On "analyzing" science that you don't understand

[PsychoSarah]

I remember I spent weeks on the 'Rates of Spontaneous Mutations' paper, all I got from it was actually a few lines that were useful. Scientific literature is rarely an easy read, but that doesn't make it incomprehensible.

Some people have really, really bad reading comprehension, though... which was actually a huge problem when I was debating an anti-vaccine person. Especially when it came to reading graphs.

 

[mark kennedy]

Some people have really, really bad reading comprehension, though... which was actually a huge problem when I was debating an anti-vaccine person. Especially when it came to reading graphs.

With vaccines it's really just about the math, 60 dollars in vaccines vs. how much for treatment when you get sick and could have avoided it early? My whole time in the Army I thought I was a pin cushion, I got more Hepatitis shots, they just keep saying it has a tendency to mutate.

 

[MadotsukiInTheNexus]

Anyone with a kindergarten education has the ability to rebut evolution claims.

Matthew 18:3 Jesus says, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you change and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.”

The quote here doesn't literally mean that adults should start acting like small children and looking at the world in the way that kids do, and I don't really know of anyone who thinks that's what the author was trying to get across. In context, Jesus is telling his followers that they should allow a group of children to come to him, because they're coming to him without the hesitancy that would be characteristic of adults, and...well, most likely just because the children make a good literary device. The incident sets up a speech by Jesus where he compares Christians to children in the sense that they're reliant on him and follow him without doubt.

It's kind of like the frequent use of sheep and goats as symbols. Being a Christian doesn't mean that you actually need to start growing wool and grazing in a pasture, and not being one doesn't mean that I like climbing rocks and eating sweaters. Actually trying to view science or any other issue like a Kindergartner would not only miss the point, but it would also be impossible.

 

[46AND2]

With vaccines it's really just about the math, 60 dollars in vaccines vs. how much for treatment when you get sick and could have avoided it early? My whole time in the Army I thought I was a pin cushion, I got more Hepatitis shots, they just keep saying it has a tendency to mutate.

Gotta love those airgun vaccs. Just don't flinch. heh.

 

[Astrophile]

Anyone with a kindergarten education has the ability to rebut evolution claims.

Matthew 18:3 Jesus says, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you change and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.”

1 Corinthians 13:11. 'When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.'

 

[tas8831]

So much claimed time spent in academia, and yet you don't seem to understand the significance of theories or even their purpose.

Lab tech?

 

[Ygrene Imref]

Here is one for you...do you realize that all language used in the subjunctive mood (even in scientific papers and studies) does not indicate fact only theoretical plausibility? Pick out a favorite or two from right now and take out all the subjunctive implied possibilities and see if the conclusion still applies.

Sometimes it does and other times it will not. Real objectivity is also very difficult since we ALL walk into it full of pre-supposed assumptions. Now eliminate those as well and read what is left for what it ACTUALLY is and usually we get a whole new perspective.

This was incredibly pithy.

Do they even teach the "subjunctive" in the West anymore - besides learning a foreign language?

If people actually understood what you are saying...

 

[Ygrene Imref]

1 Corinthians 13:11. 'When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.'

And he (Christ) said: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 18:3

In your example, a man gave that proverb - likely because he didn't have the maturity to operate as an adult with a childlike mind (not in terms of intelligence, but in terms of philosophy, openness and what is possible - not analytically probable based on naive calculations.)

In the second bible verse, it is Christ - the literal "Man" - who says otherwise/contrary to the human proverb. Heaven is like a huge grass field with a bunch of children faithfully identifying clouds as objects/people - and no one judges the other intellectually or otherwise, yet each child's observation is equally meritorious.


"Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become "fools" so that you may become wise." 1 Corinthians 3:18

Those who think they are wise by the standard of this age are absolutely foolish, because who bases their wisdom on such a fickle thing (like temporal paradigms?)

 

[SkyWriting]

Yet, after 4 years of being a member of this site, people continue to disappoint me with how little evidence they have for their claims of there being deities, etc.

God is Spirit. You need spiritual tools for analysis.
Four years and you are still looking for something
using the wrong tools? See below:

Answered Prayer - Steps 1, 2, & 3

 

[PsychoSarah]

With vaccines it's really just about the math, 60 dollars in vaccines vs. how much for treatment when you get sick and could have avoided it early? My whole time in the Army I thought I was a pin cushion, I got more Hepatitis shots, they just keep saying it has a tendency to mutate.

Certain vaccines require that you get multiple shots to be effective. For Hep A, it takes 2 shots, six months apart. Hep B is 3-4 shots (varies on age) all within a 6 month period.

