On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 20:31:57 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> But as I wrote to Nemesis, surely God could've/would've forseen that
>> need and written them clearly enough that such a clarification wouldn't
>> be necessary, no?
> 
> Not necessarily. Peoples' ability to understand may change over time. So
> maybe it only needed clarification in modern times, not in Moses' time.

But God is supposed to be all-knowing, so surely he'd forsee the need to 
write things so that they didn't need to be reinterpreted over time.  Or 
design people so that such reinterpretation wasn't necessary.

> On the other hand, I'm not sure how you get clarification of what JHVH
> did in the garden of eden, given as I said the context was the only two
> people in the whole world. Either God's lying, or he doesn't understand
> the context of the two people he himself created.

:-)

Jim

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On Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:03:20 -0800, Tim Attwood wrote:

>> But as I wrote to Nemesis, surely God could've/would've forseen that
>> need and written them clearly enough that such a clarification wouldn't
>> be necessary, no?
> 
> They were trying to trick Jesus into saying that one of the deadly sins
> was worse than the others, and therefore by reasoning that other sins
> aren't that bad, since every sin would have a sin that is "less bad".
> This is a variation on Zeno's arrow paradox.

Well, sure, and that's one of the issues I have with religion - it 
doesn't often stand up to scrutiny like that.

Jim

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On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 13:58:27 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:

> That said, I bloody well hope Darren isn't looking for "proof", just
> evidence. ***Any*** evidence, that doesn't add unneeded complications,

Some would say (and have said to me in this debate in the past) that the 
evidence is all around us.  That the creation of humans is so remotely 
unlikely that it must have taken a creator.  (The common statement made 
is "does not a watch imply a watchmaker?").  To that way of thinking, the 
fact that we're here to question the existence of God is sufficient 
evidence that there is a God, because the chances of anything existing 
that could do so are mind-numbingly remote.

Not saying I agree with that idea, but that's the counter argument that 
I've run into in the past myself.

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> Not saying I agree with that idea, but that's the counter argument that 
> I've run into in the past myself.

Sure, except that's factually incorrect. It's easy to do experiments to 
show it's pretty trivial to evolve something that does a rather 
sophisticated function without actually designing how it does it, and 
indeed with the result being difficult or impossible to analyze for how 
it works. In other words, no, the watch doesn't imply the watchmaker.

This is the same "I can't imagine how it could be anything else, so I 
must be right."  The old "since my imagination is inadequate, I must be 
right" argument. They said the same thing about thunder too.

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

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On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 11:07:09 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> In other words, you not only would have to have the same message
>> delivered, but you'd have to have identical interpretations.  Given how
>> many ways people interpret something that many consider to be as
>> important as the Bible, I think that's unlikely.
> 
> Well, yeah. Unless it's *GOD* delivering the message. See my point?

Well, yes - I have all along.  :-)

But God identified how?  (And thus the circle begins again)

> Of *course* anything that would convince me of the existence of God is
> going to be unlikely. That's why I'm an atheist. :-)

True enough. :-)

>> Why does it have to be Christians, though?  How's about Buddhism?
> 
> That's fine. I don't think Buddhists are theists, tho. Or, at worst,
> they worship someone who said "don't worship me."  However, I'll happily
> admit I know very little about buddhism.

I think that was my point; the reason we debate about the Christian God 
is because it's a common point of reference.

>> Again, though, there would be interpretive questions.  Word for word in
>> what language, for example?
> 
> The language of the Torah, of course.

So biblical Hebrew, then?

> You ask me what would convince me some God is real. I give a list of
> miracles that do it. You complain that the miracles are too unlikely.
> Well, yeah, that's why they're miracles.

Not so much that they're too unlikely, but that they are vague enough as 
to take anything that fits the criteria and say "well, it happened, so 
therefore it wasn't improbable enough".  See the difference?

>>> (See the "Giant's Star" novels.)
>> 
>> Will have to look them up.
> 
> Brief plot starter: Explorers on the moon find a 50,000 year old human
> skeleton in a space suit in a cave on the moon, with alien life forms in
> ration packs in the backpack. Much hilarity ensues while trying to
> figure out how that could have happened.
> 
> The first book was the best, but the two sequels aren't too bad.

