Question for Atheists...

[Polymath257]

I totally agree. Those ways are not all physical.

Give an example of one that is not.

 

[Polymath257]

So where is the observer of the observation in regards to the sufficiently strong interaction with a complex environment?

The interaction *is8 the observation. In this case, the best 'observer' would simply be the environment.

 

[Polymath257]

Even if one layer would actually fit to other alleged times, it doesn't necessary mean that they are all correctly counted.

Of course. And layers can be skipped (which is also detectable, by the way). But the results aren't going to be off by more than a fraction of a percent, which is quite accurate enough for most purposes. The fact that the results align for known events gives us confidence they are accurate. That is known as calibration.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Do those of faith actively try to prove their ideas wrong?

If not, they are not doing real tests.

...

When I test as per observation if there are real tests, I get the result that I can't observe real or test.
Rather I get that you are using a norm for how to behave according to that norm and declaring that other norms are wrong according to your norm of real tests.

You have to learn that you are not just a passive observer, but in the universe as a part of the universe and you do more than just real tests.
But I am no different than you as such. It is just that we sometimes have different thoughts, feelings and behaviors. That is all.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

The interaction *is8 the observation. In this case, the best 'observer' would simply be the environment.

Can you rephrase that and remember I am neuro diverse so I struggle with "this" form of using "".

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

And when you use workds in non-standard ways, communication starts to fail.

Yeah, but you are not the standard of science for all cultures and neither am I. So I use the word science as per another culture than yours.
Now if you can test objectively, that your subjective standard is not that, but in effect objective I will listen to you.
But until that is the case, then you are not the objective standard of understanding of what science is and neither am I.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

​

What caused you to stop believing in the supernatural?

I never started.

Unless if you count believing in magical things as a child (like santa etc).
Even though I can't actually remember ever believing such things - I assume there was a time that I did.

But, assuming you mean traditional religious beliefs in the supernatural: nope, never did.
I had a secular education and was never indoctrinated into a religion. As a result, I never held religious beliefs.
My first real encounter with religious beliefs was when I transferred into a catholic school and suddenly had a religion class. I was about 16 then.
And the reason I transferred to that school was logistic. The "catholic" part had nothing to do with it. It was more a compromise then anything else, lol.

Anyhow: to summarize, I was always an atheist. I have never been a theist.

Or perhaps you never believed in them. Good for you. You were born with a more rational mind.

Not really. I was born with the same "blank slate" mind as everybody else.
There's this saying when it comes to religious indoctrination: "you got to get them while they are young!"
Indoctrinating children into a belief system is a very easy thing to do. Their brains are like spunges that will accept pretty much anything a figure of authority tells them without question.

Once they get older, it becomes a lot harder.

So it's not that I was "smarter" or "more rational" then others. It's just that I didn't have any parents or teachers that taught me (or I would rather say: "tricked me") to believe in it.

I suspect I kept asking why and how. Perhaps that simply causes one's mind to become more rational overtime.

Asking questions certainly is a good way to expose false beliefs and / or beliefs without rational justification.

 

[PureX]

Validity in science *means* functional. A theory is valid exactly as much as it predicts accurate results.

Try telling that to the scientism crowd.

 

[PureX]

Do those of faith actively try to prove their ideas wrong?

No, because they aren't trying to understand. They're trying to interact/relate. Keep in mind we are talking about faith based theists, not "believers". The believers of religion are the theistic version of the scientism crowd. Both out to create and maintan the illusion of their own self-righteousness.

If not, they are not doing real tests.

The kind if test and the criteria for results depends on the questions being asked. Stop presuming that science is the method for investigating everything. It's not.

And do those of faith try to show their ideas are wrong? Do they try to find the limits of when their faith works?

Yes.

But you're just repeating your bias, here. Philosophy is not science. Neither is theology, or art, or religion. Stop presuming that they are all subject to scientific query. They aren't.

If not,, they are simply doing confirmation bias.

Conformation IS a bias. How do you not understand this?

Nope. Fundamentally different approaches: one of faith vs one of skepticism.

But faith includes skepticism, just as does science. Unless you want to equate faith with belief, which is what the idiots do as they try to justify their idiotic bias. You don't want to be an idiot, do you?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Try telling that to the scientism crowd.

what crowd would that be?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

It's only a problem for those who think science is the only possible way of addressing questions on the true nature of ... well ... anything. Like yourself. For those of us that understand there are other methods and avenues of investigation, it's really not such a problem.

