quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: And to Lisa:
What is wrong with you?
You make claims, then you ignore the arguements against them! You refuse to discuss them, you essentially state "it's so" and dismiss us.
Honestly, it's because you come across as shrill and uptight about the whole thing. And by "you", I don't mean you in particular, but you and KoM and others.
I think understand why you think this is an important discussion. Your recent conversion (if that's an okay term) to atheism is a big change, and you want to make sure that it's justified. If I'm wrong, tell me; that's just my perception.
From my point of view, when someone says something I think is untrue, I feel a responsibility to say, "I disagree". What I don't feel (necessarily, in all situations) is a responsibility to convince the person I'm disagreeing with that I'm right and he's wrong.
So why even bother saying that I disagree? I'm not 100% sure. Just to have it on the record, I guess. And so that something I think is untrue doesn't slide by unchallenged.
I think biology is a useful science. Genetics is useful and good as well. In order to make those sciences work, we have to deal with the world in front of us. That we see. If the evidence we see says the earth is billions of years old, I don't have a problem using that, even though I don't think it is. Because I don't see that as a contradiction.
I don't think T-Rex was hopping around in Eden, because there's no reason to think so. The discovery of fossils and remains of dinosaurs and the like is useful scientifically. I think God wants us to use our minds to figure things out about how His world works.
Paul and some others here have attributed mean motives to God for doing this. "It must be for deceit". I don't think so. I think it's to inform. What use is a world riddled with discontinuities caused by the creation 6000(-ish) years ago? What could we learn from that? Instead, God gave us a consistent world from which we can learn.
There are shrill people who have heart palpitations when someone says "This fossil is 2 millions years old." They need to learn to relax. And there are shrill people who want to burn the Bible because it says the earth was created less than 6000 years ago. Both sets of shrill people should pool their funds and get a king sized grip.
quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: The difference between you, and between scientists, is that scientists care about understanding, about evidence, and do not commit the evil of willful ignorance.
I'm against willful ignorance. But you know, you can't necessarily know everything. There's data we just don't have. It's nice to think that there's no such thing as data we don't and never will have, but it's kind of immature to think that way, don't you think?
I like history. Some history, anyway. I'd love to know more details about certain historical personages. But you know, there's just a limit to what can ever be deduced from the information that exists.
You will never know everything. It's a tragedy, but eventually you have to learn to live with it.
That's what I mean when I keep quoting John Dayton's line that "It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong." One of the biggest flaws in scientific thought today is that the scientific method, which is a good and useful tool, is a means of determining truth. It can do that, but that's not what it's for, and it can't always do it.
Radiocarbon dating, for example, is based on a lot of assumptions. Fine. That makes it at best an internally consistent system. But those assumptions make it different than observable facts. So I point out that it might be wrong. You insist that I prove that it is wrong, otherwise I must accept that it's right. But that's a false dichotomy. Because I don't have to prove that it's wrong; only that it could be. Because I'm not out to prove my position to you. I don't feel the need to do so.
quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: Yes. It's an evil. One of the greatest evils in the world. (believing without evidence isn't evil. We all do it, in many cases, myself including. I don't do so for God anymore, but we all do such things. It's just what we have to do.)
See, and I disagree with this. Believing without evidence is evil. Refusing to pretend that certainty exists when it doesn't is an unfortunate foible, but it's not evil.
You should consider what certainty means. Human beings operate on the basis of degrees of certainty. I don't know with 100% certainty that there isn't going to be an 8.9 earthquake here later today, but I don't have to in order to go about my life normally. Anyone who claims they have 100% certainty about anything scares me. Particularly if they do so without evidence. That's fanaticism at its worst. And it includes fanatics for religion and fanatics against religion and fanatics for science and fanatics against science.
quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: Willful ignorance, that closedness of mind, is EVIL.
Why don't you see it? It makes me incredibly sad, to see a decent person act in such an evil, and potentially harmful manner.
How do you know I'm a decent person? I mean, I think I am, but I imagine most people do. If you think I'm acting in an evil manner, I wonder why you think I'm a decent person.
I disagree with you, is all. I have X amount of time on my hands, and I choose how to use it. Saying that I disagree with KoM and his varves is a reasonable use of time. Trying to convince him of it is not. In my estimation.
quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: I'm sure I've said some rude things here, to you. Nothing I wouldn't say to a flat earther, but even so, it's rude.
