Who won the Collins-Dawkins Debate?

Can't. I could well be wrong about this premise, but saying "I might be wrong" wouldn't do any good. If we ran some test on God and he didn't show up (hope you're ok with my terminology there), I'd have to at least allow "he may not have wanted to be tested in this way." On a chatty level, I've been there in a much different way than you. I had been a Christian for 13 years, and I'd been looking everywhere I could for something that looked to me like a deep unity based on love. I just couldn't find anything like that.Jesus had prayed a prayer, "Father, make them one, just as you and I are one, so that the world will know that you sent me."I used to ask myself, "Why do I still believe? He said that the unity of his disciples would let you know that God sent him. He either has no real disciples or he can't make them one. Either way, what's the difference. I personally have no obligation to believe in him, because he's unable to produce even what he said he would offer as proof."I still believed, and I used to wonder why.One more chatty point, mostly off topic for this thread, but very on topic for this web site:When I went from YEC to evolutionist, it didn't rock my beliefs even a little. When I found out that there was no worldwide flood, no problem at all. When I found out that there were contradictions in the Bible, no big deal. All of those things, I knew intuitively would end up being true, even when I didn't want them to be true.However, when I found out that there was no exodus (unless it was much, much smaller than the Bible describes), that rocked me pretty badly. Then, I had a discussion on this board about suffering in the earth vs. a loving God, and that rocked me pretty badly, too.Another argument that stuck with me was from Schraf. She said, let us give you a frontal lobotomy, and let's see how well your soul works then. I sat in a ditch next to a trail in the woods at some point back then and debated becoming an agnostic. (I could stay at Rose Creek Village as an agnostic, though it would be awkward.)I found when I quit having to defend all those things, I found my belief (what others would call my delusion) was firmly and completely settled. I wasn't troubled by doubts at all anymore. The fact is, when I didn't have to deal with all that history stuff, the present seemed kind of obvious to me. That was a surprise.Those aren't arguments or defenses. Just being chatty.

Me, too. I didn't say I didn't have any doubts. I said I wasn't troubled by them, anymore. Some doubts are big enough to be troubling. Others are small enough that they don't worry you. "There's always a possibility that I might be wrong or even totally insane" is not the sort of doubt that one loses sleep over. There's a certainty of belief that makes it worth losing your life--or completely changing it. Such belief comes from inside a person, and it is very reassuring, even if there's always the "sure, of course I could be completely missing something and this could all be not true" admission that must be made.

It's infidelity to the true God even if he's revealed. On this issue, we agree completely. And how likely is it, that if there is a revealed God that has judgments for beyond this life, that he'll accept, "Well, it really seemed pretty unknowable to me, so I just did whatever I thought was best without really looking that hard to see if you had any requirements or suggestions"?The problem is, the First Church of the Agnostic has morals, commands, rules, and a way of life as well. Being a part of it is a lifestyle choice.And if it turns out that God isn't unknowable, and maybe there's something inside or outside of you that you should have been listening to, then the First Church of the Agnostic will turn out not to be the one true religion.

It was not a dig, but it was obviously very unfortunate wording (and thinking that produced that wording), and I apologize profusely. I actually paused for a moment when I wrote that about not looking very hard, because I am already aware that more agnostics/atheists than Christians put great thought into their belief.But here's why I wrote it. I was simply addressing the thought behind your post, not any particular person, real or imagined.The statement in your post was "Yes, and because there's no way to know anything for absolutely certain, then agnosticism should be the one true religion."I was only addressing that thought and disagreeing with it. That thought is not the same, or even nearly the same, as, "If we look into it, and it looks like God is not knowable or has chosen not to reveal himself, then we ought to be agnostic. In fact, I'm so certain that's what you'll find, that I'll call agnosticism the one true religion."I read a book once by William Law called something like A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, and it addresses the fact that most Christians just cruise along through life with little effort. I am well aware that this is typical of Christians (way too typical of humans, in fact), and it is less typical of non-theists.I hope that is a sufficient retraction of my dig. I did not mean to imply that any individual (agnostic or Christian) was looking insufficiently, and I apologize for writing in such a way that it sounded like I was. I readily admit that all you said in your post 251 about searching for truth is accurate.