Which "methods" and "avenues of investigation" would that be and can you provide a demonstrable track record of success for them?

Of course it's not only possible, it's advisable. We humans learn by imagining possible explanations and the possibilities those explanation afford us

Keyword here is POSSIBLE.
For things to be concluded as POSSIBLE, you require some type of demonstrability and / or plausibility.
What makes you think the "supernatural" is POSSIBLE?
How did you come to that conclusion?

, and then acting on them to see if they work.

Meaning, testing?
How do you test supernatural assertions?

Your theory that an idea has to be justly valid before we can propose it is silly.

No, it's not.
It has to do with a simple initial triage of reasonableness.

Otherwise, you might as well invoke extra-dimensional cake stealing aliens when a cake is missing from your kitchen.
Contrast that for example with considering the possibility that your pet or child or roommate took it / ate it.

We'd never learn anything if we behaved that way. Every possibility would be rejected before it was even tried.
I realize that's what you want us all to do with THIS idea, because you have decided it's not valid, but that's just your bias trying to get in everyone else's way.

He didn't "decide" it is not valid.
Instead, those invoking the stuff have failed to show how they are valid pathways to consider.

Why would we contemplate assertions that are indistinguishable from sheer fantasy?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Validity in science *means* functional. A theory is valid exactly as much as it predicts accurate results.

Take #2
Testing and the 2 variants of empiricism. Now if you go deep, you will find 2 versions of empericism or if you like definitions.

So stop there and don't claim that the one is the standard and the other is not. Rather test them both. But the problem is that if you only use one of the defintions, you will have been biased, because you use conformation bias.

So here they are.
-There is only one kind of valid experince and that is external sensory experinces.
-There are 2 kinds of experince, first person cogntive self-reflective experinces and external sensory experinces.

And there is the test.
Someone: Only tests based on that the result is external as only external sensory experinces are valid.
Me: I then test if I can have an experince of the other kind as above and then answer is yes. I simply answer that is not valid, as valid is a first person cogntive self-reflective experince and not an external sensory experince.

The joke about your belief system, is that valid, is not valid as it is not an external sensory experince. It is that simple!
Just learn that there are 2 versions of empiricism and not just one.
That is basic epistemology and that is part of how there are at least 2 kinds of science.

You are just a product of one of these versions and I am just a product of the other one. And that my fellow human is as much a fact as any objective fact, but it is for us 2 subjective facts, because it is so dependent on our individaul brains.
Your subjective bias is that you have subjectively learn that only objective external sensory experince is valid. But that it is valid, is not an objective external sensory experince.

So if you learn to reflect on your own thinking and not take it for granted, you could learn that. But with sociology and psychology, you don't need that and it is not so, that you must, have to, ought or what ever to have a life as human, Nor it is given that you will learn it, because you can be a human without learning to reflect on the 2 versions of empiricism.

 

[Audie]

I don't believe that. There can be different reasons for layers, and they are always result of how much rain, melting and freezing there has been. For example there could have been years without no rain, or years when the ice has melted and frozen many times. This is why they count can't be trusted, it is too simplistic and ignorant principle.

Of course you don't believe it.
Religious dogma

Now, you do have a point, several perfectly good ones,
in fact. You have a part of the idea of how a scientific
or detective or other investigation is done.
Yahoo
As in, if an idea is proposed, first look for problems
with it. Don't do expensive time consuming investigation
if there's a fatal flaw. Like that your suspect was in Paris,
not Bangkok on crime day.

So sure, the possible issues that are obvious to you
are obvious to all. Each, and more, had to be addressed
long before the millions of dollars were going to be
appropriated, time wasted and reputations ruined by
such stupidity as to overlook things equivalent to
"but he was in Paris".

Before you go charging that the thousands of
people involved are " ignorant"
( and me too ftm) you would
be well advised to consider whether
you know anything yourself besides
how to ask a few pertinent questions.
You obviously have no idea how your concerns
have been addressed



The chance that you are more clever and know more
than any researcher is not especially good nor that they are all fools.

" Simplistic " and " simple " are not the same.
A lot of simple ideas are true and work well.
The principle that lets airplanes fly, finding the
age of a tree by counting rings. Utterly reliable.

What youd need to do with your type of
objections,would be tpshow tree ring counting is not reliable. Or that counting
ice layers does not give consistent results.

Now, since it turns out that in any glacier / ice field in
the world, if one counts ( visual, and e- log) back to
the year 79 AD, you find ash from Mt Vesuvias and
the characteristics spike in sulfuric acid.
That means something. What do you think it means?


