Plane Crash & Spirituality

[Professor_X]

[quote]pookie wrote:
Professor X wrote:
And what is “supernatural” other than a word to describe something we don’t have a scientific basis for understanding?

So anything we don’t currently understand is supernatural? That’s not the generally accepted definition of the term.[/quote]

That also isn’t what I wrote. I wrote specifically, “something we don’t have a scientific basis for understanding”. That is not the same as “something we don’t currently understand”. Something we currently don’t understand but falls under the current laws of physics is not supernatural. Something we have no scientific basis for understanding is. I didn’t mix my words up. You just didn’t understand them.

[quote]

We don’t understand the complete concept of a black hole or what truly goes on IN one as our laws of science break down.

Which indicate that our laws are incorrect or incomplete. It does not imply that black holes are supernatural.[/quote]

Did I say that black holes are “supernatural”? They exist but as of yet we only have theories as to what goes on in one. I was making the connection between our current understanding of science and things that exist that break through it and go against the laws of physics that we currently understand. If we have been given examples of things that do exist but go against our own basis of science, how much farther is the leap to conceive that some things exist that completely defy those laws?

[quote]
We can entertain the thought with no problem. It’s when people contend that entertaining the thought of that entity is more or equally rational to not entertaining that thought that problems arise.

That is where faith comes in and I don’t need a scientific explanation for everything I believe in.

That’s perfectly fine and I have no problem accepting that. What irks me is the need that many people have to somehow justify their faith using science, or worse, to try and prevent some lines of scientific inquiry (ID vs. evolution, abiogenesis, cosmology, etc). because they feel that such research somehow threatens their beliefs.[/quote]

It is the same need any man would have in nature. The need to attempt to understand something by analysis of it or what was left behind by it. Why wouldn’t a Christian use science to help describe what they believe in? As of yet, science does not DISPROVE God so what is the issue? You should be applauding any time someone does this because if science ever does disprove the existance of a higher power, you will then be justified. It hasn’t. Does this upset you?

[quote]
As far as I’m concerned, God, if he exists, is forever removed from the perview of science and can neither be proved nor disproved by the scientific method.[/quote]

That would be a philisophical stance considering a Christian would believe the moment that he is proveable, the game is over.

[quote]
Until you explain gas and ignition. A Bic can be understood and explained adequately by a 7th grader.[/quote]

Incorrect. It is understandable to a 7th grader of TODAY. The average 7th grader has more education than the average full grown farmer a few thousand years ago. You would have to cover a lot of basic info and dispell a lot of myth to explain that to a full grown person thousands of years ago.

The only reason it isn’t to us is because we NOW have that scientific basis to understand it.

If we were to come across a piece of extra-terrestrial technology, say a piece of metal who “floats” a few inches above the ground; we wouldn’t conclude that it did so by supernatural means. We’d deduce that whatever civilization produced that part had a better understanding of gravity than we do; and we’d study it to understand how it works. We’d assume that it is possible to understand, and eventually replicate it, simply through “natural” means.

What is your point? I thought you didn’t want God to be confused with science. Has the concept that God is completely in line with Science never been a concept that occurred to you?

[Professor_X]

[quote]pookie wrote:
Hanzo wrote:
“The probability of forming the 2,000 or so enzymes needed by a cell lies in the realm of 1 in 10^40,000. This makes the conceptual leap from even the most complex ‘soup’ to the simplest cell in the time available (that is about 500 million years) so dramatic that it requires some suspension of rationality in order to accept it.”

Speaking of bad math and creationism, there is an interesting article on ABC news by John Allen Paulos (who’s book “Innumeracy” I recommended in my initial reply.) He explains the various flaws in Creationist math: What's Wrong With Creationist Probability? - ABC News

[/quote]

That article wasn’t very interesting at all. It was like a plug for his books. He could have taken up ad space for a nice poster with the book titles that could have been more effective. He spent three pages telling us the probability of shuffling a deck of cards and coming up with a certain sequence. How is that interesting?

[Hanzo]

[quote]pookie wrote:
Hanzo wrote:

Why not just be honest about your views and discuss what you truly believe? Why do you feel that your religious arguments can’t stand on their own and that you must disguise them as scientific and logical?
[/quote]

Well primarily becuase the discussion would have ended before it started. Before I wrote my first post you were saying that God and the tooth fairy were one and the same. I do not discuss my religious views with people who consider me to be a moron. Rather I share my views with like minded people or people that don’t immediately discount religion. Discussions with atheists are a different animal. As a Christian I can discuss my religion with a Muslim or a Buddhist, but with an atheist I cannot. However, I can debate philosophy with the latter. This is because you have to be on the same playing field as the atheist when debating them.

