Not to mention:

1) One part of a book being "true" doesn't mean the rest of the book is also "true".

2) Even if someone correctly predicted something, that doesn't mean their explanation for how they got the information should be believed without question.

And that's pretending the "prophecies" in the bible have any merit in the first place. They would only further convince someone who already believed the book was magic, or someone who will just believe anything.

(March 4, 2016 at 10:03 pm)AJW333 Wrote: gobbledigock?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=moK7nE_UCqU

(March 5, 2016 at 2:07 am)robvalue Wrote:

(March 4, 2016 at 7:02 pm)AJW333 Wrote: OK, I am up to speed. You seem reluctant to acknowledge "laws" and prefer to talk about "models" just in case the law should suddenly up and change itself. I'm not sure whether you believe there are any concrete laws of nature at all. Do you think there are?

Considering gravity, if I was to observe a heavy rock just float off into the sky, would that be a violation of the law of gravity or would we have to change our "model" of how gravity works?

Thanks for watching the video.

In what way am I reluctant to say they are laws? Did you ignore everything I said about the difference between the actual law and our models? You are equivocating, and it's hard to know whether this is deliberate or accidental. The more times this is explained to you, the more likely it is you're simply being dishonest.

Not trying to be difficult, it's just the way you expressed yourself. At 4:20 on the video you said, "At no point do we say these are the laws of nature, we impose them on reality......reality could just change if it wanted.....that's all wrong now, you've got to do something else............you can informally say that what our theory of gravity is, is a law of nature but that's informal and not accurate."

 You then go on to say that the law (of gravity) is not the same as the model, that you are equivocating.

So when I listened to this, you appear somewhat reluctant to refer to the law of gravity, in preference to talking about the "theory of gravity" and "models of gravity." This seems odd to me given that there are laws of gravitation that are well accepted, reliable and testable.

(March 5, 2016 at 2:07 am)robvalue Wrote: Reality/nature works a certain way. However it works, those are the laws. It appears, so far, that many of those laws stay the same and can be usefully modelled. There is still no guarantee they will always stay the way they are, or that we haven't missed some detail which we will find out later.

Again, you're assuming our current models are perfect. You give science way too much credit.

Given that we use these "fallible models" to build supercomputers, rockets and nuclear power stations, It would appear that we have a pretty good handle on the laws of physics.

(March 5, 2016 at 2:07 am)robvalue Wrote: If you saw a heavy rock float away, that would potentially be evidence that our theory of gravity needs refining.

Or that there was evidence of supernatural activity

(March 5, 2016 at 2:07 am)robvalue Wrote: Of course, some guy just saying they have seen it is not evidence it has actually happened. It would need to be reproduced in order to be useful

. In general, the reliance on anecdotes that can't be tested betrays the desperation of theists to sneak in conclusions. But they are "only cheating themself". They don't need to convince me, after all. You're trying to imply it happens just one time, and that's supernatural. What it would be in that case is an unexplained event that doesn't fit our current models. Again, trying to call it supernatural is the argument from ignorance.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this isn't true. What I'm saying is that if something violates the laws of physics, like a rock floating off into space, then that qualifies as a supernatural event, not just something requiring some further modelling or redefining the law of gravity.

You're committing the same equivocation over and over. I'm going to give up now.

If it makes you happy to call things supernatural, you do it.

(March 4, 2016 at 7:22 pm)AJW333 Wrote: At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this isn't true. What I'm saying is that if something violates the laws of physics, like a rock floating off into space, then that qualifies as a supernatural event, not just something requiring some further modelling or redefining the law of gravity.

Not wanting to sound like a broken record either, but I repeat - alert us when rocks floating off into space are an observed and confirmed occurence.

And, again, not wanting to sound like a broken record. Johnny Noname claiming to have seen it happening and other people buying his tale with awe, doesn't count as confirmation. Scientists observing the phenomenon would do nicely, thank you very much.

If god was something real, you wouldn't need all this sneaking around, switching terms, trying to create "reasonable doubt" as if you're OJ's lawyer, and then saying "just maybe it was god..."

This is how someone makes themselves feel better about something they already believe, for other reasons. Because I can't believe for one second anyone believes because of this nonsense. Even if there was something supernatural, you're no closer to finding out what it is, you still have an uncrossable chasm to correlate it with a storybook.

And then you have to explain why I should care, even if you're right.

(March 5, 2016 at 2:35 am)Constable Dorfl Wrote:

(March 4, 2016 at 1:17 am)AJW333 Wrote: You think two people having the identical dream about a precise event in a specific location that actually happened is guessing or mere coincidence? I would look at the probabilities against that happening as being mind-mindbogglingly high.

If your wife knew her grandfathervhad heart troubles and if it was worrying her, she would be thinking "what if he has a heart attack?"and out in the yard is a bad place to have it, away from view and away from stuff like phones if he were conscious. It's not that big of a jump to start dreaming about one's grandfather dying of a heart attack.

I wouldn't be suprised if you wife had other dreams about her grandfather dying and this is the only one your remember because of its seeming predictiveness. I remember having a dream once about moving into a house and meeting one of my fellow tennants who was a jockey and said he recently won a race. Imagine my suprise when I moved house a few days later when I did move house ant the conversation happened like I imagined. This wasn't god speaking however, I read the sports news and the race was high enough profile that it was written about, I had received some information from my mother's friend who had put me in the know about the room to rent, and the jockey's name is James, very common. Just a bunch of details I had that my subconscoiusness threw together into a lucky coincidence.

