Science and Supernatural:Atheist Misconception about Sciene and Fortress of facts

 


 The whole point of this essay is to illustrate the point that religious thinking is not stuck in the ancient world. Modern religious people can and do think scientifically and modern atheist don't always understand what scientific thinking is about. The atheist straw man understanding of faith chalks belief up to stupidity and calls it "faith" while assuming that scinece is an ultimate form of proof that can't e questioned. All of these assumptions are wrong headed.

CARM discussion: a thread by "The Tide" called "The absurdity of Christianity."
 Argument about the origin of the universe.  The atheist has made the claim that there is no empirical evidence for God. I have said no empirical evidence for multivariate and string theory and things atheists re willing to base their views upon. Mathematical models are no better my God arguments i say. MarkUK says:

Originally Posted by MarkUK

 Mathematical models are supplemented by empirical evidence; they aren't Genesis.

Originally Posted by Metacrock

they are not! there is no such evidence. we have no empirical evidence of a multivariate and probably never will. I wonder do you understand what mulitiverse is?we have no empirical evidence that proves the origin of the universe. when scientist assert that we will find it someday and it wont be about God they are expressing faith. just because they are priesthood of knowledge doesn't mean they know everything or that they don't use faith.you might as well open your eyes and learn, scinece is a human thing ti's done by humans and humans make mistakes. Science is not god its not even the only form of knowledge.

 Originally Posted by Whatshisface

So, you have faith the origin of the universe is God's doing, scientists, according to you, have faith it will be a natural explanation. As stated by you both positions are contradictory, so faith seems a poor way to get at the truth. The thing is, science gets round this by having a system to weed out faith, prejudice, mistakes etc. It may not be perfect, but for finding things out its the best thing wev'e got. If you disagree, please point to anything else that has science's track record.

Meta

 Now probably by "faith" he means the  atheist straw man of faith which is "believing things for no reason."That will become apparent when he seems to contrast this "faith" with the reasons he thinks he has in science. the truth is reason means placing confidence in a hypothesis even though it may be particularly proved. It does not mean believing things without evidence. Faith is a complex concept that can be summed or understood easily. In this context it deals with belief, and there is no reason to dismiss it as something stupid like "believing things for no reason" or "without evidence." Because I make a rhetorical rejoinder to his pejorative about faith he thinks that means there's a contradiction and it proves faith is bad. No, the contradiction is in his view becuase he has faith that means he must think at some point faith is good. It just depends upon what one has faith in. The atheists clearly expressing faith in science when they assume that the models are backed by empirical proof even though there is no such empirical proof for multiverse.

His assertion that scinece weeds out faith and mistakes shows not  only that it's the straw man version of faith he's going by but also the total misconception about the nature of science. That assumes that scinece is proof, becuase if it's not resting on faith at some point then it must provide absolute proof. Science is not about proof. I've already discussed, the views of Philosopher of science Karl Popper. Popper is highly respected among scientists. If we assume that faith is not being stuipd, it is not accepting things for no reason or not ditching critical faculties, then there's no reason to think science has anything over faith. Both are apt for their given tasks. They don't do the same things, there's no reason we can't use them both. This is one of the most fallacious assumptions atheist make is the idea that religion is stuck back in the ancinet word and it can never evolve with that times.

Whatshisface goes on:

Every time we find out about something that we once thought had a supernatural explanation we find a natural explanation, its never the other way round which is why a natural explanation of the universe is a reasonable expectation, not faith. The only way you can redress the balance is to point to examples where the supernatural explanation has turned out to be true, to the same confirmed, evidential standard that natural explanations have. Can you do this? I don't think so.

