was intended to illustrate how God could answer prayers for healing in ways that would be undetectable by science. There was never an implication that this was the only way God ever answered prayers.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
The book Zen and the art of motorcycle maintainance is highly relevant to this discussion.
If you haven't read it, I recommend you to this site and read (at least) chapter 19.
Here are two passages I consider to be highly relevant.
quote:Philosophical mysticism, the idea that truth is indefinable and can be apprehended only by nonrational means, has been with us since the beginning of history. It's the basis of Zen practice. But it's not an academic subject. The academy, the Church of Reason, is concerned exclusively with those things that can be defined, and if one wants to be a mystic, his place is in a monastery, not a University. Universities are places where things should be spelled out.
quote:Quality is not a thing. It is an event.
Warmer.
It is the event at which the subject becomes aware of the object.
And because without objects there can be no subject...because the objects create the subject's awareness of himself...Quality is the event at which awareness of both subjects and objects is made possible.
Hot.
Now he knew it was coming.
This means Quality is not just the result of a collision between subject and object. The very existence of subject and object themselves is deduced from the Quality event. The Quality event is the cause of the subjects and objects, which are then mistakenly presumed to be the cause of the Quality!
Now he had that whole damned evil dilemma by the throat. The dilemma all the time had this unseen vile presumption in it, for which there was no logical justification. that Quality was the effect of subjects and objects. It was not! He brought out his knife.
"The sun of quality," he wrote, does not revolve around the subjects and objects of our existence. It does not just passively illuminate them. It is not subordinate to them in any way. It has created them. They are subordinate to it!.
If you replace the word "quality" in through out chapter 19 with the word "God", or the word spirityality, or the word "good", or the word "ethical", or the word "beauty", or the word "love", then you can perhaps begin to understand what we are saying when we say that God is not a subject which can be understood as the object of a scientific study.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:you can perhaps begin to understand what we are saying when we say that God is not a subject which can be understood as the object of a scientific study.
I understand what you're saying. I just disagree completely.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: Wow, that's more than a bit of stretch. No one has suggested that antibiotics are the only way God has answered prayers related to bacterial disease. kmboots example was intended to illustrate how God could answer prayers for healing in ways that would be undetectable by science. There was never an implication that this was the only way God ever answered prayers.
Nevertheless : If we assume that antibiotics were the answer to prayers, then it is clear that there were a lot more answered prayers in the 1950s than in the 1930s. Nie?
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
I saw that, KarlEd!
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: The book Zen and the art of motorcycle maintainance is highly relevant to this discussion.
If you haven't read it, I recommend you to this site and read (at least) chapter 19.
Here are two passages I consider to be highly relevant:
quote:(Mystical twaddle)
If you replace the word "quality" in through out chapter 19 with the word "God", or the word spirityality, or the word "good", or the word "ethical", or the word "beauty", or the word "love", then you can perhaps begin to understand what we are saying when we say that God is not a subject which can be understood as the object of a scientific study.
I do feel that any 'philosophy' that can be convincingly imitated by a phrase generator does not actually qualify as an argument.
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
dkw,
quote:Well, yeah, the idea that God is outside the realm of science is what dag and kate have been saying all along.
I think that it's more correct to say that they are making sure that their definition of God keeps him fully outside the realm of science. Every time one of us challenges even the slightest inkling of a useful definition, we are told, "nope; that's not what I meant!" And every time we ask for clarification, we're told, "Oh, now you're playing games," or "But that's as clear as we can make it!" or "I'd tell you, but I just don't have enough time, or the internet just doesn't have enough space," etc.
Sywak's Second Law in action.
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
KoM, you can also exchange the word "quality" with the phrase, "in my pants," and it gets really funny.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:I think that it's more correct to say that they are making sure that their definition of God keeps him fully outside the realm of science. Every time one of us challenges even the slightest inkling of a useful definition, we are told, "nope; that's not what I meant!" And every time we ask for clarification, we're told, "Oh, now you're playing games," or "But that's as clear as we can make it!" or "I'd tell you, but I just don't have enough time, or the internet just doesn't have enough space," etc.
Wah! Wah! They won't let us oversimplify a complex subject so our sophistic refutations work! Wah!
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
I'd have no problem with god falling outside the scope of science if people would stop trying to push him into it. It would have been rather hypocritical of me to advocate that position on the last intelligent design thread and then turn around and attaack it here. The fact that I don't see the utility in such a belief for myself doesn't mean that no one else does, or should; the fact that all but one of the religions I've studied simply do not resonate with me in the slightest has a lot more to do with why I'm an atheist than the utility of belief or unbelief.
