Science is our friend - says Lion IRC (is not, is too, is not, is too,)

[Malintent]

And you think I'm anti science?
No way!

You appear to be anti-science about that which provides evidence against your positions and pro-science about that which supports your positions.
With respect to how "science-believing" you are, it really is just indicative of your dishonesty, or at best an inconsistent honesty - to be kind, about your science literacy / confidence.

 

[Malintent]

Claim- Science has helped the cosmological argument.

Basis of claim - have you ever seen a modern apologist present the cosmological argument WITHOUT reference to evidence made available by science?

Yes. Claim refuted.

More detail:

Those that use science words to sound like their propositions are supported by science are not actually using science.

Like if I claim to cite the Bible passage, "Thou shan't eat of a red fruit, so say Him", and evidence a claim that it is a sin to eat strawberries, then I am using Theology to prove a point of mine, right? Except that is not a bible passage, it just sounds like one.... which is what many failed arguments like the ones you use do... make up sciency sounding things that are not, in fact, science.

 

[Elixir]

Claim- Science has helped the cosmological argument.

Basis of claim - have you ever seen a modern apologist present the cosmological argument WITHOUT reference to evidence made available by science?

DUH! Have you ever seen any science that wasn't based on the scientific method??? Has there every been any examination of reality that wasn't based on a pre-existing reality?
Oooooh NOOOoooees! It's a korn-fucking-spiracy Ah tellz ya!

Guess it's time to find some old scrawl written by and for a nomadic pre-scientific population and take it literally, if we want to do REAL science. Right, Lion?
:laughing-smiley-014

 

[Malintent]

Cosmological arguments all depend on special pleading by claiming that the universe requires a cause but the universe's creator does not.

You clearly don't know the Cosmological Argument.

LOL! There are more experts on the topic here than in the philosophy 101 class you took last semester, that's for sure. Too funny.

It does NOT even attempt to apply to a universe which had always existed.

What are you responding to? if you are able to read what you quoted, you would not find an assertion that the universe always existed as part of the argument. You read that all wrong, which easily explains how you misunderstand the CAG... English your second language? you should slow down and use a dictionary as needed. nothing wrong with that.

William Lane Craig would have no problem admitting the obvious logic that things which have always existed do not have/need a cause.

He only granted that to the "first mover" a.k.a "the creator god". He begs the question right from the beginning with special pleading for an attribute of this first mover that he refuses to apply to "the universe" for no reason other than special pleading... His argument falls apart without that... which is why it is a failed argument for god.

Now, to the extent that ALL argument premisses are, by definition, self-asserting it's rather purile to dismiss the premise of an argument as 'special pleading'.

yes, if you are as pedantic as 'your argument requires logic, therefore it is self-asserting to call my argument illogical'. But the breakdown is so complete there that one could simply end all dialog with that and get nowhere.

P1 God Exists.
C1 God Does not Exist

without logic, one can do nothing with that.

If that were the case, then the NEGATION of any arguments premise would equally be 'special' pleading.

not following you there... maybe you don't mean "any" argument's negation.

 

[Malintent]

The little color badges are not the reputation to worry about.

Im not worried. But thanks for your concern.

...Lion IRC, right now you and syed are the guys on this board who seem willing to say just anything. Including the jeering at atheists/atheism

Jeering? Is that what you read into my posts?

...you can’t back up your assertions and you want to deflect the problem onto atheists.

I've given several reasons and examples showing why I think science is helpful to (my) religion. Now, you might disagree with the implications of those but I don't think you can accuse me of not backing up my claim. It's not as if people have asked me why I think a certain thing and I'm refusing to answer.

...Give thinking a try instead.

WUT? Are you serious? That's just insulting!

... Do it without loading your wanted conclusion “God” into every question, into every assertion. Make the argument lead to God, don’t start with the God and then shape the argument to fit.

Hang on pal!
Where have I done that?
A few days ago I was posting about the Cosmological First Cause argument and freely admitting that you can avoid a first cause by positing a past-eternal universe. Most classical apologetcs consist of arguments that begin with religiously neutral premisses which then lead TO the inference that God exists.

...The numbers of webpages don’t matter.

