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Member (Idle past 1494 days) Posts: 19762 From: Silver Spring, MD Joined: |
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Author | Topic: People - I /was/ a Christian | |||||||||||||||||||
arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Nonsense. If the color-blind wanted to honestly test if color-perception was actually possible, they might assemble a series of objects, and then, individually, ask color-sighted persons to identify the color. as you might know, i take a lot of art classes. i hear some fun stories from time to time from the professors about previous color-blind students. for instance, my color theory prof told us about two color blind people who made it through the color-mixing portion of the class and did better than the people who could see a "full" range of color. a photo teach told me a similar story, about someone who could name all the color compositions of a particular color that she couldn't even see. how, exactly, does the color blind person know that others aren't doing exactly the same thing they are, and that the color objectively exists? (ishihara tests maybe? i'm not sure what these people score on those...)
If everybody who claimed to see color saw the same colors, that would be evidence that color-perception was actually an existing sense that some people had. what does red look like to me? what does red look like to you? are they the same thing? if we want to be fairly objective about this, we can compare something like camera sensors and not our own eyes. i shoot with a nikon dslr nowadays, and it happens to see red really poorly. it has a tendency to shift them to orange and blow them. compared to a canon, the two see color differently. which one's the objective? neither look exactly like the way my eye sees, and both have the same sensor construction. and fact is that everybody who sees color does NOT see the same colors. people have massively varying ranges of color vision. even the same person will see one color two different ways depending on the time of day and lighting conditions. or even just surrounding colors. i actually had a problem in my color theory class, because i couldn't see a color illusion i was supposed to duplicate. when you make a huge swath of a color, and then put a neutral gray square in it, it's supposed to appear slightly tinted with the compliment of the color of the surrounding, even if it's pure neutral gray. i don't see it, and i'm the only person the professor has ever taught that didn't. where everyone say a slightly blue square in the orange, i saw only gray. curiously, i knew i was right, because i knew how i mixed my paint. that square was absolutely neutral gray, just like i saw it. everyone else was "deluded."
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
So, what you're saying is - you were in a situation where everybody perceived something you knew was illusionary... ...and you think that undermines my position? i'm sorry, did you assume i was arguing against you?
Would it have been as invalid for you to insist that the square really was gray and that everyone else was mistaken... or deluded... as you now insist it is for me? well, i suppose "deluded" was the wrong word. everyone else also knew the square was gray, because we all went through the same process. the idea was to demonstrate the illusion so we could learn to either use or avoid it in paintings. but i don't happen to see that illusion, which makes me highly abnormal.
Why the double standard? If you can be so sure that everyone else is mistaken, is suffering from an illusion, why can't I? well, this is more about different levels of perception. how do i really know that everyone else saw a blue square, when all i saw was gray? is the objective truth really that it's gray, or does the fact that everyone, everywhere, all the time (except me) sees blue make it blue? what is color, anyways? is it the composition of the pigments? is it the reflection of light? is it the electrical reaction in our eyes? or the processing in our brains? you may argue that it was quite objectively gray. it may well be. but the lesson here was actually that if everyone sees it as slightly blue, you have to compensate for that fact. it doesn't matter that it *IS* gray, all that matters is how people see it. another interesting example of perceptual differences can be had with sound. i happen to have an almost super-human hearing range. i can hear the electromagnetic fields created by things like televisions and computers, and even our air conditioning system. i worked in a department store's portrait studio for a while, and they had a store radio system. whenever they played music, there was this awful screeching noise. it would cut out when they came over the speakers for announcements and such. i was the only one in the store that could hear it, but it started to get so loud i would come home with migraines. i talked to the store manager, and she treated me like i was insane. no one else had ever complained, she said. the one time a customer could hear, i got him to complain -- manager yelled at me, like i somehow made someone else crazy too. i couldn't be crazy, i knew a few other people that could hear it too (brenna could, some of my family could). but everyone there thought i was positively nuts until it got so loud they could hear it too. what's the objective truth there? there was a noise, but it wasn't until a lot of people heard it that that fact mattered. and truth be told, there are lots of other noises that even i can't hear. they're there too.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Arguments that convince myself do me no good if I keep them to myself. quote: It's only in pitting them against others that their weaknesses, if any, are revealed. I talk about atheism because I want to hear the responses, because I'm under the impression that the existence of God and the validity of religion is an issue that's important. well, frankly, if you argue that way simply to gather debate (isn't that "baiting?") don't get too offended when you get debate.
