Science Self-Corrects

Originally posted by Soothfast
Don't let the door spank you on the ass on the way out...

I didn't say I was leaving, just that you guys are full of yourselves and self delusional.

Originally posted by humy

The basic problem is that some believe that certain unproved [b]assumptions are more correct than others.

You are talking about probability here, aren’t you! what else could you mean by "assumptions" being "more correct"?
So you are saying there is not such thing as probability. So how can you then rationally assume that ther ...[text shortened]... re isn't such thing as 'probably'? -answer; you cannot without logically contradicting yourself.[/b]

I'm talking about assumptions.

Does God exist?


One assumption is that God exists and can perform miracles.

One assumption is that God does not exist and miracles are impossible.

Both of these are assumptions and neither can be proved, only accepted on faith.

Originally posted by Eladar
I'm talking about assumptions.

Does God exist?


One assumption is that God exists and can perform miracles.

One assumption is that God does not exist and miracles are impossible.

Both of these are assumptions and neither can be proved, only accepted on faith.

Both of these are assumptions and neither can be proved, only accepted on faith.

You were correct up until that last bit of “only accepted on faith”; What happened to Occam’s razor? The assumption that a hypothesis is false because of Occam’s razor is NOT “only accepted on faith” but rather accepted because of the logical principle of Occam's razor.

Assuming the existence of a 'God' is a very complex thing to assume exists because, depending on your religion, it has many assumed characteristics. For example, depending on your religion, you may assume it to be something immoral AND conscious with a mind AND it created the whole universe AND it is benevolent AND it is the only god etc -there I just listed only 5 of the assumptions (there will be more! ) that are typically implicitly assumed by assuming there is a God, thus, assuming there is a God is not making one assumption but MANY! And it takes only one of those assumption to be wrong for there to be no God -at least not the God of your assumed religion. Now, the point I am making here is that, given that none of these MANY assumptions are necessary to make a predicative model of reality (unlike, say, the assumption of the principle of induction ), and given there is no evidence that all these assumptions are correct, according to Occam’s razor, we must reject the assumption of there being a God as being highly improbable (to say the least! ) -so you see, the assumption that there is no God this is based on LOGIC NOT FAITH.

Let me put that in a simpler way:
why would you reject as extremely improbable that there is a conscious supernatural teacup orbiting Mars called “Marscup”?
Here I have just invented the word Marscup that, just like the word 'God' implicitly makes not one assumption but many.
I could rephrase the question as “why would you reject as extremely improbable that there is a Marscup?
-Answer that and you have your answer why we reject there being a God as being extremely improbably.

Originally posted by humy

Both of these are assumptions and neither can be proved, [b]only accepted on faith.

You were correct up until that last bit of “only accepted on faith”; What happened to Occam’s razor? The assumption that a hypothesis is false because of Occam’s razor is NOT “only accepted on faith” but rather accepted because of the logical princip ...[text shortened]... wer that and you have your answer why we reject there being a God as being extremely improbably.[/b]

So your religious beliefs are based on Occam's razor, who cares? Rationalize it as you will, but assumptions are assumptions and must be made to come to a conclusion about things that you can't see first hand.

These assumptions are based on faith because they can't be proven.

Originally posted by Eladar
So your religious beliefs are based on Occam's razor, who cares? Rationalize it as you will, but assumptions are assumptions and must be made to come to a conclusion about things that you can't see first hand.

These assumptions are based on faith because they can't be proven.

Wrong.

On the existence of god/s there are three belief positions.

1) Belief in the existence of god/s
2) Absence of belief in the existence of god/s
3) Belief in the non-existence of gods.

1 is theism.
2 and 3 are both atheism.

1 and 3 are claims about the existence or otherwise of gods.
and thus require evidence sufficient to support and justify those
claims.

2 makes no claims whatsoever and is the default position in the
absence of evidence either way.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Wrong.

On the existence of god/s there are three belief positions.

1) Belief in the existence of god/s
2) Absence of belief in the existence of god/s
3) Belief in the non-existence of gods.

1 is theism.
2 and 3 are both atheism.

1 and 3 are claims about the existence or otherwise of gods.
and thus require evidence sufficient to support an ...[text shortened]... makes no claims whatsoever and is the default position in the
absence of evidence either way.

If you do make no claim about God's existence, but still claim that miracles can't be taking into consideration, then you are a hypocrite.

Originally posted by Eladar
So your religious beliefs are based on Occam's razor, who cares? Rationalize it as you will, but assumptions are assumptions and must be made to come to a conclusion about things that you can't see first hand.

These assumptions are based on faith because they can't be proven.

