Australopithecines aren't "just" apes

Mallon · Feb 28, 2010

Skaloop said:
Yes, I agree, we can't do away with the supernatural altogether. But God (as opposed to god) has specific attributes by which he can be disproven.

I guess that depends on whether you subscribe to a concordist or an accommodationist hermeneutic. I agree that the God of YECs is falsifiable. Or rather, the actions attributed to Him are falsifiable.

Skaloop · Feb 28, 2010

brinny said:
ok, you say yes....Mallon says no....

So Mallon and I disagree on it.

Yeah, but we were talking about different things. Can a supernatural power be disproved? No. I think we agree on that. Can a specific supernatural power be disproved? Yes. Say for example that God would make people green if they said "Hello." Since people have said "Hello" and none have turned green, that would disprove that specific God.

As for the Bible God, He has promised many things. Most of which have not happened, and many of which disprove that specific idea of God. If God answered prayers as He said He would, there would be evidence of that. But there isn't. Which, while perhaps not absolutely disproving God, certainly goes against His existence.

Skaloop · Feb 28, 2010

brinny said:
which attributes can be dis-proven?

That He answers prayers made with a true heart. That he caused world-wide flood. That sort of thing.

Skaloop · Feb 28, 2010

Mallon said:
I guess that depends on whether you subscribe to a concordist or an accommodationist hermeneutic. I agree that the God of YECs is falsifiable. Or rather, the actions attributed to Him are falsifiable.

Ok, then, we're pretty much on the same page.

brinny · Feb 28, 2010

Skaloop said:
So Mallon and I disagree on it.

Yeah, but we were talking about different things. Can a supernatural power be disproved? No. I think we agree on that. Can a specific supernatural power be disproved? Yes. Say for example that God would make people green if they said "Hello." Since people have said "Hello" and none have turned green, that would disprove that specific God.

As for the Bible God, He has promised many things. Most of which have not happened, and many of which disprove that specific idea of God. If God answered prayers as He said He would, there would be evidence of that. But there isn't. Which, while perhaps not absolutely disproving God, certainly goes against His existence.

what many things has He promised have not happened?

Skaloop · Feb 28, 2010

brinny said:
what many things has He promised have not happened?

The answering of prayers, for one. Favouring Christians, for another. Returning within the lifespan of the apostles, for another.

USincognito · Feb 28, 2010

{point of order}

Skaloop said:
Yes.

Skaloop said:
Here, I disagree. Depending on the specific nature and definition of God, He can indeed be disproven.

Skaloop, this is OT. You're not supposed to be posting here.

{/point of order}

{point of information}

brinny said:
ok, you say yes....Mallon says no....

Check his faith icon.

{/point of information}

Papias · Mar 1, 2010

In post #62, I asked Smidlee to let us know which of the transitional Ape/humans show in post 59 were "obviously ape" and which were "obviously human".

I haven't seen a reply.

In fact, would any other creationists like to say which is which? They claim it is obvious, so this should be really easy.

Papias

brinny · Mar 1, 2010

Originally Posted by brinny
which attributes can be dis-proven?

Skaloop said:
That He answers prayers made with a true heart. That he caused world-wide flood. That sort of thing.

Aah, but lo, He has answered my prayers. I am not as i was. That be a good thing. I wasn't very nice.

The flood can be dis-proven? Where is this dis-proof at? Is there a site i can visit or a source?

LightHorseman · Mar 1, 2010

brinny said:
Aah, but lo, He has answered my prayers. I am not as i was. That be a good thing. I wasn't very nice.

But does he answer all prayers? Why some and not others? How many of the prayers answered have a supernatural element to them, and how many were prayers for stuff that was going to happen anyway?

The flood can be dis-proven? Where is this dis-proof at? Is there a site i can visit or a source?

The world wide flood is quite disproven, and there's about a zillion websites to show this.

Now, you CAN always fall back on the old "God made it look like something different to what actually happened, happened", but that, of course, rather necessitates God being decietful, which of course disproves a different aspect of Him. So take your pick, you can have either a Flood and a decietful God, or no Flood and a non-deceptive God. Personally, i take the latter, because the former terrifies me.

lucaspa · Mar 1, 2010

Skaloop said:
Here, I disagree. Depending on the specific nature and definition of God, He can indeed be disproven.

