Double-blind Prayer Efficacy Test -- Really?

[Subduction Zone]

Irrelevant. Lack of belief isn't " I maybe, kind of could believe." That's uncertainty. The definition of words is important.

Try to avoid using strawman arguments please.

 

[Subduction Zone]

You have provided no such evidence.

You have taken away your own right to demand evidence. So don't blame him.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Try to avoid using strawman arguments please.

What? This isn't a hard concept to understand... If we change the definitions of words nobody knows what we're talking about.

 

[Wildswanderer]

You have taken away your own right to demand evidence. So don't blame him.

I got maybe three solid hours of sleep last night...I really have no patience for nonsense posts.

 

[Subduction Zone]

What? This isn't a hard concept to understand... If we change the definitions of words nobody knows what we're talking about.

Once again, you are the only one that has done that. Perhaps it is because your religious beliefs get in the way of understanding definitions.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I got maybe three solid hours of sleep last night...I really have no patience for nonsense posts.

Once again this is projection on your part.

You do not understand the concept of evidence. You run away from discussing that concept. That action tells us that you know that you are wrong.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Once again, you are the only one that has done that. Perhaps it is because your religious beliefs get in the way of understanding definitions.

My dog is now only sort of a canine. Might even be a cat! Because I can define it any way I want to.

 

[SkepticThinker]

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

Uh no. All you need to be an atheist is a lack of belief in god(s). As already pointed out.

 

[PruePhillip]

The bible says in the kingdom of God there is no time. I find it incomprehensible that a realm can operate without time. All physical laws that I am familiar with require t=time.


It's comprehensible, just incoherent. I imagine time stopping, and everything else stops with it, including thought and action. The claim that a deity thinks and acts outside of time is easy to conceive and to reject. Remember, your original claim was that no comment can be made about such incomprehensible realms, and I argued that all such notions could be analyzed critically for just those kinds of errors.

I can imagine time stopping. I can't imagine time not existing - an entirely different proposition.
Time appeared with the beginning of the universe. Where did it come from? The PROCESS of creating this universe created time. HOW was this process done when time did not exist? This is the magic bit in the secular's vision of everything appearing from nothing, for no reason.
So dithering over aspects of this magisterium outside of the natural world isn't just pointless, it simply can't be done.

 

[SkepticThinker]

No, that agnostic.

Nope. Agnosticism speaks to (lack of) knowledge.
Atheism speaks to (lack of) belief.
As already explained.
Remember? I'm an agnostic atheist.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I don't see a difference. An absence of belief in deities doesn't leave room for God being a possibility.

Okay, how about this ...

I've never seen compelling evidence that convinced me that God(s) exist, and so I don't believe in God(s).
Or this:
I've never seen compelling evidence that convinced me that fairies exist, and so I don't believe in fairies.

Neither of these mean that I am not open to compelling evidence for the existence of things, just that I haven't seen it, and so remain unconvinced.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I have this theory I call 'skeptics of the gaps' concerning the bible.
The claim by skeptics has been, over the past 100 years or more, that the bible is myth - there being no Jewish people, no Patriarchs, no King David, no Moses, no Sodom and Gomorrah and no Jesus. But slowly these figures, cities, empires and prophets have come to light. This year it has been Sodom and the proving that the Jews of Moses time had a written language.

I've said this to you before and I'll say it again.

When archaeologists uncovered the city of Troy and found that it really did exist and people really lived there, did that suddenly mean that the god Apollo exists and pulls the sun across the sky every day with his chariot, or that the god Zeus mated with a sea nymph who gave birth to the demi-God Achilles as foretold in prophecy?

Is this also a case of "skeptics of the gaps?"

 

[SkepticThinker]

What? This isn't a hard concept to understand... If we change the definitions of words nobody knows what we're talking about.

Then maybe stop trying to change the definitions of words.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Then maybe stop trying to change the definitions of words.

I didn't.

 

[Wildswanderer]

I can imagine time stopping. I can't imagine time not existing - an entirely different proposition.
Time appeared with the beginning of the universe. Where did it come from? The PROCESS of creating this universe created time. HOW was this process done when time did not exist? This is the magic bit in the secular's vision of everything appearing from nothing, for no reason.
So dithering over aspects of this magisterium outside of the natural world isn't just pointless, it simply can't be done.

