[quote='rjh4' pid='51133' dateline='1263932376']
[quote='theVOID' pid='50919' dateline='1263836935']
How are they remotely similar? You presuppose the existence of the biblical God and then base your world view around that with absolutely no way of being able to verify it as true where as i base my world view on repeatable, verifiable, testable observation and change my opinion if the observed evidence changes whilst withholding judgement on the things that are outside of my current scope of knowledge. I work from the ground up piecing together the puzzle along the way where as you already know what picture you are trying to make and select the pieces that support your preconception.
[/quote]
You presuppose that matter and energy are all that exists and build your world view around that with absolutely no way of being able to verify it as true.[/quote]
No I do not, I operate under no presuppositions, I simply chose the explanations for events based on the weighing of evidence and thus far there is absolutely no measurable manifestation of the supernatural known, nothing that can be demonstrated as statistically significant. When there is no evidence to support a particular hypothesis over any other, such as the existence of God, I simply withhold judgement and will do indefinitely until such evidence emerges.
Should a sufficient amount of convincing evidence arise for the existence of any supernatural phenomenon I wouldn't be able to ignore it, that would be breaking my own standards.
[quote]
Do you get it now?
[/quote]
I could ask you the same question.
[quote]
I am not trying to make the picture. God has already done that through the Bible which indicates some of the things that happened in the past, e.g., God created the universe, man sinned and the consequence was a fallen man and universe, there was a global flood, Jesus came into the world to live a perfect life and then to take the punishment that man deserved because of his (man’s) sin, and then rose from the dead. There is no need to reinterpret that which God has already interpreted for me.[/quote]
How can you prove God had anything at all to do with the authorship of that book?
[quote]
The fact is, you want to test God by your standards instead of subjecting yourself to His standards.[/quiote]
They aren't God's standards, they're the standards of barbaric, illiterate, superstitious sand dwellers from the ancient middle east! There are so many simply disgusting injunctions in that book that allow things such a slavery, stoning children to death, being able to rape and then buy women etc. I have more information at about reality at my disposal than these ancient Jews and Christians ever did and as such I am in a better position to assess reality.
I don't believe any of them had revelations of any kind, this is a man made religion just like the tens of thousands of religions in history that you reject yourself.
[quote]
You think you are a higher authority in the universe than the creator of it. You can do that but in the end, you will still be subject to His standards and you will be without excuse. See Romans 1:18-32. You see, this passage of the Bible indicates pretty clearly that everything in the universe points to God and that while everyone knows this (it is self-evident), some, like yourself, suppress this knowledge (hence no excuse).[/quote]
You know preaching is against the rules right?
Ask yourself this ; If I don't believe that book is anything more than the product of primitive men then why on earth do you think making arguments from it is going to impress me in the slightest. Prove it is the inspired word of God and then, and only then, will I take seriously a single argument drawn from it.
[quote]
[quote='theVOID' pid='50919' dateline='1263836935']
When you discover what this standard of evidence is that allows you to separate multiple contradictory supernatural claims of origin from each other please do present it, but until that point in time you have demonstrated nothing more than picking one amongst a myriad of carte blanche explanations for no rational reason.
[/quote]
I’ll trust the God who came to the earth, died for my sins, and rose from the dead. I don’t think any others have done that in history.[/quote]
Oh, the God who fathered himself and then sacrificed himself to himself in order to offer redemption from the sin he created when he, the omnipotent fucktard, put naive humans in a garden with a forbidden tree and a talking snake creating a situation that he knew the outcome of before he created it, only to rise from the dead in 3 days and become the ruler of the universe in eternal paradise... Yeah, some sacrifice.
[quote]
[quote='theVOID' pid='50919' dateline='1263836935']
Evidence of the global flood? Sure, God flooded the world in such a way that all of the fossils would represent apparent geological time. He also modified the topology of the radioactive elements in the strata so their would be more heavily decayed radioactive isotopes the further back in the strata you reach. The strata would also be layered into distinct geological regions descending into the earth in an extremely uniform way to give the illusion that the layers of strata themselves formed over time from different materials in different atmospheric conditions.
If this is the case then God is the ultimate swindler, liar and fraud. If he did not want to make it seem as if these events happened in such a uniform and predictable manner over time then he would have simply have left the usual chaotic flood to disperse and fossilise the animals as you would expect from a flood scenario, by weight, surface area any buoyancy rather than tampering with his own natural laws. It would have made the existence of a global flood being responsible for such formations likely and expectable rather than his expecting that people believe other people who wrote a book that they claimed without proof was inspired by God outlining the details of the flood....