Sometimes it takes me a while to realize I've been convinced. You may yet convince me in the Sodom thread. I'm still thinking about everything you've said - even the stuff you think I haven't read. You convinced me, all those years ago, in the "Gender of Objects" thread, if not completely; it took me a long time to absorb what you had said, and it inculcated an interest in feminist thought that persists to this day. And a wider understanding of the phenomenon of gender. fair enough. i'm quite stubborn myself. i think we'll both fight just for the sake of the fight, but the learning takes a while to set in. i do think the sodom thing is worthy of discussion -- i'm fairly convinced on that matter for a number of reasons, most of which you haven't touched on in that thread. i see you are revisitting it.
Of course, doubtless you'll simply interpret these remarks as me being an asshole, yet again no, quite the contrary. and i'm not saying that to be contrarian yet again. i'm glad we're being reasonable.
It's beyond possibility, I suspect, that I can ever convince you of anything but the most devious and degenerate intent on my part. no, not at all. i'm sure there are a few fields that you are far more versed in than myself, and i am not beyond hope of being taught something. i don't recall any particular instance off the top of my head where you have convinced me of anything, but it's certainly not outside the realm of possibility that you have before or will again.
I don't think the existence of God is a philosophical question. I think it's every bit as practical a question as any in the geosciences. If an interventionist God exists, that has practical consequences in reality that we can look for - and, suspiciously, have never found. err, yes, but notice the qualifier: "interventionist." what if god does not intervene in any appreciable way?
that's just what brenna said to me earlier this afternoon. So, what you're saying is, if I had tits, this thread would be 50 messages shorter? (That's a joke.) lol, no i'm saying that you're both jerks.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Yeah, I did. From context, it seemed like you were presenting an example in rebuttal. Was I mistaken? Never mind, if so. just providing more accurate and detailed information in the hopes of furthering discussion.
I get that too. My TV has a failing flyback transformer, and the coil oscillation noise is mind-shattering, sometimes - but my wife can barely hear it, and neither my parents nor hers hear it at all. (Deafness runs in her family to some degree. No one's ever lived long enough in mine for us to know.) An interesting aside, but again, in each case there exist tools that would have allowed you to demonstrate, without a doubt, that it wasn't just a matter of perception of subjective reality - that there was actually an objective reality that you were accurately perceiving and others were not. A simple spectrum analyzer would have shown a loud sound up around the 20 kHz range in your department store. it was closer to 30 -- i tried matching it to "you shouldn't be able to hear these" tones, to determine just how far out of normal hearing range it was. my best guess (from memory, now) was about 27 kHz (which yes, i can hear).
The fact that humans differ in perceptive ability doesn't impeach the fact that there is an objective reality out there that it's possible to be wrong about. well, yes. i'm not arguing that objectivity does not exist. it does. it has to. i'm just arguing that experience and perception are quite subjective. in the color example, i subjectively did not experience something everyone else did. objectively, what they saw was and illusion. in th sound example, i heard a sound that everyone else could not. objectively, the sound was there, but the people who could not hear it thought i was delusional. with the color, we can objectively test it with a densitometer* and with the sound, something like your spectrum analyzer. but what precisely is the objective test for god? the subjective "i've seen no evidence" isn't really good enough. it wasn't good enough for the sound no one heard -- it was there, but nobody could hear it.