 That's using the atheist straw man concept of supernatural. As I've discussed before supernatural is empirical. It's something we know for a fact exists, it's mystical experience,that was the original concept (see my essay). The enlightenment philosophies changed the idea to unseen realms and magic powers and so forth in order to ridicule the notion. He argues that the only way to reinstate the balance. This talk of a balance comes from the assumption that there's some kind of competition and scinece is winning. There can only be competition if these concepts do the same things. They don't do the same things, they dont' cover the same aspects of reality, there can't be a completion. There's way to say that striking a blow for the truth of one counts on the same scale as the blows of truth for the other. So being to prove 47 different kinds of arthropods might not be anywhere near as important as one concept of spiritual reality. Of course he's assuming the straw man concept. In terms of the true concept, where supernatural is mystical experience then that is proved to be real and well documented with a huge body of scientific work of over 200 empirical studies from academic journals. The scientific studies document the transforming effects of these experiences. I do not have a complete bibliography of the 200 studies as yet reading on the net. I have them assembled but not on the net. There's an excellent article that sums up many of the studies and provides an excellent bibliography, although it's only partial. Krishna Mohan's article on spirituality and well being. See also my article on doxa.

 As Abrham Maslow said in his book on Peak Experience:

Now that may be taken as a frank admission of a naturalistic psychological origin, except that it invovles a universal symbology which is not explicable through merely naturalistic means. How is it that all humans come to hold these same archetypical symbols? (For more on archetypes see Jesus Chrsit and Mythology page II) The "prematives" viewed and understood a sense of transformation which gave them an integration into the universe. This is crucial for human development. They sensed a power in the numenous, that is the origin of religion."

"In Appendix I and elsewhere in this essay, I have spoken of unitive perception, i.e., fusion of the B-realm with the D-realm, fusion of the eternal with the temporal, the sacred with the profane, etc. Someone has called this "the measureless gap between the poetic perception of reality and prosaic, unreal commonsense." Anyone who cannot perceive the sacred, the eternal, the symbolic, is simply blind to an aspect of reality, as I think I have amply demonstrated elsewhere (54), and in Appendix I, fromPeak Experience (online copy of the book)

 Whatshisface

BTW, the past is littered with statements that say, we will never find that out, that's impossible, etc, that have been proven wrong. I am slightly taken aback by your dim view of science. Remember, all science is is a disciplined way of finding out about things. You can't brush it under the carpet as if it doesn't count. And re the origin of the universe, science is the only way we will find out about it.

 That's charming but irrelevant becasue nowhere have I said that. The idea that religion says this in general just by the nature of what it is is part of the ideological propaganda and the myth of the enlightenment. There's no actual reason why religious people have to think this way. This is assuming a God of the gaps mentality. Atheist assume that becuase they think everything is about scientific explanations. They can't understand the concept  of having other kinds of explanations that matter more. "Science is a disciplined way of finding out about things" but what he says after that shows what he really means to say is "scinece is the only way to find out about things. It's not. It's not a way to find about ultimate reality or God. The only way to do that is to experience God.

 Originally Posted by MarkUK

Never, in the history of humanity, has a scientific explanation been supplanted by a non-scientific one; there is an embarrassment of riches of it going the other way.

Science sticks around, or is turned over by more science.

That assumes that religion is about ancinet world thinking and it can't ever update. If you try to update atheists will say "that's not Christianity." Christianity to them is thinking stupidly and in a very old fashioned unscientific way. The modern scientific study of religious experience confirms the turth of religoius belief. Atheists known nothing about social sciences as a general rule an the shameful and silly way they have tried to find all manner of means of destroying confidence in the studies, everything but read them, proves this. They are not scientific thinkers. They are totally and totally opposed to scientific thinking when it doesn't back their ideology of anti-God propaganda. We can see modern scientific thinking in process theology which has been the major trend in theology throughout the twentieth century. We can see it in the acceptance of evolution as a fact of scinece, and we can see it in the understanding of science and relative value expressed in so many major theologians in the last century such as Pannenberg and Molatmann.

Science and Supernatural:Atheist Misconception about Sciene and Fortress of facts

 


The whole point of this essay is to illustrate the point that religious thinking is not stuck in the ancient world. Modern religious people can and do think scientifically and modern atheist don't always understand what scientific thinking is about. The atheist straw man understanding of faith chalks belief up to stupidity and calls it "faith" while assuming that scinece is an ultimate form of proof that can't e questioned. All of these assumptions are wrong headed.

