Monday, July 20, 2009

Atheist Illiteracy Pays Off

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Atheist Intellectuals at Work


I was amazed to find this morning that my hits went from about 84 over the weekend to over 400 this morning. How could that be? I look at stat counter "recent came from" and found a search engine blog sort of thing were no nothings make little comments about things they don't understand, one caleld "read it" were another illiterate atheist who knows nothing at all about science, logic, philosophy, or thought chimes in with his two cents worth of ignorance agasint a preice I posted called "the Religious A priori."


The piece they are so outraged over is saying that things fall through the cracks in science and some issues are not scientific issues. God is not a scientific issue. So what's so alarming and scary? But It must strike a never. Someone just ent a hate male saying "anyone who claims to understand this stuff is insane." So I'm just being attack by vermin who know nothing and who are outraged because I have knowledge they don't have.



Powers 1 point2 points 1 hour ago[-]

The challenges are absorbed into the paradigm untl there are so many the paradigm has to shit. This may never happen in naturalism.

I spat my tea all over my laptop...

stargazer202 [S] 2 points3 points 4 hours ago[-]

Joe Hinman of the aptly named Metacrock's Blog for his post THE RELIGIOUS A PRIORI. If you can make any sense of this rambling nonsense let me know (or better yet, get a psych evaluation).

If you know of any other blog posts in religious apologetics you think top this one for sheer ridiculousness feel free to post a link.




So what is ridiculous about this. Well first he's saying that there is paradigm shift in naturism. Naturism is a philosophy it is not a science. Science is what naturalists enjoy reading. Naturism is not a science like biology,cosmology, physics, ect. it's a philosophy. it' s way of organizing people's ideas about the world, in this case it tends to be organizing ideas by people who like reading science stuff. Look at the way this jackass expresses his understanding "the paradigm has to shit." I am so impressed with his grade school humor. I can say dirty rods, I'm cool!

Paradigm shifts happen in all sciences. By denying this this little ignorant know nothing is telling us how stupid he is. To say garbage he must have no knowledge of Thomas Kuhn or any of the theories spinning off from Kuhn' work. Of course Kuhn is known to all major people involved in science, he is highly respected, considered a great thinking, it's the height of stupidity not to know this. To say this illiterate fool is saying requires lack of a major education, lack of an advanced degree, and the lack of having read any major book in science.


Any major reference work will tell you that Kuhn is one of the major thinkers of the 20th Century. Of course he's the one I'm quoting in talking about the paradigm shift. So when these unread illiterate buffoons display their stupidity they are bucking common knowledge that can be found almost anywhere.

Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.


Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1922-1996) became one of the most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century, perhaps the most influential—his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the most cited academic books of all time. His contribution to the philosophy science marked not only a break with several key positivist doctrines but also inaugurated a new style of philosophy of science that brought it much closer to the history of science. His account of the development of science held that science enjoys periods of stable growth punctuated by revisionary revolutions, to which he added the controversial ‘incommensurability thesis’, that theories from differing periods suffer from certain deep kinds of failure of comparability.



The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | 2008 | The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Thomas Samuel Kuhn 1922-96, American philosopher and historian of science, b. Cincinnati, Ohio. He trained as a physicist at Harvard (Ph.D. 1949), where he taught the history of science from 1948 to 1956. He subsequently taught at the Univ. of California, Berkeley (until 1964), Princeton (until 1979), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (until 1991). In his highly influential work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Kuhn distinguished between normal science and revolutionary science. In normal science, researchers operating within a particular "paradigm," i.e., Ptolemaic astronomy, engage in activity that involves solving problems related to the paradigm. In revolutionary science, which occurs rarely, researchers abandon one paradigm, i.e. Ptolemaic astronomy, and embrace another, i.e., Copernican astronomy. Kuhn held the abandoned paradigm and the embraced
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Thomas Samuel Kuhn 1922-96, American philosopher and historian of science, b. Cincinnati, Ohio. He trained as a physicist at Harvard (Ph.D. 1949), where he taught the history of science from 1948 to 1956. He subsequently taught at the Univ. of California, Berkeley (until 1964), Princeton (until 1979), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (until 1991). In his highly influential work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Kuhn distinguished between normal science and revolutionary science. In normal science, researchers operating within a particular "paradigm," i.e., Ptolemaic astronomy, engage in activity that involves solving problems related to the paradigm. In revolutionary science, which occurs rarely, researchers abandon one paradigm, i.e. Ptolemaic astronomy, and embrace another, i.e., Copernican astronomy. Kuhn held the abandoned paradigm and the embraced one to be "incommensurable" with one another such that the fundamental concepts of one cannot be rendered by the terms of the other. The jump from one paradigm to another, he argued, has a sociological explanation, but no strictly rational justification. Kuhn's other works include The Copernican Revolution (1957) and The Essential Tension (1977).