In an argument about the Internet's utility for advancing the theistic worldview you think the number of web pages don't matter???? Really? I would have thought it was vaguely relevant. But as you say, I don't think.

...An “advance of theism” due to the internet would show in numbers, right? Not in an increase in “nones” in the polls, but in an increase in theists, right? If that’s so then show it and don’t keep just giving us your “testimony”.

Let's ask the Internet whether religion is increasing or decreasing worldwide.
Christianty - growing.
Islam - growing.
Bahá'í Faith - growing.

"By 2050, just 13 percent of people in the world will say they are unaffiliated, compared with 16 percent who said the same in 2010, according to a new Pew Research Center survey."

"growing" is not enough information. The population is growing. General population growth is outpacing religious growth... which means non-religious affiliation is the highest growing group. This, according to the article you linked.

for example, the article says that from 1910 to 2010 there was 600 million more Christians. However, over 7 BILLION people have been born between 1910 and 2010.
That makes becoming Christian a very rare thing, indeed... far more rare than ever.

People are getting a little smarter.. not much... but enough to not be religiously fanatic anymore and allow the old customs to die.

 

[Malintent]

How did you find your estimates for Facebook and Reddit pages, anyway?

I extrapolated social media demographics.

After extrapolating that out of your ass, how did you get the bad smell off? Did you just leave it smeared in shit and that is how we noticed what you did, maybe?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Two people get compound fractures. The tibia and the fibula are cracked and shattered and sticking through the flesh.

Victim one prays and prays to the baby spaceman to cure him. He sits pondering why his ancestors could have been so disobedient as to bring this fate upon him. He knows his peers will shun him and let him die because this is the will of the spaceman, who has marked him as unlucky, and they do not wish to bring the same fate upon themselves. Nevertheless he hangs on for a few days until bleeding takes its toll and gangrene sets in. He dies an ignominious and unnecessary death at the hands of his religious convictions.

Largely, such behavior has been selected against, which is why most instances result in how we respond to victim number two.

Victim number two cries for help. He shrieks in pain. His friends respond. More friends respond. He is taken to a place where his wounds are attended to. Though traumatized, he heals and returns to a normal life. No one told him to forget about all that stupid germ theory stuff. No one told him to sing songs to his superstitions so his bones would suddenly mend. Yes, a couple told him the magic spaceman must be talking to him and watching over him, though it never occurs to them that the spaceman must have been napping to let the misfortune initially occur.

Scientific inquiry is winning the natural selection battle over superstition and religious ignorance. It's happening slowly but it is happening. And so it is no wonder that even the most religiously devout and or unscientific people are won over by the scientific method, even if they don't know what it is or that it's happening. The fact is that if they refuse they end up dead more times than not. Natural selection marches on.

So it is quite natural to hear even the most crackpot of religious crackpots telling us how science is just another facet of their invisible magic spaceman.

 

[Learner]

Victim number two cries for help. He shrieks in pain. His friends respond. More friends respond. He is taken to a place where his wounds are attended to. Though traumatized, he heals and returns to a normal life. No one told him to forget about all that stupid germ theory stuff. No one told him to sing songs to his superstitions so his bones would suddenly mend. Yes, a couple told him the magic spaceman must be talking to him and watching over him, though it never occurs to them that the spaceman must have been napping to let the misfortune initially occur.

Or you can have yet another idea of many other possible scenarios for example like your victim number two.; These friends could be exchanged for nuns healing the sick as it has been known or monks in a monastry aiding to the poor and diseased.

So it is quite natural to hear even the most crackpot of religious crackpots telling us how science is just another facet of their invisible magic spaceman.

Well yes we think science is a useful tool given to humans.

 

[abaddon]

Well yes we think science is a useful tool given to humans.

You don't think the brave and brilliant minds of the more strongly curious among humans who made and advanced science deserve the credit? You want to steal the credit from them and give it to your Gawd? There's something ungracious about that.

 

[Learner]

Well yes we think science is a useful tool given to humans.

You don't think the brave and intrepid and brilliant minds of the humans who made science deserve the credit? Gawd made science and "gave" it to humans.

