The Greater Miracle

This seems to me to be a different telling of Occam's Razor if you agree that the greater miracle will require to greater number of assumptions.It could also be compared to Sagan's "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."It seems things like this have been said and re-said for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, and it doesn't seem to sink in to the more theologically minded among us.

While it may not be convincing to people of faith because they already believe, by bringing up the argument, you force them to either disagree with the axiom or invoke special pleading. (Some may try to show how Occam's Razor supports their belief, but they usually don't understand the full meaning of the axiom.)Which was my initial point, asserting the axiom does little for people who disagree with the axiom a priori as shown by the fact that these axioms have been cropping up in many forms and yet seem to do little convincing.

I think the problem, as you rightly point out, is that we seem to have different ways of thinking. Those of us who prefer science to theology usually have a more logical, materialistic view of the world. "What you see is what you get."The opposite camp has a more faith based view of the world, and, in my opinion, a more naive or child-like view of the world. It is my firm belief that they want or need to believe in something, and so they grasp the religion of their parent's or society.This type of thinking, I'm pretty sure, is hardwired in our brain genetically. People may be forced or "brainwashed" into the opposite side, but the mental dissonance (not quite the same as cognitive dissonance) leads to their "conversion."Each camp speaks from a different view of the world and so ends up speaking past each other rather than at each other. We ask them for evidence and they see that as a nonsense question, or they try to give the evidence they view as overwhelming and we yawn or laugh and say "You call that evidence?"

I completely agree...it comes down to what I sort of consider the fundamentalist gene or mindset, if you will. This means the person in question has a brain or mind set up such that they have to have something greater than themselves to believe in. They can't accept that there may not be anything greater and that even the definition of greater is a subjective term. To that end, they latch onto the faith that gives them what they want and then block off anything that isn't consistent with that belief. In this country, it is mostly Christian sects, in the middle east, Africa and parts of Asia, it's the Muslim faith.For people who are brought up in a household or group for whom religion isn't a mjaor thing, they either get drawn in to a cult, a religion they have some other interaction with, either through the internet, TV or just the church down the street. Some people latch on to alien abduction claims or new age beliefs.The basic unifier, though, is that they arbitrarily pick one thing to believe to the exclusion of everything else, then become unable to honestly consider opposition to their claims. Often, they lob the same charge at those of us who follow science, but they don't see the inherent differences.AbE: I'm not saying all people who follow a particular religion or faith are of this mind set, just the fundamentalists out there who are unable to consider differing viewpoints and perhaps adjust their beliefs to new informatrion.Edited by Perdition, : No reason given.

The process is the why. You seem to think that life is the goal, that there is something out there that wanted life. That's begging the question...why do you think there is a why? It happened because the process was possible, and given enough time, anything that's possible will probably happen somewhere. This is a matter of debate and study. If we live in a brane-type multiverse, then it seems unlikely that a universe like ours would never be created at some point. Try turning it around, why would you think there should be nothing instead of something?

Uncertainty has absolutely nothing to do with free will. It says that the act of measuring one aspect of a particle necessarily affects the other aspects in proportion to the accuracy of the first measurment, meaning you can't know a particle's location and velocity at great accuracy at the same time.

No, it's not. The fact that we can't measure A and B doesn't mean that A and B don't have distinct values.Quantum Mechanics as a whole could be a bastion of "free willists" but that still only comes down to probability, not so much about choice.

For one thing, what makes you think I'm a determinist?I do admit that determinism makes the most sense to me, but I'm willing to admit that what makes sense to me has no bearing on reality.If we assume determinism, the fact that I responded wasn't a choice, it was something I couldn't not do because of my genetic make-up and the environment I'm currently in. This, I don't understand.Edited by Admin, : Shorten long line.

Determinism doesn't mean we have the answers, it just means that if we had the answers, we could predict everything. Since we will never know everything, I think you're safe, even if determinism is right.

You're heading the wrong way again. It's not that we have faith of something, it's that we lack faith in something else. We see no reason to believe there is anything supernatural, so until we are proven wrong, we continue in our lives. This is not faith, it is exactly the opposite. There were two threads devoted to the evolution of morality and even a discussion of altruism. Suffice it to say, there is absolutely no problem for evolution to explain altruism and morality. I suggest you look to those threads to read the discussion and perhaps add your thoughts to them:
http://EvC Forum: Morality! Thorn in Darwin's side or not? -->EvC Forum: Morality! Thorn in Darwin's side or not?

But you're the one making an existential claim. You believe something exists for which there is no evidence. I have a history of things that were atributed to the gods being shown to be natural. We're now left with approximately one event that we can't (yet) explain. I'm taking the consistent approach in assuming, tentatively, that there is a natural explanation. You're bucking the trend and insisting that while everything else may be natural, this one thing just HAS to be supernatural because, well, you want it to be. I require evidence, you require none. You have faith, I have none.