Let's start with an apology . . .
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I’m a Christian school teacher in southwest Virginia and your group was brought to my attention through a story my local TV station did about your "Blasphemy Challenge." I’ve never written you or had any personal contact with you or your group, but I want to start with an apology. Based on some of the discussions threads I’ve perused from your site, I want to apologize on behalf of rational Christians (an oxymoron to you, I know) for the following (the posts I refer to I read in your radio show mail bag):
1. People who try to deduce universal statements of reality from the lyrics of pop songs [I mean, John Lennon? Come on!] (‘Adam’ on 11-29-06)
2. People who try to convince an atheist that God exists because of their own personal experience (‘All I want is to be loved..Is that wrong?’ beginning 11-3-06, and MANY others)
3. People who try to convince a philosophical materialist that God is directly responsible for healing people (same)
4. People who say "I’d rather live this life believing in some myth than live without Jesus!’ (‘lins’ on 9-29-06 and undated thread titled ‘Letter from a friend who holds on to his theism’) (OK, this one actually makes me mad!, Marx was certainly right about some people’s faith)
5. People who say "I could defend my beliefs logically and all that jazz . . ." then by their own admission get irrational instead (same)
6. People who basically say that not believing in God is ‘bad manners’ (‘Yes I am De’Sha so keep HATTIN ON ME!’ 10-13-06)
7. People who try to defend the existence of God by using enough profanity and ad hominem to make a sailor blush (‘hopekill design’ 5-2-06 and, unfortunately, others)
8. People who try to convince an atheist that God exists using the Bible (‘Rebecca! At the Disco’ 7-31-06)
9. People who don’t seem to realize that, by their own way of thinking, a God-given will gives people the "permission" to deny His existence ([email protected]">‘[email protected]’ on ?)10. People (who are at least trying) who can only parrot the latest textbook argument from their favorite authority without apparently understanding it very well (‘Jay’ on 7-4-06)
Even though I obviously disagree with you on the existence of God, I was looking forward to the opportunity to engage an atheist who was intellectually honest enough to allow himself to be convinced otherwise.
After looking over much of your material and previous discussions, however, I’ve realized you aren’t that person I was hoping for. I can pretty much predict your responses to anything I would say based on what I’ve seen so far, so I’m not going to bother arguing God’s existence with you. I would like, instead, to address some problems I see with your approach and argumentation. I will then bid you a respectful adieu (unless you send me a particularly compelling response).
First of all, I would like to HIGHLY commend you for being calm and respectful in the face of the frequent ignorance, hatefulness, and profane anger you’ve faced. I wish you were exposed to more people on my side of the discussion that had your demeanor and approach.
Here are some problems I have seen on your end, from the same discussions, that I would like to point out. I have a few things, but I’d really like to address only a couple.
First of all, let’s agree to be honest about something. Evolution is not a law. Creationism is not a law. Evolution is not a theory. Creationism is not a theory. Because of the nature of what they attempt to explain, they should both be categorized as models, explanations of phenomena either too complex, too far past, or yet future to be observable. Wouldn’t you agree?
This being said, You make a comment about evolution that, as near as I can tell, puts you on the absolute far fringe of ANY form of ANY evolutionary model I’ve seen. You used the phrase "NON-RANDOM process of natural selection" with ‘All I want is to be loved.’. In old-school Darwinian evolution, natural selection involved adaptations arising from beneficial mutations (by definition, ‘random’) in response to uncontrolled (by definition, ‘random’) changing environmental factors. Neo-Darwinism leaves room for random (by definition, ‘random’) mutations that simply give some advantage to an organism. I’d love for you to explain "non-random natural selection’ because it could easily look like a subtle recognition that a directed process is more reasonable to you than the long-accepted random ones, and you would be hard-pressed to convince anyone that direction doesn’t involve the presence of intelligence. I guess you could have been intentionally trying to mislead someone that you thought didn’t know better, but I doubt that based on what I’ve seen from you so far.
