Double-blind Prayer Efficacy Test -- Really?

[Wildswanderer]

Why?
How is your god explanation better then an alien explanation?
In what specific way?

The alien explanation is just kicking a can up the road, it's not an explanation of how everything came to be.

 

[Wildswanderer]

So are the experiences of abduction to alien abductees.
So are the experiences of those who believe that they are the reincarnation of Napoleon.
So are the experiences of those who hear voices or see people that aren't actually there.

It's like you literally refuse to understand this.

To claim every religious person is suffering from delusions is delusional. Don't you find it a bit arrogant to think that your 4% are the only sane people in the world?

 

[Wildswanderer]

Even if it were true (which it isn't - any idiot knows that science is based on testable, repeatable observations and results. Computers don't work because we "believe" they will ), that doesn't explain why you don't apply the same standards of scrutiny to your beliefs as you do to science.

You obviously don't understand the difference between beliefs and provable facts. Lots of scientific ideas are beliefs. Religion doesn't claim to to operate only on facts, science does make that claim. Go to any historical museum, and you'll see plaques saying " in such a such time period, millions of years ago, such and such was happening." Those are stated as fact, but they aren't. They are speculation based on what we have found in the present, and interpreted according to the current theories. We are being lied to.

 

[Wildswanderer]

YES.

And the way to remove doubt is objective evidence.

This is precisely the entire point of the scientific method.

ie: you don't trust other people's reported results. This is why you repeat the experiments and review the methods. You don't trust people's word for it either.

Impossible... you can't repeat every scientific experiment that you've heard of to prove it to yourself.

 

[Wildswanderer]

But eternal damnation for the "crime" of refusing to believe unfalsifiable, undefendable, unsupported myths, IS an example of "love"????

Meanwhile types like Adolf Hitler having a sincere "death bed conversion" who then receive eternal reward, is ALSO an example of "love"????

Strange definition of "love" you got there.

Love offered freely to all is strange? Destruction for not believing is strange? Why, isn't death what you asked for if you don't accept life?

 

[Wildswanderer]

Well, AA was originally a religiously inspired organisation - although it wasn't very popular until it reduced the emphasis on god and put more on the science of addiction and abstinence.

However, it is no secret or mystery that people who have gone through personal trauma or psychotic events are more likely to "find god" than happy, comfortable, well-adjusted people. Same applies to therapy or counselling.

Because they have their pride wounded and accept the truth more easily. Trauma is a great motivator for truth.

 

[Wildswanderer]

So you could decide a deity doesn't exist then, it's just a subjective choice? I can only examine the evidence or more accurately note the dearth of objective evidence, and the fact no rational arguments exist for any deity. I can't really choose whether to believe or not, that is determined by the facts.

You mean at this point? People choose one way or the other at some point, but I think that happens at critical moments in their life, and we just can't make that choice anytime. At this point in my life I doubt very much I could reject God because I've seen too much of Him to doubt to that extent.

 

[F1fan]

Yes, 'church' means a gathering. You can't tell if someone is approved of God - that's judging. But if someone is building some grand cathedral, or killing infidels you can say, 'What you are doing is not authorized by scripture'

Or even basic moral decency like atheists exhibit. It makes me wonder how Christians have gotten so far off the teachings and influence of Jesus over the millennia. This religion, especially the more conservative it is, gets more and more abstract, and less a personal basis for right thinking and actions. We see the KKK claim to be a Christian organization, and this informs us that this religion doesn't help make bad people good.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

my experiences of God are just as real to me as knowing where I'm sitting at the moment.

How do you think that this statement is understood by skeptics? Do you think it means that you are experiencing God to them? Do you think your claim that your experience of God is as concrete and objective as your experience of your surroundings is believed? I might say that I believe you, but I wouldn't believe that you were correct, just honestly reporting how assess those perceptions. More likely, I'd expect that you can tell the difference between your God intuitions and the appearance of the room you're in, but are committed to the reality of this deity and so reaffirm your belief publicly as expression to yourself, others, and even to the god you believe in that you are beyond doubt. And that you are.

