Science ... NOT God ...

[mikkel_the_dane]

And science *does* study religion *as an aspect of sociology*. We can, and do, study the range of beliefs people have.

But that is a different study than the study of which beliefs are true.

So, for example, it is a fact that there are people that believe the Earth is less than 10,000 years old. It is also a fact that it is about 5 billion years old in reality.

The point is that people often have beliefs that are false.

No, the fact is that people often have beliefs that are false. So what is next? It is a fact, that it is so, as you have just established so with science. So what follows from that?
Come on, with science please, if you can. And please don't smuggle morality or utility in there, unless you admit that you are doing science, if you address what follows/is next?

 

[Polymath257]

No, the fact is that people often have beliefs that are false. So what is next? It is a fact, that it is so, as you have just established so with science. So what follows from that?

Well, for one, it means that there is no reason to take a person's viewpoint seriously if it is in contradiction to evidence.

Come on, with science please, if you can. And please don't smuggle morality or utility in there, unless you admit that you are doing science, if you address what follows/is next?

You are right. Science does not address morality, or aesthetics, or goals. Those are all important aspects of life, but they are not 'true'. They are 'opinions'.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Well, for one, it means that there is no reason to take a person's viewpoint seriously if it is in contradiction to evidence.
...

Well, that depends, because it doesn't follow with reason. It follows with reason as it works for you. And bingo, we have left science and entered morality and utility. There is more of course, but that is morality and utility and not science, so it doesn't belong here.
I am just a skeptic, who points out the limits of reason, logic, truth, evidence, objectivity and what not.

 

[Polymath257]

Well, that depends, because it doesn't follow with reason. It follows with reason as it works for you. And bingo, we have left science and entered morality and utility. There is more of course, but that is morality and utility and not science, so it doesn't belong here.
I am just a skeptic, who points out the limits of reason, logic, truth, evidence, objectivity and what not.

OK, so when claims about reality are made by religions (say, a worldwide flood), then science can be used to say they are wrong.

And when claims about morality, aesthetics, goals, etc are made, science can *inform*, but is unable to do more than that.

If this is all you are saying, then I agree.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Like i said, youl always come on here asking for evidence, youl get the same evidence from any religious person, and then youl deny it. You wont convince me or other religious folk we are wrong and we wont convince you.

I could go alot deeper into this evidence with details, but it will be a waste of time, unless we make it about the audiance and the subject and not about eachother.



If I remember correctly you do not even understand the concept of evidence and ran away from offers to discuss the concept. And yes, the DNA claims have been substanciated. Of course you can't support any of your claims, but if you make a clear claim about DNA I will post a refutation for you.

By the way, you should not lie about others. Let's discuss the concept of scientific evidence. You remember, the one that you do not understand.

As a Christian do you think that it is proper behavior to troll and lie?


Is it okay to "lie for Jesus"?

I offered to support my claim. All you could do was to make false claims, bear false witness against your neighbor, and run away.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

OK, so when claims about reality are made by religions (say, a worldwide flood), then science can be used to say they are wrong.

And when claims about morality, aesthetics, goals, etc are made, science can *inform*, but is unable to do more than that.

If this is all you are saying, then I agree.

We agree.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Just claiming that evidence does not exists does you no good. You have never once provided any reason that your so called none evidence demonstrates anything except your own self-deception and personal desire to really, really, really find some reason to follow your beliefs.

I suppose all those science degrees and 30 years working in science probably have not helped you much.



Saves me time and if the shoe fits, wear it. Your words are best applied to you.

You could not even point any "evidence". This is typical of creationists. They make false claims but when push comes to shove they run away because they know that they are wrong.

You also have the problem that when it comes to evidence that you are either lying or you do not have any,and since you refuse to even discuss the topic it appears that you know that you are wrong. Your own actions make it look as if you know that you are lying.

Let's correct this. Let's discuss the concept of evidence. You will be a better debater if you understand the concept.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

Like i said, youl always come on here asking for evidence, youl get the same evidence from any religious person, and then youl deny it. You wont convince me or other religious folk we are wrong and we wont convince you.

I could go alot deeper into this evidence with details, but it will be a waste of time, unless we make it about the audiance and the subject and not about eachother.



If I remember correctly you do not even understand the concept of evidence and ran away from offers to discuss the concept. And yes, the DNA claims have been substanciated. Of course you can't support any of your claims, but if you make a clear claim about DNA I will post a refutation for you.