There is also, as you know, much disagreement and skepticism of the evolutionary model among ALL the scientific community, not just the I.C.R. types. It is not the universally accepted, solid, comprehensive explanation of all things that you present it to be, and it could appear that you might be taking advantage of people who aren’t aware of that by suggesting that the scientific community at large believes evolution is the do-all and end-all explanation for life’s diversity. That is, in fact, far from the truth. I also think you throw out abiogenesis a little flippantly as well, implying that it is a stronger principle than even it claims to be.
Second, you shouldn’t use the Bible or your preconceived understandings of God because, quite frankly, you do it very poorly. If you discount the Bible as objective statements about a God that you don’t believe exists, and don’t want Biblical arguments in support of God, then it’s not logical to use them against God, either. That only seems reasonable. There are probably people somewhere who do believe in God as you claim we conceive Him, but you yourself are using a straw man here. The God of the Bible as you have deconstructed it doesn’t resemble the God that anyone I know in thinking circles sees presented in Scripture.
But the real issue here is your epistemology. You have made the rules of the challenge unwinnable. You have a very closed-minded epistemology that crosses categories with the questions you’ve asked. In other words, you’ve laid out a challenge to define and give evidence for a supernatural, all-encompassing God, but you accept only direct, limited, physical, empirical "evidence". By analogy, you’ve asked Christians to count to 100, but declared that you will accept only even numbers for answers. You are not open to many sources of truth that everyone, including scientists, use every day: intuition, inference, and reason. Yes, I said reason. In spite of the name of your group, you do not accept reasonably deduced hypothesis from existing empirical phenomena. You want only touchable, measurable, physical evidence. There is no branch of science that works without these methods, ESPECIALLY evolutionary science.
I think you are a very bright, intelligent young man, and I hope you pursue all of your life’s avenues and opportunities with the same passion and integrity with which you have this one.
Eric Miller
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Yes, but do they masure ghosts? If they are measured in any way, the the ghosts are in some way natural beings.
I was asking what types of effects lead to to believe that the cause is supernatural. If you see some event, how can you tell it was caused by something supernatural?
If A is something supernatural, and it can cause an effect on B, what is the nature of that interaction? If the mechanism for interaction is something natural, then how did the mechanism interact with the supernatural?
If the supernatural and natural are really different types of substances with no ontological relationship, then how does one affect the other? If I had a set of items in basket A, and another in basket B, and the rule was that these two sets could not effect each others, then you could throw objects from set A at objects in set B for eternity and none of them would effect each-other.
If you don't like that rule that they cannot interact, then stop using the term 'supernatural.' Or at least give us a definition of it that allows it to interact with the natural world while still holding onto the attributes such as omniscience, ominpotence, omnipresence, etc
And after you have done that, explain how the causal chain between the set of supernatural things (A) can affect things in the natural set (B) while it is not possible to detect set A. Detection runs along the same principle as causality. If their is a possible chain of causality between the sets, then one could use the mechanism (or whatever) that the causality runs along to act as a detector.
If there is some third susbtance that acts as a translator for tthe supernatural and natural, then we should be able to detect that intermediary. And if there is yet another intermediary, then we should be able to detect that. We could play Xeno's paradox all day, but at some point there has to be a detectable link to the supernatural and we can use the mechanisms that link them together to detect, if only indirectly, the supernatural.
Shaun
I'll fight for a person's right to speak so long as that person will, in return, fight to allow me to challenge their opinions and ridicule them as the content of their ideas merit.
I let this one pass by. Perhaps on summer break, Eric will be back.
That's very nice, but not needed. The very existence of atheism scares the crap out of theism. In other words, it is expected that we get the wheat with the chaff and sort it out.
I'm not going to respond to any of your criticisms of the other posters because they were, are, and should be responsible for their own words. Perhaps while reading them you should have responded in the threads containing the original message instead of disavowing them here separately. To me, that is dishonest.
One would appreciate that to be reciprocated. Respect both ways must be earned.
Likewise, one shot posters aren't worthy of discussion. Perhaps you will return after you teach the children that pi = 3 with no need for any decimals after it.
The very fact that many responders have answered your post shows respect for you as a human. That should be enough.
We are exposed to both nice and mean people in our day to day lives outside of cyberspace and yet we remain atheists. It isn't exclusively the christians that give christianity a bad reputation. The belief system itself is flawed and can be attributed as the root cause for the way the people are.