And since the prof is tagging along, taking the occasional potshot, I’ll point out that “loony”, to describe a believer was, again, mentioned by the believer himself.

you never seize to amaze me. do you understand the meaning of sarcasm (def 1. harsh or bitter derision or irony. 2. a sharply ironical taunt; sneering or cutting remark).

As for life “springing up” by itself; that has to happen in some manner once all the prerequisite conditions are present. It is not pure coincidence in the sense that the elements present are behaving in accordance with physical law.

What we don’t know is if the constant are actually “tuned” values, or simply appear that way because we don’t have the right theory. We also don’t know if another universe, with different constants, could also support life.

Again, you believe in coincidence when i do not. There are about 40 or so physical constants that if slightly tuned would cause the non existence of our current universe. If the strong nuclear force was slightly smaller all there could be no heavier element than hydrogen which would inhibit life chemstry. You are suggesting that abiogenesis could occur in another universe when it hasn’t even occured i the last couple of billion or so years or in any other known place in the universe.

You’re just throwing out random scientific terms that you don’t understand to discount science.

Where did I discount science. Putting words in my mouth, AGAIN. I was simply pointing to that it is hypocritical for some scientists who sneer at religion to put their “blind faith” into unverifiable and implausible concepts.

Apparently, you’re allowed to misuse science in any way you want to support your idea of God; but scientist trying to answer difficult questions through natural means are wrong even before they’ve even tried.

Words in my mouth. Well, if what they are attempting show is unfalsifiable than it is not true science. You even said that those theories have neither less or more evidence to support themselves than does the idea of God and supernature. Difference is that that is presented under the guise of science.

If the primordial soup and panspermia are essentially failed paradigms and completely unfounded why do atheists keep supporting them.

Panspermia hadn’t been mentioned at all until now. It is a generally discounted idea and, furthermore, has nothing to do with abiogenesis.

You keep making stuff up, reaching wrong conclusions with it; and then attributing it to atheists.

No, again I am speaking out of personal experiences with atheists that have supported the panspermia idea. Panspermia, is related to abiogenesis in a so far as that it shifts the complexity of trying understanding the origins of life to outerspace because of the unsubstantiated paradigms of abiogenesis. The basic idea still remains that atheists believe purely in the non-existence of a God that could have pre-ordained or created the universe.

Then you ask "who’s really being dishonest here?You tell me.

Hmm well you are, because your taking my philosophical arguments to be science when it’s not.

Abiogenesis is not a theory, it is the name for the study of how life begins from non living elements. It’s the name given to that branch of study.

No, abiogenesis the hypothetical process that life sprung from inorganic matter. Science junkies might refer to abiogenesis as a “branch of study” but that doesn’t make that the correct definition.

Sounds like science to me. Science is open to criticism and falsification. That’s how it works. That ideas and theories and challenged, changed and replaced is the whole mecanisms of science. That one theory of abiogenesis is contested doesn’t invalidate the whole branch of study.

It’s as if, when people thought that diseases where caused by miasma (bad air), they’d discounted the whole of biology because that theory was shown to be wrong.

i never did discount it, i was open to various explanantions unlike you. I said that did not believe i extreme coincidence. stop making stuff up. you on the other hand have discounted religion and theology which are basically philosophies concerning life from the get go.

[pookie]

[quote]Professor X wrote:
That article wasn’t very interesting at all. It was like a plug for his books. He could have taken up ad space for a nice poster with the book titles that could have been more effective. He spent three pages telling us the probability of shuffling a deck of cards and coming up with a certain sequence. How is that interesting? [/quote]

The deck of cards example was an illustration of the main point of the article.

As usual, you’ve been sidetracked by concentrating on the wrong detail, desperately trying to pick out something to whine about, while entirely missing the main point.

[Professor_X]

[quote]pookie wrote:
Professor X wrote:
That article wasn’t very interesting at all. It was like a plug for his books. He could have taken up ad space for a nice poster with the book titles that could have been more effective. He spent three pages telling us the probability of shuffling a deck of cards and coming up with a certain sequence. How is that interesting?

The deck of cards example was an illustration of the main point of the article.

As usual, you’ve been sidetracked by concentrating on the wrong detail, desperately trying to pick out something to whine about, while entirely missing the main point.

[/quote]

No, I got his point. I believe in genetic mutation and evolution within species. I have no reason at all to believe that life just appeared on its own through abiogenesis. I consider life to be a more complex phenomenon than something that just happened for no reason because of “biochemical soup” randomly binding together until it breathed out of complete and total chaos. His explanation was an attack on creationists. I just wasn’t impressed.