By the way, you should not lie about others. Let's discuss the concept of scientific evidence. You remember, the one that you do not understand.

You're the one that doesn't really understand the situation, and you prove it with statements about me like: "Of course you can't support any of your claims"

I haven't made any claims.

You're the one who makes claims when you insist that "God" was involved in anything. I don't make the claim that God wasn't involved. All I state is that I don't believe the claim you have made. I may pull into the discussion points that appear to run contrary to your own (like the FACT that "God" did not "sign" DNA, nor is there any way - scientific or otherwise - to directly link DNA to "the handiwork of God" - otherwise the scientific community would easily be in an uproar over such a thing having been discovered) in order to try and show you why YOU shouldn't be making your claim - but I admit I have no claim to substitute for many of the claims you make. I have no "atheist version" of the claims you make. There isn't even such a thing. And this is how I know you don't understand. You (and tons of theists who think incorrectly like you) keep making statements that frame the situation up incorrectly, all the while seeming to think you know exactly what is going on.

You have made the claim. And you don't present directly correlating evidence for God - like you want to pretend you do. Otherwise it would not be so easy for the non-believing world to simply deny it. Because that's the thing, a very large portion of the purposefully non-believing community does adhere to beliefs/knowledge that are based in empirical, real-world, testable, reproducible evidence. The kind that YOU DON'T HAVE for your God. You don't have it. You don't. Stop saying that you do. If you did, you'd put the world into a tailspin, and be one of the most famous people on Earth. But you haven't, and you're not. All you have is the same old tired thought exercises, pointing a finger that you just pulled out of your nose at "nature" (as if that is supposed to mean anything), and hopeful philosophical drivel that has been paraded around for hundreds of years in many cases. Which is why I can confidently state that the "evidence" you keep talking about is garbage. Absolute garbage. And it will continue to prove itself so when contrasted with the many things in the this world for which we do have a sufficient caliber of evidence.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Just claiming that evidence does not exists does you no good. You have never once provided any reason that your so called none evidence demonstrates anything except your own self-deception and personal desire to really, really, really find some reason to follow your beliefs.

I suppose all those science degrees and 30 years working in science probably have not helped you much.



Saves me time and if the shoe fits, wear it. Your words are best applied to you.

I disagree and the bulk of the evidence is on my side. The evidence of your posts goes to support what I have said. All you are doing is living in denial and repeating back what others post for lack of anything valid of your own to use.

 

[Windwalker]

See, it's stuff like this that throws me of. I don't know if you are speaking literally or figuratively.
Figuratively, I agree.
Literally, I do not.

It's both actually. Not to make this too obtuse here, which is easy to do, every way we have to talk about these things are not literal. They're all figurative. To have a mind/body split is a model of the different domains, dividing the mental and biological domains. But these domains are not actual separate things. That is the filter of a Cartesian dualism that we look at these things through, and then the mind plays a little trick on everyone who uses language, it sees that this is a real separation. It's all figurative.

In Buddhism for instance, and many other cultures outside the West, this division does not exist. They refer to as bodymind. It all interconnects and interrelates. And that particular view of it to me, fits the highly complex and integrated relationships between these basic domains much better that this Western dualism. One needs to only engage in some good qigong mediation practices to begin to understand this. I practice taijijuan, which is making me even more acutely aware of this on a "bodymind" level, beyond just theoretical models of the mind, or assumptions of language which affect the reasoning of the mind.

So with that in mind....

Yes, your mindset can influence the events in your life. But it's a social effect. Your mindset influences your behaviour and body language . That in turn determines who people perceive you ("he always looks angry", "he's got a great vibe!",...). These are literally perceptions of your physical presence and composure.

Sure. Yes. What begins in the mind reaches out through thought into the manifest world through the body, as well as other modes of manifestations beyond body language. There are things we are perceptively aware of on an unconscious level that we haven't begun to understand yet. Life is quite Mysterious indeed. The key is to try to not let our basic models of "the way things are" interfere with the way things really are.

Not that that means go off half-cocked into la-la happy New Age fantasy land. There has to be some actual grounding at some level or another. The key is though to understand that all of it, include science as a language, is a metaphor for Reality. They not Reality itself, like the Cartesian Dualism split of mind and body. In Reality, nothing is separate.