CARM discussion: a thread by "The Tide" called "The absurdity of Christianity."
 Argument about the origin of the universe.  The atheist has made the claim that there is no empirical evidence for God. I have said no empirical evidence for multivariate and string theory and things atheists re willing to base their views upon. Mathematical models are no better my God arguments i say. MarkUK says:

Originally Posted by MarkUK

 Mathematical models are supplemented by empirical evidence; they aren't Genesis.

Originally Posted by Metacrock

they are not! there is no such evidence. we have no empirical evidence of a multivariate and probably never will. I wonder do you understand what mulitiverse is?we have no empirical evidence that proves the origin of the universe. when scientist assert that we will find it someday and it wont be about God they are expressing faith. just because they are priesthood of knowledge doesn't mean they know everything or that they don't use faith.you might as well open your eyes and learn, scinece is a human thing ti's done by humans and humans make mistakes. Science is not god its not even the only form of knowledge.

 Originally Posted by Whatshisface

So, you have faith the origin of the universe is God's doing, scientists, according to you, have faith it will be a natural explanation. As stated by you both positions are contradictory, so faith seems a poor way to get at the truth. The thing is, science gets round this by having a system to weed out faith, prejudice, mistakes etc. It may not be perfect, but for finding things out its the best thing wev'e got. If you disagree, please point to anything else that has science's track record.

Meta

 Now probably by "faith" he means the  atheist straw man of faith which is "believing things for no reason."That will become apparent when he seems to contrast this "faith" with the reasons he thinks he has in science. the truth is reason means placing confidence in a hypothesis even though it may be particularly proved. It does not mean believing things without evidence. Faith is a complex concept that can be summed or understood easily. In this context it deals with belief, and there is no reason to dismiss it as something stupid like "believing things for no reason" or "without evidence." Because I make a rhetorical rejoinder to his pejorative about faith he thinks that means there's a contradiction and it proves faith is bad. No, the contradiction is in his view becuase he has faith that means he must think at some point faith is good. It just depends upon what one has faith in. The atheists clearly expressing faith in science when they assume that the models are backed by empirical proof even though there is no such empirical proof for multiverse.

His assertion that scinece weeds out faith and mistakes shows not  only that it's the straw man version of faith he's going by but also the total misconception about the nature of science. That assumes that scinece is proof, becuase if it's not resting on faith at some point then it must provide absolute proof. Science is not about proof. I've already discussed, the views of Philosopher of science Karl Popper. Popper is highly respected among scientists. If we assume that faith is not being stuipd, it is not accepting things for no reason or not ditching critical faculties, then there's no reason to think science has anything over faith. Both are apt for their given tasks. They don't do the same things, there's no reason we can't use them both. This is one of the most fallacious assumptions atheist make is the idea that religion is stuck back in the ancinet word and it can never evolve with that times.

Whatshisface goes on:

Every time we find out about something that we once thought had a supernatural explanation we find a natural explanation, its never the other way round which is why a natural explanation of the universe is a reasonable expectation, not faith. The only way you can redress the balance is to point to examples where the supernatural explanation has turned out to be true, to the same confirmed, evidential standard that natural explanations have. Can you do this? I don't think so.

 That's using the atheist straw man concept of supernatural. As I've discussed before supernatural is empirical. It's something we know for a fact exists, it's mystical experience,that was the original concept (see my essay). The enlightenment philosophies changed the idea to unseen realms and magic powers and so forth in order to ridicule the notion. He argues that the only way to reinstate the balance. This talk of a balance comes from the assumption that there's some kind of competition and scinece is winning. There can only be competition if these concepts do the same things. They don't do the same things, they dont' cover the same aspects of reality, there can't be a completion. There's way to say that striking a blow for the truth of one counts on the same scale as the blows of truth for the other. So being to prove 47 different kinds of arthropods might not be anywhere near as important as one concept of spiritual reality. Of course he's assuming the straw man concept. In terms of the true concept, where supernatural is mystical experience then that is proved to be real and well documented with a huge body of scientific work of over 200 empirical studies from academic journals. The scientific studies document the transforming effects of these experiences. I do not have a complete bibliography of the 200 studies as yet reading on the net. I have them assembled but not on the net. There's an excellent article that sums up many of the studies and provides an excellent bibliography, although it's only partial. Krishna Mohan's article on spirituality and well being. See also my article on doxa.