Is Kuhn right? Some think so some think not. Why does that make me an idiot and the things I say in blog so amazingly stupid just because I happen to think those who agree that he wa right got it right? But these cow turds making their childish comments know nothing. They are not evacuated. they think about anything. they don't know anything. they are nothing but little bullies conducting a lynching because they despise knowledge. This is what we see more and more with the rise the the new stupidity, I mean atheism. Pseudo cave men fearful of things they don't understanding running about mocking and ridiculing everything that's over their silly little empty heads.


The little brain dead non thinkers go on:

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stargazer202 [S] 1 point2 points3 points 42 minutes ago* [+] (0 children)

stargazer202 [S] 1 point2 points3 points 42 minutes ago* [-]

The problem isn't that his argument is too complex. Its really, when you look past the clumsy wording and overuse of jargon, quite simple ---and not an argument at all but a list of assertions, central to which is the idea:

there are other ways of knowing than science/empirical evidence and religion is known by one of these methods.

Most of the premises in his "argument" are just different ways of stating that claim.

Premise 1 (which fuf stated far more clearly above as "the existence of qualia,subjective phenomena, the "redness" of red, cannot be reduced to their physical causes") isn't even relevant to his argument. Premise 2 is just the claim that we have other ways of knowing than empirical evidence (which is true, mathematics as one example, but it doesn't follow that the truth of any particular religion is in this category). And, to top it off, Premise 3 simply asserts what he's setting out to show:

That religion involves a non-empirical form of knowing.

Its, when you tease the meaning from its poorly worded premises and conclusion, just an example of circular reasoning and assertion in place of an actual argument.

And he has plenty of other arguments on his blog, some of which are probably even worse.

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what these people know about logic and thinking could be written large on the bum of a fly. Pimple faced high school drug addicts paying their little trollish games and attack ideas that are too good for them and that they will never understand. Is their writting so great? NO, their writing is crap. Runamuck's statements are full spelling errors.

These people are nothing. They simply are noting at all. the fools have raised my hit rate five times what it was with their little dumb fuck Penny Hinkler style nonsense. They deserve to burn in hell. but the pity of it is I am so much better than them I don't believe in hell. I wouldn't send them there if I could. But I have no doubt they would Not hesitate to kill me. This is what we are degenerating into because we have abandoned God, which means we abandon decency and learning.

Here is my debate with Runamuck.


the little cowards put a great deal of emphasis into attacking my selling. Like most bullies they are cowards, thus afraid to argue issues and ideas. But always to asault someone's handicap.

these are backstabbing little pieces of filth. I can't see who the hell would want to be part of their little cowardly movement, except perhaps illiterate types with a sneaking admiration for Hitler.
Of course he's chicken out and ran away.


Yesterday I was taken aback to find that a cowardly troll had attacked by writings with a lot of insulting ignorant garbage and like the little cowardly bully most of the hate group atheists are, he mocked and derided ideas he doesn't understand. Nevertheless I've decided not to respond in kind but to actaully demonstrate to this miscreant why his ideas are lame and silly. So here is a post he made in response to my major post yesterday. It's posted in the comment section of my piece on Religious a priori.


ranafuerte

If your statement is not infalsifiable, then how would one go about falsifying it?




