Feel my pain. Listen to this ignorant young woman lie and lie and lie about evolution: Charles Darwin was a theologian who just guessed and didn’t do any science, there are no transitional fossils, the cell is very complex and therefore could not evolve, yadda yadda yadda. She has been grossly miseducated, and she’s parroting creationist dishonesty with extreme smugness.
There. Now I’ve ruined your morning.
OwlMirror,
Ouch. Fair enough. Unless they were using, quite poorly, irony or sarcasm, which doesn’t seem to be the case, I accept the presentation of the Han and Warda paper, assuming they are in fact scientists which appears to be the case, as an example where beliefs adversely affect the science. Tipler is another matter. People can publish whatever they like in the non peer-reviewed literature. We judge their science by their research publications, not their philosophical publications.
(Aside: Do you accept Hoyle’s and Eddington’s reactions to the Big Bang as evidence where atheists let their beliefs adversely affect their science?)
Sastra,
What test is that again? I’d like to be part of the collaboration. What equipment will we use? What measurements will we take? Count me in. But provide some details. But for heaven’s sake under no circumstances allow anyone to “compartmentalize” this experiment. It must be done at all costs. Again, please send the research proposal.
No, yes, and yes. If science requires humility—oh boy we are in deep kimchee. Nor does it require any ethical values. The worst scoundrel on the planet can do science—as we have seen in the past, some great science has resulted from evil motives. I agree with the other points.
I accept you believe that. I don’t see why. A secular, church and state separated society with religious freedom seems optimal to me. I think science all-the-way-down would be boring. Having a Moslem neighbor is more interesting than having a scientist as a neighbor. I see enough scientists at work.
Nemo#500 wrote:
Heddle is providing us with alternative viewpoints and arguments. Some people like that, some people don’t. Some people like the way he does it, some people don’t. Some people find the experience useful and interesting, some don’t.
Are you sensing a pattern here?
Some people respond to him, some people don’t. Now that this thread is officially over #500 comments, it’s not as if anyone should feel obligated to swell the count so PZ doesn’t feel hurt that nobody reads his blog.
Please stop calling evolution a religion. Intelligent people refuse to be a part of cults, no matter how large.
This video perfectly shows the ignorant, uneducated, brainwashed minds of the creationists. Please site your references!!! The ancient scribblings of your book will not suffice. Scientific books that are updated with new information seems a little more accurate. Is this girl a scientist? (All this talk about the cell, most of it wrong)
Wow
She is brainwashed idiot #87686655
My kids go to public school here in Oregon. My seventh grader is studying horse fossils in Earth Science right now, with objectives of showing the progression of their evolution and how archeology works. No nods to creationism. Just want you all to have some confidence in the public school system.
heddle wrote:
Literalist ;)
Is the existence of God a hypothesis?
If not, what is it?
Some of my best friends are New Agers ;)
I think you’re answering a different question: are people with irrational or false beliefs sometimes very interesting and nice? Or, perhaps, can an individual decide that, for the sake of harmony and a little free time, they’re not going to fight every damn battle all the time?
It’s probably similar to deciding that one isn’t going to try to convert the Damned at every opportunity, nor will one avoid them as friends.
But at some point, truth (or Truth) matters. And whether Islam is true, homeopathy works, God exists, or Jesus Saves needs to be taken seriously, and — in some sense and way that keeps one from being a total and complete dick — applied to life all the way down.
Having a Moslem neighbor is more interesting than having a scientist as a neighbor
Totally. Their cooking is way better.
Sastra,
I understand, I think, what you are saying and I agree with science all-the-way-down if by that you mean that we only teach accepted scientific theories in public schools and that we base our scientific and technological goals and policy on accepted science and we do not allow church interference in the state. I disagree that it should include any attempt to eradicate religion. If education accomplishes that, so be it. (Of course, as a Calvinist I am not worried.) I’d like to think that I’d even think that if I were an atheist, but who knows? It’s a spice of life thing—I’m not a scientist 24/7 (in fact I am now much more a science teacher than a scientist) and I’d rather, at least for good fractions of time, be among people very different from me rather than people just like me.
Heddle: You asked
As an atheist who sees the ‘fruits of science’ continually quotemined by the religious to provide support (however fragile) to their creaking bronze-age philosophies – I undertand exactly why any scientist would fear the irrational use of their findings by unscrupulous ‘shepherds’. Especially such a finding, which could be twisted to support claims of biblical genesis and creation, regardless of truth or how much it had to be stretched to fit the narrow prejudice of pastors and their flocks.
Science is assailed every day by God of the gaps arguments. The Big Bang hypothesis (which is still all that it is, you must agree) is sheer gold for unscrupulous preachers.
You might note, however, that despite their fears (justified in light of subequent events) those scientists still published!
That is the triumph of science. And it ultimately will be the downfall of religion.
Uncomfortable truths in Science will always be aired in public, and scrutinized in the light of the global community of scientists, and of ‘lay people’ like myself.
Uncomfortable truths in Religion — will continue to be glossed over, hidden from view, obfuscated, or demoted from fact to metaphor. When all of your religious ‘facts’ become metaphor, where then is the basis for your religion?
I’m somewhat puzzled Knockgoats: do you really think you have brought out anything that those here have not heard a thousand times before? That’s what’s so boring about atheists – they so seldom have anything new to say. – heddle the hypocrite
Feeble, heddle, very feeble. If you think atheists are boring, what are you doing here? Show me where someone had previously objected to your demand that those convinced science and religion are incompatible shut up about it until they have proved it, on the grounds that you feel at liberty to indoctrinate children with your Calvinist crap even though you have not proved that. If you can’t, then all you have proved, yet again, is that you are a liar.
Argh! I don’t have time to respond fully enough to the nonsense and lies from Heddle the Slippery Calvinist Fish before my next class, and then I’m going to talks in Cambridge and Boston and won’t get home till late tonight. I probably won’t have a chance to fillet him until tomorrow.
I’d rather, at least for good fractions of time, be among people very different from me rather than people just like me. – heddle the hypocrite
Well, something we can agree on – only I’d express it more strongly! I’d much rather, all the time, be among people very different from you rather than people just like you.
SC, it’s 16F in The Hub. He’ll keep.
Yeah, ’cause that’s exactly what Sastra meant by science all the way down. heddle apparently sees enough evidential bases for fact claims at work as well, and hopes to avoid all such boring evidency stuff in the rest of his life (when forming an opinion on the war in Iraq, the economic stimulus plan, etc.).
Heddle,
You can take some comfort in the thought that most of the Pharyngula herd disagree with you. If I were you, I’d be more concerned about the quality of my thinking if they agreed with me.
Tony,
So what? And the quote-mining charge can be a cheap blunt instrument best used when presented with unfortunate facts. Neither Eddington nor Hoyle only went as far as taking the position: “Shit. Crap. Damn. The data point to a universe with a beginning. The friggin’ whackos are going to have a field day with this.” If they said that, and then added: “But what can we do? That is where the data take us.” Then you’d have a point. I would be quote-mining. But both went the extra mile, both sought to dismiss the big-bang scientifically. Any atheist that doesn’t follow the data because it might be exploited by creationists is making a grievous mistake. You can argue that they didn’t do that, though I think the case is pretty strong, but you cannot claim this is a simple quote-mining.
They did, and that’s the point, just like OwlMirror’s example. If they didn’t publish, who cares what they believed? And so the question stands: Did Hoyle’s persistence of a (let’s face it, bizarre) modified steady-state model, adapted to accommodate expansion, and publishing on it, long after there was near unanimous acceptance of the big-bang, indicate that he was letting his beliefs adversely affect his science? I think it is possible. Or maybe you believe atheist scientists are always 100% pure?
SC, OM,
Ooh, that sounds so scary!
Facilis said “Without God as the necessary precondition for the laws of logic there is no standard of logic and reason, so all our objections that I am using “circular reasoning” are meaningless.
Account for the laws of logic and reasoning before you accuse me of fallacies.”.
Your god does not exist so cannot be the source of logic. A number of people on the various threads touched upon the source of logic and reason, but you, of course, were afraid to acknowledge what they said.
The source of logic and reason is the nature of the world and the way things, people, etc. interact. We learn logic and reason by observing and remembering the way the world works and the nature of the universe.
On one other thread you were endlessly repeating “Humans reason. In order to reason they use laws of logic. These laws of logic and reason are universal (apply to everyone), objective (not dependent on human opinion or conventions), immaterial (not made of matter) and invariant( do not change). God is universal,objective,immaterial and invariant and he is the necessary pre-condition for these laws of logic and reason to exist. This is proven by the impossibility of the contrary. How do you account account for the absolute ,invariant,universal, objective,immaterial laws of logic and mathematics?”
It’s pretty clear why you’re wrong. Your claim that its impossible for the laws to have come from someone other than your imaginary god is clearly false. For example the laws of non-contradiction and identity that you referred to come from observing the interactions of things in the real world – we notice that one thing is never another and so on, we notice that heavier than air objects fall, e=MCsquared, etc. As well the case can be made that
1) The laws of logic and reason are not necessarily universal or objective because some logic and reason is dependent on how people react to what they think and as such may vary from person to person.
2) The laws are not immaterial as even the abstract ideas we hold in our heads ultimately exist as neuro-chemical firings and electricity. We have a model of the world in our brains that plays out scenarios based on how we’ve observed the world to work and that model consists of material things and as such even our thoughts are not immaterial.
3 The laws are not necessarily invarient. As the laws of logic and reason exist in our minds as abstract concepts they can and do change with our growing understanding of the world. For example whereas it was once thought that newtonian physics perfectly explained motion we now have the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics – our understanding of the world and hence our rules of logic and reason have changed. A simpler example would be whereas we once reasoned that god opened a window in heaven to make it rain we now know a series of natural processes is responsible for this.
heddle #507 wrote:
Yes, we agree on all this — but it’s not exactly what I meant by science-all-the-way-down.
Depends on what you mean by the word “eradicate.” If you mean through force of law or government, I agree.
But I don’t agree that religion and its claims for the supernatural should be out of bounds for science to have any say on — and that this issue shouldn’t be dealt with in public forums, lest it scare the public. As I was arguing rather longwindedly upthread, I don’t accept the use of the term “methodological naturalism” (depending on what is meant by it.) I don’t think that the supernatural, by definition, is beyond science’s scope.
Yes, religious belief can be reconciled with science — but not in the sense that loving country music can be reconciled with accepting evolution. More in the sense that believing that water has a memory of healing chemicals diluted out of it when intention is imparted into it through shaking and motions made with a stick can be reconciled with being an excellent plastics chemist, top in their industry.
Perhaps, on the personal level, the chemist is a better plastics chemist because he’s also a homeopath. He feels better, and gets to the lab more often. But fight, fight, fight against homeopathy nonetheless, because, if true, it ought to make a difference in Chemistry.
I’m sure you’re not the least bit afraid. After all, you always have your three escape routes: willful obtuseness, slagging, and scampering away.
Knockgoats,
That’s because, I would speculate, you are supremely insecure and require frequent if not constant validation.
Hold on, don’t despair,–maybe Nerd Of Redhead will come by and say”
Says that person who says:”I suspect that I’m as familiar with the evidence for evolutionary theory as you are. The difference is that you find it persuasive, and I don’t.”
Question, how do you know that all of the scientist are wrong about their research? Or do you think they are collectively lying?
That’s because, I would speculate, you are supremely insecure and require frequent if not constant validation.
What the hell is it with Christians and projection?
Sastras,
I certainly agree. Anyone should be free to attack religion in the arena of ideas. And if anyone wants to use science against religion: go for it. After all my position is that my religion not only is but must be consistent with science. You will do me a favor by putting it to whatever test you can devise.
I guess we disagree—but perhaps with a subtlety. The miracles were witnessed. They could have been photographed, documented, studied, measured, and analyzed. So in that sense they are in science’s scope. And that is how I would approach one, if I encountered it today. When I say they are outside of science’s scope, what I mean is that if they are actual miracles, then by definition science ultimately will fail in explaining them. But again, we don’t have any at our disposal to test our theories.
SC, OM
Only in your delusions of grandeur, where you imagine you have stopped me cold in my tracks with your compelling, powerful, and insightful gotcha! questions, and you have Nerd patting you on the back as proof!
Garfunkel:
If I were you, I’d be more concerned about the quality of my thinking if they agreed with me.
Making it perfectly clear that you are utterly incompetent when it comes to assessing propositions on their own merits. What I’ve quoted here is the same as admitting that you actually prefer the ad hominem approach as opposed to actual independent thinking: Members of group X, whom I dislike, disagree with me, therefore I must be right. So when I read any more of your inane screeds, I’ll be sure to keep in mind that you have no basis other than your ideological associations on which to make judgements.
Stu,
It’s just like Sam Harris’s, except it’s not Astral.
Heddle: I’m shocked! Are you suggesting in your response that Scientists are never in disagreement about the meaning of their science?
You may choose to ascribe Hoyle’s reluctance to recognize the “Big Bang” immediately however you prefer – but simply saying that he waited until “the consensus” was “overwhelmingly in favor of a Big Bang” is disingeneous at least.
The big bang was a major “discontinuity event” in cosmological science. As such it had it’s adherents and it’s detractors. Scientists are people too! You bleat as if Hoyle is the only scientist EVER to face disquiet at what their data suggests is the truth. (Einstein’s disquiet with Quantum Theory comes to mind)
Yes – the evidence, viewed dispassionately and objectively TODAY, points at an event we dub “Big Bang”. Other current (and more recent) cosmological theories also account for that ‘discontinuity’ (various oscilatory brane models, other recent models suggesting no ‘bang’ but more of a ‘bounce’, etc). You seem to be pissed because (a) Hoyle was an avowed atheist, and (b) felt that his ‘results’ were too strange to be reasonable, therefore was (c) reluctant to publish, and when he did publish (d) his paper proposed an extension of steady state.
Hoyle – for the most part – did not like the big bang (nor do I for that matter) because it is so loose. It has zero explanatory power. WHY? What came BEFORE? Why is the universe thus & so, and not other?
As someone who values science, I understand that reluctance to ‘throw in my hat’ with the ‘easy and obvious’ answer, and also because it does ‘play into the hands’ of creationists.
So tell me. What is YOUR position on the ‘big bang’? What cosmological model do you find to be most accurate & provides the most explanatory power? WHY do you subscribe to that model versus another?
But if you need to use ‘god’ in your answer, then by your own admission – that is not science.
If, indeed, we discover that the steady state is indeed truer – through a ‘bounce’ model, instead of a ‘bang’ model — what effect would that have on the religious ‘creation as an event’ myth? Especially since ‘progressive’ faiths have climbed onto the big bang bandwagon in a major way.
Knockgoats @460 – I second your opinion.
Forgive me if I missed these points somewhere above but I’ve been busy being snarky elsewhere.
If these miracles interact with the “natural” world, the force interacting on the physical should be measurable. And being physically measurable it’s no longer supernatural.
Once you cross that threshold of detection it enters into the realm of science being able to quantify and qualify it and eventually explain it. We may not have the tools at this point but that doesn’t mean we will not.
If this is true shouldn’t this lead to the ability to “prove” miracles and therefor god(s) or just “prove” the opposite?
If god interacts with the physical world via miracles, angels and / or divine intervention would it be or would not be detectable?
Facilis @ 473 repeats himself:
I know this is a no-no, but he has failed repeatedly to deal with my argument, last repeated at #429, so I will paste the meat of it again. Apologies:
Deal with this or shut up! Refute it or you’ve got nothing!
Heddle @ 490:
Fred Hoyle rejected (and derisively named) the Big Bang Theory partially because he thought it gave aid and comfort to religion. His Steady State Theory was however, a testable theory, which eventually was tested and found wanting.
Perhaps he wouldn’t have had this reaction had Georges Lemaitre not been the creator of the “Primeval Atom”. But even Father Lemaitre told the Pope that his theory had no bearing on religion and shouldn’t be used as an argument in support of Biblical creation.
As for Eddington, now you’re just making shit up. Eddington was quite devout. Perhaps his reasoning powers being poisoned by religion account for the airy-fairy numerological nonsense he came up with to explain the values of the physical constants, or his suppression of Chandrasekhar’s proof of the existence of neutron stars that delayed his Nobel Prize for 40 years, but he was a convinced Christian and a conscientious objector in WWI. Or don’t Quakers count?
Tony,
No, I stated it stronger than that, or at least I intended to. He didn’t wait until there was a consensus, he waited beyond that point.
That would be fair if Hoyle was a blank slate. But he wasn’t. He made a lot of statements regarding religion and the big bang. (And even coined the term derisively, as I’m sure you know.) Given that we know that he was not just atheist but anti-theist, then the question is of interest. Did he hold on to a steady state model for so long because the creationists were gloating? You cannot pretend (well you can) that it is not a fair question for historians of science. I admit there is no way to prove it, should of it appearing as an admission in his journals—but there is circumstantial evidence. And I don’t think you believe that all atheist scientists are incapable of bad judgment.
Zero explanatory power? Are you insane? It is one of the best tested models in all science. It friggin’ predicts the cosmic background radiation. Modified, it predicts the slight non-uniformities in the background. It predicts the abundance of light elements. It makes all sort of predictions. It is one of the greatest scientific achievements ever, and you call it loose?
I prefer the inflationary big bang models. They (in spite of your weird claims) are very predictive and well tested. No other speculative cosmology comes close. I don’t invoke God.
It would disprove Genesis, completely, with no chance of reconciliation. I strongly support research in this area.
I just watched the whole video.
I feel like I deserve a combat medal.
At the very least, I should get lifetime
disability payments for the damage to my
cognitive abilities.
Replying to SC, FCTE, OM, Heddle said “You are mistaking “running away” with not being interested. I’m obligated to answer questions regarding things that I claim, and may choose to answer questions that I find interesting, but I’m not obligated to answer questions that do not relate to any claim that I have made”.
LOL, you suddenly become “not interested” when its clear the questions asked of you, if answered honestly and fully will lead to a clear refutation of your arguments. You’re claim that they “don’t relate to any claim” you’ve made is just a laughable excuse to hide.
Tony said “If the supernatural is not compatible with science, how can religion be compatible, since without the supernatural foundation, religion is nothing more than philosophy and apologetics?”.
Heddle said “I didn’t run away from that question, I answered it in #237. You apparently ran away from my answer.”.
No you didn’t answer it in #237, you put down some empty words that explained nothing but aparently serve as a suitable hiding place from reality for you. You did the same thing in the “I’m in good company” thread where someone pointed out that your chicago statement showed science was incompatible with religion because it said scripture always trumps science. You replied to that with an absurd statement to the effect that “Scripture doesn’t always trump science, but science never trumps scripture”. That was just another way of saying the same thing, but that non-answer was a good enough excuse for you to hide from reality.
Heddle said “The supernatural by definition, if it exists, cannot be explained by science. Otherwise it would be natural, not supernatural. It is indeed incompatible—although orthogonal is a better word. But belief in the supernatural is not incompatible with science, because nothing compels me only to believe things that science addresses.”.
False. Honesty and rationality compel reasonable people to reject things for which there is no evidence and for which science has repeatedly failed to show possible like supernatural impregnation, or supernatural events of any sort.
Heddle said “There are plenty of things in my life (that are not religion) that I believe and yet science has nothing to say about them.”.
False. There is nothing that is off limits to science.
Heddle said The only way my belief in the miracles of old affects my science is if I invoke supernatural explanations to explain experimental data. I don’t, so it doesn’t.”.
No, your religion can also affect your science in that you may accept conclusions asserted by the bible and ignore evidence to the contrary to push those conclusions.
Heddle said “I bet you will run away from this question: How can you detect the way in which a theist-scientist’s belief in the supernatural affects his science?”.
You’ve lost that bet. As an LGBT I see theist-“scientist”‘s beliefs in the supernatural affecting their science profoundly and repeatedly. Over and over I come up against theists doing “science” starting with the conclusion that its immoral to be LGBT and filtering evidence in their research to only accept that which portrays LGBTs in a bad light. Paul Cameron is the worst example and filters evidence to produce “research” that says gays typically die at 42, are disproportionately more likely to be child molesters, eat feces and so on. An objective view of his “research” always shows he’s filtering the evidence, prejudging, and often outright falsifying data in order to reach the conclusions he set out to reach. He doesn’t go where the evidence takes him, he reaches the conclusion first and then tries to make the data fit that conclusion.
Now spare me your “no true scotsman” falicy that he’s not a scientist. He’s the epitome of what religious beliefs typically do to people trying to do science. He’s the classic example of religion being incompatible with science.
Its no coincidence that one of the most common ploys of religionists to demean gays is to take a study that looks at AIDS patients, or attendees at an STD clinic and to claim that what is true for people in the study is true for all gays in general. Religion leads to people deciding on conclusions first and then filtering evidence to support those conclusions. Religion makes people dishonest. You may claim that this isn’t true for you, but you’d be far from typical if that wasn’t the case.
Sastra said “By their failure to apply the scientific method on any belief they consider “supernatural.””
Heddle said “Not true. Bring me the resurrected Jesus, and I’ll apply the scientific method to his claim. I apply the scientific method to the origins of the cosmos all the time. Part the red sea? The scientific method says it cannot be done. God exists? If you tell me the test, I’ll apply it. There is not one belief that I have that I have put off limits for the scientific method.”.
Liar. The bible says if you have faith the size of a mustard seed you can move mountains. Go ahead attempt it, this is your experiment. You’ll fail and prove the bible is a lie but you’ll still claim god and Jesus exist.
Heddle said “Running away does not mean getting bored with your repetitive questions.”.
How convenient. You “get bored” whenever you come across a question which answered honestly and fully would demonstrate you’re wrong.
Heddle said “Running away is when someone posts a really good showstopper question and the person to whom it was addressed declines to answer and just goes away. I challenge you to reproduce from your list of posts on the previous thread one question that a reasonable person would say: yes, that or something close wasn’t already asked and answered, and it is a substantive question, and it is on topic, and heddle simply refused to answer. C’mon, do it.”.
Its been done repeatedly and you’ve run away by either failing to answer or giving nonsensical non-answers such as “Scripture doesn’t always trump science, but science never trumps scripture” when it was pointed out to you that the chicago statement demonstrated that religion and science are incompatible. Or for example when Tony said “If the supernatural is not compatible with science, how can religion be compatible, since without the supernatural foundation, religion is nothing more than philosophy and apologetics?” you respond with some nebulous hair splitting that says nothing to any rational person.
Heddle said “If science requires humility—oh boy we are in deep kimchee. Nor does it require any ethical values. The worst scoundrel on the planet can do science—”.
Its a rare exception to find an unethical person who can do good science. Case in point the aforementioned Paul Cameron. He was ejected from the mental health associations he belongs to for unethical behavior including the falsification of data in pursuit of his vendetta against gays – a motivation that comes directly from his religion. In my life I see religion dirtying science again and again. A few exceptions to this rule doesn’t deny the fact that science and religion are incompatible.
heddle #522 wrote:
I think that a religion that was genuinely consistent with science would adhere to the same principles, and approach the existence of God as a scientific hypothesis, coherent and uniform with other theories, and derivable from evidence — without an attitude of faith. That’s a bit more stringent, perhaps.
I suppose it’s like saying that chocolate jelly donuts are “consistent with” a nutritious breakfast, in that you can eat a nutritious breakfast — and then have a chocolate jelly donut to wash it down. But people, being what they are, are likely to misunderstand that meaning of ‘consistent with,’ and not take it that loosely. It eventually becomes known as a health food, in a sort of deep-fat-fried version of creationism.
I think that, if they are actual miracles, science would fail in explaining them as natural and material. Instead, there would be a new scientific category for the supernatural, and that is how science would explain them.
Lurkbot #528,
No I am not making shit up. I don’t care what his religion was, but I know he was against the big bang, which he termed “repugnant” and “preposterous” and demanded that a loophole be discovered, because he worried that it (a universe with a beginning) didn’t leave enough time for evolution to get started. Those at least hint at non-scientific reasons why he was opposed. Rarely is “that’s repugnant” a valid scientific response to a sensible scientific proposal.
heddle #524 wrote:
Minor point, but Sam Harris doesn’t believe in Astral Projection — or any of the typical New Age-ish pseudoscience claims of that nature. His approach to mysticism is much more subtle, and a bit hard to pinpoint. He thinks the experience is completely brain-based, but useful psychologically and emotionally.
Heddle
At #270, I presented an argument for the incompatibility of science and religion at least as presuambly manifested in you. I was hoping for a response.
It seems that you infer that incompatibility of science and religion must imply that a religious person cannot write a scientifically sound paper.
This is clearly not true, and any number of papers and pieces of scientific work could be cited as examples. I am not aware of anyone who makes the claim that you appear to deduce. I infer that you are invoking a straw man.
Thus trivially it seems that science and religion are not incompatible in the way you choose to define this term.
However, it is still possible that the rest of us have something different in mind when asserting this incompatibility, something that doesn’t have your implication. For me, that incompatibility consists simply in the fact that scientific (more generally, evidence-based) thinking and religious thinking lead to inconsistent conclusions when faced with the same set of data. My post in #270 is an example of this.
If you prefer to think religiously, let’s try a parable, the parable of the 3 vessels.
