What does science think will disprove God?And what do Christians think will prove God?

[TagliatelliMonster]

If God did not exist, neither would we.

Doesn't follow.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

You can try an insult in every post as much as you want if it satisfies you, but its no argument.

The so called survey is a no go. 7 billion people in the world. This is worse than the worst induction you have provided. In order to eliminate something like this, you have to reach very very far in doing the research. And your own so called great 'study' says "although some of the results of individual studies suggest a positive effect of intercessory prayer". In your study, even if one human being in the entire world has a positive effect due to prayer, your entire thesis fails because your claim was you or your "we" group have proven it does not work.

Very poor.

The only poor thing here, is your grasp on statistical correlation.

Even a broken clock depicts the time accurately twice a day.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

one of the reasons various multiverse models are deemed credible, is because introducing infinite possibilities in this manner alters the probability of our existence, from negligible to inevitable.

This seems to assume that multi-verse models were "invented" with some specific cop-out purpose in mind.
That is off course not true.

In the words of Lawrence Krauss (paraphrasing): "It's not arbitrary. Physicists didn't purposefully create multi-verse models. Instead, we have been pushed to it by predictions of other theories. Some of us while kicking and screaming, like me - because I don't even like the multi-verse. I think it's messy and not elegant. But I'm also intellectually honest and if that's where the evidence pushes me, then that's where I will be going"

 

[joelr]

That’s interesting, when did “we” find God does not answer prayers? Because millions of people around the world would assure you that He does and has.

For my own part, I changed from a hopeless drunk obsessed with alcohol, to a person who hardly ever thinks about a drink. I take no personal credit for this miraculous turnaround in my life; all the credit goes to a God of my understanding.

Large studies have been done and shown that prayer has no effect.

"The results showed that prayers had no beneficial effect on patients’ recovery 30 days after surgery. Overall, 59% of patients who knew they were being prayed for had complications, compared to 51% of the patients who did not receive prayers. The difference was not considered statistically significant."
Largest Study of Prayer to Date Finds It Has No Power to Heal.


People go through recovery in the millions. Some relapse many many times, some don't make it and others do. Usually after a series of tries many people will be able to make it through a program or even a self induced recovery.
But did you have a support group? A sponsor, friends and other members to help with support? Are you forgetting about all that? Atheists and people in all types of religions and spiritual groups have stories about beating addiction. Prayer also gives people an emotional support system. In AA they say "give up and let God", it's a psychological trick to get you to believe in some outer power which gives hope. When one has hope then they have more tools to succeed.
But some people pray for recovery and then overdose.
You can give credit to whatever you want, Hindu addicts who are religious will swear Krishna healed their addiction. But that doesn't mean Krishna really did anything. It was a psychological tool, we all have the power to make changes.

So millions of Hindu telling you that Krishna answers their prayers isn't going to demonstrate to you that the Hindu demigod is real. It's confirmation bias.
If prayer actually worked we would see it in mortality rates. But disease and even addiction follows probabilities. If 60% of all people in AA manage to stay clean for 1 year after 5 tries then you will see that play out the larger amount of cases you look at. If a deity were helping out it would be impossible to map out statistics.

Also why would a God heal one person of an addiction while millions of children under 7 still suffer stage 4 cancer?

Proper studies on prayer were done and it produced no results.

 

[RestlessSoul]

This seems to assume that multi-verse models were "invented" with some specific cop-out purpose in mind.
That is off course not true.

In the words of Lawrence Krauss (paraphrasing): "It's not arbitrary. Physicists didn't purposefully create multi-verse models. Instead, we have been pushed to it by predictions of other theories. Some of us while kicking and screaming, like me - because I don't even like the multi-verse. I think it's messy and not elegant. But I'm also intellectually honest and if that's where the evidence pushes me, then that's where I will be going"

Well I didn't say that multiverse theories were created with the express purpose of overcoming probability issues thrown up by the various observed cosmic coincidences; only that they are afforded credibility in part because they appear to solve these problem in a convenient manner.

I have no issue with that Lawrence Krauss quote btw.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Large studies have been done and shown that prayer has no effect.

