Is Faith Evidence of Things Not Seen?

[Valjean]

You didn't read my chapter did you?

People of different religions come to different conclusions, but everyone knows in themselves right and wrong.

From an anthropological perspective I'd have to disagree. Our innate morality is quite rudimentary.
Let me know if you need examples

 

[Valjean]

I think it's a fine, poetic definition. Of course, there's nothing that can be said of those who think that evidence is proof. Evidence is a finger pointing at the moon, not the moon itself. It leaves room for doubt.

Definition? How it it a definition?
At best it's a poetic description -- and a perplexing one.

 

[robocop (actually)]

From an anthropological perspective I'd have to disagree. Our innate morality is quite rudimentary.
Let me know if you need examples

You may be right, but I think religion can give it a necessary boost.

It doesn't follow that if evolution gave us our innate morality that it's enough to handle a future that we had no time to evolve into.

 

[Valjean]

It's methodology includes obedience to principles and it's called the golden rule.

That's not a methodology. it's not an investigative technique or step in an investigation. It's not part of a falsifiable test.

I agree it's usually a fine principal, and adherence to fine principles usually yields what most would consider beneficial consequences. But faith itself is a cultural artifact in most people. Most people are not moral philosophers who ponder these abstruse questions.

 

[Left Coast]

1) God did what man could not do.... put in an ear drum -- God lets do what they can do... make a hole in the skin where there was no hole. The question isn't really an important question. It was all the way... an ear drum all the way

You realize humans have naturally restored deaf people's hearing through inventions like cochlear implants and tympanoplasty, right? Artificial eardrums were first invented in the 19th century.

2) Well... we know the doctors didn't do it and we know that medically speaking and biologically speaking we don't see ear drums being created years after birth. Do you have a better suggestion?

No, nor do I need one. The fact that we don't know how something happened doesn't justify saying that magic did it. The truth is, every unexplained phenomenon that has ever happened has looked like a supernatural miracle...till we figured out how it actually happened.

3) I have addressed the question. Would you like to go through a list of possibilities?

Sure. Any unfalsifiable one will do. Because they all explain the phenomenon equally well.

2) You have already decreed that cancer treatment is no good because it doesn't always work (your principle and not mine)

Silly, obvious strawman of what I actually said. Approved cancer treatments are approved specifically because they frequently do work, and their outcomes are scientifically validated.

Again, if any regimen of prayer or faith healing were as successful...doctors would prescribe it. They don't, because no prayer or faith healing method has that track record.

3) Prayer that was scientifically administered was full of holes. (Since science doesn't understand prayer... would you like to know why?)

Same reasons my lucky socks didn't work, I'm sure.

If you think you have a method that works as good or better than demonstrated cancer treatments...please call the nearest research hospital to you ASAP. If your method is as good as you claim, your Nobel Prize will follow shortly thereafter and cancer will be a forgotten memory. Call me up when that happens. I will publicly credit you and admit that I was wrong.

4) People still use prayer and it still works... BEFORE they go to the doctor.... guess why you never hear about it?

Because it doesn't work anywhere nearly as well or as consistently as demonstrated evidence-based methods.

you can live without miracles (as you are basically saying you have no faith for it) - I will continue enjoying miracles because I do believe

Now, that is a fascinating and revealing statement. Why would it be that I need to believe that miracles happen in order to experience one? You are saying here I have to believe something before I see the evidence for it, in order to then see the evidence for it. That is a classic recipe for confirmation bias.

 

[robocop (actually)]

That's not a methodology. it's not an investigative technique or step in an investigation. It's not part of a falsifiable test.

I agree it's usually a fine principal, and adherence to fine principles usually yields what most would consider beneficial consequences. But faith itself is a cultural artifact in most people. Most people are not moral philosophers who ponder these abstruse questions.

Valjean, I leave you with John 7:17:

17 If any man will ado his bwill, he shall cknow of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.

 

[robocop (actually)]

That's not a methodology. it's not an investigative technique or step in an investigation. It's not part of a falsifiable test.

I agree it's usually a fine principal, and adherence to fine principles usually yields what most would consider beneficial consequences. But faith itself is a cultural artifact in most people. Most people are not moral philosophers who ponder these abstruse questions.

After you do that, you might try James 1:5-7 and Moroni 10:3-5 at scriptures.lds.org in the Book of Mormon

 

[Valjean]

You may be right, but I think religion can give it a necessary boost.