[pookie]

[quote]Hanzo wrote:
Well primarily becuase the discussion would have ended before it started.
[/quote]

I wish it had.

[pookie]

[quote]Professor X wrote:
His explanation was an attack on creationists. [/quote]

His explanation was an attack on the flawed math used by creationists to come up with ridiculous probability numbers when discussing evolution.

You have no problem with intellectual dishonesty as long as it supports your own personal views? To paraphrase Fight Club “I am Jack’s total lack of surprise.”

[lothario1132]

[quote]Professor X wrote:
Yet you keep talking about and even know what it feels like to you. In that sense, what is pain? Can anyone else feel the pain that you experience? Then it must be all in your head. I treat people experiencing “pain” all of the time. I have to ask them to rate it for me on a scale of one to ten or give it descriptive flat adjectives like “sharp” or “throbbing” just to give me some concept of a thing that only that person can sense.

Perhaps the next time this occurs, I shall tell them they are self delusional and if they were only as intellectually enlightened as myself, they would know that their pain does not exist and they would stop crying about it.[/quote]

Honestly. That is weak, and you know it. Quit trying to straw man me, and just admit that without a brain, there is no pain. A desk does not experience pain. At all. Pain is not objectively measurable, not made out of “real” stuff, but I’ll repeat myself here and remind us all that this doesn’t mean it doesn’t have an effect on us in our minds or doesn’t matter. What’s your point here anyway?

I think people who close their minds to possibilites simply because they need to see them all are the most intellectually stunted people on the planet.

Good for you. I think that people who believe in shit for no reason, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, just because someone told them that they have to believe it’s there are the intellectually stunted.

Maybe those twelve foot tall hamsters are out there. Maybe the tooth fairy exists. Maybe Santa will bring me actual mummified remains of the aliens who built the pyramids for Christmas this year… wouldn’t want to discard any possibilities, would I?

[kaaleppi]

[quote]orion wrote:
karva wrote:

As you self pointed out earlier; acknowledging, that ‘I don’t know’, is the only logically defendable position. All other suppositions are equal.

I think that your argument is technically right and practically at least questionable.

The people that claim ID is science, make absurd claims abut ET or think that God has a lot to say about human sexuality or politcs usually have an agenda.

So, in real life the line is not drawn between

“there is no God vs there may be a supernatural being”

, but rather between

" there may or may not be a God vs I KNOW there is a God and He has told me in no uncertain terms how you, and yes I mean YOU, are supposed to life".

The questions if there is a God and if there is a God that even gives a shit, let alone writes a book, talks to people, sacrifices himself/son are really not the same, so if I deny a specific Gods existence my chances are better than 50/50.[/quote]

I accept your objection. We can discard a proposition that lead to absurd conclusions. Bible literalism is a good example of such a proposition. Unfettered reductionism is also a good example.

[Hanzo]

[quote]pookie wrote:

Why? Because I point out your dishonesty and lack of knowledge? You might have an easier time discussing your beliefs if you were able to present them in an honest, straightforward manner. Instead, you prefer to hide them behind pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo and then get offended when people who have an actual interest in the real science point it out to you.

[/quote]

Hanzo in Point Format

1. I’m not a scientist. I’m a sophomore in college and will probably end up being a Business, Econ or IR double major. Still, I have made some personal research into philosophy and science combined with the fact that I read Higher Level IB Physics in HS.

2. Science is not the end all be it all to knowledge. Theology, science, philosophy, mathematics, etc are all different forms of inquiry.
   a. Science cannot provide definitive answers to ALL of these inquiries.

3. In my first in this thread I stated that "“By PHILOSOPHICAL and logical deduction I have come to believe that there is a God…”
   A few definitions and some of my beliefs.
   a. Supernatural (Defintion: Not existing in nature or subject to explanation according to natural laws; not physical or material;
   b. Natural (Definition: Having, constituting, or relating to a classification based on features existing in nature)
   c. Philosophy (Investigation of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning rather than empirical methods.)
   d. Logic (Definition: A system of reasoning: Aristotle’s logic.)
   e. The natural world had a beginning.
   f. That beginning had a cause because there cannot be an infinite causal chain.
   g. That which is supernatural is not limited to natural law.
   h. Atheists create a finite “natural” god which they base their arguments on.
   i. Science is dependent on empirical methods. Philosophy does not rely on empirical methodology.
   j. Philosophy is not a science.
   h. Science is a philosophy .
   i. A philosophy can be based on scientific facts but that does not make it science.
   j. The Big Bang is the origin of space-time.
   k. God’s work is very subtle and usually carried out through natural means i.e the conscience of mankind, love, etc.
   l. Abiogenesis (Definition: the supposed spontaneous origination of living organisms directly from lifeless matter)
   m. I did not outright contend that life could not have evolved from chemical evolution. i just have a hard time seeing that it was spontaneous i.e coincidental.
   n. Natural science (Definition: the rational study of the universe via rules or laws of natural order)
   o. Science (Definition: systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation).
   p. God (Definition: the supernatural being conceived as the perfect and omnipotent and omniscient originator and ruler of the universe; the object of worship in monotheistic religions )
   q. Atheists ad scientists can be zealots.