However, XD their excuse for giving so many shots is incorrect, seeing as, in adults, a round of Hep B vaccinations will last you up to 25 years. If the virus mutated frequently, such as the flu virus, you'd need a round of shots every year just to keep up. The actual reason is that more shots = better protection from the disease in question, since your body is more used to dealing with the dead virus in the vaccines with the added practice.

A question you may be asking yourself is "why more shots for Hep B than Hep A"? This is where your money concern comes in. Hep A is a less severe disease than Hep B; most people that contract Hep A eventually get over the disease as long as they get medical treatment, and it doesn't result in chronic liver problems or becoming a carrier that can spread it to other people. So, more money goes to preventing Hep B, which often does become a chronic liver disease.

-_- what irked me about debating a person about vaccines was that they couldn't understand that complications from vaccines are rare, and are lesser to the number of people that would die from infections from diseases such as measles if no one was vaccinated.

 

[Loudmouth]

-_- what irked me about debating a person about vaccines was that they couldn't understand that complications from vaccines are rare, and are lesser to the number of people that would die from infections from diseases such as measles if no one was vaccinated.

Or they don't want to understand, which is probably closer to the truth. Many anti-vaxers are emotionally invested in their position, so facts might not make their way through.

On the flip side, the fact that these parents have no firsthand experience with these diseases shows just how effective vaccinations are. I was talking to my grandmother the other day and she could list off 10 or so people she grew up with that were struck with polio. How many people nowadays know anyone who has suffered from polio, or from complications from the polio vaccine?

How many kids die from infectious diseases in modern times? Again, in the middle of the 1800's almost everyone knew at least one couple who lost a child to diseases like whooping cough.

It is kind of ironic that the anti-vaxer movement is fueled primarily by the stunning success of vaccines.

 

[PsychoSarah]

God is Spirit. You need spiritual tools for analysis.
Four years and you are still looking for something
using the wrong tools? See below:

Answered Prayer - Steps 1, 2, & 3

You've shown me this thing before. Time to show you all its flaws. I even copied and pasted it for the purpose of addressing it exactly as it is rather than paraphrasing.

H

ow does one get their prayers answered?

One has to "make a request" and continue making the request
over and over. Eventually you realize that your request focused
on what you want. Is what you want really the best?

The only thing I have prayed for in the past 8 years is belief. By the logic of your religion, since belief and accepting Jesus Christ as my lord and savior is the only path to heaven and the only way to avoid an eternal hell, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that, from the Christian god perspective, this should be what is best for me, and anyone I could potentially convert. Unless you think that me burning in hell benefits more people than my salvation, so the deity would just abandon me. And if that is the case, then prayer would be a pointless activity on my part.

Then you have to understand that The Father already knew about the
request before you started. At some point you need to
stop pushing your own agenda and fully release the results
over to God and KNOW that your request has already been
fully answered. You should pray as Jesus instructed us to.

-_- from my perspective, what you are suggesting is that I have been rejected, for whatever reason, and should just accept that I will never get an answer.

At the instant that you fully release your ego from the results

The Father will instantly grant your request, and in my experience
will flood your mind with relief. Usually, you get the relief
and "knowing" just before the prayer is answered.

Is praying for belief egotistical? Most would say otherwise. I'm not asking the deity to literally show itself to me, but rather a change in my perspective or, perhaps, some subtle guidance that would lead me to the belief I seek.

So the next passage explains why this happens:

John 3:21 But whoever practices the truth
comes into the Light, so that it may be
clearly seen that what he has done has
been accomplished in God.

http://biblehub.com/greek/2316.htm
I'm still a non-believer. 8 years of weekly praying for the same thing.

I've only reached the point of fully removing my ego from the
prayer a few times, but the results where quite dramatic as if
God has reached in and changed the world around me, it seemed.
The landscape and the weather changed in one instant, one time.

What would it even mean to "fully remove one's ego" from prayer? I'm not a proud person. In fact, my expectation is that, if deities do exist, they wouldn't care about us enough to even bother with our prayers. Doesn't stop me from trying, though.

On continued analysis, what I discovered was that God had changed
my prayer to match was about to occur and made sure the
timing was correct, just to let me know He was there.

Sounds like you kept lowering the scope and standards of your request until it became so realistic that said events were liable to happen regardless of any deity's intervention. That, and you are ignoring the bulk of your prayers that don't get answered. Unless everything you pray for demands a miracle to happen, if you keep changing what you pray for, you are bound to get a prayer "answered" eventually.