This is "aura". It's not something magical or spiritual or whatever that "surrounds" you. It's rather subtleties in your facial expression, composure, body language, etc... Our social brains pick up on those signals and we then create an image of you and label it. "looks trust worthy" or "looks gentle" or "stay away from him - bad vibes" etc.

Certainly all of this is true. We have mirror neurons where we will "try on" the other person's face though subtly mimicking it in order to compute what sort of thought energy is behind that in the other person. Yes, our brain is a reading machine. I'd just caution reducing it to that and that alone. I think there is more to the world than what our current set of eyes we are using can see. Science is not the end of understanding, but a tool to further exploration and understanding. Reason is not the only set of eyes we see with.

In that, figurative, sense - I agree. Your mindset will influence your "manifestation" and how you are socially perceived. But it's not going to influence weather patterns. And it's not something "mysterious" or "mystical" or what-have-you. It's just all physical cause and effect.

I think another problem with that lens of the West is that they view anything they haven't yet "proven" to be magical, or supernatural. The things I am talking about are very much part of the natural world. I don't see that there is a division to be made in reality, only in how we frame the world and where we like to draw the line to keep us from going insane.

We like the think in abstract / spiritual terms about such things and cultures around the world have come up with such labels for it: chakra's, ki, aura, spirit, soul,... But really, it's just external physical manifestation / expression of your emotional state of mind, in the form of body language.

These are natural systems. They are languages, just as our sciences have their languages. One can interpret both as magical. That reflects the person understanding them, and not the systems themselves. They are metaphors for real, explored experiences. And in many cases, especially when we are talking the East, these "maps" of the interiors are just that. Western science does not map out interior landscapes like the mind, until you get over to those like Freud and Jung and modern psychology.

A materialist view of reality is not a complete picture, by any means. The interior landscape interfaces with the exterior physical world in a bidirectional way. It's not one over the other. But both we need to explore and understand. The East in their systems of energy centers, for instance, is not just magical thinking at all, but based on practices of ages of those engaged in looking within. They are very sophisticated maps of human consciousness.

Just because some California New Age person fluffs them all up like a marshmallow at a campfire and goes, "Oooh, my Chakras need alignment. Let me put my crystal on my heart center... Om.....", does not mean they are not rational systems. Do they ruin Quantum Physics for you too?

In either case, I don't think really we can disagree that thoughts do create reality. And neither of imagine it "kwafs" into existence some from "thought to matter", without some form of medium, or agency.

 

[Jollybear]

As a Christian do you think that it is proper behavior to troll and lie?


Is it okay to "lie for Jesus"?

I offered to support my claim. All you could do was to make false claims, bear false witness against your neighbor, and run away.

As a atheist do you think that it is proper behavior to troll and lie?


Is it okay to "lie for science"?

I offered to support my claim. All you could do was to make false claims, bear false witness against your neighbor, and run away.

You could not even point any "evidence". This is typical of creationists. They make false claims but when push comes to shove they run away because they know that they are wrong.

You also have the problem that when it comes to evidence that you are either lying or you do not have any,and since you refuse to even discuss the topic it appears that you know that you are wrong. Your own actions make it look as if you know that you are lying.

Let's correct this. Let's discuss the concept of evidence. You will be a better debater if you understand the concept.

You could not even point to any "evidence". This is typical of naturalists. They make false claims but when push comes to shove they run away because they know that they are wrong.

You also have the problem that when it comes to evidence that you are either lying or you do not have any, and since you refuse to even discuss the topic it appears that you know that you are wrong. Your own actions make it look as if you know that you are lying.

Let's correct this. Let's discuss the concept of evidence. You will be a better debater if you understand the concept.

 

[Jollybear]

You're the one that doesn't really understand the situation, and you prove it with statements about me like: "Of course you can't support any of your claims"

I haven't made any claims.

You're the one who makes claims when you insist that "God" was involved in anything. I don't make the claim that God wasn't involved. All I state is that I don't believe the claim you have made. I may pull into the discussion points that appear to run contrary to your own (like the FACT that "God" did not "sign" DNA, nor is there any way - scientific or otherwise - to directly link DNA to "the handiwork of God" - otherwise the scientific community would easily be in an uproar over such a thing having been discovered) in order to try and show you why YOU shouldn't be making your claim - but I admit I have no claim to substitute for many of the claims you make. I have no "atheist version" of the claims you make. There isn't even such a thing. And this is how I know you don't understand. You (and tons of theists who think incorrectly like you) keep making statements that frame the situation up incorrectly, all the while seeming to think you know exactly what is going on.

