What do you Believe??? (Religion)

[Riggo-toni]

1 hour ago, techboy said:

Since we're on the subject though, be careful. Most of the "scholars" pushing Bible Archeology, especially on TV, are hacks with an agenda one way or the other. I'd check credentials carefully before getting sucked in, if for no other reason than it's easy to get exposed in public later. Not a good look.

So very true....

[PeterMP]

15 hours ago, Renegade7 said:

So I don't understand why Eratosthenes' calculation of the circumference of the Earth does not count as science.  Is it because we don't know if he made a hypothesis first concerning the total size?  That's in regards to Scientific Method, they are interlinked, but that's not the definition of science:

 

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science 

 

Your definition of science is essentially a collection of information, which is sometimes how science is defined.  Science is also a process.  It is:

 

"the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment."

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=science+definition&spell=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjovs_Sz6XaAhXErFkKHRv_DsQQBQgkKAA&biw=1297&bih=574

 

A scientists is then somebody that carries out the practice of science.  Certainly before science (the process), there were natural philosophers that gather observed and gathered knowledge, but I've been talking about the process.

 

From there, your understanding of a hypothesis is badly flawed.  A hypothesis is not wild guess.  It is an educated guess.  To make a hypothesis, you have to gather data first.  Then if you are doing science, you make a prediction from your hypothesis and determine if that prediction happens it is evidence that your hypothesis is true.  If your prediction is wrong, that is evidence that your hypothesis is wrong.

 

Even if Eratosthenes measured the number some other way (or used the same general method, but at some other place with some other set of measurements), he hasn't disprove his first number.  He's then  got two numbers, and he doesn't actually know which one is correct.

 

**EDIT**

In terms of the Egyptians, like somebody writing down the positions of stars, recording them for future generations, and even making a calendar based on them, they are just gathering information and using it to do something.

 

To my knowledge, there was no actual hypothesis testing.  Pre-science (the process) medical practices were simply observation based.  If the person X has this happen and then do Y, they got better.  That person is a natural philosopher.  Not a scientist because they are not carrying out the scientific method.

 

This is why pre-science medicine had all sorts of odd explanations for diseases and why people got better.  The people that really started to understand diseases did not really have better technology than older generations.  What they had was a better process (actual science).

Edited April 6, 2018 by PeterMP

[Renegade7]

1 hour ago, techboy said:

 

This is just not true. I personally know many people who were, at some point, convinced of the existence of God. 

 

Now generally, these are not people who already feel strongly one way or the other, probably because the backfire effect just reinforces the existing beliefs of those people, but there are plenty of those too.

 

In fact, I'd expect that his scenario of talking to people that had never even heard of God would make them easier to convince, not harder, due to the absence of that backfire.

 

In general, there are a variety of philosophical and historical arguments that establish that it is more probable than not that God exists. I would describe these as persuasive, but not compulsory.

 

More often, though, people come to faith in God through personal connections and what believers would call the witness of the Holy Spirit (and others might call delusion or pattern recognition gone haywire).

 

Either way, you specifically asked people not to go there so I'm puzzled as to why you did.

 

Since we're on the subject though, be careful. Most of the "scholars" pushing Bible Archeology, especially on TV, are hacks with an agenda one way or the other. I'd check credentials carefully before getting sucked in, if for no other reason than it's easy to get exposed in public later. Not a good look.

 

You're right on the Bible Archeology thing.  I've always been pretty nervous about putting certain stuff out there as saying "this is what really happened", versus "this makes way more sense".   The Flood Theory is one of them, where the Black Sea Delugue theory makes more sense to me then a global flood.  There's a lot of skeptics of the Black Sea Delugue theory, but I say a PBS NOVA special about how people felt that the ark legend was inspired by something terrible that did happen, and that to save what they had built rafts in a sense to save what was most important to them, like a male and female of the livestock they had so they could still start over and breed once the waters went down.  Noah may have been just one of those people that did this, not the only one.

 

I said I wouldn't try to convince him and I didn't.  I took the question as trying to or sitting down with him or any of the people that voted Atheists in this thread.  I don't think you can, I haven't seen that work.