"The results showed that prayers had no beneficial effect on patients’ recovery 30 days after surgery. Overall, 59% of patients who knew they were being prayed for had complications, compared to 51% of the patients who did not receive prayers. The difference was not considered statistically significant."
Largest Study of Prayer to Date Finds It Has No Power to Heal.


People go through recovery in the millions. Some relapse many many times, some don't make it and others do. Usually after a series of tries many people will be able to make it through a program or even a self induced recovery.
But did you have a support group? A sponsor, friends and other members to help with support? Are you forgetting about all that? Atheists and people in all types of religions and spiritual groups have stories about beating addiction. Prayer also gives people an emotional support system. In AA they say "give up and let God", it's a psychological trick to get you to believe in some outer power which gives hope. When one has hope then they have more tools to succeed.
But some people pray for recovery and then overdose.
You can give credit to whatever you want, Hindu addicts who are religious will swear Krishna healed their addiction. But that doesn't mean Krishna really did anything. It was a psychological tool, we all have the power to make changes.

So millions of Hindu telling you that Krishna answers their prayers isn't going to demonstrate to you that the Hindu demigod is real. It's confirmation bias.
If prayer actually worked we would see it in mortality rates. But disease and even addiction follows probabilities. If 60% of all people in AA manage to stay clean for 1 year after 5 tries then you will see that play out the larger amount of cases you look at. If a deity were helping out it would be impossible to map out statistics.

Also why would a God heal one person of an addiction while millions of children under 7 still suffer stage 4 cancer?

Proper studies on prayer were done and it produced no results.

Thanks for providing the link to the study.

Regardless of it’s findings, I’ll continue to pray every day, because lived experience tells me that my life is immeasurably better in every sense, if I do. Prayer, in my experience, does not give one immunity from illness, nor from life; that is not it’s proper purpose. But daily, conscious contact with a higher power makes the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune far easier to bear. And I can introduce you to a great many people who would willingly testify to that.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Well I didn't say that multiverse theories were created with the express purpose of overcoming probability issues thrown up by the various observed cosmic coincidences; only that they are afforded credibility in part because they appear to solve these problem in a convenient manner.

I disagree.
First, because it's not even clear that these are problems in the first place.

Secondly, the credibility of multi-verse predictions of certain hypothesis is mostly dependent on the evidence for those hypothesis. So at best, I'ld say that these predictions are compatible with the things we observe that you are calling "problems".

I don't see how this gives it "more credibility" then it does to any other thing your imagination could produce which would also be compatible with it.

When you say that it gives it "more credibility", I understand that as being "it is evidence in support of it". But merely being compatible with something doesn't mean that that something is evidence in support of it...

I have no issue with that Lawrence Krauss quote btw.

cool.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Thanks for providing the link to the study.

Regardless of it’s findings, I’ll continue to pray every day, because lived experience tells me that my life is immeasurably better in every sense, if I do. Prayer, in my experience, does not give one immunity from illness, nor from life; that is not it’s proper purpose. But daily, conscious contact with a higher power makes the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune far easier to bear. And I can introduce you to a great many people who would willingly testify to that.

It's called the placebo effect.

People can find comfort in a great many things.
I submit it's not the act of praying itself that has this effect, but something else that underpins it which can be achieved by very different means as well.

 

[RestlessSoul]

It's called the placebo effect.

People can find comfort in a great many things.
I submit it's not the act of praying itself that has this effect, but something else that underpins it which can be achieved by very different means as well.

Yeah, could be that. What matters, as always, is what works. If faith enriches the quality of a person’s life, then it is proven to be effective, even if it is misplaced.

 

[RestlessSoul]

I disagree.
First, because it's not even clear that these are problems in the first place.

Secondly, the credibility of multi-verse predictions of certain hypothesis is mostly dependent on the evidence for those hypothesis. So at best, I'ld say that these predictions are compatible with the things we observe that you are calling "problems".

I don't see how this gives it "more credibility" then it does to any other thing your imagination could produce which would also be compatible with it.

