Atheists believe in miracles more than believers

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Superstition is ANY belief not supported by reason or experiment.

That's too broad a definition. Every false and unfalsifiable statement fits that description. The latter can be called superstitions, but the former includes errors.

"Superstition : a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation. b. : an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition. 2. : a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary."

By that definition, your claim that science is based only in experiment, being false, is itself a superstition. I'd call it error, not superstition.

They imagine a scenario in which all those millions of supposed changes were happening, one by one over millions and millions of years. An objective mind immediately realizes that it takes a lot of imagination to suppose that such a scenario ever unfolded

That's what great scientists do. They see further than their predecessors. It took a lot of imagination to come up with the idea of an interaction between living populations and their environment powering the evolution of the tree of life from a single ancestral population, but not much imagination to understand or accept the idea as plausible.

What is tangible in all this imagery?

The theory of biological evolution unifies mountains of data from a multitude of sources, accurately makes predictions about what can and cannot be found in nature, provides a rational mechanism for evolution consistent with the known actions of nature, accounts for both the commonality of all life as well as biodiversity, and has had practical applications that have improved the human condition in areas like medicine and agriculture.

What tangible support or results do you have for its alternative, creationism, or in your case, biblical creationism? None, right? You can't give me an analogous paragraph summarizing its contributions to scholarship and the human condition. All one can do with that is just keep passing it on from generation to generation, where the idea continues to accomplish nothing for people over millennia except to distract them from the contradictory science.

The church likes to depict Satan as the great deceiver waiting in the bushes to distract us from its truth and send us down a path of lies, but who is really the great deceiver here? Who's lying to whom?

 

[cladking]

Good thing then that nobody thinks that science works like that. Nobody that is scientifically literate anyway.

Oh!

Then how do you parse this sentence;

"Reality is not what you perceive it to be. Instead, it's what the tools and methods of science reveal."

 

[cladking]

That's too broad a definition. Every false and unfalsifiable statement fits that description. The latter can be called superstitions, but the former includes errors.

By george I think you got it. And every true statement is also a superstition because no statement can be formatted in English so as to have a single meaning. Even the individual words have many meanings and most of them are abstractions. Two plus two really can't equal four if there is no referent for "two" as is obvious and shown by experiment. The reality is that the "first of two things and the second of two things create the first, second, third, and fourth of four things when added to the first and second of two another set of things". This was the basis of ancient math I believe. This second way of saying it is a true statement if each of the terms are defined with a single fixed meaning.

Essentially everything we believe is a superstition. However experience is different and it will normally produce the same result every time. Experience is knowledge and not superstition. Animals have no superstition. They act on experience in conjunction with consciousness. Each is a scientist seeking patterns in nature and then incorporating them into behavior. They are ineffective as scientists NOT because they aren't intelligent or conscious but because each one has to start at the very beginning. A thousand year old beetle would in many ways be smarter than most people.

Believing in science is wrong and your beliefs are wrong as well. Science is a tool that reduces reality to tiny little spectra. Interpolation and extrapolation of this is what our species does and history has shown we are always wrong. We see hat we believe. We see our assumptions. We can only reason in circles. homo rationatio circularis.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Believing in science is wrong

If believing in means believing without sufficient evidence as in believing in gods or Santa, then believing in anything is wrong. That is, though there is much that I believe, I believe in nothing.

Furthermore, one doesn't need to believe in science to benefit from it. Nor need one understand it.

history has shown we are always wrong

I've been right about many things over the years, although I've also been wrong many times.

Your experience must be different than mine to write always wrong. It means that you think that you are always wrong, and that you believe that nobody else is doing any better.

We can only reason in circles.

You apparently think that you think in circles and project that onto others. I have a different opinion about myself.

 

[cladking]

Furthermore, one doesn't need to believe in science to benefit from it.

Believing in science is wrong. It is dangerous. Believing in survival of the fittest has been killing people and leaving many dispossessed.

Superstition is the most destructive force on earth. Tornados, hurricanes, saber-toothed tigers, and earthquakes come and go but superstition is ubiquitous, omnipresent, and far more destructive.

One doesn't benefit from science. Rather the benefit comes from the ideas of individuals most of whom understand science.

