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Author Topic:   Belief in God is scientific.
New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


(1)
Message 76 of 262 (695220)
04-03-2013 6:26 PM
Reply to: Message 73 by ooh-child
04-03-2013 5:37 PM


Re: Your brain gets too much wrong
I think petro was posting tongue in cheek, CS.
I don't. Its not the first time he's claimed that for an argument.

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 77 of 262 (695223)
04-03-2013 7:31 PM
Reply to: Message 68 by divermike1974
04-03-2013 5:14 PM


So i take it then that the simple answer is no? The human brain and its intuition cannot be classed as scientific evidence for the existence of God.
Well, science is about evidence, not about counting heads.
Try asking the next ten non-scientists you meet: if a running man carrying a brick by his side drops it, what happens to the brick, what path does it take to the ground? Most or all of them will be wrong. This is not for want of evidence, we've all seen falling objects and people dropping stuff. And yet they will be mistaken.

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nwr
Member
Posts: 6408
From: Geneva, Illinois
Joined: 08-08-2005
Member Rating: 5.1


Message 78 of 262 (695225)
04-03-2013 8:01 PM
Reply to: Message 64 by divermike1974
04-03-2013 5:04 PM


Re: More examples of Garbage in/garbage out.
The human brain is regarded by the whole of modern science to be the most powerful natural computer in the known universe.
No, it isn't.
There are some scientists who claim that the brain is a computer. There are other scientists who dispute that.
Since this this is not a settled question, it is improper to talk of how science regards it, though there's nothing wrong with discussion how particular scientists regard it.

Fundamentalism - the anti-American, anti-Christian branch of American Christianity

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NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 79 of 262 (695226)
04-03-2013 8:21 PM
Reply to: Message 30 by New Cat's Eye
04-03-2013 3:42 PM


Re: Your brain gets too much wrong
I don't see an illusion of motion either. Maybe my display isn't the best.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I would say here something that was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree; ‘That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how the heaven goes.’ Galileo Galilei 1615.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

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NosyNed
Member
Posts: 8996
From: Canada
Joined: 04-04-2003


Message 80 of 262 (695227)
04-03-2013 8:24 PM
Reply to: Message 79 by NoNukes
04-03-2013 8:21 PM


Motion
Blow it up big. Stare at the black dots in the center for 10 or 20 seconds. Then move your eyes from dot to dot.

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 81 of 262 (695228)
04-03-2013 10:31 PM
Reply to: Message 59 by divermike1974
04-03-2013 4:48 PM


divermike1974 writes:
I don't claim the majority consensus is true. I claim that if the brain is the most powerful natural computer in the known universe and the majority of those brains say there is a God then that overwhelming number of answers should be classed as scientific evidence for the existence of said God.
I'm just saying the same thing as you, only in briefer form. So let's go through this one more time. I'll try to use your preferred wording so you can't invent more reasons to avoid addressing the rebuttals.
You reason that because the human brain is so powerful, any majority consensus of human beings should be considered scientific evidence. That means that these statistics should be taken as evidence for the existence of god:
Atheists2.3%
Agnostics16%
Belief in a god81.7%
But it also means that these other statistics should be taken as evidence that god is a non-Christian god:
Christians33%
Non-Christians67%
The obvious point here is that you've chosen a criteria (majority belief wins out) because it lends support to something you believe, namely that God god exists. But it also lends support to something you don't believe, namely that the true god is a non-Christian god. It also lends support to other things you probably don't accept, such as gay marriage.
It has nothing to do with who believes in what only in the fact that scientists ignore the very real answers being given by billions of people, people who also happen to be very very powerful natural computers.
This position that beliefs derive validity from being widely accepted has been rebutted at least several times in this thread, yet here you are again ignoring those rebuttals and just restating your position as if the rebuttals had never been made. The simplest form of the rebuttal is that the majority of people alive at any given time have been wrong time and again. At one time or another the majority of people have believed that thunder and lightning are supernatural, the Earth is flat, the sun and planets orbit the Earth, the planets are propelled along their paths by wisps of air from the wings of angels, and so on. Given that the majority have been so frequently wrong, especially about anything concerning the supernatural, shouldn't you be arguing that it is evidence against god?
Of course the reality is that it isn't scientific evidence at all.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 59 by divermike1974, posted 04-03-2013 4:48 PM divermike1974 has replied

Replies to this message:
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divermike1974
Member (Idle past 4004 days)
Posts: 59
Joined: 02-08-2013


Message 82 of 262 (695246)
04-04-2013 2:07 AM
Reply to: Message 81 by Percy
04-03-2013 10:31 PM


You couldn't be more wrong. The people who said the Earth is flat, and all the other stuff about the Earth being the centre of the universe and all that stuff where actually the scientist's of the day, the popular conceptions of those days where propagated by scientists. Only a handful of people in some Greek university new what they where talking about yet the wrong information spread round the world. In the same way today only a very very small amount of people know the required amount of physics to actually understand what is really going on, yet millions and millions claim to understand, we are no different from the witch burning idiots of old. The only conclusion you can come to with regards sciences current position is that it is wrong and that untold millions of people believe in somthing that is going to be proved wrong.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 81 by Percy, posted 04-03-2013 10:31 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(1)
Message 83 of 262 (695247)
04-04-2013 2:18 AM
Reply to: Message 82 by divermike1974
04-04-2013 2:07 AM


You couldn't be more wrong. The people who said the Earth is flat, and all the other stuff about the Earth being the centre of the universe and all that stuff where actually the scientist's of the day, the popular conceptions of those days where propagated by scientists. Only a handful of people in some Greek university new what they where talking about yet the wrong information spread round the world.
In the same way today only a very very small amount of people know the required amount of physics to actually understand what is really going on, yet millions and millions claim to understand, we are no different from the witch burning idiots of old. The only conclusion you can come to with regards sciences current position is that it is wrong and that untold millions of people believe in somthing that is going to be proved wrong.
I think some reasoning should have appeared in there somewhere.