True, but, historically, religion has yielded some pretty horrific results. Application of a specific, religion based principle can yield good results, of course, but the principles it instills tend to be very shallow, culture-bound and easily altered by social pressure -- or removal of social pressure. I don't find religion based actions to be particularly consistent or reliable.
Few internalize moral principles deeply. In this way religion can act as a crutch, enabling proper behavior within a specific context, but obviating
the need to form any strong, internalized moral scaffolding.

It doesn't follow that if evolution gave us our liz innate morality that it's enough to handle a future that we had no time to evolve into.

Agreed.
Rudimentary moral behavior has been observed in many species, but it's not enough to deal with modern social complexity, and enculturated or religious morality is too thin a veneer -- and too cuture-bound -- to reliably deal with rapid social changes or allocultural intercourse.

 

[Trailblazer]

Trailblazer said: What would be evidence for no God?

I've given you a lengthy answer to that in the past, which I won't repeat in its entirety, but in summary, it's based on the idea that if either case A or B is true, and if A is true, either result 1 or result 2 is possible, but if case B is true, only result 2 is possible, and the result is always is always 2, then you have a strong argument for case B being the case, an argument that gets stronger with every result 2. I'll illustrate:

Case 1 is a fair coin. Result 1 is heads and result 2 is tails. Case 2 is a loaded coin that always comes up tails. After 1000 flips, all outcomes are tails. Is this proof that the coin is loaded? No, there is still a vanishingly small possibility that the coin is fair, but I doubt that you would bet on the next flip being heads, which would be just as likely as tails if the coin were fair.

I gave you multiple examples of "If the universe has a god, then either result 1 or result 2 is possible, but if there is no god, only result 2 is possible" with multiple. A couple of examples: If there is a god, the universe might or might not have had natural laws, as a god doesn't need a gravitational law to keep the planets orbiting their stars, but a godless universe requires it. If a god exists, it might or might not leave us a holy book that no human could have written or not, but if there is no god, only a holy book that human beings could have written is possible. In both of these cases, we see what is necessarily true in a godless universe. Let's call it tails.

The last time we went through this, I gave you about a dozen examples, all coming up tails. This is evidence against an interventionalist god existing (but not evidence against a deist god, who would leave our universe rendering it godless)

Basically, what I have to say to the heads and tails and the results is that all your ideas about an interventionalist God vs. no interventionalist God are based upon your expectations about what an interventionalist God would/should do if such a God existed, so it is just your personal opinion, facts not in evidence.

As I have said repeatedly in the past, the only way to know what God does and why God does it is through what the Messengers of God reveal about God. Anything else is just our personal projections onto a God we know nothing about. The problem with projections is that you do not know anything about why things are the way they are in this material world, what might be related to God’s actions and what isn’t.

Trailblazer said: You cannot prove God does not exist because you cannot prove a negative.

Some negatives can be proven (there is no living hippo in this room), but I take your point, and add that that is irrelevant to the critical thinker, who needs no proof that a god doesn't exist to not believe i gods. I also don't have proof that leprechauns and vampires don't exist. Neither do you. But I'll bet you reject the notion nevertheless just as I will not believe in a god without good cause.

Likewise, critical thinker who believes in God needs no proof that God exists in order to believe in God, although a critical thinker would need evidence, because otherwise their faith would be blind. That evidence would be a good reason to believe in God. Unfortunately, not everyone views the same evidence in the same way, and that is why we see the dichotomy between believers and nonbelievers.

 

[blü 2]

I can't show it to you, I can show it to you like 2+2=4.

Exactly ─ 2+2=4 is a conceptual operation with abstractions regarding quantities. Numbers don't have objective existence, though their instantiations may.

We are playing naive empiricism, namely that all experiences are external sensory experiences.

Of course we're not. There are many kinds of experience that are internal. Dreams are an easy example. Certain meditative states are another.

But sensory deprivation is so disorienting, it's used as a form of torture. That's because objective reality is out there, and we've evolved to live in it.

That is easy to show and test:
Someone: All experiences are external sensory experiences.
Me: No!

E.g. you use of the word "mean" is purely conceptual/imaginary, because I can't show you the meaning of this sentence, yet you understand it.

I wouldn't usually call understanding the meaning of a word an "experience".

But the fact we communicate with words, is evidence of the reality of reality. If we followed your solipsism instead, you could talk to me just by thinking, because I'm simply the product of your imagination ─ like that bus that's about to run over you and kill you.