 

[cladking]

Your experience must be different than mine to write always wrong. It means that you think that you are always wrong, and that you believe that nobody else is doing any better

You do realize all men die? By the same token all science is necessarily wrong. Belief in science is not what create progress and learning what's wrong. Disbelief in science creates progress

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Believing in science is wrong

Agree. As I just wrote, belief by faith is wrong. My trust in science is evidence-based.

It is dangerous

Disagree. It is harmless.

Believing in survival of the fittest has been killing people and leaving many dispossessed.

Disagree. Actions might, but beliefs seldom kill.

Superstition is the most destructive force on earth. Tornados, hurricanes, saber-toothed tigers, and earthquakes come and go but superstition is ubiquitous, omnipresent, and far more destructive.

Disagree. We're all constantly surrounded by superstitious people, and many do cause harm, but mostly to themselves.

One doesn't benefit from science.

Disagree.

I do and so do you:

"You stare into your high-definition plasma screen monitor, type into your cordless keyboard then hit enter, which causes your computer to convert all that visual data into a binary signal that's processed by millions of precise circuits.

"This is then converted to a frequency modulated signal to reach your wireless router where it is then converted to light waves and sent along a large fiber optics cable to be processed by a supercomputer on a mass server.

"This sends that bit you typed to a satellite orbiting the earth that was put there through the greatest feats of engineering and science, all so it could go back through a similar pathway to make it all the way here to my computer monitor 15,000 miles away from you just so you could say, "Science is all a bunch of manmade hogwash."- anon.

You do realize all men die?

Agree. Don't know why you thought to so say so here.

all science is necessarily wrong.

Disagree.

Disbelief in science creates progress

It's not doing much for superstitionists such as the creationists and the flat earthers. And a lot of superstitious vaccine deniers died of Covid needlessly.

 

[cladking]

You apparently think that you think in circles and project that onto others. I have a different opinion about myself.

If I'm right then your opinion is irrelevant. It's just another belief derived from language and thought; from assumptions you used to reason in circles. I've told you many times that experiment shows we see what we believe. Do you really think our mind's eye isn't the same?!

Yes, I have always reasoned in circles. I started with the assumption everyone makes sense and then I found that Ancient Language makes perfect sense and they say they used a means to invent agriculture that didn't take survival of the fittest as being axiomatic. ie- for the species we call "homo sapiens" "natural selection" didn't even exist. Through simp-le extrapolation I maintain it doesn't exist for us or any other species either.

I'm proud to reason in circles but prouder to be the very first homo rationatio circularis to know it and prove it. I'm even proud to have had the right assumptions allowing me to solve all this. If I had started with any other assumptions I'd have reasoned around to those false assumptions. So this is what we have; a bunch of people who don't even know they are speaking confused language using a metaphysics to reduce experiment to bits of reality that we mistake for omniscience. This is my ka, my life's work, to rediscover ancient science and its metaphysics. Of course my ka doesn't exist until I don't.

Perhaps this new knowledge can even lead to yet another speciation event. Perhaps we are homo omnisciencis and we are becoming homo circularis rationatio. Only time will tell because nobody, not even Imhotep, Chief of Seers can predict the future. It only unfolds according to events which have yet to transpire and according to laws we are yet to understand.

Sure I can extrapolate on current beliefs and practices to make guesses but they are just guesses. In less than 30 years we will be using computers to run ancient and modern science in tandem unless our beliefs destroy us first. People will laugh at survival of the fittest, ramps, and Egyptology. They will think they are very different than we are and understand that they are in danger of being controlled by others because they are already controlled by their beliefs. They may never be a new species but they'll be less dangerous to themselves and the world.

 

[cladking]

By that definition, your claim that science is based only in experiment, being false, is itself a superstition. I'd call it error, not superstition.

I've proven this a million times in a million ways.

Back in the '80's some flake discovered it was possible to communicate with the severely autistic. To his surprise he found they were highly creative and articulate and autism was a kind of locked in syndrome. Soon he had thousands of people allover the world using ouija boards and other contrivances to communicate with them. Autistic people were publishing book and various other art. It was a golden age for the severely autistic.

