Atheists - A Question...

[HonestJoe]

A miracle is something which surpasses all known human or natural powers.
That doesn't mean it isn't a reality. It just means man's knowledge is limited... which is a fact - a reality.

Sure, but that means you're talking about what we (currently) know rather than the actual phenomena or event. By your definition, everything would have been a miracle at some point, since at some point there was no humans to understand them and some things will be miraculous to you but not to me (and vice-versa) since we will have different knowledge and understanding of the world.

The other problem is the fact that terms like "miracle" and "supernatural" generally aren't used to indicate simple lack of knowledge but to assert the intervention of some specific being or energy.

Since miracles surpasses all known human or natural powers, it is not considered "natural", but supernatural.

What's wrong with the word "unknown", since that is literally what your definition means? If you're really only saying that the distinction is between what we understand, why would you need any other words? Could it be that you actually want to imply something more specific than that?

I would not dismiss one and hold to the other, but I would investigate.
The fact that the majority of atheists would cling to a natural explanation, when they have not even investigated, tells me they are closed-minded... and so, nothing would convince them.

That isn't what your OP said though. You asked atheists whether this single incident, without any further investigation or information, would convince them "that the spiritual side of life is a reality". You never asked for investigation or consideration of a possibility, you asked for a definitive conclusion on the spot.

The simple fact is that even such a strange set of circumstances provides literally zero reason to suspect that there could be anything "spiritual" or "supernatural", since no such things have even been demonstrated to exist. They could be related to the root cause but so could countless other hypotheticals. Based on the events described alone, there is no reason to even suspect anything "spiritual" or "supernatural" (even if you defined them in any meaningful way ). The reason most people would start by considering "mundane" causes is because pretty much everything we've ever come to understand has such a cause. That doesn't mean you automatically dismiss any possibility but you have to start somewhere, and it makes sense to start with things we actually know, understand and can study, rather than speculative ideas that operate on the basis of faith alone.

 

[Alien826]

So what is your take on Rene Descartes' Evil Demon, brain in a vat and all the other variants?
And how do you explain this:
Philosophy of science - Wikipedia
"Naturalism's axiomatic assumptions[edit]
All scientific study inescapably builds on at least some essential assumptions that are untested by scientific processes.[43][44] Kuhn concurs that all science is based on an approved agenda of unprovable assumptions about the character of the universe, rather than merely on empirical facts. These assumptions—a paradigm—comprise a collection of beliefs, values and techniques that are held by a given scientific community, which legitimize their systems and set the limitations to their investigation.[45] For naturalists, nature is the only reality, the only paradigm. There is no such thing as 'supernatural'. The scientific method is to be used to investigate all reality,[46] and Naturalism is the implicit philosophy of working scientists.[47] ..."

The latest and possibly best example is the movie The Matrix. What is my take? I can't be absolutely 100% sure that what I experience is "real". The probability of any of these scenarios being true is very low though. If I see i cliff ahead of me I don't jump off.

The unprovable assumptions of science thing? I agree with some of them but not all. Science is well aware of these limitations and tries to overcome them as best it can.

 

[Tiberius]

I suppose you would use Hebrews 3:4 to say God made hairpins and false eyelashes too.

I'd say at best that passage says God created the metal that is used to make hairpins, or the raw materials used to make the false eyelashes, since we have clear evidence that those things are created by people.

 

[Mine sweeper]

Scenario :

You are in the waiting room of a medical facility.
There are about 30 people in the room.
A man enters the main entrance. Stands in the doorway. Looks around the room at everyone, and then leaves.
You see people looking at others, and reacting as if they are having mixed reactions... and some get up and start exiting the room.
You and the few remaining are looking at each other.
You feel it. You are assuming they feel it too.
Feel what? You no longer feel like when you came to the doctor.
Whatever you were experiencing - runny nose / headache / stomach cramps / ___ was gone.
Not wanting to look like an idiot sitting there by yourself (everyone else has left), you get up... to leave.​

Wait a minute.
Maybe you need to see the doctor, to be sure you are fine.
You could say, "Doc. I have... had... this awful pain a few moments ago..."

Atheists... If this happened to you, would this convince you that the spiritual side of life is a reality - that miracles and the supernatural are real?
Or would you attribute it to a 'natural' phenomenon - perhaps associated with some scientific experiment or mind altering technology?

