Who won the Collins-Dawkins Debate?

I will accept any help offered in framing this topic (and its title) better. I was up in arms hunting for a place to answer two comments I read about the Dawkins-Collins debate. Here they are:From Open Source TheologyGrumble, grumble, grumble...bullarkey.Collins does not accept this. It always irritates me when people say this.The scientific method is not the only way to the truth. There are many other forms of evidence. Eye-witness testimony is pretty unreliable in distinguishing one stranger from another, and it is never 100% reliable. Nonetheless, testimony and experience runs the gamut of reliability from pretty much worthless to extremely reliable. For example, your spouse's testimony that it rained at your home while you were out of town is pretty much "proof" that it happened, yet it is not scientific evidence. Her testimony on other matters may not be that reliable, but the fact is that we all attach a standard of reliability to things we hear and experience. We can refine our judgment on those things as we learn, but in the end the reliability of experience and testimony and anecdote is not zero.That said, all Collins has to prove is that science cannot exclude the possibility of God. Thus, on a completely scientific level, he can explore the possibility of God with Dawkins. Once he it is agreed that scientifically, God cannot be excluded, then Collins and other believers are entirely free to determine the possibility of God's existence on the basis of other things than science, such as experience, testimony, and even wild theorizing about things seen in science and nature.Which brings me to the other quote, from Evolution News & ViewsOnce it is established that science is not the means to determine God's existence, then looking at all the evidence we can find is. If some of that evidence, perhaps circumstantial, but nonetheless useful, comes from scientific facts or conclusions, then so be it. Just because science can't determine whether God exists does not mean that it cannot weigh in on God's existence, and it doesn't mean that those who are seeking experiential evidence of God cannot pull some ideas, thoughts, and influences from science.Finding truth is not an easy thing. It is hard work. Science has weighed in on the existence of God. For example, Darwin himself weighed in, making it clear that the amazing power of an eye (and it really is amazing) is not proof of God. He was able to show from nature, that it can develop, well, naturally. The same with the lung (which developed from the swim bladder, which was awe-inspiring to a non-scientist like myself). Science explained all sorts of things that originally seemed to need a God.Does that mean it will explain all of it? Science may well eventually find a theory of everything (the unifying theory), but that will establish only the orderliness of everything. Will they explain every religious experience? Some already write all such experiences off as the result of brain activity, but such a conclusion is not even remotely warranted at this point, despite the fact that it is certainly understandable that many postulate this.We who believe in God will continue to point, not to gaps that science has not explained, but to the power of a relationship with God and to what man feels in his heart, which is what we've always pointed to at the base of it. Like Collins, I love exploring the universe. It is mandated by my belief in God and in the Scriptures, that say day to day utters speech and night to night give knowledge.However, our belief in the existence of God is not based on science, and the scientific methor is not the only way to seek truth, or we would have disbanded courtrooms long ago.This looks like "Faith & Belief" forum to me ("objective reality vs. subjective concept").

BumpIs no one really interested in this? It was very interesting to me.

This is a general answer to the thread, not really just to Percy. I just needed to quote Percy for one answer. Supposedly, they actually staged a 90-minute debate, according to the intro. So the article can only contain excerpts, because it's sure not 90 minutes of speech long.I really didn't think a moderator would think my OP was ready for moving to a topic, so I thought I'd end up renaming the thread. Oh, well.My issue really isn't who won the debate, but what constitutes evidence in relation to those two quotes, which both suggested that Collins said it wasn't a scientific issue, but then made it one.Somebody in this thread said something along the lines that people or scientists think that science has a monopoly on truth. I think scientists approach their discipline very well, but I also think that we get trapped into thinking the scientific method is the lone way to find truth. It's not.My point was really along those lines.

Well, let's try again. This is edited, because most of the post didn't post. Part of the quote and that's it. Fortunately, this wasn't too long, anyway.I really didn't find it amusing. As a Christian, I found it rather embarrassing. It's hard to appreciate someone making jokes or blithely commenting things like "he'll have an eternity in hell to prove it." It's funny that someone would bubble and boil for all eternity, being excruciatingly tortured by God for 10,000 times 10,000 years and still being at the beginning of the torture? That's not funny. (And you may be able to tell I have a problem with the whole concept.)At least he did settle down and actually talk to Dawkins some. I find the "so you surrender?" comments perfectly acceptable. After all, with only 6 minutes available, it's not like you can have a real debate. He did give Dawkins a reasonable chance to speak, though of course the time was brief. Dawkins can be amazingly gracious for a guy who chooses a rather inflammatory approach to his usual topic of choice.Edited by truthlover, : Most of post disappeared! Maybe my close quote box code was wrong and made that happen. I don't know.