No discussion with or about Grandpa's heart as he had no known heart problems at the time of the dream. Two people having the identical dream would be exceptionally rare, especially given that they had the dreams at about the same time. To add a further level of unlikeliness that it was coincidence, the event happened about a week or so after the dreams happened. Two prophetic dreams that came true - I find it compelling.

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(March 5, 2016 at 8:04 am)abaris Wrote:

(March 4, 2016 at 7:22 pm)AJW333 Wrote: At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this isn't true. What I'm saying is that if something violates the laws of physics, like a rock floating off into space, then that qualifies as a supernatural event, not just something requiring some further modelling or redefining the law of gravity.

Not wanting to sound like a broken record either, but I repeat - alert us when rocks floating off into space are an observed and confirmed occurence.

And, again, not wanting to sound like a broken record. Johnny Noname claiming to have seen it happening and other people buying his tale with awe, doesn't count as confirmation. Scientists observing the phenomenon would do nicely, thank you very much.

 if I saw something supernatural happen, would my testimony not carry weight since I do have a degree in science?

(March 5, 2016 at 8:11 am)AJW333 Wrote:  if I saw something supernatural happen, would my testimony not carry weight since I do have a degree in science?

Yesterday, Bugs Bunny dropped by at my house to take a shit on my front lawn. Does my testimony not carry weight, since I too have a scientific degree? Prove me wrong, if you please, or buy my story.

(March 5, 2016 at 2:45 am)robvalue Wrote: Let me address this "are they all lying" point.

Lying is not the issue, when it comes to anecdotes. Someone can fully believe what they are saying is the truth. However:

1) Memory is notoriously unreliable and warps over time; false memories can even be created

2) Even if the memory is more or less correct, it doesn't mean the person correctly identified what was happening

3) No one has the authority to categorise things that have not as-yet been demonstrated to be real

For example, my wife tells me stories about ghosts. I believe she is being sincere. I believe she really believes she saw ghostly activity. What I don't believe is that she has correctly evaluated her experience.

From my position, there is nothing to test. I can have no opinion of it, other than it is an extroidanary claim. So until such time as there is evidence to examine, I don't believe her conclusion. I don't have to say her conclusion is false; although weighing up the probability, it's reasonable to say it is probably false.

If you just believe conclusions people make about mysterious phenomena based on anecdotes, you are gullible. The filter you apply is likely to be the same as your own beliefs. If you already thinks ghosts are real, you'll probably believe ghost stories. But if you also don't believe in vampires, you'll likely reject vampire stories.

 I simply look at the statistical probability that this all happened through random chance. I believe that it takes more faith to believe it was random than to accept that it was deliberate.

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(March 5, 2016 at 8:07 am)robvalue Wrote: If god was something real, you wouldn't need all this sneaking around, switching terms, trying to create "reasonable doubt" as if you're OJ's lawyer, and then saying "just maybe it was god..."

This is how someone makes themselves feel better about something they already believe, for other reasons. Because I can't believe for one second anyone believes because of this nonsense. Even if there was something supernatural, you're no closer to finding out what it is, you still have an uncrossable chasm to correlate it with a storybook.

And then you have to explain why I should care, even if you're right.

Because truth matters - doesn't it?

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(March 5, 2016 at 3:12 am)Constable Dorfl Wrote:

(March 4, 2016 at 7:48 pm)AJW333 Wrote: Isaiah11:11 In that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that remains of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Cush, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea. 12  He will raise a signal for the nations and will assemble the banished of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth."

The nation of Israel was destroyed in 586 BC and regathered 70 years later. It was destroyed a second time by the Romans 2000 years ago and the Jews were dispersed to the four corners of the earth. For all this time, the nation of Israel ceased to exist. Then in 1948 God fulfilled his promise to regather the Jews and to restore their nation.

None of what you quoted in isiah happened. None of the countries mentioned existed in 1948, there literally no corners to the Earth, being an oblate spheroid (and yes the bible writing goat fuckers did literally believe the world was flat and square). And finally there was no act of god involved in tthe creation of Israel, just the Balfour declaration, the holocaust and its aftermath, western latent anti-semitism and terrorist groups like the Stern Gang. In fact Isiah is most likely an after the fact "prophesy" about the end of the Babylonian captivity where it was written in that yhwh said he would return the jews to judea after they were returned to judea by the Babylonians (the Torah was mostly written at the end of and just after this period a combination of old oral legends [hence the henotheistic nature of the pentateuch] and post hoc aggrandising of the jewish people from a powerless random Canaanite tribe into great conquerors who were brung low by evil "false gods")


And this isn't even going into stuff like the fact that the majority of the iron age jewish tribes' descendants probably stayed in Palestine, converted, and are now the people being oppressed by Israel for being the "wrong race and religion".

I doubt that the Jews believed that the earth was flat since the same guy that used the four corners idiom (Isaiah), said  it was round.

Is 40:21 "Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth."

Truth matters, yes. But you're nowhere near any sort of truth, you're wildly speculating.

This is not consistent with someone who claims to know how science works.

I think we're done. I'll leave you to your imagination.