So I wouldn't have any thoughts on why other people left the office. For myself if I simply didn't feel sick anymore at that moment it wouldn't be an unusual thing. I don't have magical thinking so I wouldn't try to find some deep meaning or look at it like I had an experience. I would see the doctor when I was called in and describe my symptoms and mention that my symptoms come and go. So I'm guessing your religious. What if you preyed one particular time and you didn't feel any connection to a spiritual being at that particular moment. Would that convince you that your faith was in vain. Would you cash it in at once. Of course not.

I spoke to a cousin I hadn't spoken to lately. She recently had a heart attack, and was 'gone' for about 3 minutes in the ambulance. They did surgery same day. She laughed when I asked about an NDE, and said everyone asked her about seeing lights, or all that, because she had nothing at all. "I can't remember," was all she had.

NDE? So, Not dead, right. I'm not dead right now. I have no EXPERIENCE. When someone is very sick we say near death. Okay I understand what you mean. So what about another sence in which you are NEAR death every day. When you drive you pass other cars at an approach rate over 100 mile per hour. You certainly may die if you were to collide which could happen at any moment as far as you know. You are near death in that sence and it would be instant death not slow lingering sickness. Why no experience with that. Is it God that controls your soul , that there is no evidence we have, and God didn't know we were not going to die? Is your soul stupid and thought incorrectly that you would die. There is simply no convincing evidence that souls and after death exists. You live you die that's it.

 

[F1fan]

NDE? So, Not dead, right. I'm not dead right now. I have no EXPERIENCE. When someone is very sick we say near death. Okay I understand what you mean. So what about another sence in which you are NEAR death every day. When you drive you pass other cars at an approach rate over 100 mile per hour. You certainly may die if you were to collide which could happen at any moment as far as you know. You are near death in that sence and it would be instant death not slow lingering sickness. Why no experience with that. Is it God that controls your soul , that there is no evidence we have, and God didn't know we were not going to die? Is your soul stupid and thought incorrectly that you would die. There is simply no convincing evidence that souls and after death exists. You live you die that's it.

I'm waiting for theists to have a near life experience. I wanna hear all about it.

 

[Mark Charles Compton]

... but what reason would we have to assume that the magic was a positive "miracle"? If we're going to assume - for whatever reason - that there's magic going on, wouldn't it be plausible that the mysterious figure placed a temporary curse on the people who ended up at the doctor's office?

Mysterious figure: Kenneth Copeland. Famous televangelist preacher known for his lavish lifestyle and incredibly devout followers. Was recently in the media for claiming his power and responsibility for eradicating the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

Individual Cursed: Bonnie Parker. Innocent woman who was convinced that her cancer treatment regimen should be abandoned in favor of more prayer and monetary donations to Eagle Mountain International Church. Her personal diary revealed that she was convinced she had a lack of faith, evidenced by the cancer's persistence.

RIP Bonnie, you were indeed a woman of unshakable faith.

Faith/religion/spirituality, whatever you'll call it or label it, should be less of a congregational and more of an intrapersonal experience. In my opinion.

 

[blü 2]

Who created SARS? Where did it come from?

The first living things on earth were single-cell organisms. For three billion years they evolved, diversified, and continued to reproduce (and gave the earth an oxygen atmosphere). When the Cambrian explosion brought larger animals into existence, it didn't end the development of microorganisms. When modern H sap sap arrived some time in the last 100,000 years we as a species came equipped with immune systems that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't, giving rise to concepts like 'the plague'.

Humans in the last century got serious about bacterial warfare, and still are.

In the case of the present Covid epidemic, one theory of its origin is a variety of coronavirus that was capable of crossing over from animals ─ particular attention has been paid to the pangolin ─ to humans, and on at least one occasion did so.

Another theory says it escaped from a Chinese laboratory. That theory implies, but does not show, that Chinese scientists were trying to alter it, presumably to militarize it ─ but there are many innocent reasons why it might have been in a lab, assuming indeed that it ever relevantly was.

If you think God created the first cell capable of self-reproduction, then the only answer to your question is God, who is said to be omnipotent and omniscient, and therefore knew in advance all the consequences of [his] act in so doing.