Exactly my point. Faith should be examined, but not necessarily by the scientific method of repeatable experiments.On the other hand, repeatable experiments are not excluded. I think things like conducting prayer experiments were a great idea. It's hard for that to tell us much, though. For example, Charles Finney, the famed 19th century revivalist, was the leading person who said, in a sense, that prayer didn't work. His point was that most Christians of his day had no faith (no useful belief in God, I'm not talking about faith healer faith), their prayers were never answered, and it didn't seem to bother them. Yet he believed in prayer so much that he brought a praying man he trusted with him on every trip he went on.

It is. We know at least that those people's prayers are ineffective. I do offer an alternative (to repeatable experiments). I have argued that there is validity to testimony and to experience (and that this is in fact what court decisions, historical records, etc., are based on).People like Frances Collins don't believe in God because of evidence that can be repeated in a lab. However, it is also not true that it's pure faith based simply on what his parents told him. It's based on testimony, experience, etc.My great aunt believed in ghosts because she lived in a house that was haunted by one. How much reliability do you put on that testimony. None, I'm sure. I don't put much in it, but it's more than none, and the fact is that her experience was repeated, though not in a lab, by her son-in-law, at the same house, who had an extremely hair-raising experience there. That's not the scientific method, but it is the beginning of the historic, investigative, and judicial method. You're speaking of Finney that I mentioned. I don't see how he ignored his own conclusions. He concluded those people had no faith, not that faith didn't work. He would tell you he had plenty of evidence that prayer worked when done right. He had a pretty dramatic influence on New York state in his time. Reader's Digest (admittedly not the most impressive investigative journal) gave him credit for Rochester's citizens being voted the nicest people in America a century after Finney was there.

It is said by most on this board, and it is said by most scientists that some things are not testable by science. In such situations, a different method must be used.I think you are calling things the scientific method that are not the scientific method. They are based on scientific thinking, in that it is good to do things to test or improve the reliability and validity of personal testimony, but they are not scientific, because they are not necessarily repeatable in the lab.We could perhaps do things to test whether my aunt really saw a ghost. We could give her a lie detector test. Not conclusive, but we could make progress. I have no idea what a PKE meter is, nor why anyone would think any meter would be useful in finding ghosts, but if there's some good reason for that, we could try that. We could interview neighbors or people who have visited her and see if they've seen anything. We could interview friends and other relatives to help determine her honesty. But most of these aren't science, they're investigative reporting or history.I actually think you're mostly agreeing with me, except that you are calling things the scientific method that I don't. The only reason that matters is because most people say God can't be tested by science. I agree, but that doesn't leave us with nothing. It leaves us with other methods to find truth, the same methods used in a courtroom, in history, in investigative reporting, etc.

Well, this helps. I'm not the one who has said there are things that can't be tested for science. It is a "given" from my standpoint, because others have said it. In my OP, I was responding to two quotes. Both quotes were working off that idea.That idea seems pretty obviously true, because despite your arguments, I don't see that there's a good way to test whether my aunt really had a ghost in her house can be tested by science. Even if you could determine there wasn't one now--which having no certain information about ghosts, we can't determine--wouldn't prove there never was one.However, let's address your statement, which says "things we know are real." Maybe there are things we "know" are real but can't be tested scientifically, I don't know--never thought about that. However, that's not the issue. The issue is, if there's things we know can't be tested by science, does that automatically make them extremely unlikely.That's the issue, and my argument is no it does not. Or, as is likely, there'd be hardly any evidence to work with at all, and we wouldn't know anything, because there is no PKE meter, which again would only tell us if there was a ghost now, not whether there was one when my aunt saw something.What is the likelihood of my aunt being correct? Who knows? Those who have had similar experiences tend to think the probability is not close to zero. You can't use self-correcting scientific methodologies on everything. You can't use self-correcting scientific methodologies to determine guilt in a courtroom, which is why we use a 12 person jury trial. Whether that 12 person jury trial is a joke depends a lot on the nature of the evidence and the emotional state of the trial. In a low emotion trial with strong evidence, a 12 person jury trial works pretty well.In the end, though, this isn't about a trial, it's about God. Was it God who healed my nephew in response to prayer, or did he just happen to suddenly get well after a year of increasing blindness? If that's the only thing that's ever happened in response to prayer, then I'd be prone to saying he suddenly got well after a year of increasing blindness.It used to seem very likely to everyone that God existed, because the world was so unexplainable. Science has explained much of creation. So now many believe it will explain it all. Some have had virtually no experience with bizarre, unexplainable experiences. Others have had many. All those things affect our judgment of the likelihood of God existing.I wasn't an atheist very long. A few years in my late teens until around 21. Now I've spent 24 years putting the hypothesis of God existing into practice in my life. I have to look at those who have done the same and had no experience of God whatsoever. I have to look at the failure of religion around me. I have to look at arguments concerning the suffering that is in the world. And I have to look at places where religion, prayer, and religious activities have not failed, but have been successful, useful, and powerful.Every person does that to some extent. From my own perspective, it seems very unlikely that God isn't real.The things I've mentioned above are notoriously unreliable. There's not something else to work with, though. There's those kinds of evidences. When I try to take those evidences and make a case for God, that case looks shaky on paper (though when a person gets to live the life I live for a while, it looks a lot less shaky). However, when I take those evidences and try to say God is unlikely to exist, I'm unable to draw that conclusion, either. Too much mitigates against it.I apologize that this is so long. I couldn't think of a way to say this shorter.That's my whole case. If I don't answer your next post, it's not because I didn't read it, nor because I'm mad, nor because I give in to your arguments. I think I've said all I can, and I'm okay with my position. You can have the last word.