There is no such standard if we are meat robots. There's only what we are programmed to do. You can't blame a robot for carrying out its program. If it's program is to torture kittens, I can't say that's wrong or right. It has no other option.

That's the metaphor I use to describe the inadequacy of divine command theory, or the belief that anything God says or does is moral by definition. If you can convince an adherent of this theory that torturing kittens or persecuting LGBTQ is God's will, they'll gladly do it and feel good about it.

But I disagree with your idea that we can't make moral judgments if free will is an illusion. It very well may be the case that that is exactly what is happening.

I've noted that most free will discussions with Christians have them simply asserting that man has free will because it is essential to Christian doctrine that damnation be just, that Eve's act was a freely chosen act of rebellion and deserved punishment. It all falls apart if retributive justice is being administered to "meat robots."

But with you, I get a different vibe. I suspect that you are trying to defend the doctrine of the soul, which you likely see as the source of free will. For you, meat robots are soulless, and that is some or all of your objection.

Even if that's correct, which you have not proven, it doesn't negate free will.

Nothing can rule in or out whether a decision is freely made at the time of action or was preordained by the circumstances of the moment and the laws of physics, that is, whether a different decision was possible at that moment. I think that if this idea is correct, it's important to understand, as it ends the speculation about whether free will is an illusion or something else by calling the answer undecidable. I've already given you the argument for concluding that twice - the thought experiment involving time travel - which you have not rebutted, so there is nothing more to say on that except the conclusion is sound (correct).

From my notes, compiled over 20 years.

To reconcile Genesis’ account of creation with science three assumptions need making:

Assume:

1. The observer is standing upon the Earth (in reality most readers of Genesis had no concept of space, just as we have little idea of a “multi-verse” of whatever lies beyond this)
2. That the “days” are symbols of completeness or periods of creation.
3. One event is repeated and one is out of sequence.

KJ version:

[1] In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

This is not a preamble to the six days. First the "heaven" and then the Earth. No time or method of creation is stated.


[2] And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.


We now move to the earth - an oceanic cloud world like most earth size planets are thought to be (Bayesian evidence for the prevalence of waterworlds. Royal Astron Soc. June 2017)
The existence of an early ocean was not accepted until 2005 when Australian scientists were able to study the chemical composition of zirconian crystals dating from the pre-continent age.


[3] And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
[4] And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
[5] And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.


Assuming a Titan analog, the early Earth would have been dark until the cloud deck cleared, bringing light. This would have exposed the day and night cycle caused by the Earth’s rotation. And so, on the early earth the sun appeared in the sky - not because it had just formed but because it just appeared.

[6] And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
[7] And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
[8] And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.


I do not understand what the “firmament” here means. I checked it in parallel translations. This might mean the air itself as it separates the waters below from the waters above.


[9] And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
[10] And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.


“Dry land” meant the granite blocks which rose above the submerged basalt crust. The continents required the existence of oceanic water to initiate the motion of plate tectonics (continental drift) and this in turn created the granite necessary for the lighter continents.

[snip]

[24] And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
[25] And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
[26] And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

[27] So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them….
[31] And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.


God made man in the image of something which already existed. The “second” Genesis account suggests that Adam and Eve were not the only people on the Earth, for Cain went out and married into people not know to that family.


Genesis is roundly criticized in our secular society. It is remarkable that its account accords so closely to what is agreed upon in science.

This is nice, but irrelevant.

For starters, I asked you to make your point explicitly - your reason for your posts about the comparison of Genesis and science - and you did not, so I am now assuming that you have no point. You also continue to fail to address the errors in the biblical account pointed out to you and the significant omissions.

And you failed to address the discrepancy between the two creation stories in Genesis.

You failed to address the claim that you are committing a Texas Sharpshooter fallacy if your unstated point (we don't know yet at this point whether you have one) is that the Genesis account is scientifically accurate. The above is just more of the fallacious thinking - overemphasis on similarities and underemphasis on differences. Where's evolution in that account? That's a pretty significant omission if you want to claim that the story is more than mythology.