Otherwise, nature is ultimately responsible, and the supplementary role, if any, of humans is undetermined.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

The latest and possibly best example is the movie The Matrix. What is my take? I can't be absolutely 100% sire that what I experience is "real". The probability of any of these scenarios being true is very low though. If I see i cliff ahead of me I don't jump off.

The unprovable assumptions of science thing? I agree with some of them but not all. Science is well aware of these limitations and tries to overcome them as best it can.

To me the probability is unknown. So we differ as even as skeptics. As for science, it is the same. We understand its methodology differently.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Who created SARS? Where did it come from?

If God exists and is good, then it came from a source that God had no control over, wasn't aware of, or was powerless to stop.

Do you think such a source can exist?

 

[Alien826]

I'd call it sound as you wrote it in the conditional form, but theists don't ask if God is real. They claim it as fact, in which case you would be correct if their reasoning were valid, but how many of these apologists can write a fallacy-free argument?

Just to make sure I'm understood, I'm using the strict definitions of "valid" and "sound". To remove the conditional form (that I shouldn't have used),

All scripture is true (premise)
Some scientific statements contradict scripture
Therefore those scientific statements are false. (conclusion)

That's perfectly valid as the conclusion follows from the premise. It's not sound though as the premise is false.

I'm sure you understand perfectly, but for the record ...

 

[Alien826]

To me the probability is unknown. So we differ as even as skeptics. As for science, it is the same. We understand its methodology differently.

I'll assume you know the principle of "Occam's razor", but I'll spell it out anyway. There are many ways of putting it, basically it boils down to "simpler hypotheses are generally better than the complex ones".

So applying it to what we are discussing, which is the simpler explanation?

1. My perceptions of the world are generally fairly accurate.
2. A mad scientist has me connected to a computer and is feeding me all the information that I think represents the world.

How many extra "facts" has explanation 2 added to the simple version? The existence of the mad scientist. The technology necessary to be able to do that. Lots more probably.

So, allowing that Occam's Razor is a guideline rather than proof, and that unlikely things are true sometimes, I don't say that the mad scientist hypothesis is totally untrue, but that it has a very very low probability. Labeling the probability of every such situation "unknown" is dangerous as it tends to give credence to all kinds of silly ideas that are more properly set aside as "unlikely". And in any case probability is based on known factors, not unsupported possibility. That's why it's called "probability" and not "prophesy".

One thing though, the "unlikely" world is much more fun than the boring one where everything is explained simply. That's why we have fiction.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I'll assume you know the principle of "Occam's razor", but I'll spell it out anyway. There are many ways of putting it, basically it boils down to "simpler hypotheses are generally better than the complex ones".

I word it differently. The simplest narrative that accounts for all relevant observed phenomena is preferred. Less complexity is inadequate, and more adds no additional explanatory or predictive value.

I learned recently what razor means in this context. It's meant literally. A razor "shaves off" possibilities from a list by identifying them as not worthy of consideration. Sagan said that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Hitchens said, "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." Popper said that for a theory to be considered scientific, it must be possible to disprove or refute it. All of these allow us to identify claims that can be safely ignored.

More lighthearted razors include Hanlon's Razor ("Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence or stupidity") and the duck test ("If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck").

Incidentally, I'd say that Hanlon's Razor needs to be reversed now given the way that the world is going: don't overlook malice as the explanation, as when somebody tells you they are merely trying to shore up voter integrity, but it turns out to make voting LESS democratic. Incompetence or malice? B.

Individual Cursed: Bonnie Parker. Innocent woman who was convinced that her cancer treatment regimen should be abandoned in favor of more prayer and monetary donations to Eagle Mountain International Church. Her personal diary revealed that she was convinced she had a lack of faith, evidenced by the cancer's persistence.

Thank God (or the multiverse) she found the faith necessary to refuse potentially life-saving treatment. I followed a website about anti-vaxxers who became seriously ill or died of Covid. The faith shown there was inspirational. People stood firm no matter how many other people they watched die, so great was their faith. Who doesn't admire that? Who can't see what a virtue faith is? I promise you that this story will make your jaw drop with amazement. Now THIS is faith!:

The Duncan Family of Shawnee, KS vs COVID (sorryantivaxxer.com)

Who created SARS? Where did it come from?

