Sunday, August 04, 2024

Debunking the atheist's fortress of facts



This is part of a larger framework that includes the theories of Thomas Kuhn and argues that science is a social construct. That part of it will be saved for another time. This section, although long is answering an argument that I see atheist touting all the time. They always deny it but it's unmistakably there. Section one documents that there such an attitude among atheists and gives some preliminary arguments. Section 2 shows the truly unscientific nature of the attitude.

Nowhere is the arrogance of humanity more apparent than in the many tendencies to treat God as a big man in the sky and try to subject him to scientific analysis. This is a move that most thinkers of the previous century would have laughed themselves silly over. One cannot second guess the nature of the divine by insisting that God operates under rules like a biological organism? Richard Dawkins is a major purveyor of this view but Victor Stinger is even more so. Stinger, in his God the Failed Hypothesis[1] is the genius who stated the "who created God" thing, one of the hallmarks of atheist ignorance. The method is super simple. Stinger does mess not with trying to probe the heavens or reaching beyond our tiny little sample of reality on this dust mote, he does it the "obvious way" by creating a straw man argument for God then knocking it down. The straw man is based upon a selective understanding guaranteed to denude belief of a factual basis and to load a pile of facts in the unbelieving camp so as to create the impression that atheism is a choice based upon the full brunt of scientific fact, and religious belief has nothing going for it but ignorance and superstition. This tactic I call the “fortress of facts.” The fortress of facts is something atheists deny vehemently but it’s obvious in almost every argument they make. Most scientifically inclined observers know that science is not merely the accumulation of a pile of facts. Science is not about proving facts or manufacturing a pile of facts so much as it is about testing hypothesis in a systematic fashion. Science is more about disproving than about proving. There are aspects of reality that beyond the ability of science to disprove. God is one of these. Yet, even though atheists will deny the words “fortress of facts” if we observe the way they argument this is undeniable consequence of their logic and their approach.

Science and the “God Hypothesis.”

The whole idea of referring to God as an hypothesis in the first place is an attempt to classify the God concept under the rubric of scientific domain. If God is an hypothesis then he’s something science can dispute, because science is about testing hypothesis. Of course the notion weather or not God can be so classified is a theological question and must be answered theologians. Since atheist denuded theology of any valid content (through sheer mocking and ridicule) then there’s no one to respond who atheists wont mock and ridicule. Thus truth by stipulation is written into the atheist ideology. This overall move turns upon the fortress of facts idea because a hypothesis without fact can’t be maintained. Thus while denying up front that they think about science in this manner we can see the fortress of facts as the basic assumption in the over all atheist approach to belief. We see the fortress of facts at work in the writings of Singer:

says Victor Stenger in "God: The Failed Hypothesis." The book is subtitled, "How science shows that God does not exist." Chapter by chapter, the author shows that the existence of God would suggest certain realities in the world that would be verifiable by scientific inquiry. But the data don't support these would-be realities, thereby providing evidence that no God exists. Stenger, retired professor of Philosophy at University of Colorado and of Physics and Astronomy at University of Hawaii, is successful in this line of reasoning because of his clearly stated definition that he is not just talking about any kind of god, but specifically the capital-g God of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition.[2] We can see the assumption of the fortress of facts in Skeptic Magazine article reviewing[3] Stinger’s book: “conspicuous by his Absence.” "Stinger lays out the evidence from cosmology, particle physics and quantum mechanics showing that the universe appears exactly as it should if there is no creator." This is a factual approach. The facts show God doesn’t exist because if he did things would be different. To show this we use our tremendous fact finding potential in science.

How does he reckon it should if there is no God? He constructs his own fundamentalist driven version of what God would be like. Of course he has no knowledge of that. It's really a disproof of the atheist big nightmare of the fundamentalist concept of God, in other words, a straw man argument not a real disproof of anything valid. Beyond that, which is a deal breaker--because how you set up the inquiry in the first place determines everything-- there are other criticisms. For example his take on the issue of prayer studies. This is also proof of the "fortress of facts" concept which I am always pointing out that atheist ideology teaches. No atheist has of yet accepted the notion when I point it but it's clear that they argue from it all the time. The idea science gives them a big pile of facts but we believers have no facts. The facts are going to tell us if we can believe in God or not, of course the facts are only facts if they are “scientific” (ie in this case that means if they work against belief in God).