However, your sheer intellectual dishonesty worries me.
What other parts of your life do you use this?
I won't whistle you for the dishonesty comment, because I can see how frustrated you're feeling. I'm sorry to be the cause of it, but honestly, I'm not being willfully ignorant. I'm starting from a lot of different premises from you.
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quote:In other words, there isn't really the conflict that some of you think there is. Yes, the world is young. And yes, for purposes of scientific inquiry, you can treat it as though it were old.
And I'm perfectly happy with that position. It's consistent with the evidence AND with your doctrine. Win-win, I say. Of course it's philosophical position, not a scientific one, so the creation science folks are not about to accept it.
When the "creation science" people can make their system work, I'll worry about it.
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Lisa: "I'm starting from a lot of different premises than you."
This seems to be the major disconnect. It is the cause of the Groupthink phenomena. The evolutionists/ancient earth guys are all starting with the same premises and cannot appropriately engage those who do not share them. We are all deficient in some way, because we don't think the same way.
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quote:The evolutionists/ancient earth guys are all starting with the same premises...
More precisely, my starting premise is "things that happen have an observable effect." What's yours?
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Again, you're missing the point (we should really try to keep this on one thread.) You aren't starting with one premise, and I'm starting from a different one. We all have many different beliefs, and some of them, like the one you wrote, we're gonna agree on. But there are many others that we do not share.
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No. All my beliefs stem directly and inexorably from that single premise (and its parent premises, like "effects have causes" and "things happen.")
If you disagree with me, you disagree with that premise.
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quote:The evolutionists/ancient earth guys are all starting with the same premises and cannot appropriately engage those who do not share them.
But Resh, you're not engaging in good faith. You ask for a level of evidence for our position which you are unwilling to meet with evidence from yours. You claim that an inability to provide a mutation-by-mutation recipe for the creation of an eye is evidence that evolution is merely a fanciful idea while at the same time putting forth no evidence at all for the process or discernment of design.
However, we do have mechanisms by which an eye could evolve and every major intermediate form of "eye" from a single light-sensitive cell to a complex articulated, focusing, eyeball can be found in species that exist today.
No, we cannot evolve an eyeball in the lab, and no, we cannot give you a few hundred thousand years of detailed history, but we also can't raise a mountain or move the continents around. We have to work with the evidence and time frames that are available to us.
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quote:The evolutionists/ancient earth guys are all starting with the same premises...
More precisely, my starting premise is "things that happen have an observable effect." What's yours?
I have the same one. But I have additional information that you choose to disregard.
If you see a ball rolling uphill with no one around pushing it uphill, it's absolutely reasonable for you to construct theories about why a ball might, in certain cases, roll uphill. If I, on the other hand, happened to have been told by the guy who jiggered the ball that he jiggered the ball to roll uphill, I can say that in this case, the real reason it was rolling uphill was because someone made it roll uphill.
If I tell you about it and you say, "Who the hell are you?" and refuse to listen, you'll go merrily on your way coming up with theories about uphill-rolling balls.
Now obviously this is a flawed analogy, because if it was God who jiggered the ball, there really would (or might, at least) be cases in which balls will roll uphill, since God generally does even miracles within the rules. But it still would have been God who did it.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: No. All my beliefs stem directly and inexorably from that single premise (and its parent premises, like "effects have causes" and "things happen.")
If you disagree with me, you disagree with that premise.
Wrong. If I disagree with you, I disagree with the idea that your premise is the entire story.
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quote:More precisely, my starting premise is "things that happen have an observable effect."
This premise seems very wrong, though. There are things all over the world that I can't possibly observe, but that doesn't mean they aren't happening. And I strongly suspect there are things on the far side of the Universe that are happening which no human being could possibly be observing, yet that doesn't mean those things aren't happening. And there have probably been things that happened in history that have left no observable trace today, but that doesn't mean those things never happened.
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quote:Originally posted by MattP: However, we do have mechanisms by which an eye could evolve and every major intermediate form of "eye" from a single light-sensitive cell to a complex articulated, focusing, eyeball can be found in species that exist today.
quote:Originally posted by MattP: However, we do have mechanisms by which an eye could evolve and every major intermediate form of "eye" from a single light-sensitive cell to a complex articulated, focusing, eyeball can be found in species that exist today.