Also, I quite enjoyed Robert Pirsig's second book, which was more philosophical treatise and less novel than Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. His Metaphysics of Quality is actually both interesting and useful. A worthwhile read. Also, it contains -- surprisingly enough -- one of my favourite lines in fiction.
(I won't post the line here, because it's about sex. Oddly enough, a number of my favourite lines in fiction are about sex. )
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: Wah! Wah! They won't let us oversimplify a complex subject so our sophistic refutations work! Wah!
Well Dag, I have yet to see a straight answer from you to an extremely simple question. If all prayers for recovery from disease were granted, would we know about it, or not?
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
Dag,
quote:I asked KoM for a very specific thing to back up a claim he made: an experiment that would test whether a Creator exists. It seems to me he is the one avoiding coming to a conclusion here.
And we just asked you to explain just what it is you're talking about (i.e., Just what is this "God" thing you keep refering to?)
quote:Also, it seems to me that Sywak's Second Rule is really just a whining defense of the common practice of Making up Stupid Strawgods.
and
quote:Wah! Wah! They won't let us oversimplify a complex subject so our sophistic refutations work! Wah!
Thank you for invoking Rule 5:
quote:RULE 5: If all else fails, you may just have to reveal your opponent for what he really is. An idiot. A Godless, liberal, democrat, communist, baby-eating, tree-hugging idiot.
...or a whiner.
Meanwhile, the excuses I listed that you, kmbboots and dkw used was accurate, such as your own: "I'm not capable of completely answering that question - certainly not within the storage capacity of UBB"
So, every time someone catches you at your own game, you accuse them of being a whiner? Way to go!
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Well, KoM, I have yet to see a straight answer from you to an extremely simple request: If the existence of a creator is the proper subject for science, propose an experiment to test that existence.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
I beg your pardon, boothby. I gave you a very consise definition. It's not my fault you don't find it useful.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Dag, the issue there is that y'all are being rather slippery with your definition of "a creator." I submit that the existence of several TYPES of creator would be a proper subject for science, but that there are several other types -- i.e. the irrelevantly hypothetical types -- which are untestable.
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
dkw,
I took your definition. "God is the Creator and the Creation," or some such thing. If that's all he is, then, well, fine. By accepting that the Universe exists (can we all, at least, accept that the Universe exists?), then by definition, your narrowly defined God exists. Or at least partially exists--the part of your God that is the Creation. But the part that is the Creator...
Well, if the Universe is God, and the Universe created itself (such as with the Big Bang), then I suppose one could say that God created the Universe.
But, according to you, that's all that God is. SOmething tells me that's not the extent of the God that most believers here believe in. Is that a sufficient God for you? Does that God provide any meaning? Or use?
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:And we just asked you to explain just what it is you're talking about (i.e., Just what is this "God" thing you keep refering to?)
KoM is the one who made a claim about the existence of a creator being the proper subject of science. Surely he wouldn't say that without knowing what it is?
Boothby, you seem to be oversimplifying your own rule. Let's list the elements of your charge:
quote:1.) making sure that their definition of God keeps him fully outside the realm of science.
You have assigned a nefarious motive to something without one whit of justification.
quote:Every time one of us challenges even the slightest inkling of a useful definition,
Gee, how is it that "useful" means "subject to verification by science"? And you accuse us of defining something to meet an agenda.
quote:we are told, "nope; that's not what I meant!"
When one of you insists on saying something that's not what I meant, what should I say?
quote:And every time we ask for clarification, we're told, "Oh, now you're playing games," or "But that's as clear as we can make it!" or "I'd tell you, but I just don't have enough time, or the internet just doesn't have enough space," etc.
Ah, see, I have said I don't have enough time or space to describe fully my beliefs in God. Where you are utterly, totally, and completely wrong (not to mention out of line and damn near lying about me) is when you assign the motive of "making sure that [my] definition of God keeps him fully outside the realm of science."
Especially when you and KoM and TD have been attempting to redefine him so that he fits within science. Or to redefine useful to that end.
quote:So, every time someone catches you at your own game, you accuse them of being a whiner? Way to go!
You shat all over this discussion with your sophmoric rules.
KoM has repeatedly demanded things from me that he has no right to demand. I do not think God is the proper subject of science. I don't think that any experiment that proves or disproves the effects of prayer brings us one whit closer to the original subject of discussion. KoM has repeatedly failed to show how it would, simply repeating "I'm starting off small."
quote:RULE 5: If all else fails, you may just have to reveal your opponent for what he really is. An idiot. A Godless, liberal, democrat, communist, baby-eating, tree-hugging idiot.