For instance, he tackles the question of the efficacy of prayer, in which the followers of these faiths fervently believe. If God exists, he argues, prayers could be shown to have been answered, using verifiable, replicable studies. And indeed, such studies have been conducted, with universally negative results. (Some studies, which supposedly yielded positive results, used flawed methodology and thus the conclusion is dismissible.) "If prayer were as important as it is taken to be by Jews, Christians and Muslims, its positive effects should be obvious and measurable," Stenger concludes. "They are not. It does not appear - based on the scientific evidence - that a God exists who answers prayers in any significant, observable way."[4]

Here again we have the same idea at work, science gives us a fortress of facts that religion can’t match, never mind the fact that we have selected which facts are important to observe and what assumptions about God set up the facts we want to select. For example consider the flip flop that has happened in regard to these prayer studies. Back in the day when they were being done (late 80s, early 90s) they were big news the atheists were on defensive grasping at whatever straws they could to answer, since they had no counter studies and counter data. One of the major arguments they used to make on every message board, every blog, ever news group where this was debated was that you can’t control for outside prayer. The defenders of the studies, such as Dr. Byrd and Dr. Harris did their own straw-clutching to answer this argument about control. Since that time, however, thing have turned around. A study with the largest data base was done that showed very little or no difference in the two groups. The atheists have gone ape making the argument that “prayer is disproved.” The study detractors (now the theists) argue “you can’t control for outside prayer, the argument atheists used to make. The atheists say “O sure you can.” When I point out that they used to make this argument themselves many of them have said “no atheist ever argued that.” How quickly we forget. I remember. I have the article. Gary P Posner did argue it:

The most striking flaw in this study's methodology is one forthrightly acknowledged by Byrd. "It was assumed that some of the patients in both groups would be prayed for by people not associated with the study; this was not controlled for ... Therefore, 'pure' groups were not attained in this study." In other words, the focus of the study - prayer - was "not controlled for," except that three to seven intercessors were assigned to pray daily for each patient in the IP group, and none was assigned to the controls. Thus, although unlikely, it is nevertheless theoretically possible that the control group received as many prayers as did the IP group, if not more.

If "intercessory prayer" was not controlled, except that each IP patient was assumed to have received somewhere between X+3 and X+7 prayers daily, as opposed to X+0 for the control patients, what are we to conclude? That God is conditioned in a Pavlovian manner to automatically respond to the side with the greater number of troops, even though the assigned intercessors had no emotional ties to their patients, and even though the IP patients were otherwise no more worthy of healing as a group than were the controls? Does God not know that the side with fewer troops is in just as much need of assistance? Where is the evidence of his omniscience and compassion?

And what can be said about the evidence for God's omnipotence? It is true, assuming that Byrd's data are valid, that in the IP group, 5 percent fewer patients needed diuretics, 7 percent fewer needed antibiotics, 6 percent fewer needed respiratory intubation and/or ventilation, 6 percent fewer developed congestive heart failure, 5 percent fewer developed pneumonia, and 5 percent fewer suffered cardiopulmonary arrest. But no significant differences were found among the other twenty categories, including mortality, despite explicit prayers "for prevention of ... death." And, reports Byrd, "Even though for [the six seemingly significant] variables the P values were less than .05, they could not be considered statistically significant because of the large number of variables examined. I used two methods to overcome this statistical limitation ... [the] severity score, and multivariant [sic] analysis" (emphasis added).[5]

So what happens if we say Posner was right? These studies don’t measure the truth of prayer because you can’t control for outside prayer? The study that shows no difference is meaningless. Of course the atheists will say but the theist still has no facts to back prayer. Of course they are just selecting the facts that support there view. There are facts that back prayer but they are ignored because they counter the ideological assumptions of naturalism. That will be dealt with in subsequent chapters. The assumptions that Stenger has to make to make his straw man work is that God is exactly as he wants him to be. The reviewer at Simply Einstein (ibid) defends him against the charge of straw man. The logical purist may object that one can't "prove a negative," that one can no more disprove God than disprove the existence of Santa Claus or an invisible unicorn in the backyard. But the fact that most people do believe in God while rejecting the latter two is part of the point. Given no real reason to believe in Santa Claus or invisible unicorns, people reject such beliefs. Yet they hold tenaciously not only to belief in their God, but specifically to the tenets that their religion teaches about him. It is really these tenets that Stinger is addressing. By showing that they are wrong, like the efficacy of prayer or the notion that God fine-tuned the universe specifically for the sake of existence of humanity, the author demonstrates that belief in God is equally unfounded.[6]

Yet this is not much of a defense. The so called "tenets" are self selected to be one's he picks out that he thinks he can beat. No religious creed or Bible passage commands us to believe on the basis of the fine tuning argument. No scientific argument can disprove the notion that God has fine tuned the universe to bear life. The only thing science can prove about fine tuning is that we can't prove it. On the other hand far greater scientists than Stinger say his arguments against fine tuning are not so good. The person answering mail for John Polkinghorne’s website (formerly physicist at Cambridge second only to Hawking, who retired to be a Christian minister) says:

Stenger did some marginally useful scientific work but his claims are far too dogmatic. As for his suggestion that Anthropic Fine tuning is a non-problem because of his simplistic program MonkeyGod that purports to simulate universes and “show” that anthropic universes are commonplace, I know of no serious cosmologist who takes this seriously. Martin Rees’s “Just Six Numbers” is a good guide to the real science.[7]

Polkinghorne himself says: “I have read several of the books expressing the current outburst of militant atheism, but not the two you mention. My impression is that they are polemical rather than presenting reasoned arguments of a truth-seeking kind, and that they largely depend upon attacking caricature distortions of religious belief.”[8]

Others find the straw man to be Stenger's usual method:

Stinger—a retired physicist who is leveraging his scientific background to try to discredit anything and everything that smacks of spirituality—doesn’t respect his intellectual opponents enough to get their positions right; in some instances he appears to deliberately misrepresent their views; and, most important, his own reasoning is characterized by unremitting carelessness. Moreover, there is a method to his carelessness—it enables him to systematically avoid addressing the tough arguments of his opponents. Hence we find him frequently setting up a straw man by misrepresenting the debate as a simple matter of science and reason versus superstition. Once having defined this as the issue, all he needs to do is assume the attitude of an outraged scientist and heap on the ridicule. But if he had done his homework and taken the trouble to really understand the science and logic supporting quantum spirituality, he would have discovered that it is harder to dismiss than he had imagined. Indeed, the more carefully—and yes, critically—one considers the issues, the more one finds quantum spirituality to be eminently worthy of serious consideration, as a plausible and measured approach to the most long-standing and intractable questions at the basis of science.[9]

Stenger doesn't deal with what I consider to be the major God arguments, the ground of being stuff of Tillich and Schleiermacher. Like most of the cult of atheism he's in thrall to his own version of science which is laced with metaphysics. Like most of them they think they are being scientific and philosophical when they denounce philosophy and theology and talk about how science is the only form of knowledge, and then they are bringing ontology in through the back door to put fiber into their world view. Stenger's straw man making is standard procedure for the new atheist. They are always spitting out some line with a dashing air of how theology is stupid so they don't have to read it. They know it's stupid even though they haven't read any. The whole point of showing they haven't read is usually because they are getting the ideas wrong but they never seem to care.

The fortress of facts concept is seen in the works of the high priest of New Atheism, Richard Dawkins.

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: "I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one." I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.[10]

Intellectually “fulfilled atheist” is code for “we have the facts.” What he’s clearly saying is that it was unsatisfying when we didn’t have the facts, God is still be rejected even though he has no real reason for it, but it’s not satisfying. The only thing that makes it satisfying is when we get a pile of facts. That’s because of the explanatory value. He makes it quite clear this is his motive reason for saying these things that he’s after is expletory power and what constitutes an explanation is a scientifically verifiable fact that can’t be disputed.

An even clearer example:

-Faith, being belief that isn't based on evidence, is the principal vice of any religion. And who, looking at Northern Ireland or the Middle East, can be confident that the brain virus of faith is not exceedingly dangerous? One of the stories told to the young Muslim suicide bombers is that martyrdom is the quickest way to heaven — and not just heaven but a special part of heaven where they will receive their special reward of 72 virgin brides. It occurs to me that our best hope may be to provide a kind of "spiritual arms control": send in specially trained theologians to deescalate the going rate in virgins.[11]

As juxtaposed to the next paragraph:

Well, science is not religion and it doesn't just come down to faith. Although it has many of religion's virtues, it has none of its vices. Science is based upon verifiable evidence. Religious faith not only lacks evidence, its independence from evidence is its pride and joy, shouted from the rooftops. Why else would Christians wax critical of doubting Thomas? The other apostles are held up to us as exemplars of virtue because faith was enough for them. Doubting Thomas, on the other hand, required evidence. Perhaps he should be the patron saint of scientists.[12]

The implication is we have the facts, that are why we understand the world. Further implication is that the world is only the surface level of physical workings. The first paragraph is clearly arguing from guilt by association. It’s asserting that if there are some brutal dangerous religious people they must be that way because of religion; therefore all religious people are potentially that way. If a Christian apologist for example were to talk about the Nazis and how their scientifically engaged members conducted inhumane experiments on Jews in concentrating camps, and tried to drawn conclusions about the dangerous nature of science based upon that association, the atheists would set up a howl. It would not take the atheist long to see the fallacy of guilt by association in that case. Never mind that, and let’s also skim over the fact that he’s using a straw man version of faith tailored to make it seem more stupid. While faith per se is not based upon facts there’s nothing in the nature of faith that causes one to ignore facts. He tried to incriminate the joy of discovery which is he hardly in a position to critique since he’s never experienced and can’t understand it. That sense of joy has nothing to do with ignoring facts. For me part of that joy came form the realization that my faith is backed by facts. The more important point is that he’s placing the tailored example of no facts along side the self selected example of fact finding to create the sense of the skeptic haing a huge pile of pile of fact that confirms his world view while in fac the believe purposely rejects having facts. That is a perfect example of the fortress of facts mentality.