That's clearly untrue.
Which part? The mechanisms, the intermediate forms, or both?
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quote:More precisely, my starting premise is "things that happen have an observable effect."
This premise seems very wrong, though. There are things all over the world that I can't possibly observe, but that doesn't mean they aren't happening. And I strongly suspect there are things on the far side of the Universe that are happening which no human being could possibly be observing, yet that doesn't mean those things aren't happening. And there have probably been things that happened in history that have left no observable trace today, but that doesn't mean those things never happened.
things have "an observable effect", not "all things are observed".
just because you can't personally observe something happening in another area of our universe does not mean that it can't be theoretically observed. and it doesn't have to be with your eyes. if someone has a thought, you can't observe it visually, but the processes which produced that thought *can* be observed with instruments.
if something happens, something caused that thing to happen. rinse and repeat.
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quote:If I tell you about it and you say, "Who the hell are you?" and refuse to listen, you'll go merrily on your way coming up with theories about uphill-rolling balls.
No, most likely I would go to see how a guy that you can't see or hear was able to get the ball to roll uphill. If upon looking at the area I find that the ball is rolling up the hill because it likely had just rolled down a bigger hill, I'd doubt the accuracy of your invisible guy. If you say that your invisible guy intentionally made it appear to roll down a bigger hill when in fact he had really set up an amazing invisible contraption that is able cause balls to roll uphill while covering any evidence of its existence and interference, then yes, I would go merrily on my way coming up with theories about uphill-rolling balls.
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quote:if someone has a thought, you can't observe it visually, but the processes which produced that thought *can* be observed with instruments.
Are these theoretical instruments? As far as I know, we don't currently possess that ability, either theoretically or practically. We can observe neuronal activity, but we really don't have any way of credibly claiming that this is a measure of all the processes that produce thoughts.
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quote:If you see a ball rolling uphill with no one around pushing it uphill, it's absolutely reasonable for you to construct theories about why a ball might, in certain cases, roll uphill. If I, on the other hand, happened to have been told by the guy who jiggered the ball that he jiggered the ball to roll uphill, I can say that in this case, the real reason it was rolling uphill was because someone made it roll uphill.
Better analogy:
You see an ice cube tray, and some ice cubes. (For utter realism, let's make this a room that's below frezzing) The cubes are shaped nearly as closely to the shape of the ice cube tray pockets as is molecularly possible.
Next to the ice cubes is a sign that says "God told me to tell you taht he carved these ice cube with a blowtorch". (intentional typo)
You want to take the sign at face value, fine. But the rest of us will stick to what the evidence shows, which is 1) carving ice cubes with a blowtorch isn't going to work very well, 2) the known properties of water (when liquid, it fits a container perfectly, and when frozen, it retains its shape) are enough to completely explain what we see. It's just not logical to posit that some other agent for whom there is no evidence did it, espeically when the known physical laws tell us that it just didn't happen the way the sign said. Calling that agent God doesn't actually change that conclusion.
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quote:We can observe neuronal activity, but we really don't have any way of credibly claiming that this is a measure of all the processes that produce thoughts.
what else is there?
But I'll concede that we can't pinpoint the specific neuronal activity that produces a particular thought.
My point was a more general point that there are lots of events that occur that can't be seen with the human eye. But that can be seen visually with the aid of an instrument or at least detected(whether it be a magnetic, electric, etc..) with other instruments. I have a problem with Tres's assertation that an inability to observe something, for whatever reason, necessarily means that it doesn't have an observable effect.
We can't see gravity, but we can observe and measure its effects. Whether we do or not, doesn't change the fact that the effect is observable.
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quote:My point was a more general point that there are lots of events that occur that can't be seen with the human eye.
I got your point. However, you were presenting your assumption as a fact.
You can choose to believe in a materialistic universe, but it is a very big, though very common, mistake to think that science supports you in this.
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: And there are shrill people who want to burn the Bible because it says the earth was created less than 6000 years ago. ...
quote:I got your point. However, you were presenting your assumption as a fact.
You can choose to believe in a materialistic universe, but it is a very big, though very common, mistake to think that science supports you in this.
Like I said, I concede that specific point for now. But, I do think that the *aim* of science is to treat the universe as if my assumption is correct.
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quote:You can choose to believe in a materialistic universe, but it is a very big, though very common, mistake to think that science supports you in this.
