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Author | Topic: Belief Versus The Scientific Method | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8 |
But we do know that Frodo gave his finger for you.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8
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An old joke that is pertinent:
quote: Phat knows what he's supposed to do, but he keeps complaining that it's too hard and not fair. Which it isn't. Which is undoubtedly the point. The Jesus Freaks I learned fundamentalism from circa 1970 spoke often of Jesus wanting followers whose faith was "hot" and not those whose faith was only "lukewarm" (ie, "I do believe, really I do! But I don't wanna act on it, to actually do what I'm told to!"). There's another teaching they gave me and that Pat Robertson used on a reporter during his presidential campaign. The reporter asked if a non-Christian could be saved and Pat replied that he could be but only if he followed all of Mosaic Law his entire life without fail or a single lapse. Having eyes to see and ears to hear (ie, having been taught the hidden meaning to the teachings and parables -- plus having hear that explicit teaching espoused), I immediately recognized that as their argument for why Christ is so necessary for salvation. God had given the Jews laws that He had deliberately made too impossible to be able to keep, so as to make Christ an absolute necessity. Could this mean that Christ was Moses 2.0? That God also deliberately made following Christ just as hard to follow, if not more so? Why? Because God does have a Sense of Humor after all? Sick though it may be. Edited by dwise1, : without fail or a single lapse
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8
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Yeah I forgot that you berate us for having the audacity to think we are any more blessed or favored than a womanizing, drunken atheist who laughs at organized religion and our "sky daddy". Really? You are seriously going to push that old stupid shite? In the meantime, we are all sick and tired of Repuglians pulled that same old stupid shite of projecting their own sick perversions onto their opponents in the height of hypocrisy. Believers' lies about atheists' motivations are based on their own sick longings. Here is the literal testimonial of a local creationist (and one of the worst liars I have ever had to suffer, besides perhaps Trump (but that is a close call) ) of how he had become a fake atheist:
quote: Besides his first sin against English ("They took my sister and I ... " -- please please please study some German (or any other inflected language, though Russian can be a bit more difficult, ну? (Да, я говорю мало по русскиы, конечно) in order to learn the most basic things about case), he just told us in no uncertain terms that it was not evolution, but rather HIS OWN RELIGIOUS TRAINING that had turned him into a "atheist". He wanted to find a legalistic loophole to allow him to sin guilt-free and he found one that had been taught to him his entire life: if you don't believe in God then you are not responsible for your actions and you can freely sin in every which way you could possibly want. Furthermore in our email correspondence, he stated emphatically that he had continued to believe in God and had prayed to God every single night of his "atheism". All of that demonstrates decisively that he was just a fake atheist, though he insists that he was an actual atheist and so he knows exactly why atheists are atheists. Complete and utter BS lies. The truth of the matter is that atheists are more moral than "true Christians" are. Referring to developmental psychology, moral reasoning also goes through stages of development. To test where a child is in moral reasoning, we can use the Jean Valjean scenario from "Les Misérables" in which a man becomes a hunted convict for having stolen a loaf of bread to feed his starving family, though sometimes redressed as stealing an expensive medicine to save his dying wife's life. The earliest most primitive stage is "rules-based morality" in which some authority makes the rules and your job is simply to follow those rules. Basically the Nürnberg Defense ("Ich befolgte nur meine Befehle.", "I was only following orders."). Milgram's infamous psychology experiment in which "teachers" would electrocute "students" to death exposed this mode of morality: if an authority figure takes full responsibility for your actions, then you can commit the most unthinkable acts as directed to by that authority figure. Most adults, especially "true Christians", are stuck in rules-based morality. God tells me to kill gays and abortion doctors, so that is what I will do. I am not responsible for those killings, but rather God is. Yes, that is intentionally extreme, but that is their mind-set. But thus belief in God as your sole responsibility for being moral is actually a cop-out. If God tells you to do something immoral, then the bad consequences of your actions are not your fault, but rather God's, the One Authority who took full responsibility for your actions. You were only following your Befehle. Thus, "true Christian" teachings that atheists don't believe in God in order to escape responsibility for their actions is a complete reversal of reality: "true Christians" use God in order to escape from responsibility for their own heinous misdeeds, choosing to blame God for the great damage they cause. Rather, atheists do take personal responsibility for their own actions. We have no other choice! Nobody else to blame! And BTW. Women are not objects, but rather people in their own right. Objectifying them is far more a Christian thing than an atheist thing. Unless you happen to be yet another a theist pretending to be a fake atheist. So please do not blame atheists for your own moral shortcomings*. *FOOTNOTE: Back when streaking (running naked in public) was a thing in the early 70's, during the Oscars when David Niven was presenting some guy streaked across the stage. David Niven recovered with a remark that some people should refrain from airing their own short-comings in public.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8
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Another take is that if life had never evolved on this planet, then we wouldn't even be having this conversation.
