Who won the Collins-Dawkins Debate?

Hi Truthlover,Though I have to say I think you're completely deluded, I admire you for sticking with this discussion and giving us some insights into your thinking. If at some point you're find you're willing to give up on the "God won't be tested" premise I'd probably be interested in pursuing this more.It's interesting to see your two minds at work on this. You know on some level that what we're telling you about reliably demonstrating a cause/effect relationship is true, and you know on some other level that the God you believe in is real and has the qualities you think he has. It reminds me of the joke at the end of the Woodie Allen movie, "Annie Hall". It's an old joke, you'll recognize it, goes like this I'm not that different from you, actually, though my conclusions have come to rest in a different place. I know on a rational level that there is no room in this universe for the God of my belief, yet I believe anyway. Religion is not a rational choice.--Percy

This is extremely well put. Is it yours? Doesn't matter, I'm shamelessly stealing it anyway at the first opportunity. --Percy

To complete your description, you not only mean that something happened, but that there is a cause/effect relationship. In other words and by way of example, the claim isn't merely that your nephew regained his sight, but that prayer was responsible for your nephew regaining his sight.But realize that all the observations and experiences of things like ghosts, UFOs, spoon bending, clairvoyance and so forth, if interpreted using your approach, would mean that something happened and that, where appropriate, there was a cause/effect. What is the proper way to objectively establish if things like these really happen?The answer is the scientific method using appropriately designed sets of experiments and/or observations. The task for you is to make clear why the way we approach objective study of such things is inappropriate for your own claims concerning prayer and God.--Percy

We're not always looking for causes. Sometimes we're just looking for scientific evidence of a phenomena. For example, UFOs are a purported phenomena. In the case of the interpretation that UFOs are alien spacecraft, we're still just seeking evidence of the phenomena. We're not up to the point of asking for the cause of alien spacecraft appearing on our planet because we haven't yet established that there *are* alien spacecraft on our planet. But in the case of spoon bending, the effect isn't in dispute. We can see the spoon bending. And so since the phenomena has been established we now look for the cause. One hypothesis is that the mentalist' mental effort bent the spoon. The generally accepted hypothesis is that it is a relatively simple magician's trick. That's all I meant by seeking causes "where appropriate". You can't seek a cause of something that hasn't actually been observed yet.Just a small additional comment about the UFO case: when one assumes they are natural phenomena, then it is always appropriate to seek causes, and it isn't uncommon for plausible natural explanations of causes to be identified. You're forgetting that this is anecdotal and completely unobjective. Were you doing a study that involved cataloging temperature and air pressure against date and time, then your study is objective and scientific. Presumably human bias and subjectivity is not a factor in reading thermometers, barometers, calendars and clocks. But it is completely unscientific and totally anecdotal to set yourself up as the sole judge of everything where subjectivity is everywhere. Here's just a short list of factors where your subjectivity and biases completely influence the outcome:

• What constitutes a prayer? For example, "Gee, it didn't rain today, and I said to myself just yesterday, 'I sure hope it doesn't rain tomorrow,' but was that a prayer? Okay, I'll count it as a prayer. Chalk one up for prayer."
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• What constitutes an answer to a prayer? For example, your nephew doesn't completely recover, he only regains 50% of his sight. Is that a prayer answered? Yes? Then how about regaining 40% of his sight? Is that a prayer answered? And so on.
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• You prayed for money, but instead someone granted relief from a debt. Was your prayer answered?
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• Someone tells you a story about their prayers being answered. Does that count in your study?

In order to perform an objective scientific study you have to define *all* the criteria, anticipate all the potential ambiguities, and eliminate all subjectivity by removing yourself from knowledge about which events have been prayed for and which haven't.If you don't do this then the information you gather is merely anecdotal and not data at all. It's useless for establishing anything.--Percy