So your religious beliefs are based on Occam's razor

I have no religious beliefs and Occam's razor is not a religious belief but a known and generally undisputed principle of LOGIC that all reasonable and intelligent people implicitly (at least mainly implicitly ) use in their daily lives.

If you want to see some people that never use Occam's razor, you will have to search either in the mental asylums or in homes for the severely mentally retarded due to learning difficulties that will inevitably result from not ever using (usually implicitly ) this logical principle and, even then, I guess you would find it hard to find such a person.

Eladar; would you claim LOGIC to be "religious belief"?
(Because you make it sound like you might do so from your recent posts so I like you to clarify )

Originally posted by Eladar
If you do make no claim about God's existence, but still claim that miracles can't be taking into consideration, then you are a hypocrite.

I wouldn't say miracles can't happen, but miracles aren't a useful explanation since anything is potentially caused by a miracle and there is no way to verify whether something was caused by a miracle. Thus, miracles should be discounted as a possible explanation for natural phenomena on the grounds of being metaphysical.

Originally posted by Eladar
If you do make no claim about God's existence, but still claim that miracles can't be taking into consideration, then you are a hypocrite.

Isn't a 'miracle', BY DEFINITION, VERY unlikely and therefore generally doesn't happen?
Obviously, THAT it why it is perfectly reasonable to not to take "miracles' "into consideration"! ( unless we have seen some or have indisputable evidence for some, which we haven't )

Even if we see a 'miracle' in the sense of seeing an extremely unlikely event such as the same person winning the lottery ten times in a row, so what? What does that tell us other than what we already know which is that even highly improbable events mathematically can happen? As for truly impossible events, we haven't seen any and, by the definition of "impossible", the default assumption must rationally be they don't happen (if you can call that an "assumption"!!! )

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
I wouldn't say miracles can't happen, but miracles aren't a useful explanation since anything is potentially caused by a miracle and there is no way to verify whether something was caused by a miracle. Thus, miracles should be discounted as a possible explanation for natural phenomena on the grounds of being metaphysical.

Of course you do, you want to believe that your position isn't based on faith. It makes you feel better about how you view reality.

Originally posted by humy
Isn't a 'miracle', BY DEFINITION, VERY unlikely and therefore generally doesn't happen?

I love your reasoning. lol

Originally posted by Eladar
Of course you do, you want to believe that your position isn't based on faith. It makes you feel better about how you view reality.

Not really, I just like to understand how things work, and "it's a miracle!" doesn't contribute to that.

Originally posted by KazetNagorra
Not really, I just like to understand how things work, and "it's a miracle!" doesn't contribute to that.

If you understand how things work, then you will understand how life can evolve if at one time life did not exist. You will be able to reproduce how it works because you know how it is done.

Originally posted by Eladar
If you understand how things work, then you will understand how life can evolve if at one time life did not exist. You will be able to reproduce how it works because you know how it is done.

If you understand how things work, then you will understand how life can evolve if at one time life did not exist.

What has life evolving got to do with “ if at one time life did not exist”? You do know that life did not evolve when it did not exist because that is a contradiction and nobody claims or thinks otherwise, right?

Extremely hypothetically, if there was never a beginning of time and if life always existed and never was created from none life, that would not in anyway contradict evolution theory nor hinder the evolution process Although you may then have a bit of a job of explaining the fossil record that appears to indicate a general trend of increasing complexity of life, it is a general misconception that evolution necessarily results in increasing complexity of life because sometimes the opposite happens! (such as in the evolution of snakes which involved the loss of legs )

You will be able to reproduce how it works because you know how it is done.

that is a false inference. How does it logically follow from “ you know how it is done” that “you will be able to reproduce how it works”? It may be possible to reproduce something if you know how it works but not necessarily so because there is no logical contradiction in knowing how something works and NOT being able to reproduce it.
For example, I actually understand how a microchip works (part of my university courses ) but, even if I had unlimited resources but excluding experts and excluding expert knowledge of how to manufacture it (because I don't have such knowledge ) , I would be unable to reproduce a microchip because me knowing how it works does not equate with me knowing how to make it and, if I don't know how to make it, I cannot (and it probably would take me more than my lifetime to figure out how to do it )

In the case of evolution, obviously it would be totally impractical to evolve complex life by US evolving it just like in nature since that would take millions or even billions of years of selective breeding -but that doesn't stop us discovering how evolution works or how biology works and there is no contradiction there with that.

Originally posted by Eladar
If you understand how things work, then you will understand how life can evolve if at one time life did not exist. You will be able to reproduce how it works because you know how it is done.

Wanting to understand things isn't the same as understanding everything. Alas, I only have a solid understanding of my own field of expertise, and even in that field there are many people who understand much more than I do. Saying "it's a miracle" doesn't contribute to understanding; in fact, it's the same as saying you don't want to understand how it works.