You have made the claim. And you don't present directly correlating evidence for God - like you want to pretend you do. Otherwise it would not be so easy for the non-believing world to simply deny it. Because that's the thing, a very large portion of the purposefully non-believing community does adhere to beliefs/knowledge that are based in empirical, real-world, testable, reproducible evidence. The kind that YOU DON'T HAVE for your God. You don't have it. You don't. Stop saying that you do. If you did, you'd put the world into a tailspin, and be one of the most famous people on Earth. But you haven't, and you're not. All you have is the same old tired thought exercises, pointing a finger that you just pulled out of your nose at "nature" (as if that is supposed to mean anything), and hopeful philosophical drivel that has been paraded around for hundreds of years in many cases. Which is why I can confidently state that the "evidence" you keep talking about is garbage. Absolute garbage. And it will continue to prove itself so when contrasted with the many things in the this world for which we do have a sufficient caliber of evidence.

You're the one that doesn't really understand the situation, and you prove it with statements about me like: "Of course you can't support any of your claims"

I haven't made any claims to proof, only evidence and inference.

You're the one who makes claims when you insist that "God" was NOT involved in anything. I don't make the claim that God was involved via proof. All I state is that I don't believe the claim you have made. I may pull into the discussion points that appear to run contrary to your own (like the FACT that DNA is a CODE, implying intelligence, nor is there any way - scientific or otherwise - to directly link DNA to not being a code- otherwise the scientific community would easily be in an uproar over such a thing having been not discovered) in order to try and show you why YOU shouldn't be making your claim - but I admit I have no claim to substitute for many of the claims you make. I have no "theist proof version" of the claims you make. There isn't even such a thing. And this is how I know you don't understand. You (and tons of atheists who think incorrectly like you) keep making statements that frame the situation up incorrectly, all the while seeming to think you know exactly what is going on.

You have made the claim. And you don't present directly correlating evidence for a none God - like you want to pretend you do. Otherwise it would not be so easy for the believing world to simply deny it. Because that's the thing, a very large portion of the purposefully believing community does adhere to beliefs/knowledge that are based in empirical, real-world, testable, reproducible evidence. The kind that YOU DON'T HAVE for your none God. You don't have it. You don't. Stop saying that you do. If you did, you'd put the world into a tailspin, and be one of the most famous people on Earth. But you haven't, and you're not. All you have is the same old tired thought exercises, pointing a finger that you just pulled out of your nose at "nature" (as if that is supposed to mean anything), and hopeful philosophical drivel that has been paraded around for hundreds of years in many cases. Which is why I can confidently state that the "evidence" you keep talking about is garbage. Absolute garbage. And it will continue to prove itself so when contrasted with the many things in the this world for which we do have a sufficient caliber of evidence.

 

[Jollybear]

I disagree and the bulk of the evidence is on my side. The evidence of your posts goes to support what I have said. All you are doing is living in denial and repeating back what others post for lack of anything valid of your own to use.

I disagree and the bulk of the evidence is on my side. The evidence of your posts goes to support what I have said. All you are doing is living in denial.

 

[ratiocinator]

...like the FACT that DNA is a CODE, implying intelligence...

Are you for real? I mean apart from the silly parroting, is this supposed to be a serious point? Really?

 

[Audie]

Are you for real? I mean apart from the silly parroting, is this supposed to be a serious point? Really?

Uh, no, this is, actually, are you seriously asking
a real question here? I dont think so.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I disagree and the bulk of the evidence is on my side. The evidence of your posts goes to support what I have said. All you are doing is living in denial.

Sure it is. That is why you are in second grade mode and just copying others and repeating it back.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Are you for real? I mean apart from the silly parroting, is this supposed to be a serious point? Really?

Yes he is. So you have seen his best argument for his position. It's a daisy. Genuine creationist honesty and logic.

 

[MonkeyFire]

Skepticism should be no more welcomed into science than faith is. Howeverthere is anything wrong with either of the two things, there just opposites.

 

[Jollybear]

Sure it is. That is why you are in second grade mode and just copying others and repeating it back.

If the shoe fits, wear it. Your words are best applied to you.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

If the shoe fits, wear it. Your words are best applied to you.

So, your best response is not to provide a valid argument, backing it with logic, reason and evidence, but to get all snarky and throw a tantrum.

At least you are consistent.