I'd be very interested in hearing how science supports anything but a materialistic universe.
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quote:If things happened that didn't have an observable effect, how would we know?
We wouldn't. Ergo, they don't matter. That's why it's a premise and not a fact. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:I'd be very interested in hearing how science supports anything but a materialistic universe.
I don't think you understand the nature of the objection, Tom.
Science supports neither assumption. Its explanatory power requires that the things that it studies to behave in a materialistic, deterministic way. However, there is no valid way of using this to claim that only things that occur in a materialist, deterministic way actually exist. This is a common espistemological error I've notived among evangelical atheists.
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quote:If things happened that didn't have an observable effect, how would we know?
We wouldn't.
So what's the point of talking about them?
edit - damn you Tom!
I think this discussing is missing an important concept, that of discrimination.
Things can occur that have effects, but they are not observable unless we can discriminate them from other things.
In many instances, there isn't a way to tell the difference between a deterministic and non-deterministic system. From a rational and scientific standpoint, there often isn't any way to decide between these two options, so you are basically left with a blank area and a choice between two equally valid options.
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I will respond to more later, but this particular statement of Lisa's struck me.
"You will never know everything. It's a tragedy, but eventually you have to learn to live with it."
Are you kidding?
This means I'll always be able to learn something new! As long as I live, I will never run out of discoveries to make. That is the greatest gift this universe could possibly give me.
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quote:Originally posted by MattP: However, we do have mechanisms by which an eye could evolve and every major intermediate form of "eye" from a single light-sensitive cell to a complex articulated, focusing, eyeball can be found in species that exist today.
That's clearly untrue.
Which part? The mechanisms, the intermediate forms, or both?
The "every". Assuming that you think random mutations are the mechanism.
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" think understand why you think this is an important discussion. Your recent conversion (if that's an okay term) to atheism is a big change, and you want to make sure that it's justified. If I'm wrong, tell me; that's just my perception."
Most of what I'm talking about actually has nothing to do with my atheism. Some does, yes. But when talking about the Bible, talking about the evidence, and talking about evolution, age of the earth, etc, this has to do with something fundamentally more important than my religious beliefs.
It has to do with evidence. Science. Knowledge, understanding, the thing I care about in this world.
"There's data we just don't have. It's nice to think that there's no such thing as data we don't and never will have, but it's kind of immature to think that way, don't you think?"
This has nothing to do with science. Evolution, for example, is a theory, a set of predictions. And, furthermore, the predictions have been proven right millions upon millions of times, in many different fields.
That's a damn good theory. Theories aren't reality, but they're descriptions of reality. Perfect? Not at all. A single piece of evidence which is validly against evolution (a rabbit fossil in the Precambrian is all that's needed) disproves it, or at least requires new explainations that both account for all current data, and accurately predict future data.
We only know the smallest part of knowledge. Science makes that clear. But when it comes to the theories I've seen, they explain and predict so well that, as a provisional truth (nothing in science is anything BUT provisional) it's unbelievably excellent.
It's very possible God made the world with appearances of age. But even if He did, God made made that creation inperceptible to any humans looking it up. So, we base our understanding, if you're true, on what God put there, which just so happens to look precisely like what you'd find if life came about without any guidance at all.
Whatever. We can't KNOW for certain. But science isn't knowing for certain in the philosophical sense. We can't KNOW anything. But we can assume causes have effects, and the effects can be measured. And that underlying assumption has been very, very, very useful.
It's so useful I base my understanding of the world on their photons, atoms, chemical reactions and transfers of energy, on their gravity and phyiscs. It's how I'm talking to you, after all.
I suppose I trust it for two reasons. It works, is the gut feeling, the emotional side, and second, I agree with the premeses underlying it, and am shown precisely what they mean.
In the end, my frustration comes from the fact that the evidence, the effects, say one thing... while you say "no, that's not true" and then give no mechanism which can account for all of it, except something we could never prove either way.
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As it is, I feel believing without evidence isn't, in and of itself, wrong, necessarily, because it's something we all must do. We must all make assumptions. We don't have perfect knowledge, and I dont have any more perfect knowledge than anyone else. With small things, such as "oh, I heard from a friend that the raccoons around here live in the trees, that that's where they always dissapear to during the day!" I don't have time or need to look it up, and prove it, seeing it for myself.