[/quote]
Just a repeat of what I said earlier in this thread:
God creates the universe and all that is in it and tells us (reveals to us) that He did it and provides enough specifics in history to determine approximately when this happened.[/quote]
So you claim, but have you any positive evidence to support the flood hypothesis? Prove it, or i'm not accepting a word of it, i've got standards you see.
[quote]
Man rejects what God says and determines that he can discover how the universe came to be without God's help.[/quote]
Again, prove God said it.
[quote]
Man comes up with an answer that contradicts what God says.
[/quote]
Not what God says, what primitive people claim God said.
[quote]
Man determines that he is correct and God is wrong.
[/quote]
Who do you think you're talking to here? One of your Christian buddies who will gobble up this drool?
[quote]
Based on man's determination, man accuses God of dishonesty by deceiving us with His creation.
[/quote]
I don't accuse a being who I don't believe in anything, it would be rather insane to do so
[quote]
Isn't man brilliant...in his own mind?
[/quote]
We've done pretty well so far, shame about all the silly religions out there.
[quote]
[quote='theVOID' pid='50919' dateline='1263836935']
If your God manifested himself in nature in any way, such as answering prayers for example, then we would be able to measure a statistically significant correlation between praying to a particular god and positive outcome when compared to the control groups of an equal number of people praying to a different god as well as a group that did not pray at all.
Every single double blind clinical trial involving prayer ever conducted has shown absolutely no positive statistical trends compared to the control group.
This means either:
1) Your God does not answer prayers
2) You were praying to the wrong God
3) God chose not to answer the prayers
or
4) There is no God
This method could easily be used to establish the positive effect of prayer compared to the control groups, but thus far no results.
[/quote]
I thought truth claims in you world view were analyzed through the scientific method? So how did you come to the conclusion through the scientific method that your initial premise is true? (If your God manifested himself in nature in any way, such as answering prayers for example, then we would be able to measure a statistically significant correlation between praying to a particular god and positive outcome when compared to the control groups of an equal number of people praying to a different god as well as a group that did not pray at all.) The fact is, I reject you premise altogether and you have not provided the scientific evidence to support the premise from within your own world view.[/quote]
If god manifests himself in reality in any way his presence would create causation that can be measured and represented statistically as more significant than the control group, denoting a strong correlation between prayer and the desired outcome of the test, whether it be psychic powers, prediction, healing etc etc. This is the kind of evidence i would be interested in and if I was a Christian interested in proving the existence of God I would be formulating hypothesis on where God manifests and what effects that would cause and then run statistical studies to gather evidence in support of the hypothesis.
Many Christian scientists have done exactly this, as well a secular scientists. One particular study (i can't remember the name of it but i'm looking , i'll update if i have any luck) involved people with diabetes who were firm believers in God, the same size was 500 if i remember correctly, and faith healers with a good amount of anecdotes recommending them. The first group was prayed for individually by each religious healer and then by the entire group, the second group was not receiving any prayer. Both groups were told that there was a 50/50 chance they would get the placebo but not a single group knew which group they belonged to, the doctors did not know either as an independent organisation ran the Prayer part of the experiment and the results were sealed away until the end of the experiment, this is done to eliminate all bias from the experiment. There were prayed for a number of times over 6 months, i believe it was once every 2 weeks, so 12 times total, each time the prayer was asking for God to heal their diabetes, which would produce a very easily measurable increase in insulin levels in the body.
No correlation between prayer and recovery was found, but it was good science with a solid methodology, a testable hypothesis that falsified the assumptions used for the trial which were all based on the Biblical description of the procedure of prayer. If Christians want evidence for the existence of God then these testable hypotheses are the way to go, in my opinion the best type of experiment that could provide positive evidence for the existence of God rather than the usual pathetic attacks on the more supported theories and hypothesis arrived at by a rational methodology.
[quote]
[quote='theVOID' pid='50919' dateline='1263836935']
He is talking about the logical absolutes:
1) The law of identity : P = P, P ≠ ¬P (A car is a car, it is not a fish)
2) The law of non contradiction: ¬(P ^ ¬P) (A car is not not a car)
3) The law of excluded middle: P ∨ ¬P ("I am alive" is either true or false)
There is not a single instance of any imaginable reality anywhere, natural or supernatural, in which these laws will not be true.