Yes, indifferent. It's maddening and embarrassing.The main reason people are indifferent is because it happens every day. It's not against the law, so they don't go to jail for it, so they'll just do it again and again and again. After looking into a few hundred of those, you don't have any more moments of your precious life to waste checking on those things. I've followed up on numerous such stories, including one recently from someone I thought was honest. It was the only reason I was willing to waste more time asking about such a thing. At least I found out the guy wasn't honest.I'm not indifferent, though. We oppose and expose those frauds pretty strenuously if we can find anyone who cares about what's true. Sometimes those people are hard to find.

I don't. See my post 252.

That's only because time has proven me to be always accurate and never wrong.Oh, wait. I guess that was Sylas, not me. My bad.Just kidding . Thank you, and I'm glad to hear it, because I have to object to something.

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The plural of anecdote is not data

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In some semantic sense, I'm sure this is true. In application, however, the plural of anecdote is rarely ignored and often should not be.For this to be true, it seems to me that you'd have to establish that increasing anecdotes do not provide increasing evidence that something really happened--in every case, or at least in almost every case.It seems to me that America's Most Wanted owes all or almost all of its success in catching criminals to anecdote and eye-witness testimony. According to Wikipedia, there's been 968 people found as a result of viewer tips.While sometimes anecdote fuels anecdote, and anecdotes increase due to people's imagination, sometimes it is not so. Sometimes anecdotes increase because something is really happening.Around suspected UFO areas, reports of UFO's are normally fueled by imagination and suggestion. However, in other places multiple reports of UFO's don't prove aliens arrived, but they usually turn out to be some sort of phenomenon that lots of people actually saw.Thus, while the plural of anecdote may not constitute "data" (I don't know how best to define data for this discussion), it does constitute evidence that something happened. While the plural of anecdote often doesn't tell us what happened, it does quite often tell us that something happened.

Percy,Thank you for your clear reply. This whole discussion has been very hard for me, as I feel so often that something other than what I said is being answered. However, you started with an assertion that really helps. Disagreement is a lot easier for me if we're at least talking about the same thing. While this is an appropriate answer to my overall proposition, because I did indeed say that there was at least evidence for a cause/effect relationship in my nephew's case, because of repeated answer to prayer and other experiences, it doesn't really answer my objection to schraf's "the plural of anecdote is not data." I don't know what you mean by inserting "where appropriate" there. In this case, I was only arguing that anecdotes, especially in the plural, can help establish that something happened...only. I don't want to argue that cause/effect is established by anecdotes.If you'll remember, Crash suggested that maybe some of our experiences could be attributed to the power of community rather than the power of some faith my particular community holds to. I did not object to this in any way.When you suggested that a study on the longevity of those holding to faith in God would apply, I went and looked at some. In fact, the references I found said that religious people do live longer (and it's being discussed in another thread). If I was just jumping to cause/effect relationships, I could have declared my triumph with the references I found, but of course I didn't, because it was obvious that the specific religious groups mentioned (SDA, LDS, Amish, Hutterite) have nutrition and health practices that science already knows will make you live longer.Even in the case of my nephew, I did not argue that cause/effect was proven. I said only that my choice of faith (and Collins') was not based on "no evidence." You're welcome to say that even if I have 100 extremely unlikely experiences in a row seemingly in answer to prayer that cause/effect is not thus proven. It would sure be implied, but if an alternative possibility for cause/effect was postulated, you'd find me discussing it openly. I don't think I object to this. In reference to one prayer study, I said it didn't apply, because it doesn't. In reference to putting together a prayer study like it that did apply, I said that I don't think God would let himself be tested like that. You and others have said that's a copout, so ok, that's where that's left, because I don't think God would let himself be tested like that.However, I do not object to the scientific method being applied to any claims I or anyone else makes. I'm making it difficult, I know, but I can't help that. I didn't make up any new thing to believe as a result of suggestions to conduct studies. It just is difficult.

I never suggested that outer-space aliens were the origin of these events. I suggested that plural anecdotes, in many situations, are evidence that something happened, and if that something is unusual, then all of us tend to want to investigate it. So do I, and since all I said is that anecdotes are the evidence that something unusual, strange, and even unsettling is going on, then it appears we agree. So we agree here, too. And here, I object to where this might be applied, because it seems to me y'all were prone to applying it too freely.

It was the "relatively simple" that caught my attention. Awesome, I'd love to pull a spoon bending trick on my kids.So I looked up spoon bending on the internet. A LOT of people claim to have done it. My favorite report was this one.Do you know anything about this kind of thing? I'm going to try it, but I don't think I'm up to having a party with people shouting at spoons. That's not what I found. When I was in college, before I was a Christian (I was a new ager, but I don't think it was called New Age then, or at least I didn't know it was), I laid in my bed one night and concentrated on pulling one of my posters off the wall mentally. I did self-hypnosis, which I had done regularly for at least months, maybe more, and then dwelt on the poster coming off the wall.There was a rustle of paper from the wall where the poster was, and I was instantly terrified. It was a strong, urgent terror. I curled up under my blankets, covering even my head, and eventually went to sleep that way.When I woke up in the morning, the poster was hanging by one of its bottom corners. It scared me so badly that I never tried anything like that again.I'm not offering an explanation. That's what happened, though.Edited by truthlover, : Give source of second quote box

Yes, but I'm not suggesting that aliens are doing any of those things.If this were a different topic, I might be suggesting that there are pretty patterns in wheat fields that are doggone mysterious. Chances are, I'd be right. That has to be established before we can have arguments over why there's patterns in wheat fields.Like I said before, I think in steps. I'm generally only arguing one step at a time. I'm only arguing that anecdote can be evidence that something is happening. In this case, that something unusual or out of the ordinary is happening.I keep responding, because it's not really fair for y'all to argue that anecdotes can't prove causation. It's almost like a straw man, because I haven't argued that anecdotes prove causation. I can't even talk about causation to y'all, because you won't allow that anecdotes can even prove something happened.All I'm saying is that in some cases, anecdotes really prove something happened. There really are crop circles. There really was a civilization that created immense diagrams/pictures that can only be seen from the air. Those anecdotes are accurate.The source, the topic, etc. all have to be considered, but in some cases multiple anecdotes are pretty strong evidence for "x," because either you know the people, the stories make sense, it's the kind of thing that multiple people don't mistake, etc.If you disagree with that, at least disagree with that. I haven't argued and am not suggesting that anecdotes prove causation.

