You must be American.
I don’t mean to come off as a jerk. As I tell my students, the meaning of terms matters, and is a precondition to being able to have an intelligent argument.
It’s just that rational explanation is not limited to scientific explanation, especially if science is conceived exclusively as what the practitioners of physics (my field), chemistry, etc. do.
LOL. Try again.
I’ve had a peer reviewer on one my published papers trying to be semantically clever in trying to reject its publication, but he just came off as a jerk. The arbitrator didn’t use that particular word, but that was what he meant, and the paper was published. So yes, trying to be semantically clever is normally just a means to draw the attention elsewhere.
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So what explanatory powers does adding a deity offer to scientific facts, only you seem not to have offered anything, after asserting that science alone was not enough. Now you’re switching your claim to be about logic in some vague way not being limited to science, when no one claimed it was?
Every explanation science offers, does so without the need or evidence for any deity, that’s a given.
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What is explained and what is not explained is not a matter of science, it is a matter of personal opinion. If you don’t want something to be explained, it will never be explained to your satisfaction. If you want it to be explained, it will be trivial to explain. It means about as much as someone’s favorite color being blue. hypotheses non fingo
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Does this mean that you require some sort of explanation for all that you observe? That it all can be explained by some combination of god(s) and / or measurement?
Perhaps it would be a good idea to adjust that goalpost to include, “I / we don’t know.”
Unless, of course, you are asserting that everything for which there is no measurement is because, god. I would hope not. After all, a rather prominent astrophysicist you may have heard of said, rather pithily that, “God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that’s getting smaller and smaller and smaller as time goes on.”
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The very possibility of measurement presupposes the existence of stable kinds of quantities, each realized by multiple quantity tokens. Measurement compares these tokens to know their ratios and represent them mathematically. But one could wonder how there even exists stable, knowable kinds of quantities in the first place…
Hastily, I’ll argue that the very knowability of the world, the very existence of kinds, to which we can meaningfully give a name, implies that the universe was the product of thought, not of chance. The intelligible content of the world is not accounted for except by an intellect who put it there. The alternative is to say that the world is inherently incoherent, and meaningless, and that concepts are just imposed constructs. But then science too works by chance, and that for me is just too much. It’s either God - an intelligent first cause - or the absurd.
That’s really some creative story telling, but it’s just dead wrong. It’s the error of scientism. Give me one example of something that the Medievals generally attributed to God’s direct action instead of natural causes, that today’s science has explained doesn’t come from God but from natural causes.
Clearly, we have a much better understanding of many aspects of nature than folks did even 100 years ago, but it doesn’t follow from this that God as an “explanation” is getting less and less useful.
- That’s a bare subjective assumption, and it’s a false dichotomy. A third choice is we don’t know of course, and yet a fourth choice is that it is the result of as yet unknown natural phenomena.
- It doesn’t remotely evidence a deity.
That’s an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy, and you’re accounting for nothing, merely making a subjective unevidenced assertion for a deity, that itself lacks any explanatory powers whatsoever.
No it’s not, you are presenting a false dichotomy.
False dichotomy fallacy. Also you are appealing to magic, that has no explanatory powers.
Everything science explains, it explains as entirely natural phenomena, no deity is evidenced or needed. Nor does claiming a deity did any of it add any explanatory powers at all. It violates Occam’s razor.
God is not an explanation, it is a bare subjective claim, an appeal to mystery.
However by all means offer the best evidence you think there is for a deity, as so far all you have offered are bare subjective claims, and irrational arguments. To be clear, rationally consistent arguments are a bare minimum, and on I don’t believe you can argue something into existence in the complete absence of supporting evidence, and the evidence of course must be sufficient for the claim, which is to say that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So far what you have offered is the poorest of evidence.
Even were one to accept your claims, it gets you no closer to Jesus, Allah or Yahweh, then it does to Zeus or Apollo, or any of the countless deities humans have imagined.
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How do you know that? Have you considered every possible explanation or are you just guessing?
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You are very close to a false dichotomy here. Once formed, you ignore that the universe that we can observe can be the inevitable result of natural law(*). Yes, the exact combination of microstates that we observe is obviously a particular realisation that is the result of a series of complex random processes. But rather than calling it a product of chance, I think it is better characterised as an emergent property. The detailed microstates do not really matter, it is the higher level properties and functions that are important. The merging of fermionic matter under the laws of gravity is inevitable once and whenever the sufficient inhomogeneities and other necessary conditions are there. Likewise the formation of stars, the forming of planets in dust rings around stars, the formation of self-organising structures once the physical and chemical properties are there, etc. This requires no thought. It just follows from natural law.
