Who won the Collins-Dawkins Debate?

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Some things are not worth wasting the time and money to study, and I can imagine that if I could produce nine people who regained limbs after prayer at someone's prayer meeting, there would be very few clamoring for a study to determine whether it was pure chance and people are just regaining limbs on a regular basis with or without prayer.

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No, actually, we would most definitely clamor for a study on how a group of people started regrowing lost limbs.We would want to use the very most vigorous scientific methodology in order to learn everything we possibly could about this limb regrowth.

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Many experiments reported in newspapers and even in journals can't meet the standards that you describe.

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I think that you still have some fundamental misunderstanding of science if you believe this to be the case.Sure, studies vary in quality, and some that are published and reported on later turn out to have some serious flaws.However, by and large, the standards that Percy and I have been talking about are, indeed, followed in the vast, vast majority of published scientific papers. Otherwise, they wouldn't pass peer-review. We're talking hundreds of thousands of papers per year.

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Thus, the extracts will say things like "this suggests further study on such and such"

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See, that's very good. That a study produces more questions for further investigation is a sign that the scientific process is working and that this line of investigation is a fruitful one with lots to discover.

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and if it's a newspaper story, then they say things like "other scientists say such and such was not addressed, so the conclusions are tentative" or some such thing.

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Just because a study doesn't answer ALL questions regarding a phenomena doesn't mean it hasn't answered ANY. And just because scientists may disagree on the interpretation of the data doesn't mean the data wasn't gathered or analysed under rigorous scientific standards.And remember, science isn't done by one or a few people. Any one particular study is a narowly-focused, closeup snapshot of approximate reality. You need many such snapshots, often captured over decades, of the same landscape before you begin to be able to get any kind of coherent overall picture.Edited by nator, : No reason given.

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I think that sufficient repeated failure would convince me that prayer doesn't work, which is why I don't try emptying hospital wards and nursing homes with my incredible faith.

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See, this is your bias showing again.If you think that prayer works, why wouldn't you try emptying hospital wards and nursing homes?Look, you've likely made scores of prayers that failed, and you've discounted them or simply forgotten those "misses". That is a form of confimation bias.It surely looks as though, even if all of those failures were painstakingly recorded somehow and you saw the enormous list, you would still just point to your several spectaular-looking sucesses.It appears to me that you are taking great pains to shield yourself from any possible negative evidence.

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Ok, this to me is what we're really arguing. Am I ignoring countless "misses" because of confirmation bias? I blot them out, ignore them, don't look at them, whatever.

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I'm sure that must happen some. I don't believe it happens so much that I'm just deluded.

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LOL!Of course you don't believe that you are deluded. That's the nature of delusion, isn't it? If you knew you had deluded yourself, you wouldn't be deluded anymore.And confimation bias is completely pervasive and insidious and second-nature in the everyday cognition of all of humanity.The ONLY way to counter it in situations like we've been discussing is by the double-blind methods percy and I have been harping on about.

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You, of course, think it's all the result of confirmation bias. Good enough. I've already discussed this with you, and I know you think that. I'm not trying to talk you out of believing that, and I haven't been trying to talk you out of believing that.

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I know you haven't been trying to talk me out of anything.It is as though, however, that percy and I have been pointing out the flaws in your logic and the bias you keep displaying, and you keep restating them in different ways, which we then address a second, and third time, etc.Honestly, it's like you are putting up some kind of barrier to keep yourself from applying what we've been saying to your own situation.

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I, on the other hand, since it's my life, have to consider whether maybe you're right. I really don't know what else to do except to think, "You know, tl, you're just like everyone else, and you may be fooling yourself," and then pay a lot of attention.

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Just "paying attention" isn't enough, tl. Even if you pay attention "a lot".That's the entire point of this discussion between the three of us.If "paying attention a lot" was enough, double blind studies wouldn't have near the clout in, say, medical testing, that they do.That's because we've identified something called "observer" or "experimenter effect", which is when the person making the observation can influence the oucome of a test if they know what the outcome of the experiment is supposed to be.So, "double blind", where neither the thing or person being tested, nor the person administering the test, knows what the result is "supposed" to be, is the best possible test wrt eliminating bias.

You really need to redesign your car experiment, mike.It won't tell you anything meaningful as it is.In fact, it's completely incomprehensible and there is no possible way that one could come to the conclusions you say I would by folowing your method.

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They count the negatives, we count the positives.

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No mike.You count the positives, and we count the positives, the negatives, and the neutrals.Remember what I wrote way back in message #124 of this thread:

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All people are biased, including atheists.

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Right.Exactly.Everybody is biased.I wonder if there is a method we can use to examine a phenomena with as little influence from bias as possible?Can you think of one, mike?

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'Explanations like "God won't be tested by scientific studies" but local yokels can figure it out just by staying aware of what's going on have no rational basis whatsoever.' -Percy"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool."- Richard Feynman"Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends! Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!"
- Ned Flanders

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Ok, Schraf, yours first. (I hope the change to nator wasn't a dislike of the Schraf part; I'm used to referring to you as Schraf. If there's some reason I should quit, that's fine.)

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Nah, you can call me whatever you like (within reason).

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You can "LOL" if you want, but my point was valid. It's not so simple that people are simply deluded, don't know it, and that's that. In fact, it's almost never that simple in real life. Deluded people can be educated; they can be told how they were deceived; they can be shown something they missed. That's how real life works from minor disagreements among members of a household all the way to members of the Branch Davidians.

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But nothing you've just written counters my point in the least.People who are deluded, by definition, don't know that they are deluded.The nature of their particular delusion doesn't matter at all.You are trying to find a technicality to get around a tautology, but that's impossible.

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No, that's the only way too eliminate it. It is not the only way to counter it.

