Double-blind Prayer Efficacy Test -- Really?

[F1fan]

You are still assuming Free will.

You keep confusing agency with free will. There is no actual free will. Mentally well people do make decisions and perform actions. The mistake you seem to make is assuming there are no influences to those decisions that a person is not consciously aware of.

 

[Wildswanderer]

No, actually, I am not. Free will isn't relevant as I see it.

"The basis of morality is Thinking and Caring. Care about those around you and the effect you have on others. And Think about what you do and how it impacts the world around you. Compassion and a sense of Fairness are other good moral values."

All of what you said here is completely beyond your control if you have no free will, but you still act as if you can decide right and wrong.

 

[Wildswanderer]

You keep confusing agency with free will. There is no actual free will. Mentally well people do make decisions and perform actions. The mistake you seem to make is assuming there are no influences to those decisions that a person is not consciously aware of.

Influence isn't even on the table here. It's irrelevant to the discussion. No free will equals no decisions, only the illusion of making decisions.

 

[Wildswanderer]

but atheists have revised that to comport better with their reality, namely, that most atheists, including me, are agnostic about gods.

Then you aren't an atheist.

 

[Wildswanderer]

So why the double standard? Why does the theory of evolution have a different standard for belief for you than a creationist hypothesis? Why do you voice these objections against the one but give the other a pass?

Because as already stated multiple times, you all claim not to operate on faith, yet in many cases you do.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Wrong. One aspect is that we can modify our programming through training. The variability allowed by our genetics is wide enough to allow for a great deal of differences in actual behavior. And, those difference are determined by what happens in our brains: in other words, they are determined *by us*. We are the ones that choose between perceived possible outcomes. And that choice is a crucial step in what actually happens.

Again you assume free will is real. I guess you just can't look outside that paradigm

 

[Wildswanderer]

No. The assumption is that *we* (sometimes) choose: that the choice happens in our brains. That the causal nexus is within our heads for some situations. And that is clearly true.

And yes, we are then responsible for the choice we make *because* it is in our heads that the choice happens. It is how we have programmed ourselves and how we respond to our environment that determines whether or not we do actions that harm others and thereby whether we need to have corrective actions taken.

You are not getting it. If you are programmed by prior events, your attempt to reprogram is just part of the original program.. you are still assuming free will.

 

[KWED]

So if someone tells you God changed them you just assume they are lying?

Or mistaken. Or deluded.

People who have suddenly been freed from lifelong addiction? That's more than willpower.

So people can only kick addiction if they actually have a real encounter with a god. Really? Come on, at least pretend you are making an effort here.

 

[KWED]

That doesn't mean you had the same experiences. Or that my experience can't be real because you decided yours wasn't. You can't know what another persons experience is. That's part of why we don't assume everyone who claims to believe does.
There's different kinds of believing, too. The devil believes in God after all. Trust has to be an essential part of an enduring relationship with God or anyone else. The longer we've trusted him the more we can see him working.

But you have to accept that people who were once just as convinced as you that they had "experienced god" later realised that they were just mistaken. That they misinterpreted their experience. In which case, you could well be doing the same.

 

[KWED]

If one isn't sure there's no God he's not an atheist obviously.

Yes they are. An agnostic atheist.
"Agnostic" isn't a position halfway between "atheist" and "theist".
I am a gnostic atheist but an agnostic adeist (I am certain the gods of religion do not exist. I am not certain that there isn't some non-specific, supernatural force in the universe, but I consider extremely unlikely).

 

[KWED]

The evidence for the dark earth theory is super-recent - only one year old. Genesis 1 it says 'Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.'
Going back 20 years I used to say 'That can't be true because the early earth was hot and dry.' But then we found, here in Australia, evidence that the early earth was actually W.E.T. In fact the entire earth was one ball of water - 'formless' if you like as there was no relief to this ocean as there was no landfall.
And I wondered how could the early earth be dark. Could it have been a cloud planet like Venus, the gas giants and Titan? Then I began reading theories that the early earth could have been like Venus - a white ball if you like. Now we have the evidence that yes indeed, the early earth was wet, featureless and dark. Like Genesis, actually.

So you are claiming that the earth was once just a ball of water with no light falling upon it?

With all due respect, I perhaps you may have misunderstood whatever hypothesis you think you are citing. Or dreamed it.

 

[Wildswanderer]

But you have to accept that people who were once just as convinced as you that they had "experienced god" later realised that they were just mistaken. That they misinterpreted their experience. In which case, you could well be doing the same.

No, more likely they just decided to reject what they once accepted as true. That doesn't make it untrue. They were not necessarily mistaken, they just rebelled. Belief is a choice.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

What are the 'two more things not present in the account' ?

"Genesis doesn't mention the SNOWBALL EARTH either, or the LATE GREAT BOMBARDMENT."

Genesis did not synthesise this from what was already known.