What you can do is disprove specific theories about God. Theists have been doing that for millenia. That's why they end up discarding religions like the Greek pantheon, the Babylonian pantheon, Mithraism, etc. The surviving religions are those whose theories about deity have not been disproven.

The Hebrews hit upon a theory of deity -- Yahweh -- that cannot be disproven by science. You can believe, as Judeo-Christians do, that they had genuine revelation. Or you can believe, as atheists must, that as humans randomly invented religions, one of those would have the characteristics of Yahweh.

lucaspa · Mar 1, 2010

brinny said:
Can science dis-prove the existence of God?

Science can disprove theories about deity. For instance, a vital characteristic of Thor was that he caused thunder with his hammer. When science discovered the real cause of thunder, Thor no longer had a purpose and was disproved.

Now, you mean by "God" the specific deity of Judeo-Christianity. I will refer to that as "Yahweh" for clarity. The characteristics of Yahweh are such that science has not disproved Yahweh's existence. However, it appears to me that, if ekpyrotic theory is correct, then Yahweh will have been disproved because Yahweh will no longer by Creator. However, that is a mighty big IF because ekpyrotic is based on String Theory and String Theory so far has only been falsified by experiment, not supported.

Chesterton · Mar 1, 2010

Skaloop said:
The answering of prayers, for one. Favouring Christians, for another. Returning within the lifespan of the apostles, for another.

You sound like a Bible literalist, or anti-Bible literalist, I guess.

lucaspa · Mar 1, 2010

Skaloop said:
Yes.

How do you think science can disprove the existence of Yahweh?

The answering of prayers, for one. Favouring Christians, for another. Returning within the lifespan of the apostles, for another.

These are not really science, except for the first. Unfortunately for you, all the scientific experiments done so far have shown that intercessory prayers are answered. Even the study by Benson et al. found that the prayed-for group had less serious complications than the non-prayed for group. And that was in a study that was flawed in that it really didn't have the statistical power to detect a small difference. The difference there was large enough to overcome the flaw.

So, if you are going by your view of science, in this case science has "proven" the existence of God!

However, because of limitations of science, the studies do not show that God answers prayers. What it showed was that intercessory prayer has an effect. They did not test the mechanism by which intercessory prayer worked. Thus science remains agnostic -- to the great relief of atheists everywhere.

It does appear that Jesus did promise that the end of the world would come in the generation of the apostles. Paul thought so. The failure caused a crisis within the early Christian Church. There are several hypotheses to explain the supposed falsification. (This is permitted in science. You can propose ad-hoc hypotheses to save a theory from falsification. The criteria is that the hypothesis needs to be tested independent of the theory it is trying to save.)

There is nothing I can find that God will favor Christians. Instead, belief in Christ is one sure way to find God. Some Christians have professed the belief that God favors them (particularly the new "wealth" theology), but indeed this has no theological support.

lucaspa · Mar 1, 2010

Chesterton said:
You sound like a Bible literalist, or anti-Bible literalist, I guess.

No, what he is doing is using synedoche -- letting a part stand for the whole. This is one of the dangers Biblical literalism poses for God and Christianity: it falsely sets up God to be falsified. Militant atheists love Fundies and hate the mainline denominations, because Fundamentalism does incorrectly tie the existence of God to testable statements. And so militant atheists build the strawman that God must be what the Fundies say He is. It's not honest but hey! who needs honesty when you delude yourself that your faith is not a faith?

brinny · Mar 1, 2010

is there a picture of this Lucy person, my ancestor? I wanna see if she be as pretty as me.

Is there? Fergive me if there's already been a link posted...

lucaspa · Mar 1, 2010

Skaloop said:
If God answered prayers as He said He would, there would be evidence of that.

You so screwed yourself here. All of the studies below show evidence of intercessory prayer having an effect on health.