Of course it wasn't real. Anyone who has dealt with the autistic should have known it was all self delusion and high tech hocus pocus. We have an infinite ability to believe anything at all no matter how ridiculous like survival of the fittest. It's not real. It is an illusion we see because we want to believe and the lack the ability to stop thinking in circles without experiment. All "science" not founded in experiment is a superstition. This is what "metaphysics" means; experiment and observation. These are the only basis of science possible to our species that can be performed by every individual. Other sciences in our species are individual. No experiment > no science.

 

[cladking]

That's what great scientists do. They see further than their predecessors. It took a lot of imagination to come up with the idea of an interaction between living populations and their environment powering the evolution of the tree of life from a single ancestral population, but not much imagination to understand or accept the idea as plausible.

Yes!!! It took imagination. No science.

Yes!!! It's plausible. No. It is not real.

The theory of biological evolution unifies mountains of data from a multitude of sources, accurately makes predictions about what can and cannot be found in nature, provides a rational mechanism for evolution consistent with the known actions of nature, accounts for both the commonality of all life as well as biodiversity, and has had practical applications that have improved the human condition in areas like medicine and agriculture.

Any theory based in reason can correspond to reality. But it still isn't "reality" until shown by experiment.

What tangible support or results do you have for its alternative, creationism, or in your case, biblical creationism? None, right? You can't give me an analogous paragraph summarizing its contributions to scholarship and the human condition. All one can do with that is just keep passing it on from generation to generation, where the idea continues to accomplish nothing for people over millennia except to distract them from the contradictory science.

I predicted the hot spots in G1 and the passageway behind the chevrons. I predicted the way copper "pollution" lays out over time in the harbor. I have explained the function of all the ruins around all the great pyramids and predicted the course of the river on this basis. There's really quite a bit more like solving how the pyramids were built, the meaning of symbols drawn by cavemen, and the speciation events of the last 300,000 years. I've probably solved how and why we think and how this differs from other species. I don't credit "religion" for any of this, just reason and the fact that religion was involved surprises me more than it would have surprised you because I have far fewer beliefs than you. I don't even believe in taxonomies, species, and inductive reasoning remember?

The church likes to depict Satan as the great deceiver waiting in the bushes to distract us from its truth and send us down a path of lies, but who is really the great deceiver here? Who's lying to whom?

The church is closer than you are. The devil is the few individuals who aren't trying to do the right thing or not trying to see what exists. They try to deceive us all and are always deceiving themselves.

 

[cladking]

My trust in science is evidence-based.

So do I.

But real science isn't based in evidence but rather in experiment. "Evidence" is virtually defined as "those facts that support the current paradigm.".

If you'd actually my read posts and comment on what I actually say I wouldn't have to repeat things again and again. Why don't believers respond to what people say instead of lecturing?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I'm proud to reason in circles

Congratulations. You've set a high and worthy bar for yourself and achieved your goal.

Perhaps we are homo omnisciencis and we are becoming homo circularis rationatio.

It sounds like you got there first.

If I'm right then your opinion is irrelevant.

If you're right, YOUR opinion is irrelevant, since it is the product of reasoning in circles.

I've told you many times that experiment shows we see what we believe.

Yes, you have, and I've rejected that with counterexamples just as often.

I'm often surprised at what I see. I had my car towed once for parking in a supermarket parking lot after hours. I was expecting to see my car where I left it. Imagine my embarrassment if I "saw" what I believed and tried to drive home in thin air because I just couldn't see that the car wasn't there.

not even Imhotep, Chief of Seers can predict the future.

Here's yet another high bar you set - outseeing Imhotep.

We all successfully predict assorted aspects of the future, although some see further and are more accurate more often. I'm going to predict that the sky goes dark tonight and lights up again tomorrow morning. I predict that the wife and I will play bridge at the bridge club in the afternoon and go out for dinner immediately after followed by a return trip home to watch Jeopardy and finish the movie we started yesterday, Patriot's Day.

I'll update you Wednesday regarding how well I predicted the future today.

I've proven this a million times in a million ways.

You've never proven "your claim that science is based only in experiment" is correct, but I've refuted it. It only takes a single counterexample to do that. Of course, getting you to see that your claim was refuted has been impossible, since you never address the rebuttal, which, as I've told you, is where the discussion ends. It ends with the last plausible argument that has not been successfully refuted. You make a claim, I make a compelling counterargument, then you go into hibernation mode, and the matter is resolved.