4. The basic facts which point to a creator from a philosophical stand point are…

a. The fine tuning of the universe. Does God Exist? - Home Page
b. The universe had a begining http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9404/bigbang.html
c. Moral Law
d. Life and the universe are not coincidental
e. the phi phenomenon http://www.harunyahya.com/articles/70golden_ratio.html
f. Again, I see meaning where you see coincidence. i guess we just have different existential philosophies.

5. How were my beliefs shaped?

A couple of years ago I was an adherent of weak agnosticism. I would go to church with my family but was never convinced of the existence of a God. My skepticism kept growing until I one day decided to do some reseach on the topic. I found Meditations on First Philosophy in my father’s library. After I had read numerous select parts of the book I decided to further my investigations into to the topic. Hey, I had no summer job, all I did was play basketball and workout. I read numerous articles online, I read the Bible, the Qu’ran, etc in order to get in tune with my spirituality. I’ve read into Kant’s Moral Philosophy and Darwin’s Origin of Species. And all along this one question fazed me. Is life and the universe simply coincidental? As I became increasingly certain of the presence of a God I became somewhat of a deist. However, as I became more spiritual and grew to believe that God does interact with mankind albeit in subtle and mysterious ways. However, how could I put this forward to you when throughout debate you have only misinterpreted, misquoted, rebuked and ridiculed my philosophical arguments which were based on accepted scientific facts.

I did my personal research on the origin of life and numerous theories concerning the origin of the universe about a year ago hence the slightly sloppy manner in which my arguments relating to science may have been presented. My philosophical arguments however philosophy however was never flawed because the “metaphysical realm” is argumentatively accepted within philosophy. In the future don’t call someone dishonest and act like a know it all when you clearly do not.

[Alpha_F]

[quote]Hanzo wrote:

Atheists ad scientists can be zealots.
[/quote]

This is an excellent observation.
And when they are they beat everyone else.

I call it the self-delusion of intellectual supremacy.

Intelligence is as shallow as beauty is.

In my perception they are no different from the catwalk supermodels.

[orion]

[quote]Alpha F wrote:
Hanzo wrote:

Atheists ad scientists can be zealots.

This is an excellent observation.
And when they are they beat everyone else.

I call it the self-delusion of intellectual supremacy.

Intelligence is as shallow as beauty is.

In my perception they are no different from the catwalk supermodels.

[/quote]

Priceless

[lothario1132]

[quote]Alpha F wrote:
Intelligence is as shallow as beauty is.

In my perception they are no different from the catwalk supermodels.

[/quote]

I have known people who were deeply beautiful – inside and out. I have also known people who are deeply intelligent – wise, knowledgeable, and humble at the same time.

These traits aren’t shallow in and of themselves, that’s part of the character of the individual. Do you know any catwalk models who aren’t full of themselves? They’re out there.

[Alpha_F]

[quote]lothario1132 wrote:
Alpha F wrote:
Intelligence is as shallow as beauty is.

In my perception they are no different from the catwalk supermodels.

I have known people who were deeply beautiful – inside and out. I have also known people who are deeply intelligent – wise, knowledgeable, and humble at the same time.

These traits aren’t shallow in and of themselves, that’s part of the character of the individual. Do you know any catwalk models who aren’t full of themselves? They’re out there.
[/quote]

Of course, lothario.
I agree with your statement. I wasn’t speaking about the traits in and out of themselves, I was speaking about the people whose sole indentity is tied up with one particular image and use that as a tag of superiority over others. Whether that is the image of higher beauty or higher intelligence.

These people are limited in as much as they are limiting their experience of other aspects of their human nature.

Depth of mind does not mean depth of humanity or depth of spirit or depth of (instinctual) nature.

What never ceases to amaze me is our capacity as race ( and there is only one race - the human race ) to bullshit ourselves into rationalizing our intellectual superiority just because we are aware of possessing a complex brain while at the same time being uncapable of using it to rule ourselves without causing domination, sorrow and pain.

Alpha F