 As Abrham Maslow said in his book on Peak Experience:

Now that may be taken as a frank admission of a naturalistic psychological origin, except that it invovles a universal symbology which is not explicable through merely naturalistic means. How is it that all humans come to hold these same archetypical symbols? (For more on archetypes see Jesus Chrsit and Mythology page II) The "prematives" viewed and understood a sense of transformation which gave them an integration into the universe. This is crucial for human development. They sensed a power in the numenous, that is the origin of religion."

"In Appendix I and elsewhere in this essay, I have spoken of unitive perception, i.e., fusion of the B-realm with the D-realm, fusion of the eternal with the temporal, the sacred with the profane, etc. Someone has called this "the measureless gap between the poetic perception of reality and prosaic, unreal commonsense." Anyone who cannot perceive the sacred, the eternal, the symbolic, is simply blind to an aspect of reality, as I think I have amply demonstrated elsewhere (54), and in Appendix I, fromPeak Experience (online copy of the book)

 Whatshisface

BTW, the past is littered with statements that say, we will never find that out, that's impossible, etc, that have been proven wrong. I am slightly taken aback by your dim view of science. Remember, all science is is a disciplined way of finding out about things. You can't brush it under the carpet as if it doesn't count. And re the origin of the universe, science is the only way we will find out about it.

 That's charming but irrelevant becasue nowhere have I said that. The idea that religion says this in general just by the nature of what it is is part of the ideological propaganda and the myth of the enlightenment. There's no actual reason why religious people have to think this way. This is assuming a God of the gaps mentality. Atheist assume that becuase they think everything is about scientific explanations. They can't understand the concept  of having other kinds of explanations that matter more. "Science is a disciplined way of finding out about things" but what he says after that shows what he really means to say is "scinece is the only way to find out about things. It's not. It's not a way to find about ultimate reality or God. The only way to do that is to experience God.

 Originally Posted by MarkUK

Never, in the history of humanity, has a scientific explanation been supplanted by a non-scientific one; there is an embarrassment of riches of it going the other way.

Science sticks around, or is turned over by more science.

That assumes that religion is about ancinet world thinking and it can't ever update. If you try to update atheists will say "that's not Christianity." Christianity to them is thinking stupidly and in a very old fashioned unscientific way. The modern scientific study of religious experience confirms the turth of religoius belief. Atheists known nothing about social sciences as a general rule an the shameful and silly way they have tried to find all manner of means of destroying confidence in the studies, everything but read them, proves this. They are not scientific thinkers. They are totally and totally opposed to scientific thinking when it doesn't back their ideology of anti-God propaganda. We can see modern scientific thinking in process theology which has been the major trend in theology throughout the twentieth century. We can see it in the acceptance of evolution as a fact of scinece, and we can see it in the understanding of science and relative value expressed in so many major theologians in the last century such as Pannenberg and Molatmann.

God is not a Plausible Explaination for the Universe: God is Truth

Atheists have often argued that God is not a plausible explanation for the universe. What they mean by that is that we don't know enough about God to judge the value of the explanation, and that issues such as the complexity problem prevent a clear understanding. The plausible explanation thing is not a very good standard by which to judge the efficacy of belief. The reason for religions is not a scientific motivation to explain the workings of the physical world. The reason religion exists is becuase we have an empirical sense of the numinous, a sense referred to as "the religious a priori." Religion is not intended as an explanation in the sense that scinece is. It's not meant to be a means of explaining the workings of the physical world. That kind of thinking went out with the nineteenth century.