You seem to be under the impression that "all else" has failed. It hasn't. No one has made a single argument to anything I believe on this thread that amounts to more than "if we can't measure it, it doesn't matter."
I don't call you a whiner because you have somehow brought me to bay. I call you a whiner because you resorted to insults and distorted the whole purpose of the discussion.
If KoM can demonstrate an experiment to test the existence of a creator, well and good. Until then, he's merely rehashing his tired old arguments about prayer.
You think he's winning or I'm failing because you buy those arguments. I don't care about those arguments because they entirely miss the point.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:ag, the issue there is that y'all are being rather slippery with your definition of "a creator." I submit that the existence of several TYPES of creator would be a proper subject for science, but that there are several other types -- i.e. the irrelevantly hypothetical types -- which are untestable.
Once more for the cheap seats:
I HAVEN'T GIVEN A DEFINITION OF CREATOR.
KoM asserted that the existence of a creator as the cause of the big bang is testable. I await the description of the experiment to test it.
I don't really care about KoM's diversion of this into a study of prayer. I returned out of courtesy at his request. I've repeatedly repeatedly repeatedly made it clear what part I'm interested in. So far I've heard excuses why the requested experiment can't be described yet. I don't actually care if it ever is described - as I've said, I don't think it can be. But that's what it will take to convince me that the existence of a creator is the proper subject of science.
I don't buy your foundational contention that an untestable creator is irrelerevant. Every single thing you say that relies on that as a premise is irrelevant to me. And not one of you has given a single real reason why an untestable creator is irrelevant.
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Whiner.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:But, according to you, that's all that God is.
dkw has not said this. At all.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Originally posted by Boothby171: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Whiner.
Boothby tactic 101: ignore what's actually said. It's too hard to respond to. Make some sh&% up and respond to that instead.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I have proposed several tests for specific kinds of creators. That they are not the sort you believe in is hardly my fault. They are, however, the kind I'm interested in. It does seem that we were using the word in rather different senses at the beginning of this discussion, which may account for the confusion.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
What test have you proposed for a creator?
You have proposed tests for prayer-answerers. If you snuck a creator test in there, I apologize for missing it.
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
BTW, you're right about prayer.
Even if prayer is shown to work--even if it is show to work and be repeatable--the mechanism of prayer would be separate from its efficacy. After all, we acknowledge that gravity works, even though we're not yet sure how.
Prayer may work and there still would not need to be a God to make it work. The proof or disproof of the existence of a God (or god) would remain a separate issue.
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
Dag,
1) I did not "make sh&% up" and respond to it. I really just didn't pay much attention to what you said; I just heard this incessant whining in the background...
2) But dkw did say it. She said,
quote:Short answer definition: God is the ground of being – the beingness without which even the property of existence would not exist.
Well, maybe you are right...she mentioned nothing about God having created the "beingness," just that God "is" the beingness. So that's even less of a God than I originally thought.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Yes, she said that. But she didn't say "that's all that God is."
And she's already explained why.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Sigh... Most prayer-answerers that are actually believed in are also creators, and indeed vice-versa. Really, Dag, are you being intentionally obtuse here?
But ok, suppose we look at pure creators. Now, a creator that is of any interest is an intelligent being, right? I mean, there could certainly be some kind of undefinable 'creative urge', but I don't see how that's any different from the explanation we've got now, to wit, 'the Big Bang just happened'.
So then, intelligent beings. Well, we can certainly see that this being is nothing like me, because I would not have designed the Universe so badly. So that rules out a whole class of creators right there. We can also see that the hypothetical creator really likes log scales, or the different forces would be much closer in strength. (Or else the creator was only going to be around for a few 10^-36 of a second, and didn't care what happened to the forces after that.) Further, it is clear that the creator did not use the methods described in Genesis.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Sigh... Most prayer-answerers that are actually believed in are also creators, and indeed vice-versa. Really, Dag, are you being intentionally obtuse here?
Gee, I wanted to ask you the same thing. I thought we were being scientific.
And, in fact, most prayer answerers (if you go by numbers as professed by various systems of belief) are not thought to be the "creator" that would be at issue in the big bang.
quote:But ok, suppose we look at pure creators. Now, a creator that is of any interest is an intelligent being, right? I mean, there could certainly be some kind of undefinable 'creative urge', but I don't see how that's any different from the explanation we've got now, to wit, 'the Big Bang just happened'. So then, intelligent beings. Well, we can certainly see that this being is nothing like me, because I would not have designed the Universe so badly. So that rules out a whole class of creators right there. We can also see that the hypothetical creator really likes log scales, or the different forces would be much closer in strength. (Or else the creator was only going to be around for a few 10^-36 of a second, and didn't care what happened to the forces after that.) Further, it is clear that the creator did not use the methods described in Genesis.
Is there an experiment in there?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Yes. 'Look at the data and draw inferences about the underlying distribution'.
Now, how about this one? Find a way to expose the singularity at the center of a black hole; there are some really interesting solutions to GR with sufficiently high angular momenta, so I'm not drawing this out of a hat. See if, as is theorised, there is a new Universe at the center. If there is, why, you have a perfectly good universe that is plainly uncreated. You can make an arbitrarily high number of such universes, and see how they match up against ours. If you can detect major differences, why then, splendid evidence of a creator.
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
Dag, dkw offered no other reason for her definition other than:
quote:And I don't find the definition I gave to be meaningless, although it certainly is outside the realm of science. But again, that's pretty much my point.
She never actually explained how she finds meaning in a God who is just the core of beingness, or even what meaning she finds there. Just that it was her intent (her "point") to define God in a way that pllaced him outside the realm of science, since that is the point she was trying to make.
Please stop making sh$% up.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:She never actually explained how she finds meaning in a God who is just the core of beingness, or even what meaning she finds there.
No, because it would not be very possible in this forum. She did, however, explain that she did not intend her definition to list all the properties of God.
You see now why I wouldn't respond to the requests for a short definition? Because I knew what someone like you would do with it.
"I asked you for a short definition, and now you're adding to it when I make up an argument based on the incredibly faulty assumption that any definition lists all the properties of an entity. It's not fair."
quote: Just that it was her intent (her "point") to define God in a way that pllaced him outside the realm of science, since that is the point she was trying to make.
No - her point is that God is outside science, not that she was defining God with the intent of placing him outside science.
Which you might have realized if you weren't being so holier-than-thou. Irony intended.
quote:If there is, why, you have a perfectly good universe that is plainly uncreated.
"Plainly uncreated"? You have a strange idea of "plainly."
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
Oh, as to this:
quote:Dag, dkw offered no other reason for her definition other than:
...
Please stop making sh$% up.
She did give a reason for her definition:
quote:Boothby171, you asked for a definition of God. You did not ask for a list of everything I believe God has done/is doing. That would, as Dag pointed out, be much longer.
Dictionary.com defines human as "a bipedal primate mammal of the genus Homo" That doesn't tell us anything about whether or not humans eat lunch, surf the web, or bake chocolate chip cookies. But neither does it deny that they do.
Posted by Tante Shvester (Member # 8202) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: I have proposed several tests for specific kinds of creators.
I can just picture the creators whining when they get this announcement. "I didn't know there was going to be a test on this!" "Is it multiple-choice?" "Can I borrow your notes?" "No fair -- I was absent that week!"
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
Yeah, Dag, that's soooo different.
She listed, what? ONE property of God? His "core of the beingness" thing? And then she stopped. Just like you.
But then you whine on about how "no short definition" would be any good, and about how the rest of us would just spin it around.
And then you complain that to properly define God would take more than this poor UBB could handle (what, are you planning on uploading the bible?).
What, you got no medium sized definitions for God? Sounds to me like you really don't understand what it is you believe in. Unless, of course, that's the whole point of God. He's so big (great, wonderous, etc.) that nobody can understand him.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:Sounds to me like you really don't understand what it is you believe in.
Your lack of reading comprehension no longer surprises me, Booth.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
quote:I took your definition. "God is the Creator and the Creation," or some such thing.
Well, you’re half right. The other half I can’t see how you possibly got from anything I said.
quote:Well, if the Universe is God,
While that would be an interesting discussion, I don’t believe it and it came from nothing I posted. I believe there is an absolute distinction between the Creator and the creation. (And one of the results of that distinction is that one of them can be measured by science, the other cannot.)
I also don’t appreciate you assuming you know what I believe. About anything.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Boothby171: I really don't know how to respond to that. it allows you to see an undefined God in everything, while (at the same time) it allows me to see an ill-defined God in absolutely nothing at all. Amazing.
Yes. It is amazing. That God would remain unprovable so that each of us could choose which of those to believe. A God who is scientifically provable would be a tyrant. We would have no choice but to believe. That we are allowed this choice may make God "useless" to you; to me it is an amazing gift.
Posted by camus (Member # 8052) on :
quote:Find a way to expose the singularity at the center of a black hole; there are some really interesting solutions to GR with sufficiently high angular momenta, so I'm not drawing this out of a hat. See if, as is theorised, there is a new Universe at the center. If there is, why, you have a perfectly good universe that is plainly uncreated. You can make an arbitrarily high number of such universes, and see how they match up against ours. If you can detect major differences, why then, splendid evidence of a creator.