"Not all" knowledge came soley from God but yes humans have the gift of imagination for creatiing useful things like his creator. This was meant to be it seems and delights God when man uses his loaf correctly. The knowledge for darker side of science/dabbling includng original warcraft shall we say; was a fallen angel and nephilim thing, the taboo knowledge.

(Religious understanding/belief)

 

[Juma]

humans have the gift of imagination for creatiing useful things like his creator.

And how dyou know this?

 

[Lion IRC]

And you think I'm anti science?
No way!

You appear to be anti-science about that which provides evidence against your positions and pro-science about that which supports your positions.

I've never seen any science that weighs against God's existence.
Have you?

 

[Lion IRC]

I extrapolated social media demographics.

After extrapolating that out of your ass, how did you get the bad smell off? Did you just leave it smeared in shit and that is how we noticed what you did, maybe?

Thanks for your contribution to the thread.
And thanks for speaking on behalf of all the other vulgarians.

I'm always left wondering how it works in a freethought community when a person appoints themself custodian of the word "we" and speaks for some cohort of sheeple.
I must checkout your list of 'followers'.

 

[Lion IRC]

You clearly don't know the Cosmological Argument.

LOL! There are more experts on the topic here than in the philosophy 101 class you took last semester, that's for sure. Too funny.

Talk is cheap.

It does NOT even attempt to apply to a universe which had always existed.

What are you responding to?

Go back and read it carefully.

William Lane Craig would have no problem admitting the obvious logic that things which have always existed do not have/need a cause.

He only granted that to the "first mover" a.k.a "the creator god". He begs the question right from the beginning with special pleading for an attribute of this first mover that he refuses to apply to "the universe" for no reason other than special pleading... His argument falls apart without that... which is why it is a failed argument for god.

He only uses the word God as a placeholder for personal cause. And he only does so conditionally!
If you don't think the universe came into existence then he is NOT talking to you.
If you think it did then he presents a subsequent premise which is predicated on the claim that it is either due to spontaneous chance or deliberate prior cause. If you think it's spontaneous chance (magic) then WLC isn't talking to you.
Only if you think that things which come into existence have a prior cause which is not random chance or necessity, THEN William Lane Craig goes on to the Personal Being - act of volition - premise which the theist calls 'God' for want of a better word.

Now, to the extent that ALL argument premisses are, by definition, self-asserting it's rather purile to dismiss the premise of an argument as 'special pleading'.

yes, if you are as pedantic...

This is not pedantry pal!
The stand-alone premiss of an argument is self-asserting. And it is either more or less plausible than its negation.
To call a given premiss "special pleading" is facile.
Is it special pleading to assert that Socrates was a man?
Is it special pleading to assert that all men are mortal?

If that were the case, then the NEGATION of any arguments premise would equally be 'special' pleading.

not following you there...

Oh well. Sorry. I feel for you.
Hope you have a happy life.

maybe you don't mean "any" argument's negation.

No. I said exactly what I meant.
If a premiss asserts that 'all things which come into existence have a cause', then the negation of that premiss would itself be a premiss.

'not all things come into existence'
'nothing ever comes into existence'
'things come into existence in a totally uncaused manner'

If you say that KCA premisses amount to special pleading then you must also regard the negation of those premisses as special pleading.

God exists - special pleading.
God does not exist - special pleading

 

[bigfield]

Since theists outnumber atheists, one would expect religious pages to outnumber anti-religious pages.

Yep.
And many religions are evangelical by intent.
So their proliferation on the Internet would be expected.
Plus, the Internet makes public square atheism easier to find - what a boon for the apologist.

That's a silver lining for apologists personally. Yet despite the proliferation of online defenders of the faith and your great advantage of numbers, religion is still losing ground to irreligion. Apologetics is impotent.

...How did you find your estimates for Facebook and Reddit pages, anyway?

I extrapolated social media demographics.

You've got nothing but some guesses pulled out of your ass.

- - - Updated - - -

If science is the friend of religion, then why is irreligion more common among scientists than among the general population?

 

[bigfield]

This is not pedantry pal!
The stand-alone premiss of an argument is self-asserting. And it is either more or less plausible than its negation.
To call a given premiss "special pleading" is facile.
Is it special pleading to assert that Socrates was a man?
Is it special pleading to assert that all men are mortal?

