Why do you think so many scientists are atheists?

[John Cuthber]

Needsimprovement.

Hostile witnesses lie.

 

The experiments were done to study the reliability of eyewitness evidence.

The people involved generally knew this.

They still proved to be lousy witnesses.

 

If you decide to only believe the witnesses on one side then you have decided what you will see as the outcome so saying

"As far as Pauls conversion, it wasn't only written about in pauls own letters but I believe that Luke attested to it"

doesn't really convey any information apart from a reaffirmation of your faith. Your faith isn't in question here. The things you put forward as facts are open to contention.

 

I'd really like you to actually answer the points I put forward. Do you really believe that "Even if this could be investigated , there were only 8 people there, "?

I'd also like to see some real evidence to support the assertion that "As far as historicity and historically accurate reporting, Luke was a top notch historian, even more accurate then secular accounts of that time. "

 

People who don't respond to reasonable questions tend to get written off as trolls.

[iNow]

Assuming something to be a miracle is still a load of horseshit.

[mooeypoo]

Assuming something to be a miracle is still a load of horseshit.

 

If my previous reply (written nicely and non-staffy without the big bad red font) wasn't clear, here's the clarification:

 

!

Moderator Note

This forum includes netiquette and etiquette standards in its rules. Not only is there no need for you to use such obtuse tone and language, these type of posts will not be accepted here. You know this already.

My bad for thinking I could hint this without wearing my mod hat.

 

Next time, I'll wear my mod gloves, and start taking action. We have a debate, people. Please, be nice, and express yourselves like the intelligent people you are. I know you can.

 

~moo

[Moontanman]

Most claims of miracles are just a misinterpretation of what happened, when someone recovers from what was thought to be terminal cancer it is often called a miracle when in reality there are many explanations that do not require intervention by a supreme being on any level. people have fallen out of airplanes are 25,000 feet with no parachute and survived and this is hailed as a miracle but closer inspection shows other wise. the are things that i would see as a miracle but I would have to keep the possibility of technology at hand too.

 

If Venus and Mars were to suddenly exchange places in orbit around the sun for no apparent reason it would be difficult not to think miracle but any reasonable person would have to admit technology of some kind could be at the root of the exchange. Not understanding why something happened does not make it a miracle, nor does understanding mean a supreme being wasn't involved. The whole idea of something being miraculous is disingenuous to me... using something not understood to prove or disprove anything is also wrong...

Edited August 26, 2010 by Moontanman

[John Cuthber]

iNow.

I think the word you were looking for is "Bollocks" * as in

"Assuming something to be a miracle is still a load of bollocks. "

 

Mooeypoo,

while you are reminding people of the importance of netiquette, could you explain to Needsimprovement that repeatedly failing to answer questions is also ill mannered.

Thanks.

 

 

* feel free to check out the meaning of the word

"In 1977, Professor James Kingsley, a famous linguistics professor at the University of Nottingham, had accredited the word to be used in the early eighteenth century with the Roman Catholic Church priests. His studies show that the actual word "bollocks" means either a 'priest', or 'rubbish spoken by the priest'."

from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollocks#Etymology

[Mr Skeptic]

Yes, there are many equally rude words that could be used. That one person is being rude does not mean us moderators must allow everyone to be rude. Passive rudeness is very hard to deal with properly. Note that it is also somewhat rude to gang up 4 vs 1 or so in an argument and yet expect the outnumbered one to dedicate as much time to answer all questions.

 

Incidentally, it is just this sort of situation where a one-on-one "duel" would be appropriate. In a one-on-one discussion it is very difficult to ignore a question, especially if repeated, since the other can force them to answer the question or end the discussion. On the other hand, the other is not outnumbered and flooded with questions and eventually demands.

[needimprovement]

Needsimprovement.

Hostile witnesses lie.

 

The experiments were done to study the reliability of eyewitness evidence.

The people involved generally knew this.

They still proved to be lousy witnesses.

 

If you decide to only believe the witnesses on one side then you have decided what you will see as the outcome so saying

"As far as Pauls conversion, it wasn't only written about in pauls own letters but I believe that Luke attested to it"

doesn't really convey any information apart from a reaffirmation of your faith. Your faith isn't in question here. The things you put forward as facts are open to contention.