Edited April 6, 2018 by Renegade7

[PeterMP]

6 hours ago, DCSaints_fan said:

 

Ok, well how about Cavendish's calculation of the gravitational constant?  Or Milliken's calculation of the charge of the electron?  Should those experiments have been rejected from journals because they were just measuring something?  

 

This is just silly.  The journal "Science" publishes opinion pieces, editorials, book reviews, and various journals through the years have published completely fabricated results.  Nobody would claim any of those things are science, and they've appeared in scientific journals.

 

Anybody that is just measuring a number is not carrying out the scientific method and as such is not doing science.  They might be aiding science and in the context of using science to mean a collection of knowledge, they might be adding to science (adding to the collection of knowledge).

 

But nobody would contend that science simply observing and measuring is science (as a process). 

 

Gathering data and analyzing data is part of the science, but if science ended there, it would be no different than natural philosophy, and that's not true.

Edited April 6, 2018 by PeterMP

[Renegade7]

4 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

From there, your understanding of a hypothesis is badly flawed.  A hypothesis is not wild guess.  It is an educated guess. 

I'm not saying that's what a hypothesis is at all, I'm saying I don't believe he had what he needed to make an educated guess and that's not fair to say that's not science because he didn't.

[PeterMP]

3 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

I'm not saying that's what a hypothesis is at all, I'm saying I don't believe he had what he needed to make an educated guess and that's not fair to say that's not science because he didn't.

 

You said:

 

"When dealing with something the size of the Earth in that time period, do we need to expect him to make a wild guess first to consider that technically science?"

 

If he had made a wild guess it would not have been a hypothesis, and he can't really have been testing a hypothesis if he didn't really have a hypothesis, and you can't claim you are doing science if you don't have hypothesis to test.

[Renegade7]

15 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

If he had made a wild guess it would not have been a hypothesis, and he can't really have been testing a hypothesis if he didn't really have a hypothesis, and you can't claim you are doing science if you don't have hypothesis to test.

We're going to have to agree to disagree on the bolded.  I was being sarcastic about a wild guess, but if we're going to accept that there's multiple definitions of science, you can't say because this doesn't meet one that it doesn't meet any of them.

Edited April 6, 2018 by Renegade7

[PeterMP]

15 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

We're going to have to agree to disagree on the bolded.  I was being sarcastic about a wild guess, but if we're going to accept that there's multiple definitions of science, you can't say because this doesn't meet one that it doesn't meet any of them.

 

There's really 2 definitions of science. The first is as a collection of information or knowledge.  The second is a process to uncover information based on the scientific method.  People before the scientific method that studied nature and collected information we're called natural philosophers and they did natural philosophy not science.

 

From there, you have to read with some context.  Clearly, I wasn't using science as a collection of information.  I wasn't claiming in 400 AD there was no knowledge.

 

Collecting and analyzing data is part of science, but if that is all you are doing, you are really a natural philosopher.

Edited April 6, 2018 by PeterMP

[techboy]

21 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

 

I said I wouldn't try to convince him and I didn't. 

 

The way you did this, though, is by making the claim that it's not possible to convince someone that God exists, then suggesting that someone prove you wrong.

 

Of course, the only way for someone to prove you wrong is to lay out arguments that can convince someone, which will then be challenged, and leads directly into the very thing you specifically requested people not do.

 

7 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

We're going to have to agree to disagree on the bolded.  

 

You'd be wrong. 

 

I teach science, and every year my first unit of the Physics course I teach is on the the nature of science and the difference between science and philosophy.

 

Galileo is generally considered the first scientist because he is the first person that obviously followed the scientific method by making testable (and falsifiable) hypotheses, then actually testing them to determine the results, rather than simply doing thought experiments.

 

The classic example is that Aristotle, a Natural Philosopher, wrote that heavier objects fall faster than lighter. Galileo did his own thought experiments to conclude that all objects fall at the same rate, but then he tested it and exposed the idea to falsification.

 

The problem you are facing is that people we consider to be scientists do a lot of things which support science, but are not actually science. Physics, for example, is a lot of math.

