Double-blind Prayer Efficacy Test -- Really?

[Subduction Zone]

How do you know there weren’t third parties available? How do you know I wasn’t a third disinterested party?

You have already told us that you were not a disinterested party.

One of the huge red flags about Reiki is that no one can properly explain how it is supposed to work.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Yes, you can. You aware no doubt aware that definitions don't change reality, just what we call its objects, processes, and traits. Those choices will create problems for you conceptually and in communication, so they are poor ones, but you're free to go ahead and make those changes if you think it will clarify reality for you. Likewise, you calling agnostic atheists agnostics but not atheists doesn't change who those people are or what they believe, just what YOU call them, and is not relevant to them except when trying to understand what YOU mean when you use those words.

Apparently, for YOU, atheist means a person who says that there is no god, and an agnostic is somebody who expresses psychological (emotional, or felt) rather than mere philosophical doubt (intellectual, or understood). OK. I have no objection to your use of language that way except that your words don't map onto reality and your nomenclature isn't useful to me, as I explained, and I can generally understand what you are trying to say even if I disagree. But I can't use a definition of atheist that doesn't include what I call agnostic atheists like me, which apparently is most of us.



Not for an atheist. I have found meaning and purpose in my life, but that doesn't answer why any of us are here.

Also, out of respect for your desire to know the why of reality all the way back, you now have a whole raft of new unanswered questions, such as why someone put us here to do good and why somebody exists that can do that. You seem unaware that the weapon you wish to scuttle naturalistic hypotheses with

The Principle of Sufficient Reason stipulates that everything must have "a reason, cause, or ground." It might be correct, but even if it is, it doesn't promise that that reason or the one preceding it or the one preceding that can be determined, and ultimately, we must abandon the hope of finding a first cause in that infinite regress. And as I explained, this OK because it has to be and because it always has been the case and caused no problems.



Purposeless to whom? Not to me. My life is purposeless to inanimate matter, but that doesn't matter to me. Your theology has deprived you of what the humanist sees. I suppose you can't know what he thinks if you can't imagine it and won't listen to him, but you keep guessing, and guessing wrong. Why? You take your mind instead of his and subtract God from it, and imagine how that would look to you - hopeless, purposeless, not worth living. It reminds me of the line from Seinfeld:

ELAINE: If you were a woman would you go out with him?
JERRY: If I was a woman I'd be down at the dock waiting for the fleet to come in.​

That's an example of a guy who took his mans mind and imagined how he would react in a woman's body if he woke up in one some day. Of course, he's overlooking the fact that almost no woman want to do that, so he's wrong. He didn't grow up as a woman, and so doesn't think like one. The same applies here with you. You make the same kind of substitution, and also fail to notice that the people you're talking about don't fit your guesses for them.



Not nonsense. But then, how would you know? You deprived yourself of the opportunity to mature in atheism.



And that would likely lead to an existential crisis for you were you to suddenly lose your god belief, which is why I told you earlier that I am not interested in converting older theists to humanism. I made the change at 35 when my neuroplasticity was up to the challenge of redrawing my mental map, and when I still had most of my generative years still ahead, years in which I would be making life decisions that could impact my future greatly. I had much to gain and the cost, an uncomfortable year of being half in and half out praying to Jesus that if I were making a mistake to let me know, was absorbable. But to do that now? Assuming that it was still possible, why bother?

But I did make the transition and have had plenty of time to mature in humanism, and I can assure you that the experience in nothing like what you describe or imagine.

I'd like to introduce the term optimistic nihilism here. You've seen it in me before when I expressed acceptance of the facts that reality might be fundamentally and radically different than it appears, and that we not have free will. OK. If that's how things are, I'm good with it, just as if there is no purpose to life outside of that which we give it, OK. That's fine, too.

"Optimistic nihilism views the belief that there is no underlying meaning to life from a perspective of hope. It’s not that we’re doomed to live in a meaningless universe–it’s that we get the chance to experience ourselves and the universe we share. The optimistic nihilist looks at a world lacking meaning and purpose and sees the opportunity to create their own."