The concept of God is that of the foundation of reality. There is no basis for a standard of plausibility in dealing with foundations of reality since we have no other examples of foundational reality to compare to. This observation in a nutshell beats all of their arguments about plausibility, because it says that plausibility is the wrong standard by which to judge the efficacy of belief. This observation leads to a realization that actually destroys most of the arguments made about God an probability and standard of scinece.

Science has to have two things: predictive power and falsifiability. That's in addition to replicator and representative sample and double all the together things all of those are made impossible if you don't have these two. Science can't prove it can only disprove. if there is no disproof it's not assumed proven it's assumed a match with theory then theory is assumed to be verisimilitude. Science is not the acquisition of truth its' verisimilitude.


Since God is synonymous with truth (according to the primordial assertion of belief--that's the foundational assumption made in belief--the religious a prori) God is not subject to falsification. God is not subject to predictability God is not a matter of empiricism becuase God is not a thing in creation. This idea that God is synonymous with turth is met with consternation by atheists, and one can understand why. One might think this is becuase since the atheist is dedicated to rejecting believe he/she can't very well accept a religious a priori that puts God in at the foundational level. Yet, there's a more basic reason than that why this idea is upsetting them. It's because it is predicated upon a different notion of truth than any that they understand or have been taught to think about. The typical atheist notion of truth is pretty much one of verisimilitude. It's surface level, it excludes any sort of depth of being. Things are not any more than they seem. There's no underlying issue with being it's just a surface matter of does X exist or not?

The notion of truth with which St. Augustine understood God's synonymy is a kin to the concept dreaded by Postmoderns, the "meta narrative." We are talking about Truth with a capital "T." In bold letters yet. This notion of truth is the overarching explanation for all of reality, depth and all, not just the surface explanation of the existence of a given X. This kind of truth is apt to be rejected by atheists because it hints at not only God but notions such as sin and judgment and virtue and the whole metaphysical nine yards. This is not only installing God at the epistemological and metaphysical level, without a fight so to speak, but it also excludes the replacement religion atheism turns to for substitution in the face of losing the advantages of God belief. In other words, one can't work the doings of science upon the epistemic foundation of reality becuase it's at a higher epistemological level than anything in science: it's not a matter of inductive abstraction.


Belief in God can be warranted or unwarranted, not proved or disproved.

Augustine never made an argument for the existence of God because for him God was known with certainty and immediacy. God is immediately discerned in the apprehension of truth, thus need not be “proved.” God is the basis of all truth, and therefore, cannot be the object of questioning about truth, since God is he medium through which other truths can be known.[1] Tillich said:

Augustine, after he had experienced all the implications of ancient skepticism, gave a classical answer to the problem of the two absolutes: they coincide in the nature of truth. Veritas is presupposed in ever philosophical argument; and veritas is God. You cannot deny truth as such because you could do it only in the name of truth, thus establishing truth. And if you establish truth you affirm God. “Where I have found the truth there I have found my God, the truth itself,” Augustine says. The question of the two Ultimates is solved in such a way that the religious Ultimate is presupposed in every philosophical question, including the question of God. God is the presupposition of the question of God. This is the ontological solution of the problem of the philosophy of religion. God can never be reached if he is the object of a question and not its basis.[2]

Augustine says God is truth. He doesn’t so much say God is being as he says God is truth. But to say this in this way is actually in line with the general theme we have been discussing, the one I call “super-essential Godhead,” or Tillich’s existential ontology. Augustine puts the emphasis upon God’s name as love, not being. Since he was a neo Platonist he thought of true reality as beyond being and thus he thought of God as “beyond being.”[3] This makes no sense in a modern setting since for us “to be” is reality, and to not be part of being would meaning being unreal. But in the platonic context, true reality was beyond this level of reality and what we think of as “our reality” or “our world” is only a plane reflection of the true reality. We are creatures of a refection in a mud puddle and the thing reflected that is totally removed from our being is the true reality. It was this distinction Tillich tried to preserve by distinguishing between being and existence.