 

I'd really like you to actually answer the points I put forward. Do you really believe that "Even if this could be investigated , there were only 8 people there, "?

I'd also like to see some real evidence to support the assertion that "As far as historicity and historically accurate reporting, Luke was a top notch historian, even more accurate then secular accounts of that time. "

 

People who don't respond to reasonable questions tend to get written off as trolls.

Your really reaching for straws now. Why would a hostile witness lie if their tesimony would be what is needed to get to their version of the story. Again , no reason for hostile witnesses in the new testament and the pharases to do so. Debunked

 

As far as luke testimony not meaning anything your flat out wrong as Luke has been proven to be far more reliable source then even secular historians.

 

10) Luke's use of the word Meris to maintain that Philippi was a "district" of Macedonia was doubted until inscriptions were found which use this very word to describe divisions of a district.

 

11) Luke's mention of Quirinius as the governor of Syria during the birth of Jesus has now been proven accurate by an inscription from Antioch.

 

12) Luke's usage of Politarchs to denote the civil authority of Thessalonica (Acts 17:6) was questioned, until some 19 inscriptions have been found that make use of this title, 5 of which are in reference to Thessalonica.

 

13) Luke's usage of Praetor to describe a Philippian ruler instead of duumuir has been proven accurate, as the Romans used this term for magistrates of their colonies.

 

As I said before Luke is a top notch historian.

Edited August 26, 2010 by needimprovement

[Mr Skeptic]

I guess that makes me a top-notch historian. I too know how to use correct words, and can correctly name the leaders of a country! And with my new-found status as a top-notch historian, I can say with confidence that the miracles attributed to Jesus were not really that miraculous.

[John Cuthber]

"As far as luke testimony not meaning anything your flat out wrong as Luke has been proven to be far more reliable source then even secular historians."

Blatant straw-man. I never said that.

 

Rather than answering things I didn't say, perhaps you should answer my original question.

 

Here it is again.

Do you really believe that "Even if this could be investigated , there were only 8 people there, "?

 

Also you need to find out what evidence means.

Just saying something again doesn't count as evidence.

[iNow]

iNow.

I think the word you were looking for is "Bollocks" * as in

"Assuming something to be a miracle is still a load of bollocks. "

Perhaps it's cultural. I could have just as easily said it's intellectually lazy. I could have said calling something a miracle is a ridiculous waste of lexicon. I could have said it's an escape route used by an ignorant person who is incapable of exploring more realistic scenarios and accepting a present state of uncertainty. I could have said that calling something a miracle is a form of mental surrender, and I could have said that people who use the term are obvious asshats who probably ate too much paste in school and who never enjoyed reading books past those where coloring was required.

 

Instead, I said calling something a miracle is a load or horseshit. I suppose bollocks works, too. I'd never looked up the definition. Thanks for sharing.

 

 

Mooeypoo,

while you are reminding people of the importance of netiquette, could you explain to Needsimprovement that repeatedly failing to answer questions is also ill mannered.

Thanks.

QFT. Talk about missing forests for trees.

 

 

 

---

Yes, there are many equally rude words that could be used. That one person is being rude does not mean us moderators must allow everyone to be rude.

Strawman much?

 

 

Passive rudeness is very hard to deal with properly.

But preaching, proselytization, and failure to address valid criticism is NOT hard to deal with properly. How about you start there, eh? Maybe you can find some traction and get better at it as you gain experience.

Edited August 27, 2010 by iNow

[ParanoiA]

Perhaps it's cultural. I could have just as easily said it's intellectually lazy. I could have said calling something a miracle is a ridiculous waste of lexicon. I could have said it's an escape route used by an ignorant person who is incapable of exploring more realistic scenarios and accepting a present state of uncertainty. I could have said that calling something a miracle is a form of mental surrender, and I could have said that people who use the term are obvious asshats who probably ate too much paste in school and who never enjoyed reading books past those where coloring was required.

 

Instead, I said calling something a miracle is a load or horseshit. I suppose bollocks works, too. I'd never looked up the definition. Thanks for sharing.