Three men set out across a hot desert, a day apart from each other. Before he left, each man was given the choice of one of three vessels, each with a spigot at the bottom and all corked so that he could not see the contents.
Only one man made it across the desert, the one who had chosen the vessel filled with water. One made very little distance before he died of thirst when he discovered that he had chosen a vessel filled only with oil. The other man had chosen a vessel half-filled with water and half with oil. He made good progress until he discovered that he had finished all the water and the rest of the liquid was oil, not compatible with life and oddly immiscible with water.
Garfunkel
I’m still waiting eagerly – after more than a day – for your reference on the required precision of the initial universal expansion. All I need is a reference – I have access to a pretty good library.
It would disprove Genesis, completely
That’s just silly. There is no claim to disprove, beyond “A being with infinite capabilities caused the beginning of everything.” Those powers, being unlimited, surely do not exclude the power to create a universe that appeared to every conceivable test to be without a beginning. It might seem perverse by our lights, but I’m always hearing about these “mysterious ways.” (And perversity doesn’t really seem to bother the big guy that much anyway, if the chronicles of his exploits are any guide.) I just don’t get a mindset that conceives of a transcendent, infinite, unknowable-by-human-reason being, and then expects our necessarily limited conception of the universe to conform to some way that being “must” have acted in the past.
Given that evolution was a popular scientific hypothesis at the time, it is not at all unreasonable to demand that cosmological age conform to what else is known about the universe (i.e., that evolution occurs). Evolution was originally questioned because the methods for determining the age of the earth suggested that the planet was not old enough for evolutionary processes to have taken place. I don’t see how this criticism of Eddington’s is somehow non-scientific, or the result of bias.
That’s because, I would speculate, you are supremely insecure and require frequent if not constant validation.– – heddle the hypocrite
No, heddle, my distaste for people like you is simply a dislike of hypocrites, liars, and those who indoctrinate children with disgusting filth such as Calvinism.
MartinH, 535
Oh Noes, I Sir Robbined another challenge!
I didn’t answer your post in #270 because I had trouble understanding it.
You said:
There is a bible, is that what you mean? I agree there is a bible and it is fair to put anything it says to the test. Now when it describes something as a miracle, it is more or less telling you: you’ll never be able to explain this. Of course you can try–and of course there is plenty in the bible that is not describing a miracle but history and a wee bit of science. That can be tested in the normal sense.
That is true.
That is not invoking the supernatural, that is accepting the biblical accounts as true.
If accepting the biblical accounts as true is in and of itself sufficient to prove incompatibility, then you have a tidy tautology. If you are religious, you accept the supernatural, and if you accept the supernatural, you are incompatible with science. Like all question begging, such an argument cannot be refuted, excpt by pointing out it’s circularity. That is why I continue to ask for a demonstration, an experiement. Not words. Show me the affect of the incompatibility, don’t keep trying to prove it with words, which is impossible.
Invoking the supernatural is this: 1) Do an experiment. 2) Collect the data. 3) Analyze the data. 4) Fail to explain the data. 5) Declare that as proof that God did it!
Step 5 is invoking the supernatural, and step five is where you’d have me—it would be proof positive that my religion is incompatible with my science.
Tulse,
OK, fair enough. I stand by the claim that Eddington went beyond routine scientific concern over the problems he thought it would cause for evolution and stepped over the line to where the tail was wagging the dog–but I have no interest in fighting the fight. I was just curious whether people would even concede the possibility that Eddington or Hoyle might allowed their believes to adversely affect their science. If you say no, no way, then I’ll take that as a no, you don’t concede the possibility.
CJO,
OK I’ll modify it. It would disprove Genesis to me. I can interpret Genesis so as to be compatible with an old earth. I see no way to have an interpretation that is reconcilable to an infinitely old cosmos. So for me, Genesis would crumble, and the rest of the bible along with it. You are right, it doesn’t rule out some other deity–but it rules out the one I believe inspired Genesis.
[heddle on the underrepresentation of theists in science]
Number two might, depending on why Christian schools tend to teach science abysmally. As for explanation 1 under Calvinism, I’m curious, why do you think God would be more likely to bestow belief upon non-smart people and/or non-scientists?
Nonsense. Can I point to Kurt Wise and say that young earth creationism is compatible with paleontology, since he did not let creationism interfere with his work under SJ Gould?
heddle @#501:
And Isaac Newton famously did write bunches of stuff about angels and alchemy and his own take on theology, in addition to the Principia and works on optics, et cetera. OK, point granted.
(although I note that you appear to be using “philosophical” to mean abstract non-empirical philosophy; science is an outgrowth of earlier empirical natural philosophy)
Yet as noted below, Eddington was not an atheist.
I think it is possible that a scientist may let some (prior) ideological commitment(s) adversely affect science; colloquially called “crankiness”. There are plenty of examples of scientists who become slightly or extremely cranky for one reason or another. An example with no connection to religion that comes to mind is Lynn Margulis’ rejection of HIV being the cause of AIDS, and her description of horizontal gene flow as “Lamarckism”, and her castigation of “Darwinism”, which looks almost creationist-like until one reads her rather narrow definition of what that is, and her further qualifications and clarifications of terms.
Getting back to Hoyle: ¹ I would agree that his ideological commitment to steady-state looks at least partly motivated by anti-religion, yet I think it could be argued that his motivation was also based on the common reaction to to cosmological argument: If God caused the universe, what caused God? If God does not need a cause, why does the universe need a cause?
But I think it’s worth noting that non-religious crankiness in general tends to be from a minority of scientists, who are for the most part cranky about different things or in different ways; a small amount of noise in the much stronger “signal” that is the scientific consensus.
The problem with religion is that it is prior ideological commitment with a much larger social backing and reinforcement, which leads to boosting the “noise” over the “signal” in such debacles as “creation science”, and scientists supporting creationism in areas outside their fields of expertise.
______________________________
1: I note, from Wikipedia: “Ironically, he is responsible for coining the term “Big Bang” on a BBC radio program, The Nature of Things broadcast at 1830 GMT on 28 March 1949. It is popularly reported that Hoyle intended this to be pejorative, but the script from which he read aloud clearly shows that he intended the expression to help his listeners.[5] In addition, Hoyle explicitly denied that he was being insulting and said it was just a striking image meant to emphasize the difference between the two theories for radio listeners.[6]”
I too think Sam Harris is silly on eastern mysticism. But he seems to have waffled on it and said different things in different places, leading some people like Sastra in #534 to get a completely different impression.
But let’s for the sake of the argument accept that
1) Sam Harris is a scientist
2) Sam Harris believes in astral projection.
Does this make astral projection compatible with science?
Windy,
I don’t know that he does (see number 3) but maybe he does. I do often worry about God’s sense of humor. The bible does talk about the foolish things shaming the wise, and the weak shaming the strong. I don’t that’s what it means, but maybe it is. There is also Jesus’ statement that he came for the sick and the unrighteous, not the healthy and the (self) righteous. Are these consistent with fewer highly intelligent people being saved? I don’t know. A bit of a stretch, but maybe.
Christian schools teach science abysmally because as we see in the video there is a fair amount of anti-science sentiment among Christians. Usually not as bad as that girl, but often a general distrust of science. That is exactly the kind of thing I like to fight. But the bottom line is—take a look sometime at the catalogues for many Christian colleges. With few exceptions (Wheaton, Grove City, a few others) the science offerings are pitiful.
I would say yes, though I have never seen his thesis—I assume it passes scientific muster. Either you would have to do the science in spite of what you believe—which as I have pointed out is always possible. There is no requirement that a String Theorist actually believes String Theory. Or you would have to choose problems that minimized your conflict. But as long as you could find them, you could do it. People choose what problems they want to work on all the time. Now if Wise, a la the Creation Scientists, began explicitly to insert YECism in some detectable way into his science, that would be a problem.
Re: Sam Harris, assuming he really is deeply in to eastern mysticism. No, in the same sense I have been arguing about theists, his scientific production must be evaluated and praised or criticized as appropriate solely on the basis of its merit. To bring up his eastern mysticism when evaluating his science is an ad hominem.
I honestly don’t see it, at least based on what I’ve seen. This seemed to me to be more a matter of the consilience of science — if evolution is indeed a supported hypothesis, then any unsupported speculations shouldn’t contradict that hypothesis. Perhaps I don’t know enough about the specific source of Eddington’s views, but on the surface there seems nothing particularly biased. You may disagree, of course.
Of course I concede the “possibility” — don’t be ridiculous. It may very well be that further biographical research would reveal that either or both of them held their views out of deeply irrational beliefs. If that were the case, such beliefs would be just an inimical to the practice of science as would religious commitments.
However, I very much doubt that in Eddington’s case his views were prompted by some sort of atheistic orientation, since contrary to your claim he was (very famously) a Quaker, and wrote a book on science and religion.
And it looks like however anti-religious he may have been, he was not atheistic:
Sir Fred Hoyle reached the conclusion that the universe is governed by a greater intelligence.
Really, Wikipedia outlines his descent into exceedingly cranky anti-evolutionist steady-state deism.
I infer that Charlie Wagner picked up his own cranky ideas from Hoyle.
heddle #543 wrote:
Clearly, you are using the word “compatible” in a different sense than we are. Perhaps this sums up your position best:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/coyne09/coyne09_index.html
You guys have to stop equivocating with regard to the question of miracles and science. Science often deals with mechanistic processes (gravity, erosion…etc). A miracle is claimed to be the act of a transcendent personal agent. A personal agent is different from a mechanistic process.
Claiming that God could not resurrect Jesus because of something in biology is like claiming I cannot pick up my laptop because of the law of gravity. The theist never claimed Jesus was restored to life my mechanistic processes, just as I never claimed my laptop got up on my desk by mechanistic processes. A personal agent changes things.
Here’s a way of framing the issue that might help to clarify positions somewhat: If non-scientific beliefs do not impact on research, then why should drug researchers disclose whether they have investments in a pharmaceutical company? Surely their research should be judged solely on the outcomes and following of protocol, and not whether they might happen to benefit from the outcomes? Why should we worry about possible conflicts of interest?
I think the situation is analogous (at least for me) with religious scientists. I am certain that many can overlook their religious commitments when doing their work, and in an ideal world all scientific work would be replicated many times to correct the impact of systematic bias. However, the reality is that much work isn’t replicated, and we generally depend on scientists working “in good faith”, without prior commitments as to the outcomes of their work. Religious commitments work against that trust, because they can involve an undeclared “conflict of interest”.
It seems quite ironic that Harris is calling Collin’s book ignorant given the sheer amount of factual and logical errors present in his books.
(His red-state/blue-state argument is a good source of laughter)
There are no miracles.
How? If Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes, how did that happen? Did he create them ex nihilo, and thus added actual mass to the universe? Or did he convert some existing mass? If the latter, where did that mass come from? Were the atoms used actually transmuted into the appropriate elements, or did he pull the appropriate elements from other locations? How long did the process take? Was it temporally measurable, or did it take place literally instantaneously (which, if the matter were drawn from elsewhere, would imply either teleportation or faster-than-light travel)?
Even if the process were not “mechanistic”, it was a process, and one that impacted on the physical world and thus could be characterized in physical terms.
(And why is it “fishes”? Were there several species of fish involved?)
Sastra @#505:
Heddle, you sidestepped Sastra’s questions here. Do you have any answer to the questions at all?
I have some questions to tack on, though.
1) Does God have definable traits at all?
The theological stance of negative theology insists not, yet it certainly looks to me like taking the theology to its logical conclusion is one hairsbreadth — or even one Planck-length — away from Deism, pantheism, or even atheism.
Do you agree with negative theology? Sometimes it looks like you don’t, but in the way that you shrug helplessly or carefully avoid when asked more specific questions, it looks like you do.
2) If God does have definable traits, would you agree that at least some of those traits are defined by religions? How about by your own religion?
3) If you agree with #2 above, what are God’s traits that you think are defined by your own religion?
Heddle at #539
Feel free to ask for clarification if you don’t understand something I write, and I will happily attempt it.
Now please clarify something for me. Please define the word “incompatible” in the context of the present discussion.
Facilis at 516 I explained how your imaginary god is not the necessary precondition for the laws of logic and showed how contary to your claim the contary is not impossible. How about you acknowledge reality that the laws of logic and reason come from the nature of the universe and our observance how things interact with each other.
Tulse,
I stand utterly corrected regarding my contention that Eddington was an atheist.
Interesting theory. Give me a plausible example. In the case of the drug researcher with a financial conflict of interest, the potential for mischief is clear.
Now take the religious nuclear physicist, working on an experiment on, say the pion form factor. If he wanted to, even subconsciously, have his theism influence his science, how would he? I wouldn’t know where to go in the bible to figure out what Q2 behavior God prefers for the pion form factor, or which theoretical model he would prefer to see validated.
And how would that be different from common “conflicts of interest” such as an experimenter trying to confirm an earlier result—most scientists are in this position at one time or another, and nobody relishes the thought of refuting a result from an earlier experiment they did—or an experimenter who has a vested interest in one theoretical model—maybe it is associated with his university—over a competitor. Aren’t those conflicts of interest that we assume 1) the experimenter will operate in good faith and 2) if he doesn’t the hope is the checks and balances of the peer review system will catch him. Wouldn’t the same applie to any conflicts of interest from the theist scientist?
Facilis #547 wrote:
You misunderstand; we’re talking about justification, and whether, given the evidence we have, science supports the existence of miracles, and “transcendent personal agents” who move material objects around through psychokenesis. If not, then believing in such things is not justified scientifically. It requires a leap of faith.
Could science accommodate the supernatural? Yes, in theory. Given strong enough evidence, it would have to.
But can science accommodate “leaps of faith” which lead to a radically inconsistent view of how the world works? No, not in its practice, and not in its model of the world.
If, on the other hand, these “leaps of faith” are kept absolutely minimal, are assumed to have no import in anything happening today, and are then placed in a rigid compartment separate from everything else, scientists can allow themselves to make them, and still do science. Science can accommodate such scientists.
We do not think religious faith is consistent with science in anything but a trivial sense.
Heddle @ 501:
Me @ 528:
Heddle @ 533:
Don’t you just love principled intellectual discussion?
Facilis the Fallacious Fool, you haven’t proved your imaginary deity exists, so you need to realize until you do so, you add nothing whatsoever to the discussion except noise. You just look like the Fallacious Fool you are.
And once again Facilis The Fallacious Fool flees in abject terror from the questions he’s been hiding from for a month. No surprise, of course.
Analogy fail. We know that other forces working against gravity can “defeat it”. We can show them very easily. Your claim that your god can resurrect Jesus without giving any mechanism for it beyond an unestablished all powerfulness let alone unestablished existence, and lack of actual evidence of there even being a resurrection beyond a book that is not in any way established as reliable evidence is nothing like the above.
Heddle said to me “I bet you will run away from this question: How can you detect the way in which a theist-scientist’s belief in the supernatural affects his science?”.
LOL, I didn’t run away but you sure did! You’re weak Heddle.
Once again the answer is that you can see the evidence they select is filtered to reach a pre-chosen conclusion. They ignore all evidence that contradicts what they want to conclude and focus on, doctor up, and even fabricate evidence that supports the conclusion they want to achieve. Case in point is the religious people doing “reseach” on gays such as Paul Cameron. It is notoriously flawed and dishonest. Case in point is the intelligent design scientists like Behe et al. Case in point is the pushing of intelligent design and the denial of evolution in schools pushed by religionists. Case in point is the video itelf at the start of this thread – you can see when religious people attempt to be scientific the vast majority of them bastardize science in order to kow tow to their religion. That there are a few exceptions to this rule does not counter the fact that in case after case after case religion is shown to be antagonistic to science.
You ran away from this one again “If the supernatural is not compatible with science, how can religion be compatible, since without the supernatural foundation, religion is nothing more than philosophy and apologetics?”.
You didn’t answer it in #237, you put down some empty words that explained nothing but aparently serve as a suitable hiding place from reality for you. You did the same thing in the “I’m in good company” thread where someone pointed out that your chicago statement showed science was incompatible with religion because it said scripture always trumps science. You replied to that with an absurd statement to the effect that “Scripture doesn’t always trump science, but science never trumps scripture” – another way of saying the same thing and pretending that was an excuse to hide from the implication that your chicago statment said where there’s a conflict scripture always trumps science which proves they are incompatible.
And you hid from this:
“God exists? If you tell me the test, I’ll apply it. There is not one belief that I have that I have put off limits for the scientific method.”.
The bible says if you have faith the size of a mustard seed you can move mountains. Go ahead attempt it, this is your experiment. Try it, fail, and then acknowledge that your religion is wrong and not compatible with science.
Owlmirror,
Yes the existence of God is a hypothesis. I honestly thought I addressed this, in terms of anticipating where it would go, a number of times. That is: by all means put it to the test. But you’ll have to come up with the test, because I don’t know of any. But if you have one, do it.
Yes of course. He is holy. (OK, I don’t know exactly what holy means.) He is eternal, omnipotent, immutable, etc.
No I do not agree with negative theology.
There is some semantics here. Of course all of them are in some sense defined by my religion, on the basis of what we read in scripture and to a more nebulous extent what is revealed in creation. (The heavens declare his glory.) So I don’t know if I should answer: yes they are defined or no, they are revealed in inspired scripture. I guess the latter would my answer.
MartinH,
Sure, I always use incompatible this way: If incompatible is to mean something more than mumbo-jumbo, it must have a detectable effect. That is, if religion is incompatible with science then (to me) that means that a theist’s science is adversely effected by his theism in a way that can be demonstrated by examining his science.
If that is not what incompatible means, I don’t really care whether someone claims science and religion are incompatible, for in that case it doesn’t really mean anything.
Priya Lynn
Let’s grant an absurdity—that Jesus meant this literally. Because we know that figures of speech are prohibited under the first, second, and possibly the ninth commandments. Metaphors are bad, and hyperbole is downright blasphemous. So let’s assume the Jesus meant this literally. Let’s test it, as you suggest: Now I am doing the experiment. There is a mound of dirt outside my office window. I’ll take that as my mountain. Now I’m concentrating, trying to move it, concentrating,…damn, nothing! But of course that doesn’t prove, as you contend, that my religion is wrong, it only proves that my faith is smaller than a mustard seed. Bummer!
You can pull the SC, OM trick of repeatedly claiming I didn’t answer regarding reconciling the existence of the supernatural with my claim, in spite of the fact that I must have by now written 5000 words on the subject. That’s OK, I’ll agree that I ran away from the argument with my tail between my legs. I realized I couldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole. I was secretly hoping that when I argued they were compatible that nobody would bring up the supernatural or miracles. But damn, nothing gets by this bunch! Busted! Mea Culpa, you win.
facilis wrote:
I’ve asked you these questions before, facilis; you still haven’t answered any of them:
a) what qualifies you to make such judgements? Be specific.
b) upon what standard can you judge them? You need an objective standard, because if you are judging it based on the Christian standard that means you are already accept the Christian standard without considering the possibility that the other ‘revelation’ may be correct – rendering your analysis biased and therefore invalid.
Just to make it even more interesting, here are two more:
c) Your claim is twofold – 1) something is responsible, and 2) Christianity is the best explanation for what that something is. But if you haven’t performed this examination on every religion there is, how do you know another is not more able to provide those answers than your version of Chrisitianity?
d) list all the religions upon which you have performed this examination, and explain, in detail, what it was about them that allowed you to reach the conclusion that your particular version of Christianity (remember, there are many and they are often very different) is the best one.
You have to have answers to these questions before you can make any claims about your religion being correct about its god being the one responsible for the laws of the universe.
Do that and I swear (by Bob) I’ll accept your claim.
Heddle at #562
This does seem a rather idiosyncratic definition, and as I said in an earlier post it seems to be a “straw man” definition. Does anyone espouse the view that science and religion are incompatible in this sense?
Hoever, I need further clarification of your definition. Are you saying that it must be true for all theists who have produced examinable scientific work? Is one instance sufficient to prove incompatibility? Or is the existence of one theist who has produced only solid scientific work a disproof of incompatibility?
I accept that you don’t care if people mean something different, but you haven’t demonstrated that if they don’t espouse your definition their term cannot have any meaning. In post #535 I proposed a definition which seems to me to have meaning, which is testable and yet is not the definition you have sketched.
MatinH, from #535
(I missed the point of your parable that followed.)
If incompatibility means reaching different conclusions when faced with the same data (is that your definition?) then I can confidently assert, from years of attending seminars, colloquia, theses defenses, workshops, conferences, and not to mention reading peer-reviewed literature, the following: science is incompatible with science. For I have witnessed and participated in countless arguments over different conclusions reached by scientists of good faith presented with a common set of data.
Facilis:
Still no answer to my #429 and Priya Lynn’s similar argument at # 516.
Why is that? Can’t think of one? Here’s a hint: repeating the same crap you’ve said over and over again before about “God” being a prerequisite for logic and reason doesn’t constitute an argument. Deal with ours or give up!
Heddle said “Let’s grant an absurdity—that Jesus meant this literally”.
LOL, that’s a good one Heddle. How do you know what is meant to be taken literally in the bible and what isn’t? Pretty convenient to claim anything you don’t like in the bible wasn’t meant to be taken literally. There is nothing in the bible that would lead you to believe “if you have the faith of a mustard seed you can move a mountain” wasn’t meant literally. If you can believe in a supernatural virgin conception you can believe this too.
Heddle said “it only proves that my faith is smaller than a mustard seed. Bummer!”
Some Christian somewhere must have faith greater than a mustard seed. The failure of any Christian to move mountains has thus demonstrated that the bible is a lie. Further Jesus says pray and ask for anything and you shall receive. Once again no one has received something that would require the supernatural – your experiment is done and your god is disproven.
Heddle said “If incompatible is to mean something more than mumbo-jumbo, it must have a detectable effect. That is, if religion is incompatible with science then (to me) that means that a theist’s science is adversely effected by his theism in a way that can be demonstrated by examining his science.”.
I and others have repeatedly demonstrated to you this to you. You can demonstrate that religion has affected theist’s science by looking at theists’ “research” on gays, particularly Paul Cameron. You can demonstrate it by looking at the science of the Intelligent design crowd such as Behe et al. You can detect it by looking at the science attempted by the girl in the video’s bastardization of evolutionary evidence. You can see the incompatibility of science and religion by looking at attempt after attempt to replace evolution in schools with intelligent design.
heddle #562 wrote:
In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins set forth the God hypothesis as
“there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it.”
I realize that your version of God may include additional properties, but, as a simple form of the hypothesis, can you go along with this?
If not, how would you rephrase it?
We definitely do need a new word to describe that kind of behavior: The specific combination of stupidity and arrogance so often embodied by creationists.
I was about to type smugnorance, but I decided to do a find on the page first… Good thing too, since I see now that someone’s suggested that word already.
I’ll just add my vote for it. :)
Dunning-Kruger effect.
Though i doubt many creationist can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level to a point where they can acknowledge their previous lack of skill.
For the interest and edification of all, I have collected parts of heddle’s posts in order to try to understand what he means by “incompatibility between science and religion”. In this post I won’t comment further, because the thing’s long enough as it is. I’ve tried to get the main points, but he can of course object if he thinks I’ve missed anything vital. For clarity I’ve separated off what comes from each comment using rows of asterisks.
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If you despise this crap so much, when then do you team up with those who teach this kind of nonsense to fight those of us in the middle (scientist/theists)? When someone sends me an email or posts on my blog and leads with the “incompatibility of science and religion” I have to read on a bit to determine whether the writer is Myers-like or Hovind-like—for the basic attack will be the same in either case. Those of us who are theists and scientists are very effective at reaching people such as this, especially the young. I can not tell you how many times, after speaking to believers on science, I have been told words to the effect that it was wonderful to hear that a pro-science position that didn’t have to come at the expense of their beliefs. (True, some at such gatherings will use the heretic word—but one step at a time.) – heddle@22
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Christianity rejects methodological naturalism for some physical phenomena, such as the resurrection. What it does not do, except in the hands of the likes of the DI, is reject MN as the means for studying any physical phenomena that we might encounter. Ever. Anywhere. Nothing is excluded. Use science to attempt to explain all data ever encountered in the field or in the lab or in the observatory. Never invoke a miracle to explain anything you are examining. Christianity is compatible with that, and hence with science. – heddle@259
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You are correct, MN would lead to conclude that none of the famous miracles occurred. If MN concluded that the miracles could have occurred, then they are not miracles. Did I not just say that the supernatural is by definition incompatible with science?
The question is whether a belief that Jesus walked on water is incompatible with science. But MN does not say: MN is all that there is. You may not believe anything except that which is demonstrable by MN. MN says that it is the proper way to do science. The best way to study the natural world. I agree 100%. I do science just like anyone else—so there is no incompatibility until such time that I invoke a miracle to explain the results of an experiment. Then you would have incompatibility. – heddle@264
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The supernatural by definition, if it exists, cannot be explained by science. Otherwise it would be natural, not supernatural. It is indeed incompatible—although orthogonal is a better word. But belief in the supernatural is not incompatible with science, because nothing compels me only to believe things that science addresses. There are plenty of things in my life (that are not religion) that I believe and yet science has nothing to say about them. The only way my belief in the miracles of old affects my science is if I invoke supernatural explanations to explain experimental data. I don’t, so it doesn’t. I bet you will run away from this question: How can you detect the way in which a theist-scientist’s belief in the supernatural affects his science? Everyone on this blog has run away from that question. Everyone. But it is a fair question—if science and theism are incompatible, show me the measurable effect. – heddle@372
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Bring me the resurrected Jesus, and I’ll apply the scientific method to his claim. I apply the scientific method to the origins of the cosmos all the time. Part the red sea? The scientific method says it cannot be done. God exists? If you tell me the test, I’ll apply it. There is not one belief that I have that I have put off limits for the scientific method. I have no objection whatsoever to proving that you can’t part the Red Sea. So you are dead wrong.
