Deism, an intellectually serious position in previous centuries, now must reject scientific explanations

[southernhybrid]

Are we through yet?

In what sense?

With this silly discussion. Do we not all know by now what denim is and that people can believe some irrational shit and still be rational about other things? I guess I get bored with this stuff, but at least I put my comment in a tiny font. So okay. Some of you aren't through, but I am.

Oh. I thought you were saying we’re done as a species, because we blithely go along with destructive superstitions despite still working effectively at stuff like creating weapons of self destruction.
My bad!

Not yet.

 

[Tigers!]

Are we through yet?

In what sense?

With this silly discussion. Do we not all know by now what denim is and that people can believe some irrational shit and still be rational about other things? I guess I get bored with this stuff, but at least I put my comment in a tiny font. So okay. Some of you aren't through, but I am.

Oh. I thought you were saying we’re done as a species, because we blithely go along with destructive superstitions despite still working effectively at stuff like creating weapons of self destruction.
My bad!

That's what I thought too!

 

[Tigers!]

Must have been a big car, to crush 120 people.

Yes

 

[Tigers!]

What is the definition of scientifically curious?
If we cannot test a person's level of "scientific curiosity" then you are creating a straw man.

True. How would we test a person's level of scientific curiosity? We test for/observe levels of curiosity in kids, not so much in adults.

When people claim that Christians lack "scientific curiosity" I always wonder what exactly do they mean? You used the term in post 43. Yet it is such a throw away line. Pejorative but without any meaning.

Maybe I should say scientific interest or interest in scientific discovery. I used to subscribe to the magazine "Science News." Maybe it's difficult to gauge an individual's scientific interest but it wouldn't be very difficult to see how many of us subscribe to such journals or publications or for that matter how many scientific books leave libraries. I would imagine a very tiny percentage of evangelicals subscribe to something like "Science News." It's just not their thing seems to me but I'd like to see data. If the population is mostly christian how many of those folks subscribe to such journals? What percentage of the entire population does that?

It shouldn't be overly difficult to devise a way of gauging people's scientific interest. A dozen questions would probably suffice.

What's the nearest star?
What is CERN?
How does the sun shine?
What is the scientific method?
etc.

And add questions from other scientific disciplines.

I recently read about a disastrous woo woo gathering in India where 120 people were crushed to death. They came to see this self proclaimed godman and died trying to collect dirt from under his tires as he drove away. Sounds rather primitive and barbaric. probably not much scientific interest there. Doesn't give one much hope that humanity has a healthy interest in scientific discovery, at least not Hindu fundies.

I used to buy Scientific American for decades and subscribed to semi-technical papers from the CSIRO. I could probably give a reasonable answer to your questions above.
Does that make me , a Baptist, unscientific or lacking in scientific curiosity?
There are many threads here that get quite deep scientifically and enjoy them though the maths in some of them is beyond my learning.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I used to buy Scientific American for decades and subscribed to semi-technical papers from the CSIRO. I could probably give a reasonable answer to your questions above.
Does that make me , a Baptist, unscientific or lacking in scientific curiosity?
There are many threads here that get quite deep scientifically and enjoy them though the maths in some of them is beyond my learning.

A question list should have both scientific and religious questions, Besides some general science it ought to also ask if people believe in ghosts, spirits, bigfoot, afterlives, gods, angels and other manner of woo. Submit your list please and we'll administer it bluebook style to any takers.

 

[Swammerdami]

Why do intelligent people attend church, or seem to believe in a Christian-like Deity? I never had the gumption (nor curiosity) to ask such a religious person but I think there are several possibilities. Starting with the most trivial, I think some parents feel an obligation to expose their children to religion, rather than just imposing their own non-belief.

When one goes to the opera, for full emotional effect one immerses one's-self in the story, temporarily believing it to be true. My mother -- who thought Jesus was an ordinary mortal, but whose teachings she admired -- liked to attend church on Christmas Eve, IF they swung thuribles of incense. She enjoyed the pomp. (The small church she took me to one Christmas had a much more impressive incense-swinging than this, the first YouTube that showed up.)

Let me try to put myself in the shoes of more serious deists -- but I am just guessing here. Some people feel that a notion of Spirituality gives their life a sense of purpose, and helps them satisfy and direct themselves. If believing in a Supreme Creator contradicts their knowledge of science or sense of logic, that's OK. They ignore some of what their brain might tell them, just as the opera-goer ignores that the play is a fiction. I never pursued this myself, but I feel like that may be a flaw in my autistic personality, rather than a triumph of my rationality.

And the above discussion ignores that belief in some sort of Supreme Creator is NOT necessarily incompatible with science and logic. I will NOT try to "defend" that sentence: I've seen the trite little memes trotted out to reject such a claim, and have NO desire to get involved with THAT.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I recently rewatched the 1951 movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still." Early in the movie the professor tells our extraterrestrial visitor "It isn't faith that makes good science Mr. Klatu, it's curiosity." Later in the movie our extraterrestrial visitor, having just been been brought back from death by gunshot, when asked if he has the power of life and death responds, "No, that power is reserved for the almighty spirit." BTW the remake of that movie sucks.

This is a 1951 movie and we're in the process of changing the nation's Pledge to include god. So put the movie in perspective. It's illustrating a clash between scientific knowledge and religious faith. Or perhaps it's going a bit further and juxtaposing scientific faith with religious faith. But regardless one's interpretation it's just a movie and our brains should recognize it as fiction.