I believe this is one of the reasons why they push for the multiverse even though there's no evidence... Then they don't have to imagine time beginning, which they have no explanation for.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Irrelevant. You keep implying otherwise, that we need these answers. No we don't. We've never had them and yet here we are. Furthermore, the religious "answer" explains nothing, either, and leaves additional questions unanswered about how and why a deity could exist, questions the theist doesn't ask himself, questions he dismisses with special pleading.

Oh good grief! Yes here we are? Why? That's the question literally every sane person asks at some point.

You didn't rebut the assertion - again. You implied that unavailable answers were important to have, probably as part of a strategy to give this god an important job, namely, providing the answers or being the answers to why things are the way we find them. I called those answers irrelevant. They might be interesting and they might even be useful, although I can't imagine how, but they aren't important. Remember, a rebuttal is a counterargument that, if sound, demonstrates that the original claim is incorrect. Perhaps you can see that your comment doesn't do that. We can both be correct.

Why? Because no answer is available and no answer is needed.

And yes many find answers, like we are here to help others, or we are here to worship the creator, or we are here for a purpose of some kind at least.

Finding meaning and purpose in life does not answer the questions of how the universe came to be.

Actually, it does, as has been explained to you in vain ad infinitum. The limitations of your imagination do not limit what is possible. All of my fellow self-identifying agnostic atheists have no difficulty with the idea that something can be not believed while believing that it is possible. I'll bet you've said, "Maybe, but I'm not convinced." Try to adapt that thought to atheism: "Maybe, but I'm not convinced about gods."

Irrelevant. Lack of belief isn't " I maybe, kind of could believe." That's uncertainty. The definition of words is important.

Lack of belief can be accompanied by naming the conditions if any which would lead to belief. You see that here everyday on RF. Perhaps you know that the moderator in the debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye on whether creationism is a viable scientific pursuit asked, “What would change your minds?” Scientist Bill Nye answered, “Evidence.” Young Earth Creationist Ken Ham answered, “Nothing. I'm a Christian.” Nye is giving you the conditions

And I notice that you failed to rebut that claim as well. It still remains plausible and unrebutted that "the limitations of your imagination do not limit what is possible." Nor did you rebut (or even acknowledge) that you've likely said in the past, "Maybe, but I'm not convinced," nor address its implications for your claim.

I can't emphasize to you enough that when you're playing on the critical thinker's field, your comments are assessed by them according to their rules, not yours. If you can't rebut those statements, the debate is over and the matter resolved. It doesn't matter that you don't agree. You're playing by rules the critical thinker rejects and vice versa. You reject his rules and the sound conclusions they generate. I suspect that you believe that the matter is unresolved, and that your rebutted claim is still tenable and arguable in the minds of your collocutors when it is not. You're repeating claims that have been dispatched with already, like a clearly guilty inmate who keeps insisting that he is innocent in the face of compelling forensic evidence that he is. The matter considered settled unless he can produce a rebuttal from prison leading to a vacating of his conviction. Nobody's listening to his claims of innocence any more. The matter is considered resolved. Same here.

You left the last plausible statement unrebutted, and the debate ended: not only can life come from nonlife, it is necessarily the case that it did.

You have provided no such evidence.

It was an argument from pure reason. No evidence beyond the existence of life is relevant to the argument. And you didn't answer it. As I said, the debate ended then. It doesn't matter to the critical thinker that you can't seem to remember what you have read, or else didn't understand it, or don't accept those rules.

This isn't a hard concept to understand... If we change the definitions of words nobody knows what we're talking about.

You're projecting you own inflexibility onto others that can do that successfully. It's really rather easy to know what everybody is talking about however they define words as long as we know what they mean when they use the word. It's as easy as translating a language.

 

[Wildswanderer]

was an argument from pure reason. No evidence beyond the existence of life is relevant to the argument. And you didn't answer it. As I said, the debate ended then. It doesn't matter to the critical thinker that you can't seem to remember what you have read, or else didn't understand it, or don't accept those rules.

No it wasn't. It was a blind guess. At least have the honesty to admit that.

 

[Wildswanderer]

You implied that unavailable answers were important to have,

They are available, however. You just don't care for them.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I didn't.

Yeah, you did. As pointed out by myself and several other posters. Multiple times.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Yeah, you did. As pointed out by myself and several other posters. Multiple times.

I literally posted the definition from the dictionary.