(*) what the cause of natural law is, we as yet do not and cannot know. To insist that natural law is a product of thought is imho dishonest, as we don’t (or can’t) know what happened before (however you might define before) the point in time where our models break down.
Allowing @TheMetrologist ‘s claim to be working in the field of physics, they will therefore know very well that credible evidence is testable, quantifiable, and independently verifiable.
The notion of gods fails all three of the above requirements. Pesky, that.
Thus, @TheMetrologist has mainly offered invalid forms of logic and bare assertions as attempts at evidence and argument as far as I can see.
I would also suggest that, should @TheMetrologist actually be responsible for students and is presenting them with the same piffle we see here, they are doing those students a grave disservice where critical thinking is concerned.
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In his/her posts from a year ago, s/he spoke about something as “mere theory” and said something about “proving a theory.” At the time, I challenged him/her about both and asked if s/he would accept sloppiness like that from students but was met with an “it’s common parlance” excuse.
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“I make sense of something, therefore God is?”
As a scientist you are aware that matter self organizes under the right conditions. Happens all the time. The existence of patterns is not evidence of intelligence, and we understand our environment because we’ve evolved to do just that as a matter of survival.
This is the proverbial puddle claiming that the hole it fills is purpose-built to its exact shape.
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The start and end points are correct. Of course, there can’t be an argument with just one premise.
Yes, of course. But that it should do so, and to boot in a way that I can understand, still requires explanation.
You’re mixing in belief with testimony which was not my argument. I’m not saying we should investigate what people believe based on the numbers-- but those that have strong testimonies about the same thing in strong numbers. In a court of law, testimony is used as a form of evidence. Even unverifiable testimony is a form of evidence, it’s just considered less reliable, but depending on certain factors some unverifiable evidence will be considered more reliable than others.
So yes, evidence of OBEs and NDE’s have more merit to investigate than the tooth fairy.
Exactly, they were investigated because other researchers agreed it had merit.
Further, it deserves continued investigation because no, it’s not entirely explained naturally. Jeffrey Long’s NDERF study surveyed over 600 NDErs, in which he noted not only a clear pattern of experiencing some or all of 12 NDE elements (i.e. OBE, encountering a boundery, life review), but usually happening in a consistent order. That has not been explained.
I need to do more research on the AWARE study but from what I’ve read online even they concluded more investigation is needed… so clearly they find merit in it. They also had an OBE verification method which, while apparently inconclusive in that study still separates it much further from the “no different from the tooth fairy” argument.
Jeffrey Long’s NDERF study had a participant who saw lucid images of a person they never met or saw before, turning out to be a relative that died years before the NDEr was ever born. That’s another type of NDE that could be the basis for a verification method.
If by bare claim you mean I didn’t provide a source, fair enough, but it’s not untrue and as far as studies go it’s not a bare claim. Most of my understanding is from Jeffrey Long and his NDE study, specifically his book Evidence of the Afterlife.
Also, we need to be specific on who “they” is when discussing having similar experiences. Your citation is simply people who’ve experienced cardiac arrest and were interviewed which doesn’t really qualify under Long’s definition and what people generally mean of NDE, because there’s usually the element of a profound/spiritual experience when we talk about these things. Someone nearing death and surviving but having zero profound experience isn’t usually what people are talking about when saying NDE’s.
I will correct one thing I said, which is “everyone is having the same experience” and meant that to mean what I explained about Long’s study of hundreds of people in high percentages sharing the same elements of an NDE.
I will have to do more reading on the AWARE studies but this explanation alone does not disprove what I’m saying. For example, fearful and persecutory experiences…what if this came in the form of a life review(which was one of Long’s 12 elements)? Happy to get back on this when I start a different thread.
Regarding atheism being a bold stance, my subjection perception. No biggie to me if people think being a theist is a much bolder stance. No offense was meant when I said it, as several people on this thread seemed to also take issue with that statement.
As far as why I believe in a deity, that’s way off topic of this thread. I knew very few atheists in my life so I’m using this forum to understand better why people are atheists and, as a follow up, how much they’ve considered consciousness w/out matter.