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anglagard
Member (Idle past 836 days)
Posts: 2339
From: Socorro, New Mexico USA
Joined: 03-18-2006


(1)
Message 84 of 262 (695248)
04-04-2013 2:20 AM
Reply to: Message 17 by divermike1974
04-03-2013 2:36 PM


divermike1974 writes:
Billions of people don't do astrology, but billions of people do belief in God.
I checked this assertion out of curiosity and my preliminary research indicates at least a billion people and perhaps even a few billion worldwide actually do believe in astrology.
Unfortunately.
Sorry for the interruption, just pointing out that in addition to being wrong in confusing a logical fallacy (majority opinion is how one establishes facts and is always the truth) with science, I think your statement concerning this matter may also be construed as misleading.
Edited by anglagard, : Clarity

Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. - Francis Bacon

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PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


(2)
Message 85 of 262 (695249)
04-04-2013 2:21 AM
Reply to: Message 82 by divermike1974
04-04-2013 2:07 AM


In other words, evidence and sound reasoning beat majority opinion.
Thanks for admitting that you were wrong.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 82 by divermike1974, posted 04-04-2013 2:07 AM divermike1974 has replied

Replies to this message:
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divermike1974
Member (Idle past 4004 days)
Posts: 59
Joined: 02-08-2013


Message 86 of 262 (695250)
04-04-2013 2:34 AM
Reply to: Message 85 by PaulK
04-04-2013 2:21 AM


Yeah i do admit iam wrong it was never my intention to say i was right and everyone wrong, merely that its strange that belief without proof is a very real thing practiced by billions of people yet belief cant be factored into any kind of scientific method because the science police of the day say you cant
I would like to thank you for admitting you are part of the majority opinion within this thread and demonstrating so beautifully the effects of the fallacy on the search for truth.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 85 by PaulK, posted 04-04-2013 2:21 AM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
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 Message 102 by Stile, posted 04-04-2013 11:59 AM divermike1974 has not replied
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PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 87 of 262 (695252)
04-04-2013 3:01 AM
Reply to: Message 86 by divermike1974
04-04-2013 2:34 AM


quote:
Yeah i do admit iam wrong it was never my intention to say i was right and everyone wrong, merely that its strange that belief without proof is a very real thing practiced by billions of people yet belief cant be factored into any kind of scientific method because the science police of the day say you cant
If course it isn't strange at all that science doesn't doesn't accept a method that doesn't work.
quote:
I would like to thank you for admitting you are part of the majority opinion within this thread and demonstrating so beautifully the effects of the fallacy on the search for truth
Which presumably is an irrational attempt at an attack on my position.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 86 by divermike1974, posted 04-04-2013 2:34 AM divermike1974 has not replied

  
anglagard
Member (Idle past 836 days)
Posts: 2339
From: Socorro, New Mexico USA
Joined: 03-18-2006


(1)
Message 88 of 262 (695253)
04-04-2013 3:16 AM
Reply to: Message 86 by divermike1974
04-04-2013 2:34 AM


Please Try to Understand
divermike1974 writes:
Yeah i do admit iam wrong it was never my intention to say i was right and everyone wrong, merely that its strange that belief without proof is a very real thing practiced by billions of people yet belief cant be factored into any kind of scientific method because the science police of the day say you cant
Science can't allow religious or political belief to influence conclusions because to do so sometimes kills people in huge numbers. Lysenko-ism in the USSR caused famines that killed around 10 million in the 1930's. Mao's policies to force science to conform to ideology (except nuclear, aerospace, and petroleum, wink, wink) in the 1960s caused the starvation of well over 10 million. The Germans attacked "Jewish science," in the 1930s preferring "Aryan science" with similar and even more tragic consequences than listed above.
I would like to thank you for admitting you are part of the majority opinion within this thread and demonstrating so beautifully the effects of the fallacy on the search for truth.
If I properly understand what you are saying here, I hope someday you will be informed enough to regret that statement.
Edited by anglagard, : Better wording.

Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. - Francis Bacon

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Dogmafood
Member (Idle past 348 days)
Posts: 1815
From: Ontario Canada
Joined: 08-04-2010


Message 89 of 262 (695257)
04-04-2013 5:16 AM


Argumentum ad populum vs Peer review
Is there not some conflict in this thread concerning the value of an opinion? On the one hand, the opinion of the majority has absolutely no impact on the validity of a fact and on the other hand we rely heavily on the idea of peer review and the agreement of many is considered as verification.
To be clear, I seem to be aware of the difference but how would you define it?

Replies to this message:
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JonF
Member (Idle past 168 days)
Posts: 6174
Joined: 06-23-2003


Message 90 of 262 (695260)
04-04-2013 7:29 AM
Reply to: Message 68 by divermike1974
04-03-2013 5:14 PM


The human brain and its intuition cannot be classed as scientific evidence for the existence of God.
By George, I think he's got it!
Although of course he doesn't.
The human brain and its intuition cannot be classed as scientific evidence for the existence of God without lots more corroborating evidence.

This message is a reply to:
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