 

Another classic example of this, from modern times, is the Multiple Universe hypothesis. Many people we would consider scientists have proposed this as an explanation of the existence of the Universe. They have provided a lot of good mathematics to support the idea.

 

The idea, at the moment though, is not testable. It is not falsifiable. 

 

At the moment, the Multiple Universe hypothesis isn't science. It's philosophy.

 

There's nothing wrong with philosophy (or math). Philosophy is necessary. There are areas of knowledge that cannot be accessed through science. As an easy example, moral values and duties cannot be accessed by science. There is no experiment one can do to test whether or not the Nazis were right or wrong to experiment on concentration camp prisoners, for example.

 

It's not science though. Neither is math.

[Renegade7]

Just now, PeterMP said:

 

There's really 2 definitions of science. 

 

From there, you have to read with some context.  Clearly, I wasn't using science as a collection of information.  I wasn't claiming in 400 AD there was no knowledge.

Ya, saying it wasn't science or science didn't exist before the time period you mentioned really bothered me and probably a couple other people as well. I didn't think you were claiming there was no knowledge, you're too smart for that.  I've agree with a lot of what you said, I really needed clarification on that one, though.

[Renegade7]

26 minutes ago, techboy said:

 

The way you did this, though, is by making the claim that it's not possible to convince someone that God exists, then suggesting that someone prove you wrong.

 

Of course, the only way for someone to prove you wrong is to lay out arguments that can convince someone, which will then be challenged, and leads directly into the very thing you specifically requested people not do.

 

Yes, I'm wrong for doing that.  I originally wanted people to send me a PM but I knew if I put this out there that wasn't going to happen.  I cracked a little, I wanted to know if people felt they could or did as opposed to convincing me how they would do it (which I still don't want in here), and I don't believe it would've mattered if I framed it that way, I've already lost.  I probably just torpedoed the thread because of even trying.  

 

Quote

You'd be wrong. 

 

It's not science though. Neither is math.

 

I get that, even if I don't like it, because:

 

1. I don't get why there would be multiple definitions of science when the only one that "counts" is the one where Scientific Method is utilized

2. Not classifying the accomplishments of many of the examples that have been put forth as science I feel deligitimizes their accomplishments and contributions to science

 

#1 reminds me of the Atheist/Agnostic term evolution that was discussed earlier and #2 just really bothers the hell out of me even though I want to believe neither you or Peter are really trying to do that.

Edited April 6, 2018 by Renegade7

[techboy]

5 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

1. I don't get why there would be multiple definitions of science when the only one that "counts" is the one where Scientific Method is utilized

 

A lot of it is semantics. The technical definition of science is a lot more specific than the way the word is used in a popular sense.

 

It's a distinction that matters to Peter, because he is making a specific claim about the nature of knowledge and pointing out that people believe things all the time that cannot be established by science, and he is correct.

 

It also matters for the skeptic because one of the most valid criticisms of Intelligent Design is that it's not falsifiable, and therefore not science. 

 

Opening up the definition of science allows the Intelligent Design advocates to sneak their curriculum into my science class.

 

I suspect this point may shift some opinions in this discussion.

[Riggo-toni]

5 hours ago, Renegade7 said:

The Flood Theory is one of them, where the Black Sea Delugue theory makes more sense to me then a global flood.  

 

The best argument I ever heard against the documentary hypothesis (the theory that the Torah and much of the rest of the OT was stitched together from different sources) came from Dr Gary Rendsberg, a noted Jewish/Biblical scholar. He points out that the story of Noah follows in perfect sequence with the older Babylonian story of Utnapishtum. If the biblical narrative had been pieced together, it could not have duplicated the Babylonian epic so precisely.

 

The Black Sea deluge being the inspiration for all this seems quite likely to me.

Edited April 6, 2018 by Riggo-toni

[Renegade7]

7 hours ago, Riggo-toni said:

The Black Sea deluge being the inspiration for all this seems quite likely to me.