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Bias in can be greatly reduced, but if there is a human element present anywhere in any scientific investigation, there is probably some bias in there somewhere.

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I used to read nutrition journals regularly. Tentative conclusions are drawn all the time apart from double blind studies, especially where they are impossible.(snip)

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That's a pretty good response, but the evidence for prayer that we've been talking about doesn't even come close to the nutritional studies you are talking about. You are arguing with very flimsy anecdote and lots and lots of unchecked bias.In the nutritional studies, we know with pretty good confidence that there is a difference between those who take vitamins and those who don't. With your prayer claims, we don't have any idea if there is a difference or not.

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However, you haven't walked in my shoes, experienced the things I've experienced, and yet there is an assumption you make that those consistent, positive results haven't happened.

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No, no, no, no, no.I have made no assumption regarding any anecdotes that you have brought forth.I am sure that you have had some instances where prayer seems to have worked.Yet again, I will state that looking only at the positives in no way can ever tell you if those positive results are "consistent".Never. Ever. Not ever. Period.

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My objection all along has been not to the argument that my judgment is questionable, but that the evidence really doesn't exist.

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TL, you haven't come remotely close to presenting any evidence in any way that would allow a rational conclusion to be reached.

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'Explanations like "God won't be tested by scientific studies" but local yokels can figure it out just by staying aware of what's going on have no rational basis whatsoever.' -Percy"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool."- Richard Feynman"Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends! Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!"
- Ned Flanders

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However, the answer to this question is that there's a lot of "lives of faith" that don't produce any results and ought to be abandoned.

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So, the point of living a "life of faith" is to "get results"?...as in, "get special favors from God"?This may not be what you mean but in the context of the ongoing discussion on the effect of prayer on healing, that is what your above statement seems to imply.

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I don't understand the reason for this question. Of course the point of living a life of faith is to get results. That includes finding favor with God. Maybe that's all it includes, but I don't know how you define "favor with God."

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Well, I guess I'd like a more specific definition of how you define "favors from God."I mean, when I was a believer I viewed the Bible as a source of guidence for how to get along with other people so that everybody's life gets better. I prayed for the wisdom to do the right thing, not so much for God to grant special favors.If, however, you are defining "special favors from God" as healings in response to prayer, are those the "results" of faith of which you speak?

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You don't have to believe the evidence that there's divine intervention in our life is that great. I'm just asking you to admit that if we offered up 300 prayers for something that had a 1% chance of happening, and it happened 250 of those 300 times, that we would be justified in concluding that our prayer is related to those results, and that it would be reasonable not to dismiss prayer.

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I agree, wholeheartedly.The problem is, you aren't currently including in your analysis the 50 times that prayer doesn't work. Not only aren't you counting those times, you actually have no idea how many times prayer does or doesn't work.That is because you are not calculating the statistical chances of something happening (or not) in each instance.Like I said, you haven't presented any data in any form that can allow anyone to make a rational determination of the efficacy of your prayer.Not even remotely close.Edited by nator, : No reason given.

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True, but not just one.

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The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

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I wasn't troubled by doubts at all anymore.

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Deeply religious people who don't have any doubt at all scare the crap out of me.That's the honest truth.I just don't have any understanding whatsoever of that kind of certainty of belief.I don't have that kind of surety of belief or confidence of my understanding of anything at all. Not a single thing do I think I understand or believe 100%, with no doubts at all.How can I be completely sure, since I am a mere human with human limitations of imagination and intellect and ability to access information?How can anybody be without any doubt, about anything?

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Another argument that stuck with me was from Schraf. She said, let us give you a frontal lobotomy, and let's see how well your soul works then. I sat in a ditch next to a trail in the woods at some point back then and debated becoming an agnostic. (I could stay at Rose Creek Village as an agnostic, though it would be awkward.)

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Well, damn, I'll have to remember to use that line again. Edited by nator, : No reason given.

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Which I suppose makes me paradoxically sure about one thing - The First Church of the Agnostic is really the only one true church.

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Oh wow.You need to read this essay that my friend wrote a long time ago.

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This is extremely well put. Is it yours? Doesn't matter, I'm shamelessly stealing it anyway at the first opportunity.

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As much as I would love to take credit for this phrase, I cannot.I heard it first from Zhimbo, but I don't know if it is his or if he heard it from someone else.I can't ask him, either, because he is currently napping.A long, long night of writing last night for him.

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Me, too. I didn't say I didn't have any doubts. I said I wasn't troubled by them, anymore.

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OK, now I understand better. That's not so scary. In fact, this makes you and I very similar, since I am an agnostic.

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Some doubts are big enough to be troubling. Others are small enough that they don't worry you. "There's always a possibility that I might be wrong or even totally insane" is not the sort of doubt that one loses sleep over.

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Perhaps the difference is I doubt everything, and I am quite comfortable with such doubts, and you are only comfortable with certain doubts?

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And how likely is it, that if there is a revealed God that has judgments for beyond this life, that he'll accept, "Well, it really seemed pretty unknowable to me, so I just did whatever I thought was best without really looking that hard to see if you had any requirements or suggestions"?

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Why do you assume Agnostics "haven't looked hard"?

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Being agnostic is not just being lazy and shrugging your shoulders. Being agnostic means that you use your God given talent and senses to constantly evaluate the evidence, and will not settle for a comfortable pew and spoon fed theology. The agnostic believes in expanding and learning and rejects stagnation, complacency and laziness.

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YES! YES! YES!

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'Explanations like "God won't be tested by scientific studies" but local yokels can figure it out just by staying aware of what's going on have no rational basis whatsoever.' -Percy"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool."- Richard Feynman"Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends! Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!"
- Ned Flanders