Owlmirror,
“How about if said scientist specifically invokes the supernatural as the only possible explanation for some physical phenomenon?”
If it one that he is studying, definitely. Suppose you and I wrote separate papers on the possibility of walking on water. We publish simultaneously. It turns out we did the same analysis, ran the same experiments, and reached the same conclusion: it is impossible. Outside the lab, you might state: therefore Jesus didn’t walk on water. I might state: no he did, that’s why it’s called a miracle. In either case our science would be indistinguishable. If it is indistinguishable, it means my faith has no ill-effect on the science, nor did your atheism. – heddle@454
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With walking on water I do not dispute that science demonstrates it impossible. I concur. If a trial needed an expert witness to demonstrate the scientific impossibility, I’d be happy to take the job.
Your point is, I think: how can I still believe it, even in the one isolated case of Jesus? My answer would be that you are putting a demand on me that the scientific method does not place on me–namely that I only believe what science tells me. The method does not require that. It says: if you do science, this is the way you do it. These are the steps. Now I practice the scientific method and I believe science, but in principle even believing in science is not a requirement. Only the method is a requirement. A scientist could wake up one day and say: hell, I don’t believe any of this science stuff, but life is good and I want tenure and I know how to do it even if I don’t believe it. And that person could contribute mightily to the field because science is a methodology and while it is not advisable one could do the work and make contributions without believing any of it. – heddle@461
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A meaurable effect is to demonstrate how the science a theist produces is different from that an atheist produces. Anything else is just words. – heddle@466
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“Do you think that historians should also adopt such an approach, with the religious among them saying “Well, such an event is physically impossible, but my religion tells me it happened, so I’m sure it actually did”?” – Tulse
Not if they are publishing a scholarly history article; i.e., “doing history”—in which case they should follow the guidelines of their profession. If they are assessing the historical evidence for the existence of Jesus, they should evaluate and report on the evidence the same way a (professional) secular colleague would do, no matter where it leads.
The only examples I know about of practicing scientists ignoring the evidence because of their beliefs are atheists. That would be Hoyle and especially Eddington resisting the Big Bang because of perceived religious implications. – heddle@490
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Ouch. Fair enough. Unless they were using, quite poorly, irony or sarcasm, which doesn’t seem to be the case, I accept the presentation of the Han and Warda paper, assuming they are in fact scientists which appears to be the case, as an example where beliefs adversely affect the science. Tipler is another matter. People can publish whatever they like in the non peer-reviewed literature. We judge their science by their research publications, not their philosophical publications.
(Aside: Do you accept Hoyle’s and Eddington’s reactions to the Big Bang as evidence where atheists let their beliefs adversely affect their science?) – heddle@501
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The miracles were witnessed. They could have been photographed, documented, studied, measured, and analyzed. So in that sense they are in science’s scope. And that is how I would approach one, if I encountered it today. When I say they are outside of science’s scope, what I mean is that if they are actual miracles, then by definition science ultimately will fail in explaining them. But again, we don’t have any at our disposal to test our theories. – heddle@522
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“By your own lights, to be true to science, you should not invoke the supernatural to explain what you are examining.” – Martin H.
That is true.
“However, to be religious in this context, you need to invoke the supernatural. To do so, you must disavow the explanations arrived at by MN, and thus demonstrate the incompatibility of the two.” – Martin H.
That is not invoking the supernatural, that is accepting the biblical accounts as true.
If accepting the biblical accounts as true is in and of itself sufficient to prove incompatibility, then you have a tidy tautology. If you are religious, you accept the supernatural, and if you accept the supernatural, you are incompatible with science. – heddle@539
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Christian schools teach science abysmally because as we see in the video there is a fair amount of anti-science sentiment among Christians. Usually not as bad as that girl, but often a general distrust of science. That is exactly the kind of thing I like to fight. But the bottom line is—take a look sometime at the catalogues for many Christian colleges. With few exceptions (Wheaton, Grove City, a few others) the science offerings are pitiful. – heddle@543
****************************************************
I stand utterly corrected regarding my contention that Eddington was an atheist.
“Religious commitments work against that trust, because they can involve an undeclared “conflict of interest”.” – Tulse
Interesting theory. Give me a plausible example. In the case of the drug researcher with a financial conflict of interest, the potential for mischief is clear. – heddle@555
Priya Lynn
I know. I have a problem. Like when Jesus said: “I am the vine” I know that has to mean that grapes can be plucked right off of him, at least during harvest. But I keep reading it as a metaphor. God help me. I am a bad person.
You would hope so, but maybe not. Or maybe they do move mountains and cause stuff like the explosion of Mt. St. Helens to kill any homosexuals camping nearby. Which would of course be their righteous duty.
Yes, indeed, because one discredited lunatic proves your case. Now fair is fair: if I find one atheist who engages in pseudo science, say a vaccine (as in efficacy of) denier does that prove atheism is incompatible with science?
Yes, their almost uncontainable corpus of peer-reviewed publications demonstrates conclusively how they have been able to sneak their ideas into mainstream science.
Sastra,
Nope, Professor Dawkins nailed it. That definition works for me. As long as we allow for the possibility (certainty) of secondary causes. For example, such a definition does not rule out theistic evolution.
According to Gould it did, so that seems more than good enough. So are you seriously suggesting that this single example shows that young earth creationism as a system of thought is not in conflict with science?
I agree, but nobody’s suggesting that we do that! You are trying to change the question from whether there is a conflict between two fields of inquiry, to how individual scientists should be judged on their work. To many of us these seem to be different questions.
But what if there’s a statistical effect of religion turning people away from science? How can you say that it can be disproven by a single example of a theist doing good science? Is finding one perfectly healthy smoker enough to prove that smoking does not cause cancer?
To be fair heddle, the atheist would have to deny vaccines because he was motivated by his non-belief for that analogy to be worth anything.
On a (very) positive note: a famous Dutch television presenter (Andries Knevel) of the Dutch christian television-station EO has just committed himself fully to the evolution theory and he has apologized by letter for imposing a literal interpretation of Genesis on his audience for many, many years. True story. He has even denounced ID. Even though he is still a christian, it’s one extra point for evolution. Hooray!
Thank You Knockgoats. PZ has the ban button warmed up, perhaps your post will catch his eye and he’ll be bored almost into a coma by Heddle’s bullshit ice skating maneuvers.
It is odd that Coyne seeks to call people irrational without even interacting with their epistemology?
Windy,
As I have argued people can believe anything and do good science. There is no demand on science that you like it, value it, trust it, believe it, admire it, want to use for the common good, etc. Every piece of work is judged on its own merits.
For the NAS or any other statistical evidence you must realize, in addition to the other reasons I suggested, that quite simply there are additional career options available for theists, in the ministry, the mission fields, the seminaries etc. So if the best and brightest opt out of science, that does not necessarily mean there is an incompatibility, it means there is something else they prefer to do. Who knows what the effect of that really is–I sure don’t, I’m just making a point.
Facilis #578 wrote:
I’m not sure what you mean. The line you quoted was from Sam Harris, and he was being facetious. He thinks the importance of epistemology is underrated.
Sorry, a bit late to this particular party. But it seems to be some serious micron-level hair-splitting on heddle’s part regarding the definition of conflict.
It appears that, in his mind, conflict is limited to someone doing science a particular way under then influence of religion – and not when someone choosing to avoid doing the science in the first place because of the conflict between the science and the religion – as was the case with Wise.
Just because the conflict is passive rather than active doesn’t stop it being conflict. How much difference is there between a racist doctor deliberately killing a black patient and the same racist doctor letting the same patient die by refusing to treat him or her?
The lawyers, of course, will tell you there’s a vast difference. The dead black kid, on the other hand? Well, he or she is dead either way no matter what happens to Dr Racist. But using heddle’s logic Dr. Racist has done nothing wrong in the second example, because the conflict was passive, not active.
Facilis, you intelligence is overrated in your own mind. We understand your gross limitations, like the inability to extend a true argument for your presupposition. So, until you learn elsewhere, you will be mocked here.
facilis wrote (emphasis mine):
Good grief. Who the hell writes like this? Gah! It makes me want to take a fork to him, even without all the other rubbish he spouts.
I’ve named some. Law of identity, law of non-contradiction.
I PROVED it by the impossibility of the contrary
So “Is murder objectively wrong?”
Wowbagger, no wonder FFF copies and pastes. He couldn’t think his way out of a wet paper bag with a hole in it.
facilis,
You’ve had this explained to you before – have you forgotten already? Murder is by definition wrong; it is the word used for wrongful killing. If you want to argue about whether killing is wrong then you may. But there is no argument for murder.
But more important is what you’re doing here anyway. Did you not see my post #564? Go back and read it – it’s important. Basically, you need to be examining the revelations of every religion of the world to ensure yours (and your version thereof; remember, lots of different sects of Christianity) is the most correct one, and explaining to us how you reached that conclusion.
Otherwise your claim of responsibility for universal laws is applicable to any and all of the gods that have ever been posited.
Now, let’s try some heddle-ical exegesis.
In his first intervention in this thread, heddle complains that PZ “teams up” with creationists, and that atheists send him emails and blog comments claiming the “incompatibility of science and religion”. Now, heddle must know that PZ has explicitly stated that theists can do good science. So clearly he can’t be complaining that PZ is claiming they cannot (let’s call this incompatibility-1), yet the implication seems to be that PZ is claiming that science and religion are incompatible – which, indeed, he does, in the sense (incompatibility-2) that (PZ claims), science mandates you to adjust your beliefs in conformity with the evidence, while religion (and specifically theism) tells you to believe what your religious authority (whether a person, committee, book or whatever) tell you to believe. These would both seem to be quite reasonable interpretations of “science and religion are incompatible”, but heddle insists that only incompatibility-1 is an acceptable meaning of the phrase, because (he says), science is simply a method, following which does not require you to believe anything; and he demands evidence that the alleged incompatibility be shown to have effects. Heddle also claims, repeatedly, that the term “compartmentalization” is just a “mantra” or “chant”, having no useful meaning. There are at least two other possible meanings for “science and religion are incompatible”, which might be regarded as weaker versions of the two already outlined. The first is that in practice, science and religion do not in general get on well together, either in society or in individuals (incompatibility-1a). The second (incompatibility-1b) is that religion marks out certain phenomena where the conclusions of science are to be rejected.
Now, no-one hear, and no-one heddle has cited (AFAIK – I haven’t read Coyne) holds incompatibility-1. Evidence has been presented for incompatibility-1a – some of it by heddle himself (anti-science sentiment among Christians and the perhaps consequent poor science teaching of Christian “colleges”), most of it by others (the strong negative correlation between religious belief and scientific eminence, the paper of Han and Warda, research on gays by Paul Cameron, the history of religious attempts to suppress specific types of scientific research and conclusions, and to insinuate religious beliefs into science classrooms). Moreover, heddle’s counterclaim that the only examples he knows of beliefs concerning religion affecting scientific outcomes concerned the atheists Eddington and Hoyle collapsed in farce when it turned out they were a Quaker and a deist respectively. So evidence for effects has indeed been presented, heddle has failed to refute it, and incompatibility-1a is at least a hypothesis with more support than its negation. Heddle himself appears to accept incompatibility-2a, since he (a) accepts that science would conclude that miracles (specifically, walking on water) are impossible, but (b) believes it anyway, because his holy book tells him it happened. This seems, incidentally, as good an example of the compartmentalization whose existence he denies as one could possibly hope to find.
So in sum:
incompatibility-1: no-one, here at least, claims this is true.
incompatibility-2: heddle can maintain his denial of this only by holding that it is possible to be a scientist and do good science while not believing any of your conclusions. To say the least, this is arguable. Perhaps the odd individual (and I do mean odd) can do this – one would think at considerable psychological cost – but could science continue if all scientists took this attitude, or even a significant proportion of them? Why would they continue to do so, and why would anyone pay them to?
In pursuit of this claim, heddle has asserted that young Earth creationism is compatible with science – given the example of Kurt Wise. This raises a difficulty however: if young Earth creationism is compatible with science, why does he oppose it, and moreover, get on his high horse and insist atheists STFU so he can do so more effectively?
incompatibility-2a: everyone here seems to accept this, at least with regard to theism.
This came in after my “Thoughts of Chairman Heddle” above:
If incompatibility means reaching different conclusions when faced with the same data (is that your definition?) then I can confidently assert, from years of attending seminars, colloquia, theses defenses, workshops, conferences, and not to mention reading peer-reviewed literature, the following: science is incompatible with science. For I have witnessed and participated in countless arguments over different conclusions reached by scientists of good faith presented with a common set of data. – hedlle@566
What was meant, of course, was that a single person – to whit, heddle – comes to two different conclusions given the same data, depending on whether he’s currently using the scientific or the religious compartment of his belief-system. This is pretty close to incompatibility-2a.
Now heddle can speak for himself (and he will, he will), but my conclusion from all this is that he’s full of shit. The only one of the four meanings I have distinguished where he has a strong case is incompatibility-1, which no-one here is maintaining, and PX has explicitly denied holding on numerous occasions. On any other interpretation, he has failed to make a good, let alone a conclusive case, so his whining about PZ and other atheists asserting incompatibility is unjustified. Moreover, he is himself the clearest possible example of the compartmentalization whose existence he denies.
Facilis #584 wrote:
The law of identity (A = A) and the law of non-contradiction (A =/= Non-A) do not need any justification, and therefore you cannot demand that someone justify them. They are both self-evident, and incorrigible — and examples are readily available to the senses.
“A thing is what it is, and it isn’t what it isn’t.”
That’s your proof of God? Really? That’s your miracle? And you’re amazed that it applies to everything.
No. That sort of basic, clear self-consistency isn’t some befuddling mystery which requires supernatural foundation, because we otherwise can’t figure out how we can “account” for it. It’s foundational. It’s more basic than “”there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it.” It’s certainly more obvious, I don’t care how orgasmic your special revelation was.
Next time you ask for us to justify it, or account for it, I’m going to ask you “Do you think it’s wrong?”
And you will tell me that you don’t think it’s wrong, but, unless I believe in God, I don’t have any right to believe it, and then I will point to a dictionary and ask you to look up the definition of “self-evident.”
This is one of the silliest arguments for the existence of God out there. And yes, I’ve read Bahnsen and Van Til, and they’re no better at it. It reduces to nonsense.
Sastra,
Maybe you’ll answer what facilis dodges – is there any way of taking his argument (if we were to accept as valid that there are ‘universal laws’ and his claim that a being is responsible for creating them) to the point where it is applicable to only one of the many gods that humanity has produced?
As I’ve mentioned before I don’t know enough logic/philosophy to argue whether that claim is valid (and, unlike facilis, I don’t just cut-and-paste arguments; I need to actually understand what I’m saying) but I can’t see that there’s any way it can be shown to apply to only the Christian god and not anyone else’s.
I showed exactly how their reasoning was circular and false.
1)But you are seeking to establish universals. How do you get universals from particulars(i.e. subjective experience)?
2) But how do you KNOW this? You might say you got it from your senses but you just push the problem back agains. How do you KNOW your senses are reliable?
3) Can my logic be different from yours? This is inconsistent. If you call my argument a fallacy I could just say that “logic varies from person to person” and even though it might be a fallacy it is sill correct for some people.
4)Let us take my mouse. Does the law of identity apply to it? If no why not?
5)The laws of logic change?? Have they changed since we started talking? Is it possible that [the girl in the videos] arguments are fallacious now but can be true tomorrow?
Facilis the Fallicious Fool.
First you only have alleged. We have been awaiting your full “proof”, which you have be studiously avoiding giving us. What an ignorant ape.
Second, you keep asking questions when you need to be supplying answers. Which you studiously avoid doing. What an ignorant ape.
Third, you have no logic since you mangle it so badly. What an ignorant ape.
Big rant, no substance, just more ignorance and fallacies. Just another ignorant ape. With my apologies to real apes.
@ Facilis (in #477 and everywhere else)
I’m not going to engage you — not because you’re onto the truth but because you’re wrapped in an impenetrable bubble of your own ignorance. Your entire purpose here is to watch people react to the faces you make squawking nonsense and mashing your fat, sucker-like lips against the inside.
Well of course there are lots of historians and philosophers who disagree with you. (not to mention that we have more than 1 book. We have several lettters and biographies and an early creed as well as eyewitnesses.)
I’ll name drop Richard Swinburne and N.T. Wright if you want to do some reading to correct your ignorance.
Facilis, in order to correct you ignorance I recommend any grade school level book of logic. You need to start somewhere, as you are showing no logic here.
By invoking Me! Hee hee hee.
But I am the source of logic and reason. I say so, so it must be true, because, as the source of logic and reason, I cannot possibly lie.
Kenny got junked at 273 comments. I wonder how close Facilis is to the magic number?
facilis lied:
No, you asserted that their reasoning was circular and false. You’ve got a very poor memory, haven’t you? Just to remind you: ASSERTION ≠ EVIDENCE!
That aside; how can you afford to be wasting this time writing lies on a blog? You should be busy examining, remember?
In order to support your claim to need to be examining the revelations of every religion in the world, past and present, and showing us how you reach your conclusion that it is less able to make the claim of its deity (or deities) being responsible for the universal laws than your sect of Christianity.
Until then you can’t question anyone about anything, because you can’t account for the logic you use.
I got two minutes in.
Then I had to shut it down to preserve the sanity I had left.
Quite true. It’s a silly argument for the existence of God, since it is in actuality a perfect and excellent argument for the existence of Me.
Satan – Did you bring any pineapples? Facilis needs to be entertained.
Insipidity is grounds for junking. I checked, although I’m not sure it is possible to KNOW if it is though.
No, but I do have a couple of hungry bears. They enjoy eating the flesh of those who deny Me or insult My Holy Prophets, such as Sideshow Bob.
Where is the full formal treatment that you use to reason correctly from these laws? Where is the complete set of axioms, their proofs and rules of inference? How does your axiomatic system avoid Goedel incompleteness? If they are truly universal, invariant, absolute and KNOWN, how hard is it to support even one of your assertions by providing a link or reference to this formal presentation. Your continued refusal to do so completely undermines your entire argument. When I asked Sye the same question he, also couldn’t answer me. So are both of you being coy on purpose or did you really bring a logical spoon to a philosophical gunfight? I’m not sure which possibility is more disturbing.
You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?
Let me see if your veil of stupidity really is impenetrable.
You say “…because of the law of The Impossibility of the Contrary…”
So I say: “Ah, but TIOTC doesn’t apply to God because of Helio’s Fourth Axiom.”
And you say: “That’s not one of UULL!”
And I say: “Sure it is.”
How do you prove me wrong?
You still have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?
You say: “How does an atheist account for certainty in knowledge?”
I say: “How do you account for certainty in knowledge?”
You say: “Goddidit! Take that atheist blackguard!”
And I say: “How does ‘Goddidit!’ answer the Gettier problem? In other words, how does assuming God give you certainty, given Gettier’s demonstration that beliefs can be true, and justified and still not be knowledge?”
You STILL have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?
Heddle (#480)
I’m not talking about the purpose of the scientist, but the purpose of science itself, you evasive, illiterate, turd-gargling twit. Now, if it doesn’t break your fragile intellect, reread #468 with that in mind and answer my questions minus the not-so-clever dodge.
It’s a silly argument for the existence of anyone!
And quit giving Yourself airs. When I said “Hail Satan!” before, I was being sarcastic.
I was first, no two ways about it.
How do You KNOW?
After all, as the omnipotent source of all reason and knowledge, I could have hidden the particular knowledge of my precedence and omnipotence from You.
And take away the only reason Heddle should take his mental tap dancing on the road? I got three belly laughs a two tee-hees from Heddle today. He can do better. Unless he decides be become honest with himself. Then I get no laughs.
[…]
Now You cut that out!
I mean, really, why would an omnipotent entity create another entity and make that entity think that the first entity wasn’t the first, and was less omnipotent than the second?
It’s insane, and a complete violation of parsimony!
Like sacrificing part of Yourself to Yourself so as to save Your creation from being punished by Yourself as the result of one of Your creatures being tempted by another of Your creatures?
[…]
Well, yes… But I didn’t do that! The whole thing was a hoax! You know this!
Ah, but you wanted the humans to think it was true.
I rest my case.
Ah. So in other words, a bored omnipotent entity is liable to do insane things for no particular reason other than that it seems funny at the time.
Point taken.
heddle’s position is similar to one I described on another post a while back about how Christians determine which aspects of the bible are figurative/metaphorical and which are literal*. It can applied to morality as well.
Where the bible says something about reality and science and gets it correct then that part is meant to be taken literally. Where the bible gets something about reality and science wrong (bats being birds, the cure for leprosy, dragons and unicorns existing and so forth), well, that’s not meant to be taken literally.
But over the years the proportions of literal vs. metaphorical/figurative have shifted – obviously, at one point none of it was metaphorical/figurative, because no-one knew any better. But in more enlightened times it’s amazing how much turns out to have been written ‘in a different genre’ or ‘as an allegory’.
What an amazing coincidence that God was able to predict what science would be able to dismiss. He must be very clever.
*I’ve never studied logic/philosophy; no doubt there’s already a name for, and a succint description of, this particular fallacy but I don’t know what it is. Until someone tells me what it is I’ll stick with my own words.
I am disappointed about the pineapples Satan. Your bears, I’m sure, are terrifying, but compared to god you really are 2nd rate.
To paraphrase – God, “I’m gonna kill everyone.” Ezekiel 6:12
I hung myself on the World Tree, sacrificing myself to myself, for the gift of the Runes! Pikers!
Wowbagger @ 614:
Where is our old friend Teno Groppi when we ned him?
That rings a bell – was he the one who’d concocted a list of where the bible ‘predicted’ modern scientific discoveries? Like because it mentioned bats that predicted humans developing sonar and such?
(Makes sign of crossed noodley appendages.)
Damn! Now we’ve posted his name three times – he’s bound to appear.
Wowbagger:
The very same. He made just as much sense as Heddle, Facilis, and Garfunkel put together and was much more entertaining.
I don’t think we have to worry–when that thread got too long, PZ started a new thread just for him and he couldn’t find it. (Insert joke about creationists, both hands, and a flashlight.)
Lurkbot,
Yeah, I just did a search and found him on a thread from last year on Entropy and Evolution. I should have remembered the name; the thread shows that I joined in with a few of the others for a good, clean, old-fashioned, fun-filled troll stomp.
My contributions included dubbing him ‘Tenuous Teno’ and mocked him for seeing doctors when sick rather than follow the bible’s medical advice of a) anointing with oil, and b) praying.
I remember all that. At first he was just trying to knock evolution. It took me a good day of wheedling to get TG to actually begin to state his ideas. Then the fun began as others joined in. PZ even had to open a new thread.
Nerd,
Yeah, it was quite bizarre; the crazy-woo certainly was strong in him. At one point his argument for the bible predicting antiobiotics and vaccinations was that the phrase ‘bitter water’ appears.
In his mind? Unequivocal.
This is for Sastra:
I thank you profusely for your elegant, incisive, and elucidating commentary on nearly everything. But (you knew there was a but coming, didn’t you)…. in spite of all your endless patience, you have failed to get through to either FFF or Heddle. So when you are addressing either of them, I have taken to skimming. I would rather you addressed those issues (all others) and I could continue enriching myself with your superb discourse – with those two, I thing you are casting your pearls before swine.
My favourite Tenocious G quote:
Second favourite :
Once you invoke Satan Goodwin’s law seems like a step back.
That guy made Facilis look like a Rhodes scholar.
Letters and biographies?!? Well shucks.
And eyewitness accounts handed down to people who handed them down to people who then wrote them down who passed them along to others who translated them and threw out parts and translated again?
Well shit yeah.
That’s establishment right there.
And philosophical arguments too?
Holy shit I’m convinced.
Gooooooooooooly.
Well you sure got me.
A chimp writing with a crayon clenched between its butt cheeks makes facilis look like a Rhodes scholar.
At least we can give Tenuous Teno some points for at least trying to come up with some ideas rather than having been stupid enough to steal flaccid arguments from another idiot without either stopping to think them through or bothering to check if they’d been debunked.
Wowbagger #589 wrote:
As far as I know, short answer: no. The Transcendental Argument for God — and all the presuppositional arguments — only get you to a vague “transcendental source” — even if they worked. They do this by claiming that “God exists” is an obviously properly basic belief, a precondition for logic, reason, and universals.
They then go further and try to say that “The Christian God exists” is also an obviously properly basic belief — because it is so to them. Following this principle either leads to an extreme epistemic relativism — with everyone allowed to say what is their own properly basic belief — or special pleading, where only they can say it, because only they are right.