Accepting it as plausible with no real evidence is not a big deal. And I don't have time to check it out, honestly.
However, stuff you base your whole life around... that's something it's unwise to base on unproven premeses.
"But you know, there's just a limit to what can ever be deduced from the information that exists."
That's where we disagree. Everything which has effects can be observed. We are learning more all the time.
We will continue learning, and the thing is, we may very well never reach the limit. We may never understand everything, but we'll keep understanding more and more, as long as our species exists.
But if there is a limit, it's knowing everything. And once you know everything about the present, you can understand everythingin the past and everything in the future. But knowing everything in the present will take until the end of time.
What a pleasant, pleasant thought.
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quote:If you see a ball rolling uphill with no one around pushing it uphill, it's absolutely reasonable for you to construct theories about why a ball might, in certain cases, roll uphill. If I, on the other hand, happened to have been told by the guy who jiggered the ball that he jiggered the ball to roll uphill, I can say that in this case, the real reason it was rolling uphill was because someone made it roll uphill.
Better analogy:
You see an ice cube tray, and some ice cubes. (For utter realism, let's make this a room that's below frezzing) The cubes are shaped nearly as closely to the shape of the ice cube tray pockets as is molecularly possible.
Next to the ice cubes is a sign that says "God told me to tell you taht he carved these ice cube with a blowtorch". (intentional typo)
You want to take the sign at face value, fine. But the rest of us will stick to what the evidence shows, which is 1) carving ice cubes with a blowtorch isn't going to work very well, 2) the known properties of water (when liquid, it fits a container perfectly, and when frozen, it retains its shape) are enough to completely explain what we see. It's just not logical to posit that some other agent for whom there is no evidence did it, espeically when the known physical laws tell us that it just didn't happen the way the sign said. Calling that agent God doesn't actually change that conclusion.
Ignoring the fact that this was not a better analogy at all, your basic stance seems to be that if it can be explained without God, then it should be explained without God.
Fine. If that works for you, then cool. But please don't deceive yourself into thinking that it's actual proof of your position. It's just an arbitrary assumption, based on God's non-existence as a starting premise.
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Lisa: if it is clearly untrue, could you provide an example of a major intermediate form for the eye that we don't know of a species having? Just a single counterexample will be fine.
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: And there are shrill people who want to burn the Bible because it says the earth was created less than 6000 years ago. ...
Exaggerate much?
Now and again, Mucus. Now and again. But KoM has said that he'd lock religious people up. And he's not the only such person around. So I don't think I'm exaggerating at all. I didn't say that all atheists want to burn the Bible any more than I said that all religious people have heart attacks upon hearing about dinosaurs.
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quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: I will respond to more later, but this particular statement of Lisa's struck me.
"You will never know everything. It's a tragedy, but eventually you have to learn to live with it."
Are you kidding?
This means I'll always be able to learn something new! As long as I live, I will never run out of discoveries to make. That is the greatest gift this universe could possibly give me.
And yet you accused me of being willfully ignorant because I say that there are some things you just don't know.
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quote:The "every". Assuming that you think random mutations are the mechanism.
I did say every "major" form. For instance, we have light sensitive organelles within single-celled organisms (dinoflagelletes), a single light sensitive cell(or group of cells) in multicellular organisms (earthworms), groups of these cells in a depression (starfish), etc.
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quote:Originally posted by Strider: if something happens, something caused that thing to happen. rinse and repeat.
Which, extrapolated fully implies God. Of course.
Well, I think that the statement might break down when dealing with origins of the universe, but to automatically extrapolate "god" doesn't clear up any ambiguity. It just poses more unanswerable questions. And is a huge and unbased logical leap. As well as serving to stop questioning and learning. Assuming you were being serious.
Is it Dawkins that said something along the lines of "god exists in the gaps of science". Every time a gap is closed up god finds a new smaller gap to exist in.
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quote:The "every". Assuming that you think random mutations are the mechanism.
I did say every "major" form. For instance, we have light sensitive organelles within single-celled organisms (dinoflagelletes), a single light sensitive cell(or group of cells) in multicellular organisms (earthworms), groups of these cells in a depression (starfish), etc.
I was wrong. I misread what you wrote and omitted the "major". I'll take your word that your claim is correct (though I reserve judgement on your definition of "major"). What I posted was based on something you hadn't said, and I retract it.