 

Ya, my initial reaction to this is "Where did the Utnapishtum legend come from", but I'm going to read what Rendberg said about it first (because I'm assuming he touched on that).  I remember us rapping about about the Bible Archaeology thing in RTT, so I'm glad this perspective is coming up in here.  Hopefully this thread is still here when I get back, because there's a lot of exploration that can be done on that aspect of this discussion alone where we can focus on what we do know (which you can argue is just as important as what we don't).

Edited April 6, 2018 by Renegade7

[Renegade7]

4 hours ago, techboy said:

I suspect this point may shift some opinions in this discussion.

 

It's entirely possible : )

 

Looking back at @Sacks 'n' Stuff question, I wonder if I looked passed or overthought the difference of convincing someone God was real versus proving God was real.  In my eye, they feel synonymous because if you're trying to convince someone who believes he isn't real and they've made that decision based on the facts in front of them, I'm not sure what facts you could use to convince them otherwise.  You mentioned factoring in experiences people have been through, there are those out there that don't feel the need to make a connection for that and are just fine with that.

 

Many of the examples of God's power have been explained away via other means or remain uncorroborated by scientific facts. I don't know how you could use Scientific Method to prove that He's real.  It may be like a bell curve where the scientific evidence we do have can help re-enforce ones faith that He's out there, but relying on it can backfire.  There's certainly more scientific evidence to support that He doesn't exist then He does, and that's coming from someone that believes he does.

[Zguy28]

29 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

  There's certainly more scientific evidence to support that He doesn't exist then He does, and that's coming from someone that believes he does.

Boy, talk about a subjective statement. People believe when they want to believe or in the case of my Calvinist theology, when God elects you to believe. But He also uses other people as a means to that end.

[techboy]

31 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

I don't know how you could use Scientific Method to prove that He's real.

 

I don't think anyone has tried. All of the arguments for the existence of God I am aware of are based in the field of Philosophy, even though some refer to science to support premises.

 

 

[Zguy28]

1 minute ago, techboy said:

 

I don't think anyone has tried. All of the arguments for the existence of God I am aware of are based in the field of Philosophy, even though some refer to science to support premises.

 

 

Something about "thou shall not test God..."

[techboy]

34 minutes ago, Renegade7 said:

There's certainly more scientific evidence to support that He doesn't exist then He does, and that's coming from someone that believes he does.

 

There is also no way to prove that God doesn't exist using science. What you might be referring to is that science can provide rational explanations for events once attributed to God, but that's not proof one way or the other, just the rejection of "God of the Gaps" reasoning, which is flawed to begin with.

[PeterMP]

In terms of what is science, let's try this.  Let's say for some reason I become very interested in the rocks in my back yard.  I go out and count the number of rocks in my back yard.  I mass them all and get the volumes of all of them.  From that, I can determine the density of each rock, and I can even then do things like make histograms.  I make a web page and put all of that information on the web.

 

I've done a lot of work, I've collected data, and I've even done some calculations.  I've added to the global collection of knowledge.  I don't think anybody would say that I've done any science.

 

Now, the way the landscape around my house is laid out when we get heavy rains the way the water flows through my backyard is different than my neighbors.  Now, let's say I have an idea: the landscape is going to cause different movement of the rocks in and through my backyard than his (which then might affect the ability of things to grow, etc, or whatever).  Well, I have a hypothesis.  Now, if this is true, then I would expect after a rain fall the rocks in my backyard to be different than his.  I have a test for for my hypothesis.  Before some heavy rain falls I go out and catalog all of the rocks in my backyard and his backyard.  After the rain fall, I do the same.  The rocks that are new, I mass, volume, and determine the density.  I do this for a few heavy rain falls.

 

And then I can show the density of the rocks in my backyard after rain fall are different than the rocks.  My test of my hypothesis has been supported.  I've done science.  Science was done.

 

I work with a guy that is a historian.  He collects lots of information and even data (e.g. troop numbers).  He thinks about his data.  Based on his data and logic, he draws conclusions.  He publishes books with his data, logic, and conclusions.  He's absolutely contributing to the global pool of knowledge.  He isn't doing science, and he's not a scientist.  He wouldn't claim to be.