While it is anecdotal, evidence from the popular level shows, to some extent, the effects of this kid of thinking upon the rank and file of the atheist movement. There’s a popular website by one of the troops called “God is Imaginary.” It’s far from special, just run of the mill message board sloganeering and propaganda. It does express the fortress of facts mentality clearly

. “God is imaginary: Proof no 11, notice that there is no scientific evidence.”

"There is no scientific evidence indicating that God exists. We all know that. For example:

• God has never left any physical evidence of his existence on earth.

• None of Jesus' "miracles" left any physical evidence either. (see this page)

• God has never spoken to modern man, for example by taking over all the television stations and broadcasting a rational message to everyone.

• The resurrected Jesus has never appeared to anyone. (see this page) • The Bible we have is provably incorrect and is obviously the work of primitive men rather than God. (see this page)

• When we analyze prayer with statistics, we find no evidence that God is "answering prayers." (see this page)

• Huge, amazing atrocities like the Holocaust and AIDS occur without any response from God.

• And so on…

Let's agree that there is no empirical evidence showing that God exists.

If you think about it as a rational person, this lack of evidence is startling. There is not one bit of empirical evidence indicating that today's "God", nor any other contemporary god, nor any god of the past, exists. In addition we know that:

1. If we had scientific proof of God's existence, we would talk about the "science of God" rather than "faith in God".

2. If we had scientific proof of God's existence, the study of God would be a scientific endeavor rather than a theological one.

3. If we had scientific proof of God's existence, all religious people would be aligning on the God that had been scientifically proven to exist. Instead there are thousands of gods and religions.

The reason for this lack of evidence is easy for any unbiased observer to see. The reason why there is no empirical evidence for God is because God is imaginary."[13]

The major thrust of that bit of flim flam is that “we” (our side) we have all the facts in a great big pile and they don’t have a single one. Most thinking atheists and most scientifically minded atheists put it in terms of “explanatory power.” Appeal to God doesn’t explain the world as well as does science. That’s a more sophisticated version of the fortress of facts. Dawkins has a variation on this argument.

Unfortunately, Dawkins pushes envelope too far. He tries to turn the simple desire to know into a moral virtue in order to make it seem that science is more moral than religion:

Humans have a great hunger for explanation. It may be one of the main reasons why humanity so universally has religion, since religions do aspire to provide explanations. We come to our individual consciousness in a mysterious universe and long to understand it. Most religions offer a cosmology and a biology, a theory of life, a theory of origins, and reasons for existence. In doing so, they demonstrate that religion is, in a sense, science; it's just bad science. Don't fall for the argument that religion and science operate on separate dimensions and are concerned with quite separate sorts of questions. Religions have historically always attempted to answer the questions that properly belong to science. Thus religions should not be allowed now to retreat away from the ground upon which they have traditionally attempted to fight. They do offer both a cosmology and a biology; however, in both cases it is false.[14]

He’s saying that religion is trespassing upon questions of science, yet he doesn’t even bother to point out that religion was there first. Just because people in the prehistoric and ancient worlds mixed religious and scientific explanations—not having developed science religion was all they had to fall back on—doesn’t mean that’s the reason religion came to exist. As science has developed there is no reason why religious people can use it to understand questions that fall into he overlap between the two domains. The questions he’s discussing are overlap questions and modern thinking religious people have used to science to help answer them. In making this point he asserts that science is the fact giving endeavor while religion is content to have faith and do without facts. Of course that’s not a good description of most modern thinking religious people.

Dawkins wants us to think in terms of the fortress of facts, nothing provides scientific facts like science does. Of course he’s not mentioning the fact that it’s only one kind of explanation. There are facets to the question about the origin of life than just the physical workings of evolution. There are questions people have asked for thousands of years that science is not prepared to answer. There are questions that science is not allowed to answer because they are out of its domain. These are questions about the meaning of the life, the reason why life is, and the ultimate “destiny” (for want of a better word) of humans. These are things science can’t tell us they are the reasons religion exits. So the kinds of facts that religion provides the uses for faith are in a different area than those provided by science. The nature of the atheist view point is self selected to focus only upon the kinds of facts that science provides and it offers a biased, fallacious and inaccurate view of religious thinking. It also provides a distorted understanding of what science is. Science is not a pile of facts. Science is not even about fact making. Science is about hypothesis testing; it’s not about proving facts but testing for verification and falsifying premises. The overall “big picture” painted by science is a lot more dependent upon they a particular culture views life than it is the demonstration f a pile of facts.