He's talking about my piece on religious a priori. We have to clear about what can be falsified and what can't be. It might also help to understand why falsifiability is an issue. I am sure Runamuck thinks that falsifiability is some standard that scientists came to in the laws of physics. It is actaully the result of philosophy of science ( fact that atheist carm spit through their noses over if they knew about it, since they believe no good can come of philosophy of any kind, and philosophy of science is Philosophy which they hate trespassing on the land of their little tin god science). Falsification is actually the work of Karl Popper. The idea is that one can't actually prove a hypothesis but if it could not possibly be disproved then we don't need to take it seriously. So the very concept in the beginning only apply empirical things, it only applies to things that can't be proved. Hypothesis that don't need falsification would be things like "life is worth ilving." How could you prove or disprove that life is worth living? It's a totally subjective matter because it's in the eye of the beholder. To one man a life might be totally nightmarish but another might find life in the same circumstances entirely wroth it for whatever reason.

Atheists tend to think that subjective things a false and stupid a priori. Atheists fear and loath the subjective. But no one actually deny the existence of a life worth living. It can't be proved or disproved but it can't be ignored or treated as a myth. Some people find life worth living. Now belief in God is not exactly on the same level, but it's not on a level empirical things either. A statement is not nonsense just because it's not falsifiable. Atheists will often pretend that that's the case, or not pretend just they don't know anything about it. That's not what Popper said:


In contrast to positivism, which held that statements are senseless if they cannot be verified or falsified, Popper denied that lack of falsifiability makes statements meaningless. According to Popper, falsifiability is a general notion of creditability, even though he admitted that falsification is only method by which scientific theories may be formulated, criticized or refuted at all.



God is not merely another fact in the universe. Belief in God is not adding a fact to the universe. Belief in God is more like a world view. God is the basis of all reality, the ground of being, so while not given in sense data and not falsifiable, God is not an object of empirical investigation so the non falsifiability is not a minus for the rationality of belief in God. Falsifiability is not a turnstile of existence. It's not a test, or a job philosophical gate keeping to determine the reality of a thing just because it may not be falsifiable. This ignorance person runamuck is very lame to think that it is. This shows a complete lack of education in not understanding the ramifications of the concept. There are major wings of thought in the Western tradition that don't support the ideological slogans of the reductionists.

Nevertheless there are certain aspects of belief that are falsifiable. While God is not given in sense data and is not a direct object of empirical investigation, there are co-determinate of God which are empirical. A co-determinate is an aspect or a ramification of the existence of something that is indicative of that which is it's co-determinate. For example the a foot print in the snow is the co-determinate of the foot that left it there. A fingerprint is indicative of the finger that made it. If one were tacking the invisible man, you could not see the man but you could see his footprints in the snow. This is analogous for the situation with God. Not that God is invisible but is the basis of reality and thus off scale, can't be measured, not given in sense data. But aspects of belief in God can be understood as the trace of God. i talk about these in religious a priroi part 2 the continuation of the piece runamuck attacked with such ignorant rage. There is a huge body of scientific work that demonstrates the empirical validity of religious experiences. There are several arguments that can be made based upon this hug body of scientific work.

My arguments are not about proving the existence of God. They are about proving that religious belief is rationally warranted. Why is this? Because God can't be proved with empirical data, but it is more than rational to believe in God. this is because belief based upon religious experience is verifiable, falsifiable and demonstrated to be the best thing one can experience in life. I have made these arguments on this blog many many times so I wont go through that now. Just follow the links and you will see. There are hundreds of studies they prove that people who have religious experience are far better off than those who don't, their lives are changed dramatically for the better, then have long term positive effects. A great deal of scientific data demonstrates tat it's not a illusion or mental illness it's a real experience probably caused by something external not imagination or placebo. The crux of these studies is called the "M scale." It was developed by Ralph Hood Jr. of University of Tennessee Chattanooga. The M scale tells us when and whether or not one has had a valid mystical experience. It's so accepted by psychology of religion that it's become standard procedure to use it in all studies about RE. The M scale has been cross culturally verified in a a half dozen different cultures including India and Iran and others. This is a means of falsification. IF God were false if the trace of God were false (the "trace" being the experiences and their effects) they could not be validated by the M scale and the long term positive effects would not be detectable. Because the experiences are real and the effects are real and consent is about God we can assume logically that this the trace of God.