When it's religious lots of our brains can't separate the fact from the fiction, and that's because of emotional override.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Touching the Void (2003) is a documentary feature that tells the story of Joe Simpson, a British mountain climber who suffered through a terrible ordeal in the Andes, first breaking his leg, then falling down the side of the mountain (actually, how he came to fall is the most controversial issue in the film, but I'll leave that to the curious) and crashing through an ice dome to end up at the bottom of a crevasse. He realized that if he was to survive, that he must save himself, every grueling inch of the way. He states to the audience that he's an atheist, and that the presumption that at this lowest moment he would appeal to a deity is...false. Didn't happen, didn't cross his mind. He doesn't credit any god for his survival. He credits his own stubborn will and ability to endure pain and exhaustion. The whole story is unforgettable -- I wonder if Readers Digest ever ran it; probably not, as his matter-of-fact atheism would be like a chug of arsenic to the Digest editors.

 

[Learner]

I used to buy Scientific American for decades and subscribed to semi-technical papers from the CSIRO. I could probably give a reasonable answer to your questions above.
Does that make me , a Baptist, unscientific or lacking in scientific curiosity?
There are many threads here that get quite deep scientifically and enjoy them though the maths in some of them is beyond my learning.

A question list should have both scientific and religious questions, Besides some general science it ought to also ask if people believe in ghosts, spirits, bigfoot, afterlives, gods, angels and other manner of woo. Submit your list please and we'll administer it bluebook style to any takers.

As it happens... I know of three atheists (one is a member here) who claim to have seen ghosts. They swear that what they witnessed was not their imagination. What ever these apparitions were, these atheist believed 'there must be a scientific explanation somewhere'.

What intrigued me most was one of them who was a lecturer at a university, teaching mathematics. He said he saw a 'woman' appear in the corner of their hotel room. He was quite sure it wasn't his imagination because his wife saw it too!

(I was quite intrigued and came up with a theory back then as a non-Christian (too long to post via the phone - perhaps for another thread).

 

[bilby]

Hallucinations are commonplace.

Optical illusions are commonplace.

Human brains are prone to "see" faces, and people, and animals, when in fact there is no face, person or animal present.

If two people (or a thousand) report a ghost, hallucinations are a possible explanation; Optical illusion is a more likely explanation; And pareidolia is an even more likely explanation still.

In the absence of high quality and convincing evidence that a given report is not one of these three things, it might be reasonable to speculate about ghosts, but at best this is wild speculation.

Wild speculation is fun, but it's not rational, reasonable, or justifiable.

Life after death is less plausible than perpetual motion machines, or rocks that fall upwards. If ghosts are your go-to explanation for witness reports of people who are visible, but aren't really there, then you are a gullible fool.

Which puts you in good company, as very few (if any) humans are not gullible fools.

 

[steve_bank]

I used to buy Scientific American for decades and subscribed to semi-technical papers from the CSIRO. I could probably give a reasonable answer to your questions above.
Does that make me , a Baptist, unscientific or lacking in scientific curiosity?
There are many threads here that get quite deep scientifically and enjoy them though the maths in some of them is beyond my learning.

A question list should have both scientific and religious questions, Besides some general science it ought to also ask if people believe in ghosts, spirits, bigfoot, afterlives, gods, angels and other manner of woo. Submit your list please and we'll administer it bluebook style to any takers.

As it happens... I know of three atheists (one is a member here) who claim to have seen ghosts. They swear that what they witnessed was not their imagination. What ever these apparitions were, these atheist believed 'there must be a scientific explanation somewhere'.

What intrigued me most was one of them who was a lecturer at a university, teaching mathematics. He said he saw a 'woman' appear in the corner of their hotel room. He was quite sure it wasn't his imagination because his wife saw it too!

(I was quite intrigued and came up with a theory back then as a non-Christian (too long to post via the phone - perhaps for another thread).

As has been said many times on the forum, atheist is a rejection of a specific belief, the existence of gods. Atheist says nothing about what an atheist does believe.

It is Christians and other religions who blindly clam to have a singularly true supernatural belief, ignoring the rest of it. My supernatural god is true, and yours is not.

To be honest, Christianity and the other two Abrahamic faiths are no more true than Bigfoot, alien abductions, Bermuda Triangle, and Loch Ness monster.

From naturalism anything that exists by definition is natural, there can be no supernatural. If ghosts are real then there is a causal link between our perception and the ghost, even if we can not discover it.

Back in the early 70s I was sharing an apartment with two guys, one from the Philippines. He said there was a tradition in his family of seeing departed relatives after they died. He sad when his grandfather died he saw him walking up stairs.

Ghosts, angels appearing, talking to Jesus are all the same human imagination.

 

[Spacetime Inhabitant]

If a "ghost" appears in a public place, the most likely explanation is that there was an actual person or object nearby, whose image was reflected by a glass door or window.

 

[bilby]

If a "ghost" appears in a public place, the most likely explanation is that there was an actual person or object nearby, whose image was reflected by a glass door or window.

Certainly that is one plausible explanation, and has the distinct advantage of not requiring us to hypothesise life after death, or the existence of barely detectable beings for whom no other evidence can be found than eyewitness accounts (the weakest possible form of evidence).

Pepper's Ghost was a famous conjouring trick in which stage magicians created the illusion of a ghost in exactly this way, named for John Henry Pepper who popularised this trick in the nineteenth century.