People - I /was/ a Christian

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...) 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."

---

i'm sorry, did you assume i was arguing against you? 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. 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.

---

quote:

---

this little light of mine,
i'm gonna let it shine...

---

well, frankly, if you argue that way simply to gather debate (isn't that "baiting?") don't get too offended when you get debate. 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. no, quite the contrary. and i'm not saying that to be contrarian yet again. i'm glad we're being reasonable. 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. err, yes, but notice the qualifier: "interventionist." what if god does not intervene in any appreciable way? lol, no i'm saying that you're both jerks.

---

just providing more accurate and detailed information in the hopes of furthering discussion. 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). 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?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.

---

clearly! i'm sorry, what? well, objective reality is the difference then, isn't it? "might as well" and "is" are two different statements.

---

yes, it is. but the question is, how does one objectively determine the existence of the supernatural? can it be done? 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? 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.

---

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. 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. exactly. 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. oh, ok then. 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.

---

not unreasonable, no. however, going around and telling my coworkers that i'm crazy might be. no, they're not, are they? but they are rendered undecidable by a lack of an ability to be tested. 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. ...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. 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? 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.

---

it's really quite a good strategy."darwinists who disagree with me prove me right."
"everyone who disagrees with me is a darwinist."

---

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.

---

since you do not believe in the bible, that proves you are not a christian.

---