I thought this diagram might amuse you...
Offline This is a subject which exasperates me. The problem with religious language is that there are these notions floating about which don't actually mean anything but come up all the time. The easiest way to explode this is to subject it to a very rigorous analysis. The problem is that many of these assertions often go together and are part of a general trend toward complete incomprehensibility. It is for that reason that I have made the following diagram. The diagram is supposed to be read from top right clockwise. Start on the right, find a knowledge claim/assertion, find the number on the left it corresponds to and follow it into the rejection pile.
If you have problems seeing this image, you can view it here:
(added by Sapient)
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
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Nice! I was considering getting together a sort of flowchart for shooting down creationist claims.
Can you post a link to a higher resolution version?
-Triften
The problem is that the diagram is a screen cap and so I got the max resolution possible while keeping the zoom such that I could fit the whole thing onto the screen.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
Yes.
You can still read it, though? I can.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
I could sort of read the one in the post. The link added is more legible but still rather small. What did you use to make it?
I could also see an html "choose your own adventure" style version of it.
Thanks again for the excellent summary in flowchart form.
-Triften
As you can see, it still leaves something to be desired but the next step would be to recreate the image from scratch. Personally, I would reorder the second page because the flow seems to be upside down where the original was clearly intended to be read clockwise from the top right.
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Sweet. I'm sure I'll be able to use this. Whether or not they understand basic english is of course another question...
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
hmm.. Very Nice! Good work!
Well, not exactly the discussion I was hoping to spark, but...yeah.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
What did you have in mind? I have one of those charts in my head already from all the bullshit cowboys visiting this site.
"Yee-Haw! I'm a bullshit cowboy! Here comes more bullshit! Yeeeeee-haaaaw!"
That's basically how I see the argument on the other side of the fence now.
...
Okay, so my flow chart isn't as elaborate as yours is.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
No, but the basic point is the same.
On the other hand, mine's got the whole "choose your own adventure" style going for it, which was really cool...30 years ago.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Hey now, don't get down on the choose your own adventure. I picked up one of those books that I had when I was a kid just recently, and they still make me laugh.
"Turn to page 38 if you wish to wield the sword!"
flip flip flip
"You're fucked!"
flip to the other choice flip flip
"All is well! You save the princess!"
Yes, those were the days. I don't think I finished a single one of those books. I mean, I flipped to the end to see the disappointing ending, but, uh ...
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
The idea isn't out of date, just the format. Make it into a game and you'll get tonnes of people having fun with it.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
hahaha!
Wow. Great minds must think alike then.
I assumed there was something there to prevent saving the image. Is the one hosted on photobucket the original?
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
Not if he took a screen cap. In any case, I don't think that you can really block saving of an image since it has to be locally cached to view it.
Here is a neat trick if you don't know it already: On flash sites that force the loading in a small target window, look at the html source and do a text search for “swf” or “flv”. That should give you a browser loadable url that can then be saved locally. Hit F11 and play your flash games/movies in nearly full screen.
That annoys many flash authors because they often use a fragment of action script to detect when other sites rip their work and take credit for it. If you do not have a block in your router, they will get a report that the app was loaded from an unapproved url.
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I want to return to this thread because religious language is often so confused and loaded with assumptions that either don't make sense or don't mean anything, yet people use it in conversation with each other as if they know exactly what they and the other person mean. It's very important to dissect common assertions and questions that come up in the context of this agonizingly and deliberately convoluted subject because often they are nonsense. As an example, consider the question "what happens when I die?". THis question has some loaded assumptions that the person asking the question assumes that the person listening will understand. The correct response to this question is "the world keeps on turning", or if you are feeling particular sarcastic, the answer is "you die". Because taken purely as phrased above, the question asks "what happens when event x happens"? Death, after all, is an event. But what people are really asking, but don't actually phrase directly, is what you experience after you die, which is, of course, a stupid question, because you've died! Experience is the process by which the biological brain interprets sensory data from the outside world. That process is no longer occuring once the biological function of the brain terminates.
It's much the same which people talking about "God". Instead of being precise about the matter and attempting to argue for an entity which possesses certain attributes in clear and coherent terms by describing it's properties, they convolute the issue by using notions that are too soft to be subject to rigorous analysis. Phrases that come to mind here are "higher power" and "God is all around us" and "God is infinite" etc. etc.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism