Since Pineapple has had an epiphany, I'm trying to have one myself.  I may need some help.  Is it possible that Pineapple and I are disagreeing about what the word "cause" means?  If so, is it a legitimate disagreement, or is it just a semantic ploy for one or the other of us to get our way?

Let's start simple.  If I desire an apple, and there's an apple sitting in front of me, I might eat the apple.  If I do so, I will say, "My desire for an apple caused me to eat the apple."

We can make that more complicated, of course.  My desire to eat an apple was caused by several things:

1) I was hungry.  My hunger caused me to eat the apple.

2) I've had apples many times before, and like them very much.  My previous experience with apples caused me to eat the apple.

3) The decision that I wanted an apple was reached by my brain before I became consciously aware of it.  My unconscious brain caused me to eat the apple.

I could go on.  In fact, if I really had to, I could probably come up with hundreds of causal agents for me eating the apple.  My muscles, my eyes, my nose, my mother, my genetic makeup, etc, etc.

Ok, now let's ask the question:  Are any of these statements incorrect?  It seems to me that they are all correct, and that any one of them is a good answer for a specific question.  By the same token, many of them are unsatisfactory answers for a good many questions.  Observe:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SryFVhNfvow

Look at how lost he is.  "Uhhh", "Ehhh", "Duhhh", he has no clue where to go.

Dinesh just totally made a complete arse out of him.

 Since the name of this forum is rational response squad, my question is :

why do you think it is more rational to believe, no God exists, than the oposit. ?

I ask this in face of following facts :

1. According to science, the universe had a beginning. Therefor, it had a cause.

2. The universe is extremely fine tuned. If the four natural forces would differ just a fraction, the cosmos would not have surged, and therefor no life. The probability number, that this universe surged by chance, is so small, that it can be discarted. At this point, the " God of the gaps " argument does not apply, since the constants are known. Why should it be more rational to believe, the universe arised by chance thow ?

3. Science has no answer how life arose from unanimated matter. Even the simplest unicellular being is so complex, that even the most complex machine invented by man is like a toy. DNA is a code, and code can come only from a mind. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rov3pV9PsRI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EgK-VquRko

So for those that haven't seen my exchange with Hamby in the past day or two, something came out of it, but not what Hamby thinks.

Mainly, it got me questioning my beliefs as per this topic, it made me realize something: That I was doing what I was ragging on Hamby for doing. That everytime somebody was asking me to back up my claims, I was simplying avoiding the scientific method and merely going "Well, it's obvious" and was baffled as to how they can't see what I was saying.

Then Hamby posted his blog a few days later I saw it. After all, if I refuse to let Hamby use the shady/vague techniches, then how could I? I realized that the method of dismissing it as "obvious" could be used to prove pretty much anything.

It just hit me today at work, how can I stress that in order to make a positive claim, you should apply the scientific method and not rely on anecdotes or vague data, then going out and doing it myself.

So I now realize that in order to make a positive claim such as God exists I need scientific data and that means peer reviewed studies and not anecdotes, I cannot merely say it's obvious and I don't have to prove it in the same way I don't have to prove people eat hot dogs at baseball games.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/6083338/Sebastian-Faulks-The-book-I-really-cant-put-down.html

So this geezer Sebastian Faulks writes a scathing article (that The Telegraph has taken down) on moslems then does the old 'twitchy rectum two-step'.

While we Judaeo-Christians can take a lot of verbal rough-and-tumble about our human-written scriptures, I know that to Muslims the Koran is different; it is by definition beyond criticism. And if anything I said or was quoted as saying (not always the same thing) offended any Muslim sensibility, I do apologise – and without reservation.

Some of the most vile weasel-words you'll ever read. This utter shit-bag should have just said "Don't kill me!" and have done with it. What a gutless wanker!

Reading the comments section of the article gives me some hope though.

Since I fucked up the quoting on Hamby's blog, and I prefer the board format better, I will try to move the conversation between hamby and I here.

Here is the link to the blog entry in question:

http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/atrocity-religion-and-causality-again/

My response:

Since everybody seems to be on the edge of the seat waiting for my speal about last week.

I feel what I said in this topic sums it up most

So now let me go out of my MO and give a little history [But don't get too comfortable with this] in order to understand why I did it, and why I got what I got out of it.

So in order to get a backround on this, you would have to, as some people already do, know that I was once atheist during my first couple years of university. The reason of course, is that I was of course a science major [picked science for the reason mention above] and as such took variety of courses. The reason for de-conversion I suspect was the common one, that science and God [or religion at least] were incompatiable. But then I began to dig a little deeper, and basically for the reasons that Nigel put up during his apologist post, began to ditch my atheism.

Another reason, which is ironically enough echoed by many atheists, is that I realized that there's no shame in not knowing.  That I didn't have to know every last detail about the nature of the universe or God to actually hold a belief.

Now, plenty of the atheist blogs I've read say that they champion science and the scientific method regardless of where it leads us, so you would think their objections to pro-religious [not necessarily "pro" but something that goes against their negative views]  publications/presentations would address the data, the  logic of the paper/presentation, and have data/logic to back up the objections.


But no, they usually go straight to the ad homs, and claims of the authour being a religious apologist.


This way they don't HAVE to address the data, they can just resort to ad homs. They can say "Well of course this person disagrees with my anecdotal views of religious people, he's just a religious apologist!!"



So now, let me take you through a little lesson on data and the scientific method and bias.



Let's say for example a study comes through that says that candy can help you lose weight and is a good replacement for fruit and veggies.


This would be a rather odd claim, considering the evidence to the contrary. Then you realize that this was released by Nestle company.


Now, I argue that the fact it came from Nestle doesn't make the claim false, the fact that there is no data to support it and data to the contrary makes it false the orgins of the claim are irrelevent.