In one case, I needed dramatic help.
In another, a second person needed dramatic help.
In another, the request was stupid, but still granted.
The commonality between all events was the total
release of the request from my ego that called for
me having control over the outcome.

-_- in other words, you had to fulfill the request yourself. If you could do it yourself the whole time, why bother nagging a deity over it? You should save yourself some time and skip the praying part and just start out doing it yourself.

However, I can't simply make myself believe anything I want to. I legitimately need assistance in that regard. None has come.

You also contradict yourself twice by saying prayers only work if you lose the desire to control the outcome. But if you didn't desire an outcome, you wouldn't have made a prayer in the first place. What is necessary to actually pray, and what is necessary to get a prayer answered (according to you) contradict each other.

This method needed to allow the Spirit in is:
to suppress your desire to control the outcome

There are, from the perspective of a Christian, only 2 outcomes for me. Either I believe, or I am locked out of a positive afterlife forever. I'm already well aware that my degree of control over my views is not strong enough for me to force a transition from atheist to theist. Hence why I try prayer, what so many theists claim allows interaction with a deity.

and even your insistence on controlling the request.

I legitimately have nothing else I'd request of a deity.

The Father already heard your past and future prayers

before He formed the World.

He then set up the entire world to answer each one of
your prayers and conversations with Him.

By that logic, the answer is that deities don't exist or, if they do, don't care to make their existence known.

Again:

He then set up the entire world to answer each one of
your prayers and conversations with Him.

Why say that twice in a row? It doesn't make the statement any stronger.

Now all one has to do is trust His judgment to either
get their prayer changed, or their prayer answered
as He wills it. But on the occasion of true surrender,
He steps in AS IF with a magic wand and grants your
prayers.

Any prayers answered that would actually demand magic? Probably not, but worth asking.

On one occasion, God answered my prayers weeks
before I prayed for somebody else's benefit.
He then handed me the prayer in those minutes
before answering it just so I would know He was with there
and was the "God With Us".

So... what prayer was answered on your personal behalf? Unless it was an outcome that is unreasonable to expect, such as "the first time you prayed to win the lottery, you found the winning ticket on the ground outside", there's no reason for us non-Christians to attribute the "prayer fulfillment" to the prayer itself.

Lots of people have said they get a response when praying. People of a multitude of religions. Furthermore, your claim that the deity granted your prayer and, afterwards, gave you another prayer to do, makes absolutely no sense. The Christian god doesn't need prayers to act. If it wanted to fulfill the prayer it "gave" you, it could have at any time without your input.

 

[SkyWriting]

I'm still a non-believer. 8 years of weekly praying for the same thing.

It doesn't sound like you're an unbeliever at all.
It only takes a few minutes, and you get your answer.
Actually, you've already received it.

The only way into Hell is to purposely reject Gods Holy Spirit.
I see no evidence that you have done that.
You will not be allowed into Hell.

 

[SkyWriting]

So... what prayer was answered on your personal behalf? Unless it was an outcome that is unreasonable to expect, such as "the first time you prayed to win the lottery, you found the winning ticket on the ground outside", there's no reason for us non-Christians to attribute the "prayer fulfillment" to the prayer itself.

Its the prayer you receive that is the answer. Occasionally the prayer you receive is dramatically answered far beyond your expectations. Sometimes the same.

 

[bhsmte]

Some people have really, really bad reading comprehension, though... which was actually a huge problem when I was debating an anti-vaccine person. Especially when it came to reading graphs.

With some, it isnt reading comprehension, it is really just a strong need to deny certain well evidenced realities.

 

[PsychoSarah]

It doesn't sound like you're an unbeliever at all.
It only takes a few minutes, and you get your answer.
Actually, you've already received it.

The only way into Hell is to purposely reject Gods Holy Spirit.
I see no evidence that you have done that.
You will not be allowed into Hell.

You very well know others disagree with you on that, and that this brings me absolutely no comfort. Regardless, your "guide" to getting prayers answered demands that most prayers are going to be rejected. It also doesn't distinguish between religions.

 

[mark kennedy]

Certain vaccines require that you get multiple shots to be effective. For Hep A, it takes 2 shots, six months apart. Hep B is 3-4 shots (varies on age) all within a 6 month period.

However, XD their excuse for giving so many shots is incorrect, seeing as, in adults, a round of Hep B vaccinations will last you up to 25 years. If the virus mutated frequently, such as the flu virus, you'd need a round of shots every year just to keep up. The actual reason is that more shots = better protection from the disease in question, since your body is more used to dealing with the dead virus in the vaccines with the added practice.

A question you may be asking yourself is "why more shots for Hep B than Hep A"? This is where your money concern comes in. Hep A is a less severe disease than Hep B; most people that contract Hep A eventually get over the disease as long as they get medical treatment, and it doesn't result in chronic liver problems or becoming a carrier that can spread it to other people. So, more money goes to preventing Hep B, which often does become a chronic liver disease.

-_- what irked me about debating a person about vaccines was that they couldn't understand that complications from vaccines are rare, and are lesser to the number of people that would die from infections from diseases such as measles if no one was vaccinated.

It was also mandatory that all soldiers get a flu shot, it always made me sick. The one I really hated was the anthrax vaccine, at times we were required to start the series. When this was offered to Postal workers hardly any took the shots even though a couple of workers had been killed from anthrax in the mail. Certain vaccines have been wonder drugs Polio and Small Pox come to mind.

I think there is a lot to be said for vaccines but like antibiotics, I think they are over used.

 

[bhsmte]

Its the prayer you receive that is the answer. Occasionally the prayer you receive is dramatically answered far beyond your expectations. Sometimes the same.

And, how do you make this determination, with any level of reliability?

 

[PsychoSarah]

It was also mandatory that all soldiers get a flu shot, it always made me sick.

Unlikely that it was the vaccine itself that made you sick, since even in the nasal spray (the only one I know that is a "live", relatively intact virus) the virus is weakened to the point that it is unlikely to cause illness. You could be mistaking different diseases for the flu. For example, a lot of people complain that they have the "flu" when they are vomiting a lot and have a fever, but violent vomiting and diarrhea are not particularly common symptoms with the flu (especially uncommon in adults).

So, unless you had muscle and body aches, fever, and sore throat/coughing, you probably didn't have the flu at all. -_- additionally, vaccines do take time to kick in, so even if you did have flu symptoms a day or two after the shot, that means that you were infected before the benefits of the vaccine could even apply. Generally speaking, it takes 2 weeks after a vaccine has been administered for immunization to be in effect.

It annoys me that this is not common knowledge; I've seen symptomatic people in lines to get flu shots. They are not only wasting their time getting a vaccine that is unlikely to help them, but they are infecting nearby people so that they too will not benefit from the vaccine and may even erroneously attribute the illness to the vaccine.

The one I really hated was the anthrax vaccine, at times we were required to start the series. When this was offered to Postal workers hardly any took the shots even though a couple of workers had been killed from anthrax in the mail. Certain vaccines have been wonder drugs Polio and Small Pox come to mind.

Most vaccines consistently do a lot of good, even the flu vaccine, which can be a bit of a hit and miss sometimes. After all, they have to be made before the flu viral variants actually exist, so the likely strains have to be predicted based on patterns derived from past mutation developments.

I think there is a lot to be said for vaccines but like antibiotics, I think they are over used.

Actually, the antibiotic "equivalent" for viruses are antivirals. Vaccines aren't something viruses can become resistant to, since they stimulate your body's natural defenses to be prepared in case of infection to the point that, even if you are infected, your body is likely to take care of the problem with little to no disease symptoms.

Antibiotic overuse results in resistant strains of bacteria due to people being inconsistent with taking them/ stop taking it when they "feel better" (which allows enough of the bacteria which weren't immune to the antibiotic to distract your immune system and allow more of the resistant ones to reproduce). This can also be the result of people nagging doctors to give them antibiotics for viral infections, which antibiotics do not treat at all but no one wants to hear that they're just going to have to suffer through the symptoms.

Although, the biggest and often forgotten culprit for antibiotic overuse is the meat industry. Cows, pigs, chickens, etc. are often kept in such cramped quarters that the only way to prevent massive amounts of death is to shove them full of antibiotics. This could easily be avoided by giving the animals a reasonable amount of space to live in, but that'd increase the cost of meat, oh gee -_-

As for vaccines, they are always at their most effective when as many people as possible are vaccinated, thanks to herd immunity. This helps to prevent disease spread and protects people that cannot get vaccinated, such as young infants, people with immune disorders, and people with allergies to vaccine ingrediants. I'm 22, and unlikely to die from, say, measles, but I could easily spread that disease to my immunocompromised grandmother, who likely would die if she caught it. Even if I did managed to catch measles despite being vaccinated, my symptoms and potential medical complications would be greatly reduced. As for people that want to make eugenics arguments (seriously?), the human immune system isn't fully developed in children and infants, so a young child or baby that dies from measles didn't die due to "inferior genes". They die to the imperfections of the human immune system everyone has to deal with.