Edited April 6, 2018 by PeterMP

[Renegade7]

8 minutes ago, Zguy28 said:

Boy, talk about a subjective statement. People believe when they want to believe or in the case of my Calvinist theology, when God elects you to believe. But He also uses other people as a means to that end.

 

I'm not a fan, either.  I can totally dig what I like to call "the ligher hand theory" (because I haven't done enough research to find somebody else's better name for it, I'm sure someone has one) where he's doing a little push here and there, especially in regards the Genesis, but I have no way to prove that.

 

5 minutes ago, techboy said:

 

There is also no way to prove that God doesn't exist using science. What you might be referring to is that science can provide rational explanations for events once attributed to God, but that's not proof one way or the other, just the rejection of "God of the Gaps" reasoning, which is flawed to begin with.

 

Ya, but I'm not comfortable with the "you can't prove he doesn't via science" idea, and I personally (not saying you or anyone else is) wouldn't want to lean on that as a basis for my faith that he does.  We may never develop the technology to prove one way or the other that something like a god actually exists, let alone a scientific experiment to prove he does or doesn't. If we're stuck just trying to make sense of what we believe he did or didn't do via scientific method, then like you said, that doesn't prove he does or doesn't exist, either.  Proving that he does or doesn't exist sounds like it falls into similar territory to the multiple universe example that is currently untestable via scientific means, and I believe that's what a lot of people are waiting for, scientific proof that he's out there.

[PeterMP]

21 hours ago, Sacks 'n' Stuff said:

That’s an affirmative.

 

Everybody else is probably getting bored of this conversation so I’ll make one last post and then you can bottom line it.

 

The original question was, how would you convince someone in the existence of God. Is your point that since people believe in things like gravity, that they experience all the time, even though they’re not scientifically testable or fully understood, that a belief in anything is equally valid? If so, how is this convincing of a God? The same logic could be used to argue the existence of leprechauns.

 

 

The first part has to be make it clear to the non-theist they have strong beliefs are not supported by science.  That for other things, we treat non-scientific evidence to be strong evidence that something is true.  You have strong beliefs (e.g. that gravity will be the same tomorrow as it was yesterday).

 

1.  Those beliefs are not scientific.  Science does not tell you that is the case.  Science essentially assumes that the past is a good predictor of the future and things like natural laws exist.  It does not allow somebody to conclude that.

 

2.  Even statements like there is 0 evidence that gravity is the same everywhere all the time are false.  The evidence that it is false isn't scientific, but we've already said we will essentially except things as being true that are not supported by scientific information.

 

3.  (We actually hadn't come to this part so this is the first time I've laid this out in this thread).   One possibility for anything is always just dumb luck (good or bad depending on your perspective).  To try and demonstrate this think about our natural laws every day are decided by somebody somewhere rolling two die.  If they role 2-4, we get pretty the much same natural laws we've known since the start of this universe and everything at least seems the same to us.  If they roll something else though, we'd get a very different set of natural laws and we'd all likely die pretty quickly.

 

Now, you might argue that at 13.7 billion years (the age of the universe), we've gone beyond luck, and there must be something about the dice that they have to come up 2-4.  But 13.7 billion years is nothing compared to infinity.  If the dice have been rolled "forever" (including before the start of this universe), you'd expect to get 13.7 billion years of dice rolled 2-4.  Before you said: "There is zero reason to doubt it."  (and as I've stated, that's not really true).  What there really is there is zero evidence to believe that we haven't just been very lucky with the values we've gotten for the "natural laws" that exist in our universe.  (There is also really zero evidence to doubt God exist.).

There is 0 evidence to support that the universe's "natural laws" won't change tomorrow, but none of us live that way.

To sum up, we all have strong beliefs that are not supported by scientific evidence and if we are honest with ourselves, there is no reason to believe that the things we believe strongly in haven't just been the result of luck.

 

Now God:

 

1.  We have evidence that god exist.  We have various people through history and even today that claim to have had spiritual experiences.  It isn't scientific evidence, but again, we've said that we accept things are true that are not scientific.