* actually, since i talked about cameras above, it's worth noting that densitometers have to be calibrated and such. what's to say they're really objective? Your examples are interesting, but they don't impeach the conclusions I've already arrived at. We're not talking about detecting sounds at the extreme range of human hearing. We're talking about the existence of an infinitely creative and benevolent force who, if it existed, would profoundly change the face of the universe. well, how exactly would it profoundly change the face of the universe? you might argue that by ockham's razor, a god that doesn't is irrelevent -- and you'd be right. but ockham's razor doesn't say the small variables eliminated for the sake of simplicity don't exist. you might not need lorentz contractions when calculated the speed of your highway travel on the way to work, but it still has an effect.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
I clearly have a lot less interest in the eternal struggle than you. clearly!
I'm all for debate but when parties are at loggerheads, I'd like it to come to an end before the really nasty attacks start happening. You know? i'm sorry, what?
what if god does not intervene in any appreciable way? Then who gives a shit about him? We might as well all just be atheists if we're saddled with a do-nothing God. What's the difference? well, objective reality is the difference then, isn't it? "might as well" and "is" are two different statements.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Nonexistence is the "default" position in such cases. The position of nonexistence is always supported over existence when there's an absolute lack of evidence. yes, it is. but the question is, how does one objectively determine the existence of the supernatural? can it be done?
And honestly, you should know better. How many times around here have you heard people say that the burden of evidence is on those who propose the existence of something? Did you just not believe them? Surely this isn't the first time you've heard of this principle. If we're talking about a God who never takes action and is therefore completely undetectable, what possible reason is there to believe in that God? well, is it objective reality, or not? it seems that if it is, that's a pretty good reason. we might liken it to something like sub-atomic particles. the implications thereof are actually so minute that no one in their right mind would have taken quantum mechanics seriously 200 years ago. what effect does it have, exactly, that you could objectively demonstrate given the tools of the 1800's? yet quarks are real, and we can appreciate the effects today, and tests can be formulated and executed. but 200 years ago, it would have just been "imagination." the burden of proof is on the believer, yes. and that's a mighty fine debate technique -- but the inability to test or deliver evidence in a debate does not change objective reality, does it?
Just making things up is rarely a path to truth. er, no, on the contrary. it's always the path to truth -- at least one step of it. you have to "just make up" explanations to formulate hypotheses -- which can then be tested. a lot of science (and math) comes from sitting around and daydreaming of possibilities. it is the application of those flights of fancy that matters.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
well, is it objective reality, or not? Not, obviously. well, yes, but you're only saying that subjectively, as there's no objective test handy. similarly, you might have said that about the sound only i could hear -- obviously it doesn't exist, because you can see no effect of it in your subjective perceptions, and i don't own a spectrum analyzer required to prove it to you.
It's like you're thinking backwards on this, Arach. You're starting by just assuming what you want to be true - even if it's just to have the discussion - and then wondering if our positions change reality. well, not exactly. our positions don't change reality. you might be right. i might be right. one of us is wrong, objectively. the problem is, with only subjective ways to approach the problem, how do you say one way or the other objectively? you can't -- you can only state the logic that the likely position is nonexistence, not that your likelihood is the objective truth. for all you know, the objective measurement just hasn't been invented yet. and your statement does not change the objective reality, one way or the other. nor does mine.
How does that make any sense? The question is, does God exist or not? The way we answer doesn't change his existence; rather, his existence or non-existence should change how we answer. exactly.
But that doesn't happen if you're just using your imagination. Unless you're looking at the evidence, God's existence or non-existence would have no effect on whether or not you come to the conclusion he exists. unless, perhaps, my subjective experience is different than yours. i'm not saying it is, of course. but what's to say the crazy person who hears god is actually crazy? maybe he's just hearing something outside everyone else's perception. remember, i was percieved as delusional when i heard something that objectively existed when no one else did.
Uh, I did say "just making things up", as in making things up and stopping, not making things up and then doing hypothesis testing against the physical evidence. oh, ok then.