Cool, on my reading list.  It's been far, far too long since I read 
something like this.

>> There again, you defined it as a return, not the Rapture, armageddon,
>> or whatever word fits.  "Return to earth" is exactly what the Mormons
>> believe happened.  So again, it's a question of definition and details.
> 
> Yes. Granted. And while the Mormons think he already returned, all the
> Christians think he already came back to life, too. Note I didn't say
> "Jesus having returned to earth in the past."  I said "Jesus returning
> to Earth."

Sure, but none of that particularly implies rapture.

>> Didn't Jim Jones claim that he was Jesus?  How would one prove that
>> someone claiming to be Jesus was in fact Jesus?
> 
> Miracles. Rapture. All the stuff that's supposed to happen when Jesus
> returns to earth.

To those who died in those set of events, if you asked them now, they 
probably would define the events as rapture.  JWs believe, as I recall, 
that only a select few will get into Heaven, so looking at the number of 
people who died in those events, it could well be said that the rest of 
us are in hell and those few were saved.

Obviously, I'm not saying that's the truth, but that is a point of view 
that could be argued, and could be discounted by the likes of you or me 
because we simply don't believe it to be true.

>> I don't think it's "We understand" but "we have faith that there's a
>> reason for it".  There's a big difference there.
> 
> That's fine. But then don't accuse me of being irrational, if I don't
> agree with the faith.

I never would.  I think it's bollocks myself.  At the same time, though, 
I think we all have had the experience at one time or another of knowing 
something but being unable to articulate it in a way in which our 
"audience" can comprehend.

>> Some people believe that, yes.  And I think that's nuts, and in
>> situations where someone puts their child's health at risk for that
>> belief, that's when society needs to step in.  It's one thing for an
>> adult to make that decision for themselves; quite another IMO for them
>> to decide that about someone else.  Falls under my "as far as my nose"
>> (or perhaps "others' noses" is a better analogy) rule for letting
>> people believe what they like.
> 
> I'll personally disagree on this one. Sometimes, you're just f'ed, and
> that's necessary for a free society.

Perhaps, but you'll note that I didn't say it was government's role, but 
society's role.  I think an important part of a decent society is to 
recognize bad things happening and to say "hey, that's bad" and to do 
something about it.

That is why, as a society, we have laws.

>> Well, yes and no.  But the situation set up is one that requires the
>> question be asked, because religion is defined in so many different
>> ways to different people.  It need not be organised,
> 
> Fair. Again, I'm talking miracles. You're not going to convince me by
> saying "See, those three people who believe in FangleMork, the god of
> blue tomatoes, all share this wonderful trait in common."

To someone who believes in FangleMork, though, whatever it is that they 
describe as a miracle is going to be a miracle to them.  It's all in the 
perspective.  That's one reason why I like the Adams quote about not 
being able to see or know what someone else sees or knows.

>> and I don't think I've ever met two who defined their beliefs in the
>> same way.  But they certainly can be very religious people, too.
> 
> Sure. But you just lumped them all together, right?

Ah, perhaps I did. <g>

>>>> I'm not saying it has or hasn't been met in this instance, but it is
>>>> arguable that the stated requirements of the proof are vague enough
>>>> that you can come back and say "that doesn't count" when such a
>>>> counter was made.
>>> See above.
>> 
>> Well, the devil *is* in the details, no? ;-)
> 
> Not really. When something like this actually happens, show it to me.
> Then we'll worry about the details. If it's not statistically unlikely,
> then no, it won't be too convincing.

Well, kinda the converse of something that our ex-chimney sweep said to 
my wife - when the tornado hit Salt Lake City several years ago, it 
caused a lot of damage near a gay bar downtown.  He said that it was 
because God hates gays, because the likelihood of a tornado in a major 
metropolitan area is very improbable (which is true - too much heat 
radiating from the city to allow tornadoes to form) and at a high 
altitude, tornadoes are already quite improbable.  The fact that it 
touched down within several hundred yards of this particular gay bar was 
sufficiently improbable, that he said it MUST have been because it was so 
unlikely to happen.

