Re: funny creationsist

In <1137648903.694030.27090@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Jim Spaza"
<spaza9@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>
>Richard Forrest wrote:
>> Jim Spaza wrote:

>Using scientific methods (theory, testing, analysis, conclusion, peer
>review), please explain how you would test for hate.

I'd come up with a definition first. Beginning with "Hatred is an
emotional state..." and being as specific and concrete as possible.
Then I might try to get reports from people that see if there's a good
correlation between what they call "hate" and the definition I came up
with. Based on that, I might have to modify my definition.

As Mr. Bryant has stated, I could also try to get brain scans to
correlate particular mental activity with the reported experience of
hatred.

>If all you can do is infer the existence of the emotion hate, then
>you'd be doing as much as you can.

Given all that we know about people, it would be a pretty damn sound
inference, known as well as we know anything about any other emotional
state.

>Same with God.

God is an emotional state?

>Even if He appeared
>to you, you'd never be able to scientifically provide evidence that God
>exists. But the inference for God's existence is readily verifiable.

Let's see. Do we have a common description of hate across multiple
times, places, and cultures? Yup. Common description of God? Nope.
Even people who claim belief in the same God give significantly
different descriptions.

<snip>

>> > Scientists
>> > theorizing about the Big Bang Theory routinely admit that conventional
>> > laws of physics and chemistry break down at the purported beginning of
>> > time (at the "singularity"). Thus, they have to think outside what
>> > science can test and can't.

>> No, quite categorically they don't. They propose hypotheses which may
>> be testable if technology advances far enough, and are consistent with
>> what we know about behviour of the universe.

>Maybe technology will one day be available to track angels in flight,
>see normally-invisible demons, and even view God's hand at work.

More likely, given the information at hand, technology will show us
what's going on in the brains of people who claim such things are
real.

<snip>

>> Common sense has nothing to do with it. It is quite simply unknowable.
>
>Common sense has everything to do with it. How do you know that you
>exist? Some things don't need testing under controlled conditions to
>be established as truth.

I don't need to prove *my* existence to myself. To accept existence
of another, I do need evidence. But evidence of other people like
myself is an absolutely ordinary, day-to-day thing, like evidence that
coffee makes me more alert.

>If you don't have free will, then your post happened only by undesign
>random chance through the interaction of the forces of nature and the
>chemicals in your body.

Strike "only by undesign random chance" and you're trivially correct,
as far as I'm concerned. Nothing about posting to Usenet violates the
forces of nature or can happen without the operation of chemicals in
the body of the poster.

Free will and intention aren't the same thing. My posts "happen"
because I want them to. I select from many options, starting with the
decision to post down to choosing words and phrases. But of course my
choices are constrained. I can't post in MSWord format because my
newsreader doesn't do that. I can't post in French because I don't
know French. I can't post the smell of my breakfast because Usenet
technology doesn't allow that. I can't post a solution to the Halting
Problem because there's no such thing.

Now let's think about other constraints. I *won't* post a string of
obscenities directed at you. I am not prevented from doing so by
anything other than my own internal state, right? But what defines my
internal state? I can alter it, *within limits*. I can't, by
concious act of will, make myself suicidally depressed, or homicidally
enraged. I can't make myself sociopathic or autistic. There are
clearly *internal* limits on what I am capable of choosing. How tight
are those limits?

It seems to me that every choice I make, regardless of how trivial, is
*influenced*. If I am conscious of a particular influence, I can
decide to reject it. But I can't be conscious of all influences. I
can't not have any influences - some of them are what define who I am.
So, can I know that any particular decision is not determined by
influences I'm unaware of? Doesn't seem so to me.

It *feels* like I decide things "freely". But I cannot know that this
is actually the case.

<snip>

>> No they don't. I know that I'm conscious. I don't, and can't know if I
>> have free will.
>
>Then test it. Do something that makes no logical sense. Do something
>which provides zero benefit or even some detriment to your existence.
>Do something that goes against all genetic and environmental
>programming in you.