While imagination is clearly integral to the forming of scientific models, it's not a substitute for doing so. Imagination's power must be restrained by hypothesis testing if it's to guide us to truth. indeed. what test can be proposed here? i'll at least hand it to the IDiots, they at least try. even if they're full of shit.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
It wouldn't be unreasonable of me to disbelieve you until one was produced. And it would be pretty ridiculous not to produce one if the stakes of the argument rose to the level of the theism dispute. And indeed, if the spectrum analyzer showed nothing, that would be a mark against your position. Of course, it could be broken. If a second and third failed to detect the sound, a diagnosis of tinnitus on your part would become increasingly reasonable. not unreasonable, no. however, going around and telling my coworkers that i'm crazy might be.
That's what it means to be a "skeptic." These questions aren't rendered undecidable by the subjectivity of experience. no, they're not, are they? but they are rendered undecidable by a lack of an ability to be tested.
Suppose someone maintains the existence of the teapot in orbit. I maintain the non-existence. Are you saying that, with absolutely no evidence for that teapot, both positions are equally likely? That doesn't make any sense. The way we determine the answer objectively is to look at the evidence. And the conspicuous lack of evidence supports the atheist's position. er, no, i'm saying that the inability to find evidence doesn't mean there isn't a teapot in orbit. that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. it might decrease the viability of an argument for presence -- but it doesn't change the objective facts. if there's a teapot in orbit, then your inability to find evidence for it is irrelevent. though i think "satellite of alien origin" might be a better analogy than a teapot, which strongly suggests something of human origin, and vastly decreases the likelihood. you may argue that god is a human creation (indeed, the god of the bible almost certainly is), but that's not what i'm talking about at all.
You mean, besides the fact that he has a medically-diagnosed mental illness? ...well, be careful there. there are a lot of medically-diagnosed mental illnesses of yesteryear that are still in the DSM, but are no longer thought of socially as disorders. such as "gender identity disorder" for homosexuality.
See above where we covered replicating experiences. It's a characteristic of fictional or illusional experiences that individual accounts differ dramatically when people don't have a chance to confer. Don't make me repeat what I said about 30,000 Christian sects, etc. you said you were a former fundamentalist. have you ever been to a pentecostal church? the kind that lays on the hands, and people fall over, and often hallucinate, "speak in tongues" and shake, and such? it's actually quite an interesting point of fact how common those sorts of experiences are. they all have the same basic hallmarks. similarly, alien abductions. i don't think you'd argue that those are "real" phenomena; just part of the human brain. and they are. so i don't think the ability to replicate an experience is a good test for whether or not it's a delusion. but what is?
Defining "God" in such a way that no test is possible doesn't help anything. Just because you (you, generally, "theists", not you specifically Arach) invalidate hypothesis testing by gaming the definition doesn't mean that you've established the veracity of pure imagination. er, you mean by defining god as supernatural? isn't that sort of the point of god? is a god that is not supernatural really a god? (not a rhetorical question -- i don't know) but we don't do it to evade testing for god. that's just the definition of what god is -- i think you'll find many theists these days are more happy to try to define as god as more natural, like the ID crowd who have proposed a (ridiculously moot) test. but the problem comes about because naturalism inherently rejects the supernatural, as there is no way to demonstrate it, and all indication is that it doesn't make much difference. you cannot demonstrate god through scientific means, by definition. why can you demonstrate god in the negative, but not the affirmative? seems rigged to me; a double standard.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
only because you claim that the people who condemn you are atheists and evolutionists. it's really quite a good strategy. "darwinists who disagree with me prove me right.""everyone who disagrees with me is a darwinist."
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Since you are an Atheist-evolutionist and I am a Christian invulnerable logic says your contention that I am mishandling the Bible is false. i thought we already covered this, ray. you're not a christian. remember? you suggested that we could determine who was really a christian and who wasn't by a person's argument. your argument contradicted the teachings of christ, because you go around condemning others. so you're not a christian. sorry, but thanks for playing.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Since you are a person who thinks mankind evolved from an ape ancestor instead of being created by God in His image, and since Richard Dawkins believes what you believe, this proves you are not a real Christian and that I am. since you do not believe in the bible, that proves you are not a christian.
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