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Double-blind Prayer Efficacy Test -- Really?

Sheldon

Veteran Member
That's just a snide way of claiming you can't believe in miracles and be a historian. The Guy is biased.
The problems arise when people who don't know any better, use argument from authority fallacies, to pretend subjective unevidenced and irrational claims about magic, are historically supported because they are asserted as true by an historian.

The real irony is when superstitious claims by religions are wholly or partially falsified by science or historians, and the same apologists deny the scientific evidence. talk about wanting to have your cake and eat it, and of course not having a clue how cake is made is an apt analogy as they are usually scientifically illiterate, and this is particularly true of creationists.
 

Wildswanderer

Veteran Member
If the word multiverse explains nothing, then the word God explains nothing. If that's a valid reason to reject either, it's a valid reason to reject both.
Thanks for telling me you are from the church of the multi verse. Yeah we don't deny we use faith, you do deny that you also believe in lots of things strictly by faith.
 

Wildswanderer

Veteran Member
Why? because he has decided that no such thing exists as you just described. The empiricist would investigate the possibility before arriving at a tentative conclusion, which is the fundamental difference between the two approaches to mapping reality. The empiricist begins with that reality and generates useful inductions about it by noting its patterns and laws. The faith-based thinker begins with his "conclusions," then massages the evidence through his confirmation bias to try to make it comport with those a priori beliefs.
So the atheist has not decided that no such thing as God exists? And why would you think a theist would not investigate what he experiences? We are told to test the spirits, not a to blindly accept everything.
 

SkepticThinker

Veteran Member
So the atheist has not decided that no such thing as God exists?
Atheism is a lack of belief in god(s) not the claim that "there are no gods."
See the difference?
And why would you think a theist would not investigate what he experiences? We are told to test the spirits, not a to blindly accept everything.
You literally just told us that he wouldn't. That a person who thinks they see a fairy should just go with it and believe in fairies.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Yeah we don't deny we use faith, you do deny that you also believe in lots of things strictly by faith.

But you know that I don't accept your definition of faith. Faith is unjustified belief. The beliefs I've expressed to you are all justified. I've given you the argument, which you haven't refuted, which is always the case with sound conclusions. Any unsound conclusion can be successfully rebutted by identifying the error of fact or reasoning that makes the argument unsound. No sound conclusion can be rebutted since it is correct. I make sound arguments and you fail to rebut them. The faith is all yours.

Reasoning should tell you God is more plausible than magic matter.

Reasoning tells me that belief in gods is unjustified, and therefore faith, which is guessing. And it should tell you that gods are less plausible than naturalistic interpretations of reality. Why? The evidence is pretty lopsided when one compares the number of things once attributed to gods now understood naturalistically and the number of things once thought to be natural that have been shown to be better explained supernaturally.

What purpose would a god serve? What would its job be? The universe is self-assembled and automated. Apologists keep looking for a role for a god to fill, but can't find one. They offer designer of the living cell as a role that can only be filled by a god, citing that cells are too complex to have arisen undesigned and uncreated by an intelligent designer, never noticing that their rescue of this problem is to invoke the existence of something even more complex and less likely to exist undesigned and uncreated. Reasoning allows one to identify and then reject the incoherent ideas like that one.

So the atheist has not decided that no such thing as God exists?

You seem to never make progress in this and a few other areas. It's pretty pointless answering you again except to say that you still haven't understood what was written to you, and just recently, too:

The universe:

I. Had no prior cause
1. Always existed
2. Arose uncaused from nothing

II. Had a source
1. Unconscious substance (multiverse)
2. Conscious (deity)​

Did you not understand what that meant? Why is it that I get the impression that every time I repost this, it's as if you've never seen it before? Why am I sure that within days, you will be making that same claim again about what atheists believe?

Of course, if by "God" you mean the god of the Christian Bible, that one has been disproven. I doubt that you're interested in the disproofs. No believer ever is. No believer rebuts the proof. None have even tried. None have ever indicated that they read or understood it. So, I consider the matter settled. Debate ends when the last plausible, unrebutted statement is made.

Other gods remain possible, such as the deist god, about whom almost nothing is alleged, hence agnostic atheism. But not the biblical god. The Bible writers fleshed it in too much, enough to see that that description contradicts both observation and pure reason. Of course, one needs to be in the "little club" to come to such conclusions.
 

Wildswanderer

Veteran Member
What purpose would a god serve? What would its job be? The universe is self-assembled and automated.
Not even close. What does it even mean to say that the universe is automated? You think everything that happens is explained by science? Please! We don't even understand some things our own brains do. We don't understand how some people seem to read the minds of their twins.. how people have premonitions that come true and I could go on for a long time.
 

SkepticThinker

Veteran Member
Not even close. What does it even mean to say that the universe is automated? You think everything that happens is explained by science? Please! We don't even understand some things our own brains do. We don't understand how some people seem to read the minds of their twins.. how people have premonitions that come true and I could go on for a long time.
Now you're trying out the god of the gaps argument. Eesh.

So? That doesn't mean magic or some God did anything. It just means we don't know how something works yet.
And guess what? Every time in our history that we didn't know how something worked, saying "God did it" never provided an explanation. It was the scientific method that got us all the answers we currently have about how the world around us works. People used to attribute lightning to Gods because they didn't understand it. Then science came along and gave us actual explanation as to where lightning comes from. Science is actually useful that way.
 

Sgt. Pepper

All you need is love.
You think everything that happens is explained by science? Please! We don't even understand some things our own brains do. We don't understand how some people seem to read the minds of their twins.. how people have premonitions that come true and I could go on for a long time.

For once, we agree. We agree about science. I don't believe science can explain everything either. I'm not aware of any specific science explaining the abilities that I have, which I've explained in the threads I've posted in the Paranormal Activities sub-forum. I won't go into any specific details in this thread about that, but I wanted to say that you and I agree about science. It was your remark about not fully understanding our brains, twins' unique connection with each other, and people having premonitions that caught my attention.
 

Wildswanderer

Veteran Member
The universe:

I. Had no prior cause
1. Always existed
2. Arose uncaused from nothing

II. Had a source
1. Unconscious substance (multiverse)
2. Conscious (deity)
Did you not understand what that meant? Why is it that I get the impression that every time I repost this, it's as if you've never seen it before? Why am I sure that within days, you will be making that same claim again about what atheists believe?
Because if unsure, by definition you're not an atheist.
 

Sheldon

Veteran Member
Because if unsure, by definition you're not an atheist.

Nope, atheism is a lack or absence of belief. I don't know about you but I tend to withhold belief from claims if I am unsure. I also must rationally disbelieve all unfalsifiable claims, and also must remain agnostic about them, since by definition you can know nothing about an unfalsifiable claim. That's why science rejects such claims as meaningless, or "not even wrong" as they are sometimes referred to.
 

Sheldon

Veteran Member
What does it even mean to say that the universe is automated?
It operates without any evidence it needs a deity to do anything. The unevidenced assumptions a deity created it or controls it with inexplicable magic, adds nothing but an extra layer of unevidenced assumptions. It has no explanatory powers whatsoever.
 
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