(As to the meaning of 'meaning' in this context, it's the concept or set of concepts we associate with one or more signals from outside ourselves ─ verbal, written, musical, body language, all the forms of communication.)

I can't help you, because your rule against purely conceptual / imaginary is itself purely conceptual / imaginary

Or is that you can't describe it because you don't actually have a coherent concept of it? That's what it sounds like.

and you accept that and then turn around and use your conceptual / imaginary non-physical rule against anything non-physical.

Real is physical. Thoughts are physical states and processes in the brain. The reason unicorns aren't real is because you can't find them in nature, the world external to the self. The reason why 2 isn't real, is purely conceptual, is because you can't find an uninstantiated 2 in nature. The reason I think you're real is because you're in nature, or at the least conveying a credible impression of being so. Even if you're a Turing machine, you're in nature.

The reason the supernatural is not real is because you can't find it in nature.

 

[Valjean]

Valjean, I leave you with John 7:17:

17 If any man will ado his bwill, he shall cknow of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.

I don't see this as very reliable. So many people believe so many different doctrines and are so sure they are of God.

After you do that, you might try James 1:5-7 and Moroni 10:3-5 at scriptures.lds.org in the Book of Mormon

James: Wisdom will be imparted only if you're a true believer (so will not question it)? Sound's intellectually shaky, and there's still the problem of millions of true believers all over the world asking sincerely and getting contradictory truths.
Moroni: 10:3: I don't agree that God has been particularly merciful. He's been cruel, vicious and capricious. 4-5, again a promise of true revelation to believers without any historical consensus about what's been revealed.

The believers believe they've been revealed truth, but that's because they're true, unquestioning believers. If you're not questioning, comparing or testing, you'll never know whether what you've received is of God or a product of your own, inner longings.
If they compared revelations they'd realize that different faithful believers have been receiving different revelations all over the world.
I conclude that this is not a reliable method of determining truth.

 

[Valjean]

There goes my confidence in the hurricane and bomb shelters.

Spoiler

Faith is confidence or trust in a person, thing, or concept

May God help us.

LOL -- That's a different usage than the religious seem to be pushing. They're using it as a sort of ontological shibboleth.
Beware the multiple meaning. There lurk straw men.

 

[robocop (actually)]

True, but, historically, religion has yielded some pretty horrific results.

Those results in their historical contexts do not usually seem so horrific to me.

 

[robocop (actually)]

I don't see this as very reliable. So many people believe so many different doctrines and are so sure they are of God.
James: Wisdom will be imparted only if you're a true believer (so will not question it)? Sound's intellectually shaky, and there's still the problem of millions of true believers all over the world asking sincerely and getting contradictory truths.
Moroni: 10:3: I don't agree that God has been particularly merciful. He's been cruel, vicious and capricious. 4-5, again a promise of true revelation to believers without any historical consensus about what's been revealed.

The believers believe they've been revealed truth, but that's because they're true, unquestioning believers. If you're not questioning, comparing or testing, you'll never know whether what you've received is of God or a product of your own, inner longings.
If they compared revelations they'd realize that different faithful believers have been receiving different revelations all over the world.
I conclude that this is not a reliable method of determining truth.

Well, then obviously you have to start from scratch and figure out what religions you need to explore if its worthwhile and explore all of them. Or figure out what it is that you need to test and test it. Pursuit of truth no matter where it lies and all that good shiz.

 

[Kenny]

You realize humans have naturally restored deaf people's hearing through inventions like cochlear implants and tympanoplasty, right? Artificial eardrums were first invented in the 19th century.

No, nor do I need one. The fact that we don't know how something happened doesn't justify saying that magic did it. The truth is, every unexplained phenomenon that has ever happened has looked like a supernatural miracle...till we figured out how it actually happened.

Sure. Any unfalsifiable one will do. Because they all explain the phenomenon equally well.


Silly, obvious strawman of what I actually said. Approved cancer treatments are approved specifically because they frequently do work, and their outcomes are scientifically validated.

Again, if any regimen of prayer or faith healing were as successful...doctors would prescribe it. They don't, because no prayer or faith healing method has that track record.


Same reasons my lucky socks didn't work, I'm sure.