 

And I, or anyone else, could just have easily said you're a paste eating asshat as well for ruling out that which you cannot disprove nor confirm. I could have said that ruling out miracles is an escape route used by an ignorant person incapable of understanding that inductive reasoning, the philosophy driving the scientific method, holds that you have yet to prove a single theory and cannot even claim the future will behave as the past. You don't know that gravity even exists beyond where you've looked - you've inferred how less than 1% of the entire universe even works - yet you're still petulantly peddling your disbelief faith offensively.

 

It makes no logical sense to rule out miracles any more than it does to rule them in. They are merely a possibility that cannot yet be disproven. Why does a man so adamantly rule out choices in this way and then ridicule others for not making the same, limiting leap of faith? Emotion. How does that same man rationalize disparaging others, like theists, for doing the exact same thing? Emotion.

 

Drop the baggage. You can choose to rule out that which you don't believe in, like miracles, but to offend from some pretentious soap box of objectivity...you might as well be shitting on the scientific method, the very thing you hold up so proudly.

 

If you are going to take a purely scientific view of everything in life, then you are never going to accept anything as a "miracle". This is just a matter of definition. A "miracle" is by definition unexplainable by science, so accepting that it is a miracle is to accept that it cannot, in principle, be explained by science.

 

If you take the view that everything can be explained by science, then even if you don't have an explanation, you believe an explanation exists and therefore it isn't a miracle.

 

In other words, you guys are never going to agree because your starting axioms are different (and in my opinion this underlined the stupidity of having a religion forum on a science site).

 

It does seem reasonable that scientists should operate from a position of miracle rejection, in practice. That doesn't mean offending people in the process, of course, or even believing it to be so, but it does mean that science shouldn't stop trying to explain something until it gets explained by science. I'm assuming here that miracles cannot be proven, of course.

Edited August 27, 2010 by ParanoiA

[Moontanman]

I'm going to have to take sides here, while Inow might have been abrasive needimprovement has pretty much shit all over the rules and the very idea of what this site is about from day one. He seems to have no concept of evidence nor does he refrain from constant proselytizing. He makes shamelessly unsupported claims, over and over as though repeating them is sufficient to make them true and he has asserted things like killing a liberal is something no one would notice and he has asserted his religious views are the only views that should be respected while demeaning any other religions as "old timey" ways believed by the superstitious and gullible. he is very frustrating to debate and slippery as an eel to pin down some semblance of meaning to his posts. He ignores all attempts to get him to abide by any rules but his own religious derived rules. If one of us did what he does we would be called down immediately, the OP of this very thread is nothing but a straw man argument meant to allow him to proselytize. The question could have just as easily been asked "Why are so many uneducated people theists?" and it would have been just as arrogant a question as the OP....

[Marat]

Both scientifically-oriented thinkers and religiously-oriented thinkers occasionally encounter phenomena they can't explain. But while the religious people quickly leap to the assumption that what they cannot explain has to be interpreted as the manifestation of a divine miracle, the scientists say that what cannot be explained is just a temporarily blank spot on the map of scientific accounts, an open space lying unfilled and waiting for additional data or rational inference to fill it in. The essential point is, however, that these two approaches are not equally rational, since the religious approach illegitimately assigns the explanation, 'divinely caused miracle,' for something it cannot explain by natural causes, while the scientific approach honestly leaves unexplained what for the moment cannot be explained by normal, objective, publicly accessible, universally shareable data and rational inference.

 

Consider the 'unexplained phenomenon' of the waviform propagation of light through space in the 1890s. The fact that light had this transmission pattern rationally implied that it was being carried in some medium able to preserve its waviform structure in motion, like the waves propagated from a turtle swimming on the surface of a pond. But then the Michealson-Morley experiment showed that the speed of propagation of light didn't change whether you fired a light beam into space with the motion of the Earth or against it, so it couldn't be moving through a resisting medium such as was required to account for its waviform structure. At this point, no scientist said that inexplicable result was a 'miracle' requiring some magical force to 'explain' it, but rather, they just left it as an open question and continued to tinker with aether explanations to try to come up with a natural explanation. The reason they didn't fill this blank space on the scientific map with a miracle, a special kind of being with magical powers, was that special hypotheses with unique properties really can't explain anything, since they fail to connect the phenomenon to be explained with anything more well understood. Instead, they just re-depict what is to be explained on a lower ontological level, much as the Ancients 'explained' thunder by the action of the Thunder God. An 'explanation' like that is just circular and uninformative.