He was informed of two things upon sharing this "revelation" with us:  
First, that he was doing the last job for us he'd ever do for us, and 
second, that God missed.  Instead of causing death and destruction for 
the people in that bar, "he" caused the death of an innocent out-of-
towner who was setting up for an outdoor retail convention in the parking 
lot across the street, and then the destruction of part of the then-under-
construction LDS general conference center, including the "miraculous" 
non-death of a worker in a crane that was folded in half by the force of 
the tornado hitting the crane he was working in.

Statistically speaking, all of those events are quite improbable, yet it 
happened.

>>> Again, it has to be big enough to be statistically unlikely. If you're
>>> going to say *this* church is the only church for its entire religion,
>>> then sure, that can happen.
>> 
>> See, that's the problem with it.  Big enough to be statistically
>> unlikely becomes difficult to quantify consistently.
> 
> Not especially. That's what statistics are for.
> 
> There was a volcanic eruption a few years ago in Hawaii. The flow came
> down, burned out a small town, carefully split and went around the
> shrine to Pele (the volcano goddess), and came back together and trashed
> the rest of the town.  I found that pretty convincing.
> 
> If this happened with every eruption, I'd start to wonder if there's
> something more to it.

Fair point.

>>> I think you know what I'm getting at. You're just arguing that I
>>> haven't provided enough details.
>> 
>> I do know what you're getting at - and my list actually would be very
>> similar.  I just know, though, that the response from someone who is
>> truly religious is going to poke those kinds of holes in the required
>> proof.
> 
> Uh, you know something? I don't really care. In my experience, trying to
> describe the scientific basis for your beliefs to someone trying to
> convince you their religion is right just doesn't work. The logic isn't
> there.

Agreed, because belief isn't logical.  Otherwise, it wouldn't be belief, 
it'd be fact-based.

>> We're not so different in points of view, Darren - I hope you do see
>> that.
> 
> Sure.
> 
>> I hope this has been an enjoyable conversation for you, it has been so
>> for me.  This sort of discussion gets me thinking and analyzing about
>> what I think and believe, and I enjoy that immensely for some reason.
> 
> Sure.

OK, good.  It's sometimes difficult to have a discussion like this and 
know that it is being approached from both perspectives in a non-
emotional way.  (I'm probably not saying that the best way I could, just 
kinda struggling for the right words for some reason)

> There's also the other fun kinds of conversations: "Do you believe in
> Life After Death?"
>     "Sure."
> "Then you *are* religious."
>     "No, why would you say that? Can't there be LaD without God?"

Heh, yes, that's true enough.  (The "fun conversation" aspect, not the 
content).

> "Do you believe in UFOs?"
>     "Sure. They just aren't alien space ships. They're unidentified."

Ah, Dennis Kucinich.... :-)

> And it constantly amazes me the number of people who try to support
> religion by pretending organization of structure is unimportant. That
> there must be some physical "thing" that represents the difference
> between a live person and a dead person, beyond how the parts are
> positioned.

Well, some people do seem to have the need to think "there's got to be 
more to it than what I see", and I don't have a problem with that up to 
the point that they try to convince me that if I just studied harder/
prayed harder/did whatever they do, it'd be revealed to me as well.  I've 
got my own understanding of the universe based - I think like yours - 
around what I can observe or logically infer from what I observe.

And such understanding is open to adjustment as new facts become apparent.

Jim

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On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 14:08:46 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:

> In article <4758485d$1@news.povray.org>, dne### [at] sanrrcom says...
>> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> > Why does it have to be Christians, though?  How's about Buddhism?
>> 
>> That's fine. I don't think Buddhists are theists, tho. Or, at worst,
>> they worship someone who said "don't worship me."  However, I'll
>> happily admit I know very little about buddhism.
>> 
> I don't know a *lot* about it either, but strictly speaking there are
> two reasons you don't see them as powerful as Christianity (though
> technically Islam is at least twice as large as Christianity and more
> cohesive, so...), or as prone to kill/conquer and/or convert people to
> make them Buddhists.

Um, Islam and Buddhism are two entirely different things, Patrick...