But it still isn't "reality" until shown by experiment.

The theory of evolution has been demonstrated to be correct beyond reasonable doubt. Its naysayer's objections are based in unreason. It's as much reality and just as correct as the heliocentric theory and the germ theory of disease, which are also demonstrably correct beyond reasonable doubt.

The devil is the few individuals who aren't trying to do the right thing or not trying to see what exists.

Not according to the church. It is a master demon created by the god of Abraham, unleashed on earth beginning with the first two people in their transitory garden paradise, and made man's chief and eternal inquisitor in a torture chamber made by that god for it to gratuitously torture souls that guessed wrong.

They try to deceive us all

The church? Agreed, but not just them.

Many are immune to indoctrination from the church as well as other professional deceivers such as advertisers and many political ideologues. They would all like to control your thoughts and make your choices for you by planting ideas in your head. But one can learn to become immune to that simply by mastering critical thought and choosing to never believe anything not justified by the academic rules for interpreting evidence.

Really. One can develop that as an automatic habit of thought like saying please and thank you or looking both ways before crossing such that there is no chance of forgetting to do any of that even once.

"Evidence" is virtually defined as "those facts that support the current paradigm."

No, it isn't.

If you'd actually my read posts and comment on what I actually say I wouldn't have to repeat things again and again.

My last post to you was literally a list of comments beginning with agree and disagree.

I've addressed your claims about suddenness, metaphysics being the basis of science, life and consciousness being the same, consciousness being undefined in science, and science is only done by experimenting several times each. You then disregard those replies followed by repeating your original claims unchanged.

I don't do that every time. Sometimes, I simply let the comment go by.

This is similar to the endless cycle I've discussed with Leroy in a related currently active thread in which you also participate. Eventually, one declines to repeat himself again, which evokes comments like yours above and his. And neither one of you will consider the possibility that you do that despite each being told so by multiple posters.

 

[cladking]

It sounds like you got there first.

I am not structurally different than I was before and only subtly behaviorally different. As we learn about reality maybe there will be a bigger difference in people. Remember proto-humans lacked the complex wiring between higher brain functions and the wernickes area in homo sapiens and they lacked out broca's area. For speciation to occur there must be a real difference somewhere.

I'm just the first guy with two metaphysics not a new species.

If you're right, YOUR opinion is irrelevant, since it is the product of reasoning in circles.

No. That's not the way it works. When you use reason and experiment to arrive at an answer it will be correct if your assumptions are also correct. I'm not smarter or more knowledgeable than Egyptologists, I merely started with the right assumptions. Darwin may have been a better (albeit much less knowledgeable) scientist than I am but he started with numerous erroneous assumption so he ended up in the wrong circles.

Here's yet another high bar you set - outseeing Imhotep.

You should be so lucky. In addition to knowing everything about chemistry, physics, and physiology (et al) he was also a fine surgeon, metaphysician, and physician.

I can see from Newton's shoulder but my vision from Imhotep's is really quite hazy and ephemeral. Imhotep was smarter and knew more about everything than the abstraction we call "the calculus". Imhotep could never learn mpodern math because he'd be stoped from even counting past the number 1.

 

[cladking]

I'll update you Wednesday regarding how well I predicted the future today.

How do you think Biden shipping long range missiles to Russia will play out?

Why do you think this would be done at this time?

You've never proven "your claim that science is based only in experiment" is correct, but I've refuted it. It only takes a single counterexample to do that.

And what is thaty counterexample. If you really made one why did I say it is irrelevant.

All I hear is believers saying they've proved points while never addressing a single word uttered by non believers. You have nothing again.

The theory of evolution has been demonstrated to be correct beyond reasonable doubt.

But you can't cite one single experiment that supports gradual change through fitness.

Not according to the church. It is a master demon created by the god of Abraham, unleashed on earth beginning with the first two people in their transitory garden paradise, and made man's chief and eternal inquisitor in a torture chamber made by that god for it to gratuitously torture souls that guessed wrong.

Or maybe you're parsing the Bibnle wrong. Maybe you want to pick and choose what's literal and what's metaphoric. Maybe you pick wrong.

Many are immune to indoctrination from the church as well as other professional deceivers such as advertisers and many political ideologues. They would all like to control your thoughts and make your choices for you by planting ideas in your head. But one can learn to become immune to that simply by mastering critical thought and choosing to never believe anything not justified by the academic rules for interpreting evidence.