[ParanoiA]

I'm going to have to take sides here, while Inow might have been abrasive needimprovement has pretty much shit all over the rules and the very idea of what this site is about from day one. He seems to have no concept of evidence nor does he refrain from constant proselytizing. He makes shamelessly unsupported claims, over and over as though repeating them is sufficient to make them true and he has asserted things like killing a liberal is something no one would notice and he has asserted his religious views are the only views that should be respected while demeaning any other religions as "old timey" ways believed by the superstitious and gullible. he is very frustrating to debate and slippery as an eel to pin down some semblance of meaning to his posts. He ignores all attempts to get him to abide by any rules but his own religious derived rules. If one of us did what he does we would be called down immediately, the OP of this very thread is nothing but a straw man argument meant to allow him to proselytize. The question could have just as easily been asked "Why are so many uneducated people theists?" and it would have been just as arrogant a question as the OP....

 

But his 'miracles are horseshit' comment was to Severian, not needimprovement. Severian didn't crap on this thread, nor this site, and is quite the respectable thinker in my opinion, not to mention, an actual scientist.

 

And so what? If we're doing a comparison on asshats, or if asshatting was a sport, then I could understand your need to choose a side.

 

We already know needimprovement has no respect for the scientific method, this site, or even passionless reason and evidence. There is a worn out revolving door of his model day after day. The folks at this site are more than a little experienced at dealing with that.

 

There is also a model of scientist that forgets to appreciate just how much they don't know about the universe, and the assumptions that the scientific method makes. Personally, I revere science over anything else. I also admit that it's an act of faith to believe that science can and will explain everything - or at least everything that I notice. Not unsupported faith, because we have evidence to support that it's very possible.

[Moontanman]

Then it would appear I owe Severian an apology, it's real and I hope Severain will accept it, I think I stated my feelings about miracles in post #54, it would also appear that my frustration in trying to engage needimprovemnt has caused me to step outside the rules of respectful behavior as well, I apologize for that as well. It would seem I need to leave needimprovement alone and let him proselytize his way on in the world...

[Marat]

It would be a very interesting discussion if Needimprovement were to engage some of the points made against his views specifically and directly. If anyone is going to be persuaded by anything said, we need to answer each other's points punctatim.

[needimprovement]

A "miracle" is by definition unexplainable by science,

This is because of our knowledge status only. A true miracle is totally based on empirical laws which can be performed by any advanced mind.

 

Miracles like the parting of the sea is possible if one knows the inner workings of the quarks which make up water, like H and O, and what their attributes are and how they can be made to react against other forces. In ancient times, a gun would be seen as a miracle. But there is no difference between a cell being made to carry blood to the heart, a seed becoming a pineapple and a strong easterly wind making locusts appear when they should not.

 

What needs to be realized is if the surrounding factors in a described miracle are authentic, like the amazing description of a plague of locusts appearing like a dark cloud and blocking out the sun: many farmers know this as certainly an authentic description.

 

The advent of spells are also authentic for ancient times, but this is now replaced with science. Humanity would not have survived without spells and voodooism - there was no medicine then, this faculty introduced in the Hebrew bible, which first separated occultism with scientifically based medicine with the ID, treatment and quarantine of contagious diseases like leprosy.

 

One day, humans will be able to move Jupiter 5% to the left - which seems like star trek now.

[iNow]

One day, humans will be able to move Jupiter 5% to the left - which seems like star trek now.

5% relative to what? It's like you're asking all of us, "What's the difference between a duck?"

 

<maybe I should add an entry to favorite swansontisms>

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

And I, or anyone else, could just have easily said you're a paste eating asshat as well for ruling out that which you cannot disprove nor confirm. I could have said that ruling out miracles is an escape route used by an ignorant person incapable of understanding that inductive reasoning, the philosophy driving the scientific method, holds that you have yet to prove a single theory and cannot even claim the future will behave as the past. You don't know that gravity even exists beyond where you've looked - you've inferred how less than 1% of the entire universe even works - yet you're still petulantly peddling your disbelief faith offensively.