Plantinga calls this objection “the Great Pumpkin Objection” (after Linus) — but he doesn’t really have an answer for it. Facilis once said, on another thread, that, because the atheist objections are anticipated, this means they’re irrelevant, and shows him that the TAG is doing its work.
No. It’s just that any reasonably astute philospher — or first year philosophy student — or person thinking it over — can see the problems coming.
My understanding is that most theists scorn this argument, and you seldom see it in the philosophy or theology rags. Even Calvinists and Presbyterians are divided on it. I doubt that heddle supports it — though I think he does believe regeneration by the holy ghost is necessary for belief.
It’s too bad I’m 600 comments in, because this actually gets even funnier / sadder. Someone sent me a link to a “funny” shirt, and I recognized the font from this video. Check out this photo bucket profile that is possibly the source of the Ex-Atheist shirt:
http://s132.photobucket.com/albums/q8/acureton/
It has several funny and disturbing things. The first is that there are several other “Ex” shirts — fornicator, hustler, diva… masturbator.
Disturbingly, it has a folder for Ex Homosexual as well — not just the shirt, but articles. So the stupid is also bigoted (big surprise.)
The last funny thing is there’s also a folder with Beyonce pictures in provocative poses. Meaning that the poster is lying about one or more of those Ex’s — either masturbator or homosexual, depending on their gender ;) You can tell they feel guilty about it, because they left a bloody picture of Jesus in that folder too for guilt!
The photography is actually decent though, in my unprofessional (even un-amateur in that field) opinion.
Again, it’s a shame I’m so far down that most people will miss this new and interesting addition to the story.
The laws of logic simply are, there it’s accounted for. Though it’s irrelevant, we both agree that logic exists, and from that we can both see that your position is circular and therefore invalid. It’s like saying “can you account for the laws of physics? No, therefore the universe is 6000 years old and we were created out of dirt.” *but we see galaxies billions of light years away, and rocks billions of years old on earth* “But you can’t account for them therefore my position is better”
Lee Picton #626 wrote:
Thanks … I am patient because I am cynical. I do not expect positive results, and would be astonished to see any theist admit any major reversal in blog comments. Both Facilius and heddle have thought through their positions a great deal. I am probably unlikely to come up with anything completely unanticipated (though I can hope.)
They probably know the weaknesses in their arguments better than I do. Sometimes you only notice problems when you’re making your best case. That’s true for me, at any rate. So I’m more focused on trying to improve myself, than them. And understand the argument better.
There’s also smaller victories. Hey — if Facilius, at any point, thinks to himself “this is more complicated than it looks when I watch the professionals” — then win! None of us is likely to have any real idea of what “gets through” or works — and in what area. When I used to go into debate rooms, my goal was just to get them to eventually say “Well, I still think you’re wrong — but I can see now why you might think you’re right.” To some people, that is cataclysmic.
It’s tough on our side, too. Unless we can figure out how they can reasonably come to the conclusions they’ve come to, nobody is going anywhere, and nothing will be effective. The worst position is “they’re nuts.” No they’re not. That girl in the video could have been me. My job is to figure out how.
It looks like what I linked to might just be the photographer working with the Passion 4 Christ people (who held this “Debate” — their site is hilarious) and that I read too much into it. It’s just a little comical how well it fits though. Don’t read too much serious into it.
p4cm.com, however (Passion 4 Christ Movement) is a different story. The Ex-masturbator story is leading the page right now. In case the first video was an insufficient dose of stupid, there are plenty more…
Feshy #631 wrote:
I’m not going to scroll back and look, but people on the thread were laughing about the t-shirts earlier — particularly “EX-masturbator” — so I think they either found your link, or one like it.
Knockgoats:
Exactly!
Heddle at #566
In my absence, Knockgoats at #587 covered what would have been my response to you, and much, much more, in his excellent synthesis. I think he’s done a pretty good job of demonstrating that as far as your definition of incompatibility goes, there seems to be agreement with you on this thread. However, he has also shown a strong case that other assertions of incompatibility adopting more natural definitions are well supported, and unsurprisingly, are actually espoused by people on this thread.
In my view, you are less of a scientist than you might be for believing in christianity, since you have adopted that belief in the teeth of strong evidence that Jesus is a mythical figure. I would be extremely interested in the case you could make to persuade someone of the truth of your beliefs.
I speculate that your obsession with incompatibility_1 (to use Knockgoats’ terminology) is that you want people to somehow buy into the view that you are a solidly rational being. Holding two incompatible thought schemes would threaten that. Only if you can force the discussion to remain focussed on incompatibility_1 can you win the argument, which combined with your presumably impeccable and religion-free scientific opus lets you off the hook. Well, people here clearly think that you are holding two incompatible thought schemes in that one head, and are less sound rationally for it.
Sastra, #630
Thanks for that. I couldn’t imagine there’d be a way they (facilis and his ilk) could limit the argument to work for only their god, but I wanted to be sure – though that facilis hadn’t managed to find anyone to appropriate anything from that’s an argument against it is pretty good evidence.
But I have to say something: you this wrote in #633:
heddle has definitely thought through his position; he’s buried deep inside a cocoon of obfuscation and sophistry. But facilis, on the other hand, is a flat-out plagiariser. All he’s done is regurgitate the arguments made by someone named SyeTenB – several days ago, when forced into yet another corner, he linked to this person’s site; I went there and realised he’s repeated it word-for-word.
All he does is looks for where the same argument have been presented to his idol and indulges in a bit of cut-and-paste. Whenever he is faced with something neither he nor his man-crush has dealt with then he hides and waits until enough comments have been added (or a new post appears) and then starts again.
He’s really not worthy of the respect you give him and the patience you show him – but I admire you immensely for being able to do so.
Do they necessarily even get you to monotheism? Could multiple “sources” be responsible for the multiple necessary features that presuppositionalists, um, presuppose?
I would say that it only gets you as far a deism, since it isn’t necessary for the deity to be interventionist in any way.
It’s easy to respect heddle’s way of thinking, even if I personally disagree with it. Facilis on the other hand, he’s just the king of fallacies which he’s been able to mask himself from with his absurd position that one needs to account for logic in order to be able to use it. Maybe it’s well thought out in the respect that it’s a hard nut to crack (any attempt to use logic is just dismissed off-hand), but it’s not well thought out in the sense of a valid worldview. It’s childish really, it’s like a YEC saying Goddidit is a more valid answer than we don’t know.
Again as I said, I critique my opponent’s worldview. I would critique deism if I met a deist. It seems so bizarre here that atheists are unable to stick with their beliefs. It’s like worldview hopping. Every time a theist destroys this worldview, you hop to another and after he destroys that you hop to another… and when the theist gives up the atheist claims victory. And btw both Sye and I learned from the same source (Greg Banhsen)- so it is no accident that our arguments are similar. I also learned some debating tips from watching him win debates.
Back from a very productive day. The thing that I find so sad about heddle (forget about facilis and Garfunkle, and ignore the fact that we have yet to see heddle lift a finger to actually model for the rest of us why and how he is the man to dissuade theists who reject science from the error of their ways–it’s always a united front among the theists; heddle has yet to confront them here on their science-denial and don’t hold your breath)is heddle’s inability or unwillingness to look at the basic Christian Gospels and see them as a collection of stories that seek to imagine and establish a flavor of mythological hero/god that is the greatest and most badass of all time, during an era in which there was much competition and source material to emulate/plagiarize. Due diligence is going to show anybody where the serial numbers got filed off earlier accounts. Once you see stories from the Far East that predate The Naz that had been around for centuries, and most certainly passed through the Middle East on their way to eventual Hellenization, it’s just bizarre to try and figure out how anybody could look at the form of such tales, their tropes and style, and go to all the trouble of treating genre fiction as historical documents.
Treating fairy tales as true, requiring so much transparent tap-dancing and compartmentalization for somebody who claims to understand and value science, especially in the course of the sort of civil discourse that Sastra has shamed heddle into participating in, is a really bizarre mental feat for somebody waving the banner of science so unconvincingly, as if heddle has to convince himself he really is a scientist. The behavior is quite a bit more pathetic than that of the aliens from the film Galaxy Quest who regarded a cheap SF TV show (modeled on TOS/Now Generation) that they intercepted as “the historical documents.”
facilis wrote:
You think you can disprove deism? You really are stupider than I thought. Do you even know what deism is?
Since you brought it up, though, I’ll remind you that you’re still hiding from my post #564, facilis. Here are two of the questions you’re dodging:
a) what qualifies you to make such judgements? Be specific.
b) upon what standard can you judge them? You need an objective standard, because if you are judging it based on the Christian standard that means you are already accept the Christian standard without considering the possibility that the other ‘revelation’ may be correct – rendering your analysis biased and therefore invalid.
Next in a long line of blunders:
Do you even know what those words in that sentence mean? I’m guessing the answer is no – with particular focus on ‘atheist’, ‘beliefs’, ‘destroys’, ‘worldview’ and – most of all, ‘victory’. Trust me, you’re never going to experience that last one if you keep coming here.
Once you’ve consulted a dictionary you might be able to understand my response.
I don’t need to hold a belief to use what that belief presents as an example to show how your belief is invalid. In fact, the very existence of a belief system other than yours undermines your claim for a universal deity.
Destroyed my worldview? Are you high? The only thing you’ve destroyed is what I’ve considered to be the lower limit on human stupidity and obtuse self-indulgent babbling. You’ve certainly blown those away.
And for extra chuckles:
I also learned some
debatingdodging tips from watching himwindodge debates by hiding from questions he couldn’t answer.Fixed if for you. Indeed, you’ve learned very well. I’d congratulate you, but I don’t respect cowardice.
I don’t respect heddle’s point of view for one instant.
Kel have you checked out Calvinism? It’s as foul as the Catholics. The concept of total depravity is something no one should be burdened with. The Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy is chump change compared to TULIP.
Perhaps you don’t have any of this sick sect in your country.
I have not, nor do I wish to. Like I said, I don’t agree with his religious point of view. But I don’t really give a shit just as long as the science is not affected. Just as Francis Collins or Ken Miller or Robert T Bakker can keep their faith and do good science. Obviously I think that some points there is contention, and that’s what Jerry Coyne was talking about, and heddle doesn’t really contend with those properly. I highlighted my concerns probably 150 posts ago, but I didn’t really get a reply. Maybe he’s answered them before so I gave it the benefit of the doubt.
Just took a glance at Calvinism, it does sound really fucked-up. Though only on a par with the bile that Pilty spews in the name of Catholicism.
Religions in Australia for the most part are pretty liberal really. It surprises me how right-wing the Catholic Church seems to be in the US.
I examine my opponent’s worldview to see which can provide the necessary preconditions of the intelligibility of human experience. IF he fails I will show my worldview is superior
I KNOW this because God has revealed it to me with certainty. I demonstrate it by critiquing other worldview, as I have done here with atheism
You have failed to demonstrate that your worldview is coherent, let alone superior. You still have the same fallacious nature at the core of everything you say. Everyone can see it’s fallacious apart from you!
Yes and yes.
Facilis,
You keep saying that, but I have yet to read the details. Did he appear to you in a piece of toast and start talking about the laws of logic? Or did a giant cheese burger become animate and start telling you vague prophecies? Or was there some masculine, deep voice in your head telling you it’s God and that you should kill, kill?
Inquiring minds want to know.
What is it Patricia, about the Calvinist Elect? Lo, before the foundations of time, they, and only they, got their celestial pre-boarding pass, as if they were the current Battlestar Galactica’s Final 144K, predestined to be struck by the realization that they would experience the joy of filling their nostrils with the scent of the damned, flambé, from the battlements of heaven for all eternity. All those other Christians who aren’t Calvinists? They’re just as extra crispy as me and Patricia.
Paul Schrader’s film starring George C. Scott, Hardcore, portraying a Calvinist looking for his runaway daughter in LA’s 70s porn scene, contains pretty much everything we pre-damned un-elect need to know about Calvinism. The more you learn, the sooner you’ll be yelling, “Turn it off!“
Ken Cope (#643)
He probably thinks what he said back up in #22 is sufficient: “I can not tell you how many times, after speaking to believers on science, I have been told words to the effect that it was wonderful to hear that a pro-science position that didn’t have to come at the expense of their beliefs.”
He lets the little dears keep their beliefs. Aww. Athiest scientist who want to take those beliefs away are too scary to be properly convincing. Rawr!
So he basically has to make a case for giving people an incorrect and incomplete understanding of science in the name of fostering acceptance. But that would require he realize he’s practicing deception in the first place and he’s his own victim here.
I don’t think heddle will worry about you guys’ feeling about Calvinism. As James White always says, it is not surprising that depraved sinners who spend their lives in rebellion against God should be offended when presented with God’s true teaching.
Ken Ham and Pat Robertson both think their worldviews have been told by God with certainty. Funny that anyone can say that God has revealed to them, that God gives contradictory accounts, and that anyone could think that being certain somehow makes them superior. Iäm certain that facilis is a moronic little shit, therefore facilis is a moronic little shit. It’s okay, the Sideshow Bob figurine confirmed it. It being eternal and accounting for all logic makes it so not circular…
Wowbagger @644:
“I’m high all right. But not on false drugs! I’m high on the real thing: powerful gasoline, a clean windshield, and a shoe shine!” –op. cit. The Firesign Theatre
lol, reminds me of this. Got to love the way that any criticism can be brushed aside without even a second thought. It’s not true what they are saying, it’s the original sin talking. All this needs is the bible quote about atheists being fools for completion.
Facilis, God told me to skin you alive. Funny thing about God talking to you, it is a sign of mental problems.
Seek medical help.
Well Ken, I was damned to begin with. Being female I am guilty of the original sin. That’s extra crispy!
Where did heddle say this?
That’s extra crispy!
As well as delicious and habit-forming, leading to activities that paradoxically yield serendipitous weight-loss for all participants (with certain notable exceptions).
Kel – You might want to check out Calvinism just so you could inform/protect any children in your family from the disgusting teachings.
facilis, the question was what qualifies you to make this judgement? this:
…is not an answer to that question. You see, when you say you are going to examine something to see if it provides an answer, you have to explain what that answer is, and how you’re going to go about looking for it.
You have not done that. Just saying-so does not count.
Next mistake:
So, you’re trying to tell us that your ability to judge, objectively, whether any of the gods of other religions’ revelations has the capacity to be more valid than your own is dependant on knowledge given by your god?
I can’t even begin to explain exactly how idiotic an argument that is. I don’t think that I can make my mind function in the limited ways yours does with doing it some kind of traumatic injury – and I don’t want to wake up Christian, so I’m not going to risk it.
“depraved sinners”
I always love it when they really get up in the pulpit. So facilis, what depraved sins do you think we’ve engaged in?
Patricia, can you say “Devil’s Gateway”?
“Depraved sinners”? I am working at being a refined sinner.
Where did heddle say this?
Don’t worry about it facilis. You’re not a Calvinist, so you’re gonna burn forever and ever, pain without end, amen. But if you let Jello Biafra skin you alive, I’m sure you’ll make a fine condom, so you’re not a complete loss. And now, kids, here’s a cut from Frankenchrist that I think you’ll really dig.
See here
http://www.livingwaters.com/good/
Janine, I worked so hard to get Post of the Beast. What’s your secret?
Ken, what if Facilis’ skin is as porous as his mind? Perhaps is can be given to the Rookie in order to bind his books.
Damn, I did not even notice. It must be like attracting like.
Wow, and here I thought you’d actually try and shine away from that archaic petty bullshit. It’s exactly what is wrong with Christianity placed conveniently in a flash presentation.
Oh and what a surprise, it’s made by those Liars for Jesustm: Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron. Great people to represent morality there and doing “good”. Nothing like telling lie after lie then sugar coating it by condemning anyone who doesn’t have faith in Jesus to eternal damnation. Even with your limited mental capacities, I thought you would have done better than those two liars.
Ken Cope – You are well known, sirrah, as a fine judge of a well turned ass.
And now you stride forward with a taste for the delicious, serendipitous, and the paradoxical. You realize, of course, that only Waterford has a glass to hold that?
Dammit – y’all are so much faster than me.
Oh, Kel. The sacrifices you make on our behalf, to suss out that facilis was foisting Comfort and Cameron on us? It’s the sort of thing that makes me wonder if “facilis” isn’t a collective identity shared among a load pzombies who take turns experiencing the qualia of sanctimonious Gobsmackery by clicking “Post” to drive up PZ’s stats.
Thanks for taking one for the team, Kel. Here’s a unicorn chaser, the site promoting Coraline.
Though I guess facilis was oddly appropriate in posting some Ray Comfort logic in a thread entitled “The stupid, it burns”. Good work there making the comments on the blog as stupid as the person the blog was based on, well done facilis.
only Waterford has a glass to hold that
*clink*
given to the Rookie in order to bind his books
If it wasn’t any more binding than fallacious’ logic, poor Pete’s pages would all waft away in the breeze.
I know that is a site for advertising a movie, but it is beautiful.
facilis is linking to Ray Comfort? We must have broken his brain (gets mental image of the key on a wind-up toy mouse grinding to a halt…)
I stopped feeling real scorn for Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron after watching the video of their ‘debate’ with RRS – and before any idiot (facilis, I’m looking at you) says that it was edited to make them look bad, I’ll explain that it wasn’t anything they said, it was the looks on their faces after one of the RRS delivered a line.
Heck, I can’t even remember what that line was. But the looks on Ray and Kirk’s faces illustrated exactly what was going on – they were little kids trying to play with the big boys and they’d just realised exactly how little they knew about the game. It took away any real antipathy I had for them. To hate them would be like kicking a puppy.
Of course, I dislike them for being morons who spread lies, but that’s not quite the same thing.
Hmm. You disappoint me. I always thought that the Christians thought that we, because of our lack of the threat of punishment by a god, must all be inveterate liars, murderers, people who enjoy sexual activity, etc. But I guess we’re just being accused of little everyday sins, as well as the bogus ones like buying beer on Sundays. And that “sinned in our hearts” nonsense. But because we don’t grovel enough to God, we’re “depraved”. Meh.
Mathematics with facilis:
Kel – I say 2+2=4
facilis – you can’t say that!
K – Why not?
F – Because you can’t account for logic
K -What do you mean I can’t account for logic?
F – Well where do you think logic comes from?
K – logic is derived from the universe.
F – No it isn’t, the universe cannot account for logic.
K – Why not?
F – because logic needs a logic giver
K – Wait, what?
F – Logic is immaterial, the universe doesn’t fit logic so logic must be transcendent.
K – How does that stop me from applying logic?
F – Because you cannot account for it, so how can you use what you cannot account for?
K – Like this: here are two objects, I couple them with two more objects. Look, it’s exactly the same size as that pile of 4 objects!
F – But you cannot say that without being able to account for logic in the first place.
K – *facepalm* so facilis, how do you add two plus two?
F – I know that logic comes from God, he told me himself. Now that I can have a point of explanation for logic, I can assure you that 2+2=5
K – Wait, no it doesn’t. I’ve demonstrated that 2+2=4. It can never equal 5.
F – Ahh, but you can’t account for why 2+2=4, I can account for why 2+2=5 so I win.
K – No you don’t, mathematics can be used regardless of how it was obtained by humanity. It may be a constant in the universe, it may be given down by a divine being, it may simply be a construct of the macroscopic world as we see it. The point is that one needs not know where it comes from in order to apply it
F – Nope, you can’t use it. 2+2=5 because I’m certain it’s right and my worldview is superior to yours!
Facilis (#660)
Where did I say heddle said he said that? (No, really.)
Whoops, that’s supposed to be: Where did I say heddle said that?
Because it is wrong. Eastern mysticism is also wrong. But an eastern mystic can do science at the highest level. No difference. If I couldn’t oppose something just because its proponents were capable of doing perfectly fine science, there wouldn’t be much left that I could oppose. KenCope-ism maybe, but that’s not very high on my radar. I never said, let alone insist, that atheists should STFU. My original post was related to the fact of strange bedfellows—the New Atheists and the anti-science YECs are united in their opposition to pro-science theism.
MartinH,
I understand that. I even understand that I am arguing a strawman. That’s because the actual definition is meaningless. If there is no effect on, say, Miller’s ability to do science because of his theism, then any discussion of the incompatibility is intangible gobbledygook. As I have said before, I could a 3000 word psycho-babble essay on why Dawkins’s science would improve if he converted to Christianity. If I did, you would be right to ask me for evidence where someone’s faith improved their science. That’s what I am asking.
You’ll be extremely bored with the answer: I don’t make any such case, ever. If I witness to someone I give the gospel and maybe my testimony. I never, ever try to persuade someone of the truth of my beliefs. I may try to persuade someone that they have an incorrect exegesis, and sometimes I get persuaded that I do, but that is a different matter.
Ken Cope,
It’s true I stay out of and generally don’t follow parallel discussions you guys have with other theists. I have little more than a vague knowledge that they are happening. I would hardly call that a united front. If we went about backslapping each other Nerd of Redhead style, that’d be a different matter. The reason is mostly historic. Once on this blog I was in the thread and stated another Christian (Vox Dey I think) was wrong. The discussion deteriorated, in as much as that is possible, to “well how do we know which one of you Christians is the True Christian™?” Bleh. However on my blog I routinely call out YECs and the Dembski crowd. So go there if in-the-family disputes give you the chuckles.
Yeah right. I would hope a more accurate statement for you is: the civil discouse between Sastra and heddle has shamed me, KenCope, into realizing that such adult converstion is possible. But I don’t think you have any shame.
Where did you get that idea? That is anti-Calvinism. The most important verse for Calvinism is God will have mercy upon whom God will have mercy. That’s not: God will have mercy on those who can pass an exam in Calvinist doctrine, just in case you need that to be spelled out.
Kel have you checked out Calvinism? It’s as foul as the Catholics. The concept of total depravity is something no one should be burdened with. – Patricia
Well said! Calvinists believe God created billions of human beings predestined to eternal torment – and they worship this vile monster. In other words, they worship infinite evil. Even Pilty wanking over his fantasies of torturing heretics is less disgusting. That heddle peddles this vileness to unfortunate children ensures that he has my deepest contempt.
Facilis, still the Fallacious Fool. Can’t even give a straight answer to a simple question. Until you learn to do so, you will be rightfully mocked and scorned. Not answering simple questions in a straightforward manner is not a sign of a superior intelligence, but rather a sign of somebody who is pulling a scam and knows it. You are a liar and bullshitter until you prove otherwise.
Composing a response to heddle’s lies at the moment. Here are a couple of highlights fom the earlier thread:
SC, #196: YECs. Are you suggesting that position is compatible with science?
heddle, #199: I think I said as clearly as I possibly can, on multiple occasions including in my previous comment, that it is not.
***
heddle, #445: As I said, I can “point out” why religious belief might be helpful to a scientist…
SC, #455: OK. Go ahead. You claimed above that the Bible tells people to go do science. Where do you find that? How do you square that interpretation with some of the passages and writings people have pointed to above, or with the larger message of faith without evidence? Are you just saying that people can find inspiration in their religious beliefs or ideas? Inspiration can come from anywhere, just as the drive to understand the universe has a number of sources. Are you suggesting there’s something specific to religion (or Christianity) that’s an advantage in doing good science, and that it nullifies the larger incompatibility issues raised above? How?
heddle, #?: [still waiting]
Rey Fox, did your mother ever tell you you could only have cookies after dinner, and you snuck into the kitchen and ate a cookie while she was emptying the washing machine?
You’re absolutely depraved and you deserve to burn in hell forever and ever. Amen.
You have GOT to be kidding me.
Ray Comfort?
You can not with any certainty distinguish between what could be a psychological episode and what you claim is divine revelation.
SC, OM,
You have one that is fair enough: I have made, on the surface, contrary statements about whether YECism is compatible with science. The same could be said about, for example, eastern mysticism. I accept that deserved criticism, attribute it to my own sloppiness, and will clarify:
1. YECism is incompatible with science in the sense that what it claims (a young earth) is demonstrably false.
2. It is not incompatible in the sense that we have discussed on this thread–that is a YEC could choose, for whatever purposes, if only to be mischievous, to do good science, and that good science would not carry a detectable signature of his YEC beliefs.
So I accept that criticism, and you can accept or reject my explanation at your pleasure.
(Enumeration added.)
Now is this is representative of big-tough-showstopper questions I have avoided? Have you stopped to think that neither I nor many other people care to wade through a dense paragraph of rapid fire questions? Your definition of running away is peculiar: No matter how annoying I am, unless heddle answers all my questions he is a coward!
1) Romans 1:20. Even without the bible creation leaves men without excuse. That presupposes the study of creation. That’s science. That passage says, in effect, that even science will reveal characteristics of God. (Considered that answered. If you don’t agree that’s too bad, but it has been answered.)
2) As for faith and evidence, I don’t recall what people were talking about. It was probably the misconception that the bible calls for blind faith and treats it as a virtue. People (atheists and fundamentalist Christians—you guys are often on the same side) often say that, referring to Hebrews 11:1. I have ad nauseum, even on this blog. addressed that. If you are actually interested, here is a Sunday school I gave on that topic.
3) No. I can only guess you took my claim “I can write an essay showing why faith makes you a better scientist” (or something similar) not as an example of why science-faith incompatibility arguments are senseless, but that I was actually making the claim.
4) No, as my now numerous comments that anyone with the requisite skills can do good science regardless of their personal beliefs or pathologies demonstrates.
