RE: The Problem with Christians
March 4, 2016 at 6:12 am
(This post was last modified: March 4, 2016 at 6:44 am by pocaracas.)
(March 3, 2016 at 11:38 pm)AJW333 Wrote:Perhaps people are poor communicators... some, like myself, are not even native english speakers... keep prying to get past misunderstanding!(March 3, 2016 at 8:36 pm)pocaracas Wrote: Bingo!I would say that every atheist here who says that there is no such thing as the supernatural is automatically ruling out the possibility of there being a God, since God is synonymous with the supernatural.
That's why you'll find it difficult to find an atheist here that claims that.
What you'll most likely get is "there is no evidence that anything supernatural has anything to do with what goes on in this Universe".... which, after many fruitless discussions and frustrations, becomes very akin to "there's no supernatural, sod off with your delusional speak!"
As long as a natural explanation is available, even if we are unable to ascertain if it corresponds to the actual event observed, then that option is far far more likely than the supernatural.
Some people, however, are primed to attribute a higher likelihood to a supernatural interpretation.
Probability, here, always plays in favor of the natural explanation...
- When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. [Sherlock Holmes]
If you want to promote a particular supernatural event, then you must make damn sure that no unlikely natural events could have taken place. The supernatural is Holmes' "impossible".
(March 3, 2016 at 11:38 pm)AJW333 Wrote:Many (linking directly to the relevant section):(March 3, 2016 at 8:36 pm)pocaracas Wrote: Observable means that it can be observed, but need not be, or have been, observed yet.So do we have an explanation of abiogenesis yet?
You should not confuse the unexplained with the unexplainable.
Unexplained is that which hasn't been explained yet.
Unexplainable is that which cannot be explained, no matter how we try. You seem to think that abiogenesis falls in this category when it doesn't seem to, at all!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesi...ent_models
(March 3, 2016 at 11:38 pm)AJW333 Wrote:(March 3, 2016 at 8:36 pm)pocaracas Wrote: yes... history is full of stories.Vagaries aside, there are certain instances that are quite precise. My wife had a prophetic dream of her grandfathers heart attack in the backyard of her parents house three weeks before it happened. It just so happens that her sister had the same dream, exactly.
And sometimes people guess correctly at what will happen. Sometimes, the guesses are vague enough to fit many things in there. Most times, however, the guesses are wrong and, as such, are cast away into oblivion. The good guesses, however, get recorded. Can you spot the problem with this mechanism?
Your wife had a dream... so did your sister. How many dreams do they have yearly? How many come true?
Then the thing happened.
And a vague memory of a dream surfaced on both their minds... or only on one and the other mimicked as it was being commented? or maybe the other had what's called a "déj-vu" moment? Or maybe the dream was just about some faceless person having a problem at that backyard and then got retconned as something actually happened in that backyard.... or... or .... I could come up with tons of examples... tons of natural explanations for the event (heck, they could both be lying!). Sadly, we cannot probe a mind to the level of detail required, so it's beyond our ability to verify.... but not 100% theoretically unverifiable.
Like I said above, as long as a natural explanation exists, even if we cannot test it, that one is far far more likely than the supernatural explanation.
As such, your wife's and her sister's dreams are what's termed "anecdotal evidence of prophecy", which is the same as saying, "none at all".