You assume that somebody thinking that there's no point to life will be unhappy. All you need do is look around you and count the numbers of people that are content with the possibility that they live in a godless universe that can blindly generate life and mind. Yes, I understand that that may not be the case, but that's not the point. The point is that one can be happy without beliefs like yours.



Except that you reject people like me calling themselves atheists because they don't also believe that gods cannot exist. Your definition is based in what people calling themselves atheists believe about gods



You don't seem to be able to grasp that the ideas are not mutually exclusive. I suspect also that you don't understand the difference between philosophical and psychological doubt because you are only familiar with the latter, so you think agnostic atheists are still travailing over whether gods exist.

Have you seen Dawkins' scale of theistic probability from his book The God Delusion, or how sure one is in his or her god belief or disbelief? He names 7 levels, the last two being

6. De facto atheist. Very low probability, but short of zero. "I don't know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there."
7. Strong atheist. "I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung knows there is one."

"Dawkins argues that while there appear to be plenty of individuals that would place themselves as "1" due to the strictness of religious doctrine against doubt, most atheists do not consider themselves "7" because atheism arises from a lack of evidence and evidence can always change a thinking person's mind. In print, Dawkins self-identified as a "6", though when interviewed [later] suggested "6.9" to be more accurate."​

This is philosophical doubt - understood, not felt - but would have you say that Dawkins is not an atheist, as if he were sitting on a fence on the matter. The issue is settled for him like it is for me and most other agnostic atheists. We're not seeking gods because we don't expect to find any, not because we know they don't exist. And your nomenclature doesn't work for us, so we don't use it, or care when others insist we must because they found it in a dictionary.

Great post! Love the Seinfeld reference.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Belief

1. The mental act, condition, or habit of placing trust or confidence in another.
2. Mental acceptance of and conviction in the truth, actuality, or validity of something.
3. Something believed or accepted as true, especially a particular tenet or a body of tenets accepted by a group of persons.

Atheist
One who denies the existence of God, or of a supreme intelligent being.

To deny something is a belief. If you only day: " I don't know one way or another, that's neatral.

Dude! You went back to using your refuted definition.

Nor does your post say anything about a lack of belief.

Having an unjustified belief is your flaw, not mine. You are trying to create a Tu Quoque fallacy out of your inability to understand a simple concept.

 

[sojourner]

You have already told us that you were not a disinterested party.

One of the huge red flags about Reiki is that no one can properly explain how it is supposed to work.

No, I just neglected to mention.

years ago, no one knew how gravity worked, either. But it does.

 

[Subduction Zone]

No, I just neglected to mention.

years ago, no one knew how gravity worked, either. But it does.

But we do know how various placebo effects work. A reinforced placebo effect is a much more reasonable explanation than "magic".

 

[Sheldon]

I don't see a difference. An absence of belief in deities doesn't leave room for God being a possibility.

Possibility needs to be demonstrated, and not assumed, and until it is I will withhold belief, I rule out nothing.

Atheism is the lack or absence of belief in any deity or deities, and nothing more.

 

[sojourner]

But we do know how various placebo effects work. A reinforced placebo effect is a much more reasonable explanation than "magic".

Who said anything about magic?

 

[Sheldon]

Matter can't create life.

It certainly can, indeed we only have evidence of life being created by matter.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Who said anything about magic?

Those using Reiki.

They have no other explanation.

 

[sojourner]

Those using Reiki.

They have no other explanation.

Sure they do.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Sure they do.

I have never seen one. Perhaps you know of one.

 

[Sheldon]

PruePhillip said: ↑
1 - you cannot question the nature of a realm you cannot comprehend

Of course I can, don't be silly, your claims about its nature are risible, since you have claimed it cannot be comprehended. It appears you still don't understand what a laughable contradiction those two assertions create. That you think making an appeal to mystery somehow defends the notion speaks for itself, but if you'd care to learn how irrational such a rationale is, you might learn what an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy is, and what it means logically for your argument here.