5)I don’t have to answer how, since I answered no to #4.
heddle (#685)
Is it safe to assume you’re referring to “incompatibility-2” as explained* in Knockgoats’ post at #587? On what grounds have you determined its lack of meaning? I suppose the rest of us are deluded when we find this defintion completely meaningful and relevant. (Ironically, you invoke shades of it yourself in criticism of other would-be thestic scientists: YECs, etc.)
I’m convinced you’re compelled to reject this definition not on its lack of meaning but because anything other than your own definition is inconvenient to your worldview and would require further mental gymnastics to reconcile science and theism. Or more simply put, you’re in denial. The most honest thing you could have done would be to admit your rejection of other definitions from the start and then refrain from the whole strawman diversion.
Oh, and you still haven’t answered my questions in #468 with the clarifications given in #604. Is that because you’re bored or because you’re incapable? (Guess which I’m going to assume.)
“[S]cience mandates you to adjust your beliefs in conformity with the evidence, while religion (and specifically theism) tells you to believe what your religious authority (whether a person, committee, book or whatever) tell you to believe.”
Oh, and just for fun, I thought I’d point out you also made a straw man out of “compartmentalization” by conveniently redefining it way back in #214: “If ‘compartmentalization’ means ‘people use different parts of their brain’ then yes we all compartmentalize all the time.”
You realize that’s a terrible, terrible habit, don’t you?
heddle, #691, wrote:
Not attempting to derail the discussion you’re having with SC, but I’d like to point out that stating this is more than a little disingenuous.
We may come to the same conclusion on an issue, (liberal, café Christianity is a dodge in order to avoid cognitive dissonance) but that is not the same thing as being on the same side
To say atheists and fundamentalists are ‘on the same side’ is like saying competing boxers who both agree to wear red gloves during the fight are ‘on the same side’, or that the generals of two armies fighting each other both look at the heavy clouds in the sky and realise it’s going to rain are ‘on the same side’.
A.Noyd,
No I was confused by this exchange:
1) Heddle: “science is motivation-agnostic” clearly referring to the motivations of the scientist.
2) A.Noyd: “Motive-agnostic does not mean purpose-agnostic”
3) Heddle: (not realizing that A.Noyd has shifted the emphasis away from the scientist science itself, answers regarding the purpose of the scientists.)
4) A.Noyd responds like a jackass in #604.
5) Heddle reviews #468 d and notices three things: I) A.Noyd did indeed refer to science, ii) A.Noyd was already displaying signs of jackassedness, , iii) A.Noyd gave a biased, question-begging, non standard definition of science: to give us a self-consistent (and therefore useful) description of reality. The word reality should have in front of it the adjective physical.
Is this your question that you are so proud of?
1) I don’t reject science ever, let alone arbitrarily or on a whim.
2) As discussed, that is not a definition of science.
3) I guess I’ll just keep doing science until I need glasses.
4) Faith, and the sum total of experiences in my religious life, self-consistency, the Holy Spirit, all relying upon the fact that I have been regenerated.
5) They are not immune to falsification. A cosmos without a beginning would shatter my faith,
6) Believe whatever you like.
Good for you. The real reason I am compelled to reject the definition is I am a scientist. So I don’t accept someone—PZ, Coyne, or you telling me they are incompatible. Any fool can do that. I want them to show me. With an experiment.
Wowbagger,#694
Fair enough–that is a bad habit I have. But it is such a guilty pleasure.
Has Facilis answered my request for a demonstration of how “God = Logic”?
Stanton, what do you think? He appears to be afraid to do anything other than posture and pose, like little fallacious fool he is. If he offers any evidence the chances of being refuted, like everything he has proposed to date, approach 100%.
Eh, I probably shouldn’t complain. Apparently, I’ve been known to take the occasional cheap shot myself; the last person who went down the ‘I find it interesting that atheists and fundamentalists think the same thing’ path expressed immense distaste for the expression ‘cafeteria Christian’ – so I used it in every subsequent post just to annoy him.
Back to our glass houses I guess.
@Facilis
You know what would destroy my worldview? The formal demonstration that laws of logic exist; that they are universal, absolute and invariant. Providing evidential support for the first assertion made by proofthatgodexists.org.
Shockingly, the internet apologetic equivalent of Ren and Stimpy (you’re Stimpy, BTW) haven’t been able to pull that off.
Your worldview fails at the Gettier problem. Discuss.
Because it is wrong. Eastern mysticism is also wrong. But an eastern mystic can do science at the highest level. No difference. If I couldn’t oppose something just because its proponents were capable of doing perfectly fine science, there wouldn’t be much left that I could oppose. KenCope-ism maybe, but that’s not very high on my radar. I never said, let alone insist, that atheists should STFU. My original post was related to the fact of strange bedfellows—the New Atheists and the anti-science YECs are united in their opposition to pro-science theism. – heddle
You really are so full of shit I’m coming to the conclusion that you must be a sewage treatment plant. You complained about atheists voicing their conviction that science and religion are incompatible, and falsely said they “team up” with anti-science theists. Groups opposing something from opposite sides are not “strange bedfellows”. That term, like “team up”, specifically implies working together.
1. YECism is incompatible with science in the sense that what it claims (a young earth) is demonstrably false. heddle
So are the claims that anyone can walk on water (you have said yourself that scientifically, this is “impossible”), that human beings can be born without a biological father, that people dead several days can be brought back to life, that five loaves and two fishes can feed five thousand people. You believe these absurdities because your interpretation of the Bible is that it says they really happened – just as the YEC believes in the literal truth of Genesis 1 because of their interpretation of the Bible. You do not, as you have dishonestly claimed, simply believe things that science does not tell you to believe; you believe things that you have admitted science tells you are impossible – because of your religious convictions.
2. It is not incompatible in the sense that we have discussed on this thread–that is a YEC could choose, for whatever purposes, if only to be mischievous, to do good science, and that good science would not carry a detectable signature of his YEC beliefs.
Well at least you’re admitting that there is more than one sense in which it can be asserted that science and religion are incompatible. Your (2) above is my incompatibility-1 @587 which PZ has repeatedly said he does not claim, and which no-one here has supported. Yet your original whine was simply about atheists asserting the incompatibility of science and religion – sense of incompatibility unspecified. You must know perfectly well that PZ does not claim incompatibility-1, and most people here know that you must know it, so the natural assumption was that you were talking about some other version of incompatibility – and all the other three variants I distinguished @587 were brought up in the course of the thread. You cannot honestly claim that only the one you want to talk about is the one “we have discussed on this thread”.
Eastern mysticism is also wrong.
In contrast to what’s right, rejoicing that the Magic Skydaddy who created the universe for the express purpose of clairvoyantly eavesdropping on heddle’s deep and prayerful contrition for the last time heddle masturbated, to forgive him, because hey, it’s heddle we’re talking about here. It must be one of heddle’s amazing theist/scientist superpowers that enable him to declare, with certainty, that any stance apart from heddle’s is as wrong as atheism, especially if it’s something Sam Harris studies.
My original post was related to the fact of strange bedfellows—the New Atheists and the anti-science YECs are united in their opposition to pro-science theism.
But atheists are black on the right side and white on the left, while all of the anti-science YECs are white on the right side. Wait! You mean that we’re really just exactly the same as each other! I see, because atheists who explore the world through the lens of science and reject religion are just exactly the same as the anti-science YECs because…heddle says so.
Knockgoats ,
I have no comment on this. I just wanted to repost it because it is such beautiful prose. Darn near Hitchens-esque.
Yeah—is that supposed to be new insight? Have I hidden my belief in the supernatural? Hmm… I think not.
Man you don’t get it. Both the YECs and OECs agree that God can perform supernatural deeds. We both agree that God supernaturally created the cosmos.
It is not that YECs claim supernatural origins and OECs do not, it is that the YEC claim can be put to the test. When you measure the age of the earth you are not refuting the supernatural, but rather the natural consequence of the alleged supernatural event as the YECs claim it. Could God have created the cosmos 6000 years ago? Sure. But if he did then there will be a natural as opposed to a supernatural effect: the measured age will be 6000 years.
Consider this: If Jesus walked on the water, you are free to apply science but we both know the answer will be: he can’t do that. However if I came by just after he walked on water, and I didn’t see it, I could do an experiment. If I were very careful I could measure the waves and do an inverse scattering problem to see if they were consistent with eyewitness accounts of a man walking on the water.
That’s the concept. All theists believe in the supernatural—even deists do. Once again if believing in the supernatural is synonymous with an incompatibility then you have victory by definition. Congratulations.
However on my blog I routinely call out YECs and the Dembski crowd. So go there if in-the-family disputes give you the chuckles.
It’s not exactly giving me the chuckles is watch heddle use PZ’s blog to godbot and pimp his own blog.
Could God have created the cosmos 6000 years ago? Sure. But if he did then there will be a natural as opposed to a supernatural effect: the measured age will be 6000 years.
What, the Supernatural Pixie who does it all for heddle falls so short of omnipotence that He couldn’t have poofed the universe into existence 6000 years while making it appear to have happened 13.8BYA without the need for any supernatural agency? Nah, heddle knows–he doesn’t worship a trickster.
heddle:
Do you have no sense of honor at all, heddle? You just lie openly, and feel no shame? I said on this very thread, @ #357: “Which is ludicrous for a number of reasons. I’ve noted some but would be happy to describe them in more detail at your request.” If you wanted me to remind you of its problems, you simply had to ask. You’re a lying jerk.
The claims that are being made are about the incompatibility of religion and science, while you, in your own self-interest, have arbitrarily reduced the question to “Does theism affect scientific production?” and asserted that if you can find examples of cases in which it does not then you have shown that the two are incompatible. Leaving aside this misrepresentation and shrinking for the moment, even your narrowed version runs into trouble when you start to discuss empirical investigation.
I tried several times on the earlier thread to explain to you that in the social sciences (the question at hand being a social-scientific one), experiments are only one method of research. Sociologists, for example, use surveys, interviews, participant observation, content analysis, and existing data to answer our questions. Experiments (which can be interesting and lead to insights) are used fairly rarely in my experience, for the obvious reason that controlled conditions are artificial and don’t necessarily relate to real-world behavior (less true, of course, of “experiments in nature”).
After much difficulty on the part of a number of people explaining to you that an experiment involves manipulating/controlling conditions, you finally managed (without, I’ll note, apologizing for insulting me for understanding what an experiment is and simply calling you on your own ignorance) to define “experiment”:
So you, idiosyncratically, define an experiment as systematic empirical observation and measurement (of course, you should include analysis) to test hypotheses. This is not the definition of “experiment” but of “research.” (The use of the term “experimental physics” to distinguish empirical work from theoretical work has evidently confused you somewhat, though I doubt your fellow physicists are as unclear on what “an experiment” means.) This broad definition, as I explained to you on the other thread, means that you have no justification for rejecting the relevant findings of other research methods and insisting on experiments as the only acceptable method. You can’t move back and forth as it suits you. In any event, what you’re proposing – your “challenge” – is not an experiment. It doesn’t involve controlling conditions to precisely measure relationships between or among variables. As you present it, it doesn’t remotely qualify as sociological research, but is closer to a game-show stunt.
But let’s say for the sake of argument that we could approach this as research to answer the question you pose – again, “Does religion affect scientific work?”. First, we would note that what we’re doing is not an experiment but a form of content analysis. We would be looking at existing scientific productions and examining them for “marks” of religion, just as we could do for “marks” of any other belief system. Our first problem would be in terms of the measurement tool itself. You keep saying “I’ll show you” this or that set of papers, but who is “you”? I’m not qualified to judge what would probably often be subtle evidence in papers in disciplines in which I know relatively little of the content of existing knowledge or the accepted methods. So who are our coders going to be? How are they going to be trained to make these determinations in a way that eliminates the possibility that it is their ignorance of the disciplines in question that doesn’t allow them to distinguish the work of a theist from that of a nontheist?
On what basis are the people reading the papers to make their determinations, and which are we calling relevant to our question? It is certainly possible that someone could identify a theist’s paper based on elements that have little or nothing to do with any fundamental incompatibility – the writer used Bible verses or fables, terms usually used by the religious, etc. This would allow for identification, but not in any way relevant to answering our question. How do we separate these out from those identifying markers that would point to incompatibility? (According to your challenge as presented, identification based on anything at all would be accepted by you as evidence against your position.)
Then we have to think about the examples of scientific production offered for measurement and analysis. Even if we’re only looking at published, peer-reviewed work, questions of sampling (even if this were as random as possible) arise. The fact that the proportion of theistic scientists is small (and decreases the fursther up you go) is relevant and important data that any honest researcher would have to report, and not just in a footnote. What if in a given field or subfield (say, research on abiogenesis) you are selecting 5 papers by theists and five papers by nontheists, but the five by theists are the only ones published by theists in that field in the past 5 years, whereas for nontheists you had 500 to choose from. That is not pertinent? (If I selected ten NBA players and gave you their stats and you couldn’t guess their heights, would this be good evidence that being short does not affect one’s possibilities of rising to the top levels in basketball? And more generally, if “one discredited lunatic” doesn’t prove the case against you, how many theistic scientists doing good work prove your own case? Real-world statistics can simply be ignored?)
But the biggest problem for your challenge is one you yourself have noted on numerous occasions in the mistaken belief that it’s helping your case. Your attempt to appropriate the rule that we should only judge science by published, peer-reviewed work for your ends is really slimy and underhanded. The reason for this is that the reason we don’t accept other productions is because published, peer-reviewed work has been vetted – arguments and methods incompatible with good science have been weeded out and rejected (either whole papers or portions thereof). When, in response to the suggestion that “You can demonstrate [the incompatibility] by looking at the science of the Intelligent design crowd such as Behe et al.,” you respond “Yes, their almost uncontainable corpus of peer-reviewed publications demonstrates conclusively how they have been able to sneak their ideas into mainstream science,” you have made the clearest argument against your proposed method that anyone can. An honest examination of the effects of religion on scientific production would necessarily inlcude submissions to peer-reviewed journals that have been rejected, as well as other writings (including books) that are non-peer-reviewed. It would explicitly appreciate the role of the vetting process of peer-review and the meaning of this in terms of answering our question.
As I said on the Coyne thread, “I mean, there were some Stalinist scientists who did good work. Doesn’t mean there was no incompatibility there.” I’ll elaborate: I’m fairly confident I could produce 15 articles in your or a related field with which you’re familiar, published in peer-reviewed journals in the 1930s: 5 by diehard Stalinists/diamats, 5 by non-Stalinists working in the Soviet sphere, and 5 by non-Stalinists elsewhere, and that you could not distinguish among them (at least in terms of scientific claims, analyses, and methods). Would this convince you that Stalinism was compatible with science? If not, why not? How about if I pointed to, say, ten, good scientists who were scientists? Would this be evidence against incompatibility?
Let’s talk about books. You keep mentioning Miller as an example of a scientist whose theism has not affected his capacity to do good science. But read Coyne’s discussion of Miller’s arguments about theistic evolution in his article. Science includes the analysis and interpretation of evidence. I agree with Coyne that the evidence so far doesn’t square with Miller’s presentation, and yet Miller continues to trumpet theistic evolution in speech and writing. What is your response to Coyne about this? Where does Miller respond to what Coyne is saying about the science of evoution in a way you find satisfying?
In closing this post, in addition to asking once again on what grounds you justify excluding all evidence derived through non-experimental (in the narrow sense) methods*, I’ll point out the profound hypocrisy at work in your posts. You insist on evidence (data, falsifiability,…) in support of claims about incompatibility. But these are social-scientific claims, and you’ve maintained several times, idiotically, that you hold social/political/economic beliefs that aren’t based on any evidence. You also maintain that outside “the lab” evidence (religious and otherwise) may be accepted or rejected based on personal preference. So why should anyone bother presenting you with any evidence at all?
*When I asked “Why do you not accept any of the above as “measurable effects”? How do you justify this?” you responded “Because they aren’t measurable. A meaurable effect is to demonstrate how the science a theist produces is different from that an atheist produces. Anything else is just words.” Excuse me, but what the hell? How are these other things not measurable? The percentage of theistic scientists is measurable, and has been measured. The interference of religious groups with scientific education is measurable. The persecution of scientists by established churches is measurable. You cannot show that these aren’t measurable. You can only repeat that you reject this evidence, but you’ve offered no justification for this.
KenCope,
I’m not godboting. I have purposely, with one minor exception, avoided all the comments about Calvinism. (Which of course really means that they were devastating rebukes for which I have no comeback.) Nor have I proselytized. The subject of the post has to do with religion. How the hell can you discuss it without discussing religion?
Nor have I pimped my own blog. I explained why I don’t jump into other subthreads involving theists. Only on the occasion of referring SC OM to a revalent post on blind-faith did I link my blog. In what, 50 posts on this blog I provided one link to avoid pasting a long argument here? That is hardly pimping by anyone’s standards.
But hey, you can certainly be a manly tattletale and encourage PZ to put me in the dungeon. Here’s two things about that:
1) If he does I’ll never mention it on my blog or anywhere else. That is, I will not claim martyrdom.
2) If he wants, he can send me an email right now saying: please don’t post on my blog anymore. And I won’t, no muss, no fuss, no comment on my own blog, not publishing his email, no claim of martyrdom.
It is entirely his blog and he is within his rights to ask me to leave or force me to leave, though he doesn’t need to do that. Though I would think the sight of you trying to goad him into it would be distasteful—but what do I know?
Sastra possesses a far more sophisticated and subtle knife than anybody else on this blog, wielding it with a Socratic air and a calming smile. Me, I point and laugh, along with everybody else.
Heddle
Way back when (in the early 500’s) I posted a comment suggesting you were being somewhat biased in your statement suggesting that Hoyle “allowed his atheism to influence his results”. At that time I stated (I paraphrase) scientists can legitimately reach different conclusions from the same data – which you essentially then lambasted in a ‘Hah!’ post.
Sometime later, downthread, you made the following comment
For I have witnessed and participated in countless arguments over different conclusions reached by scientists of good faith presented with a common set of data
WTF?
So You have observed many times different scientists reaching different conclusions from the same data … yet find it absurd that Hoyle would reach conclusions different from his peers? You also implied that the overriding rationale for Hoyle’s stance must be his anti-theism (as you put it)? Why not simply accept that his position was founded upon his investment in Steady State in addition to his disquiet at the potential misuse of the results for religious purposes.
You also objected strongly to my use of the word ‘loose’ regarding the big bang theory. I do not disagree that the explanatory power of the inflationary model is immense – but as you yourself stated, it is incomplete. Modified, it predicts the slight non-uniformities in the background. There is still much room for improvement.
My comment was quite clear, that ‘zero explanatory power’ was in the context of ‘what came before’. You focused on ‘what came after’. As I said – that is most definitely NOT the big bang theory.
I do not disagree with inflation (as your intemperate response seemed to suggest). I disagree (as did Hoyle) with the ‘act of creation’. It appears to me to be simply absurd. The does not mean that it is false. It does mean that I reserve judgment of that portion of the theory. I stated (and you later agreed) that part of the theory requires further work, and many different cosmological models are being presented and theorized in an attempt to explain what we see as ‘the big bang’.
So despite the fact that you called me insane for suggesting the ‘big bang’ was in any way wrong or incomplete – you agree that it is incomplete and ‘needs further work’.
Again
WTF?
Just a comment regarding Heddle at #702, and in many other places, actually. If I am interpreting Heddle correctly, if he himself were to witness a seemingly miraculous event – for example, Jesus walking on water – he would be bound by his scientific training to examine that event using scientific methodology to discover how Jesus accomplished this feat. Likewise, had the event been videotaped, the videotape could then be subjected to scientific scrutiny afteward.
However, if the event occurred far in the past, and was (supposedly) witnessed by persons who would be more familiar with Bronze Age mysticism than with Enlightenment science, and is ascribed to a supernatural power because – well, because these witnesses unlearned in the ways of science SAY SO – well, that is a miracle, to be believed as such on faith, and is not open to scientific scrutiny, because we didn’t directly witness it, and no one trained in science was an eyewitness and offered a critique.
But maybe I’m wrong, because then Heddle said:
If the answer is still “there is no way, using the processes that we know to operate in the natural world, that Jesus could actually have walked on water”, then the simple conclusion is, he didn’t. To conclude otherwise is to say, yes, I take this on faith – and isn’t that kind of unfounded belief the very antithesis of science? Is this where the argument over “compatability” enters in – is it that Francis Collins may be (and is) an excellent scientist, but if “being a scientist” could be measured on a continuum, that Collins is “less scientist-y” than one who has no faith beliefs?
As a non-scientist doing his best to follow the line of discussion, these are the impressions I have so far.
Nor have I pimped my own blog. I explained why I don’t jump into other subthreads involving theists. Only on the occasion of referring SC OM to a revalent post on blind-faith did I link my blog.
Only if you don’t count the link from your name to http://helives.blogspot.com/ at the top of every one of your posts and the personal invitation to visit your blog @685. It was a feeble excuse for your solidarity here with the morons.
what do I know?
Nothing.
One of many questions Facilis has been hiding from for a month:
Facilis The Fallacious Fool @ #584:
Wow, you actually acknowledged that the question was being asked! And it only took you a MONTH!
Of course, you still failed to ANSWER it. Maybe in another month you’ll make a real attempt.
Really, is this the best you can do? You’re amazed that your imaginary friend exudes some sort of magical field that makes A=A?
These “laws” you babble about in capital letters are trivial and self-evident. They are observable facts. They do not require justification by magic, much less the work of your specific imaginary friend.
And, of course, you haven’t listed ALL of your precious “absolute, invariant, universal, immaterial laws of logic and reason“. January 9, 2009 (almost a month ago) was the first time I asked you this question, in these words:
As you have utterly failed to provide the entire list of “absolute, invariant, universal, immaterial laws of logic and reason”, you obviously don’t know what the fuck you are talking about. Nor do you have the basic common courtesy to shut up once it’s been proven repeatedly that you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
Also, you have fled in terror from multiple requests to justify why YOUR version of god is the correct one. Even if logic required a god (and you have done nothing whatsoever to show that it does, or even to define the features of logic that supposedly require such) you have given no reason why that god couldn’t be Anubis, Bokonon, Coyote, Dionysius, Enki, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, Grumsh, Haephestus, Isis, John Frum, Kira, Laharl, Marduk, Nerull, Odin, Palkia, Quetzalcoatl, Ra, Sousuke Aizen, Thor, Ungoliant the Unlight, Vishnu, Waspinator, Xemnas, Yu Yevon, or Zeus.
(bonus points to anyone who can identify the sources of all these deities, some of which are there as a joke just to show how little respect I have for Facilis’ vacuous arguments)
More Fallacious Foolery from Facilis:
You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean.
Yet more Fallacious Foolery:
Yes, by the definition of murder, as has been explained to you REPEATEDLY. Not that you’re ever going to get it. And even if it weren’t it wouldn’t make it a valid form of argument. The fact that you’re a murderous sociopath does not make you right. It makes you insane.
It is entirely his blog and he is within his rights to ask me to leave or force me to leave, though he doesn’t need to do that.
Why should PZ ask the heddle to leave? You’re a spectacular example of PZ’s and Coyne’s stance on the incompatibility of theism and science! Who knew there could be stupid more burning than that open-mike ignorance slam in the initial post, until along comes heddle and The Sound of Stupid with Facilis and Garfunkle, highlighting the contrast between brains, and brains on religion. Any questions?
heliobates @ #699, to Facilis the Fallacious Fool:
So that makes Facilis a worthless sack of protoplasm. I’ve PROVED it by the impossibility of the contrary. :P
belief in the supernatural is not incompatible with science, because nothing compels me only to believe things that science addresses. – heddle@372
But science does address the question of whether it is possible for anyone to walk on water. It says that is not possible – as you yourself admitted. That is the inconsistency in your position. That we cannot test the specific claim that Ned Ludd walked on the waters of the Trent, or Jesus on the Sea of Galilee, is neither here nor there. We apply this kind of reasoning from empirically established impossibility to the falsity of specific claims routinely. Did the Red Sea part for Moses as described in Exodus? (IIRC, this one you don’t believe – I have no idea on what grounds you accept some Biblical miracles and reject others.) No: water does not pile up in walls and remain there. Did Heracles strangle two snakes in his cradle? No, babies are not capable of such feats. Have any yogis or Tibetan lamas really vanished from one place and appeared in another without travelling a continuous path between the two points? No: physical objects cannot be teleported. Did any of the medieval alchemists who claimed to have turned lead into gold really do so? No: at least without particle accelerators (maybe not even with them – I’m not a physicist), it can’t be done. That the specific individual claims cannot now be tested, because all these events are in the past and the evidence has vanished, is irrelevant.
Could God have created the cosmos 6000 years ago? Sure. But if he did then there will be a natural as opposed to a supernatural effect: the measured age will be 6000 years. – heddle
Why? Are you presuming to tell god what he can and cannot, or must and must not do? Naughty heddle! As you probably know, Philip Gosse’s Omphalos proposed precisely that God created the Earth a few thousand years ago, but with all the signs of great age – I believe he still has followers. You are in exactly the same logical position as a YECer – overruling science in favour of your belief in the supernatural when your religious beliefs demand it – only at least some of them, like Kurt wise, are honest enough to admit it.