When you say that it gives it "more credibility", I understand that as being "it is evidence in support of it". But merely being compatible with something doesn't mean that that something is evidence in support of it...



cool.

As far as I am aware, all the evidence for the existence of the multiverse is theoretical. I’m told that these theories are supported by mathematical models, but unless you take the niche structuralist view that the fabric of the natural world is the sum of the laws and formulas which can be used to describe it, then these theories are built on non-empirical abstractions. Which, I concede, doesn’t make them wrong, or without value. But it does make them, in a sense, castles in the air, albeit convincing ones.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

As far as I am aware, all the evidence for the existence of the multiverse is theoretical. I’m told that these theories are supported by mathematical models, but unless you take the niche structuralist view that the fabric of the natural world is the sum of the laws and formulas which can be used to describe it, then these theories are built on non-empirical abstractions. Which, I concede, doesn’t make them wrong, or without value. But it does make them, in a sense, castles in the air, albeit convincing ones.

A note. Sometimes some people conflate words like predict, evidence and theory for different usages. I think that this is at play here. I mean I seem to recall one cosmological scientist liking these debates to theology. Not that theoretical physics is wrong and that. But some people don't seem to understand how come it is termed theoretical physics.

 

[RestlessSoul]

But isn't that the point? That their asserted supernatural perceptions are in each case cultural artifacts, because gods are something humans tend to do? How can Shintoism, which held the emperor to be divine as well as human, and still holds that your ancestors, and miscellaneous ghosts of other humans, are around you all the time, be seen as having any particular supernatural perceptions in common with the Abrahamics? With Hindu beliefs? And so on and so on. Why doesn't Christianity hold with reincarnation as the recycling of souls on earth, or search for Nirvana? I don't see how the founders or expounders of these religions could be looking at the same landscape, let alone seeing the same entities in it, or perceiving their functions.

I don't think the things in common that James attributes to religions are of the same kind as I'm talking about (which are number, nature, form, function, demands of particular gods, and their purported usual environment). I also think his views make more sense to dualists (in the Cartesian sense) than they do to me.

(I should perhaps make it clear that outside of RF, where I enjoy the debate boards, I'm happy for people to believe as pleases them as long as they treat their fellow humans with decency, respect and inclusion.)

Religions may be part characterised as cultural artefacts, sure. That’s certainly true of the ritual elements, mythologies, temples and places of worship, religious art etc. But these are the superficial things, magnificent though they may sometimes be. At the core of all spiritual and religious practice, is the ambition to unite Man, collectively and individually, with His community, with His Creator, and with all of creation.

Im sure this is as true of Shintoism, of which I confess I know very little, as it is of Zen Buddhism. Doesn’t the latter incorporate some elements of Shinto along with elements of Taoism and Mahayana Buddhism? There is in Japanese culture a deep reverence for nature as a transcendent spiritual phenomenon, a quality of Shinto which finds expression also in the poetry and art of Zen monks.

I suspect the deification of Hirohito may have been an aberration, as the deification of their emperors was an aberration in pagan Rome; a culture more familiar with monotheism than us generally acknowledged; the image of the Christian God as a bearded old man in the sky, having it’s roots in the character of Jupiter (Deis Pater, Lord of light and sky). And so on, but we are perhaps back to cultural artefacts. The ephemera, distinct from the universal substance.

 

[asherjaechester]

Science and religion aren’t exclusive to each other. You don’t have to deny one to believe the other. Science is real and concrete, the only people who deny it are lunatics.

In terms of atheism vs theism? Honestly not sure it depends who you ask.

 

[blü 2]

At the c ore of all spiritual and religious practice, is the ambition to unite Man, collectively and individually, with His community, with His Creator, and with all of creation.

At the core of all religious practice is the evolved tendency to act in ways that favor living long enough to reproduce, and the coherence and cooperativeness of the tribe's members is a major part of human practice, with many other examples in nature. Our evolved moral tendencies ─ child nurture and protection, dislike of the one who harms, like of fairness and reciprocity, respect for authority, loyalty to the group, a sense of self-worth through self-denial, together with a conscience and a capacity for empathy ─ are appropriate to us as gregarious primates.