Augustine looked to the same passage in Exodus that Gilson quotes in connection with Aquinas. Augustine’s conclusions are much the same about that phrase “I am that I am.” This is one of his key reasons for his identification between God and truth. He saw the nature of God’s timeless being as a key also to identifying God with truth. The link between God and truth is the Platonic “one.” Augustine puts the forms in the mind of God, so God becomes the forms really. The basis of this identification is based partly upon God’s eternal nature. From that point on it’s all an easy identification between eternal verities, such as truth, eternal being, beauty, the one, and God. The other half of the equation is God’s revelation of himself as eternal and necessary through the phrase, for very similar reasons to those listed already by Gilson, between I am that I am and being itself (or in Augustine’s case the transcended of being). “He answers, disclosing himself to creature as Creator, as God to man, as Immortal to mortal, eternal to a thing of time he answers ‘I am who I am.’”[4]

That means in accepting belief in god one is not merely adding a fact to the universe or accepting a proposition about the existence of another thing in the world, but accepting a concept of truth as opposed to other concepts of truth.

---

[1] Donald Keef, Thomism and the Ontological Theology: A Comparison of Systems. Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1971, 140.

The “two Ultimates” discussed are philosophy and Religion.

[2] Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, 12-13

---

[3] The quotation above from the Levenson and Westphal book says Augistine believe God was being itself, Marion seems to say that Augustine put God beyond being. I think it’s debatable as to which he did because he didn’t say directly which it was. I’m assuming Marion is probably right just because of the time in which he lived and because he was a Platonic thinker.

[4] Carl Levenson and Johnathan Westphal, ed, Reality:Hackett readings Philosophy. " New York: Hackett Publishing. translated by Edmond Hill, 54 see the link

Why we are not Regalining them With Facts About God

Re: atheist nemesis was just joking

CARM atheist "Big thinker" is arguing that there is no God because if there was there would be scientific evidence of God. This discussion was not on CARM bu ton my boards, Doxa forums.

The fact that we are not regaling him with scientific facts about God is proof that there is no God. Of course the assumption he makes is that "scinece is what we use to know things, science is the only knowledge." This led to the use of an analogy by Wordgazer I think about finding air pressure with a ruler. I's the wrong tool, so not all tools are right for all jobs. So BT asserts that she doesn't understand and says a ruler isn't good for finding air pressure you need a bogometer (which is part of science by the way). I try to expalin the analogy to him again: scinece is the ruler, God is the air pressure. So that' where I'm taking up.

by Metacrock on Sat Mar 05, 2011 11:55 am

In answering one who might say there is only scientific knowledge.


"Real factual Knowledge?" So what's a fact? I am sitting in front of something we call a "desk." I'm really here, I'm really sitting in front of a desk. That is a fact, ergo it is knowledge. I know I'm doing, knowledge is anything I know. I did not obtain this "real factual knowledge" through scinece.

How do you know scientific knowledge is real? If you can question the non scientific empiricism knowledge by epistemic wonderment (how do you know you exist ect ect) why can't you question scientific knowledge that way?

The great Genius of the Legion of Super Heroes is Braniac 5 of the planet Calou. That is a fact. Now it's also a fact that the LSH and braniac 5 and Clous are function, but that doesn't mean that my knowledge of their membership is not factual.

you are asserting that the only "facts" worthy of the appellation are those gleaned by science. As long as you assert that you are selective excluding knowledge that doesn't fit your paradigm and thus rendering all possible knowledge subject to your paradigm that's what we call "ideology."

There are facts that are not from science, there are real things that are not given in scinece necessarily (I exist, I am here). These things I know thus they are facts thus all facts are not from scinece:

ergo scinece cannot be the only form of knowledge.

when you say it is you are merely creating a truth regime.

Big Thinker:

No, your analogy is completely incorrect. First of all, the method used to determine anything, including the existence of air pressure, is entirely dependent upon the definition of the claim. I doubt air pressure could be defined in such a way as to make a ruler make any sort of logical sense as a standard of measurement.