I'm having difficulty deciding what your point is. You don't say explicitly. Is it that Genesis is unexpectedly accurate and therefore evidence of divine prescience? I've been assuming that all along, as that is usually the point when believers show us scientific support for a few of the features of the Genesis account. And that is what I have been rebutting - that this account is exactly what we would expect if ancient humans wrote it without any divine intervention, and that you are committing the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy: "The Texas sharpshooter fallacy is an informal fallacy which is committed when differences in data are ignored, but similarities are overemphasized. From this reasoning, a false conclusion is inferred," which you've never acknowledged doing or arguing why that description doesn't apply to your list. And you're still doing it, looking for whatever overlap you can find between the two accounts while disregarding the significance of the errors and omissions such as the mistakes you made using the Genesis account as a guide including that the earliest earth was dark and wet.

The Genesis account cannot be considered correct or reliable if it has errors in it. And it should not be considered prescient or the words of a transcendent intelligence if all it got right are things that can be imagined by the ancients to explain what was visible to them as you're doing here referencing a water earth (which was NOT the state of the earth at formation or for millions of years thereafter, a point you've already ignored without rebuttal once). This creation story is like all of the rest with one notable exception:

• Mesopotamia: "The mighty Marduk took his club and split Tiamat’s body in half. He placed half of her body in the sky and made the heavens (space). He created the moon to guard the heavens, and set it moving back and forth, on endless (time) patrol (energy). With the other half of Tiamat's body he made the land.(matter) "

• Vikings: "Odin, Vili, and Vé killed the giant Ymir. The sons of Bor then made the world (matter) from him. From his blood they made the sea and the lakes; from his flesh the earth; from his hair the trees; and from his bones the mountains. They made rocks and pebbles from his teeth and jaws and those bones that were broken. Maggots appeared in Ymir's flesh and came to life (life). By the decree of the gods they acquired human understanding and the appearance of men"

How hard would it be to do the Texas Sharpshooter thing if you were these people trying to show how insightful these stories are? They both presume that the world had a beginning, which is why they are called creation myths. They both list a series of acts of creation, the first one beginning with the creation like Genesis. The second one accurately predicts that the earth was made before the oceans, life came later, and mankind and intellect after that. That's all you're doing here, and it is no more convincing.

Two digressions if I may, because I find them each interesting ideas worth considering:

[1] That notable exception about the Genesis creation story is the timeline, which includes six days of creation followed by a day of rest, which really needs explaining. Why would an omnipotent deity need six days to build the world or a day of rest? Doesn't that make him seem less than omnipotent? I have what I think is a fascinating speculation and one I consider very likely to be correct. This is the invention of the work week with a weekend off, which I believe was inserted into the story once the Hebrews transformed from a nomadic society comprising small tribes to permanent settlements, which led to the formation of synagogues for the people to come to for instruction and tithing.

Once, no doubt, all able-bodied people worked every day, certainly before settling into cities. And religion was administered by shamans or rabbis wandering with the tribe. With the transformation, no longer was the tribal holy man always close by, but now, he might be a few hours away, and people needed a day off to get there and back and listen to the service. Somehow, it was agreed upon that this should be every seventh day. Natural cycles like days, months, and years were too short or long. So this new artificial cycle was created, the work week with the day of rest for coming to synagogue.

So, once it was probably "sin" to not work every day. A new work ethic was necessary to accommodate the need for people to travel to and from a temple and stay for services, and where it once it was unacceptable to take a day off for anything less than illness, it was now necessary to make the opposite true: It's a sin to NOT do that, to not take the day off. This is no doubt the origin of the timetable and the inclusion of the day of rest in the creation story and the Ten Commandments. If God did it, it's not only moral to take the day off, it's immoral not to.

[2] Anyway, the debate is over. It ended when the first of us failed to rebut the other, which happened immediately. You have never rebutted anything I've written to you. Note that mere disagreement is not rebuttal. Debate is two critical thinkers with contradictory opinions each attempting to show one another or a jury that he is right and the other wrong. That can only be done if they are addressing one another's arguments attempting to show a flaw in them. The last one to do this has prevailed in the debate, and the debate ends then. Use the courtroom experience if that helps. The prosecution makes a plausible argument that if not rebutted leads to the ending of the case and a guilty verdict. If the defense can show why the prosecution's case cannot be correct as with the production of an alibi, and this is not rebutted by the prosecution, this is where the case ends, and the verdict is not guilty. If the prosecution can undermine the alibi and restore his original argument, the defense must rebut that or the trial is over and ready for the jury. It's the same here. You make a claim, I rebut it, you don't rebut the rebuttal, and the debate is over, the last plausible and unrebutted argument prevailing. In this case, it is that you have committed a Texas Sharpshooter fallacy and coming to an unsound conclusion about Genesis because of it, and that Genesis contains errors of fact, some of which you have presented here, and which have been shown to be errors. Since you seem to have nothing to say about either of those things much less an argument why you think that they are incorrect, we've reached the end of that debate.

Please think about these words. They're helpful to you even if you never learn to rebut. They'll let you know how your own words are received by critical thinkers, what effect they have. It's not what you think if you are unaware of academic standards for debate. The net effect of the apologetics is that you are seen to have no argument and that you don't know how to recognize or generate sound conclusions, which is counterproductive to your apparent purpose. I can't recommend enough that apologists recognize that their apologetics are effective with uncritical thinkers, for whom they are designed, but have the opposite effect when shown to people who can spot fallacies and errors of fact, and shouldn't be shared in mixed venues like this one.