Not only is this notion of science as a big pile of facts that guarantees an accurate understanding of reality a view that most scientists don’t take to the understanding of science, it’s specifically contradicted by the vast majority of historians and philosophers of science. While there is a great of contradiction between philosophers of science, the one thing they all agree on is that this fortress of facts idea is nonsense. First let’s turn to two major philosophers of science, Karl Popper and Thomas S. Kuhn. These two are destined to be linked since they had a major showdown to so speak over Kuhn’s theory, in the early to mid 60s. In that day Kuhn was thought to have won, his views went on to define philosophy of science for about three decades. I suspect that in this day popper is more popular and is probably now thought to have won. In reality, however, I think talk of who won is foolish because no only is the field still evolving but it’s diversifying and moving away form both, so neither of them won really. There is coming to be a plurality of models. Before going into that I’m going to examine Popper first, then Kuhn. What all of this evolving plurality agrees upon is that science is too complex and problematic to be regarded as anything like a fortress of facts!

[1] Victor J. Stenger, God: The Failed Hypothesis:How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007.

[2] Jerry Petersen, Simply Einstein, Review “Victor J. Stinger, God the Failed Hypothesis.” Online web page:

URL http://simplycharly.com/einstein/victor_stenger_god_the_failed_hypothesis_review.html visited Jan 31, 2012.

[3][iii] David Ludden "Conspicuous by His Absence". Skeptic. April 4, 2007. http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-04-04.html. Retrieved 2007-10-17. visited Jan 31,2012

[4] Petersen, ibid

. [5] Secular web

Gary P. Posner, “God in the ICU? A Criticique of San Franscisco Hospital Study of Intercessory prayer and Healing.” Originally published in Free Inquiry spring 1990, Secular Web URLhttp://www.infidels.org/library/modern/gary_posner/godccu.html

[6] Petersen,ibid

[7] John Polikinghorne’s staff, formerly on Polikinghorne’s official website, now Star Course, “Polikinghorne Q and A, Stenger and Hitchens. On line reseruce: URL http://www.starcourse.org/jcp/qanda.html#Stenger_and_Hitchens visited Summer 2011.last visited Jan 2 2012.

[8] Polkinghorne,ibid

[9] David Sharf, “Pseudo Science and Stenger’s Quantum gods: Mistaken, Misinformed, and Misleading.” NeuroQuantology, Vol 8, No 1 (2010), online copy URL: http://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/viewArticle/272 visited Jan 2 2012 Sharf received his Ph.D. in 1986 from Johns Hopkins University, in the philosophy of physics. The title of his dissertation was: Quantum Mechanics and the Program for the Unity of Science [10] Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker. Why The Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design. New York: W.W. Norton & Company,inc. 2004, 6.

[11] Richard Dawkins, “Is Science a Religion,” The Humanist: A Magazine of Critical inquiry and Social Concern, Jan-feb 1997, on line copy URL: http://www.thehumanist.org/humanist/articles/dawkins.html

visited Feb 2, 2012

[12] ibid

[13] “God is Imaginary” Example no 11 no scientific evidence URL: http://godisimaginary.com/i11.htm

visited 1/30/2012

[14] Dawkins, ibid.


God,Science, and ideology,a book by Joseph Hinmman

This book makes the argument that those say science beats religion are not speaking scientifically but ideologically

This is an important book that spans an immense literature in a balanced and very readable form. For anyone interested in why some believe and others do not, this book will inform you of the entire range of literature in which not only can the proper questions be asked, but the reader can evaluate the often hidden ideological nature in which answers are proposed

Ralph W. Hood, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology and LeRoy A. Martin Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies



"Hinman is highly stimulating, brilliant in places. It is rare to find a book so exuberant yet still rational."

--Lantz Fleming Miller, Ashoka University

https://www.amazon.com/God-Science-Ideology-examining-religious-scientific/dp/0982408765

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Joe: Nowhere is the arrogance of humanity more apparent than in the many tendencies to treat God as a big man in the sky and try to subject him to scientific analysis.

Why is that arrogant? I would say that

(a) trying to understand the universe is part of man's nature, and subjecting God to scientific analysis is just part of that

(b) theists really only object because said scientific analysis indicates there is no God

If science showed there was a God, theists would be all over it. We know this because they do exactly that with the cosmological argument.