Jim

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
> > I might go as far as saying "This drug has not been proven to cause
> > cancer", but I don't know that "This drug does not cause cancer" is
> > something that would not be disproven over time.
>
> We're speaking scientific proof here, which is always open to revision.
> You can certainly prove that to a statistical degree, certain things
> don't have certain properties.
Ah, the magic of statistics. :-D If it's statistically proven, then you can be
confident it isn't proven.
>
> > In a purely logical sense,
>
> Sure. And in a purely logical sense, you can prove a negative also.
> There exists no integer X such that X = X + 1. Easy to prove. Axiomatic,
> almost. Or, for example, the halting problem describes a
> universally-quantified negative that can be proven.
>
You seem to be a knowledgeable fellow, surely you know that in logic the
conclusion is already present in the premises. You can't compare that to
empirical validation, which typically resorts to statistics and therefore makes
for a qualitatively different statement. In statistics you give up certainty to
get (possibly) greater insight through inference. It makes no sense to claim
that you can prove a negative with statistics.

<snipped>

> > and it's that faith in the impossible not happening
> > that provides them with the comfort of their beliefs.
>
> I have a great deal of faith that the impossible won't happen.
I guess that begs the question: define "impossible".

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On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 13:45:35 -0500, nemesis wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> The "burning bush" that Moses saw could have been anything - it
>> could've been something red and glowing that, I don't know, aliens used
>> as a communications device.
> 
> It could've been only in his own mind, indeed.  His very personal
> experience of the divine.  Still, it has led us today where we are. 
> Believers or non-believers all drawn into the same whirlwind of events
> chained by the Jewish Christian sect being adopted and spread by the
> Roman Empire and decidedly influencing the course of human history...
> 
>> Personally, I don't believe any of it, but can I (or anyone) prove it
>> didn't happen?  Not really, no.
> 
> see?  In the end, it's all a matter of faith, either believing or not.

No, actually, because my belief (or lack thereof) is subject to change 
based on more evidence becoming available.  Assuming you believe in it, 
is your belief subject to change due to a lack of verifiable evidence, or 
due to evidence that it couldn't have happened?

I find that *most* religious people (not all, certainly) have faith that 
is unshakable regardless of what facts are presented.

>> I don't know that even those theists you point to in history would
>> really have that - many/most seem to have taken the approach "God must
>> have meant for this to happen" as a way of working around the bad that
>> happens in the world (and that happened to them).
> 
> The bad that happens in the world is a fact of physical existence, just
> as the good.  So, of course it's all part of God's plan, which we
> witness in very tiny pieces and doesn't make any sense at all.

That's one possible view based on a faith-based approach to life.  To 
those who don't have faith like that, it's because people have free will 
and do what they want, and some do good things, and some do bad.  There 
doesn't have to be a reason for any of it, it just is.

>> I do know some
>> atheists whose list consists of things like "God can do something
>> that's impossible" - and with that, there's a certain degree of faith
>> that that will never happen - and it's that faith in the impossible not
>> happening that provides them with the comfort of their beliefs.
> 
> of course, that faith is always broken whenever a new physical law is
> discovered.

And frequently the reaction of "the faithful" is strongly negative 
against those who demonstrate that their faith is ill-placed.  Look, for 
example, and what Galileo endured for pointing out that the earth 
revolves around the sun (ie, the heliocentric view of the solar system).

It took hundreds of years for the Catholic Church to admit to its mistake.

>> God:  I refuse to prove that I exist, for proof denies faith, and
>> without faith, I am nothing.
>> Man:  But the babel fish is a dead giveaway, it proves you exist, and
>> so therefore you don't.  Q.E.D.
>> God:  Oh dear, I hadn't thought of that. (vanishes in a puff of logic)
> 
> I love the HHGT books too!

I'm more a fan of the radio series (all 5 of them now), but the books are 
outstanding as well IMHO.  But I prefer the radio series because it 
really cuts the imagination loose.