[/quote]
I understood which laws Adrian was talking about. I just did not get the proof and you have not helped. You have merely made a statement that is unsupported in and of itself. So that is your alleged proof? That is no proof. Remember, this whole line of argumentation began when I said that all proofs go back to some unprovable premises. Adrian said I was wrong and cited the proof of the laws of logic. I have yet to see any proof or argumentation showing that I was wrong. Note, I am not trying to say that they are not true. I am merely saying that we take them as self-evident without any proof.[/quote]
I'll leave it up to someone more familiar with the subject to answer this one, you can argue it with them and i'll just watch the back-and-forth to see what the arguments for and against are, if you don't mind. There is an excellent video by Matt Dillahunty giving a very convincing argument for the absolute nature of these statements, i'll have to watch it again later and freshen up on it, been a long time since i've had to really think about them.
[quote]
[quote='theVOID' pid='50919' dateline='1263836935']
It is logical proof, you cannot get around it, but i would love to see you try.
For example:
Green and Purple spotted comets exist.
It does not matter whether or not Green and purple spotted comets actually exist physically or not because we have defined them into existence as a concept, and since Concepts exist, Green and Purple spotted comets exist conceptually, the attributes being that of a comet that is coloured in green and purple spots.
I challenge you to find a single thing that does not meet these conditions (Hint, you can't, as soon as you think of it then it will at the very least exist as a concept).
[/quote]
Logical proof???? I thought all truth claims in your world view needed to be established with the scientific method. Even at that, you have not proven that “anything with an attribute exists in some form”…you merely take this as self-evident or definitional. This is not a proof.
[quote]
Only scientific claims are proven with the scientific method, logical proofs are used for logical statements, it just coincidentally happens that the majority of our discussions now and in the past have been about science and that may be why you were under that impression.
[quote]
Furthermore, I entirely reject your view that something exists just because you think about it.[/quote]
I made it extremely clear that it exists at the least as a concept, not something in physical reality or even a supernatural reality.
[quote]
In other words, I think your conditions are ridiculous. You are equating the concept of something with that something. I do not think that is valid. There is quite a difference between the “concept of a perpetual motion machine” and “a perpetual motion machine”. The concept certainly exists (in someone’s mind) but the machine does not. Can you imagine what would happen if people talked like that? I say to man A, “A pool in my back yard exists.” He come over to visit and asks about the pool because he does not see one in my back yard. I say, “It does exist…as a concept in my mind.” You see, saying “A pool in my back yard exists.” is clearly saying something different than and more than “The concept of a pool in my back yard exists.” The former implies an actual pool whereas the latter implies just a concept.[/quote]
You've got a straw man of my position here. The concept of Santa Claus exists regardless of whether or not he does, I made this very clear in my original post.
[quote='theVOID' pid='50919' dateline='1263836935']
How are they remotely similar? You presuppose the existence of the biblical God and then base your world view around that with absolutely no way of being able to verify it as true where as i base my world view on repeatable, verifiable, testable observation and change my opinion if the observed evidence changes whilst withholding judgement on the things that are outside of my current scope of knowledge. I work from the ground up piecing together the puzzle along the way where as you already know what picture you are trying to make and select the pieces that support your preconception.
[/quote]
You presuppose that matter and energy are all that exists and build your world view around that with absolutely no way of being able to verify it as true.[/quote]
No I do not, I operate under no presuppositions, I simply chose the explanations for events based on the weighing of evidence and thus far there is absolutely no measurable manifestation of the supernatural known, nothing that can be demonstrated as statistically significant. When there is no evidence to support a particular hypothesis over any other, such as the existence of God, I simply withhold judgement and will do indefinitely until such evidence emerges.
Should a sufficient amount of convincing evidence arise for the existence of any supernatural phenomenon I wouldn't be able to ignore it, that would be breaking my own standards.
[quote]
Do you get it now?
[/quote]
I could ask you the same question.
[quote]
I am not trying to make the picture. God has already done that through the Bible which indicates some of the things that happened in the past, e.g., God created the universe, man sinned and the consequence was a fallen man and universe, there was a global flood, Jesus came into the world to live a perfect life and then to take the punishment that man deserved because of his (man’s) sin, and then rose from the dead. There is no need to reinterpret that which God has already interpreted for me.[/quote]
How can you prove God had anything at all to do with the authorship of that book?
[quote]
The fact is, you want to test God by your standards instead of subjecting yourself to His standards.[/quiote]
They aren't God's standards, they're the standards of barbaric, illiterate, superstitious sand dwellers from the ancient middle east! There are so many simply disgusting injunctions in that book that allow things such a slavery, stoning children to death, being able to rape and then buy women etc. I have more information at about reality at my disposal than these ancient Jews and Christians ever did and as such I am in a better position to assess reality.
I don't believe any of them had revelations of any kind, this is a man made religion just like the tens of thousands of religions in history that you reject yourself.