If you take away this idea of god and jesus or allah and muhammed then you are left with just people and issues.
Evolution is a theory that describes the process. A law covers one thing. Law of levers, law of motion, law of gravity, etc. not a process. We use theories as ways to test and use laws.
Creationism sets itself up as a law with no theories to test it ergo it cannot be a law. Creationism doesn't even warrant the label 'hypothesis' because it offers no testable means to verify it. If there are some then please elucidate them. I will test them post-haste.
WOW. Good thing you're a math teacher. Natural mutation is random. However, natural selection is the way that bad mutations are weeded out. I'm trying to use simplistic terms here so that we don't get confused again. There is no need for the words 'random' or 'non-random' when discussing natural selection.
Simply put, if two breedable creatures have offspring and their offspring have a mutation that is not favorable to their survival then they do not survive or do not reproduce at the same rate that the other offspring do thereby eliminating that mutation.
Unnatural mutation can be random or forced(see Poodle dogs and breeding). Regardless if the mutation is random then natural selection still demonstrates that beneficial mutations survive and bad mutations die off.
Humans have affected this with regard to some creatures, but that is due in part to our own social animal evolution.
Was it your god's will that Dodobirds became extinct? Or that some sharks and whales are endangered? Just checking.
Oh boy. We spend more time explaining these concepts than you do in prayer, contemplation, and sleeping.
What exactly is the 'do-all/end-all' explanation for life's diversity then? You're claiming to know the answer and we want it desparately. BUT it has to make sense and be verifiable and testable.
And you throw out creation as an explanation rather flippantly as well implying it to be a 'stronger principle'.
At least with abiogenesis, we have a model of HOW things came to be rather than just accepting some pat answer written in an old book.
If you can tell me that you entered this site with no 'preconceived understandings' then I'll call you a liar and ask for proof. See how that works?
The last time I checked, we were the ones on the receiving end of 'the bible is true because it says so' argument. If we are expected to just accept your word on the bible's veracity then should you just accept our word on the many other things in contention with its obvious misrepresentations of your alleged god?
Of course, the predicted answer is 'NO' and we do not expect you to just accept any explanation given by us.
Also, you have created a straw man of us out of your stereotyping of us. YAY! We're building. We're building. la la la la-la
Wow. We got hyper. Which christians have we asked to count to 100 by even numbers? Did I miss some fun somewhere? Did they succeed or get messed up in the thirties?
I'd just like christians to agree whether father, son, and spirit is one or three. And where does this #4 virgin mary count into it and why should we pray to her? You want some counting? There you go.
existing empirical phenomena = measurable, physical evidence. Sooo yeah I'd like a reasonably deduced hypothesis. Got one?
We have women on the site as well that can easily handle any of your claims in this message.
My parting shot: I hope you continue to bullshit your way through your job and get a nice retirement package so that you can reap the benefits of all of the scientific knowledge that we hope your students receive. I hear that there are some nice, christian retirement homes where they wipe your ass at least once per day, but they cost.
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My intent in that statement was not to insult. I do not believe this particular community of atheists values reason, open-mindedness, or has a realistic conception of the scientific method. Since as far as I've seen these things are professed as self-possessed virtues, that makes the community dishonest.
Cited evidence: the presumption that I'm projecting personal flaws or "lashing out." While either may or may not be true, you have no basis for the claim.
It needs to be clear that I do not mean that atheists are hypocrites by comparison to Christians. The Christian community is as human as any other, and humans have a penchant for lying to themselves. You say belief in a god is self-deceit? I don't argue it, but do not also say refusing belief is honesty - you don't know one way or the other.
I fail to see where stating that a thing might be real based on observation, but for which no control conditions exist to test it or reproduce the observation, is a self-contradicting statement.
"The map appears more real to us than the land." - Lawrence
Learning through observation isn't the extent of empiricism, just the beginning. It must include experimentation, reliant on reproducable phenomena. It is unnatural to base all learning on experimentation, since we do not always have the opportunity or understanding to reproduce observed phenomena. Some things must be integrated on observation alone, by relating the experience to existing ones to establish a framework understanding of our universe with which to base judgement on. Since we cannot experience everything in a lifetime (let alone a portion of one), our framework will always be incomplete. It is therefore foolish to discount a possibility solely on the basis of a lack of personal experience.