Would you be willing to discuss this in another thread? What I'm curious about is how this position would answer a few common atheist arguments, such as the ones about suffering in the world. I'm curious about whether this is necessarily positing an unemotional, distant God, or whether it's not positing anything about such a God except his/her/its existence. Would the existence of terrible suffering mean that such a God could not be loving? Is the very idea to posit a God that is not personal or loving?I have a number of such questions that are not arguments or attacks, just real questions. I don't know if there's anyone else on evcforum who thinks what you wrote in this paragraph, but the concept is not unique to you, and it's one I'd like to ask questions about.Ok, having stated my motivations, would you participate in a thread like that if I started it?

No offense taken. I didn't realize that, and yes, he'd be more equipped than me. My apologies if I seemed rude rather than ignorant (or both).I really thought I was hearing something different from him than what I've been hearing, from scientists, about what is and what isn't "the scientific method." I was trying to respond to what I thought I'd heard, and he was saying something different. It was really a bit frustrating.I'll assume I misunderstood what I've heard in the past, because I certainly understood what Larni was saying. Although, as a result, I'm going to have to look up some of what I read in the past and find out what I was supposed to be hearing. Sigh...work never ends and nothing is ever as easy as I hope it is. Yep. I'd agree that what's undetectable--at all times--is irrelevant. I'm not talking about anything always undetectable. I hope I haven't said anything contrary to this, and I'm under the impression I haven't. I'm talking about things that require leaning on testimony and other such forms of evidence. Never disagreed with this, and I think I at least used the word unreliable in reference to witnesses. (Looked it up, I said "notoriously unreliable.")However, witnesses most certainly can make a difference between "there's no evidence it happened, and thus we should dismiss it as almost certainly having never happened" and "we don't have any evidence, but a lot of people say it happened, so someone ought to check it out."A lot of things that people say happened turned out really to have happened. "Unreliable" does not mean "certain to be wrong." A lot of witnesses certainly increases the chances of something having happened, often by a lot. Really? I can't say I'd have been prone to guessing one way or another. This isn't really on topic, and your comment was probably just offhand, but wouldn't emotion be as likely to get someone hung as to let someone off?Also, as someone else pointed out, you did mean to say that DNA and ballistics are more likely to get things right than an eye witness, right?

Thanks, Larni; that was very gracious of you.My apologies if I seemed obstinate on the whole subject of the scientific method. It is scientists who have been saying "God can't be tested for," both on this board and in the news. I have apparently been misunderstanding what is meant by that (I guess).But now I need to ask you something so you can help me understand what really is meant by God being outside of science.Do you even believe it's true that God could exist and yet be outside science or untestable by science? (IOW, do you disagree with say, what Collins and Kenneth Miller, who believe in God, mean when they say he's outside of science.)A lot of history is based on testimony. I'm assuming that you'd call it part of the scientific method (archeology) to find say, a stone tablet in an ancient Assyrian library that gives the history of a king. I'm also assuming that the testimony itself, what's written on the tablet, you wouldn't call part of the scientific method. It's ancedote or a witness's testimony.My question on that paragraph is, first, are my assumptions true (they're about you, and the rest of my question is dumb if my assumptions are wrong), and second, if an Egyptian papyrus also gave a similar history of the Assyrian king, historians would consider that collaborating testimony pretty reliable; would you call those collaborating testimonies science or belonging to the scientific method?Thanks.

Thank you for answering my questions, but I have to say that the most interesting thing in your post was your reasons for edit! Ok, well, that answers that.If the scientific method means properly interpreting data, whatever that data might be, then I'm perfectly fine with saying God is subject to scientific investigation. I'd hate to think I'm following a God that can't be investigated.

