Grassblade wrote:
>> Yeah, its called chance. If you want to imply otherwise you first have
>> to provide evidence that divine intervention was needed to make that
>> happen, not human action.

> Yeah, right. Now you're asking for God as testable hypothesis.

No. Read closer: "Not human" != "God". There are multiple reasons this 
could happen: JHVJ, chance, aliens, Zeus. Patrick and you seem to agree 
it's not human. But your only other explanation is "God", which you need 
to support, as there are more things in heaven and earth than God and 
Human. If you'll forgive the irresistible phrasing. ;-)  If you assert 
that anything inexplicable and unlikely must be the work of God, you'll 
have to show how you came to that conclusion. You *don't* really have to 
show how you came to the conclusion that it wasn't humans guiding the 
process.

The religious stance of "if we can't explain it, it must be God" isn't 
valid logic.

> Really? So language cannot prove itself, can it? 

That statement doesn't even make sense. Or, if it does, you'll have to 
clarify what you're asking.

> Therefore let's burn dictionaries. 

Dictionaries don't prove anything.

> And math? Can it prove itself? 

No.

On the other hand, if you postulated the existence of God as a 
mathematical premise, nobody would be arguing with you. Nobody bashes 
religion because Decartes' "evil deceiver" doesn't really exist.

> So let's add math books to the pile. 

(clip snarky comment about how much religious people like burning books 
about science and math... ;-)

> Considering Science is based on published papers, that consist of math
> and (usually English) commentaries, I think you just killed Science.

It's not that "language" can't prove itself. It's that a statement can't 
assert that it itself is true and logically therefore prove it is true.

Neither science nor math attempts to prove themselves true "because we 
said so".

OK, so Math says "assume X. Therefore Y is true." But everyone who knows 
anything about the topic understands that the second statement means "Y 
is true logically within a framework that assumes X is true and which 
assumes the logical rules we used for getting from X to Y is true." Math 
doesn't attempt to prove that Y is true in the real world because you 
assumed X is true in your logical system.

Don't you know this stuff? Why are you trying to disprove math works, if 
you don't know how math works?

>> And even if you prove times and places, which it invariably fails at,
>> your argument that God was involved in it is based ***solely*** on the
>> presupposition that because a lot of people believe in your God, this
>> validates the idea that *he* was involved somehow. Its argument via
>> popularity, not evidence.

> Ever heard of peer review? It works on popularity among peers.

No it doesn't. Have you ever published a paper in a peer-reviewed 
journal? Have you ever reviewed a peer-reviewed paper? I have maybe half 
a dozen publications, and reviewed dozens more. It has *nothing* to do 
with popularity. Indeed, people organizing peer reviews go *out of their 
way* to make sure the people doing the reviews don't know *who* they are 
reviewing.

Another one of those possibly-true logical systems (popularity -> truth) 
that turns out not to work scientifically. That's why it's called 
"Doctor of Philosophy", you see. Think about it.

That you don't know this tells me you're talking out your butt when it 
comes to science, and that you understand it as little as you think 
atheists understand your religion.

> Man, if you're
> trying to take science out of the picture you're doing a good job. <_<

Only to those who are ignorant of science, apparently.

And it's *still* the case that lack of science doesn't prove your God is 
right.

> I seriously doubt that Buddhism is second. Islam allows four wives, BTW. Kind of
> an unfair advantage. ;-)

http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html

A trivial google search turns up at least some information. Note that 
atheism is third.

On the other hand,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion#Demographics
gives a completely different order to the list, off by orders of 
magnitude, so obviously this isn't easily measurable.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     It's not feature creep if you put it
     at the end and adjust the release date.

Post a reply to this message