So space and time are part of what we call our 'universe'.
That is, the sum of all physical entities - even any multiverses.

And at some point this universe began.
But what made it begin, gave it properties and importantly, for what reason?

Whatever entity-being-alien physics created this world of space and time operated on different principles.
And if this thing created time then can we assume it doesn't have time itself? How does a realm operate without time?
So how can we be asking how some alien entity 'began' when beginning only concerns states with time in it?

Your string of unevidenced assumptions doesn't seem to have any relation to your claim or my response? You cannot rationally claim something is incomprehensible, while simultaneously making assertions about it.

 

[Sheldon]

I have this theory I call 'skeptics of the gaps' concerning the bible.
The claim by skeptics has been, over the past 100 years or more, that the bible is myth - there being no Jewish people, no Patriarchs, no King David, no Moses, no Sodom and Gomorrah and no Jesus. But slowly these figures, cities, empires and prophets have come to light. This year it has been Sodom and the proving that the Jews of Moses time had a written language.

Cool story, but scepticism is the default position to any unevidenced claim, and all you have done here is make a string of unevidenced claims, so I remain sceptical, and also have no idea what exactly you are even trying to assert, or why?

Your posts also seems yet again to have absolutely nothing to do with my post you have quoted? Here:

Sheldon said: ↑
This type of apologetics has been labelled a "god of the gaps" polemic, these arguments usually use an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy.

 

[Sheldon]

Because they gave a different definition. BTW, should we let everyone who calls themselves a Christian to define the word ", Christian"? I don't think so. I have heard people apply the word to themselves who don't even believe in the life story of Jesus from the Bible.
The word Christian comes from the Greek word christianos which is derived from the word christos or Christ, which means “anointed one.” A Christian, then, is someone who is a follower of Christ.
That means you have to know who his is.

The first Christians were called atheists, did you not know this? We are not talking about etymology, we are talking about common usage, this is reflected in dictionaries, and the definition of atheism is the lack or absence of belief in any deity or deities, and the definition of agnosticism is the belief that nothing is known or can be known about the nature or existence of a deity. They are not mutually exclusive.

 

[Sheldon]

There is no credible evidence that any natural forces, in any combination or order, ever collected and assembled the required elements essential to form even the simplest biochemical compounds necessary to create life.

Actually there is. "Building Blocks of Life Were Found on an Asteroid in Space For The Very First Time"

 

[Sheldon]

Lol, this from the same people who try to deny Jesus even existed,

What people are these? You wouldn't be misrepresenting atheism again would you by any chance?

they have historical writing and archaeological evidence that he did,

Nope, there is an historical consensus for an historical Jesus, but this is far from conclusive, and no evidence at all for anything he is alleged to have said or done.

want to believe random chemicals formed life,

Not atheism, you're using a false dichotomy fallacy again.

when they have absolutely no evidence of this.

Yes there is: "Building Blocks of Life Were Found on an Asteroid in Space For The Very First Time"

 

[Sheldon]

I have had atheists on this forum question his existence.

Atheist and atheism are not the same thing, you really ought to consult a dictionary now and again. You might avoid making erroneous and sweeping generalisations.

 

[Sheldon]

So now you agree with my definition?

Not even close to what he said?

 

[Sheldon]

Oh good grief! Yes here we are? Why? That's the question literally every sane person asks at some point. And yes many find answers, like we are here to help others, or we are here to worship the creator, or we are here for a purpose of some kind at least.

Begging the question fallacy, the question assumes there is an overarching reason, that needs to be demonstrated not simply assumed.

Otherwise, you might as well say suicide is a perfectly legitimate response to life's little problems.

That's some false dichotomy fallacy.

 

[Sheldon]

Irrelevant. Lack of belief isn't " I maybe, kind of could believe." That's uncertainty. The definition of words is important.

Then look up atheism in any dictionary, you are simply wrong. Why would you think a lack of belief requires certainty a claim is false? Do you believe in invisible mermaids? Assuming you don't then by your rationale you can definitively demonstrate they're impossible?

Do you really not understand what an unfalsifiable concept is?