Re: Intellectual Dishonesty

On Sep 25, 12:16 am, Dave Corsello <d.corse...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Snex,

I'm not understanding your argument. You say:

great theories often come from intuition

To which I agree:

intuition can be a valid source of information.

To which you reply:

this is completely false, and a perfect example of confirmation bias.

I'm really trying to understand you, but it seems to me that you're
contradicting yourself. Would you clarify how intuition can be a
valid source theories, but not a valid source of information? Isn't a
theory a body of information? In a prior post I actually said, "If
I'm not mistaken, intuition is valid grounds for a hypothesis." Is
the term "hypothesis" any more agreeable to you than "information"?

i did not say it is a valid source of theories. i said it can generate
correct theories. but so can a coin flip. coin flips are not a valid
way of generating theories, because they do not reliably do so at a
rate any greater than chance. if you want to do science by coin flip
alone, see how far it gets you.


all of the things the bible got completely wrong, you just reinterpret
so that they sound or seem right, or irrelevant.

Maybe this is true of other theists with whom you've discussed these
issues, but I certainly haven't done this. If I recall correctly, the
only issue, other than the four that are central to my argument, that
was ever mentioned in our discussion prior to this was the issue of
the age of the earth, which, I said, I find perplexing. (Then again,
I might have said that in another thread. I've got to hand it to you
guys who do this all the time. It's really tough to keep straight
what you've said, to whom you said it, and in which thread.)

you ignore its claims
about the age of the earth, sun, and moon, and how they were created.
you ignore its claims that the sky is a solid dome that keeps water
out. you ignore the incorrect order and duration of the creation of
living things. you ignore the claims that the earth is flat and
immovable.

Honestly, I haven't ignored these. In my very first post in this
thread I said, "Faith often believes without evidence, and often in
the face
of contrary evidence."

(As an aside, is the above a comprehensive list? If so, I'd like to
go back for my own sake and re-read some of this stuff.)

of course it isnt comprehensive. the bible is chock full of so many
goofy claims that it would be impossible to list them all in one
usenet post. try www.skepticsannotatedbible.com for a start.


all you have going is that they guessed that the universe (actually it
just says the heavens and the earth, not the universe) had a
beginning, and thats just 50/50.

The phrase "the heavens and the earth" refers to the totality of
existence as the writer understood it. The difference between that
phrase and the word "universe" is a matter of information and
technological sophistication, not of essential meaning.

if that were correct, the writer wouldnt have heavenly bodies created
on the 4th day. stars were created long before earth was. based on the
context, it seems the author is referring to a vast expanse of water,
which was later separated.


So if
Einstein got the origin and ultimate fate of the universe wrong, even
after going though many iterations before presenting his ideas
publicly, how much more amazing is it that ancient authors, who had no
modern technology, got those concepts right in one extremely long
shot?

the ancient authors did not get those concepts right.

Both in earlier posts and earlier in this post, you claimed that they
got them right by wild guesses. So again, I don't want to
misunderstand you, but it seems like you're contradicting yourself
here.

the only thing they got right was that there was a beginning. given
the amount of other religions that simply claim "a beginning" but get
the details drastically wrong, as the bible does, this is not
impressive.


nowhere in the
bible is red shift or hubble expansion mentioned.

Nor can these terms be found in the writings of Copernicus, Galileo,
Kepler, Newton, Herschel or even Einstein, until they were discovered.

how is that relevant? those men did not argue for a beginning on
scientific grounds because the evidence was not available to them
(except einstein once the evidence was available to him, and he was
also well aware of red shift).


the bible is not
even aware that stars are other suns. and if you read genesis 1, only
the earth is created at the beginning. the sun and stars are created
later. this does not square away with cosmology at all.

You're right. Biblical cosmology is not in complete harmony with
modern cosmology.

This is also illustrative of the uncanny harmony between Biblical
cosmology and certain flavors of modern cosmology: Again, both
include the concept of a dimensionality that exists eternally outside
of space-time. You know, snex, although our philosophical views are
probably as opposite as possible, I think that in broad terms, we
might hold more common beliefs about the nature of reality than you
might think.

this has nothing to do with biblical cosmology. you are just
reinterpreting the bible to say what you want it to say, rather than
what it actually says.

It most certainly has everything to do with Biblical cosmology. God
is portrayed in the Bible as the eternally pre-existent creator of
everything that exists. If he pre-existed space-time, then he exists
independent of space-time, and the realm of his existence lies outside
of space-time.

but that has nothing to do with string theory or loop quantum gravity.
neither of these theories makes any reference to supernaturalism or
gods. if one of them happens to be correct, then we have arrived at an
eternal "*-verse" with no need for a creator, and we will be right
back where einstein started, just one level higher.

string theory/loop quantum gravity/any other GUT will remove the basis
of the cosmological argument.


if the bible were so in line with actual cosmology, why didnt the
early christians know actual cosmology? why were they the ones who
fought hardest against scientific advances?

This seems off-topic to me.

i dont think it is off topic at all. people of all religions claim
their holy books contained scientific knowledge in them long before it
was discovered by secular science. yet if that is truly the case, why
did the knowledge need to be discovered by secular science at all?
wouldnt it have already been common knowledge to the religious?


guesses is all you could offer, of course, and thats the problem with
theology. it is nothing but guesses.

You're right, I'm not all-wise, and, although I'm a theist, I'm not a
theologian, and it's likely that I'll be guessing from time to time.
But on the other hand, the Bible makes many statements that are to be
understood as authoritative, not as guesses. (If the Bible portrayed
itself as a collection of guesses, there would be no controversy
between you and me.)

the bible doesnt portray itself as guesswork because that wouldnt fill
the coffers. but it is, in fact, nothing but guesswork as far as
theology goes. ALL theology is nothing but guesswork.


why do you think more data will confirm the biblical accounts?

Partly because over the past 80 years the trend has been in that
direction. Why do you think that more data will refute the Biblical
accounts?

that is laughable. the trend has been nowhere near confirming
christian mythology or any other mythology.

Nowhere in this discussion have I explicitly made the leap from "in
harmony with" to "confirms". I've simply provided clear evidence that
in four specific areas, as major new information has surfaced in the
science/philosophy of cosmology, the information has been in harmony,
rather than disharmony with Biblical cosmology. How is that
laughable?

it is laughable because it ignores the fact that biblical cosmology is
so wrong that no possible future discovery will ever be able to
salvage it. the sky is not a solid dome holding up water, the earth is
not flat, the sun, moon, and stars are not younger than the earth.


what science has been
revealing for the past 400 years is that the universe is far grander
than ANY of the quack ideas formed in the imaginations of theologians.

I'm sure that this is heart-felt, but it's subjective opinion.

At this point, this discussion between you and me seems to be chasing
its tail. If you would provide evidence that demonstrates disharmony
between science and Christian theology in the four areas that are
central to my argument, I might jump back in. Otherwise, thanks for
an interesting discussion.

youre going to have to point out what these "four areas" are because i
dont think it is in this thread.


--Dave


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