Right....

And Germans all murdered Jews because they are more easily led astray than better people.

No, it isn't.

Gainsay much?

I've addressed your claims about suddenness, metaphysics being the basis of science, life and consciousness being the same, consciousness being undefined in science, and science is only done by experimenting several times each. You then disregard those replies followed by repeating your original claims unchanged.

You're better than most at addressing words but you aren't addressing the ideas.

For instance try to address my oft repeated assertion that "all observed change in life is sudden" without saying "no, it isn't". Give me one exception supported by experiment and not based on a belief system. You can't do it which is why I keep repeating it.

 

[cladking]

The idea that experts can see reality and report back from on high is a belief in miracles. If we don't need experiment then why is it part of modern metaphysics? Why do we spend billions every year making things like cyclotrons to use in experiment? Why didn't we just ask one of the past greats why the expansion of the universe is accelerating? What are we here for at all if science or religion have all the answers?

What is the point? Why don't we just freeze science right where it is. Keep the damn books but destroy the printing presses so no new editions are possible.

And why keep changing Bible interpretations since it might lead to more splitters and more wars?

Everyone loves the status quo and doctrine so why keep changing. Why, do we need new inventions when we already have Siri and every answer?

Maybe there are no miracles and no short cuts to living your life. Maybe believers in science need to reconsider what they are believing.

And now this too will ignored.

 

[cladking]

Right....

And Germans all murdered Jews because they are more easily led astray than better people.

And sociologists all thought they could communicate with autistic people because unlike everyone else they are stupid.

The Inquisitors weren't misled, they were evil.

Lemmings aren't locked into a pattern, they are all suicidal.

People don't think it's good that the manufacturers of lower and lower quality make more and more money because our leaders promote it but because we like getting garbage and defective food.

I like green eggs and ham, Sam I am.

 

[cladking]

Nothing will be addressed. Believers in miracles also believe it's all been addressed before and reality is set in stone as depicted in every text book.

 

[Pogo]

No. That's not the way it works. When you use reason and experiment to arrive at an answer it will be correct if your assumptions are also correct. I'm not smarter or more knowledgeable than Egyptologists, I merely started with the right assumptions. Darwin may have been a better (albeit much less knowledgeable) scientist than I am but he started with numerous erroneous assumption so he ended up in the wrong circles.

Yes that is the generally accepted version of formal logic (not science), the problem here is that you do all of this in your head without external reference. secondarily, you seem to have no mechanism to deal with conditions where your conclusions do not comport with observations.
You seem to have developed a system where your internal reason is reinforced by your internal thought experiments and if they disagree with what others observe, you claim that they are only seeing what they believe. Which is curiously different than what you believe.
You have a large set of assumptions/axioms, whatever you wish to call them, and a set of logical arguments you base on them, how can you demonstrate to us that your formal logic conclusions are in fact correct without just requiring acceptance of them without question and demonstration to one who does not start with them?

 

[Pogo]

The idea that experts can see reality and report back from on high is a belief in miracles. If we don't need experiment then why is it part of modern metaphysics? Why do we spend billions every year making things like cyclotrons to use in experiment? Why didn't we just ask one of the past greats why the expansion of the universe is accelerating? What are we here for at all if science or religion have all the answers?

Maybe beacause metaphysics has been discarded as a source of useful knowledge, your disagreement not withstanding.

What is the point? Why don't we just freeze science right where it is. Keep the damn books but destroy the printing presses so no new editions are possible.

And why keep changing Bible interpretations since it might lead to more splitters and more wars?

Everyone loves the status quo and doctrine so why keep changing. Why, do we need new inventions when we already have Siri and every answer?

Maybe there are no miracles and no short cuts to living your life. Maybe believers in science need to reconsider what they are believing.

And now this too will ignored.

With good reason as it appears to be only the rantings of an old man at the clouds.

 

[Pogo]

But you can't cite one single experiment that supports gradual change through fitness.

Your inability to understand the words you use is not our problem.
But I would be curious as to how and why you dismiss this fairly simple experiment in contradiction to your assertion.
Sequencing has also been done to show the individual changes as well as other follow ups.