I will be happy to debate these arguments with Runamuck latter. I need to bracket that for now so we can get through the rest of his schlock.

Runamuck:

I suggest you, instead of just reading apologia, read some A. J. Ayer. Essentially, it is meaningless to debate the subjective, because you cannot logically deduce objective truth from subjective premises.


Meta: Of course that's not insulting is it? He's just accused a Ph.D. candidate of only reading apologetic sites. But this ignorant one Dashes off the name of Ayer so proudly as though marking himself as a great thinker. I was reading Ayer when you were a gleam in the milk man's eye. Moreover I figured out what wrong with Ayer and put him down before you were crying for your mother to change your nappie. Ayer is not the hall mark of the Western tradition. He was refuted, debunked, and dismissed decades ago. You need to learn the name of and read the people who put Ayer away: Michael Polanyi,Fredrick Copleleston, Norman Malcum, and E.S. Masscal. When Polanyi pointed out that the strong principle of verification also undermined the existence of science, history and all other forms of thought then Ayer dropped downt ot he "weak principle." When he did that Msscal showed that he was only talking about his habits. So the strong principle destroyed everything and the weak principle was too weak. Ayer was discredited and considered beaten and is no longer important in philosophy. As to the statement about debating subjective things. I wasn't debating. you launched a cowardly attack on a mere article that had nothing to do with a debate. I'll never understand how these people who fancy themselves "free thinkers" are so afraid so stark staring scared to death of ideas that differ from their own.

Runamuck:

Essentially, if you are claiming the existence of something that only truly manifests itself subjectively, you might as well be having a heated argument about which is the best type of ice cream. You can cite survey data, sales receipts, and even professional reviews, but it all depends on the individual's subjective feelings on the matter.
Meta: I noticed Runamuck was shocked to hear someone say that science is not the only fom of knowldge. IT's clear he is so badly read that he is totally unaware of major portions of Western thought, such as the axis from Schiller through Hegel to Marx, the Rationalists and Empiricists, Descartes to Locke, and the Existentialists and phenomenologists, the segment of thought from Schleiermacher through Kierkegaard, up through Brintono, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Derrida. This guy has clearly never read any of these people except perhaps some of the rationalists who he read as early scientists. What he's saying here is not a fact that he can back up with empirical data nd hard studies it's a slogan; it's a propagandist ideological slogan such as "the glorious five year plan," or "better dead than read," or something of that nature. He doesn't do anything to demonstrate the truth claim in the statement. The bit about ice cream not withstanding this is more telling is state of ignorance than anything else. But the fact of the is I wasn't debating anything I was just talking about ideas and I guess that's sent him into a rage. Atheists seem extremely bothered by the fact that there are people in the world, just a few left now, a merely 92% who dare to actually believe something other than believe.

The fact of the matter is while it is rather dubious to debate the existence of God (although that never stopped me form trying) it's perfectly logical to debate the co-determines because those are empirical and there's nothing subjective about the evidence. Its' empirical scientific evidence and there's not one single counter study.


Runamuck:


And, like taste preferences, there is scientific research that is picking apart belief in the supernatural.


Meta:
No there is not. I've demonstrated over and over again a vast aray of empirical evidence for the supernatural. The problem is the philosophizes change the term, they high jacked the concept and changed the term so they weren't dealing with the real concept of the Christian supernatural. No atheists has attacked that in three centuries because they don't know what it is. In their extraordinary ignorance they just don't read John of Damascus or Dionysius the Aireopegite. There is a quite a bit of empirical evidence for the Supernatural, but first you need to learn what it is.

Runamuck:
There are evolutionary anthropologists who look at the evolution of morality;

Meta:
Like what is that suppossed to prove? So moraltiyi evolves so what? I sense some how you think thts' some kind of big deal. Let us in on the secret.


Runamuck:
anthrobotanists who look at the plants that sparked religious vision, which were once considered magical and now are known to just contain hallucinogens and dissociative chemicals.