There's also a probability fallacy involved, though I don't remember its name. Basically, you are sitting in a poker game. What is the probability that you would have that exact hand that you are holding? Abysmally small. Therefore, you are not holding that exact hand. Wait, what? And that is exactly where that probability fallacy falls apart. Yes, we can calculate the probability of getting a particular hand and it is very small. But once you do have your hand, then it's a done deal, 100% probability! What are the odds of getting that particular hand? Doesn't matter, because I already have it! So what are the odds of the universe and life on earth being the way that it is? Doesn't matter, because it already happened! Otherwise, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8 |
What does the symbol "PRATT" actually mean? Phat already answered that one in his Message 90: "Points refuted a thousand times." Basically, creationists are apparently incapable (or unwilling) to learn and keep coming back with the same tired old false claims that have been refuted to their faces so many times that, cumulatively, "a thousand times" would be a gross underestimate. Seriously, I have personally witnessed creationists who, after a point was refuted so completely and utterly to the point that the creationist himself had to admit it was false, would then continue to use that exact same false claim (that he himself had admitted was false), thus constituting deliberate lying (at least in my book). Elsewhere, I don't remember an exact phrase but the gist is that it's like trying to kill the undead, that no matter how many times you kill a false claim it just keeps coming back to life and you end up having to refute over and over and over again ad infinitum. Here's a science v. creationism insight. In science when something is found to be false, there are papers published which establish that fact and, ideally, that old false claim is dropped and no longer taught (though there can be some inertia in the system that requires older proponents of that false idea to eventually die out). Such a system does not exist in creationism. Creationism not only doesn't care to test any of its claims, but when a claim is actually found and acknowledged to be false, it still does not get removed from the creationist literature. Case in point is Dr. Henry Morris' repeating of Harold Slusher's false claim about moon dust (which I very strongly suspect Slusher had himself gotten from yet another unknown creationist via handwritten notes since Slusher had misinterpreted "Volume 11" (eleven) as "Volume II" (Roman numeral two)). I did original research into this claim (see my page, MOON DUST) though a couple astronomers published first (no biggie). The thing is that Dr. H. Morris had published that false claim in his book, Scientific Creationism (2nd Ed). Since then, the ICR and Answers in Genesis have both done their best to back away from that moon dust argument, but Dr. H. Morris' Scientific Creationism (2nd Ed) is still in print as the latest edition and is still, I would assume, widely read by budding young creationists. To put that into more practical terms, we have a situation that P.T. Barnum described as a "sucker born every minute". There's an almost steady stream of new converts entering into fundamentalist Christianity (ie, while that movement is hemorrhaging those children born into the faith fleeing that faith for the psychological damage it does, it tries to keep its numbers stable by recruitment through proselytizing). The ultimate problem is that the creationist literature never ever corrects itself. Many creationist claims date back around 1980. While those claims have been refuted soundly, none of those refutations appear in the creationist literature. Indeed, the most common creationist refrain is (paraphrasing) "None of these challenges to evolution have ever been answered by scientists." Oh yes they have been answered! But like the antepenultimate fake news source, "FOX 'News'", the creationists just refuse to publish what scientists actually have to say about your false claims, thus deceiving you.
Next what does the symbol "God as I understand Her" actually mean? Here's a signature fragment of mine from a novel:
{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy. ("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984) Regardless of whether the supernatural actually exists or not, you will always have those individuals who will create gods and then try to convince you of their own personal interpretations, their "own personal heresies." Do I really need to spell it out for you?
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8 |
The God I create exists even if I never existed. Uh, what? Uh, you created that god, so if you never existed that god would never have been created.
Huh? IF A Creator of all seen and unseen exists and IF Jesus represents His identity with humanity, then GOD exists. And no, I do not believe that only those in the synagogue are able to have Holy Communion. Again, Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot-Oscar? (the "Oscar" stands for "over", which is used in radio communications)
Synagogues engaged in ritual cannibalism? They cannot even tolerate any beef less than well-done (hence kosher salt which is good for drawing blood out of meat). Plus "Holy Communion" refers both to a specifically Christian (not Jewish) and also a mystery religion ritual (also not Jewish) in which worshippers' partaking of the resurrected god's body and/or blood in order to partake in that god's immortality. So why slander Judaism as you have done?