Whatever (not necessarily 'whoever') is the source of matter, energy, force, space, and time, all of which acting over billions of years led to galaxies of solar systems, life, and mind. Do you have any thoughts on that? I suspect you'd say Yahweh or Jehovah or Jesus, but my vote is for the multiverse, which, being unconscious, cannot be blamed.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I'll assume you know the principle of "Occam's razor", but I'll spell it out anyway. There are many ways of putting it, basically it boils down to "simpler hypotheses are generally better than the complex ones".

So applying it to what we are discussing, which is the simpler explanation?

1. My perceptions of the world are generally fairly accurate.
2. A mad scientist has me connected to a computer and is feeding me all the information that I think represents the world.

How many extra "facts" has explanation 2 added to the simple version? The existence of the mad scientist. The technology necessary to be able to do that. Lots more probably.

So, allowing that Occam's Razor is a guideline rather than proof, and that unlikely things are true sometimes, I don't say that the mad scientist hypothesis is totally untrue, but that it has a very very low probability. Labeling the probability of every such situation "unknown" is dangerous as it tends to give credence to all kinds of silly ideas that are more properly set aside as "unlikely". And in any case probability is based on known factors, not unsupported possibility. That's why it's called "probability" and not "prophesy".

One thing though, the "unlikely" world is much more fun than the boring one where everything is explained simply. That's why we have fiction.

Yeah, that is a rule in your mind.
"What is Occam's razor? Occam's razor is a principle of theory construction or evaluation according to which, other things equal, explanations that posit fewer entities, or fewer kinds of entities, are to be preferred to explanations that posit more."
It is a rule of thinking.

So here it is for a Boltzmann Brain universe variation.
You are caused by the universe to experience this in your mind.
You are now in one of 2 cases of a universe.
The real universe or in a BB universe with a computer running a simulation of your external experiences, you are a program on it and the computer has a powersource.
Now determine which one you are in based on that your experiences are the same.

 

[Mark Charles Compton]

Thank God (or the multiverse) she found the faith necessary to refuse potentially life-saving treatment. I followed a website about anti-vaxxers who became seriously ill or died of Covid. The faith shown there was inspirational. People stood firm no matter how many other people they watched die, so great was their faith. Who doesn't admire that? Who can't see what a virtue faith is?

Interesting take on my post. Potent in negativity. I'll pray to Megatron that he enlightens you on how he and the Autobots were in the wrong in their actions against the Decepticons.

 

[Alien826]

I word it differently. The simplest narrative that accounts for all relevant observed phenomena is preferred. Less complexity is inadequate, and more adds no additional explanatory or predictive value.

I learned recently what razor means in this context. It's meant literally. A razor "shaves off" possibilities from a list by identifying them as not worthy of consideration. Sagan said that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Hitchens said, "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." Popper said that for a theory to be considered scientific, it must be possible to disprove or refute it. All of these allow us to identify claims that can be safely ignored.

More lighthearted razors include Hanlon's Razor ("Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence or stupidity") and the duck test ("If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck").

Incidentally, I'd say that Hanlon's Razor needs to be reversed now given the way that the world is going: don't overlook malice as the explanation, as when somebody tells you they are merely trying to shore up voter integrity, but it turns out to make voting LESS democratic. Incompetence or malice? B.

Yes on the definition. I looked up and read that one as well as many others. I picked one that was fairly simple.

Thank God (or the multiverse) she found the faith necessary to refuse potentially life-saving treatment. I followed a website about anti-vaxxers who became seriously ill or died of Covid. The faith shown there was inspirational. People stood firm no matter how many other people they watched die, so great was their faith. Who doesn't admire that? Who can't see what a virtue faith is? I promise you that this story will make your jaw drop with amazement. Now THIS is faith!:

The Duncan Family of Shawnee, KS vs COVID (sorryantivaxxer.com)

Remember the Darwin awards? For those that don't it was series of tongue-in-cheek awards given to people who found new and amusing ways of removing themselves from the gene pool.

Question. Which human failing gets punished most in this world? 1) Evil 2) stupidity.

 

[Alien826]

Yeah, that is a rule in your mind.
"What is Occam's razor? Occam's razor is a principle of theory construction or evaluation according to which, other things equal, explanations that posit fewer entities, or fewer kinds of entities, are to be preferred to explanations that posit more."
It is a rule of thinking.