14. Byrd, RC, Positive theraputic effects of intercessory prayer in a coronary care population. Southern Med Jour 1988 81(7):826-29. Positive Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer in a Coronary Care Unit Population Page 1 http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/smj.doc
15. WS Harris, M Gowda, JW Kolb, CP Strychacz, JL Vacek, PG Jones, A Forker, JH O'Keefe, BD McCallister, A randomized, controlled trial of the effects of remote, intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients admitted to the coronary care unit. Arch Intern Med. 1999;159:2273-2278 Arch Intern Med -- File Not Found
15. BBC News | HEALTH | Heart patients 'benefit from prayer' A study at North Carolina
17. http://health.medscape.com/viewarticle/405270 IP for infertile women
18: Dusek JA, Sherwood JB, Friedman R, Myers P, Bethea CF, Levitsky S, Hill PC,Jain MK, Kopecky SL, Mueller PS, Lam P, Benson H, Hibberd PL. Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP): study designand research methods.Am Heart J. 2002 Apr;143(4):577-84.
19: Leibovici L. Effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients withbloodstream infection: randomised controlled trial.BMJ. 2001 Dec 22-29;323(7327):1450-1.
20. bmj.com Sign In Page
21. Herbert Benson, MD,a,4 Jeffery A. Dusek, PhD,a,4 Jane B. Sherwood, RN,y Peter Lam, PhD, Charles F. Bethea, MD,b William Carpenter, MDiv,c Sidney Levitsky, MD,d Peter C. Hill, MD, Donald W. Clem, Jr, MA,f Manoj K. Jain, MD, MPH,g David Drumel, MDiv,g,h Stephen L. Kopecky, MD, Paul S. Mueller, MD,j Dean Marek,k Sue Rollins, RN, MPH,b and Patricia L. Hibberd, MD, PhD Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients: A multicenter randomized trial of uncertainty and certainty of receiving intercessory prayer. American Heart Journal, Volume 151, Number 4, 934-942, 2006.

Mallon · Mar 1, 2010

brinny said:
is there a picture of this Lucy person, my ancestor? I wanna see if she be as pretty as me.

Is there? Fergive me if there's already been a link posted...

It's in the first post. Read the article.
And Lucy isn't your ancestor. She's more like a distant cousin.

brinny · Mar 1, 2010

Originally Posted by Skaloop
If God answered prayers as He said He would, there would be evidence of that.

lucaspa said:
You so screwed yourself here. All of the studies below show evidence of intercessory prayer having an effect on health.

14. Byrd, RC, Positive theraputic effects of intercessory prayer in a coronary care population. Southern Med Jour 1988 81(7):826-29. Positive Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer in a Coronary Care Unit Population Page 1 http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/smj.doc
15. WS Harris, M Gowda, JW Kolb, CP Strychacz, JL Vacek, PG Jones, A Forker, JH O'Keefe, BD McCallister, A randomized, controlled trial of the effects of remote, intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients admitted to the coronary care unit. Arch Intern Med. 1999;159:2273-2278 Arch Intern Med -- File Not Found
15. BBC News | HEALTH | Heart patients 'benefit from prayer' A study at North Carolina
17. http://health.medscape.com/viewarticle/405270 IP for infertile women
18: Dusek JA, Sherwood JB, Friedman R, Myers P, Bethea CF, Levitsky S, Hill PC,Jain MK, Kopecky SL, Mueller PS, Lam P, Benson H, Hibberd PL. Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP): study designand research methods.Am Heart J. 2002 Apr;143(4):577-84.
19: Leibovici L. Effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients withbloodstream infection: randomised controlled trial.BMJ. 2001 Dec 22-29;323(7327):1450-1.
20. bmj.com Sign In Page
21. Herbert Benson, MD,a,4 Jeffery A. Dusek, PhD,a,4 Jane B. Sherwood, RN,y Peter Lam, PhD, Charles F. Bethea, MD,b William Carpenter, MDiv,c Sidney Levitsky, MD,d Peter C. Hill, MD, Donald W. Clem, Jr, MA,f Manoj K. Jain, MD, MPH,g David Drumel, MDiv,g,h Stephen L. Kopecky, MD, Paul S. Mueller, MD,j Dean Marek,k Sue Rollins, RN, MPH,b and Patricia L. Hibberd, MD, PhD Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients: A multicenter randomized trial of uncertainty and certainty of receiving intercessory prayer. American Heart Journal, Volume 151, Number 4, 934-942, 2006.

ehehe he sho' 'nuff did, didn't he? he shouldn't 'a gone dere

lucaspa · Mar 1, 2010

brinny said:
is there a picture of this Lucy person, my ancestor? I wanna see if she be as pretty as me.

Is there? Fergive me if there's already been a link posted...

lucy australopithecus - Google Search

Australopithecines aren't "just" apes

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