Joe: This is a move that most thinkers of the previous century would have laughed themselves silly over.

Really? I am sure atheists in the twentieth century were also pointing out a lack of scientific evidence for God.

Joe: Stinger, in his God the Failed Hypothesis[1] is the genius who stated the "who created God" thing, one of the hallmarks of atheist ignorance.

Is that true? There is a Wiki page about that issue, and Stenger is not mentioned.

The real problem theists have is that if they can rationalise away God not being created, then atheists can rationalise the universe or the multiverse or whatever as not being created.

Joe: The method is super simple. Stinger does mess not with trying to probe the heavens or reaching beyond our tiny little sample of reality on this dust mote, he does it the "obvious way" by creating a straw man argument for God then knocking it down.

My understanding is Stenger shows that a hypothetical universe without God would look identical to ours.

Joe: Science is not about proving facts or manufacturing a pile of facts so much as it is about testing hypothesis in a systematic fashion. Science is more about disproving than about proving.

Kind of and that is kind what Stenger does. We think relativity is true because, despite multiple attempts to disprove it, no one has managed to do so.

Stenger presents his atheist hypothesis - a universe with no God - and then shows multiple tests that fail to disprove it.

Joe: The whole idea of referring to God as an hypothesis in the first place is an attempt to classify the God concept under the rubric of scientific domain.

The hypothesis is that God exists, not God himself!

Joe: How does he reckon it should if there is no God? He constructs his own fundamentalist driven version of what God would be like. Of course he has no knowledge of that. It's really a disproof of the atheist big nightmare of the fundamentalist concept of God, in other words, a straw man argument not a real disproof of anything valid.

There is a real problem that Christians have such divergent ideas about God - which I think is evidence they are all wrong, but that is by-the-by. What you say here might be more convincing if you could give concrete examples of how Stenger's "own fundamentalist driven version of what God" differs from yours.

Joe: For instance, he tackles the question of the efficacy of prayer, in which the followers of these faiths fervently believe. If God exists, he argues, prayers could be shown to have been answered, using verifiable, replicable studies.

And he is right!

If prayer worked, Christians would routinely recover from cancer without the need for medical attention. That is simply not the case.

How many times have Christians between them prayed for world peace? Trillions seems a fair bet, given there are a few billion of them, and we can assume they pray for world peace once a week for 20 years. And they all failed. Why> Because the Christian God does not exist.

Pix

im-skeptical said...

"The fortress of facts is something atheists deny vehemently but it’s obvious in almost every argument they make. Most scientifically inclined observers know that science is not merely the accumulation of a pile of facts."
- Sure, there are many atheists who are not scientifically minded. But many are. And the truth is that those who are more scientifically minded are also more likely to be atheists. So if there is any merit to your "fortress of facts" thesis, it doesn't represent the strongest atheistic thinking.

"Of course the notion weather or not God can be so classified is a theological question and must be answered [by] theologians."
- Who says so? I would agree with that if and only if God is not observable and can't be inferred by the effects he has on the observable world. But theologians are always trying to infer the existence of God by means of observable effects. (And I know a certain blog author who claims to use science to make his case for God.) So to say that they can do that while scientists aren't allowed to make the same kind of observations is really quite disingenuous.

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

Anonymous said...
Joe: Nowhere is the arrogance of humanity more apparent than in the many tendencies to treat God as a big man in the sky and try to subject him to scientific analysis.

Why is that arrogant? I would say that

You really can't figure out why claiming understand God our own human analysis is arrogant?

(a) trying to understand the universe is part of man's nature, and subjecting God to scientific analysis is just part of that

God is not a product of the universe thus he must always transcend man's understanding.
No it's not God transcends the universe.




(b) theists really only object because said scientific analysis indicates there is no God

Bull shit It doesn't. Why don't you explain how it does?
If science showed there was a God, theists would be all over it. We know this because they do exactly that with the cosmological argument.

About half the scientists in America believe in God. If your argument was true it be about 10%

Joe: This is a move that most thinkers of the previous century would have laughed themselves silly over.

Really? I am sure atheists in the twentieth century were also pointing out a lack of scientific evidence for God.

Since God is transcendent of the natural realm he can't be studied by science how can science tell us anything about God"


Joe: Stinger, in his God the Failed Hypothesis[1] is the genius who stated the "who created God" thing, one of the hallmarks of atheist ignorance.

Is that true? There is a Wiki page about that issue, and Stenger is not mentioned.

I didn't mean to imply he was to use that. I should change that.

The real problem theists have is that if they can rationalize away God not being created, then atheists can rationalize the universe or the multiverse or whatever as not being created.

