No, I'm not misunderstanding your posts. I'm attacking the misleading nature of stating that bad evidence is still evidence. We should never count bad evidence as still being evidence. To do so is misleading in the extreme.
So our empirical world is bad evidence? the complexity of our world is bad evidence? These are the two I started out with and you dismissed them as causually as you did the other evidence in which you dismiss because it is "bad" evidence. So then I can assume from your posts that you consider all these things bad evidence, and then I must ask you why do you even consider science if these are all "bad" evidence? I think what you mean to say, if I am following you at all is that you don't agree that these things are convincing evidence and so therefore we can dismiss them. And what I will answer to you is this, evidence is evidence no matter how convincing, how well constructed, etc. Those issues come in later. We first collect all the evidence then we dismiss or accept the evidence based on things like if it was collected well, if there is contridictory evidence, etc. We don't weed it out as we go, it would be too easy to miss something important that way, we collect, then weed, then adjust, then collect some more. I couldn't care a rats hairy if we deside in course of discussion that this information should be eliminated as valid evidence, but in order to be thorough enough to understand other views, it must be brought into the discussion and evaluated as evidence. You would like to have it removed and I don't have a problem with that, what I have a problem with is not acknowledging it at evidence, and then going on to sound like I am trying to make a case for the existance of God. I am making a case for the idea that evidence does exist for there being a God. I am not at least in this discussion ready or willing to discuss it's validity, only it's existance. For example, the study in question does exist. It's existance makes it evidence and the evidence of the study is one for the spiritual natures existance. Whether or not the experiment is valid does not remove the existance of the evidence nor does it invalidate all the other studies and evidences of the spiritual existance in man. (not necessarily natural scientific evidence). The discussion if you are following me is about the existance of the evidence not about it's validity. We can get to that if you want but first things first, evidence does exist.
No. I am exceptionally good at asking hypothetical questions. The problem is that that particular 'what if' doesn't have much meaning. Asking hypothetical questions is what science is all about. But the what if as it applies to the existence or non-existence of a god has no meaning.
Oh but you are wrong, it has a great deal of meaning some of which has already been mentioned, more implication yet to discuss.
To try to illustrate this, consider: if a god exists, how will it affect the voltage I measure in a detector of a supercollider? If a god exists, how will it change the statistical distribution of stars in our galaxy? If a god exists, how will it change the statistical distribution of galaxies in the universe? If a god exists, how will it change the properties of this superconductor? If a god exists, how will it change how proteins, DNA, and RNA interact?
Very good questions and without pondering on each question individually, I will post my inital thoughts for the moment.
First, not everything we study will change because we accept that God might exist. For example, the introduction of the computer into our scientific study did not change every experiment we conduct, sometimes the traditional way is the best. That being said, the possible existance of God doesn't necessarily change the way data is collected but rather how that data might be interpreted.
Second, to illustrate that point, consider proteins above. The possible existance of God will not change how they interact, but it could help us to explain why they interact or how that interaction takes place. It is all about the premis.
When we look at a pile of data, and we want to evaluate it, we don't say, lets dismiss this or that data because it doesn't fit our premis, what we do is apply our premis to the data. If our premis is that God might exist, then the data doesn't change, our premis does and thus our outcome might or might not change with it.
And so on and so forth. The existence or non-existence of a god has nothing whatsoever to do with science.
It absolutely does, it is a premis which should be considered when viewing the data and extracting a logical conclusion. This then would mean that more than one logical conclusions might exist, but it is what science does.
Considering the possibility of a god adds absolutely nothing to science. And the reason this is so is simple: you cannot define a god. Once you do define a god explicitly, you invariably find that that god either does not exist, or that that god can have no affect upon the natural world. If you doubt this, then try it.
I have tried it and you are wrong to a point. Meaning that definitions in words might or might not show what you say, but as science has evidenced time and time again, ideas and concepts can not always be confined in words. This is why definitions in science often undergo scrutiny and adjustments to accomidate variations that don't always fit. So if you ask me to come up with a definition and then attack it to prove your point, you probably will be able to do so, however, if we work together to define God or gods, based on common understandings, I am sure that we can come to a consences that would defy your claim and it has been done. The problem is with what I have said already, confining God to words, disiplines, ideas, tests. It would be like trying to define all parts of our universe in one definition, can't be done.
Consider this, IF God exists, and is as defined in the bible (for this discussion we will limit it to the God of the bible though we can exand as time goes on) He is bigger than His creation, therefore anything you have a hard time defining percisely within His creation would be even harder for Him Himself. Does that mean He doesn't exist or that an understanding of Him wouldn't add to our understanding, NO it means that definitions are hard to make percise in the midst of a complex and chaotic world.
Go ahead. Insult me, lolol.