Your unwillingness to address any of this means [1] that there is has been no debating coming from you, just dissent and unsupported assertions, [2] I've successfully made my case, and [3] that there's nothing in this discussion for anybody but you.Only topics of interest to you are discussed by both of us. Topics of interest to me are ignored by you, and so I'll disengage now.

'No evidence' simply means there's no evidence. I had people tell me, years ago, 'There's no evidence of King David, there is no such person.' Two statements there - first is correct, second is an assertion. There's no evidence of ghosts - it's not 50/50 to say they do or don't exist. All you have to say is, 'We dont know.'

Here's one where I agree with you. Absence of evidence is only evidence of absence when that evidence is expected. If you claim that you worked yesterday but your time card wasn't stamped and none of your coworkers remember seeing you at work then you probably won't get paid for the day because of the absence of evidence that would be expected had one worked. We can say more about ghosts than that we don't know. We can also say that because of that, we don't believe, either.

Also, I've switched from writing "no evidence" to "insufficient evidence." There is insufficient evidence for ghosts, and thus insufficient justification for a belief in them. And formerly, there was insufficient evidence to believe that David was a historical figure, but there was a little - the biblical account, which is weak evidence, too weak to support belief, but those accounts make the likelihood of David's historicity non-zero.

If you call yourself a 'Christian' who 'follows Jesus' then you must subscribe to a set of values preached and lived by Jesus.

That's not included in my definition of a Christian, which includes no behavioral test. The term true Christian, which generally implies passing a behavioral test, has no meaning to me, since there is no false or untrue Christian, thus no behavior that disqualifies one from being Christian. Believers like to disqualify such people, because they believe that practicing their religion makes people better people, and so the failures are marginalized as non-Christian, but I don't do that, since the fraction of failures relative to the fraction of successes is a good way to assess the value of the religion as a people builder.

How about the homophobic people the church generates and fills the neighborhoods with? Are they the kind of people we want as neighbors? Are they not also Christians even though they don't "subscribe to a set of values preached and lived by Jesus", or would you disqualify them? They're Christians to me no matter how good or bad their behavior. My opinion of Christianity is based on the collective performance of people identifying as Christians compared to alternatives such as humanism.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Atheists lack perception, they are oblivious to the insights and awareness as those of the theist.

Atheists perceive all that is perceptible. They have the same nervous system with the same sensory organs and neural circuits. They just understand those perceptions differently.

Theists have no extra insights. I know because I've asked several for one or two them and just get empty platitudes if not crickets. So, I don't ask any more.

Insight is seeing further, but to be called insight, the idea ought to have some predictive value. Einstein's ideas were insights. The intelligent design movement's were not. The difference is that the former led to a demonstrably better understanding of how the world works, but the latter's ideas were sterile. Simply holding unusual beliefs does not make one insightful. Insight is writing books like 1984, A Clockwork Orange, and The Handmaid's Tale. Somebody saw further sooner. On the other hand, those falsely predicting the end of the world on specific dates are known to have lacked insight because they were wrong. What was seen was false belief. That's where I put the so-called insights that the faithful such as you report they have, but can never articulate.

even bad news is better than a placebo provided that the bad news is accurate.

Agreed, and this is part of my argument against believing comforting ideas by faith. The bad news for many might be that there is no god or afterlife, nobody to not on earth to protect you or answer your prayers, no absolute morals, no devil to blame, etc.. The idea of a god might be comforting, but it can lead to beliefs and practices that eventually degrade life, such as accepting that faith is a virtue and reason the enemy speaking to you trying to steal your soul, or that science and higher education are an enemy since they tend to facilitate unbelief. These ideas if believed will diminish one's understanding and potential.

Being an atheist is like believing that a car has no engine.

No, it's more like believing that a car has no soul and that it wasn't created by a god, but rather, is an entirely natural object.

 

[F1fan]

Love offered freely to all is strange?

What love can you find in a child who is born with the genes that cause cancer? Do you think this is a loving gesture by your God?