Doesn't work, the reason God does not need an origin is because he is eternal, Physical universe is not eternal.

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

Joe:"The fortress of facts is something atheists deny vehemently but it’s obvious in almost every argument they make. Most scientifically inclined observers know that science is not merely the accumulation of a pile of facts."

skep:- Sure, there are many atheists who are not scientifically minded. But many are. And the truth is that those who are more scientifically minded are also more likely to be atheists. So if there is any merit to your "fortress of facts" thesis, it doesn't represent the strongest atheistic thinking.

Half the people in America who have advanced degrees in science are believers in God.

"Of course the notion weather or not God can be so classified is a theological question and must be answered [by] theologians."

- Who says so?
I do I;m a theologian.

I would agree with that if and only if God is not observable and can't be inferred by the effects he has on the observable world. But theologians are always trying to infer the existence of God by means of observable effects.

God is not normally observable in an ordinary way. Sometimes he does things that are clearly him we call that "miracles" those are rare. they are arguable. The knowing of God happens at a level too deep for science.

(And I know a certain blog author who claims to use science to make his case for God.) So to say that they can do that while scientists aren't allowed to make the same kind of observations is really quite disingenuous.
8:25 PM
I don't claim to prove God exists. The circumstances of the natural world can warrant belief. There is no scientific disproof. The science arguments are ideological not scientific

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

This is more in response to Pix

There is a real problem that Christians have such divergent ideas about God - which I think is evidence they are all wrong, but that is by-the-by. What you say here might be more convincing if you could give concrete examples of how Stenger's "own fundamentalist driven version of what God" differs from yours.

Science is about only empirical matters, religion is not. This allows for greater diversity in analysis since a lot of the material is subjective. That doesn't make it false. That's an ideological response.

Joe: For instance, he tackles the question of the efficacy of prayer, in which the followers of these faiths fervently believe. If God exists, he argues, prayers could be shown to have been answered, using verifiable, replicable studies.

And he is right!

If prayer worked, Christians would routinely recover from cancer without the need for medical attention. That is simply not the case.

First of all they probably do. Secondly the whole argument assumes certain kinds of theology and dogmatically excludes others. You could have a theological position that God doesn't work in the word. I don't agree but it would be a valid theology,

How many times have Christians between them prayed for world peace? Trillions seems a fair bet, given there are a few billion of them, and we can assume they pray for world peace once a week for 20 years. And they all failed. Why> Because the Christian God does not exist.

You are just multiplying examples. You assume God must a machine that firs when one says them magic word. When that doesn't happen it must be because there is no God. I did not come to believe in God because of miracles per se. Why should lack of them kill my faith?

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

Question for Pix. how do they control for prayer in those studies? How do you know the people being healed haven't been prayed fo?, People can be prayed for without knowing it.

im-skeptical said...

"Half the people in America who have advanced degrees in science are believers in God."
- 33% of scientists believe in God (according to Pew Research). And the numbers get smaller with increasing age. That seems to buck the general trend of society, where older people are more likely to believe. What's going on with that? I think it's the idea that people enter into the field of science from the general public, many of them starting out as believers. And as they gain scientific understanding and become more mature, they eventually come to the undeniable realization that real scientific understanding is not compatible with religious belief.

"The knowing of God happens at a level too deep for science."
- You say "too deep" as if it is beyond the intellectual capacity of people in the scientific community. So pat yourself on the back because it's not too deep for you, along with all the believers who could never get a degree in science.


"The science arguments are ideological not scientific"
- Religion IS ideology. The pot is calling the kettle black.

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

"According to a 2009 Pew Research Center poll of scientists who are members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 51% of scientists believe in God or a higher power. This is less than half the 95% of Americans who believe in some form of deity or higher power, as reported in a separate Pew Research Center survey in 2006. Of the scientists who believe in a higher power, 33% believe in God and 18% believe in a universal spirit."==Pew research c
enter

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

I think it's the idea that people enter into the field of science from the general public, many of them starting out as believers. And as they gain scientific understanding and become more mature, they eventually come to the undeniable realization that real scientific understanding is not compatible with religious belief.

There is nothing in science that disputes belief in God. you assume Christians are all creationists, you have no scientific proof of your thesis that people abandon belief as they learn more science

"The knowing of God happens at a level too deep for science."
- You say "too deep" as if it is beyond the intellectual capacity of people in the scientific community. So pat yourself on the back because it's not too deep for you, along with all the believers who could never get a degree in science.
I do. i know I am deeper than most people. Seriously, Gpd i too dee for any human. He Transends space/time. I know science is your replacement for God you think your interest in it marks you as a great thinker. that is all psychologically driven.