So here it is for a Boltzmann Brain universe variation.
You are caused by the universe to experience this in your mind.
You are now in one of 2 cases of a universe.
The real universe or in a BB universe with a computer running a simulation of your external experiences, you are a program on it and the computer has a powersource.
Now determine which one you are in based on that your experiences are the same.

I've now read this five times and it still doesn't make a lot of sense. Are you saying that there can be a possible world in which the simplest explanation that fits the known facts is the worst way to establish truth, and the best way is to choose the most complicated explanation? If that is true then we are hardly started with the mad scientist hypothesis, which must be defeated by a hypothesis where there are exactly 9001 scientists, each colored differently, with the colors specifically defined. The computer must be exactly 25X77X9 centimeters in dimension and stand on a platform exact positioned on the 87th parallel of the Earth. I could go on, but we could never come up with a winning hypothesis because someone could always come up with one that was more complicated.

 

[Mark Charles Compton]

Which human failing gets punished most in this world?

Good deeds!

No good deed goes unpunished.

Edit: I suppose that would make good deeds befall in the 'stupidity' category. Doing good is stupid, because evil will intelligently take advantage of it every time.

 

[Mark Charles Compton]

So here it is for a Boltzmann Brain universe variation.

Boltzmann Brain (from my perspective) is/was an attempt to propose one version of the God theory (one akin to Brahmanism, "the dreamer motif", if you ask me) in more theoretically scientific terms and as such was accepted and has since been debated philosophically.

Unless we arrive at some very fringe science that is out of our scope of observing with our current models and tools, it remains just as unfalsifiable as the God theories I propose they represent. Not that this reduces the entertainment and enjoyment I get from such thought experiments.

I still lean towards the Simulation Argument being what I perceive as the most probable of "realities". If so, there is an astoundingly more likelihood we are one of many simulations, than us belonging to 'base' reality. If you really think about it, it could be a real explanation to a lot of the unreal happenings that we have allowed to occur in our reality, sometimes it seems like a movie reel more than something that's really moving.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

Sure, but that means you're talking about what we (currently) know rather than the actual phenomena or event. By your definition, everything would have been a miracle at some point, since at some point there was no humans to understand them and some things will be miraculous to you but not to me (and vice-versa) since we will have different knowledge and understanding of the world.

The other problem is the fact that terms like "miracle" and "supernatural" generally aren't used to indicate simple lack of knowledge but to assert the intervention of some specific being or energy.

What's wrong with the word "unknown", since that is literally what your definition means? If you're really only saying that the distinction is between what we understand, why would you need any other words? Could it be that you actually want to imply something more specific than that?

That isn't what your OP said though. You asked atheists whether this single incident, without any further investigation or information, would convince them "that the spiritual side of life is a reality". You never asked for investigation or consideration of a possibility, you asked for a definitive conclusion on the spot.

The simple fact is that even such a strange set of circumstances provides literally zero reason to suspect that there could be anything "spiritual" or "supernatural", since no such things have even been demonstrated to exist. They could be related to the root cause but so could countless other hypotheticals. Based on the events described alone, there is no reason to even suspect anything "spiritual" or "supernatural" (even if you defined them in any meaningful way ). The reason most people would start by considering "mundane" causes is because pretty much everything we've ever come to understand has such a cause. That doesn't mean you automatically dismiss any possibility but you have to start somewhere, and it makes sense to start with things we actually know, understand and can study, rather than speculative ideas that operate on the basis of faith alone.

“No evidence”?
Then explain this….
Lincoln's ghost - Wikipedia
…and thousands of others that many respectable people have experienced.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Boltzmann Brain (from my perspective) is/was an attempt to propose one version of the God theory (one akin to Brahmanism, "the dreamer motif", if you ask me) in more theoretically scientific terms and as such was accepted and has since been debated philosophically.

Unless we arrive at some very fringe science that is out of our scope of observing with our current models and tools, it remains just as unfalsifiable as the God theories I propose they represent. Not that this reduces the entertainment and enjoyment I get from such thought experiments.

I still lean towards the Simulation Argument being what I perceive as the most probable of "realities". If so, there is an astoundingly more likelihood we are one of many simulations, than us belonging to 'base' reality. If you really think about it, it could be a real explanation to a lot of the unreal happenings that we have allowed to occur in our reality, sometimes it seems like a movie reel more than something that's really moving.

Well, I have faith the objective reality is epistemologically fair. That is my way to cope with that.