"The map appears more real to us than the land." - Lawrence
I understood the question, but refuse to answer. I've said before, I'm not interested in anyone believing what I believe, which would be the only purpose of expressing my personal beliefs. My statement was to point out that I think this community is not being honest with itself, and my interest is in bringing this fact to light. I would be shocked if the idea were met with even a moment of genuine consideration by the vast majority, but if even one person privately chooses agnosticism over atheism I would consider my time not wasted.
The attributes listed are not given automatically to a supernatural thing. I'm dubious that "natural" automatically discounts them, as well. Hopefully my revised definition better describes the concept of supernatural. Observation of the supernatural is entirely possible, but reproducible circumstances may not be. It is worth bearing in mind that for some things - such as ghosts, since we're talking about them - a way might be found to reliably or nearly-reliably reproduce them. Researchers interested in ghosts seek that method first, by which they might slowly unravel the mystery.
Of course, that they were not able to at first did not lead them to declare ghosts nonsense as it did other scientists. History is replete with examples of dishonest scientists declaring an idea nonsense simply because it didn't fit their model of understanding or personal set of observations.
"The map appears more real to us than the land." - Lawrence
Sure, calling everyone here closed minded is not an insult.... now you compound your insults with lies.
Look, here's what is going on: Instead of conceding the possibility that you're wrong, you instead chose to label every single solitary person here as closed minded.
That's an insult.
And it's even more insulting to make me have to point this out to you. That's disengenuous.
Of course you do, because the alternative is that you're wrong.
Again, this is an insult.
The reality is that many people here have exposed weaknesses in your own claims. Rather than concede this, you choose to simply ignore the refutations and insult us.
And you are lashing out in this fasion. You continually assert that others are not scientific, when in fact, we've given you good reasons why your claims are wrong.
Whereas, in return, you 1) continue to commit the same basic errors and 2) respond with insults.
So it is you that is acting irrationally.
First of all, as to what you've said here. Again, for the 5th time now, the supernatural is not merely something out of sight (as I've again pointed out for you dozens of times now) or something that defies our ability to set up replicable experiment! The supernatural is a reference to 'something' beyond matter/energy. It is 'something' without any positive ontology at all. So the definition you've given here has NOTHING TO DO with supernaturalism. Go read Shaun's post above for help.
Now, as to what is actually contradictory: The problem, as I've already outlined for you numerous times is that you can't define something as contra-nature and then use NATURAL CONCEPTS to define it. This is the fallacy of stealing the concept. This is the internal contradiction. To even refer to the supernatural as 'something' is an error....
Now, please note how all of this again proves my points above: You're not even able to follow the basic points correctly, yet you want to label everyone else as closed minded. The reality is that you can't even define the basic terms correctly, let alone properly judge what is going on...
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
In other words, you can't answer.
Again, for the 100th time, it fails for the reasons already given.
Then it would be empirical, and part of nature.
You've been asked to stop committing the stolen concept fallacy, it's clear at this point that you don't know what that even means...
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
You're missing the point, as usual. You declared that empiricism was unnatural. That's nonsense. Epiricism is entirely natural.
The rest of your trite point is simply asserting that we need more than empiricism. NO shit.
But rational methods are natural too.
You really are lost here.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
If you have no intention of answering the question, why didn't you say so when I first brought up the definition of supernatural on March 30th? Why wait until now, when your argument is clearly defeated to try to hide it from the discussion, after you've already started hurling insults? You said before that you hoped that we would get to the point where we're talking about why you believe in the Bible eventually, but I don't see how we can get there unless we can agree to meaningfully defined terms that we can use as a basis for discussion. Suddenly when the weakness of the underlying principles is exposed, your beliefs are secret?
It's only the fairy tales they believe.