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quote:Originally posted by Strider: if something happens, something caused that thing to happen. rinse and repeat.
Which, extrapolated fully implies God. Of course.
Well, I think that the statement might break down when dealing with origins of the universe,
Why? Because it invades your comfort zone?
quote:Originally posted by Strider: but to automatically extrapolate "god" doesn't clear up any ambiguity. It just poses more unanswerable questions.
Sorta kinda like the Big Bang.
Everyone who accepts the Big Bang accepts a primal cause. Why does it bother you so much that the Primal Cause spoke to us?
quote:Originally posted by Strider: And is a huge and unbased logical leap. As well as serving to stop questioning and learning. Assuming you were being serious.
I don't see why it should stop questioning and learning. Those who want to stop questioning and learning will find ways and means to do so. They hardly need religion for that.
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posted
If you want to believe in god, fine. I just get annoyed when people default to god when there is a question that is currently unanswerable by science. People have been doing it for thousands of years, even geniuses like Galileo and Newton, and their default positions of "god did it" have always eventually fallen in the face of scientific inquiry. I see no reason to believe that the current unanswerable questions of the universe won't go the same route.
Answering questions of the origin of the universe scientifically doesn't necessitate that there doesn't exist a creator or a deity. I don't see why you should assert that unanswerable questions necessitate the existence of one.
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quote:Everyone who accepts the Big Bang accepts a primal cause.
Those who do so are exceeding what the evidence actually shows. The "Big Bang" is an extrapolation back to a certain point in time that is consistent with the current observed structure of the universe. There is a point at which the scientific answer to "What came before that?" is "We don't know." To call the Big Bang the primal cause is not a scientific statement as it asserts an answer other than "We don't know" into an area where we truly are ignorant.
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quote:Originally posted by Strider: if something happens, something caused that thing to happen. rinse and repeat.
Which, extrapolated fully implies God. Of course.
Well, I think that the statement might break down when dealing with origins of the universe,
Why? Because it invades your comfort zone?
Not at all. I mean that the statement that every effect has a cause gets a bit murky when dealing with the origin of the universe. Was there a big bang? What caused it? Did the universe exist forever? What does that even mean? Are we in a never ending cycle of collapsing and expanding?
It gets murky in the sense that we can't currently explain it. Maybe when dealing with events that happen outside of our space/time the whole concept of cause and effect needs to be reevaluated, or maybe the concept has no meaning outside of the known universe. Maybe a big bang can occur from a singularity in some way from a cause outside of our universe in whatever way things interact at that level. Maybe there are infinite amount of universes being created and destroyed all the time. And they can effect each other somehow. Maybe everything I just said is bogus, and there are countless other more plausible questions and answers. I have no idea, but the questions fascinate me.
My comfort zone is more than fine, my intellectual curiosity is peaked, and I don't see where in any of that it leads to the obvious conclusion of god.
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: And there are shrill people who want to burn the Bible because it says the earth was created less than 6000 years ago. ...
Exaggerate much?
Now and again, Mucus. Now and again. But KoM has said that he'd lock religious people up. And he's not the only such person around. So I don't think I'm exaggerating at all. I didn't say that all atheists want to burn the Bible any more than I said that all religious people have heart attacks upon hearing about dinosaurs.
See, KoM was probably being intentionally provocative, intending for someone religious to get riled up about it. The thing is, even if he was being serious, the Bible's support for YEC would be far down the list of his reasons for wanting to lock religious people up/burning the Bible.
Arguably, he would have many more reasons that he would consider more important Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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I'm not sure why that would be the case, unless you think the Jewish God is the only Prime Mover possible.
quote:However, there is no valid way of using this to claim that only things that occur in a materialist, deterministic way actually exist. This is a common espistemological error I've notived among evangelical atheists.
Tell you what: you prove to me that non-materialistic, non-deterministic things exist, and I'll concede the point. *grin*
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Fine. If that works for you, then cool. But please don't deceive yourself into thinking that it's actual proof of your position. It's just an arbitrary assumption, based on God's non-existence as a starting premise.
It's not proof, in the sense that nothing is ever truly "proven" outside of math, but it is in that case, the logially superior position. Occam's razor...Your way requires believing that it's possible to carve ice cubes with a blowtorch, and that there exists a God, and that God actaully carved the ice-cubes...all suppositions. My way requires only the observable and well-verified facts of nature: the properties of water, and the fact that people can write signs.
