Life From Dirt?

[Polymath257]

Belief, lack of belief, subjective evidence for God and how it is perceived by believers or non believers, all this is about peoples' state of mind.

And do you consider a person's state of mind to be good evidence that their beliefs are correct?

 

[Polymath257]

I find it logically unacceptable for science or skeptics or atheists to state that it is known that God was not needed to beging life on earth.

OK, how would the hypothesis that God is needed be tested? If there is no way, it is a hypothesis that can be eliminated with no other considerations.

Side tracking waste of time.
Saying life began without God is not possible in science even if science claimed to have overcome all the chemical problems for the formation of bodies in nature.

Being able to explain the origin of life without a deity itself shows that no deity is required for the origin of life.

Side tracking waste of time. We are talking about the origin of life and what life it. So it has no relevance even if science cannot also logically say that no extra-dimensional aliens exist.

But if you cannot eliminate the extra-dimensional aliens, do they suddenly become a rational alternative?

 

[Audie]

Are you talking about Luke's story at Acts 28:3.

There's only one story about him being bit
by a viper, and it's an absurd story.
You probably never analyzed it, just did the
blind faith thing.

 

[Audie]

And do you consider a person's state of mind to be good evidence that their beliefs are correct?

Any evidence will serve for the believer.
Start with conclusion, believe only what confrims.

They best hope they are never on trial in
the hands of those who think like they do.

 

[Audie]

Belief, lack of belief, subjective evidence for God and how it is perceived by believers or non believers, all this is about peoples' state of mind.

This is a unique concept with grave implications.

Care to say what you mean by " state of mind"?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Useless is less than false. We determine usefulness (in understanding) if an idea leads testable conclusions.


Once again, usefulness in being an explanation requires testability against the alternative.

Yeah, the problem is that if we test everything for at least enough outcomes for objective as independent of brains, formal objective, social, psychological and/or what matters, then your "we" is a limited social we and not all humans.
So in effect if you think that we is humanity, it is false.

 

[Audie]

I am a believer in God and a Christian and I know there are a variety of Christians from Biblical literalists to liberal, hardly believe the Bible at all Christians. I'm probably closer to the literalist end of the scale but not 100% that side and there are many more like me. Iow I'm not really extreme in the scale.
But here I am and people want to attack my beliefs.

Don't out your notions on a debate forum
if you don't like them challenged and feel
" attacked".

And don't even consider you could be
mistaken about anything, for lo, the
alternative is to accept that you are
not any more infallible than your book is.

A few of us though understand that an
unexamined thought is notvworth thinking.

And an unexamined belief ( like in snake stories)
is for fools.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I find it logically unacceptable for science or skeptics or atheists to state that it is known that God was not needed to beging life on earth.

Yes, you said that already.
You're just repeating the claim instead of addressing the point I raised.

Side tracking waste of time.

I don't consider being accurate a "waste of time".

Saying life began without God is not possible in science even if science claimed to have overcome all the chemical problems for the formation of bodies in nature.

In the same way it is not possible to claim that the cake in your kitchen wasn't stolen by extra-dimensional aliens.

Side tracking waste of time.

No. Perfectly valid point that you are avoiding to address like the plague.

We are talking about the origin of life and what life it.

The same logic applies.
For any event, regardless if it is known how to occur or not, you can never rule out that whatever unfalsifiable entity didn't also do something.
All you can say is that it's not needed and point out that those unfalsifiable things have no evidence to begin with and are therefor not even worth considering.

If you accept god without evidence, why not accept anything without evidence? Like extra-dimensional aliens.
What's the difference?

I submit that the difference is your own bias. Your a priori belief in gods.
If you had a priori beliefs or a bias towards extra-dimensional aliens... you would consider them to to be a valid contender to having played a role in whatever - without any evidence. Instead, just based on a priori beliefs.

So it has no relevance even if science cannot also logically say that no extra-dimensional aliens exist.

That's the exact relevance it has.
You're trying to make your god claim "special" and are trying to make it more credible by pointing out that it's something science could never proof. That's who you try to defend the fact that there is no evidence. How you try to weasel out of a burden of proof.

The fact is that you can say that about ALL unfalsifiable things, which are infinite in number.


Since you don't like things that are a "waste of time", perhaps you should ponder the futility of trying to contemplate unfalsifiable things for no other reason then you already believing them.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

An example would be the gospel stories as being witness accounts of what Jesus did and said.

I'ld say that those are the claims of christianity that are in need of evidence.

To accept them as evidence, then the claims themselves would be the evidence of themselves.
"the bible is correct because it says so in the bible" is what you then end up with.

So no, I don't consider the bible evidence.
I consider the bible a collection of claims in need of evidence.

An example would be living creatures needing a life giver because atoms are not alive.

That's again just a belief.
Beliefs aren't evidence, are they?

 

[Subduction Zone]

I suppose you actually believe there is no more evidence for God than there is for the Tooth Fairy.

That appears to be the case. Give me some reliable evidence for God and show that I am wrong. Or fail to do so and confirm that belief of mine.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Any ideas that survive being tested can be held *provisionally* until further testing is done. Those ideas that cannot be tested can be dispensed with as, if nothing else, a way to eliminate useless ideas.

"A way to eliminate useless ideas" - the definition of a razor, an interesting topic to me.