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8
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I first heard this one in the 1990 Eric Idle/Robbie Coltrane comedy, Nuns on the Run, in which two small-time crooks hid out by posing as nuns in a Catholic school.
One, the non-Catholic, had to teach the theology class so the other, who had a Catholic background, told him about the Mystery of the Shamrock which demonstrates how the Trinity is actually One. In a later scene, that fake nun's line was "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Shamrock." Many years later, I was surprised to hear that that Shamrock lesson was real and apparently had been used by Saint Patrick himself!
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8
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My analogy was always the Sun, the Light and the Heat. Ironic, since it was Sun God worship that had transformed early Christianity into what it is today. Complete with move the Day of Worship form the actual Sabbath (Saturday, AKA sábado) to The Sun's Day, Sunday. Just for fun and nostalgia (I learned a lot from these films in elementary school), meet Our Mister Sun:
Edited by AdminPhat, : fixed link
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8 |
"Thinking started spreading like the measles."
Christianity is not so much about Jesus as it is about a Sun God.
ABE: One of the problems of having learned so much science so early in my life is that I cannot understand how anyone could so severely misunderstand it. For example, creationist Kent Hovind has his solar-mass-loss claim which I treat here. But various things that he has said in the past makes it appear that he does not understand how the sun works, even to the point thinking that it burns through combustion, a special kind of combustion in which mass ceases to exist (and this from a self-avowed expert in science!). Every creationist I've asked about their views of how the sun actually "burns its fuel" have just gotten all kinds of huffy and left. Part of that is them just being creationists (ie, looking for any excuse at all to run away from any actual discussion), but seriously, how does a scientific illiterate thing that the sun burns? Edited by dwise1, : ABE
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8 |
Allah had no son. Sorry, but that is a false etymology. You cannot equate "Sun" with "son" in any language except for English. If it doesn't work in the original languages, then it is not valid. For example, a local creationist found "great wisdom" in a child's response to a theologian's musing that Jesus had a twin brother. She said, "The Bible says she was with child, not with children. First, the English never ever uses the expression of being "with children". Second, that is not even what the Bible says! In the original Greek, it says that she "had in belly", meaning that she was pregnant. Absolutely no mention of children let alone any hint of how many children she was carrying. If you want to analyze the exact wording, then you need to go back to the original language. Another false folk Christian etymology is "atonement" which they misinterpret as "at-one-ment". Yet again, using English to interpret a non-English word and concept, so complete BS. BTW, Jesus has a very prominent role in Islam.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8
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... my intention was not to conflate Son and Sun. They just sound alike ... Hence my point. Far too many believers commit such conflations and arrive at utterly false conclusions. To quote a fundamentalist Christian co-worker (but still a very good guy), "That's just plain wrong!"
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8
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And the one on cosmic rays. I learned so much from those Dr. Baxter films. Though it wasn't until "Green Acres" about a decade later that I ever learned who Eddie Albert was.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8 |
Furthermore, that link is to WorldNetDaily, which Wikipedia describes thus:
quote: Not very promising.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8 |
Belief is involved in the scientific method when that method is attempted to be applied to things that involve more than the natural laws the bind science. Which is to say, never. Because nobody who properly uses the scientific method would attempt to apply it to the supernatural. Attempting to apply the scientific method to the supernatural would constitute misuse and abuse of the scientific method. For a more complete discussion of this question, refer to a topic from back in 2007: So Just How is ID's Supernatural-based Science Supposed to Work? (SUM. MESSAGES ONLY). In it I posed the question of just how IDiots' reformed science was supposed to actually work. 396 message in total. No answer to my fundamental question of just how it is supposed to work.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5930 Joined: Member Rating: 5.8
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Hm, I smell troll. Yuk!
Now you are trying to favour one media over another based on one media making unsubstantiated claims about other media. Just what the hell are you talking about? If you have a particular case of "unsubstatiated claims" in mind (other than the bat quano nonsense posted on your wnd site), then present it! In the case of science regarding the supernatural, science only says that it cannot deal with the supernatural and hence cannot use it. Just as my computer keyboard cannot deal with photographs or music, so it cannot use either of those two media as input. If you truly think that that means that my keyboard is making unsubstantiated claims about photos or music, then please explain yourself. Dang, the stench of troll is getting strong! "drlove". Does that mean that you're a "true Christian"™? Their Orwellian distortion of the word "love" is very well-known.
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