[quote]
You think you are a higher authority in the universe than the creator of it. You can do that but in the end, you will still be subject to His standards and you will be without excuse. See Romans 1:18-32. You see, this passage of the Bible indicates pretty clearly that everything in the universe points to God and that while everyone knows this (it is self-evident), some, like yourself, suppress this knowledge (hence no excuse).[/quote]
You know preaching is against the rules right?
Ask yourself this ; If I don't believe that book is anything more than the product of primitive men then why on earth do you think making arguments from it is going to impress me in the slightest. Prove it is the inspired word of God and then, and only then, will I take seriously a single argument drawn from it.
[quote]
[quote='theVOID' pid='50919' dateline='1263836935']
When you discover what this standard of evidence is that allows you to separate multiple contradictory supernatural claims of origin from each other please do present it, but until that point in time you have demonstrated nothing more than picking one amongst a myriad of carte blanche explanations for no rational reason.
[/quote]
I’ll trust the God who came to the earth, died for my sins, and rose from the dead. I don’t think any others have done that in history.[/quote]
Oh, the God who fathered himself and then sacrificed himself to himself in order to offer redemption from the sin he created when he, the omnipotent fucktard, put naive humans in a garden with a forbidden tree and a talking snake creating a situation that he knew the outcome of before he created it, only to rise from the dead in 3 days and become the ruler of the universe in eternal paradise... Yeah, some sacrifice.
[quote]
[quote='theVOID' pid='50919' dateline='1263836935']
Evidence of the global flood? Sure, God flooded the world in such a way that all of the fossils would represent apparent geological time. He also modified the topology of the radioactive elements in the strata so their would be more heavily decayed radioactive isotopes the further back in the strata you reach. The strata would also be layered into distinct geological regions descending into the earth in an extremely uniform way to give the illusion that the layers of strata themselves formed over time from different materials in different atmospheric conditions.
If this is the case then God is the ultimate swindler, liar and fraud. If he did not want to make it seem as if these events happened in such a uniform and predictable manner over time then he would have simply have left the usual chaotic flood to disperse and fossilise the animals as you would expect from a flood scenario, by weight, surface area any buoyancy rather than tampering with his own natural laws. It would have made the existence of a global flood being responsible for such formations likely and expectable rather than his expecting that people believe other people who wrote a book that they claimed without proof was inspired by God outlining the details of the flood....
[/quote]
Just a repeat of what I said earlier in this thread:
God creates the universe and all that is in it and tells us (reveals to us) that He did it and provides enough specifics in history to determine approximately when this happened.[/quote]
So you claim, but have you any positive evidence to support the flood hypothesis? Prove it, or i'm not accepting a word of it, i've got standards you see.
[quote]
Man rejects what God says and determines that he can discover how the universe came to be without God's help.[/quote]
Again, prove God said it.
[quote]
Man comes up with an answer that contradicts what God says.
[/quote]
Not what God says, what primitive people claim God said.
[quote]
Man determines that he is correct and God is wrong.
[/quote]
Who do you think you're talking to here? One of your Christian buddies who will gobble up this drool?
[quote]
Based on man's determination, man accuses God of dishonesty by deceiving us with His creation.
[/quote]
I don't accuse a being who I don't believe in anything, it would be rather insane to do so
[quote]
Isn't man brilliant...in his own mind?
[/quote]
We've done pretty well so far, shame about all the silly religions out there.
[quote]
[quote='theVOID' pid='50919' dateline='1263836935']
If your God manifested himself in nature in any way, such as answering prayers for example, then we would be able to measure a statistically significant correlation between praying to a particular god and positive outcome when compared to the control groups of an equal number of people praying to a different god as well as a group that did not pray at all.
Every single double blind clinical trial involving prayer ever conducted has shown absolutely no positive statistical trends compared to the control group.
This means either:
1) Your God does not answer prayers
2) You were praying to the wrong God
3) God chose not to answer the prayers
or
4) There is no God
This method could easily be used to establish the positive effect of prayer compared to the control groups, but thus far no results.
[/quote]
I thought truth claims in you world view were analyzed through the scientific method? So how did you come to the conclusion through the scientific method that your initial premise is true? (If your God manifested himself in nature in any way, such as answering prayers for example, then we would be able to measure a statistically significant correlation between praying to a particular god and positive outcome when compared to the control groups of an equal number of people praying to a different god as well as a group that did not pray at all.) The fact is, I reject you premise altogether and you have not provided the scientific evidence to support the premise from within your own world view.[/quote]
If god manifests himself in reality in any way his presence would create causation that can be measured and represented statistically as more significant than the control group, denoting a strong correlation between prayer and the desired outcome of the test, whether it be psychic powers, prediction, healing etc etc. This is the kind of evidence i would be interested in and if I was a Christian interested in proving the existence of God I would be formulating hypothesis on where God manifests and what effects that would cause and then run statistical studies to gather evidence in support of the hypothesis.
