The stumbling block for atheists.

[Loudmouth]

Hmmmm, wellll, I am not so sure whether the actual practice is always in accord with that avoidance of absolutes ideal. Abiogenesis is a good example.. Scientists aren't trying to see whether or not it is false. Instead, they assume that it happened and are merely seeking ways to discover HOW it happened. But the fact that it happened or had to happen is never placed in doubt nor even open to serious discussion.

Are you saying that life had to come about through supernatural means?

 

[Loudmouth]

. . . and in some way began to code information into DNA which just so-happened to lead to a brain with an occipital lobe for receiving neurotransmitter signals which just so happened to be designed to interpret such signals into what just so happened to be is perceived as visual images.

We already know how coded information is put into DNA. It's called evolution which includes random mutations and natural selection.

I find mere chance and mindless chemical reactions as very unsatisfactory explanations for this.

That would be an appeal to emotion, which is a logical fallacy. The truth isn't required to be satisfactory as measured by our emotional needs.

The Pope didn't find Heliocentrism to be very satisfying. It was still true.

 

[Loudmouth]

Please note that anyone can claim that an explanation doesn't meet their personal criteria.

Just as you do throughout every thread when evidence for evolution of coded information is given to you.

"Ï don't see hows!!!!" or whatever other phrases you folks might have in reserve for any claim involving an intelligent design? No. However, if you wish to reveal what exactly it is that has you in your self-proclaimed perpetually-befuddled state each time that intelligent design is mentioned-then I will clarify.

Not that I believe for one moment that the attempted clarification will be accepted-it won't. But it's less time-wasting than what you are enthusiastically proposing .

I will ask again. How do you think life came about? What are the processes?

How do you think coded information is produced in DNA? What are the specific processes?

"Intelligent design" is not a how. If someone asked how you made a bow and arrow, you wouldn't say "Intelligent Design", would you?

 

[Michael]

I have asked you many times, to provide the falsifiable test, to determine when ID is present. Anytime you are ready......

Sure, right after you provide the falsifiable test to determine if "space expansion" has any empirical tangible effect on a photon.

 

[Michael]

You argue against theistic evolution every time you claim life was intelligently designed.

That ultimately depends on how one defines terms. It's entirely possible that the very first DNA was "intelligently designed", and it's been experiencing "theistic evolvotion" ever since.

 

[dysert]

Let's say that, contrary to what TagliatelliMonster said, this was correct: a priori excluding "the supernatural" could make you misinterpret the evidence.

But than the same would be correct for the opposite: a priori assuming "the supernatural" could make you misinterpret the evidence.

That would be a good point except for the fact that we have the Bible, which tells us that there is a supernatural dimension to reality. I realize you don't accept the Bible, but since I do I am biased towards believing that there is a supernatural dimension to reality. Therefore, when I see evidence (i.e., the Creation) I ascribe its beginning to the supernatural.

(A discussion about the Bible belongs in its own thread, not this one.)

So, shouldn't the first step in this dilemma be to find out if there is a "supernatural" at all, and next, find out how it could be responsible for "the evidence"?

Personally, I don't know how one would find out if there is a supernatural. I suppose we could assign probabilities (e.g., by going back to the supernatural nature of the Bible again), but I've had people remind me that even a high probability doesn't prove it.

We can do that quite well for "the natural". But contrary to (repeated) claims, there doesn't seem to be a way to do that for "the supernatural"... beyond "it must be, it has to be, you don't want to accept it".

This is the basis for "atheism" and the doubt in the supernatural.

We believe what we choose to believe.

 

[Michael]

I didn't think we were looking for accounts at all...we're looking for miracles.

Why *must* everything that God does be a "miracle"? Why can't he act through "natural" processes in your opinion?

I don't want your opinions...I want observable effects.

I supposed in a general sense the numerous human writings about God are a "general effect" of his presence in their lives. God may not have exactly the same "effect" on everyone however.

Just like the effects of dark matter...they should be the same no matter who examines them.

No matter who examines the writings (Torah, Bible, Qur'an, Bagavad Gita), each reader sees pretty much the same words in each document.

That is of course a *simple* and external effect whereas I'm pretty sure that there are internal experiences which also result in such material.

I'm pretty sure for instance that the experiences and feelings that I experience during meditation are quite common human experiences.

Personal accounts shouldn't even enter the picture (and if you need an explanation why, I'll gladly provide).

You'll have to explain why then. Is love real? I can't hand love to you in bottle of course, but I "feel" it and experience it. How would I know if someone "loved' me if I didn't accept their 'personal accounts" related to their feelings?

When you brought up dark matter, and I knew next to nothing about the "effects" of it...I looked into it briefly. The effect I read about involved gravity and the orbit of planets and how something must be affecting them (which is theorized to be dark matter). These effects aren't personal accounts....they're available for anyone to observe (as long as they have the knowledge to know what they're observing).

Sure but *ordinary* matter could/does explain the same observation. The fact they can't "see" every bit of matter in distant galaxies requires them to "guestimate" the mass based on a *large number* a various assumptions, all of which could be wrong. How do I know for instance that they can even properly calculate the ordinary mass of a galaxy in the first place?

Other people report "feeling" the presence of God in their life. They report experiencing the "effects" of God via meditation and prayer. What don't those "ordinary observations" count as evidence?

This idea of something possibly existing because it has an observable effect was your point about god possibly having similarly observable effects through miracles.

I'm certain if you go back and check that you used the term "miracle" first, not me. I'm not even thining about miracles, I'm talking about *ordinary* types of effects that many humans report, not just a "one off" type of event.

I don't know how you made the leap from that to "personal accounts" I have no idea.

I don't know how you leaped to "miracle" either, so we're even.

I understand that...but that's how were going to define him for the purposes of this discussion.

That's way too limiting of a restriction IMO.

If I were to propose that dark matter exists because of its observable effects on gratvity...and then claim it had a bunch of other properties like the ability to make clouds into the shape of bunnies...I'd be leaping to using it as an explanation for phenomenon which already have other possible (and more likely) explanations.

Um, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that's exactly what they do with "dark matter" too. Since they "assume" they can properly calculate "ordinary" matter in various galaxies, they need to assign "ad hoc" properties to this new form of matter. It has to be "cold" (slow moving) for instance. I has to be "dark/invisible" for instance. I has to be able to "pass through" ordinary matter, and other "dark matter". They made up all those "properties" about this hypothetical matter on a whim, and based upon an *assumption* that isn't true to begin with. They didn't properly calculate the amount of mass present in that 2006 study. They miscalculated the number of entire stars in those galaxies by a whopping factor of between 3 and 20 times depending on the type of galaxy and the size of the star. That's not a "little" mistake!

Yet these aren't observable effects to me...or anyone else who has them. I've had multiple conversations about "talking to god" and it often appears very little talking actually happens and when it does...it's to god, not from him.

Admittedly I talk *to* God more often than I have "insights" as a result of talking to God. I don't tend to hear any loud voices in my head however, even when I feel a "response".

Again, I don't know....do I need to research that to have this conversation?

Only to the degree that I won't let you impose any restrictions on 'evidence' that don't also apply to other hypothetical areas of physics. I was trying to point out to you that your complaint/concern about "God" applies to pretty much all hypothetical areas of "science".

The reason I defined "miracles" as things which cannot happen without the intervention of god is we can know they are miracles lol.

Your idea make sense in that we *should* try to eliminate 'natural' explanations for things before "assuming" it requires a "supernatural" agent. Then again, since I tend to hold faith in Panentheism, I would have to assume that "God" is the single most "natural" part of "nature". That's probably why I don't like the idea of limiting the potential influences of God to "supernatural" events.

I thought that seemed obvious. We know cancer sometimes goes into remission all on its own without therapy...so if someone claims it was a "miracle" we don't know that since it can happen without any intervention from god. If, however, someone had their eye gouged out in a fight and had nothing but an empty socket left....and then two minutes later their entire eye regrows in their head and a big booming godlike voice says "I have restored thine eye"....I think that would fairly land in the miracle category. ,

Ya, ok, I understand the logic of why you want to discuss miracles, but unfortunately we're talking past one another because I don't believe that God is "supernatural" to start with, and I'd be inclined to believe that "miracles" have a "natural" cause. This is going to be a tough conversation because you seem to be limiting the definition of God to the 'supernatural', and that's a gigantic turn off from my perspective.

For the sake of this discussion on evidence for god....there's a good reason to limit evidence to "miracles". If we included gods' ability to make someone feel good about themselves....how do we know it's god? There's lots of things that can make one feel good about themselves so that "effect" would be rather terrible and useless evidence.

Well, not so fast. In physics, any particular "observation" might have multiple subjective "interpretations" as to cause. For instance, you might choose to "assume" that astronomers can accurately calculate the baryonic mass of a galaxy, therefore "exotic matter did it". I might not be so comfortable with their mass estimates, and I might call them on those estimates and assume that "ordinary matter did it". See how that works?

Likewise photons bump into things and lose momentum as they pass through any plasma medium. They "redshift" over time/distance in such environments "naturally". Moving objects also cause 'redshift' (and blueshift) as well. I therefore have *multiple* "natural" explanations for photon redshift and I have no need to resort to "space expansion did it" to explain ordinary photon redshift.

Almost any given observation can be interpreted/explained in more than one way, sometimes "natural" ways which would then preclude any need for a supernatural construct (like space expansion).

You seem to be under the illusion that external observations are immune from human interpretation. That's simply not the case. Likewise the fact that "simpler" explanations might be possible doesn't necessarily negate the use of the term "evidence" to support a supernatural interpretation.

I was merely pointing out that just because a person does "x" doesn't require god to do "y"....after all, you believe god has free will and can make choices right?

Sure, including the right to act "naturally".

What's untenable about it?

I don't personally define God as being "supernatural". That's what's ultimately untenable about you insisting we discuss "miracles". I'm not sure that I even believe that "miracles" are "supernatural" in origin to start with.

Wasn't the whole discussion you and I are having based upon the idea that god has observable effects much in the way that theorized "dark matter" has observable effects?

Sure but an "observable effect" might be something like "serving others", or giving money away to the poor because they were "inspired" to do so by God. I can't just limit the definition of God to the "supernatural" because I don't believe that God is "supernatural" to begin with. Even if I don't understand all the physics just yet, I'm sure that physics applies to God too, and that God acts "physically" in natural ways.

I fear that we're destined to speak past each other because we don't even define the term God the same way. You seem to define God as being "supernatural" in origin, and I do not. That's making this conversation a lot harder than I expected.

You realize that isn't how the theory of dark matter came about right? The effects of dark matter are genuinely unexplainable at this time. No one quite understands what causes them. The term "dark matter" is more or less just a placeholder for whatever the cause of those effects is.

That just it. "Dark matter" could still turn out to be quite ordinary matter. In fact I can even provide you with observational evidence that demonstrates that the mainstream baryonic mass estimates used in 2006 wasn't worth the paper it was printed on.

It could ultimately have a "natural" explanation, so I can't just *assume* it has to imply something exotic.

What few attempts that have been made to do this have ended poorly for believers.

What attempts have been made to find exotic forms of matter have ended very poorly for believers in exotic matter theory. They've spent *billions* at LHC, LUX, PandaX, AMDX, electron roundness tests, etc and found exactly nothing to support the idea. It's been an extremely tough past decade for LCDM believers.

One of those "wide-ranging" accounts of the effects of god is prayer. So studies have been done to see if prayer has any observable effects. The result? It doesn't.

Yet theists tend to be happier and healthier.

If you want to talk about observable effects as evidence...then let's do that. If you want to talk about people's feel-goods as evidence...you're sorely mistaken about the problems of personal accounts as evidence.

I'm really not sure if we can communicate if we can't agree on a definition of God that doesn't preclude God from being entirely "natural". I don't hold belief in a 'supernatural" God, so any such definition precludes me from trying to support such a definition of God.

 

[Freodin]

That would be a good point except for the fact that we have the Bible, which tells us that there is a supernatural dimension to reality. I realize you don't accept the Bible, but since I do I am biased towards believing that there is a supernatural dimension to reality. Therefore, when I see evidence (i.e., the Creation) I ascribe its beginning to the supernatural.

(A discussion about the Bible belongs in its own thread, not this one.)

That doesn't change what I said at all. There is not "except" here... you just added "because the Bible" to your set of biases.

In fact, that even demonstrates your bias. You accept the supernatural because of the Bible, which you accept because of the "supernatural" nature of the Bibel.

So, no, it is a good point, period. Your a priori bias towards the supernatual can make you misinterpret the evidence, regardless of what the Bible tells you.

Personally, I don't know how one would find out if there is a supernatural. I suppose we could assign probabilities (e.g., by going back to the supernatural nature of the Bible again), but I've had people remind me that even a high probability doesn't prove it.

Trust someone who knows a little about mathematics / stochastics: "assigning" propabilities will always result in nonsense when you don't start with reliable facts.

 

[Michael]

Trust someone who knows a little about mathematics / stochastics: "assigning" propabilities will always result in nonsense when you don't start with reliable facts.

The BICEP2 folks sure learned that lesson the hard way.

 

[Loudmouth]

That would be a good point except for the fact that we have the Bible, which tells us that there is a supernatural dimension to reality. I realize you don't accept the Bible, but since I do I am biased towards believing that there is a supernatural dimension to reality. Therefore, when I see evidence (i.e., the Creation) I ascribe its beginning to the supernatural.

That's not evidence. Those are observations. If you ascribe observations to a supernatural process that you have no evidence for, the observations are not evidence.

I could just as well say that when I see evidence (i.e. rainbows) I ascribe their beginnings to Leprechauns. Will you now accept rainbows as evidence for Leprechauns simply because I ascribe rainbows to Leprechauns?

Personally, I don't know how one would find out if there is a supernatural.

Then why believe that the supernatural exists in the first place?

We believe what we choose to believe.

Reality has this weird habit of not caring what we believe.

 

[dysert]

Reality has this weird habit of not caring what we believe.

That's something we agree on!

 

[Michael]

That's not evidence. Those are observations. If you ascribe observations to a supernatural process that you have no evidence for, the observations are not evidence.

Bingo! There goes your so called evidence of 'space expansion' and exotic forms of matter.

You invented supernatural agents to explain those observations.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Why *must* everything that God does be a "miracle"? Why can't he act through "natural" processes in your opinion?

I'm not saying that...I've no problem with the idea that god can "act" through natural processes.

However, if you're to say that a baby being born was an act of god "through natural processes" we have no evidence for that because a natural process exists which doesn't require a god.

I supposed in a general sense the numerous human writings about God are a "general effect" of his presence in their lives. God may not have exactly the same "effect" on everyone however.

Maybe....it's certainly possible. Maybe none of the human writings about god are truthful and they're all false for various reasons. Some people may just want to sell books to a demographic they deem gullible. Some may just want others to think and believe as they do, so they hide behind the authority of god.

There's no real way to know if a writer actually believes what they've written so I don't see the point of this direction you're heading.

No matter who examines the writings (Torah, Bible, Qur'an, Bagavad Gita), each reader sees pretty much the same words in each document.

I've read those books, except for the Torah, and I didn't see the "same words".

It's true that mythology tends to borrow from other myths and legends....but again, I don't see what point you're making.

That is of course a *simple* and external effect whereas I'm pretty sure that there are internal experiences which also result in such material.

I'm pretty sure for instance that the experiences and feelings that I experience during meditation are quite common human experiences.

I've got no idea what this refers to.

You'll have to explain why then. Is love real? I can't hand love to you in bottle of course, but I "feel" it and experience it. How would I know if someone "loved' me if I didn't accept their 'personal accounts" related to their feelings?

Uhh oh....I've got some bad news for you. You can never know if someone loves you. They could, after all, be lying about their feelings (as I'm sure you've lied about yours). What someone "feels" isn't going to be reliable evidence of any kind.

As to why personal accounts are garbage evidence...there's lots of reasons. The main one here is that whenever people want to believe something...their mind will jump through all sorts of nonsensical hoops to continue to believe that something.

For example, remember that story not long ago about the "fallen angel" found on the beach in the Philippines? It was a female form, paraded around as a miracle, and many who saw it would swear that they actually heard it "crying" (for being kicked out of heaven i suppose). Eventually, this small town gained the attention of some western media and they visited the "angel" who turned out to be an inflatable sex toy washed ashore. Now...the question is, did those people actually hear it crying? Were they lying outright? Were they simply mistaken? Or did they want to believe something so much...that they actually believed they heard crying?

Sure but *ordinary* matter could/does explain the same observation. The fact they can't "see" every bit of matter in distant galaxies requires them to "guestimate" the mass based on a *large number* a various assumptions, all of which could be wrong. How do I know for instance that they can even properly calculate the ordinary mass of a galaxy in the first place?

Well, let's ignore for starters that they have a bunch of other experts in their field checking their work and making the same observations,....did you ever ask? You could always just email some of these scientists...pretend you're some university student writing a paper....and you had a few questions about dark matter.

We live in the amazing internet age. I remember writing a term paper on Danish policy and writing to several government officials since I couldn't find the relevant information online....I got back more info than i could use, in english no less.

Other people report "feeling" the presence of God in their life. They report experiencing the "effects" of God via meditation and prayer. What don't those "ordinary observations" count as evidence?

Simply put...they are attributing a cause, not knowing it. Let's say your whole life you've never "felt" the presence of god...then one day you did....how would you know it's the presence of god if you've never felt it lol? It's just a blind post hoc assumption.

Let's imagine for a moment that you've never tried heroin. You've heard of it, you've heard a few vague descriptions of it, but you've never felt it. Then one day, someone sneaks a tiny tiny dose of heroin in your morning coffee. For about the next eight hours you feel the happiest, most content, most connected to those you love in your entire life. You've got a warm fuzzy feeling of love from your toes all the way up through your head. Nothing bothers you...nothing stresses you out...you're completely blissful all day until it wears off, you get tired and go to sleep, and the next day you wake up feeling fine.

Would you know it was heroin? Would you attribute it to some other cause? How can you know what causes you to feel a certain way when all you can be sure about is what you felt and not what caused it?

I'm certain if you go back and check that you used the term "miracle" first, not me. I'm not even thining about miracles, I'm talking about *ordinary* types of effects that many humans report, not just a "one off" type of event.



I don't know how you leaped to "miracle" either, so we're even.

If I remember correctly, someone made a post about not being able to experience miracles with our senses...then I posted something along the lines of "then we can't experience miracles then" or something similar...

Then you jumped in with us being able to experience the "effects" of miracles in the same way we experience the "effects" of dark matter.

So if it feels like I'm holding you to your original point....I am.

That's way too limiting of a restriction IMO.

Why?

Um, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that's exactly what they do with "dark matter" too. Since they "assume" they can properly calculate "ordinary" matter in various galaxies, they need to assign "ad hoc" properties to this new form of matter. It has to be "cold" (slow moving) for instance. I has to be "dark/invisible" for instance. I has to be able to "pass through" ordinary matter, and other "dark matter". They made up all those "properties" about this hypothetical matter on a whim, and based upon an *assumption* that isn't true to begin with. They didn't properly calculate the amount of mass present in that 2006 study. They miscalculated the number of entire stars in those galaxies by a whopping factor of between 3 and 20 times depending on the type of galaxy and the size of the star. That's not a "little" mistake!

I'm sorry...what are your credentials on this matter? I'll certainly take the time to look into it if you're as qualified as the people making the claims (like if you are a doctorate in astrophysics or something similar) but if you're not, and there's ample evidence of dark matter to be found, why would I have to instruct you on this?

Here's a page on the topic...

Quantum Diaries

It seems rather clear that regardless of whether or not dark matter exists....something is causing these effects.

Now, you seem to like to bring up dark matter as some sort of "Aha! See! You atheists do believe in stuff without direct evidence!" .....gotcha!

Here's the problem though...

1. I accept it because people who know a lot more about physics than me accept it....should they change their mind, so will I.

2. I don't care. If dark matter exists or not, it makes zero difference in my life. There's no "stakes" no real loss if I should turn out to be wrong on this topic.

3. Points 1 and 2 make this completely different from a belief in god...for example, a christian god. They are ways to act, think, and believe that are basically a set of limitations that I would need impose on my life. By comparison, the stakes are huge...if I were to accept the christian god without any evidence, and he didn't exist, then I've basically wasted my entire life because I decided that some 2000+ year old jewish guys knew more about how I should live my life than I do.

So to clarify...when the s stakes of being wrong/right are so low that they couldn't possibly affect my life in any way...yes, I will accept some things on authority. When the stakes involve the way I live my entire life, the lives of loved ones, even the lives of total strangers if I were to vote based upon faith...yes, I'm going to need some evidence that amounts to more than a feeling some guy on the internet once had.

Admittedly I talk *to* God more often than I have "insights" as a result of talking to God. I don't tend to hear any loud voices in my head however, even when I feel a "response".

Ok...describe a "response" from god and what that's like.

Only to the degree that I won't let you impose any restrictions on 'evidence' that don't also apply to other hypothetical areas of physics. I was trying to point out to you that your complaint/concern about "God" applies to pretty much all hypothetical areas of "science".

No...it doesn't...see my response above. The two questions of existence don't carry the same weight. Say for example, that tomorrow a headline reads "We're wrong about dark matter! Here's the real explanation!" It's not really going to change how you live your life is it?

Now let's imagine that the headline reads "Irrefutable proof found that Christianity is entirely made-up! Vatican admits to 2000 year old secret that Jesus, the apostles, Mary and Joseph never existed!" That's going to have huge implications for your life isn't it? I mean the realization that all those times you thought you were getting responses from god you were just talking to yourself...and I imagine that would just be the tip of the iceberg.

Your idea make sense in that we *should* try to eliminate 'natural' explanations for things before "assuming" it requires a "supernatural" agent. Then again, since I tend to hold faith in Panentheism, I would have to assume that "God" is the single most "natural" part of "nature". That's probably why I don't like the idea of limiting the potential influences of God to "supernatural" events.

I'm sorry, I don't know anything about Panentheism. What's your holy book? I'll look into it so I at least have a reference point.

Ya, ok, I understand the logic of why you want to discuss miracles, but unfortunately we're talking past one another because I don't believe that God is "supernatural" to start with, and I'd be inclined to believe that "miracles" have a "natural" cause. This is going to be a tough conversation because you seem to be limiting the definition of God to the 'supernatural', and that's a gigantic turn off from my perspective.

,So what's a "miracle" from your perspective? When a butterfly flaps it's wings?

Well, not so fast. In physics, any particular "observation" might have multiple subjective "interpretations" as to cause. For instance, you might choose to "assume" that astronomers can accurately calculate the baryonic mass of a galaxy, therefore "exotic matter did it". I might not be so comfortable with their mass estimates, and I might call them on those estimates and assume that "ordinary matter did it". See how that works?

Can an "observable effect" like gravitational lensing be a result of miscalculation? Or is gravitational lensing still happening regardless of whether or not calculations are correct?

Likewise photons bump into things and lose momentum as they pass through any plasma medium. They "redshift" over time/distance in such environments "naturally". Moving objects also cause 'redshift' (and blueshift) as well. I therefore have *multiple* "natural" explanations for photon redshift and I have no need to resort to "space expansion did it" to explain ordinary photon redshift.

That's fair, and what would this natural explanation be?

Almost any given observation can be interpreted/explained in more than one way, sometimes "natural" ways which would then preclude any need for a supernatural construct (like space expansion).

I've never heard anything "supernatural" regarding space expansion. Care to explain?

You seem to be under the illusion that external observations are immune from human interpretation.

Of course they are...that's where theories come in.

If you see a dead body with a bullet wound in it's head...it's possible that through some gravitational fluke the bullet was floating in midair and the body went flying at it head first at over 1000ft/sec.

It's also possible that the body was shot in the head.

You're missing the point of needing something to observe. I can't observe how you feel when you meditate and I certainly can't observe that god was somehow involved in the process. You're just asking me to take your word for it.

That's simply not the case. Likewise the fact that "simpler" explanations might be possible doesn't necessarily negate the use of the term "evidence" to support a supernatural interpretation.

See the example above.

Sure, including the right to act "naturally".

I don't know how you could presume what's "natural" for god without a lot of baseless assumptions.

I don't personally define God as being "supernatural". That's what's ultimately untenable about you insisting we discuss "miracles". I'm not sure that I even believe that "miracles" are "supernatural" in origin to start with.

I don't recall using the term supernatural at any point....so why this is an issue for you, I don't know.

Sure but an "observable effect" might be something like "serving others", or giving money away to the poor because they were "inspired" to do so by God.

You don't need an actual god to account for those things....just a belief in one. I can't attribute the actions of people who believe in god to god itself....I'm going to need god to actually do something without any intermediary.

I can't just limit the definition of God to the "supernatural" because I don't believe that God is "supernatural" to begin with. Even if I don't understand all the physics just yet, I'm sure that physics applies to God too, and that God acts "physically" in natural ways.

When did I mention the "supernatural"?

I fear that we're destined to speak past each other because we don't even define the term God the same way. You seem to define God as being "supernatural" in origin, and I do not. That's making this conversation a lot harder than I expected.

You can go back to my post where I defined god for the purposes of this discussion. If I recall correctly, all i said was that he was a powerful entity that intervenes in the lives of mankind through miracles.

That just it. "Dark matter" could still turn out to be quite ordinary matter. In fact I can even provide you with observational evidence that demonstrates that the mainstream baryonic mass estimates used in 2006 wasn't worth the paper it was printed on.

I really don't care about dark matter....as explained above. You seem to want to return to this as some defense of not having observable evidence for god.

Guess what? You don't need any...something tells me you'll believe without any observable evidence at all.

It could ultimately have a "natural" explanation, so I can't just *assume* it has to imply something exotic.

I'm assuming it has a natural explanation.

What attempts have been made to find exotic forms of matter have ended very poorly for believers in exotic matter theory. They've spent *billions* at LHC, LUX, PandaX, AMDX, electron roundness tests, etc and found exactly nothing to support the idea. It's been an extremely tough past decade for LCDM believers.

Which isn't at all unusual for scientific fields.

Yet theists tend to be happier and healthier.

In the U.S.....yes....abroad it's the exact opposite. Sociologists tend to think it's a result of the stigma surrounding atheists in the U.S.

I'm really not sure if we can communicate if we can't agree on a definition of God that doesn't preclude God from being entirely "natural". I don't hold belief in a 'supernatural" God, so any such definition precludes me from trying to support such a definition of God.

At this point...I'll ask you to quote where I claimed god is supernatural. I couldn't find it, but I am on my phone and the type is small so it's possible I missed it. If however, you'd simply like to bow out of your previous claim about miracles and such...just say so...I'm not holding you hostage here.

 

[Michael]

I'm sorry...what are your credentials on this matter? I'll certainly take the time to look into it if you're as qualified as the people making the claims (like if you are a doctorate in astrophysics or something similar) but if you're not, and there's ample evidence of dark matter to be found, why would I have to instruct you on this?

FYI that is a pure appeal to authority fallacy. What "ample evidence" are you even referring to?

It seems rather clear that regardless of whether or not dark matter exists....something is causing these effects.

FYI, these posts are getting too long for me to respond to them between tech calls at work. I'll probably just pick a few issues from your post to focus on and break up my response into a few posts.

That "something" you're talking about need not be *exotic/supernatural* in nature however. You are simply *assuming* that it A) exists and B) is *supernatural/exotic* in nature. Why part B) in particular? Even if A) (something exists there) is true, how do you know it's exotic in nature?

Now, you seem to like to bring up dark matter as some sort of "Aha! See! You atheists do believe in stuff without direct evidence!" .....gotcha!

In terms of "direct" cause/effect justification, you have nothing to support your "belief" in exotic forms of matter. In fact there are numerous supposed "tests" that ruled out all their "popular" mathematical models of exotic matter. In the lab you have nothing, and based on direct observation, that matter could be made of *anything*, and most probably it's made of ordinary plasma just like 99 percent of the mass we *can* identify.

Here's the problem though...

1. I accept it because people who know a lot more about physics than me accept it....should they change their mind, so will I.

Pure appeal to (false) authority. This is about as convincing to me as "My Priest says so, and he has more "credentials" with respect to the topic of God than you do". How impressive of an argument is that from your perspective? It's certainly not "convincing" from my perspective. Your lack of any empirical cause/effect evidence of your claim isn't my fault, nor does an appeal to authority fallacy make up for your lack of empirical evidence. How can they be "authorities" on a hypothetical entity that continues to mystify and elude them, even after spending *billions* of dollars on "tests" that they themselves came up with? Furthermore their baryonic mass estimates have been *falsified* about a 1/2 dozen times since 2006.

2. I don't care. If dark matter exists or not, it makes zero difference in my life. There's no "stakes" no real loss if I should turn out to be wrong on this topic.

So if you "don't" care, you don't really even question the dogma, but if you do "care", then you feel some need to have no other "possible" explanations for various observations before it's considered "evidence"?

Since I seem to "care", does that change anything, or are only *you personally* relevant to your own argument?

3. Points 1 and 2 make this completely different from a belief in god...for example, a christian god. They are ways to act, think, and believe that are basically a set of limitations that I would need impose on my life.

Really? I didn't really find my life changed all that much in terms of my sense of morality or the way I acted during my nine years as an atheist. It didn't change much either once I returned to theism. I do attend church from time to time now, but not all that often, and it's not because I'm "afraid" of anything by not attending. What exactly has to change about your morality or your actions in your opinion simply to embrace theism? I personally found that my basic moral beliefs were entirely congruent with humanism both during my stint as an atheist as well as now. I didn't personally find it made that much difference in the way I acted frankly. I still "helped" people as an atheist, and I still "cared" about others too.

By comparison, the stakes are huge...if I were to accept the christian god without any evidence, and he didn't exist, then I've basically wasted my entire life because I decided that some 2000+ year old jewish guys knew more about how I should live my life than I do.

Er, it might be "ok" to suggest that Jesus claimed to know more about God than you seem to know, but the sense of morality he "taught" was pretty much a humanistic value system IMO. In fact, I actually rejected my birth religion on "moral grounds" because some "dogma" of the church really wasn't all that consistent with the sense of morality that Jesus taught.

What exactly would "change" in your behaviors as a result of embracing the red letter parts of the Bible?

So to clarify...when the s stakes of being wrong/right are so low that they couldn't possibly affect my life in any way...yes, I will accept some things on authority. When the stakes involve the way I live my entire life, the lives of loved ones, even the lives of total strangers if I were to vote based upon faith...yes, I'm going to need some evidence that amounts to more than a feeling some guy on the internet once had.

As it relates to the topic of God, you seem to require some sort of "cause/effect" justification of "cause" in controlled experimentation that is beyond question in terms of other potential causes, whereas you require nothing of the sort as it relates to "science" and astronomy. What conclusions should I draw from that double standard?

The problem as I see it is that you're imposing two different standards of "evidence" in order for you to 'hold belief'. In the case of astronomy, apparently all you need is to be "told" by supposed "experts" on supernatural entities how you should believe, and that's good enough for you. If I tried that same logic to support "God" based exclusively on a vague understand of what my "pastors" told me, you'd reject it outright. Notice a problem?

 

[Michael]

Can an "observable effect" like gravitational lensing be a result of miscalculation? Or is gravitational lensing still happening regardless of whether or not calculations are correct?

The gravitational lensing only tells you how much total matter is present. They also have to claim to know how much ordinary "baryonic" matter is present in any given galaxy. That number could *easily* be a matter of "miscalculation" and in fact there is now ample evidence that they did *ridiculously* underestimated the amount of ordinary matter in those colliding galaxies. They underestimated the number of entire stars in various galaxies by a whopping factor of between 3 and 20 times depending on the type of galaxy and the size of the star. They also underestimated the number of stars between galaxies in those colliding clusters, and they also underestimated the original "brightness" by at least a factor of 2, and that brightness figure was used to estimate the baryonic mass.

Thunderbolts Forum • View topic - Lambda-CDM - EU/PC Theory - Confirmation Bias

Not only that, they found more mass around our own galaxy in 2012 in the form of million degree plasma than exists in all the stars in our galaxy. They didn't even know that existed in 2006.

I've never heard anything "supernatural" regarding space expansion. Care to explain?

Certainly. It turns out that your "space expansion" thingy is about as impotent in the lab as any supernatural definition of God. Moving objects cause redshift. Inelastic scattering causes redshift in the lab too. Space expansion is a total dud. How do you even know that its even possible for "space expansion" to have any tangible effect on a photon? Let me guess? Some astronomer told you so?

 

[Michael]

I'm not saying that...I've no problem with the idea that god can "act" through natural processes.

However, if you're to say that a baby being born was an act of god "through natural processes" we have no evidence for that because a natural process exists which doesn't require a god.

This is one of the inherent conflicts that we have by you assuming that "God" is not "natural". I'm not even sure you can "assume" that awareness and consciousness and life are possible *without* a "quantum God field" type of energy flowing through the entire physical universe. It's not like we can even "create intelligent life" if we wanted to yet, using "intelligence" in our design. We can't even create living organisms in a test tube yet, and even that wouldn't necessarily rule out quantum effects that we simply don't understand yet.

QM definitions of gravity rely upon an hypothesized particle called a "graviton" as it's carrier particle for gravity. We've never seen one in a lab of course, but such particles may indeed exist in "nature" and exist "naturally". Other types of quantum fields may also exist beyond our current knowledge. Most QM definitions of God begin with the premise that consciousness is the original "field" from which all physical things derive, much like the Higg's Boson (God particle) is thought to give rise to mass.

I would personally assume that "God" is "natural", just as you seem to be assuming that "dark matter" and "dark energy" and "inflation" and "space expansion" are *natural*, even though you've never seen such things in lab experiments.

I think before we can continue our conversation about "evidence" of a "natural" God, you'll have to explain to me what kind of 'evidence' that you think exists for a cosmological claim like "space expansion" or "dark energy", or "dark matter" or something that you "hold belief in".

I think if we don't define what you're calling "evidence" of such things, our conversation will simply go in circles.

Your responses are well thought through thus far, but our posts are becoming prohibitively long for me to respond during the day at this point.

I think I'd like to understand your definition of evidence before I can try to convince you that there is "evidence" to support a Panentheistic cosmology theory, and how such a cosmology theory might result in tangible "effects" on humans which you will accept as "evidence".

Right now, I'm not sure we'll get anywhere unless you can define your concept of evidence beyond just an appeal to authority fallacy. It would be like me claiming that you haven't personally studied the topic of God like the Pope has, or his Cardinals, so I'm not impressed with your 'credentials' on that topic, so if and only if they change their opinions, will I change mine.

That's exactly how your arguments sound to me.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

FYI that is a pure appeal to authority fallacy.

No; that's just wrong - it's not fallacious to appeal to the authority of experts on the subject - particularly if they represent the consensus of expert opinion on the subject.

Argument from Authority: "A logically fallacious argument from authority grounds a claim in the beliefs of a source that is not authoritative."

Typically it involves quoting as support the opinion or beliefs of an authority who is not an expert in the relevant subject.

 

[Ophiolite]

It's not like we can even "create intelligent life" if we wanted to yet, using "intelligence" in our design. We can't even create living organisms in a test tube yet,

I beg to differ. With the assistance of my wife, I have created two intelligent organisms, both of whom have shown similar aptitude.

Of course, we cannot take sole credit for this and I should like to take this opportunity to thank the preceding 3,500 million years of our ancestors who made the achievement possible.

(Side note: no test tubes were involved at any point in the process.)

 

[Michael]

No; that's just wrong - it's not fallacious to appeal to the authority of experts on the subject - particularly if they represent the consensus of expert opinion on the subject.

Argument from Authority: "A logically fallacious argument from authority grounds a claim in the beliefs of a source that is not authoritative."

Typically it involves quoting as support the opinion or beliefs of an authority who is not an expert in the relevant subject.

Thunderbolts Forum • View topic - Lambda-CDM - EU/PC Theory - Confirmation Bias'

Let's review their track record over the past decade, and please explain to me *exactly* what you think makes them "experts" on dark stuff. Not a single one of their "predictions" in the lab passed any tests. Their baryonic mass estimates they used in 2006 were also shown to be *horrifically* flawed. Their claims about WIMP, axions and sterile neutrinos even failed "observational" tests last year too. What makes them experts on a type of matter that may or may not exist and which has eluded them after spending *billions*?

Not a single one of them can name a single source of "dark energy", let alone explain how it supposedly retains a constant density over multiple exponential increases in volume. The last "test" they ran on SN1A events using a larger data set *decreased* the likelihood of acceleration even happening to just around three sigma, two full sigma short of an actual "discovery" in physics.

What exactly are they "experts" at other than wasting money, time and effort on invisible snipe hunts?

 

[Michael]

I beg to differ. With the assistance of my wife, I have created two intelligent organisms, both of whom have shown similar aptitude.

Of course, we cannot take sole credit for this and I should like to take this opportunity to thank the preceding 3,500 million years of our ancestors who made the achievement possible.

(Side note: no test tubes were involved at any point in the process.)

Ok, I stand corrected. We can't create life *without* starting with preexisting DNA.