It's so difficult because... No. Like I said, one step at a time for me. I don't believe crop circles have an unearthly origin. I'm not arguing three steps in advance, trying to establish that because some event happened, that therefore God exists, aliens exist, or any other such thing. Of course it is. The reason that this is so difficult is because you think I'm saying things I'm not. I'm not asking you to draw anecdotal conclusions on anything.I've never gotten past trying to argue that multiple anecdotes--of the right type, looked at and considered--can establish there's something to look at.I believe that God answered our prayers concerning my nephew, but I have never argued that at any point in this thread. We never got that far. I have only argued for what I've argued for. Yes, I want to argue that there's at least some cause to believe that God at least may answered that prayer, but we've never gotten that far.First, I wanted to argue that anecdotes, enough of them and of the right quality--and the quality of anecdotes can be examined, and y'all have said that several times in your posts in so many words--can establish that there is something unusual, or at least something that reasonably appears to be unusual, is going on.If that can be established, then we can talk about why or why not a person might allow the possibility that it was divine intervention.But we've never gotten far enough to discuss that. Y'all have jumped ahead and taken my arguments as arguments that there was divine intervention, but I've really always been at step one--anecdotes can establish there's something to look at and discuss.Even if we get past that and get to the discussion about causation, I have no intentions of claiming I can prove causation. I'll I intend to argue is that there's enough evidence to cause a reasonable, unbiased person to say, "Wow, I wouldn't just dismiss something like that."I'm not arguing that God can be proven or that divine intervention can be proven in my nephew's case, or in the truck driving through the wall in that guy's office, or in my friend's house selling after "God" told him it would. If we ever get there, which we haven't, my intention was only to argue against the common claim made here on EVC that the possibility of divine intervention is about the same as the possibility that pink unicorns created the universe.However, we're not there. I'm arguing, and have always been arguing that enough anecdotes, of the right quality, can establish that there's enough likelihood of something unusual going on that it ought to be seriously looked at.If that could ever be admitted, then I would argue that in the absence of good, double-blind, scientific studies, an ongoing watch to see if these unusual experiences happen regularly--more regularly than ought to be accounted for by chance--and in connection with prayer or with circumstances closely associated with events of religious significance, would give a reasonable person cause to say, "You know, it looks like there might be something to all this."That's as far as I even want to go, but we've never gotten that far, because I can't get y'all to straight out admit that enough anecdotes, of the right quality, can be compelling, or at least decent, evidence that there's something worth asking about and investigating.Well, you do admit it, then you deny it. But I think it's because you think I'm taking that one admission as proof of a lot more than you're admitting.I'm not. This is all I've asked for to this point. Nothing more. Thank you, but now we're at post 271, and there's no time left to discuss the rest.With this admission, my next point would be to ask/argue/discuss the importance/reliability of ongoing observation. But maybe that can wait for another thread. There are things I'd love to talk about concerning stories like omnivorous's in the synchronicity thread. I suspect y'all would say just chance, but I'd like to talk about how reasonable it is to draw a conclusion that it's chance vs. no conclusion at all vs. concluding it's fate's intervention, and whether such stories make it more reasonable to conclude there's some unknown influence guiding or at least occasionally intervening in things than to simply venture an assertion that pink unicorns created the universe.

Not necessarily. I'm somewhat more objective and a lot less interested in winning an argument than you think I am.I believe if I approach (not "sneak up on") the subject in exactly the right way, I'll get a lot more direct answers. That's what I believe more than ever after this thread, and I wish I'd understood better the reason for so many answers that didn't address the questions I had and the arguments I made.I'm not under the delusion that I'm going to convince the people involved in this discussion of a way of following God. In fact, I have no hope--and not much desire--of convincing any of you that God intervenes in life in response to prayer.I did, however, have the goal of effectively denying the allegation that without scientific evidences, there is really no evidence of divine intervention and no reason to suspect divine intervention ("no room for God in the universe"). Enough has been said on both sides, though, to address that issue even with us talking past each other. We could all be right about the efficacy of prayer. Why couldn't we be? We can't all be right about "the true way" or the way God wants you to live (assuming there's a God and he has a way he wants you to live), because that does contradict. However, if God chooses to work miraculously in the lives of people of all different races & creeds, then that's his perogative.The other thing I'll disagree with you on is that the sects I left have scads of adherents with claims like mine. That's not what I observed, and that's one of the reasons I left.One more anecdote. A lady I knew in Germany, part of a Baptist church that I was a part of but later asked to leave (no reflection on the Baptists in this case, that particular pastor was a criminal who ended up fleeing the country)--that lady related a particularly dramatic experience she had in prayer. I know her to be an honest woman who would not make up such a story. I don't discount her story because I think her church damages Christ's reputation. In my opinion, the chances are pretty good that the incident really happened, and that it was a spiritual incident that happened because of her good relationship with God.I just tell you that to say that I don't think the church or sect makes the anecdotes invalid. When I said that I already know that the churches in the prayer study don't get their prayers answered, it wasn't because I don't like their church. It was because I experienced it, met the people, and their prayers don't get answered. They just disappear into the ether, as you put it.Mother Theresa had some pretty impressive anecdotes, too, and she's Roman Catholic. I don't think the sect matters like you suggested, because if "God makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust," then answered prayer doesn't prove one way of faith right, anyway.I know that sounds like a contradiction from what I said previously, but it's not.

Thanks, arch.At some point I'd like to follow up a bit, but this has got to have exhausted Percy & Nator, so I'll give it a rest for at least a couple weeks, and then start a new thread taking up a couple different issues. Hopefully, I'll be clearer, and it won't take 270 posts.