All theists believe in the supernatural—even deists do. Once again if believing in the supernatural is synonymous with an incompatibility then you have victory by definition. Congratulations.
Supposing that were true, it would still make your whining about atheists asserting such incompatibility dishonest, since it would be a perfectly good definition of incompatibility – although not one I have used. However, simple “belief in the supernatural” as you define it is not enough to establish incompatibility in any of the senses I defined@587. Deists do not fall foul of incompatibility-2a as I defined it, because they do not wall off any aspect of the world and say “Here I reject the conclusions of science”, since in deist belief, God never interferes. This applies even to the beginning of the universe – if there was one – since whatever we can discover is going to be from a time when the universe is already in existence, and deist-god is already lolling back in his chair smoking a celestial spliff and watching the show. Only those who claim revelation, as you do, obviously fall foul of incompatibility-2, by claiming a supernatural source of knowledge about the world.
So can claims about virgin birth, water walking, and matter replication for foodstuffs, since all these assessments are based on our understanding of the physical world. The evidence for the possibility of a young earth is precisely the same kind of evidence we use to evaluate those other events. There is nothing different in principle between using radioactive dating and using our understanding of human reproduction to determine the likelihood of a past event. Physical laws rule out a young earth just as they rule out male offspring by parthenogenesis in homo sapiens. If you’re going to say that our understanding of the physical world doesn’t apply to the latter, how are you ruling out the former?
And once you’re down that road, as I said earlier, you can’t rule our Mohammed’s flying horse or the existence of Lemuria. Once you claim as real the existence of some events which are incompatible with science, you’ve opened the floodgates, and all bets are off.
Wobagger @ #586, to Facilis the Fallacious Fool:
Not to mention every god that has NEVER been posited.
But of course, facilis will never even try to support his claims in this manner, because he’s just a jerk. A complete kneebiter. I’ve PROVED it by the impossibility of the contrary. :P
SC, OM, #705,
Geez Louise, do you have to post a tome? You know the aphorism: less is more.
That’s fine that you agree. When I read editorials, I also agree or disagree. Do you (or Coyne) know of a mistake Miller has made in the scientific literature because of his theism? If so, point out the reference and the mistake. And write a paper to the same journal.
Fine—if these claims are social-science claims that are non-experimental and cannot be falsified—that is they are editorials—then we can agree. That is—the claim “science and religion are incompatible” is on the same footing as one’s social/political/economic (and religious) beliefs.
Yep. So has the percentage of women and minority scientists. And the percentage of Americans in Ph.D. programs. None of these statistics point to anything about compatibility or incompatibility. Incompatibility between A and B means, if it means anything substantive, that if you are A you will find it difficult to be good a B. It does not mean that if you are A you might not want to do B, or that if are A there are reasons why you might not get a chance to do B—it has to mean if you are A you will not be as good at B, given that you choose to pursue B as you could be. That is actually a weak version. “Incompatible” is a strong word. I could have taken it to mean you can’t do B at all. I offered a weaker definition: at the very least it will have an adverse effect on doing B. Your version is weaker than weak: they are incompatible, which has no effect, because I can construct convincing sounding arguments.
This is not evidence for the claim that science and religion are incompatible—this is evidence for the indisputable claim that some theists behave badly.
Now: anything that I did not address was because it was so devastating that I am pretending that I didn’t even read it. I am hoping you won’t notice, and am furiously digging through Wikipedia looking for some plausible answers.
Tony,
Yep, that is because almost any reasonable person looking back at the history would conclude that what Hoyle did was not just hang on to a beloved model until the data reached a critical mass, but well beyond that—almost to the point of absurdity, and Rube-Goldberging the Steady State model along the way. I question his motives—it is legitimate to suggest I was wrong—maybe he just really, really loved the Steady State model, or maybe it was garden-variety ego that kept him hanging on. But it was quite different from the example I gave later of routine arguing over new data—these are data that don’t perfectly fit one widely accepted model and must be shoe-horned into another—these are data don’t clearly distinguish one model over another—which is why people argue. And the situation is not analogous Hoyle’s holding out to the bitter end in the face of overwhelming data supporting the big bang.
I still think your comments about the big bang are crazy.
KenCope,
Oh brother. That’s a form. That is the purpose. You do know that you also have a similar link to your blog in every post?
You [heddle] can’t move back and forth as it suits you. – SC, OM
Oh he can, SC, he can. He’s an expert at it! As shown by his performance over “incompatibility” here, his sophistry over “Biblical inerrancy” and the Chicago statement, and his shuffling between declarations of commitment to science and dismissal of its findings in favour of revelation. Such shuffling is the condition on which heddle, with the gaping inconsistencies within his view of the world, remains even approximately sane. I can’t help wondering whether he’ll manage it for a lifetime, or will eventually suffer a catastrophic breakdown.
Oh brother. That’s a form. That is the purpose. You do know that you also have a similar link to your blog in every post?
An irrelevant dodge. The fact goes to the point that you lied when you claimed not to link to your blog here.
@ heddle (#695)
No no, it went like this, see:
1) heddle: (Mistakes the scientific method for the definition of science and derives a conclusion of science’s compatibility with religion therefrom.) “[S]cience…is: a motive-agnostic time-tested methodology for studying the natural world.”
2) A. Noyd: (Points out how this disregards the purpose of science from which science derives its authority.)
3) heddle: (Still idiotically thinking that you can confine “science” to mean “the scientific method,” dodges with some twaddle about the purpose of scientists.)
4) A. Noyd’s jackass response intimidates (okay, I’m fantasizing here) the poor little theist into non-response until he realizes, after further incidents of jackassery, A. Noyd isn’t going away without a proper confrontation.
5) heddle: i) notices something incredibly obvious, ii) notices something else obvious; and then iii) misses the point while nit-picking a triviality.
Is this really the best you can muster by way of response?
Except, arbitrarily, in cases of insufficient evidence, whether due to history’s failure to preserve it or our current lack of proper testing technology. Or, on a whim, such as when you say that science shows walking on water is impossible, but it still happened no matter what science says.
I never said it was. It’s a definition of its purpose. And purpose is essential to science because that is what it derives its authority from. Without that purpose, it’s no better than any other method of explaining reality.
Note: This is the core of my argument, which you fail to confront directly. Maybe you consider it question-begging, in which case I’d like you to demonstrate how your definition above is any less question-begging and propose a standard definition we’ll both agree to rather than claiming victory on the basis of your flawed, self-serving definition as you tend to do everywhere else.
Damn the English language. That was the plural you, not you specifically: If not science, what does one use to determine the validity of one’s beliefs. The sum total of experiences in your (this time I’m referring specifically to you) religious life, etc. are hardly going to be universally compelling, so here’s where we enter the realm of the arbitrary. Anyone can pick out whatever they please as proof for their beliefs.
I was speaking in general again: How, without science, does one demonstrate belief “a” is true but belief “b” is false. The point is not how do you convince yourself but how do you convince everyone else. If they are falsifiable, then they still fall within the realm of science. Or are you claiming for religion all of secular agnosticism (by which I mean areas where we cannot yet be certain of things due to insufficient knowledge)?
Anyone can believe anything they like and this doesn’t conflict with science?
Naturally occurring experiments exist aplenty and have been referenced already in this thread. You just keep shifting the standards of proof so you can keep pretending you haven’t been shown. It’s very anti-scientific. (But it would have to be, wouldn’t it?)
Tulse, #715
C’mon Tulse, I don’t believe you raising the same objection.
We agree that the supernatural impossible by science. But as a theist I believe in the supernatural. And, once again, if that is all that is meant by incompatibility, then victory is yours. But Coyne surely didn’t need 3000 words when only 10 are required to make that claim.
The YEC claim is twofold:
1) God created the universe by speaking it into existence.
2) This happened 6000 years ago.
You cannot disprove 1. It doesn’t matter that science claims “you can’t speak a universe into existence.” We agree science says that, definitively. The second one, however, is testable. Any supernatural intervention into the physical realm might result in something we can detect, and this is the prototypical case. The earth is 6000 years old? We can test that.
For the virgin birth, we agree (with caveats discussed earlier, which we’ll ignore) that it is impossible. If I claim: Jesus was born a virgin as the result of a supernatural event then, like the step 1 of the YEC claim, there is no way to disprove it. It is not a scientific claim—in fact just the opposite. You can only say it is impossible as far as science is concerned. But you can hope for an effect on the natural world that has been preserved, and try to measure that. But I don’t know what it is. If you could get some of Jesus’ DNA, maybe that would tell you something.
For any alleged miracle to be like the YEC claim, you need the equivalent of 2. And then if you have it, and demonstrate that it is false, then that would be totally analogous to the YEC claim of a young earth.
I can do exactly the same thing. I can claim that science demonstrates that it can’t happen. (And I could even do that as a devout Moslem.) I can’t disprove the comeback: it did happen, it was a miracle.
Ken Cope,
An irrelevant dodge. The fact goes to the point that you lied when you claimed not to link to your blog here.
Yes I can see that for a person of your abilities and ethics that you would want to declare that as a victory. I salute your acumen.
A.Noid,
In addition to being rather creepy, you are a bald-faced liar. I have never shifted the burden of proof. Take some papers that I provide, and tell which ones were written by theists. I have never deviated from that. That was my original experiment, and that remains my challenge. Has someone accepted it? Did you? I am open to other experiments, but nobody has offered one. But I have not moved the goalposts. Liar.
No. As I implied, these were just things I was throwing out there since they had come up on this thread and seemed relevant while I was in the process of writing a longer post. But the second set of questions you had in fact avoided until now.
I try to respond to questions asked of me. On the earlier thread, I had a (very civil) discussion with Gotchaye about consciousness in which both of us tried to respond to each other’s questions and ask those of our own. I didn’t interpret his decision to discontinue that discussion as anything other than reflecting a lack of time or energy or whatever. I learned more about his position (and the issues in general) from that dialogue, and don’t believe he’s intellectually dishonest in the least. You’re an entirely different case.
I tell you what, heddle: I’ll read and respond to your blog post if you will listen and respond to the radio interview with the author of Inerrant the Wind that I linked to I think twice on the earlier thread. You claimed on that thread that biblical self-inconsistency had to be demonstrated and I linked to it, but you ignored that.
I encourage everyone here to read Romans 1:20 in context and to draw your own conclusions as to whether or not it is saying what he claims it is and whether it provides sufficient evidence of his claim on the earlier thread that the Bible doesn’t say much about science other than telling people to go out and do it.
And you’re too lazy to check back on an earlier thread, even for responses for your own claims.
Actually, I don’t recall whether or not Hebrews 11:1 was even mentioned on that thread. But, among other things, both Owlmirror and I (who had raised this on another occasion as well) pointed to the mythical Jesus’ statement to Thomas and the other apostles to the effect that “Blessed are those who believe without having seen.” (I did some cursory internet research on this, and it seems to me that the strongest claim that have been made about it by believers is that because Jesus is kind to Thomas this means that questioning or empirical investigation is allowed, but this is very different, as the Christian commentators have themselves acknowledged, that it is encouraged or seen as virtuous. That appears contrary to the verses.) More broadly, though, I can’t imagine that you’re claiming that in the Bible faith (belief without evidence) is not considered virtuous.
Perhaps somewhat. You keep raising this as a possible counterclaim, so I guess I did assume that you considered it justified in some sense. Of course, I’ve discussed the problems with your use of it in this context – as “an example of why science-faith incompatibility arguments are senseless” – above.
heddle: I still think your comments about the big bang are crazy. an opinion to which you are entitled. The data may be empirical, but the theories are subject to dispute.
My issue with “The Big Bang” is simply that I find the concept of creation “strange”. IF it started, why? from whence?
Your problem, you have stated numerous times. The Big Bang is a comforting fit with your religious precepts. You stated yourself that without that “act of creation” your religion would be assailed! Are you not guilty of the same projection of which you accuse Hoyle? He was “comfortable” with steady state. You are comfortable with a “Big Bang”.
Many newer theories suggest much stranger cosmos, and indeed refute a “creation” event.
Would you agree that these theories are science? Then how can you also say that your religion is NOT incompatible with science – when you have already stated as much regarding the big bang?
*****************
Apologies to all – I did not intend to get into a cosmological argument — I think it is stupid and simplistic in the extreme. Heddle seems to think, however, it is indicates a major cusp in his belief system. Big Bang = religion OK; no big bang = religion completely screwed.
Apposite in terms of the compatibility or otherwise of religion and science for that reason alone.
Tony,
Yes I am. If. If you can show me overwhelming evidence why I should reject the inflationary big bang. But you can’t even show me suggestive evidence, can you?
True enough. But as you stated correctly they are theories. When they are verified experimentally, come back and see me. I’ll be the one selling a theology library on ebay.
Fuck off. Your evasive metacomments are not derailing anyone from recognizing your refusal to engage with the substance of the arguments raised against you.
Then follows from heddle a bunch of evasive nonsense ignoring all of the arguments I made in the post to which he’s responding (among others) and other people have made here and on the earlier thread in response to him, followed by:
Yeah. No reasonable people can see through you, heddle.
Project much? And you still failed to address what I pointed out to you was the core of my argument.
Standard of proof ≠ burden of proof. I’m referring to your revision of every definition of acceptable proof, not your expectation of who is responsible for offering you said proof. In fact, you do the definition revision thing I’m talking about right in the above sentence. (Talk about creepy.)
It’s like you ask for a fish and when someone hands you a trout you say you only meant ocean fishes. Then when someone hands you a flounder you claim you meant to exclude flatfishes. No one can satisfy your request to your standards because you keep changing them. You have, however, been buried in fishes. (Maybe that’s how Jesus did it?)
Which relies entirely on your assumption, in the face of glaring evidence to the contrary, that we are all satisfied with limiting our definition to compatibility-1.
Sure you have, in the sense that you keep moving them back into the strawman field of compatibility-1 after we’ve moved them for you into compatibility-2’s field which is
where the fucking game is being played, you insufferable twat.
There is no evidence for 1. Do you, in your research, begin with the assumption that anything that has not been disproven is to be accepted? I think not. Science assumes that claims are supported by evidence and the reasonable interpretation thereof. Second, reasonably considered, the existing evidence is against the proposal that, in Coyne’s words, “our own universe with its 10,000,000,000,000,000 planets was created just so a single species of mammal would evolve on one of them fourteen billion years later.” Deal with this if you’re going to posit Christian creation (leaving aside any claims about “God’s people” and the like).
1) God created the universe by speaking it into existence.
2) This happened 6000 years ago.
You cannot disprove 1. It doesn’t matter that science claims “you can’t speak a universe into existence.” We agree science says that, definitively. The second one, however, is testable. Any supernatural intervention into the physical realm might result in something we can detect, and this is the prototypical case. The earth is 6000 years old? We can test that.
Claim 2 is no more testable than the first, if God is a lying trickster who pulled off the Last Thursdayist stunt by speaking the universe into existence 6000 years ago, choosing to make it appear to be 13.8BYO and leaving no evidence for the intervention, which ought to be a cinch for any super-being worthy of the title. There is nothing science can do with religious claims, but heddle is a theist/scientist, so he knows which miracles to reject and which to rationalize–he knows that there is no inconsistency in the inerrant bible and you should trust him on that, it’s a scientist who makes that claim, along with the claim that there is no conflict between religion and science, while mocking the obviously superstitious tales of dramatic miraculous portents surrounding the births of the venerated beings from other cultures. I don’t think heddle goes as far as Francis Collins, who looks at DNA and frozen waterfalls as present-day miracles that force him as a scientist to adopt Christianity as proven. No, the historical documents of the bible have to be true, because heddle says they are. If we don’t, we’re shameless.
After a while, I tire of feeling like Lou Costello in the Who’s on First routine trying to keep track of heddle’s twaddle.
You’re splitting hairs. I don’t see how saying “YEC claims are contrary to radioactive dating” is any different from “human virgin birth is contrary to biology”. Both involve a rejection of the scientific understanding of the relevant processes involved. Why is saying something is contrary to our understanding of radioactive decay in principle different than saying something is contrary to our understanding of human reproduction? Both involve the evaluation of truth claims about an event. Saying that God might have put pre-decayed isotopes into the earth is no different than saying that God might have caused a virgin to bear a male child (or that God might have provided Buraq to Mohammed, or that some force might have sunk Lemuria and its seven foot tall, sexually hermaphroditic, egg-laying humanoid occupants beneath the waves).
And that’s the point — you are evaluating truth claims about certain past events non-scientifically, contrary to the evidence. And doing so in a manner no different in principle from a Young Earth Creationist or Madame Blavatsky.
heddle:
Note I emphasized inflationary. I don’t doubt your ability to comprehend English, so I can only assume you are a liar.
I specifically stated my agreement with ‘inflationary’ models. I also specifically stated my issue with big bang. specifically the area that is NOT supported by evidence, but is still entirely theoretical. That is, the bang itself.
You willingness to conflate and confuse is now legendary. I can only assume, therefore, that your religious bias is clouding your objectivity.
Yes I can see that for a person of your abilities and ethics that you would want to declare that as a victory. I salute your acumen.
I don’t give a rat’s ass whether you blogwhore here or not, I just find it entertaining that you are so deeply in the habit of lying and piling up evasions that you don’t know how to stop doing it even over simple, trivial facts, like whether or not you link to your blog from here. And then poor pitiful heddle wants to pretend he’s the only one around here who behaves ethically.
“Rey Fox, did your mother ever tell you you could only have cookies after dinner, and you snuck into the kitchen and ate a cookie while she was emptying the washing machine?”
I um, take the Fifth.
“You’re absolutely depraved and you deserve to burn in hell forever and ever. Amen.”
Oh. Crap. Any last-minute grovelling I can do?
Scorecard so far, 2 belly laughs a 3 teehees. The mental tapdancing, an 8.
And I’ll add, heddle, that your lame protests about being faced with ignorant and repetitive atheist questions do not exactly inspire sympathy in me. As an anarchist, I confront ignorance; hostile questions; honest, legitimate (often ignorant) questions; and educated questions regularly. Also, though most commenters here are on the left, we don’t by any means agree on political matters, and when we argue I try to answer questions people have asked.
You keep insinuating that people here are ignorant of your religion. I was memorizing Bible verses and performing in plays about salvation before I was ten. I went to an I’m-no-kin-to-a-monkey, We-are-the-boosters,-the-mighty-Bible-boosters church*/school/camp before you had the slightest inkling what these assholes were talking about. And Patricia has far more knowledge than I. So you can take your claims of atheist ignorance and stuff ’em.
*I recently checked out their web site, and they’re still exactly the same!
What I don’t get about YEC is: what’s the point of the illusion?
I think that, if there is a Magic Skydaddy, and he did in fact blink the Earth fully formed into existence 6k-10k years ago, with all present species already in their fully evolved forms, there would be no sensible reason for him to make his pet planet look billions of years old.
If he could blink the Earth into perfect, mature existence, then I suppose it would be effortless for him to make it look much older than it is, but still…why? Why couldn’t he just let the Earth look as young as it really is? Why would he want us to think it was billions of years old, if in fact he made it with us already there? And don’t give me that bullcrap about “God works in mysterious ways.” That translates into English as, “I have absolutely no idea what’s going on.”
Tony,
You asked in #723
This only makes sense in the context of the Hoyle discussion if it means this: Am I clinging to a theory of the cosmos purely for religious purposes just as I accused Hoyle of? The question must apply to the cosmology I currently support, which is the inflationary big bang, just like almost all other physicists.
To which I replied in #724
To this you replied in #730:
Which is either an objection to my adjective inflationary, which accurately reflects the model I currently support and is therefore germane to your original question, or a complete loony-tune disconnect. I can’t tell which.
But here is a summary:
In #525 you wrote this about the big bang: Hoyle – for the most part – did not like the big bang (nor do I for that matter) because it is so loose. It has zero explanatory power. WHY? What came BEFORE? Why is the universe thus & so, and not other? Which is batshit crazy. Go tell you physics prof that the big bang is loose and has zero explanatory power. Then in your recent post you try to weasel out of a predicament. I answered the question of whether I was doing the same thing as Hoyle honestly: only if you can provide data that the model I support is wrong. You can’t, so you weaseled. You are a combination of several things: dumb as a doornail, at least in terms of science, dishonest, and a scumbag. In short, you are KenCope.
SC, OM,
Where have I committed this new crime?
All in all, so far I’m keeping an open mind. The real trouble with Christianity is the lack of historical evidence. To claim “Jesus performed miracles and was physically resurrected from the dead” is an extraordinary claim. That doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t true; all sorts of absurd and incredible things have proven to be true in the past. But, so far, we don’t have enough evidence to conclusively demonstrate that Jesus of Nazareth was a divine being; indeed, we know next to nothing about his life outside the four gospels, which are pseudonymous and of uncertain date and provenance.
It’s rather like asking someone to believe that Joan of Arc had fifteen toes, and producing, to this end, four anonymous French documents of uncertain date claiming that she had fifteen toes. It might be true; but there really isn’t enough evidence to draw that conclusion.
And, of course, the difference is that acceptance of the statement “Joan of Arc had fifteen toes” doesn’t require you to guide your entire life according to an ancient and somewhat arbitrary code of moral conduct, based on no further evidence.
To mix and match and cross reference some threads, it is because it is true, God really is Loki.
I said “Pretty convenient to claim anything you don’t like in the bible wasn’t meant to be taken literally.”.
Heddle replied “I know. I have a problem. Like when Jesus said: “I am the vine” I know that has to mean that grapes can be plucked right off of him”.
In that case the typical meanings of such words show that it was a metaphor, not the case in the “if you have the faith of a mustard seed, you can move mountains” statement. If you’re going to claim that was a metaphor you can claim anything in the bible wasn’t meant to be taken literally, such as the statement that the world was created. You’re a dishonest person.
I said “Some Christian somewhere must have faith greater than a mustard seed.”
Heddle replied “You would hope so, but maybe not. Or maybe they do move mountains and cause stuff like the explosion of Mt. St Helens”.
Obviously they do have faith greater than a mustard seed and they do not move mountains. You’re just being dishonest when you say your failure to move mountains would only prove you don’t have faith the size of a mustard seed. If you were honest you’d admit that your faith is much greater than that, you wouldn’t be such a reality denialist if that weren’t the case. The fact is this experiment proves your bible is a lie and you’re too dishonest to admit it.
Chimpy, I MUST disagree. Yahweh is a trickster coyote spirit. I dare you to disprove it!
Heddle
You are a fuckwit.
I accept, readily, the inflationary hypothesis, which is the part that has ALL of the explanatory power. I do NOT accept, readily, the fact that just prior to inflation was a primordial atom, or an X, or a Y, or a Z. The theory does not posit, predict, or suggest what there was AT THAT MOMENT, nor before. Only what came after. If the big bang is so all encompassing and explanatory, tell me what there was? Oh I know — GOD! Right?
Perhaps you should revisit YOUR basic physics. Or rather, basic English.
Again. Your acceptance of the big bang is posited on a beginning! I find that proposal to be weak particularly since it begs the question what came before?
Your religious bias lets you happily accept that stance, since it is congruent with your creator myth. You feel no overriding need to question it (yet you say you are open to investigation in that area).
Why is MY stance “only a theory”, while yours is not? They are both theories, asshole!
I said “You can demonstrate that religion has affected theist’s science by looking at theists’ “research” on gays, particularly Paul Cameron.”
Heddle said “Yes, indeed, because one discredited lunatic proves your case.”.
Its far from one person, dozens and dozens of theists do this type of research on gays and their research is clearly biased and dishonest. And Cameron himself is far from discredited amongst theists – they quote his work extensively
Heddle said “Now fair is fair: if I find one atheist who engages in pseudo science, say a vaccine (as in efficacy of) denier does that prove atheism is incompatible with science?”.
You’ll need not just one but enough to demonstrate that its a systemic problem with atheists as it clearly is with theists. And then you’ll need to demonstrate that atheism was the motivation for the bad science just as theism is clearly the motivation for theist after theist to do dishonest research on gays. By all means have at trying to find a preponderance of atheists doing bad science because of their atheism. You won’t even try because in your heart you know the truth is as I’ve laid out and you’re too attached to your imaginary sky pixie to admit it, thus once again demonstrating that your religion is antagonistic to an honest reading of the evidence and acknowledgement of the truth.
I said “You can demonstrate [the incompatibility of religion and science] by looking at the science of the Intelligent design crowd such as Behe et al.”
Heddle said “Yes, their almost uncontainable corpus of peer-reviewed publications demonstrates conclusively how they have been able to sneak their ideas into mainstream science.”.
The borders of science don’t end at peer reviewed publication. Science includes education, practical application of science and so on. Clearly the ID crowd has attacked science education trying to replace real science with religious based fraud and an honest person wouldn’t think of denying that that demonstrates religion and science are incompatible. But of course you being desperately willfully blind will continue to deny reality just as you deny the reality that there was no supernatural impregnation of a virgin and the reality that there is no god.
Nothing new about it – just the first time I’ve brought it up (I’m sufficiently annoyed and have a few hours). This was the example on this particular thread that inspired me to comment on it:
You stated this without even reading the comments on the earlier thread. And you still haven’t replied to the comments there, or here, on the subject. But this is typical of your commenting history. You seek out comments which to you demonstrate ignorance of the Bible or your religion and respond to them and only them, with the insinuation that they are representative of some ignorant atheist perspective.