Meta (before):

This is typical. The analogy is brilliant. It shows the idea of using the wrong tool for a job that has to be done the right tool, the one in question is not it. To point out the the tool is wrong merely reiterates the point of the analogy and demonstrates that you don't understand it.

God is no able to be found by scinece, because he's the basis of all the stuff that science investigates. he's not part of the things that scinece can tell us about, he's the reaosn they exist. So we find him with scinece, just like you can't find air pressure with a ruler.

This speaks volumes about your acuity, rather lack thereof.

BT:

A barometer would be the obvious device considering the definition of "air pressure".

He's answering an analogy by clarifying the proper tool. That just reinforces the rightness of the analogy. Does this mean he understands what this is doing in the argument? stay tuned, same Bat time, Same Bat channel.

Meta:

Phenomenology is like the barometer. it's the more proper tool for God finding, not scinece. Science is the ruler. see you need to think about the relationships to the argument. That's how one understands analogies.

BT

Also, you since you probably aren't aware of my entire position, I am not the kind of atheist that thinks God does not exist at all.

Meta: as opposed to the kind who think he exists a little bit?

BT:

Rather, my position is that the nature of the existence of God, as described and testified to by those who believe in God is that God is conceptual and exists in the minds of those who believe in him in the same way that say love and justice are conceptual and exist in the mind. So the only reason I would require evidence of the existence of God outside of the mind is if believers claim that God exists outside of the mind.

Meta:

To you that is the same as saying "unreal" isn't it? Unless you are a Platonist. are you a Platonist?

that was exchange 1


exchange 2:

Re: atheist nemises was just joking

by Metacrock on Mon Mar 07, 2011 9:29 am

Meta:go back to the page 3. I argued that God is not given in sense data so science is not the answer for dealing with God,

BT:Actually, science is how we know there is no evidence that actually supports God. You are right that there is not "sense" data and the reason is because God does not actually exist. God DOES exist, however as a concept, as a character in the minds and imaginations of those who believe in him. On both of these points, it seems that you and I agree. And yet for some reason you seem to want to argue about it....

Meta:

You are using circular reasoning. You are basing your assertion upon a standard I already disproved then pretending that the disproved basis is enough to ground the opinion. You are merely refusing to answer the argument I made. This is the third time we have gone around in this circle. You yet to answer the argument, I wonder if you even understand it?

the first time is the one from the beginning that's not here on the page.

(1) Science is not capable of finding God in the first place. so the fact that there is no direct scientific evidence can't be used as an argument because we can't expect to find it.

(2) This is like using the ruler to find air pressure. you wouldn't expect to find it so to say "the ruler can't find air pressure so the ruler is no good as a tool," would be a rash statement wouldn't it? The ruler is not good for finding air pressure but it's good for measuring length. You are not using the right tools.

(3) you are making the leap in logic that becuase scinece is good for producing hard data of an empirical nature than it should be able to find anything, that's false. that doesn't follow.

Meta:and thus the standard of demanding scientific proof for God is phony becuase God is not part of the scientific magerieria.

exchange 3

BT:Again you have completely mis-interpreted everything I have said. I'm not demanding anything. Rather I am pointing out that the lack of evidence for the actual existence of God indicates that God is conceptual. I wish you could get my position right and then address my actual points rather than criticizing what you incorrectly assume is my position.

Meta

ahahahah Again! you just glaze right over the problem without even acknowledging it. you are still just asserting your original argument without any acknowledgment of the problem that scinece isn't suited to epistemological or metaphysical questions.

Meta:I use the analogy of the ruler trying to use a ruler to find air pressure. BT says you have to use a barometer, and thus makes my point for me. Science is no the right tool so what's next? Philosophy, the inverter of scinece.

BT:Science is how we know that God is a concept rather than something that exists outside of the mind.

