Do atheists believe in magnetism?

[Dan From Smithville]

I got a little lost on this thread. What is the final answer? Do you atheists believe in magnetism to the extent that you recognize it as an observable phenomenon that can be measured and manipulated with predictable results?

 

[Truth in love]

You are exposing that you have contempt for science right here.


Gods aren't known to exist. Particles do exist. No wonder rules apply to only one of these.

It would seem that you have not learned what science actually is. God's around. You may not like it, you may really wish otherwise, but facts are not subject to your opinion or approval.

 

[Sheldon]

It would seem that you have not learned what science actually is. God's around. You may not like it, you may really wish otherwise, but facts are not subject to your opinion or approval.

What facts support any extant deity?

 

[Truth in love]

Sure you can. You can study the basic observations that led to quantum physics. You can do the math from which the Higgs was postulated and derived. You can go to school, achieve the credentials and get a grant to use CERN, yourself.

But you don't have to do any of that. You don't have to believe that the boson exists. Or that any boson exists. It won't affect your life. No one will try to legislate your actions and autonomy because of it. No one will try to Baptize you in bosons, or threaten you with losing mass because of your lack of belief.


So you say.

So If I'm willing to believe in it and dedicate a large portion of my life to the study of it I could maybe some day see it myself. Sounds a lot like what believers keep saying. Try it out spend some time, ask God.

 

[Truth in love]

Do you remember any physicists insisting that it must exist because they have felt its existence?

There is a thing called "deferring to expertise" (not to be confused with "appeal to authority", which apologists often seem to do). We all do it all the time, because of hard corroborative experience. We know the physics and chemistry and biology behind our phones and computers and cars and bridges and planes and antibiotics, etc, etc work - because those things work, every time we use them. We don't need to believe they work. There is no faith involved. But you don't demand to see all the research every time you log on to the internet, or get on a plane or take medication, do you?

But what does this "knowledge" show? What are the practical, real-world implications? How do you demonstrate this "knowledge" to a sceptic? And why is it apparently so subjective? Why is it only accessible by some people, and why is it so often different or contradictory?

I used to be very trusting, having studied people a lot I tend to disbelieve much of what they say. I don't recheck everything every time, but I do actually like to dig for numbers and do my own review rather than just trusting some "expert"

People make choices in who to believe or not to believe. In things to believe in or not. I find that they rarely actually check the data. It is the height of incongruence to insist that a person accept one persons conclusion as being science when they can't review the evidence while dismissing some others persons conclusion as being non science when you can review the evidence.

 

[Truth in love]

If god is going to intervene in worldly events, then why didn't he just sort out the hostage-takers mental state before they decided to bomb the school, thus avoiding years of trauma and some serious burns for dozens of children, plus the costly damage to a vital public facility?

As is so often the case, invoking the supernatural merely requires even more explanation than it supposedly provides.

God respects agency and has a bigger plan that to just play our person Genie.

Such events don't prove everything, but they do tell us we should be asking questions.

 

[Truth in love]

Trauma-induced hallucination is a better explanation than a ghost.

Made me think of the old saying about religion is like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there - and finding it.

Listening to static and thinking it is Mozart might work for you, but no one else can hear it.

Nice try, but I'm a mental health professional, and the stories don't fit "trauma induce hallucinations"

People in the millions hear it all the time.

 

[Truth in love]

No you haven't. You have merely shown that you don't understand how science or the concept of evidence work.

Actually I do understand science. I simply refuse to agree with the cult like behaviors and assumptions that pervade the pseudo science world.

 

[Truth in love]

Ironically, the theory of evolution has a far greater body of physical evidence supporting it than gravitational theory.
So, which one do you doubt most?

I can test much of gravity any time I wish. I've been asking for some time for someone to demonstrate macro level evolution. No one has even tried. So why would I believe in the "science" of something that no one can show me?

 

[Truth in love]

Atheists do not reject the idea of god because he is "invisible".

Depends.

I'd be happy to see the evidence that you can alter one species into another.

 

[Sheldon]

So If I'm willing to believe in it and dedicate a large portion of my life to the study of it I could maybe some day see it myself.

You don't need to believe it, or dedicate any time to it, that's the point, scientific facts have nothing to do with how anyone subjectively perceive them. The method(s) is how they're validated, if this method is applied then the conclusion and results will be identical no matter who employs them, or the idea is rejected.

Sounds a lot like what believers keep saying. Try it out spend some time, ask God.

Which god? You see this method can validate a whole host of them, whereas if you acquired the necessary knowledge and expertise and recreated the experiments, the results would have to produce the same identical results in order to be accepted as scientifically valid.

Even if we stick to one hypothetical deity, the Christian one, the method has produced 45k varyingly different sects and denominations, so it is on no way comparable.

 

[Truth in love]

So what happened in between the idea being hotly debated within the particle physics community and it being resolved? Nothing? They just all stopped wondering if the Higgs boson would be found where predicted for no reason?

And how did you get "fine with Higgs?"



You demonstrate that you have difficulty interpreting evidence. The evidence available to you is robust even if you can't build a collider or see a Higgs boson with the naked eye. What you are convincing others of is not that you have a good argument, but that you can't interpret the evidence properly. You're ignoring how many people expected this experiment to reveal the Higgs boson, and how much money was spent in pursuit. What did they know that you're overlooking and unaware of? You're ignoring the consensus of the opinions of experts. What do they all know that makes that the case? You're ignoring the tremendous success of science and the scientific method. Finding the boson would be just the latest success of the method.