And that's why gods change as their societies change ─ a god without a congregation is a dead god.

So it's not so important what form the supernatural beings take. What's important is that all members of the tribe agree on the stories about them.

For instance, Yahweh begins, archaeological evidence suggests, around 1500 BCE as one more deity in the Canaanite pantheon, with a consort Asherah. By the time the bible as we know it appears, [he] and Asherah have divorced, but to [his] followers [he]'s the chief god among many. Not till after the Babylonian captivity does [he] become the only god. Then in the 4th century CE Christians declare [he]'s triune, by the 18th century [he]'s losing [his] taste for slavery, in the 20th century [he] slowly gets real about divorce, and by the end is starting to become sexless, and in this century tolerant of sexual orientation and gender diversity ... and so on.

Just as we'd expect from a cultural artifact.

 

[joelr]

Thanks for providing the link to the study.

Regardless of it’s findings, I’ll continue to pray every day, because lived experience tells me that my life is immeasurably better in every sense, if I do. Prayer, in my experience, does not give one immunity from illness, nor from life; that is not it’s proper purpose. But daily, conscious contact with a higher power makes the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune far easier to bear. And I can introduce you to a great many people who would willingly testify to that.

They cannot testify that they make contact with a higher power. They can testify it causes relaxation, changes in brain states and so on. It could seem like contact but it's all in the mind, as far as we can tell.

 

[RestlessSoul]

They cannot testify that they make contact with a higher power. They can testify it causes relaxation, changes in brain states and so on. It could seem like contact but it's all in the mind, as far as we can tell.

Each man or woman is free to interpret their own experience in a manner that makes sense to them, and to testify accordingly.

You, of course, are free to dismiss these testimonies. However, if you do not share the experience they are based on, then you leave yourself open to the accusation that you are dismissing what you do not understand, for your own personal and therefore entirely subjective reasons.

 

[joelr]

Each man or woman is free to interpret their own experience in a manner that makes sense to them, and to testify accordingly.

Sure, thats just saying a met a higher power. I can say I was abducted by aliens. Unless I can provide evidence it isn't going to be considered an alien abduction.

You, of course, are free to dismiss these testimonies. However, if you do not share the experience they are based on, then you leave yourself open to the accusation that you are dismissing what you do not understand, for your own personal and therefore entirely subjective reasons.

No I'm not dismissing them. I'm saying they cannot demonstrate any higher entities exist. If they can then they should. But so far no one has been able to. So we cannot say they make contact with higher powers. We can say they feel as if they had contact with higher powers. But evidence is needed before its officially said they make contact with higher powers.
Maybe one of the higher powers can tell them how to quantize gravity, that would be a start. Or if I know one I'll hold a 9 digit number from pi in my mind and they can have the higher power tell them. That would also be a good start.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Sure, thats just saying a met a higher power. I can say I was abducted by aliens. Unless I can provide evidence it isn't going to be considered an alien abduction.








No I'm not dismissing them. I'm saying they cannot demonstrate any higher entities exist. If they can then they should. But so far no one has been able to. So we cannot say they make contact with higher powers. We can say they feel as if they had contact with higher powers. But evidence is needed before its officially said they make contact with higher powers.
Maybe one of the higher powers can tell them how to quantize gravity, that would be a start. Or if I know one I'll hold a 9 digit number from pi in my mind and they can have the higher power tell them. That would also be a good start.

You are assuming that there is some sort of onus or obligation on the part of those who claim to have had life changing spiritual experiences, to persuade you of their veracity. This assumption is erroneous.

The hurdles you throw up to protect your intellect from the prospect of incursion by faith, are barriers to no one but yourself.

 

[Audie]

You are assuming that there is some sort of onus or obligation on the part of those who claim to have had life changing spiritual experiences, to persuade you of their veracity. This assumption is erroneous.

The hurdles you throw up to protect your intellect from the prospect of incursion by faith, are barriers to no one but yourself.

Same can be said of any woo woo story.
So?

 

[RestlessSoul]

Same can be said of any woo woo story.
So?

So Luke 6:42 perhaps