No, that just might mean that we don't understand all of the factors that determine the principles of a universe found within a singularity. Unless you suggest that all of these universes have the same difference in relation to our universe. But that just adds another level of complication without actually resolving anything. For example, one solution would be that universes at different levels have different properties. All universes found within our universe will have different properties than ours, and the universes found within those universes will have even more different properties, and on and on. We could then assume that perhaps our universe is actually from a singularity found within an even greater universe, also with different properties than ours. Does that prove or disprove a creator? Hardly.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
What if one of the universes we find in a singularity is our own universe?
*head explodes*
Posted by camus (Member # 8052) on :
quote:And then you complain that to properly define God would take more than this poor UBB could handle (what, are you planning on uploading the bible?).
Interestingly, "And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written."
I think it's probably a pretty hard task to define anyone in only a few sentences.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
What if we have another universe inside a box, and inside that universe is a box with our universe in it?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Yes. It is amazing. That God would remain unprovable so that each of us could choose which of those to believe. A God who is scientifically provable would be a tyrant. We would have no choice but to believe. That we are allowed this choice may make God "useless" to you; to me it is an amazing gift.
Ah so. And then, when you believe in the wrong one - oopsie, off to eternal hellfire you go. Bit of a buggerment, that. (I'm aware that you perhaps do not believe this, but many people do.)
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:A God who is scientifically provable would be a tyrant.
Would you be interested in a separate thread on this topic? I find this opinion understandable but dramatically and intrinsically flawed.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:A God who is scientifically provable would be a tyrant.
Would you be interested in a separate thread on this topic? I find this opinion understandable but dramatically and intrinsically flawed.
Sure.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Yes. It is amazing. That God would remain unprovable so that each of us could choose which of those to believe. A God who is scientifically provable would be a tyrant. We would have no choice but to believe. That we are allowed this choice may make God "useless" to you; to me it is an amazing gift.
Ah so. And then, when you believe in the wrong one - oopsie, off to eternal hellfire you go. Bit of a buggerment, that. (I'm aware that you perhaps do not believe this, but many people do.)
So argue that with them.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
I do feel that any 'philosophy' that can be convincingly imitated by a phrase generator does not actually qualify as an argument. [/QB]
KOM, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance is critically aclaimed work and the foundation for a philosphical school. His works are widely regarded as a completion of Nietzche's effort to redefine ethics in humanistic rather than theological terms. I quoted him in an effort to illustrate that the concept that there are things which are real and important but can not be studied scientifically is not limited to theists but there has been the subject of humanist philosophy for generations.
If your best refutation of Persig's work is that it can be convincing imitated by a phrase generator, then you clearly have not made even the slightest effort to understand the issue and are not worthy of the debate.
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
dkw,
you most specifically said:
quote:Short answer definition: God is the ground of being – the beingness without which even the property of existence would not exist.
I don't even begin to pretend to know what you think or believe. I hope I never said, "This is what dkw believes..." What I do know is what you wrote. And what you wrote stated that part of your definition for what God is, is that he is the "ground of being," which I later referred to as "the core of beingness."
You did not state that you believed that God was the creator, only that he was the beingness at the core of the universe. Tom Davidson pointed that very thing out, and you seemed not to have a problem with it (at least, perhaps as far as that particular definition went).
When you were asked for additional information, you refused to provide any:
quote:Boothby171, you asked for a definition of God. You did not ask for a list of everything I believe God has done/is doing. That would, as Dag pointed out, be much longer.
Well, refused or were incapable of answering. God being very, very big, and all. And complicated.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: If your best refutation of Persig's work is that it can be convincing imitated by a phrase generator, then you clearly have not made even the slightest effort to understand the issue and are not worthy of the debate.
I'm sorry you feel that way. Have a nice day.
Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
quote:Originally posted by Boothby171: I saw that, KarlEd!
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
Some derivative of, "That's the beauty of it...it doesn't do anything!
--Steve
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
quote:Well, refused or were incapable of answering.
Neither. I pointed out that I had not done so because that was not what was asked for. I'm being precise. Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I think the word you're looking for is "pedantic." Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
I think if you have an advanced degree in something, you're sort of obligated to be a pedant about it. Aren't you?
(This is part of why I'm somewhat leery of pursuing a master's in my own profession. )
Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
quote:Originally posted by Boothby171: Some derivative of, "That's the beauty of it...it doesn't do anything!
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