LOL
LOL
Yes, interesting coincidence.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
The debate in this thread is clearly dead. Personal attacks and presumptions of motives are disingenuous. I haven't slandered yours or anyone else's character here once, merely stated that your stated philosophy is contradictory to your words and actions. I also haven't ventured a guess as to why that might be the case, and I don't intend to. If you are insulted by disagreement or having someone suggest you might be flawed, I hope experience will grant greater humility.
That doesn't reflect my usage or understanding. This would be why the semantic debate was tiresome - you had a preconceived definition and refused to offer it until now, merely to discount what was offered (by request, no less) as drivel. If this definition of supernatural is agreed-upon and irrefutable, we simply shouldn't be using the word.
Even assuming your statement about my ignorance is correct, ignorance is not a basis to declare someone close-minded.
As I said, the debate here is dead. Perhaps we can debate elsewhere at a later time.
"The map appears more real to us than the land." - Lawrence
You've launched into personal attacks. The evidence for your motives is clear, as demonstrated in my previous posts: you call us closed minded rather than concede that you may be in error.
Then present your understanding, and I will again show the errors in it. Please also read Shaun's post.
I like how you say 'semantics' as if its something unimportant. The definition of words is rather important in a discussion about the proper definition of a term!
"preconceived" - another attempt to call us closed minded, without any rational basis.
The reality is that I give you the only workable definition, (a negative one) one that comes from theology.
Incorrect. I've given it to you in nearly every post. Yet you prefer to simply quote where I've called you on your use of insults, rather than focus on the topic at hand.
************
Right. It isn't. But a person can make it the basis for his calling others closed minded, if he faces the following choices:
1) admit to your ignorance
OR
2) instead just label everyone else as closed minded...
you've chosen number 2...
And you're choosing this path now, in another way... arguing that the 'debate is dead'.. when in fact, the only thing that is going on is that you refuse to stick to the issues.
Your argument cannot stand up to the light of reason, that is why you must now look for a way to run off.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
JHensen,
You asked that someone might consider calling themselves an 'agnostic' (rather than 'atheist'
so you would not feel as if your time was wasted.
Fine. I'm an agnostic. I concede that there may be some being in the universe (or outside of it, if that means anything) that might be worthy of the title 'god.' I, despite my studies and open dialogues concerning the question, have yet to find sufficient reason to accept the claim that such a being does exist. I am open-minded about the idea, it's just that nobody has presented any reason to accept the proposition. As I've said many times, if there is a god then I want to know.
But this lack of belief makes me an atheist in addition to being an agnostic. I am a person who admits that I don't know for sure whether a 'god' exists or not, but so far I have not been convinced. Hence, I'm an agnostic atheist. Further, I'm a metaphysical naturalist--an ontological materialist/physicalist if you will. I see the natural world as being sufficient to explain what we see, and don't see any need to conclude that anything supernatural exists, whether omnimax or not.
Does that suffice as open-minded to you? Or do I have to agree with your views concerning the way to question such things to warrant that attribute?
Shaun
I'll fight for a person's right to speak so long as that person will, in return, fight to allow me to challenge their opinions and ridicule them as the content of their ideas merit.
I'll agree that there is nothing more for us to discuss while you refuse to even attempt to address the problems pointed out. However, no one here has launched a personal attack on you. You just started insulting us.
Could you cite this 'stated philosophy', because I have no idea what you are referring to here?
You do remember that we can just read back in the forum to see what was previously said, right? If you think that we were insulted by 'disagreement', then you are hallucinating. We were insulted by the use of a personal attack in place of an argument.
On the contrary, I'm much more interrested in how you define it than any attempt I could make to define it. Problem is, you've defined god as supernatural, and you haven't given any internally consistent definition of what supernatural is. So resolving this dilemma is necessary to even begin to discuss the existence of your proposed deity.
So, to reiterate, it's not that we have some hidden, secret definition that we've kept from you, we don't. I don't know of a single definition of 'supernatural' that works. Rather the problem is that the definitions that you have given fall over on their own.
Looking back, I don't see anyone calling you closed-minded. So, what happened, did you confuse what you said with what we've said?
It's only the fairy tales they believe.
I'm very glad to hear of your agnosticism. I can only encourage you to keep an open mind also about the extent of the the meaning of the "natural world."
"The map appears more real to us than the land." - Lawrence