What, like extend my non-existent claws? :-)

As above - how could committing any given action prove that I have
free will?

<snip>

>Interesting. You know that you, yourself, exist without any scientific
>testing whatsoever. So, now we know

"We"? Nope, sorry. I know that I exist as a conscious entity. You
could be conscious or a very cleverly programmed robot, or some kind
of delusion on my part. The simplest hypothesis is that you're
conscious - but I can't *prove* that. You can't prove it about me,
either.

Wow. Re-reading the discussion below, I can see where others have made
this point repeatedly, but you still don't get it.

>of one being's existence which has
>been firmly established without any objective testing, analysis, and
>peer review. I guess that God, on the other hand, doesn't rate such
>special treatment.

I've got direct evidence that there's an entity calling itself "Jim
Spaza" posting in the talk.origins newsgroup. By ordinary, mundane
evidence, I tentatively accept the hypothesis that "Jim Spaza" is a
person like myself. With slightly more evidence, I would believe that
"Jim Spaza" is a pseudonym. With more elaborate and unusual evidence,
I might be persuaded that the pseudonym actually applies to a group of
people playing some hoax. With some extraordinary evidence, I might
believe that someone has programmed a computer to compose and post as
"Jim Spaza".

Note that for all the above, I have a pretty clear idea what the
entities in question can and cannot do, based on my own experience.

Then there's this "God" idea.

>> You miss the point completely! I know that *I* have a conscious mind,
>> but there is no way of knowing with absolute certainty that anyone or
>> anything else has a conscious mind. As I said, the universe may simply
>> be a figment of my imagination.
<snip>

>I'm not talking about the worship of God. I'm just talking about the
>study of the existence of God.
>
>Anyway, here's a short list of scientists, some of whom are herein
>described as being religiously influenced by their scientific work.
>
>http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/sciencefaith.html

What does "religiously influenced" have to do with "study the
existence of God"?

<snip>

>> You miss the point. All anyone can know for certain is that they are
>> conscious and that they exist. Cogito ergo sum and all that. Nobody can
>> know for certain if anyone or anyting else exists.
>
>But, at some point, you have to make an educated guess, sometimes with
>just common sense, and then move on in life.

Yes, we do that. It works.

<snip>

>Some atheists. They don't say that God's existence cannot be
>determined. They say as a fact that there is no God.

Read such statements carefully in context. They invariably reduce to
"there is no God such as you assert", where "you" might be one person,
Christians in general, or basically everyone the atheist has ever
encountered. Or possibly "there is no evidence of any Superior Being
worth bothering about".

>Some others define atheism as a lack of any belief concerning God as
>opposed to a religious belief that there is no God. However, I always
>considered such as agnostics.

I think it's polite to pay attention to what people call themselves.

<snip>

>I think that my belief in the God of the Bible has more science behind
>it than some quantum theory made up when scientists realized that they
>painted themselves into a corner with the Big Bang theory.

Then I must conclude you don't know much about cosmology and science
in general on the one hand, or the Bible on the other.

<snip>

>> Many theologicans would say that if your belief is based on scientific
>> evidence, it is not, by definition, faith.

>They're wrong.

What a cavalier dismissal.

> If these theologians read the Bible,

The only way this makes sense is to add, "the way I read the bible".

>then they'd know
>that God never calls anyone to blind faith.

<snip>

>I hope that science fills in the gaps with the right conclusions and
>not just the conclusions that it can come up with at the time.

The cool thing about science as an enterprise is that any conclusion
is "at the time" and can be rejected or overturned later. *If the
evidence supports it.*

<snip>
>Who says that science is incapable of studying God's existence?

Besides everyone else in this thread?


--
"I'm gonna act grown up/That's my plan"
Jack Dominey
jack_dominey (at) email (dot) com
R.I.P. Bob Denver

.

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