 

2.  One of the fundamental underlying principles of science is that good ideas make predictions that turn out to be true.  Sitting in the middle ages without knowing what evolution was or that the solar system was heliocentric and a whole lot of things that we would later accept, St. Augustine said that studying nature would better help us understand what parts of the Bible were literal and which ones were not.  That was essentially a prediction.  That is only possible if things like natural laws exist (and science works).  To us today, that seems trivial and obvious, but in the middle ages, it wasn't. (and that's where what is science came in).  St. Augustine's ideas motivated what at least through most of history have been considered the first scientists (Galileo and his contemporaries).

 

3.  I'll even take it further.  This isn't so much predicted, but I think we can do a little bit of a thought experiment (and even make a prediction for the future).  In a deterministic system, there really is no room for a personal God to interact with reality.  Given enough information it should be possible to completely predict the future so a completely deterministic system seems incompatible with a belief in God.  If the system is completely deterministic, things like free will cannot exist.  Based on what we know today, the universe is not deterministic.  I feel comfortable saying that isn't going to change going forward (and I suspect people like St. Augustine who had no idea of what was coming would have told you that a deterministic system is not compatible with things like free will).

 

 

In general, the non-theist over estimates the evidence supporting some of their strong beliefs, while under estimating the evidence that god exist.

1 hour ago, Renegade7 said:

Ya, but I'm not comfortable with the "you can't prove he doesn't via science" idea, and I personally (not saying you or anyone else is) wouldn't want to lean on that as a basis for my faith that he does.  We may never develop the technology to prove one way or the other that something like a god actually exists, let alone a scientific experiment to prove he does or doesn't. If we're stuck just trying to make sense of what we believe he did or didn't do via scientific method, then like you said, that doesn't prove he does or doesn't exist, either.  Proving that he does or doesn't exist sounds like it falls into similar territory to the multiple universe example that is currently untestable via scientific means, and I believe that's what a lot of people are waiting for, scientific proof that he's out there.

 

Unless we become all powerful, there is just no fundamental way that through science we can prove that God exist.  Whatever technique or instrumentation you are using, an all powerful being could mess it up without you knowing it.

Edited April 6, 2018 by PeterMP

[Renegade7]

2 hours ago, PeterMP said:

Unless we become all powerful, there is just no fundamental way that through science we can prove that God exist.  Whatever technique or instrumentation you are using, an all powerful being could mess it up without you knowing it.

 

We should still try.

[Renegade7]

3 hours ago, PeterMP said:

In terms of what is science, let's try this.  Let's say for some reason I become very interested in the rocks in my back yard.  I go out and count the number of rocks in my back yard.  I mass them all and get the volumes of all of them.  From that, I can determine the density of each rock, and I can even then do things like make histograms.  I make a web page and put all of that information on the web.

 

Can we all just agree that comparing someone trying to measure the circumference of the Earth and coming pretty damn close all things considered to a rock collection out someone's backyard sounds really weird? 

[Renegade7]

3 hours ago, PeterMP said:

 

1.  We have evidence that god exist.  We have various people through history and even today that claim to have had spiritual experiences.  It isn't scientific evidence, but again, we've said that we accept things are true that are not scientific.

 

Wait, so is it okay to in one breath say science can't be used to disprove God then use non-scientific evidence to support the claim that he does exist?  That feels ***-backwards to me for some reason, even if I get where you're coming from towards certain laws of physics. 

 

I posted a video about gravity possibly being an illusion, we don't even know all the rules yet to be saying which ones are or aren't set in stone.  I don't feel like you're doing this but I hope people aren't using this as a means to discredit the ones that we do know, especially since we depend on them being constant and knowing what they are.  Saying I could wake up tomorrow and my car floating or having to at least investigate claims of that by others feels like Fake News to me.  We should take laws of physics seriously until we can confirm they are wrong, especially since there's no way to compensate for the nearly unlimited possibilities any rule could land on at any given moment if that's the way you want to look at it. 

 

I'd say don't be surprised a rule has exceptions or is wrong, but don't expect it to happen at some point in the future.

Edited April 6, 2018 by Renegade7