Meta:

There is no evidence that religion is the result of magic mushrooms. Even if it was that would not be a problem because there are people who support the concept enthnogens who think that magic mushrooms opens sensory receptors to God and that's just fine wtih them.

Runamuck:

We have even determined which parts of the brain are active when someone has a "religious experience" (other than the drug-induced kind) and the chemical processes involved. The more science discovers, the less space your God of the Gaps finds hospitable.


Meta:

ahahaah who was it who said there's nothing more cleched than a young man who has discovered an old idea and thinks he's the first to think of it? This notion hold no toror for me or any other believer. anyone who has done his research knows that the major researchrs in the feidld are far from believing that they have disproved religious experince. Newberg in Why God Wont Go Away tells that if God wishes to communicate with us in any way he would either have to use brain chemistry or he would have to create a whole knew communication process. We do not see the wrold directly in an unmediated state. Our brains re-write our perceptions. Empiricism is stupid in that it could not be more wrong, we do not see the world i a pure unbaised state. Our brains rewrite it for us they use brain chemistry to do it so we have to expect that God not no God. We should expect to find brain chemicals just as surely if there is a God as if there wasn't. So that doesn't prove a damn thing.

We do not find is studies claiming to create religious experience using the M scale to prove they did it. That's crucial because the M scale is the only one that has been cross culturally validated. that means the other aren't measuring mystical experience at all and they can't prove they have ever produced it. None of those those studies prove that RE originates through brain chemistry. they most they could ever prove is that either it originates nationalistically or God uses the brain chmeistry which we would have to anyway. So it doesn't prove a thing.


Newberg: Why God Wont Go Away:

A skeptic might suggest that a biological origin to all spiritual longings and experiences, including the universal human yearning to connect with something divine, could be explained as a delusion caused by the chemical misfiring of a bundle of nerve cells. But …After years of scientific study, and careful consideration of the a neurological process that has evolved to allow us humans to transcend material existence and acknowledge and connect with a deeper, more spiritual part of ourselves perceived of as an absolute, universal reality that connects us to all that is.(157-172)




Newberg again:


…Tracing spiritual experience to neurological behavior does not disprove its realness. If God does exist, for example, and if He appeared to you in some incarnation, you would have no way of experiencing His presence, except as part of a neurologically generated rendition of reality. You would need auditory processing to hear his voice, visual processing to see His face, and cognitive processing to make sense of his message. Even if he spoke to you mystically, without words, you would need cognitive functions to comprehend his meaning, and input form the brain’s emotional centers to fill you with rapture and awe. Neurology makes it clear: there is no other way for God to get into your head except through the brain’s neural pathways. Correspondingly, God cannot exist as a concept or as reality anyplace else but in your mind. In this sense, both spiritual experiences and experiences of a more ordinary material nature are made real to the mind in the very same way—through the processing powers of the brain and the cognitive functions of the mind. Whatever the ultimate nature of spiritual experience might be—weather it is in fact an actual perception of spiritual reality—or merely an interpretation of sheer neurological function—all that is meaningful in human spirituality happens in the mind. In other words, the mind is mystical by default.





Runamuck

As Chris Hitchins once said:

That which can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof

Arguing from subjective experience is very weak indeed.


He thinks he's going to impress me by quoting the great fools Wanna be.

5 comments:

tinythinker said...

Part of the beauty and as well as the price of the interconnected nature of the web is that there is no segregation by education, maturity, etc except on private sites where the administrators can be selective about who participates in their community. The cost of such selectivity is of course lack of public access and therefore broad dissemination of materials. So as long as you want to share your ideas with those who might appreciate or benefit from them, you will risk having others failing to appreciate them. Considering that a large percentage of people on the internet are insecure pinheads looking for potty humor and porn, no one, whatever their views, should be surprised to find frustrating or annoying folks on the internet.

Anonymous said...

You tell 'em, Metacrock.

Anonymous said...

cool story bro

PStryder said...

You know far less than you think you do.

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

you know far less than you think you do.

Of course. Everyone dos. Including science. I didn't mock, deride or ridicule you or Runamuck until his cowardly attack.

you brought this on yourself.