> But sure, the babel fish here is the instant translator fish that lives
> in your brain, a very unlikely and useful creature.  Thus, I wouldn't
> call it exactly "scientifically proven", more like "fictionally proven".
>  Still, this is such a big universe that anything is possible,  :)

The underlying point of the dialogue, though, is that something that 
improbable (whether it be the babel fish, life on Earth, or anything that 
could be considered 'miraculous' by a large enough group of people to 
matter) provides that kind of "proof" of the existence of God.

It's a paradox unto itself, because anything that proves that faith is 
well-founded removes the need for faith.  If God exists purely because 
"we" believe he does (and some have argued that point over the years), 
then proof is unachievable because it would cause the need for God to 
exist to vanish.

Just like the Roman & Greek gods & goddesses.  Apollo doesn't exist in 
modern times as a god (but rather as a mythological figure) because his 
role in his heyday was to drag the sun across the sky in his chariot.  We 
know what causes that now, so Apollo is no longer necessary to sustain 
our "understanding" of what makes that part of the universe work.

That's what I think Adams was getting at in that hypothetical/fictional 
discussion between man and God.  Deities are there so we can understand 
those things which we have no basis for understanding.

The more modern use for God in this way is to explain things to children 
- for example, Thunder is God bowling.  That's easier for a child to 
understand than "rapid expansion of air caused by the supersonic speed of 
lightning moving through the atmosphere".  That analogy isn't used as 
much today (I don't think) as it was 50 years ago, but the principle is 
"you can't understand it now, so we'll use God to explain it".

>> Put another way, if there's
>> evidence, you don't need faith.
> 
> if you saw God opening the river in two, yes, you wouldn't need faith:
> you are then a direct witness, like there were many in those early days
> of the covenant.

What evidence is there today, though, that the parting of the red sea 
really happened - and that that event was caused by the hand of God, as 
opposed to a geologic event?

Jim

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On Sun, 09 Dec 2007 11:56:29 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Not saying I agree with that idea, but that's the counter argument that
>> I've run into in the past myself.
> 
> Sure, except that's factually incorrect. It's easy to do experiments to
> show it's pretty trivial to evolve something that does a rather
> sophisticated function without actually designing how it does it, and
> indeed with the result being difficult or impossible to analyze for how
> it works. In other words, no, the watch doesn't imply the watchmaker.

That presupposes enough understanding of evolution (or for that matter, 
believing the facts put in front of one that support its existence) to 
accept that as an alternate explanation.

I think we could probably agree that a watch is unlikely to happen as the 
evolution of something geologic, and certainly not to the extent that 
there are billions of them in existence.

> This is the same "I can't imagine how it could be anything else, so I
> must be right."  The old "since my imagination is inadequate, I must be
> right" argument. They said the same thing about thunder too.

True enough.  Personally, I've always taken the approach that if my 
imagination isn't adequate to the task of understanding, I don't know 
(rather than "anything I make up must be right").

It seems to me that a lot of the religious people I know believe we've 
advanced science to the point that there is no more to discover or 
understand - and if we don't know "it" now, we will never know it.

That certainly could explain the decline in math/science in the US...

Jim

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Of course he can. Whether you believe in science and whether you believe
> in God are orthogonal. Many scientists are rather devout. It's *because*
> religion is illogical that this is possible.
It is? I can only talk about Christianism, but how silly of me to think that
about 1500 years of Europe's greatest minds would have ironed out the kinks so
much so that atheists can't think of anything really persuasive to make their
case. Christianism is based on a dogma: God exists. All the rest is logically
gleaned from the Bible. Mathematicians use axioms and then derive conclusions
logically from there. According to you, then, maths is illogical and irrational
because it is necessarily based on (unproven) axioms.
>
> > 3) Any logical-sounding statement defending religion made by a religious
> >    person must be flawed. It's not possible to approach religion in any
> >    logical and rational way. Religion always equals irrationality and
> >    illogical thinking.
>
> I don't think that's the case, no. Religion usually is illogical and
> unscientific, but to the extent that there's evidence, I think it's no
> longer faith. I.e., if you could logically convince someone of religion,
> I'm not sure it would be religion any more. When people got convinced
> that Thor wasn't real, it wasn't replaced with a different religion.
It wasn't? They went straight from Norse to atheist? Wow.

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