Worth noting that the scientific method explicitly rejects induction, rather than being based on it, which is why we cannot "prove" any theory.

 

It's because of this lack of an inductive principle that we cannot say "I've never seen this, therefore it doesn't exist" or "I've seen this happen several times, so it must always happen."

 

Indeed, because of this, all hypotheses are on an equal footing until one is falsified. (Falsification can be achieved, whereas absolute proof cannot be.) If two hypotheses explain the same phenomenon equally well, we cannot choose between them for any reason: not because one makes more sense to us, because one is simpler, or because one builds off an existing theory that has passed experimental tests. None of these provide a reason that one hypothesis should be true and the other shouldn't be. (Occam's razor is a suggestion, not a rule.) The only way to decide is to falsify on hypothesis through empirical experiment.

 

I highly suggest the book The Logic of Scientific Discovery for a proper treatment of the scientific method, if you're interested in more depth.

 

(So yes, I'm agreeing with you, and just pointing out that the lack of induction is the problem, not the other way round.)

[ParanoiA]

Worth noting that the scientific method explicitly rejects induction, rather than being based on it, which is why we cannot "prove" any theory.

 

Yeah, I used poor language. I hadn't thought of it as rejecting induction, but I think I understand what you mean.

 

You're saying, essentially, that science cannot accept strong or weak induction as a substitute for confirmation. It must respect the principles of induction and not therefore make leaps of faith. I was saying, essentially, that the method is driven by the concept "that the conclusion is false even where all of the premises are true", and thus the method can never confirm things and make leaps of faith.

 

And yeah, I concede "driven" is not the right word. I didn't mean to imply that induction is "utilized" by the method, but rather that the method respects the logic that supports induction. And because the scientific method respects the notion that a conclusion is false even where all of the premises are true, it cannot therefore confirm things.

 

I think we're saying the same thing, but coming at it a different way. Mine being a bit sloppy I guess.

 

You have suggested that book before, and it's on my list. Right now I have to get caught up on Covenant to get ready for the new one coming out. But it will be next...

Edited September 2, 2010 by ParanoiA

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Yeah, I used poor language. I hadn't thought of it as rejecting induction, but I think I understand what you mean.

 

You're saying, essentially, that science cannot accept strong or weak induction as a substitute for confirmation. It must respect the principles of induction and not therefore make leaps of faith. I was saying, essentially, that the method is driven by the concept "that the conclusion is false even where all of the premises are true", and thus the method can never confirm things and make leaps of faith.

 

And yeah, I concede "driven" is not the right word. I didn't mean to imply that induction is "utilized" by the method, but rather that the method respects the logic that supports induction. And because the scientific method respects the notion that a conclusion is false even where all of the premises are true, it cannot therefore confirm things.

 

I think we're saying the same thing, but coming at it a different way. Mine being a bit sloppy I guess.

 

You have suggested that book before, and it's on my list. Right now I have to get caught up on Covenant to get ready for the new one coming out. But it will be next...

Karl Popper's point in The Logic of Scientific Discovery is that induction is not, in fact, a valid means of supporting any conclusion. There is no logical principle of induction that lets us say "this has happened before, so it will happen again," or even "this has happened before, so it's likely that it will happen again."

 

One could rephrase your argument to state that a scientific conclusion has as an implicit premise that the rules of physics are the same everywhere, across all time, and that implicit premise can never be proved true. I think that's how Popper would put it.

 

(Also, I haven't actually read all of his book -- I got the free sample on my Kindle, and for some reason the free sample turned out to be a large fraction of the book. I've read most of that...)

[Marat]

The problem is that there are countless theories of what constitutes valid scientific method and how theories are properly refuted or confirmed, so depending on which one you pick, you can more or less assign falsifiability or induction completely different roles or status. In stating what you think is proper scientific method, you have to make clear whether you are a follower of Carnap, Hempel, Reichenbach, Quine, Sellars, Caws, Popper, Suppe, Searle, etc.