Destruction for not believing is strange?

Absolutely. If you insist we have free will this threat of eternal damnation for not believing absurd and implausible ideas is extreme and unloving. This is coercive if it was true. But it not only is absurd, but also contrary to the love that your God is supposed to show and reveal. This is something atheists can see and is the basis to reject the claims made by you Christian extremists. At least moderate and liberal Christians will not push this belief, as they seem to actually understand the hypocrisy and absurdity too. It's only the hard line, Christian extremists who seem giddy that God tortures and punishes free people who don't believe. And a further absurdity is that this applies to any theists that isn't a Christian. These theists were influenced by other religious beliefs in their societies and can't be blamed for the subconscious acceptance of those other religious frameworks.

It is unloving of Christians to assume their particular beliefs have authority over those who believe in different religions, or who lack any religious belief. That is authoritarian and immoral and unloving.

Why, isn't death what you asked for if you don't accept life?

I don't think religious extremists have any sort of life. They seem to be limited in their freedom beyond what they think is true. Atheists have freedom, and a chance to live a life beyond the limits and restriction of religious dogma. I suspect many religious extremists have some degree of envy of non-believers, as we don't fear what the theists fear, and thus have a greater freedom than the believers.

As I note humans evolved to believe in social frameworks, and religions are one type of framework that most humans are attracted to. It's not a hard line. Many believers are very weak believers. They believe the religious framework they were exposed to in life, like Christianity, but don't go to church, don't pray, don't really think about Christianity, or Jesus, or God very much at all. But if asked, they will identify as Christian because thet is the socially acceptable thing to say. And there is a range from atheists all the way to religious exptremists, and the degree to which a person is religious depends on their personality, their intelligence, the degree to being open to social influence, to their insecurities, to their emotional intelligence, to their need to belong, their ability to access concepts with critical thought, etc. Religious extremists do exhibit more of the traits of being influenced by religion, and they suspend their own intellectual authority to the rigid structure offered by religion. It's an easy path to adopt a rigid set of rules that gives a person meaning and the illusion of a mission in life. But these people fail to examine their own behavior and decisions, and this feeds back into why they adopted a set framework in the first place. They lack their own agency and drive to create meaning for themselves through setting goal they are capable of achieving.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Both agnostic theists and agnostic atheists don't make any sense.

Of course they do.

Atheism speaks to a lack of belief. Agnosticism speaks to a lack of knowledge.

 

[F1fan]

Not that I've seen.

You keep trying to see through the heavy veil of dogma that you have adopted and decided is true, despite this dogma having no basis in fact or reason.

You don't have the freedom to see clearly and objectively. And that is why dogma is dangerous and a liability.

 

[SkepticThinker]

The alien explanation is just kicking a can up the road, it's not an explanation of how everything came to be.

So is the God "explanation." Where did God come from?

 

[SkepticThinker]

Impossible... you can't repeat every scientific experiment that you've heard of to prove it to yourself.

Sure you can. That's why scientists have to carefully explain their methodology in the scientific papers they write.

 

[Sgt. Pepper]

Thank you for sharing this with me. My journey was pretty similar.

You're welcome.

 

[Wildswanderer]

But, the point is that it is NOT a matter of choice whether to believe or not.

We are talking about religion aren't we? About God, not math.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Sure you can. That's why scientists have to carefully explain their methodology in the scientific papers they write.

You personally cannot do every experiment to prove every scientific theory.

 

[SkepticThinker]

You personally cannot do every experiment to prove every scientific theory.

Yes I can. You can too. That's the entire point.

 

[Wildswanderer]

More likely, I'd expect that you can tell the difference between your God intuitions and the appearance of the room you're in,

Actually God is more real than the room. He is in all and through all and over all. So mere matter pales in comparison.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Yes I can. You can too. That's the entire point.

No, you couldn't build the parts of say the CERN accelerator to spec as per calibration and the computer software, then put it all together and do an experiment. Stop promoting the folk version of science.
It relies on a group effort. Basic science yes, but once it involves too many instruments and software, then no.