Most know Occam's Razor - unnecessarily complicated explanations are less likely to be correct. And most know Hitchens' Razor even if not by that name: "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." Sagan's pronouncement that, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" can be called Sagan's Razor. And the one above from Popper deserves to be known as Popper's Razor: "For a theory to be considered scientific, it must be possible to disprove or refute it" and the implication that ideas not considered scientific can be disregarded.

There are a few colloquialisms that do the same kind of thing. "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence or stupidity" has been called Hanlon's Razor. "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck" can be considered a Razor (the duck Razor?). And we had one in medicine for evaluating symptoms - "When you hear hoofbeats, look for horses, not zebras," zebras being rare diagnoses. Rare things occur rarely, so rule out likelier (and also time-sensitive) diagnoses first.

There used to be a site called Pete's Pond set in a game reserve in Botswana that was a real-time camera of wildlife drinking at a pond (now defunct, video of old footage below). One night, I was watching and heard clop clop clop, and thought to myself, there are no horses in Botswana. Then I saw them when they came into the light. Zebras. Of course. I was embarrassed at myself and had a good laugh recalling the medical razor. I wonder if African medical students are taught that when they hear hoofbeats to think zebras, not horses. Context is everything.

I find it logically unacceptable for science or skeptics or atheists to state that it is known that God was not needed to begin life on earth.

Me, too. It should be worded that gods are not known to be necessary for anything, nor even to exist.

people want to attack my beliefs.

They want to do what I just did - correct them according the what the methods of critical thinking support.

There is evidence for God

And I'll "attack" this idea by pointing out that if your evidence doesn't make the existence of a god more likely according to the academic rules of inference, then belief in gods is not justified. Anybody can point to anything in the room and claim that it is evidence for whatever he wants to claim is true, but there must be a logically valid chain connecting that evidence to the conclusions drawn from it to call them sound (correct).

 

[Brian2]

The Gospels are the claim that it happened.

The claim can also be evidence.
Does a witness at a trial need to have his claims proven in order for them to be evidence?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

The claim can also be evidence.
Does a witness at a trial need to have his claims proven in order for them to be evidence?

It generally helps if you can support your claims with actual evidence, yes.

Sadly in court that all to often doesn't happen, which is why so many innocent people end up in jail.
Buying people's claims at face value often results in ending up with wrong beliefs.

To reduce that error margin, actual verifiable evidence is required. It's like a bs filter.

Consider also that a single piece of actual independently verifiable evidence, will instantly overturn 100 "testimonnies".

I refuse to call it "evidence". Technically you could call "testimony" evidence - but it's very bad evidence. Notoriously unreliable.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

That is a particular example of in effect the following: If I say that the dentition of X is Y, then it doesn't make X is Y a fact.

This isn't about defining the bible claims as something else.
This is about calling bible claims what they are: claims.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Not even the flood has been shown to be false imo.

That is simply not true. Unless you wish to allow for magic to have occurred.
Because aside from magic having occurred, the flood as described most definitely didn't occur.
Geology as a field was actually born out of the research into this, which concluded that it didn't happen.

 

[Brian2]

How did you come to that conclusion?

The same way you looked at everything and concluded that they did not need a designer, creator and life giver.

You can believe anything you want. But it doesn't mean it's rationally justified. Faith positions are not rationally justified and not a pathway to truth, because anything can be believed on faith. Please notice how you turn to faith when asked for evidence for your beliefs.

I suppose you also have faith that a designer, creator and life giver is not needed.
And from here we go around in circles about whose faith is justified and if you even have a faith and whose job it is to prove what to whom, and what does the scientific evidence say, and is evidence actually evidence if it cannot be falsified etc.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I'd say the existence of entire civilizations before and after the flood, that seem to have been completely oblivious that any flood ever occurred at all, and continued to thrive before, during and after this supposed global flood, is a huge nail in the coffin of flood mythology.

Even if we ignore all the evidence from physics, geology, etc which shows the flood to be nothing but a myth, that fact alone can already pass as the very coffin of flood mythology instead of merely a nail

That, in and of itself, is already a slam dunk point against the entire idea.

 

[Brian2]

I don't know how the universe began. Big Bang just tells us about when it began to expand.
At this point, it does not appear that god(s) are required to explain how the universe came to be and came to expand, and in fact, I think positing the existence of a creator god just complicates things and adds axioms to the equation that aren't necessary.

No time therefore there was no first cause because a cause needs time to act through.
A singularity does not mean that the universe did not exist in that singularity.
Quantum theory shows that space and particles can just randomly come appear so no need for a creator.
Trouble is it does not make sense imo and you cannot say that a designer, creator, life giver is not necessary and so extraneous.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

And do you consider a person's state of mind to be good evidence that their beliefs are correct?

It depends on their beliefs about what is going on. If it is subjective and the person are aware of that, then the belief is correct.
But that requires that the person have learned be aware of that, but that is not a given.

 

[Brian2]

We can observe that when the brain is damaged, the mind is also damaged.
We can observe that when a person dies, their consciousness dies with them. We never seen consciousnesses floating out of bodies up into heaven or anything.

So, how do we reconcile those observations with your assertions about brains and consciousness being separate things?

I don't and don't need to. I have a belief, you are making a claim, it is up to you to justify that claim. And you justify it to yourself but not to me, and I justify my beliefs to myself and not to you.