If you can't conclude that the existence of the Higgs boson has been confirmed from just that, then you aren't considering the evidence that is available to you without even knowing what a boson is, what a collider is, nor what the following means to know that the existence of the particle has been firmly established:

I frequently wonder with apologists whether they know the actual effect that they are having, or whether they would care if they did. Would it matter to you to know that you make it seem less likely that you have interpreted what you call evidence of God properly when you demonstrate how you evaluate evidence? I don't ever get an answer to this question, so I don't expect one here either, but I would love one apologist to answer candidly. "Yes, I don't believe I am, but if I were hurting my case, I'd want to know that so I can modify my apologetics accordingly," or, "I don't believe that, but even were it the case, so what? God sees what I'm doing, that I'm trying to bring people over to Christianity, and that's what matters, not results," or some other sign of self-reflection. How about being the first? Would it matter to you to know that you were actually helping convince people that they are correct and you are wrong if that were the case? Because if it doesn't, why try to show you what your actual effect is?



Why would a skeptic believe that you know any more about gods or have more experience of them than he does? He know the limits of what is knowable about gods - nothing, even if they exist, even if the believer don't know that, even if he is 100% certain that he understands his psychological experience correctly?



That describes the faith-based thinker with a confirmation bias, the people who can't see contradictions in scripture, for example.



No, you haven't. You've shown that you don't know what the rules are for evidence, or what faith is.



Sure, but not that they are correct. Why? That they believe it is not an extraordinary claim. That they are correct is.

The true skeptic never invests in learning so they wind up not knowing. If I did not believe in the internet I would not put the time into learning how it works. So how could I understand it?

A lot of people run around with blinders on. I've been kicked out of a few groups for asking unliked questions. However it would be unjust to assume this about all believers.


And the insults are back. Why? Why do I have to agree with you or I don't understand evidence?

 

[SkepticThinker]

It would seem that you have not learned what science actually is.

That would appear to be you.

God's around. You may not like it, you may really wish otherwise, but facts are not subject to your opinion or approval.

What facts?

 

[SkepticThinker]

Nice try, but I'm a mental health professional, and the stories don't fit "trauma induce hallucinations"

Why not?

But you think they fit with some sort of supernatural explanations, not in evidence??

People in the millions hear it all the time.

Hear what?

 

[Sheldon]

to insist that a person accept one persons conclusion as being science when they can't review the evidence

Anyone can review the evidence, and the experiments must be testable and repeatable, and falsifiable. None of that is true of unevidenced claims for subjective personal experience.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I can test much of gravity any time I wish. I've been asking for some time for someone to demonstrate macro level evolution. No one has even tried. So why would I believe in the "science" of something that no one can show me?

Ring species:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1217034110
Ring species as bridges between microevolution and speciation - Genetica
Evolution: Library: Ring Species: Salamanders
Geographic Variation in Allozymes in a "Ring Species," the Plethodontid Salamander Ensatina eschscholtzii of Western North America on JSTOR

There, showed you.

 

[SkepticThinker]

God respects agency and has a bigger plan that to just play our person Genie.

Such events don't prove everything, but they do tell us we should be asking questions.

He does? How do you know this?

 

[Sheldon]

I've been asking for some time for someone to demonstrate macro level evolution.

Well if someone has a basic understanding of species evolution, they know that macro and micro evolution are the same thing, just on different timescales. The fossil record record alone provides overwhelming evidence for this.

" These successions in the fossil record are the most obvious evidence to macroevolution (Figure 2). In fact, the entire fossil record is a set of millions of intermediate fossils that provide solid evidence of how macroevolution worked in the past billion years."

"Evolutionary processes that drive micro and macroevolution are facts..
To have a better understanding of evolution, we must discuss the processes that drive evolution. For this, we start by comparing processes that drive microevolution with those that drive macroevolution. Many of the same evolutionary processes that drive microevolution also drive macroevolution, namely natural selection, mutation, migration, and genetic drift. A lineage will tend to diversify if it has adaptations that increase survival and reproductive abilities compared to other species. This advantage will tend to increase population size and the geographical distribution of the ancestral species that will more likely speciate into two descendant species. Hence, according to this view, macroevolution is microevolution on a larger scale (Zimmer, 2001), with biological speciation as the only additional process (Russo et al., 2016). Through speciation, one ancestral species gives rise to two descendant species that are reproductively incompatible with each other."

You could also try the talkorigins website, they have a massive database of the scientific evidence for species evolution.

 

[F1fan]

It would seem that you have not learned what science actually is. God's around.

Science doesn't mention any gods. Why do you imply it does and that I am ignorant about it?

You may not like it, you may really wish otherwise, but facts are not subject to your opinion or approval.

Your religious belief has no basis in fact. Your claims here are absurd and obviously in error. If you disagree point out where science of any kind refers to any gods as real and having properties.

 

[F1fan]

I'd be happy to see the evidence that you can alter one species into another.

It is readily available for you to educate yourself.

You're like a person who is starving at a food buffet and insisting you wouldn't be hungry if that food was in your belly. Alas you starve because you make no effort to eat. We say "Here's the food." and you sit there complaining because you're still hungry.