Anyway, the number of arguments and questions (mine and others’) that you’ve evaded grows and grows. This meta-analysis is useful to you as a dodge, and interesting to me as a sociologist, but it’s of no value in engaging with the substance of the issues at hand.
You are a combination of several things: dumb as a doornail, at least in terms of science, dishonest, and a scumbag. In short, you are KenCope.
No, heddle, we have these forms to fill out at the top of our posts that identify the author of these posts, and the name used by the poster at whom you were so humorously flailing is “Tony.”
“…I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill and think things over.”
Its well known that the Republicans are the party of right wing theists and that the Democrats are much more secular. Further demonstrating the incompatibility between science and religion is the Republican war on science. During the Bush administration science has repeatedly been squelched by non-scientific theists. Its common for Bush to have appointed a theist to head scientific departments who then heavily edited scientific press releases to eliminate the conclusions of scientists on things like the dangers of global warming, environmental concerns, or stem cell research. Of course to Heddle that’s irrelevant because if these anti-science people didn’t publish something in a peer reviewed publication their actions aren’t a problem.
Heddle perhaps you should consider how many people are watching you make a fool of yourself. You’ve gone from being a half ass respected scientist* to a Don Quixote character.
*pure speculation on my part.
Ken Cope: I take issue with your use of the phrase humorously flailing.
flailing I can accept, but I didn’t see much humor there on the part of Heddle.
…
Oh! You meant it was humorous to observe!
In that case, carry on!
I know. I have a problem. Like when Jesus said: “I am the vine” I know that has to mean that grapes can be plucked right off of him, at least during harvest. But I keep reading it as a metaphor. God help me. I am a bad person.
“Some Christian somewhere must have faith greater than a mustard seed.”
You would hope so, but maybe not. Or maybe they do move mountains and cause stuff like the explosion of Mt. St. Helens to kill any homosexuals camping nearby. Which would of course be their righteous duty. – heddle
anything that I did not address was because it was so devastating that I am pretending that I didn’t even read it. I am hoping you won’t notice, and am furiously digging through Wikipedia looking for some plausible answers. – heddle
Anyone else noticed that when heddle is really cornered and has no answer to a point, he resorts to facetiousness? Watch out for it.
Are you talking about the singularity? if so it seems that you and Heddle are talking past each other.
Heddle said “As I have argued people can believe anything and do good science. There is no demand on science that you like it, value it, trust it, believe it, admire it, want to use for the common good, etc. Every piece of work is judged on its own merits.”.
Just because some people can believe anything and do good science doesn’t mean most typically do. And in fact the reality is that they don’t. Once again the work of theist after theist after theist on research on gays and gayness consistently shows their work to be biased, politically motivated and driven by the preconclusion that such reasearch must demonize gays and gayness. You’ve seen enough of this on Brayton’s blog to know its true, but once again your desire to favour religion exceeds your desire to acknowledge the truth. If you don’t value, trust, and believe in science you have dramatically less incentive to do it properly and honestly.
Heddle said “For the NAS or any other statistical evidence you must realize, in addition to the other reasons I suggested, that quite simply there are additional career options available for theists, in the ministry, the mission fields, the seminaries etc. So if the best and brightest opt out of science, that does not necessarily mean there is an incompatibility, it means there is something else they prefer to do.”.
And they prefer to do something else because most theists teach that science and education are the enemy and they’ll lead you to rejecting religion. Which they often do as evidenced by the fact that 93% of members of the NAS are atheists.
Heddle: shorter. the inflationary model IS NOT EQUAL TO the big bang.
The big bang is merely one hypothesis that suggests how the inflationary universe came to be. It is not proven, nor arrived at empirically. It is not the only such hypothesis. It is unfortunate that the term ‘big bang’ has become conflated with ‘inflationary’ in your mind, such that even when I explicitly exclude and separate the two – you still conflate and confuse.
Inflation does not (and cannot) seek to explain the earliest ‘moments’ of our universe. It is, empirically, a closed book. Which is why there are so many competing models.
Your conflation of those terms is equivalent to confusing evolution with abiogenesis. Evolution has great predictive power. We think it has sufficient explanatory power to indicate how molecules will eventually ‘self discover’ bio-chemical pathways that seem to (locally at least) refute entropy (in other words – life). But we have not demonstrated that, nor discovered such – yet! Until then, abiogenesis is not evolution.
similarly the big-bang is not the inflationary model of cosmology.
So go fuck off back to your cave.
Windy: Are you talking about the singularity? if so it seems that you and Heddle are talking past each other.
I can see what Heddle is saying. And I’ve stated where I disagree.
Heddle refuses to see anything beyond his own narrow perspective, and chooses to conflate and confuse. (for such a smart guy, he seems easily confused)
I said to Facilis “Your god does not exist so cannot be the source of logic. A number of people on the various threads touched upon the source of logic and reason, but you, of course, were afraid to acknowledge what they said.”
Facilis said “I showed exactly how their reasoning was circular and false.”.
No, you never addressed the fact that the source of logic and reason is the nature of the world and how it works. And you still haven’t addressed it.
I said “The source of logic and reason is the nature of the world and the way things, people, etc. interact. We learn logic and reason by observing and remembering the way the world works and the nature of the universe.”
Facilis said “1)But you are seeking to establish universals. How do you get universals from particulars(i.e. subjective experience)?”.
No, I never said anything about universals. One persons impression as to how the world works will differ from anothers. There’s usually enough overlap that we can debate, but as the existence of over 32000 sects of Christianity prove your claim that there are universal laws of logic and reason revealed to you from god is false. If it were true there’d be no arguments about Christian doctrine.
Facilis said ”
2) But how do you KNOW this? You might say you got it from your senses but you just push the problem back agains. How do you KNOW your senses are reliable?”.
I know the source of logic and reason from the fact that my senses have allowed me to successfully survive. If I were unable to interpret reality correctly though my senses I would have died a long time ago, as would have virtually every human on the planet. We know our senses are a reasonable aproximation of reality by virtue of our success at navigating a complex world.
I said “The laws of logic and reason are not necessarily universal or objective because some logic and reason is dependent on how people react to what they think and as such may vary from person to person.”
Facilis said “3) Can my logic be different from yours? This is inconsistent. If you call my argument a fallacy I could just say that “logic varies from person to person” and even though it might be a fallacy it is sill correct for some people.”.
Of course your logic can differ from mine. If it didn’t we would inevitably come to the same conclusion as we discuss reality. If people’s logic didn’t differ we’d have far fewer disagreements and they’d all be capable of resolution as we discussed the relevant facts.
I said “2) The laws are not immaterial as even the abstract ideas we hold in our heads ultimately exist as neuro-chemical firings and electricity.”
Facillis said “4)Let us take my mouse. Does the law of identity apply to it? If no why not? “.
Yes. Although I don’t think I’d refer to logic as being governed by “laws”. That implies a certainty that doesn’t exist. For example, if I smash your mouse, melt it down and mold it into a dildo, is it still a mouse? Is it still what it was? I don’t think so, although from a different perspective one might argue that it still is, in a sense the same thing it was. What about a caterpiller? Does the law of identity apply to it when it becomes a butterfly? Depends on your perspective to a large degree, doesn’t it?
I said “3 The laws are not necessarily invarient. As the laws of logic and reason exist in our minds as abstract concepts they can and do change with our growing understanding of the world.”
Facillis said “5)The laws of logic change?? Have they changed since we started talking? Is it possible that [the girl in the videos] arguments are fallacious now but can be true tomorrow?”.
Of course the “laws” of logic can change. It was once assumed logical and rational that whenever there was a flood, famine, or war, it was because the gods were displeased with people. Nowadays most people don’t believe the weather is caused by angry gods. As to the “laws” of logic changing while we are talking or the girl in the video’s arguments being fallacious now but true tomorrow, no that’s not how things are going to typically work. It’ll take some new understanding in how the world works for our “laws” of logic to change.
Obviously several of you are getting in a little sparring practice on Facilis and Dr. David Heddle after they highjacked the thread. 755 comments and growing nowhere. How long before anyone realizes it’s not a zero-sum game?
Did you ever hear of Gregory Paul? Pz posted one of his studies here. He was a guy who drew dinosaurs and wrote anti-Christian books for a living. He alleged in these books that Christianity causes facism and atheism and secularism were good. One day he decided to do a social science study and somehow came to the conclusion that secular and atheistic countries are better off than the more religious US. do you think this is an example of how an atheist’s “social science” can be politically and ideologically motivated? Or does it not count if an atheist does it?
E.V. – What’s the point of sparring practice? :)
heddle @#691
I have just now read that verse in context, and I have to strenuously disagree that it has anything to do with science or studying the universe.
This is Paul being anti-intellectual again (I usually quote 1 Corinthians 1:19-23, but Romans 1:20-23 works almost as well). Romans 1:20 contradicts 1 Corinthians 1:21, but it is obvious in context what Paul is referring to:
At that time, the schools of philosophy that taught Aristotle and his rough contemporaries were flourishing. Romans 1:20 is a rough restatement of the cosmological argument: Given that the universe exists, there must be a creator who made it; a first cause and prime mover. However, the very next verses in Romans are a vicious condemnation of every other philosophical work. Romans 1:23 certainly looks like a reference to Aristotle’s work on animals; an early corpus of works in the natural philosophy of biology, including: “History of Animals”, “On The Gait Of Animals”, “On The Generation Of Animals”, “On The Motion Of Animals”, and “On The Parts Of Animals”. The reference to “corruptible man” is probably a reference to the fact that Aristotle studied human beings as well.
Romans 1:25 remind me of those who say that science or “Darwinism” is a religion: study==worship, in their pathetic little minds.
Paul was saying that investigating the natural world was foolishness, and all metaphysics that did not agree with his own mythology and theology was futile speculation.
Which brings me back to Tertullian again: While I agree, with Augustine, that it is foolish for a Christian (or anyone) to misinterpret the bible (or other religious work) against empirical reality, I am afraid that Tertullian more accurately reflects Paul’s very real antagonism to intellectualism, rationality, and analysis.
What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church?
SC is the high end troll stomper. I am the cut rate troll stomper.
I’m the troll titilator.
Paul was saying that investigating the natural world was foolishness
Foolishness for Paul, largely because there wasn’t time for worldly knowledge to be of any use. Jesus’ appearance (note, not “return”) was imminent, and the only knowledge that mattered was the gnosis given to the saved.
Facilis, you are just being stupid, but what else is new. Your religion does nothing except oppress people. If you analyzed it properly, you could see that too.
I recall a USNews from years ago with two maps, which appeared to along county line in each state. The first map showed the percentage of people who went to church at least monthly. The second map showed the percentage of out-of-wedlock births. The two maps were basically the same. High church attendance correlated with a high out-of-wedlock birth rate. By your logic, things should be the inverted. But if you keep people ignorant, they behave in an ignorant manner. Those who had knowledge and access to birth control avoided out-of-wedlock births. Those who were ignorant of birth control didn’t.
He was right facilis.
Far be it from me to defend the odious Heddle, but Windy and Tony, I think you and he are all talking past each other on the Big Bang.
One of you (I’m too lazy to look back) seems to be using the term Big Bang to mean the absolute beginning–the Singularity, as you called it. Heddle is using it in the standard way, to mean what happened after the inflationary epoch, when all that energy had to go into creating a whole bunch of real particles, instead of just expanding spacetime.
I’m pretty sure nobody thinks the universe began in an actual singularity any more, either. We know damn well that we live in a quantum universe, and just because our best theory of gravity (General Relativity) is still a classical theory, and has not yet been successfully quantized (at least so as to yield sensible numerical predictions) we do know as well as we know anything that there is no such thing as an authentically dimensionless point with infinite density.
Last but not least, I’m not sure it’s a settled question whether asking what happened before that is any more meaningful than asking “What’s north of the north pole?”
Pew reasearch seems to disagree with you.
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/526/marriage-parenthood
It seems like it is the religious people who teach premarital sex and out of wedlock births are bad and It is the secular people and the people who do not attend church services who think it OK.
Facilis, Mark Twains third class of lies. Your are very familiar with his first two as you say them frequently (for example, your alleged proof of god, which you haven’t done). Your god does not exist, and does not help society move forward since the work of fiction called the bible does not change. If you don’t like god and religion mocked it is time for you to go elsewhere. We will keep mocking belief in god and religion because they are bad for society.
KnockGoats,
Yup. Piltdown, too.
A prime example of the tou quoque (‘you’re another’ or ‘you too’) logical fallacy.
Facilis #765,
“Out of wedlock childbirth” is not the same thing as an unmarried couple shacking up. Please try to remain focused on the argument.
SC:
This wasn’t a “firm grasp of the obvious” moment (well, maybe it was) as much as it was a dysphoric utterance of why bother? I’m at the point where I’d like to see a real life version of War Games with a new ending where the NORAD computer wins. Maybe nature will produce a intellectually dominant species less prone to cruelty and idiocy next time. We’ve reached an isostasy between willful ignorance(religion) and rationalism and but I feel very sure that the ratio is as high as it will ever be.
Those who believe in magic, regardless of their educational level, will always outnumber materialists/rationalists/empiricists. The upshot of this is we will always have powerful people who ignore, censor and censure knowledge that contradicts their religious ideology.
Don’t mind me, I’m just suffering a little futility fatigue.
SC said “The interference of religious groups with scientific education is measurable. The persecution of scientists by established churches is measurable. You cannot show that these aren’t measurable. You can only repeat that you reject this evidence, but you’ve offered no justification for this.”
Heddle said “This is not evidence for the claim that science and religion are incompatible—this is evidence for the indisputable claim that some theists behave badly.”
And the reason they behave badly is that their religion motivates them to attack science. Hence science and religion are incompatible.
Facilis, the fact is that religiosity is positively correlated with negative societal outcomes:
http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html
In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies (Figures 1-9). The most theistic prosperous democracy, the U.S., is exceptional, but not in the manner Franklin predicted. The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developed democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly. The view of the U.S. as a “shining city on the hill” to the rest of the world is falsified when it comes to basic measures of societal health.
If the data showed that the U.S. enjoyed higher rates of societal health than the more secular, pro-evolution democracies, then the opinion that popular belief in a creator is strongly beneficial to national cultures would be supported. Although they are by no means utopias, the populations of secular democracies are clearly able to govern themselves and maintain societal cohesion. Indeed, the data examined in this study demonstrates that only the more secular, pro-evolution democracies have, for the first time in history, come closest to achieving practical “cultures of life” that feature low rates of lethal crime, juvenile-adult mortality, sex related dysfunction, and even abortion. The least theistic secular developed democracies such as Japan, France, and Scandinavia have been most successful in these regards. The non-religious, pro-evolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator. The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted. Contradicting these conclusions requires demonstrating a positive link between theism and societal conditions in the first world with a similarly large body of data – a doubtful possibility in view of the observable trends.
There is evidence that within the U.S. strong disparities in religious belief versus acceptance of evolution are correlated with similarly varying rates of societal dysfunction, the strongly theistic, anti-evolution south and mid-west having markedly worse homicide, mortality, STD, youth pregnancy, marital and related problems than the northeast where societal conditions, secularization, and acceptance of evolution approach European norms (Aral and Holmes; Beeghley, Doyle, 2002).
And Facilis has no response to my #754 so his unsupported assertion that there must be a god because logic exists is refuted.
@priyalynn
Yes you just cited that study by Greg Paul I was talking about. Did it ever strike you as odd that G.Paul came to the exact same conclusion about religion being bad that he was touting long before he did the the study, just like how those anti-homosexual writers almost always conclude in their studies that homosexuality is bad?
And out of curiousity wikipedia says
“Sweden ranks aside with France and Russia on having a large minority of its citizens who have no religion.”.
However a quick check of the crime rates of Russia shows that the homicide rate is much higher
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Russia ,
Are Russians just not true atheists? Or does it not necessarily follow that secular and atheistic countries have less crime.
From the wikipedia article on Relgion in Russia:
It would appear that Russia is not quite as atheistic as facilis apparently believes.
Facilis is the US a secular or religious country?
Facilis, go ahead and punch holes in the study if you think you can.
From Facilis’s link on the crime rate in Russia:
“Comparison of the crime rates of the Soviet Union with those of other nations is considered difficult, because the Soviet Union did not publish comprehensive crime statistics.[4] According to Western experts, robberies, homicide and other violent crimes were less prevalent in the Soviet Union than in the United States”.
Once again the study by Greg Paul is affirmed.
Facilis said “Did it ever strike you as odd that G.Paul came to the exact same conclusion about religion being bad that he was touting long before he did the the study, just like how those anti-homosexual writers almost always conclude in their studies that homosexuality is bad?”.
Unlike as is the case with Greg Paul the anti-gay “researchers” such as Paul Cameron have been caught falsifying data and evicted from their professional organizations for unethical conduct. Their “research” frequently relies on the dishonest technique of taking studies on gays with AIDS or people attending an STD clinic and asserting that what is true for that group of people is true for gays in general – a preposterous dishonesty.
Owlmirror, #758
I disagree. Rom 1:18-25 states (v. 18 being regarded of the start of the section), paraphrasing: God’s anger is directed at those who suppress the truth. They have no excuse because God’s attributes are apparent in creation. Then is goes on to explain the consequences of ignoring the truth: sexual immorality, worshiping animals, etc.
This is not the cosmological argument. The cosmological argument (which, just to state my position, I don’t agree with) does not require that God’s attributes be present in creation—God’s attributes could be absent from creation and the cosmological argument could still be applied. The earth could be a barren wasteland and the cosmological argument could still be applied.
I don’t see how you can avoid a rather plain reading of the text: God is saying: you can see my qualities in creation. Now I understand that you may not accept that that is a call to do science, but I don’t see your justification for saying that it is the cosmological argument, even a rough version thereof.
I disagree. I think he is saying worshiping the natural world is foolish. He writes in v. 25: They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator. That is not a condemnation of investigating the world, but of worshiping it.
Also, I would argue 1 Corinthians 1:19-23 is not Paul being anti-intellectual. (Aside: He was a scholar, of course, and essentially the top grad student of the most revered Pharisee of his time, Gamaliel—not that that proves he can’t be anti-intellectual.) Your interpretation is based, I think, on taking that passage at face-value. But you have to consider that it is actually mocking. He is using wise in the they-think-they-are-wise sense, not in a generic sense regarding all intellectuals. Possibly if Paul were here he might refer to, say, Dawkins that way—but not Collins—when to first order they are both scholars of comparable intellect. Jesus says something very similar: I come for the unrighteous, not the righteous. Here again is the same type of sarcasm—he is actually saying I come for the unrighteous, not the selfrighteous.
Oops, I missed the post by ‘Tis himself – apprently those Russians are much more religious than is commonly believed.
lurkbot
I’m pretty sure nobody thinks the universe began in an actual singularity any more, either.
Neither did I, but apparently Heddle does – because if there wasn’t a singularity, then the big bang doesn’t point to a single act of creation. A condition which, according to Heddle, invalidates his Calvanist creation myth.
Heddle – let me know which bookstore your theology collection goes to, wontcha?
Heddle, you’re so full of it. Those passages basically say that god was pissed of at those who denied he was god and so he punished them.
And thanks for hiding from my #740, #743, #746, #751, and #771. Le’ts hear the excuses, “its too long”, “its too boring” or claim that you “already answered that” when you didn’t.
Lurkbot:
Yes my question was meant as a prod in this direction, perhaps I was being too subtle.
Tony,
The extent which such a statement is stupid–on so many different levels–is appalling.
‘Tis, good catch on Facilis changing the subect earlier.
Facilis the here’s a news flash for you. Scientists in their professional work are scrupulously honest. The same cannot be godbots like yourself who twist and spin the data. We expect you to lie. And when we look, we usually find it. For example, you keep pretending you have proved god. You have presented nothing close to a proof. That makes you a liar and bullshitter.
On Russian religiosity: U. S. Arms Control negotiators were always commenting on the fact that their Soviet counterparts would always open their presentations with a biblical quote.
I think Russians subscribe to the George Costanza form of religion: “God will never let me succeed! He’ll kill me first!” “You don’t believe in God.” “I do for the bad stuff!”
heddle – please do elucidate. Exactly WHY is my statement so stupid. Only one or two levels of stupidity will do.
Note: you may not reference singularity – that would be stupid. But exactly what is it about the big bang that you think validates your creation myth? There must be something – you said so before. (or was that a fib?)
Note also: referencing a book of myth, such as the bible, won’t count. Science only, please. And I do understand big words and weighty concepts so please – let ‘er rip!
Facilus, do you believe your senses are reliable? How do you know? If you say you know their reliable because of a revelation from god, how do you know you can trust that “revelation” seeing as it came through your senses?
heddle:
***
This is the Bible telling people to go out and do science, and warning against “sexual immorality,” according to heddle. Fuck you, heddle.
SC – Fuck you heddle.
OK, NOW I’m going to mix a glass of sangria. Oh yeah, before I forget:
Fuck you heddle.
But that doesn’t make sense. If “God’s attributes” are literally apparent in creation, then there would be no disagreement on what God was. Science and theology would be the same thing!
Paul is of course confused and confusing. I mean, look at the structure of the verse itself:
For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.
How is the invisible supposed to have been “clearly seen“?
If “being understood through what has been made” means “can be inferred by observation and reasoning”, then it’s not something that is “clearly seen”; it requires effort. And if he’s honestly referring to things that would have been obvious 2000 years ago, what the hell did he mean besides the cosmological argument? What were the philosophers supposed to have “clearly seen” that should have convinced them? What is this “truth”, other than Paul’s personal revealed truth, that they should have been convinced of?
I can see why presuppositionalists like these verses, but they are completely insane.
And, hell, heddle, it entirely conflicts with your own stated position. What of God’s attributes can be deduced from the Q² behavior of the pion form factor, or neutron absorption cross sections, to use your own examples? What can science say about God at all? Your own position is that they’re non-overlapping magisteria; Paul says exactly the opposite.
Dude. Think for a few seconds. Paul was moaning about what he thought were the excesses of hedonistic Hellenic culture and Athenian society.
And seriously, if he was stating the “consequences of ignoring the truth”, what the hell do those “consequences” have to do with rejecting science?
Oh, and by the way: Romans 1:23 is particularly ironic given the doctrine of homoousia; declaring that “uncorruptible God” and “corruptible man” were the exact same thing.
Pfah.
I realize that I probably cannot convince you of this, but I am certain that Paul’s accusation of “worship” was as false as it is when made by creationists. Hell, creationists probably take the exact same verse as a justification for their own accusations.
This is wrong. He condemns both the Jews — those who know and study the texts of their tradition — and the Greeks — those who know and study the natural world. To cite something I wrote on a different thread:
Paul explicitly invokes a God who is pleased to do something which would be rejected by those who study and adhere to the traditions that he supposedly gave them and by those who study and reason about the natural world.
You can’t get more anti-intellectual than that.
Patricia, don’t hold back on our account. Tell Heddle, the giant sized waffler caught with his pants down, what you really think…
I am certain that Paul’s accusation of “worship” was as false as it is when made by creationists
Yes and no. If you take him to be referring to pantheism or nature worship per se. But talking about “created things” I take him to mean pagan idols and perhaps specifically the Egyptian deities, with animal forms.
The situation in Russian goes far beyond questions of secularism. Crime and corruption are rampant because their systems are partially broken. This should be obvious to anyone without a very specific axe to grind.
I stand in awe of Owlmiror’s Biblical knowledge.
This is why I comment so little, and read so much. Learning is a good thing! : )
Perhaps if Paul had been preaching in Alexandria. But he was writing to and about Rome — far more influenced by Greece than by Egypt, I am pretty sure.
Nice! Owlmirror @792 so very plainly makes a mockery of the Heddle’s superficial yet sophistic reading.
Owlmirror does have what it takes to make one humble. ;o)
On things biblical, I frequently bow to Owlmirror to acknowledge his superiority of the subject. Salaam, Salaam, Salaam.
olwmirror,
Not (nearly) necessarily. The Greek aion means: age; by extension perpetuity (also past); by implication the world; specifically (Jewish) a Messianic period (present or future): – age, course, eternal, (for) ever (-more), [n-]ever, (beginning of the, while the) world (began, without end).
And its common use in the NT is for age. It is less often translated as world.
The word kosmos means orderly arrangement, that is, decoration; by implication the world (in a wide or narrow sense, including its inhabitants, literally or figuratively [morally]): – adorning, world.
The word aion is typically translated as age used in, for example, a verse familiar to Pharyngula readers (the Blasphemy Challenge): Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.(Matt 12:32)
The word kosmos is used in John 1:10, 3:17, 7:7, 14:17, 14:19, 14:27,…(29 times). You can look those up, and see that it almost always means world in the ordinary sense. For example Rom 3:19: … so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world (kosmos) may be held accountable to God.
And the word sophia means wisdom (higher or lower, worldly or spiritual): – wisdom.
In other words, the straightforward translation that every English translation that I checked (KJV, NIV, NASB, and ESV) uses for the verse in question: Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? is more than supported by the Greek and by other usage in the New Testament. There is no need to assume any other translation. There is absolutely no reason why Paul should have chosen aion. Everything is consistent with other uses of kosmos
Oh goody! Heddle brought a stick to a gun fight.
Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
And thus, heddle rests his case that there is no conflict between science and religion.
Heddle brought a stick
Patricia, I wouldn’t be so charitable. It looks almost like a stick, but smaller. Isn’t it cute how proud of it he is?
Perhaps if Paul had been preaching in Alexandria. But he was writing to and about Rome — far more influenced by Greece than by Egypt, I am pretty sure.
Sure. “Created things” meaning just pagan idols then. The Egyptian gods, while not exactly an influence on Rome in the way you mean, were still well known and considered exotic for their animal-headed forms. Early anti-pagan Christian apologists made somewhat of an issue of it, was my only point in including the Egiptian deities specifically, and it was a side-issue at that; I’m not disagreeing with what you’ve said in substance.
It is the fear of fiery serpents that makes me charitable. Old habits die hard. *snort*
The other side of my brain was thinking Heddle had better remove Satan’s pineapple from his rectum and let a little oxygen flow to his brain before he passes out completely.
Heddle chooses the christian way once again, by challenging Owlmirror. As a dog returneth to it’s vomit, so doth a fool to his folly*.
*paraphrasing Proverbs and 2nd Peter
Owlmirror made it clear: regardless of Heddle’s sophistry, the statement is clear.
Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
I don’t need exegetic nuance to determine it’s essentially saying that, compared to God, we are all
foolishworthless.It’s also amusingly self-applicable: if it’s in truth a wise concept, then it implies it’s actually foolishness, for it is of this world; it becomes paradoxical.
What a stupid thing to believe.
John Morales:
I can’t think of a better statement about religion!
Yawn, a boring afternoon. I got a belly laugh and a couple of teehees. I give Heddle a 6 for his mental tap dancing.
Heddle
Using the online Merriam Webster, I can transform “religion is incompatible with science” into “a system of beliefs held with ardor and faith is incapable of harmonious existence with knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding.” I’m happy to subscribe to that. Now, will you say this is a meaningless statement? Or just a meaningful proposition you don’t care about? Or even a tautology?
Sticking with Merriam Webster, you may be a “scientist (“a person learned in science”) but you are not a seeker of the truth about the world around you. In Calvinism, you have adopted an arbitrary set of beliefs, unsupported by any reasonable analysis of the textual evidence. Even without an assumption of methodological naturalism, the texts on which you base your belief most naturally lend themselves to a naturalistic interpretation as myth misunderstood – see for example the work of Earl Doherty. And note there the difference between myself and you – I direct you to the evidence on which I base my current views, but you can’t or won’t do the same.
Even with the cover of your strawman smokescreen and clouds of bluster, you cannot escape the fact that you take leave of rationality when you enter the realm of Calvinism.
@MartinH
In
CalvinismNaturalism, you have adopted an arbitrary set of beliefs, unsupported by any reasonable analysis of the textual evidence and unable to account for logic and reason.Even with the cover of your strawman smokescreen and clouds of bluster, you cannot escape the fact that you take leave of rationality when you enter the realm of
CalvinismNaturalism.I’d really drop the logic and reason façade if I were you facilis. it’s been demonstrated time and time again that you have not accounted for them either, nor that accounting for them makes your position superior. Stop with the circular logic already!
There is no disagreement of God’s primary attributes. Some Christians choose to outwardly profess these truths about God, while others engage in rebellion to God and worship false idols and deny his existence
Theology is the necessary pre-condition of science.
Effort which you will not take.
In order to reach these conclusions we apply
1)laws of logic and reason to make deductive inferences about the particle
2)Make inductive inferences as to the behaviour of said particle
2)make mathematical calculations as to the motion.
None of these things can be accounted for apart from God.
Facilis, I accounted for logic and reason thus proving your imaginary god is not a precondition to their existance and you ran away from it as well as these questions:
Do you believe your senses are reliable? How do you know? If you say you know their reliable because of a revelation from god, how do you know you can trust that “revelation” seeing as it came through your senses?
@priya lynn
1)Does all information come from the senses?
2)Is it possible that God can reveal things to me apart from my senses so I can be certain.
Oh and those were just the statistics of Soviet Union. I was talking about modern Russia.
Facilis, still failing logic and reason. Your pretensions are becoming wearisome and boring. Being plonked for being boring will be your fate. Here’s something you need to understand. We are much smarter and better at logic than you are. We are not impressed by your silly posturing. All it does is confirm our presupposition that you are an idiot. So either give up your silly attitude or go away. I suggest the later. Nobody is holding a gun to your head requiring you to post here. And your god doesn’t exist except between your ears.
As to the laws of logic priya I think you misunderstand.
Let us use the example of the law of non-contradiction.
P and not-P cannot both be true at the same time in the same place.
Is this law invariant? does it change?
Is is universal ie apply to everyone?
Facilis, I’ve also posted the issues you’ve failed to respond to on your blog so they won’t get lost. Its pretty clear you’re afraid of an honest trade of questions and answers on these issues as you’re hiding from my questions.
Facilis the Fallacious Fool, poser, and stupid bore. Yawn. You had nothing. You have nothing. Learn some logic and reasoning, then come back in twenty years or so.
Facilis, 2+2=4. 2+2=4 has always been the case and will always be the case. I need not know why in order to say it’s the case, so to claim that 2+2=5 is validated by your claim to know where logic comes from is manifestly false. You are so very wrong that it’s pathetic to watch you time and time again weasel around actually using the logic that you preach.
SIWOTI aside, and do I ever understand it, suppose facilis pinched another fallacious loaf on this or another pharyngula thread, and nobody bothered to comment on its odor and texture? There are various scattered appropriate responses to the standard issue dungballs that facilis rolls up with unconstipated regularity, and links to those could be organized in a single post that, like sawdust on a protein spill, can act as an acknowledgment that it’s clear what type of stench facilis exudes. It just seems like a waste of braincycles to respond to something so repetitive and unimaginative with more than a canned response, when he offers so little variety in what he produces, and we have such a stockpile of perfectly good responses on hand.
What are the links to some of your favorite responses over the past few threads to the infection of the facilis bacillus?
1)Does all information come from the senses?
2)Is it possible that God can reveal things to me apart from my senses so I can be certain?
@Kel
But now that you admit that you are certain that 2+2=4 you have to stop suppressing the truth and give glory to the one who made it so.
Congratulations Facilis! It’s always nice to watch the children advance, gives one a pleasant warm fuzzy feeling.
Run upstairs and announce to mommy that you’ve gone from speaking Common Idiot to speaking High Idiot. She’ll give you a cookie.
Facilis the village idiot. Your god doesn’t exist. Your use of logic doesn’t exist. Massive fail all around. Time to go home. Your mommy is calling you.
Facilis, in order to have an honest discussion we need to have an equal trade of questions and answers. I answered all the questions you posed in your 590 in my 754, now its your turn to respond to all the points and questions I posed to you in my since before you ask me more questions. Those are:
I said to Facilis “Your god does not exist so cannot be the source of logic. A number of people on the various threads touched upon the source of logic and reason, but you, of course, were afraid to acknowledge what they said.”
Facilis said “I showed exactly how their reasoning was circular and false.”.
No, you never addressed the fact that the source of logic and reason is the nature of the world and how it works. And you still haven’t addressed it.
I said “The source of logic and reason is the nature of the world and the way things, people, etc. interact. We learn logic and reason by observing and remembering the way the world works and the nature of the universe.”
Facilis said “1)But you are seeking to establish universals. How do you get universals from particulars(i.e. subjective experience)?”.
No, I never said anything about universals. One persons impression as to how the world works will differ from anothers. There’s usually enough overlap that we can debate, but as the existence of over 32000 sects of Christianity prove your claim that there are universal laws of logic and reason revealed to you from god is false. If it were true there’d be no arguments about Christian doctrine.
Facilis said ”
2) But how do you KNOW this? You might say you got it from your senses but you just push the problem back agains. How do you KNOW your senses are reliable?”.
I know the source of logic and reason from the fact that my senses have allowed me to successfully survive. If I were unable to interpret reality correctly though my senses I would have died a long time ago, as would have virtually every human on the planet. We know our senses are a reasonable aproximation of reality by virtue of our success at navigating a complex world.
I said “The laws of logic and reason are not necessarily universal or objective because some logic and reason is dependent on how people react to what they think and as such may vary from person to person.”
Facilis said “3) Can my logic be different from yours? This is inconsistent. If you call my argument a fallacy I could just say that “logic varies from person to person” and even though it might be a fallacy it is sill correct for some people.”.
Of course your logic can differ from mine. If it didn’t we would inevitably come to the same conclusion as we discuss reality. If people’s logic didn’t differ we’d have far fewer disagreements and they’d all be capable of resolution as we discussed the relevant facts.
I said “2) The laws are not immaterial as even the abstract ideas we hold in our heads ultimately exist as neuro-chemical firings and electricity.”
Facillis said “4)Let us take my mouse. Does the law of identity apply to it? If no why not? “.
Yes. Although I don’t think I’d refer to logic as being governed by “laws”. That implies a certainty that doesn’t exist. For example, if I smash your mouse, melt it down and mold it into a dildo, is it still a mouse? Is it still what it was? I don’t think so, although from a different perspective one might argue that it still is, in a sense the same thing it was. What about a caterpiller? Does the law of identity apply to it when it becomes a butterfly? Depends on your perspective to a large degree, doesn’t it?
I said “3 The laws are not necessarily invarient. As the laws of logic and reason exist in our minds as abstract concepts they can and do change with our growing understanding of the world.”
Facillis said “5)The laws of logic change?? Have they changed since we started talking? Is it possible that [the girl in the videos] arguments are fallacious now but can be true tomorrow?”.
Of course the “laws” of logic can change. It was once assumed logical and rational that whenever there was a flood, famine, or war, it was because the gods were displeased with people. Nowadays most people don’t believe the weather is caused by angry gods. As to the “laws” of logic changing while we are talking or the girl in the video’s arguments being fallacious now but true tomorrow, no that’s not how things are going to typically work. It’ll take some new understanding in how the world works for our “laws” of logic to change.
Do you believe your senses are reliable? How do you know? If you say you know their reliable because of a revelation from god, how do you know you can trust that “revelation” seeing as it came through your senses?
After you respond to my questions and points in turn then I’ll get to yours.
The laws of mathematics are not only consistent with itself but empirically demonstrated. Clump two lots 2 objects together, and one lot of 4 objects together. The additive property of having two clumps of two totalling the same amount of objects that are in the clump of four is demonstrated proof of concept. Shit, this is kindergarten stuff facilis. You are arguing that logic needs a logic-giver in order to use it, which I’m saying is not the case. I can use 2+2=4 because over and over I can demonstrate that 2+2=4 will still be the case.
I’m not arguing that you need an absolute giver of 2+2=4 in order to do maths. I’m actually arguing the opposite, that why 2+2=4 is irrelevant in it’s application. You on the other hand have been using circular logic in order to construct your worldview, and evading that by criticising anyone showing that it’s circular logic on the fact that they cannot account for that. But they do not need to account for logic in order to be able to use it. Otherwise one could not dismiss the notion of a god-given 2+2=5 over an empirically demonstrated 2+2=4.
Either you are arguing that one can not use logic without basking in the glory of god (which would make my career as a computer programmer completely fucked up) or you need to admit that people can apply logic without the need to account for it. The simple fact is you don’t account for logic because your position is circular, and no denying that notion will ever make it more so. 2+2=4 and you’re argument for god is circular. Suck it [sic]fail
I do enjoy these little get-togethers when both heddle and SC show up. Tip o’ the fez to Owlmirror, as well.
As you know, heddle, this interesting study would not count as an “experiment” to me. But my real reaction is to suggest you get in touch with your University’s patent office. The only problem I see with your miraclometer are the details of calibrating it.
oops…sorry…you-all were talkin about something else by now. Carry on.
There is no way for you to be able to distinguish between your supposed divine revelation and a possible psychotic episode.
Facilis is caught in his own circular logic:
Question: How do you know god has revealed the truth to you?
Facilis: Because god has revealed the truth to me.
Inverse scattering problem…er, isn’t that what you get when you drive a herd of cattle up a long stretch of paved road?
That would be “bullshit”?
You are now ready for your life’s work. It is time for you to move to a large city, wonder around the downtown and testify to strangers as they walk by.
Harry Frankfurt. Seems appropriate for our challenged friend.
that or jake and elwood
Well thank you gents for straightening that one out. I was very close to making a misinformed conclusion that Heddle had made a funny.
Facilis:
Yep, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the number of Christians went up, and crime went up. So in your place I’d be careful of positing simplistic cause-effect relationships.
this is so stupid it hurts.
If i have 2 apples over here and 2 apples over there and i bring them all together, I have four apples.
Tell me how that relies on a god?
If I had 5 apples, then there would be a problem and I’d once again have to look towards the sky and question Loki’s reasons.
Ahem…I hate to argue with you over the powers of your gawd Chimpy. Buuuut, Eris the goddess of confusion and discord is in charge of apples, not Loki. The whole thing got started with the Judgement of Paris, and ended with the Trojan war.
Granted, Loki does have the more interesting complexion.
My god can kick your silly apple god’s butt.
Eris, the Goddess of Discord, is not an apple god, and that is no mere butt–the finely turned ass of Eris will drive yours, or any god worthy of the title, stark raving mad, unless your god is as utterly limp as one of the so-called arguments offered here by facilis.
DON’T YOU TELL ME ABOUT MY GOD. I KNOW ABOUT MY GOD.
HE TOLD ME
Oh my, Rev. Chimp, that was rather discordant, wasn’t it?
FacileFacilis at #812Nice trick that, the substitution. How’d you figure that one out?
If 2+2=4 is God’s work, who did pi? We know that s/he/it has a problem with that.
Still going, huh?
Facilis@823:
Yes. All external information comes to us through our senses. Any “information” that spontaneously appears in your mind that doesn’t correspond with your senses could be imagination, dream, hallucination or misrememberance, and cannot be treated as reliable or useful.
If God existed, I assume he probably could reveal things to you inside your head — but no, it is impossible to be certain that is what happened. As above, it could just as easily be imagination, dream, hallucination or misrememberance, and cannot be treated as reliable or useful.
You might of course feel certain about it, but that feeling is also unreliable if it’s not backed up by some sort of objective measure (which can only come to you through your senses). That’s why the scientific measure exists — to help people work towards the truth despite their own biases.
(And to head off the obvious objection: no-one can ever be truly certain of anything, save that they themselves are thinking. It’s possible that everything you receive through your senses is a lie, and you live in an elaborate simulation; but as far as every test can show, it would be a perfect simulation and you could never know otherwise, so the only parsimonious option is to go along with it.)
Hey Facilis, why is it always 2 + 2 = 4? ei π = -1 be even more convincing!
@846: “That’s why the scientific method exists”.
Hmm…is this a psychological argument against omnipotence — no god has the power to provide you with absolute certainty of its existence?
You’d think that if the god inside facilis’ head was indeed the god of logic and reason, then surely facilis would have no problem providing a proof of Fermat’s last theorem as demonstrative of God being the universal harbinger of logic than a demonstration of one of the most complex mathematical problems in history.
Anyone who needs to invoke God to prove 2+2=4 has their head up their ass.
For someone who writes so much about logic and God facilis seems to have little knowledge of either. He has just been repeating the same thing over and over again for weeks now. It is pointless to argue with someone who has given up on reason (just because he is using the term “logic” doesn’t mean he is being logical).
Pharyngulites, ignore him. Responding to him is a waste of your skills.
“But now that you admit that you are certain that 2+2=4 you have to stop suppressing the truth and give glory to the one who made it so.”
Why does he need all this glory?
Tulse @849:
As usual, it comes down to differing definitions of the word.
Of course God could provide a person with absolute psychological certainty. The person could have absolute faith that what they believe is the truth, but there’s still nothing to base it on except their own mental state. The same absolute certainty could also be the result of your run-of-the-mill delusion.
I’m sure some leaders of doomsday cults were absolutely certain God had revealed to them the date of the end of the world; but when the date came and went, their certainty was revealed to have no basis in truth.
Facilis went on about “objective revelation” for some time, but if this was what he was taking about, it’s no such thing. A mental revelation is entirely subjective.
Epistemic certainty needs objective evidence. An omnipotent God could choose to provide such evidence (say, an angel appearing on the White house lawn), which would fit the description of “objective revelation”; but it would also subject to scientific observation.
Kagato @#853: I agree, that’s the essence of the problem.
I know a number of Christians who claim to have received personal revelations or to have personally “connected” with God through prayer. They are therefore confident that God exists. But the trouble is that these experiences, by their nature, are subjective and unverifiable. From an outsider perspective, they can just as easily be interpreted as tricks of the mind. Therefore, for those of us who have never had any kind of revelation or religious experience, other people’s visions aren’t really very useful as evidence.
Really, Christianity will seem plausible to me if – and only if – more compelling evidence for the divinity and miracles of Jesus is uncovered in the future. At the moment, we have nothing more than four pseudonymous accounts of uncertain date and provenance, and two millennia of hearsay and traditions handed down. While it’s perfectly possible to accept these things on faith without solid evidence, this raises an epistemic difficulty: where do we stop? How do we know which religious claims to simply accept on faith, and which ones to subject to ordinary epistemological standards?
I do believe in a deistic God as ultimate creator of the universe, but I’m increasingly inclined to be sceptical of all “revealed” religions.
Less than four, given the synoptic problem in the canonical gospels. More than four, if we allow the apocryphal gospels, which we might as well; several were only excluded because of theological disagreements.
Why?
I have posted a video of darwin’s finches making fun of this:
Funny, it was me asking that question of myself that was part of the reason I left my faith in a deity behind. Why did a prefect being need to have a bunch of sycophants?
damn it
Right, so because certainty is determined by the individual’s own mental state, God cannot provide a mental state that distinguishes between certainty provided by God and that provided by some psychological or organic dysfunction of that mental state.
I’m going to name-drop Alvin Plantiga. He has a 3 volume series where he tries to draw the line and defend his own epistemology.
Facilis the Fallacious Fool. I just love it when you try to show something that has already been refuted. Yawn. What a stupid bore.
@Kagato
1)You said “all information comes from the senses”. From which of the senses did you receive this piece of information?
2)You made a claim that God could not reveal things to me in a way I can be certain of them.Are you certain that God cannot make me certain? (I was talking about epistemic certainty, not psychological certainty)
Facilis the Fallacious Fool. Your god doesn’t exist, so how did you receive a revelation except as a delusion? Just no idea of reason and logic.
Explain to me how you would separate the two in this case?
Right back to god again Walton. Brilliant.
Epistemic certainty is knowng something with infallible certainty without even a possibility of you being wrong.
Psychological certainty is just how you feel. For example an obama supporter may be psychologically certain he will be a good president but it is possible he may be a bad one so he does not ave epistemic certainty.
Delusional Facilis, you know nothing with certainty. We know with certainty you are a Fallacious Fool. When will you learn? Your imaginary god doesn’t exist.
I understand the difference by definition (though that definition of psychological is questionable), but you can not separate the two and your psychological self has great influence over what you think is what you know.
how are you going to separate them?
The distinction you’re looking for is certitude vs certainty, certitude being the feeling without necessarily the fact of being certain.
Tulse@859:
I guess not.
I mean, far be it from me to put limitations on an omnipotent being; I’m sure he could create a perfect mind that truly knew when it was receiving God’s Word. But in a world that also contains imperfect minds, how would you distinguish it from a delusional mind that merely thought it knew it had heard the voice of God? That’s the whole problem with solely subjective data.
Facilis@862:
As I said, only information received through the senses is verifiable and reliable. No-one else has access to the thoughts inside your head, so no-one can “check your facts”, so to speak. You may believe you have received thoughts from an external source, but it’s impossible to verify that’s true. You may think you know, but you can’t know you know (because that certitude is equally without evidence).
Yes, using subjective revelation only, God could not make you epistemically certain, because epistemic certainty requires objective evidence by definition. The known fallibility of the human mind indicates that an individual’s thoughts alone simply cannot be relied upon as evidence.
Now, if you could demonstrate certain revealed knowledge, such that its truth was not in doubt — say, accurately and precisely predicting a future event, or knowing the exact contents of a locked box without ever seeing inside — you could prove you had access to information beyond the known senses, and then you would have evidence that knowledge could be obtained via other means.
It still wouldn’t prove God, but at least you’d have built up some impressive circumstantial evidence. Plus, you could claim a million bucks from James Randi.
This is a bit late, but:
heddle @#802:
Actually, aion would have been appropriate precisely because of what it would have implied in the same way as what you quoted from Matt 12:32: it would have implied that while the wisdom of this age of world was insufficient, the wisdom of the age of the world to come was sufficient.
But really, this is just quibbling over semantics. You picked out one paragraph and ignore the larger point: Paul was complete in his condemnation of the “wisdom of the world”; the foolishness of Christ crucified made all that wisdom foolish, and by implication, useless. You can claim he was being sarcastic; that “He is using wise in the they-think-they-are-wise sense, not in a generic sense regarding all intellectuals“, but that doesn’t make it any better.
Paul knew of the Hellenic schools of philosophy; they had spread throughout the ancient Near East, North Africa, and southeastern Europe, exactly the areas where he was preaching. He could not have been ignorant of them. He had every opportunity to mention the works of Aristotle and Plato, and say that their methods were correct; that even if they had not found God, they were doing the right thing in studying God’s creation and describing it.
But his contempt for their efforts was complete. What do you think the “wisdom of the world made foolish” was supposed to include? How did it not include Greek natural philosophy, and also Jewish scholarship, given that Paul explicitly mentioned that God had deliberately acted so as to reject and contradict them?
Even by your very own experience, “Christ crucified” was a direct special revelation. How were the Greek scholars and Jewish scholars supposed to find anything in their scholarship that was supposed to lead to it?
No, Paul was utterly anti-intellectual, both in 1 Corinthians and in Romans, and probably in other books as well.
OwlMirror – *grin*
heddle:
I just have to respond to this. heddle gave a few possible explanations for these figures above (ignoring, of course, the most obvious explanation, as I’ve noted). He does not there, nor has he in any previous post that I’m aware of, argue that the small percentage of theistic scientists results from longstanding prejudice and discrimination both within and without science. The first part of his suggestion that perhaps the underrepresentation of theists in science is partially explained by the fact that “Christian schools and colleges do an abysmal job of teaching science and encouraging its study, reducing supply. Sort of the same reason why there are fewer women,” applying specifically to Christian schools and colleges, doesn’t exactly support his argument, as windy and I discussed above. The second part would only make sense if he were arguing that theists had been discriminated against in science education, which he isn’t, and they haven’t. Given the barriers women and minorities have had to overcome to become scientists, heddle’s equivalence is pretty scuzzy. But then giving evidence a dishonest spin is what heddle does.
SC, OM – I probably should resign from making comments re: Heddle. He makes me want to scratch my own eyes out.
For him to bitch about fewer women is the height of hypocrisy. The bible is all about female subjugation.
Then there’s his damned calvinism. I hate calvinism as much as fuckwit papism. That TULIP dogma of calvinism should be considered abuse. My two cents worth. *snort*
Yes Patricia, Calvinism, whether it’s heddle’s or anybody else’s, is just some of the ugliest misogyny and misanthropy ever devised. It seems to me heddle has some compulsive need to be admired as an authority, and the fact that it doesn’t happen here is an affront to his patriarchal entitlement. Oh, and Owlmirror and SC have done more than earn their tentacle clusters.
If nothing else, heddle’s posts illustrate that there are many different flavour of woo out there. I’d heard of Calvinism but had not ever understood what, exactly, differentiated it from any other kind of Christianity – well, apart from it being a kind of protestantism that seemed to require a greater-than-normal-for-Christians level of unhappiness from its adherents.
What I’ve noticed most, though, is that they (Calvinists and their ilk) seem to enjoy making up strange polysyllabic words to in an attempt lend authenticity and authority to their bizarre beliefs. It makes regular theistic sophistry seem tolerable.
Facilis, will you acknowledge that you were wrong on the use of logic, or are you just ignoring posts on the matter for long enough until you feel it safe to make the same fallacious assertion?
I see that Facilis is still crapping all over the place like a seagull with diarrhea.
Of course there is. Heck, Christians often even disagree with themselves on God’s attributes, like Paul claiming in one book that God was obvious to everyone, and in another book claiming that no-one had found God. You yourself have contradicted yourself several times over by arguing that God is the source of logic by way of a fallacious argument, and by arguing that Satan is more powerful than God, and so on.
And you contradict yourself yet again. You can’t seem to help not making any sense at all…
Only in the way that an insane asylum is the necessary precondition of a university.
Why should I need to make an effort? If God wants to unconditionally elect me, he will. If not, no amount of effort on my part will help.
It’s the other way around: they can all be accounted for as being self-evident, so invoking God is stealing from the self-evident worldview.
I guess facilis can not answer the questions posed to him.
not surprising.
he’ll show up again with the same bullshit. Ignoring the failure he’s displayed here.
Update: they took down the Debate Coach link with the copyright-breaching clip from The Great Debaters. They may not post atheist comments, but they do read them.
Shut the fuck up your dumb bitches. Why ya’ll be hatin’ up are the Darwin-meister? Go read a book.