"The science arguments are ideological not scientific"
- Religion IS ideology. The pot is calling the kettle black.
I know religion is Largey ideology you can't face that reality about your god. Religion deos not reduce to just ideological.

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

I hate this new text box. that's how computer people efme "improve,et" if they things less functional.

Anonymous said...
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im-skeptical said...

"18% believe in a universal spirit."
- ... or something. But it is not God. Only 33% of scientists believe in God.

"There is nothing in science that disputes belief in God. you assume Christians are all creationists, you have no scientific proof of your thesis that people abandon belief as they learn more science"
- There is plenty of reason for scientists not to believe in God. It's what we call objective evidence, which is what science is based on. Do we have proof? No. And you don't either. What we do have is a lack of any objective evidence that legitimately supports belief in God.

"I do. i know I am deeper than most people. Seriously, Gpd i too dee for any human. He Transends space/time. I know science is your replacement for God you think your interest in it marks you as a great thinker. that is all psychologically driven."
- My belief is based on evidence and scientific understanding about how things work in our world.

"I know religion is Largey ideology you can't face that reality about your god. Religion deos not reduce to just ideological."
- I don't have a God. I don't need one. I have a brain.

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

im-skeptical said...
"18% believe in a universal spirit."
- ... or something. But it is not God. Only 33% of sciet could beliieve in the God

You don't have enouugh information, most of that 18. It's veg what they think god is and what this universal spirit is. I think that it negates atheism, just because it doesn't qualify for your special hatred, christianity. doesnt mean ahtiests can accept it.There are many differemt notions of God it could be impersonal and abstract and still be called God. I don't believe in a big man the sky.



"There is nothing in science that disputes belief in God. you assume Christians are all creationists, you have no scientific proof of your thesis that people abandon belief as they learn more science"

- There is plenty of reason for scientists not to believe in God. It's what we call objective evidence, which is what science is based on. Do we have proof? No. And you don't either. What we do have is a lack of any objective evidence that legitimately supports belief in God.

no objetive evidence disproves God, no objective evidence makes God out to be impossible. The only scientific position is that a God is a universal spirit. Atheists can only understad one reason to believe in God that is to explain the world they can explain it without God so they don't need God to atheists that is a big reason but there are other reasons to believe in God.

you doged the issue.You have not given us a sinlge scietificaly backed reason not to believe in God.

im-skeptical said...

"You have not given us a sinlge scietificaly backed reason not to believe in God."
- For the scientifically-minded, belief is based on objective evidence. Lack of evidence is more than ample justification for lack of belief.

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

The religious experience studies are objective evidence

im-skeptical said...

Religious experience is subjective experience.

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

the effects of having the experience are ot subjective they been studied a lot for 50 years. Those effects show it is not a naturistic experience.

im-skeptical said...

"Those effects show it is not a naturistic experience."
- That's what you say. It's not what the studies actually conclude.

im-skeptical said...

OK. Joe. This is the way it always ends. But you can make a believer of me. You say these studies show that mystical experience is supernatural in origin. So show me. Quote the words and cite a peer-reviewed study that makes this case for you. When I see the evidence, I will believe it.

But I think I know what you are going to say. It's not just one study. It's the combination of all of them - right? You put all that information together, and you draw the conclusion. It that's what you have, then you should put it up for peer review and publish it in a legitimate journal of psychology.

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

you are right, I wasn't being dishonest just not thinking. I think there is a natural implication one can draw from what the studies actually show. But none of them make claims about the supernatural.

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

Skep says: '''It's the combination of all of them - right? You put all that information together, and you draw the conclusion. It that's what you have, then you should put it up for peer review and publish it in a legitimate journal of psychology."----I would not say that because I don't like formulaic answers.

im-skeptical said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
im-skeptical said...

My point, as it has always been, is that there are indeed studies such as what you have been using, and much more, in the field of psychology (as opposed to just psychology of religion). And there are theories about this whole phenomenon. They often attribute the correlation with positive outcomes to a more positive psychological state. They also note that "peak experiences" are not exclusively religious, and they are caused by a whole variety of different conditions and circumstances.

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

Anyone can make up a theory, proving the theory is another matter, none of them have been proven. Give me the site for a study not in psychology of religion that proves God isn't being experienced. Or that RE is not good for you?

im-skeptical said...

"Give me the site for a study not in psychology of religion that proves God isn't being experienced"
- I didn't make any claim about that.

"Or that RE is not good for you?"
- I didn't say it isn't good for you. There is general agreement that these experiences can produce a positive psychological state or attitude that can bring about positive effects. That doesn't mean anything supernatural is involved.