I would never have guessed this issue would be so complicated to explain.Your examples differ and have to be treated separately. You mention crop circles but say nothing about them. Observation of huge, immobile formations is not particularly susceptible to human subjectivity and bias, which is what we're talking about here. Even if they hadn't been the object of scientific study (crop circles have been debunked as the creation of people), I doubt you'd find anyone who questioned their existence.But though you don't say so, you probably mention crop circles because of the possibility of an unearthly origin. That's a strictly anecdotal conclusion. It has no evidence at all. And it wasn't anecdotal studies of crop circles that revealed their true origin. In fact, writing credulous books about crop circles is a minor industry.It was scientific study that debunked crop circles, and it also helped very much that over the years various people and groups have come forward saying, "We did these particular ones." There's even a British group that is available for hire to create crop circles. But I imagine it's a lot of fun to create a crop circle and cause a stir, and I don't see any reason why it would ever stop.Concerning the Peruvian Nazca lines, in this case you state the current scientific conclusion that an ancient little-known civilization created them, so I'm not sure why you mention this as anecdotal. Perhaps you're saying that even in the absence of scientific study it is obvious that they were created by a civilization, and that anecdotal data is sufficient to reach this conclusion. I agree. People are pretty good at being able to tell the difference between something that has happened naturally (a hill) and something that hasn't (a pyramid).What the Peruvian Nazca lines have in common with crop circles is their attribution to alien visitations, but this is a completely anecdotal conclusion with no credible supporting evidence, and I'm going to assume you weren't going there.But what's really wrong with these examples is that they're not the type of things that are particularly subject to human subjectivity and bias, which is the subject of this discussion. I think your point is that many anecdotal observations are very useful, and you're correct. We all live our lives this way. We don't require scientific studies of the approaching dark clouds before we start closing the car windows and putting away the lawn tools.But observation is not infallible, as witness the many sightings of UFOs, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster. Many conclude, "All these sightings, there just has to be something to it." But things that exist leave physical evidence.Clearly there's a declining scale for what anecdotal observation is capable of reliably reporting, and near the bottom of that scale must reside the effects of prayer. Few things could be more subjective. That's why they have to be double blind in order to have any meaning. When you set yourself up as experimenter, subject and evaluator you're just making about every mistake in the book.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

Just noticed that Randman is echoing your arguments, see Message 41.--Percy

We've already discussed it. You seem to believe that if you sneak up on the subject in the exact right way that you'll get concessions that your approach to reaching conclusions about the efficacy of prayer has some validity. It doesn't.The reason you're arguments about anecdotes don't carry forward to have any relevance to prayer studies is because your examples don't have significant subjective components. You see crop circles and conclude something happened. Well, duh! Anecdotal reports of meteors in the sky draw scientists looking for meteorites on the ground all the time. There is usually very little reason to doubt such direct observations.Your nephew regaining his sight is also a fairly direct observation, though to what degree would require an opthamologist. But what is the cause of the crop circles, of the meteorites, of the regained sight? This is where you attempt to find relationships of cause and effect. In all these cases you need to remove all subjective components. You cannot be subject, participant, experimenter and evaluator all in the same experiment and get any valid results with regard to something as subjective as the efficacy of prayer.All religions of the world, including not only Jewish, Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist sects but also the sects you left, have scads of adherents just like you arguing that they have observed the efficacy of prayer in action and that this lends validity to their beliefs. You cannot all be right. That you all think you're right anyway makes clear just how subjective an area this is.--Percy

Hi Truthlover,I don't think you're proselytizing. I just think you still don't understand what constitutes valid evidence. This is clear from the way you approach the discussion, by way of examples of observing unambiguous events or objects. Whether someone is healed naturally or through prayer is an incredibly complicated issue, and it cannot be settled in any remotely reliable way with the methods you propose.Please try to understand that we're not trying to tell you that God doesn't answer your prayers. We're just telling you that the approach you're taking is completely inadequate for answering this question with any assurance whatsoever.This has nothing to do with whether I believe or not, or whether God actually exists or not. Even if it were a given that God answers prayers, even if I knew and believed that to be so with all my heart, I would still be obligated to tell you that your approach is incapable of establishing that. The way to conduct a valid study where subjective issues are involved is not a question of whether one believes or not. It's not a question of faith at all. The definition of an objective fact or conclusion is something that everyone sees the same way regardless of individual background and biases.I doubt I'm up to untangling the second half of your message. It does read like the words of someone who is seeking truth and sincerely being honest, but there's no coherent message in the jumble of conflicting thoughts and special pleadings.--Percy