If your car won't start, and it's out of gas, do you act based on the premise that God smote your car, or do you use the premise that cars won't run without gas, and act on that?
If you run your hair dryer and the vacuum, and all the electricity goes out, do you presume that God smote your house, or do you presume that a fuse blew, and act on that premise?
If you got sick with treatable, curable cancer, would you pray, or would you go to the doctor, knowing that you risk your life if you act based on the wrong premise?
I could go on. A whole list of common events where you would not actually proceed on the premise that God is directly reponsible, but you would always proceed on the premise that the physical phenonenon you are witnessing has a natural, physical cause.
So if you really want to claim that they are both equally valid, fine.
But I really doubt that an examination of how you act on a day-to-day basis would bear out the conclusion that you think both premises yield equally good results in the real world.
Posts: 575 | Registered: Feb 2007
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quote:However, there is no valid way of using this to claim that only things that occur in a materialist, deterministic way actually exist. This is a common espistemological error I've notived among evangelical atheists.
Tell you what: you prove to me that non-materialistic, non-deterministic things exist, and I'll concede the point. *grin*
Ahhh....I'm having flashbacks of my afterlife thread. When do we start talking about qualia? Tres? Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:See, KoM was probably being intentionally provocative, intending for someone religious to get riled up about it. The thing is, even if he was being serious, the Bible's support for YEC would be far down the list of his reasons for wanting to lock religious people up/burning the Bible.
Although I understand why you might think so, I don't believe Lisa was referring to any particular statement of mine.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Fine. If that works for you, then cool. But please don't deceive yourself into thinking that it's actual proof of your position. It's just an arbitrary assumption, based on God's non-existence as a starting premise.
It's not proof, in the sense that nothing is ever truly "proven" outside of math, but it is in that case, the logially superior position. Occam's razor...Your way requires believing that it's possible to carve ice cubes with a blowtorch, and that there exists a God, and that God actaully carved the ice-cubes...all suppositions. My way requires only the observable and well-verified facts of nature: the properties of water, and the fact that people can write signs.
Occam's Razor is on my side. Not with your silly blowtorch and icecubes, because that didn't happen. But because God told 3 million of us publically, all at once, that He was there, and gave us a whole boatload of information. You have to either do backwards cartwheels to get around that information, or simply ignore it, to reach your atheist position.
You can't come up with a plausable way in which the Torah came into being if it isn't what it purports to be. It's been tried, and the lameness that is the Documentary Hypothesis is apparently the best that could be found. And it's not very good at all.
quote:Originally posted by swbarnes2: If your car won't start, and it's out of gas, do you act based on the premise that God smote your car, or do you use the premise that cars won't run without gas, and act on that?
Depends. Did God come down and talk to me along with 3 million people and say, "Oh, by the by, Lisa, I smote your car"? If so, I think I'd give it credence. If a dozen folks having dinner said, "Oh, happens that God stopped by and said He smote your car," I'd probably laugh. If some nutter in a cave came out and said, "Listen, an angel told me that God smote your car, and that I can have 70 virgins if I smite some more cars myself," I'd wonder what was in his hookah.
You want to lump all three scenarios together and imagine that they're comparable. They aren't.
quote:Originally posted by swbarnes2: If you run your hair dryer and the vacuum, and all the electricity goes out, do you presume that God smote your house, or do you presume that a fuse blew, and act on that premise?
I would hope that God would take the health risks involved in second hand smoting into account.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Please do tell me of its faults! Since I'm not certain about it anyway, and I don't have as much certainty about that as, say, certain other things, I'm very interested to see your view on it.
Posts: 1577 | Registered: Sep 2005
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quote:Occam's Razor is on my side. Not with your silly blowtorch and icecubes, because that didn't happen. But because God told 3 million of us publically, all at once, that He was there, and gave us a whole boatload of information. You have to either do backwards cartwheels to get around that information, or simply ignore it, to reach your atheist position.
Now, when you say "3 million of us", do you count yourself personally, or your ancestors? (I'm assuming this is from scripture, but I honestly don't recall where.)
In the case of your ancestors, I would ask if you have documented sources from 3 million people all saying the same story? Or, do you have a few sources that say God told 3 million people publically?
If the latter, Occam's Razor isn't exactly on your side.
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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