Meta

But only for things that it's suited to find. Its' not suited to find God becuase God is the basis of reality, scinece can only find empirical things! It doesn't fit.

stop ignoring the issue! say something about it! this is the fifth time you have dropped the argument.

you know what? In high school debate (national forensic league) and in college debate (NDT and CEDA) you don't win an argument by ignoring it. When you ignore an argument you lose it automatically. you have lost this one five times over.

exchange 4

Metacrock wrote:

Meta:go back to the page 3. I argued that God is not given in sense data so science is not the answer for dealing with God,

BT:Actually, science is how we know there is no evidence that actually supports God. You are right that there is not "sense" data and the reason is because God does not actually exist. God DOES exist, however as a concept, as a character in the minds and imaginations of those who believe in him. On both of these points, it seems that you and I agree. And yet for some reason you seem to want to argue about it....

You are using circular reasoning. You are basing your assertion upon a standard I already disproved then pretending that the disproved basis is enough to ground the opinion. You are merely refusing to answer the argument I made. This is the third time we have gone around in this circle. You yet to answer the argument, I wonder if you even understand it?

BT
Can you be more specific? What argument have you made?

meta
(1) Science is not capable of finding God in the first place. so the fact that there is no direct scientific evidence can't be used as an argument because we can't expect to find it.

BT:

Science is capable of telling us if there is evidence of God or not. So far, not.

meta
(2) This is like using the ruler to find air pressure. you wouldn't expect to find it so to say "the ruler can't find air pressure so the ruler is no good as a tool," would be a rash statement wouldn't it? The ruler is not good for finding air pressure but it's good for measuring length. You are not using the right tools.

notice he gives no data or any sort of scientific evidence to prove that scinece is the only form o knowledge. He's merely asserting it because it works well for the things that works well for. He's assuring it must be all knowing such that if it doesn't' provide data then the thing that is not demonstrated by that data is just not existent.

4th time we've gone over this same ground.

BT

First of all, there are two parts of this. The first part deals with whether or not science is the right tool. Science deals with and assesses evidence. As it stands, there is no evidence that supports the actual existence of God. This is a scientific conclusion, since science deals with evidence. The second part deals with the nature of God. As it turns out, there is sufficient evidence that God is a concept, a belief, a character that exists in the minds of those who believe in him.
So it turns out that science tells us that there is no evidence for the actual existence of God AND that the evidence that does exist indicates that God exists as a concept.

Meta
(3) you are making the leap in logic that becuase scinece is good for producing hard data of an empirical nature than it should be able to find anything, that's false. that doesn't follow.

That's a very interesting paragrph. Notice he goes from (1) scinece deals with evidence that's his answer to weather or not it's the right tool. It deals with evidence therefore it must be right tool regardless of what kind of evidence would be needed. Then he moves to (2) mo evidence for God (3) therefore since science is the way to deal with evidence and there's none for God then scinece disproves God. Then (4) he asserts God is a concept and has no evidence so it's only a concept and is not outside the head.

Also notice his opinion and science have been melded into one so with no proof of his assertion about no evidence his on opinion has become a scientific authority.

Do you see the mistake here? He's leaping over a grand canyon of logic to assume that if scinece is the only way to deal with evidence, and since it is then it must be perfect and all encompassing, there could be no corner of reality where scinece can't go.

above in no 3 I accuse of making this leap and what does he say in the 5th go round?

BT

Nope, I am not making that leap. Sorry, try again. Meta, it would be much easier for you if you simply read and comprehended my statements. If you are confused about anything all you have to do is ask.

Right after making the leap he say "I'm not making the leap," then of course charges that I don't comprehend it. I'm not bowing down to his ignorance and arrogance so therefore I don't understand. He's supposed to be the King!

Meta:and thus the standard of demanding scientific proof for God is phony becuase God is not part of the scientific magerieria.

BT:That is correct, the reason is because God does not actually exist, God is a concept.

Its perfect! what could be more fitting then that he doesn't understand what magisteria is so he just utters "that is correct." He undoes his whole argument with his ignorance and still blusters in arrogance.