 

[KWED]

Much about the theory isn't observable.

The "theory of evolution" is the explanation for the process that results in the observable phenomenon of evolution.
So, which part are you claiming isn't "observable"? Give examples.

 

[KWED]

No, more likely they just decided to reject what they once accepted as true.

And why? Because they realised that it was superstitious nonsense. That they were mistaken or deluded.

That doesn't make it untrue.

No, but it makes you claim that your experience must be real, that it can't be a delusion, unsupportable.

They were not necessarily mistaken, they just rebelled.

You need to try and grasp the concept that when people lose their faith they don't still believe but pretend they don't. They no longer believe. For them, there is nothing to rebel against.

Belief is a choice.

No it isn't. It is an unconscious reaction to a variety of elements.

An experiment to demonstrate:
I want you to spend the next 24 hours believing in Brahma, Vishnu and the other gods of Hinduism. Not pretending to believe. Actually believing, in the same way you believe in the god of the Bible. Believe in Hinduism as you believed in Christianity.
Let me know how you get on.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

That's a matter of definition. Webster made a distinction between atheism and agnosticism that persists today such that a person could be called one but not both, but atheists have revised that to comport better with their reality, namely, that most atheists, including me, are agnostic about gods. I've told you many times that gods remain on my candidate list for the origin of our universe, right along with the multiverse, something from nothing, and that the universe had no first moment. So what would YOU call a person like that? I'm not sure that there's no god. If your definition of atheist doesn't include people like me because we won't assert that gods are nonexistent, it's not one I can use.

Then you aren't an atheist.

To you. I told you that I find that way of thinking doesn't map onto reality for reality for me. It has no accurate way to describe the majority of atheists including me, so I have replaced it with one that does. You would have them all choose between atheism and agnosticism according to whether they say that no gods exist or that the possibility cannot be ruled out. That doesn't work for me. Wasn't it you who recently reposted the OED's definition of atheist, "a person who disbelieves or lacks belief in the existence of God or gods"? I would shorten that to a person who lacks a belief in gods.

As I said, if your definition of atheist doesn't include people like me, then it's useless to people like me.

you all claim not to operate on faith, yet in many cases you do.

And here's another area where we use different definitions. For me, faith is insufficiently supported belief. You keep claiming that others like me have faith, but I deny that I have unsupported beliefs, and you haven't named any. So, that unsupported claim of yours has been rejected. If you want to restore it, you'll need to identify unjustified beliefs I hold. And please try to reproduce my beliefs as I have stated them, not what you translate them into. I believe that you named my inclusion of the multiverse hypothesis as an example of belief by faith, a claim rebutted by simply restating my position and showing that it is not the one you named, that there is no belief beyond logical possibility, which possibility you cannot rebut.

Why? Because the idea was correct, and as such, cannot be successfully rebutted. Only a flawed argument or claim can be successfully rebutted.

So if someone tells you God changed them you just assume they are lying? People who have suddenly been freed from lifelong addiction? That's more than willpower.

I quit smoking and Christianity using willpower alone. Neither was quick, easy, or comfortable.

And no, I didn't assume you were lying when you said that you experienced God. I told you my read on that - you were likely misunderstanding your mental state as I had also once done. You disagreed, but you could neither rebut the idea nor support your claim that what you sensed was a god, so your disagreement had no persuasive power.

No, more likely they just decided to reject what they once accepted as true. That doesn't make it untrue. They were not necessarily mistaken, they just rebelled. Belief is a choice.

Rebelled? No, I had new evidence that showed me that I had made that error. At that point, I could no longer justify suspending disbelief, which I had done to give the religion time to make sense and demonstrate that it was the true religion and its god the true god.

Choice? Once back into critical thinking mode, which hardly can be described as rebellion, having seen the new evidence against belief, I had no choice but to not believe.

 

[Sheldon]

You don't understand why those things are outside the realm of science?

All non existent things are outside the the realm of science, to be fair. So if you're going to make the assertion they belong in that group, it isn't a cogent argument for them existing, quite the opposite, you're just right back to having no objective for them, and you've just demonstrated they share a major characteristic with all non existent things, which is (some) evidence that they might not exist.

 

[Sheldon]

Who would I have to demonstrate something using physical laws when it's not a physical realm?

We live in a physical realm, you're asserting here something more, yet you can offer nothing to substantiate that claim beyond the bare subjective anecdote?

Quod erat demonstrandum...

 

[Sheldon]

Many... but I was specifically referring to the multi verse theory.

It's not an accepted scientific theory. It's a scientific hypothesis.

 

[Sheldon]

It means we both have belief systems.... but you claim you have facts.

Nope, wrong again. It means what is freely asserted can be freely dismissed. If i assert to believe anything as fact, but without any objective evidence, as you keep doing, then please do quote an example?