There are many other such examples.

Since your thing is to look for reasonable issues,
sources of error and ways to show these are false results,
what ( other than that I am lying) do you see in such results that shows the objections you raised are valid?

 

[Audie]

what crowd would that be?

All in his head.

 

[F1fan]

As far as following some religious framework designed by others, all I can say is that there are different types of trees and each one has its own framework as well. I grew up with the Bible as the basis for my family's belief system,

Right, you were exposed to this book being truth by those around you that you trusted. You were too young to doubt wht you were told, like any of us. It is learning and practicing critical thinking skill that allows us to question and make sound judgments. Many humans never learn adequate skills and they are gullible to social influence without understanding what is going on. They become like robots, in essence. Many theists know what they believe, but can't explain why they believe it.

but I didn't understand it until much later in life because no one really explained it to me until I was older,

From what you have written and I have read of your posts I don't get the sense you understand much at all. What you think to understand is the reasons for what the Christian dogma you adopted is supposed to do for you, like gaining you salvation. But these reasons are not factual, and not explanations.

and -- it wasn't my family's religious concept even though based on the Bible.

Christianity is like a buffet that offers a lot of tasty dogma to the willing believer, and what a believer choses to accept and adopt varies. It's not unusual for a child to reject a family's particular sect and opt for one among friends , and that happens as a child strives for independence. But they aren't striving for independence from religion.

But I began to listen.

Yet you refuse to listen to critical thinkers and their arguments against religious belief.

Before that I examined other religious concepts and did not find them reasonable. (In my opinion, not speaking for others.)

Of course, there are many diverse religious frameworks, and if you have adopted certain assumptions most other religions will not be consistent, thus easily rejected.

For many years I declared that I did not believe in God, but then things happened to made me turn to God in earnest. And He answered me. And I began to read and study the Bible with people I respected.

Not unusual. In my questioning of believers over the decades those who rejected religion and didn't believe in God weres till holding on to basic assumptions, and their belief was dormant. What snaps people into being a believer is typically some sort of crisis or emotional life event. Notice how you say "things happened" that made you turn to God (no one turns to God if they don't already assume God exists), and you did it in earnest, which suggests some sort of urgency, perhaps an an emergency. Suck folks facing a crisis or emotional evnet will need to coe, and they turn to any mental option they have. We are all exposed to religion and we know it is an option if we have our backs against the wall. It's never a God that helps us out, it is other believers. I have no problem with this.

When my mom died the hospice folks had a pastor that checked in with us. My mom's friend and me who managed her hospice are both atheists, so we were pretty rock solid. I felt bad for the pastor to not be needed for support, but he obviously has been around and understood some need support and others don't. He was a pretty good guy and didn't force any religious actions at all.

 

[F1fan]

Well, yes.
But if you apply science to any claim including I don't believe, then you have to explain using science how that claim could be falsified.
In more broad terms I don't belive is a part of a model at least based on the testing of God, for which if it is a true test it includes the conditions for getting a postive result.
In other words it is not absolute that there is no God, rather it is so far that for a test for God, we get a negative result, but that is so far.

And thus if you claim with science you don't believe in God, it means that you actively have done something. Namley tested if there is a God. So I don't believe is not just a passive, but in effect an active claim.

No it doesn't. There is nothing factual or consistent as a description of "God" that anyone can test. It is just a set of claims that critical thinkers have to deal with, much like someone throwing trash in our yard. It's not our trash but we have to deal with it and dispose of it, and then move on. Believers keep dumping God in our yard and we have to keep stopping what we are doing (reasoning) and deal with it as a nuisence. Then we get back to facts and science.

 

[Yerda]

What makes you think the "supernatural" is POSSIBLE?

It isn't a logical impossibility. That's enough to say it is a logical possibility.

 

[ppp]

It isn't a logical impossibility. That's enough to say it is a logical possibility.

Logical possibility doesn't mean much. Epistemic possibility is what gives an argument or assertion weight.

 

[ppp]

The problem is that QM *is* local. It is just not deterministic. The basic equations of QM have probabilities propagating at less than the speed of light. Correlations are formed and also propagate. You don't get entanglement of particles that have never interacted.

I remember this - vaguely - from decades ago. I never quite understood how there couuld be particles that never interacted. What breaks entanglement

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

It isn't a logical impossibility. That's enough to say it is a logical possibility.

Is it?

(BTW: I would say that the supernatural is a logical impossibility)