Many Christian scientists have done exactly this, as well a secular scientists. One particular study (i can't remember the name of it but i'm looking , i'll update if i have any luck) involved people with diabetes who were firm believers in God, the same size was 500 if i remember correctly, and faith healers with a good amount of anecdotes recommending them. The first group was prayed for individually by each religious healer and then by the entire group, the second group was not receiving any prayer. Both groups were told that there was a 50/50 chance they would get the placebo but not a single group knew which group they belonged to, the doctors did not know either as an independent organisation ran the Prayer part of the experiment and the results were sealed away until the end of the experiment, this is done to eliminate all bias from the experiment. There were prayed for a number of times over 6 months, i believe it was once every 2 weeks, so 12 times total, each time the prayer was asking for God to heal their diabetes, which would produce a very easily measurable increase in insulin levels in the body.
No correlation between prayer and recovery was found, but it was good science with a solid methodology, a testable hypothesis that falsified the assumptions used for the trial which were all based on the Biblical description of the procedure of prayer. If Christians want evidence for the existence of God then these testable hypotheses are the way to go, in my opinion the best type of experiment that could provide positive evidence for the existence of God rather than the usual pathetic attacks on the more supported theories and hypothesis arrived at by a rational methodology.
[quote]
[quote='theVOID' pid='50919' dateline='1263836935']
He is talking about the logical absolutes:
1) The law of identity : P = P, P ≠ ¬P (A car is a car, it is not a fish)
2) The law of non contradiction: ¬(P ^ ¬P) (A car is not not a car)
3) The law of excluded middle: P ∨ ¬P ("I am alive" is either true or false)
There is not a single instance of any imaginable reality anywhere, natural or supernatural, in which these laws will not be true.
[/quote]
I understood which laws Adrian was talking about. I just did not get the proof and you have not helped. You have merely made a statement that is unsupported in and of itself. So that is your alleged proof? That is no proof. Remember, this whole line of argumentation began when I said that all proofs go back to some unprovable premises. Adrian said I was wrong and cited the proof of the laws of logic. I have yet to see any proof or argumentation showing that I was wrong. Note, I am not trying to say that they are not true. I am merely saying that we take them as self-evident without any proof.[/quote]
I'll leave it up to someone more familiar with the subject to answer this one, you can argue it with them and i'll just watch the back-and-forth to see what the arguments for and against are, if you don't mind. There is an excellent video by Matt Dillahunty giving a very convincing argument for the absolute nature of these statements, i'll have to watch it again later and freshen up on it, been a long time since i've had to really think about them.
[quote]
[quote='theVOID' pid='50919' dateline='1263836935']
It is logical proof, you cannot get around it, but i would love to see you try.
For example:
Green and Purple spotted comets exist.
It does not matter whether or not Green and purple spotted comets actually exist physically or not because we have defined them into existence as a concept, and since Concepts exist, Green and Purple spotted comets exist conceptually, the attributes being that of a comet that is coloured in green and purple spots.
I challenge you to find a single thing that does not meet these conditions (Hint, you can't, as soon as you think of it then it will at the very least exist as a concept).
[/quote]
Logical proof???? I thought all truth claims in your world view needed to be established with the scientific method. Even at that, you have not proven that “anything with an attribute exists in some form”…you merely take this as self-evident or definitional. This is not a proof.
[quote]
Only scientific claims are proven with the scientific method, logical proofs are used for logical statements, it just coincidentally happens that the majority of our discussions now and in the past have been about science and that may be why you were under that impression.
[quote]
Furthermore, I entirely reject your view that something exists just because you think about it.[/quote]
I made it extremely clear that it exists at the least as a concept, not something in physical reality or even a supernatural reality.
[quote]
In other words, I think your conditions are ridiculous. You are equating the concept of something with that something. I do not think that is valid. There is quite a difference between the “concept of a perpetual motion machine” and “a perpetual motion machine”. The concept certainly exists (in someone’s mind) but the machine does not. Can you imagine what would happen if people talked like that? I say to man A, “A pool in my back yard exists.” He come over to visit and asks about the pool because he does not see one in my back yard. I say, “It does exist…as a concept in my mind.” You see, saying “A pool in my back yard exists.” is clearly saying something different than and more than “The concept of a pool in my back yard exists.” The former implies an actual pool whereas the latter implies just a concept.[/quote]
You've got a straw man of my position here. The concept of Santa Claus exists regardless of whether or not he does, I made this very clear in my original post.
.