If that were the case, then the NEGATION of any arguments premise would equally be 'special' pleading.

not following you there...

Oh well. Sorry. I feel for you.
Hope you have a happy life.

maybe you don't mean "any" argument's negation.

No. I said exactly what I meant.
If a premiss asserts that 'all things which come into existence have a cause', then the negation of that premiss would itself be a premiss.

'not all things come into existence'
'nothing ever comes into existence'
'things come into existence in a totally uncaused manner'

If you say that KCA premisses amount to special pleading then you must also regard the negation of those premisses as special pleading.

God exists - special pleading.
God does not exist - special pleading

Perhaps you could actually respond to my post rather than attacking a straw man:

You clearly don't know the Cosmological Argument.

It does NOT even attempt to apply to a universe which had always existed.

William Lane Craig would have no problem admitting the obvious logic that things which have always existed do not have/need a cause.

Now, to the extent that ALL argument premisses are, by definition, self-asserting it's rather purile to dismiss the premise of an argument as 'special pleading'.

If that were the case, then the NEGATION of any arguments premise would equally be 'special' pleading.

WLC and others engage in special pleading when they introduce their God: they imagine an entity that has all of the properties needed to claim it is causeless, therefore avoiding an infinite regression of causes, and call this entity the "Creator".

If the universe has a cause, then an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless and enormously powerful.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Physical Universe:
We can see and experience.
God:
We cannot see nor experience.

God is a hypothesis whose alleged attributes create contradictions and impossibilities. God seems to be a delusion.

Science spends its time trying to figure out how the Universe works, with some success to date. Theology tries to demonstrate God exists without much luck to date. Theologians argue among themselves trying to solve the logical problems their hypothetical God has without success. Is God perfectly good, or divine command theory, God is actually immoral? Is God inside or outside of time? Does God create the metaphysical necessities of the Universe or not?

Why does a Universe with an all powerful and perfectly good God seem to more resemble a Universe with no God at all?

 

[Juma]

You appear to be anti-science about that which provides evidence against your positions and pro-science about that which supports your positions.

I've never seen any science that weighs against God's existence.
Have you?

Absolutely. There are only four forces that can make any change to our everyday life. And: There cannot be one we havent found yest since that would imply a particle we would have detected, and hasnt.

So: if there is a god, god must use the ordinary four forces,

This rules out any wonders the bible talks of. It rules out mindreading (prayers) etc.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

You appear to be anti-science about that which provides evidence against your positions and pro-science about that which supports your positions.

I've never seen any science that weighs against God's existence.
Have you?

I've never seen a god's existence so the question is silly and nonsensical at best. It's like my saying I've never seen any science that weighs against my having 17 invisible heads either.

 

[ronburgundy]

I've never seen any science that weighs against God's existence.
Have you?

Every single bit of science weighs against a creator.

You cannot rationally accept any science (and thus it cannot "help" support your beliefs) unless you accept the most fundamental principles of scientific reasoning and method, which say that faith has zero validity as a method of arriving at accurate beliefs and that any belief without strong empirical evidence that rules out the alternatives is almost certainly wrong. Any type of God belief or afterlife belief requires faith which ignores and goes well beyond what is supported by such evidence. Thus, science makes rational belief in God impossible, requiring all theists the directly contradict the most basic principles of scientific thought, making any use of specific scientific knowledge an act of dishonest hypocrisy.

It isn't the specific scientific theories so much as this this inherent contradiction between the core principles of scientific thought and faith that has led to the demise of theism in scientifically literate societies. Those principles mean that long before we know what the scientific answer is, we can rule out anything resembling a God hypothesis as implausible as the least implausible ideas ever conceived.

This is why, even before science had made much progress, the mere embracing of scientific principles of reasoning in the Enlightenment led to an immediate increase in theistic doubt and a retreat of "God" from intellectual thought, first in the form of rejecting most of what religions had to say, then in form of Deism which rejected most aspect of "God" beyond a vague "first cause" and then agnosticism and atheism that were only delayed due to the theists threats and violence against those who espoused doubt and non-belief.

That aside, your claims of religious ideas supported by specific scientific knowledge are also all wrong, but I'll put that in another post.