Hmm. Every marvelous, unexplainable thing that has ever happened to you, whether by prayer or not, is sheer coincidence; unlikely on a personal basis, but very likely to happen to someone on a 6-billion-person earth. All those awesome Guidepost stories I read from astounded people as a kid - all either imagined or pure chance. My nephew being healed of blindness (only one eye was blind, the other was still following suit) following one of those amazing other worldly experiences of prayer that are so unusual...it was just chance. His infection was fixin' to suddenly disappear after increasing for 18 months, anyway. The timing was pure luck. (He was a 2-year-old who didn't know we had prayed.)It doesn't matter how many of those stories we accumulate, they were all chance or illusion.I'll pass on Dawkins as a religious leader, thanks, despite completely agreeing with that quote you gave from him.

This is the only puzzling statement in your whole post. Why would this be hard to read? I would have assumed that the things in your post are what you think. I've had threads on this subject (at least two), so I shouldn't have surprised you, either. I think it was Schraf and Holmes who most affirmed that probably all the things I experience are chance. Overall, there is no doubt that that this is true.The only problem I have with what you said is the assumption behind it. "Gosh, even TL is deceived by religion into thinking that the things going on around him are moved by God when in fact they are all chance."Religion may bias me, though I was an atheist for a short time. Everyone is biased in some way. I wrestled for a long time with at least two specific issues: If the creator is the God of Isreal, then why would he allow Israel to wipe out entire nations? If there is a loving Creator at all, then why the sort of suffering that is in the world? I am reading "Letters from a Skeptic" by Gregory Boyd. His answers to such questions converted his father, but they're not very convincing to me.So I have to live with the fact that intellectually, I have problems with the whole idea of the God I believe in.Bias is unavoidable, I know, but that doesn't mean I don't try to avoid it. Remember, this is my life. I could be doing something different. I've already been pushed out by the Baptists for doctrinal issues, faced my friends utter astonishment at my agreeing with evolution, been called a wild liberal for not adopting Mennonite morals among another group I'm a part of. I've got a good work history, and I'm employable. I have no reason to simply continue what I'm doing if it's stupid.However, I am not blindly hoping that my faith works. It works. It works incredibly well. As far as I can tell, I and we at Rose Creek Village live life on earth with rather astonishing power. Simply walking through our front gate sometimes has rather astonishing effects on people. I see things very close to every day that strengthen me in my belief that whether the whole history of my faith makes sense to me or not, that faith has abundant spiritual power. It works.You can think me biased or simply fooled by my religion, but as far as I can tell, I'm not sticking my head in the sand or dodging anything.Personally, I think the assumption that nothing has happened in front of my eyes that should be, after careful and "scientific" inquiry and consideration, determined to be far beyond chance and indicative of supernatural intervention is just that, an assumption. I don't feel bad. I was honest, and that's all I can be. I might have been allowed to keep the name truthlover, but really, I can't be responsible for truth. I can only be responsible for honesty and thus come as close to the truth as is possible for me.I feel like if I'm honest (and not a jerk), and if I'm right that God exists, then he's got to take care of the rest. If my honesty solidifies your atheism, I don't know what I can do about that. I wish that wouldn't happen, but it's unavoidable. Maybe in the end, I'm really just a deceived person and that ought to be your response to my faith.I doubt it, though .

Gosh, I hope I haven't said anything to the contrary.I've given heartfelt prayers for people who have died (just a couple, as not too many of my friends and relatives have died). I've given heartfelt prayers for sick children, of which I have six that I love dearly, and had nothing happen. One was a child I prayed all night for at the hospital. He died. I was devastated watching his mom's empty eyes.My nephew's situation was special. I was an ocean away (I was in Germany), and I KNEW something had happened.I was in the charismatic movement in the early 80's. I saw so much fake stuff that I ran, not walked, in the other direction. In the early 90's, when my wife was pregnant with our second child, I visited a charismatic church with a friend. I did not want to be there, and I never would have gone had I not been with him. This was a huge church with perhaps 4,000 people in attendance.The pastor stopped his sermon to say he was supposed to pray for a pregnant mom. He then walked down the aisle (there were three or four aisles, this place was huge) until he got near my seat. He stopped, looking quite dazed, and stared at my wife's empty seat. She had left to go to the bathroom. He paused there for long enough for the deacon or whoever was with him to get uncomfortable, and finally someone called to him and said "there's a pregnant woman over here." (I did go talk to this pastor after the service, curious about whether God had something for me.)That's a dumb story. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and I don't even like the charismatic movement. After a couple decades of this, though, Percy, whether it makes sense or not, you start to think there's more going on than meets the eye.Or, if you already thought so, you get more convinced of it.