If you think you have a method that works as good or better than demonstrated cancer treatments...please call the nearest research hospital to you ASAP. If your method is as good as you claim, your Nobel Prize will follow shortly thereafter and cancer will be a forgotten memory. Call me up when that happens. I will publicly credit you and admit that I was wrong.

Because it doesn't work anywhere nearly as well or as consistently as demonstrated evidence-based methods.

Now, that is a fascinating and revealing statement. Why would it be that I need to believe that miracles happen in order to experience one? You are saying here I have to believe something before I see the evidence for it, in order to then see the evidence for it. That is a classic recipe for confirmation bias.

Yes... there are doctors who now help with hearing. that is why God gives wisdom to doctors because He still want people healed and knowing that people aren't going to believe (no matter what) - He still wants people healthy - so He gives growing revelations




Our associate pastor, whose wife had an inoperable brain tumor and a 4 month death sentence, was suddenly healed after prayer (hmmm... thing just seem to happen after prayer).

You can call it instant normal reversal (which can't be proved) and we will call it a miracle which you can say it is just coincidence.

Like I said, you don't have to live with miracles. God continues to give revelations to doctors to increase their capacity because God loves you and would prefer you being healed.

However, He still doesn't send me a bill. In our view, it is paid for by the Cross of Jesus Christ.

I think we took this as far as we could with what questions you asked.

Have a great one and thank you for an enjoyable time.

Signing off,

Ken

 

[robocop (actually)]

I don't see this as very reliable. So many people believe so many different doctrines and are so sure they are of God.
James: Wisdom will be imparted only if you're a true believer (so will not question it)? Sound's intellectually shaky, and there's still the problem of millions of true believers all over the world asking sincerely and getting contradictory truths.
Moroni: 10:3: I don't agree that God has been particularly merciful. He's been cruel, vicious and capricious. 4-5, again a promise of true revelation to believers without any historical consensus about what's been revealed.

The believers believe they've been revealed truth, but that's because they're true, unquestioning believers. If you're not questioning, comparing or testing, you'll never know whether what you've received is of God or a product of your own, inner longings.
If they compared revelations they'd realize that different faithful believers have been receiving different revelations all over the world.
I conclude that this is not a reliable method of determining truth.

The road to truth requires you either look everywhere or trust truth somewhere to eliminate looking somewhere else; you also can only know how true something is inasmuch as you know how false the opposite is.

 

[Left Coast]

Yes... there are doctors who now help with hearing. that is why God gives wisdom to doctors because He still want people healed and knowing that people aren't going to believe (no matter what) - He still wants people healthy - so He gives growing revelations




Our associate pastor, whose wife had an inoperable brain tumor and a 4 month death sentence, was suddenly healed after prayer (hmmm... thing just seem to happen after prayer).

You can call it instant normal reversal (which can't be proved) and we will call it a miracle which you can say it is just coincidence.

Like I said, you don't have to live with miracles. God continues to give revelations to doctors to increase their capacity because God loves you and would prefer you being healed.

However, He still doesn't send me a bill. In our view, it is paid for by the Cross of Jesus Christ.

I think we took this as far as we could with what questions you asked.

Have a great one and thank you for an enjoyable time.

Signing off,

Ken

The advances made in medicine are the result of...science, not the supernatural.

You continue to ignore the countless faithful Evangelical Christians who have died of cancer after praying and being prayed over for healing. Including people I know personally. Prayer doesn't just get credit for the Ws. The Ls count too.

If you want to keep believing in miracles, no one can stop you. Nor do I particularly care, so long as you don't advocate for prayer over demonstrated medical treatment.

Thanks for the enlightening discussion, as always.

 

[Kenny]

The advances made in medicine are the result of...science, not the supernatural.

You continue to ignore the countless faithful Evangelical Christians who have died of cancer after praying and being prayed over for healing. Including people I know personally. Prayer doesn't just get credit for the Ws. The Ls count too.

If you want to keep believing in miracles, no one can stop you. Nor do I particularly care, so long as you don't advocate for prayer over demonstrated medical treatment.

Thanks for the enlightening discussion, as always.

My pleasure... just remember I never said one over the other. Combining the best of two treatments the best choice.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

You foundation is equivocation. Nothing that you build on a fallacious foundation is sound.

Observation, thinking and feeling are not the same.

That was my first part. So if we can agree that the human behaviors of observation, thinking and feeling are not exactly the same we can continue?

 

[Valjean]

Those results in their historical contexts do not usually seem so horrific to me.

What 'results' do you think I was talking about?