Hence the need to hawk religion and pretend objections are dismissing philosophy, as if secular philosophy doesn’t exist, and attempt to then reverse the burden of proof, using words like scientism.
The simple fact is that the natural physical world exists, and natural phenomena exist, anyone positing a magic supernatural realm has the burden of proof, and as you say they fail to offer anything beyond wishful thinking and imagination.
Goddidit has no explanatory powers. That’s always the way when one posits unevidenced magic as an explanation.
They’re not mutually exclusive, and testimony is suitably vague here, for example when someone is plucked dehydrated and hallucinating from the sea, after surviving longer than seems plausible, they may offer “testimony” that mermaids saved them, would you really even attempt to describe that as evidence for mermaids?
That is precisely what you did, you asserted that a particular claim was “more worthy of investigation” based on a bare appeal to numbers.
It’s a woefully poor standard on it’s own, and many people have paid the price, but try giving “testimony” for magic or the supernatural in a court of law, and see how well it is received. So a pretty obvious false equivalence as well.
Oh dear, yes evidence is a much maligned term, on that we can agree, if you find unverifiable claims to be evidence, what can’t you believe using that lowest of evidentiary bars?
Only through subjective bias, but by all means explain how you separating unevidenced anecdotal claims here? Beyond the fact you obviously want to believe some, but don’t much care about the rest.
That’s a subjective opinion, based on wishful thinking, and again they’ve been “investigated” do you really expect us to believe there is anything approaching evidence for an afterlife in those “investigations”? Breaking on here of all places, there’s nothing on any news channel, whatever could this mean?
You said exactly, then entirely ignored what was said, and then misrepresented it to match your own biased opinion? The result seems to have passed you by.
Please link any research that offers any evidence of anything supernatural? I shall not call you aa liar until you fail to do that.
Claimed to see… It might help you look less biased if you didn’t inject so much subjective bias into phrases like that, you don’t know what someone else did and did not imagine, and it still gets a so what.
Someone has claimed that someone else may have imagined a dead relative, wow!
Only to someone like you who is so desperate to believe in an afterlife, they take unevidenced anecdotal claims about what people may have imagined and pretend this is remotely verification of claims attached to that. It’s risible to call that research.
No true Scotsman fallacy, oh dear dear me.
Oh look a bare claim that asserts your conclusion in your opening premise, to create a circular reasoning fallacy. Please do demonstrate that anyone has ever had a “spiritual experience” something beyond an anecdotal claim.
Even were we to accept your unevidenced and as it turns out false claim, the peculiarity of people imagining similar things is hardly remarkable, and certainly not evidence that what they’ve imagined is real, especially given how many will likely share the same subjective religious beliefs.
It flatly contradicts your as yet uncited claim, that people experience the same things when they are in cardiac arrest.
So you’ve offered a “what if”, and anecdotal claims without any citations, impressive. Now imagine for one second the world’s reaction if any objectively verifiable research remotely evidence an afterlife, and ask yourself how likely it is that most people still wouldn’t know who the fuck that guy is?
I see no answer still? It is not offensive, just wholly inaccurate.
Same reason as you I imagine, I disbelieve things where insufficient or insufficiently reliable evidence has been presented to allay my doubts.
No it isn’t, and that’s obviously evasion, though by now we’re used to this simple question being met with reticence.
Why would anyone consider this without any objective evidence, and when in every single instance human consciousness is only seen as a product of a functioning human brain.
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Does it now.
To me, all it requires is to acknowledge observed reality when it’s right in front of you, and if you don’t know why or how that is as it is, not to impose a preconception on it.
Natural law explains it fine for me. I don’t know, and may never know some things, such as how natural law as we know it came to be, or just always was. Or other things like what gave rise to the singularity. But I’m willing to admit I don’t know, and sit with that uncertainty until there is good and sufficient reason for tme to draw a supportable conclusion about it.
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Even were this piece of wishful thinking true, requiring an explanation does not translate into goddidit.
Well and sufficiently said.
W.K. Clifford had it figured out back in 1877.
Evidentialism, y’all.
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People having out of body experiences (or “near death” experiences) don’t “bring back” information about the world. It’s fiction not that different than a dream.
It’s just more of that supernatural nonsense that people foolish cling too, often in the desperate attempt to make themselves special, to make themselves different that the other animals.
It isn’t explained because you don’t want it to be explained. If you wanted it to be explained, you would already have an explanation.
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