Peter Higgs criticises Richard Dawkins

Originally posted by kd2acz
I am not interested in getting dragged into a debate over some perceived notion that you have of my motivations, I assure you there is nothing afoul. I will make no apologies if some of my views are similar to others here, Christians are likely to have the same ideas about things, this is an obvious observation. This is no different than some of your views ...[text shortened]... iendship, have a little dialog, camaraderie and maybe even play a game of chess. Thats all.

I am disappointed. I thought you might have some sinister motive, like bringing folks closer to belief in Christ, at the very least. 🙁

Originally posted by RJHinds
I am disappointed. I thought you might have some sinister motive, like bringing folks closer to belief in Christ, at the very least. 🙁

Who sorry?

Oh! I get it now.

The fictitous character created 2,100 years ago. The 'Harry Potter' of the day.

He sure could turn water into wine, just like Harry can pick up a wand and fly, and a character named Moses who could part 2 seas by telling them what to do.

Great books! Great fiction.

-m.

Originally posted by mikelom
Who sorry?

Oh! I get it now.

The fictitous character created 2,100 years ago. The 'Harry Potter' of the day.

He sure could turn water into wine, just like Harry can pick up a wand and fly, and a character named Moses who could part 2 seas by telling them what to do.

Great books! Great fiction.

-m.

No, you still don't get it. 😏

Originally posted by RJHinds
No, you still don't get it. 😏

Oh! I get it alright, that being what I get that is on offer, if I like it.

I don't always accept what is offered though, and your foolish offerings, well for even the most thoughtless of needing improvement...... you'd simply be inihilated for offering crab paste on a sandwich, upon which you bought the crab paste from a chemist! That's tantamount to your offering.

-m. 😛

Originally posted by RJHinds
I will explain one thing to your dumbasss so you know better the next time. There is no talking snake mentioned in the Holy Bible. There was Satan who, disguised as a Serpent, tempted Eve in the garden of Eden. No talking snakes. Got it? 😏

I would assume the serpent disguise had to talk in order to temp little evie. So it was in fact, a talking snake. That is the only conclusion little Eve could come to, not knowing about shape changers.

Originally posted by Suzianne
It's because people love to live in the land of black and white, where things are clearly defined and they are told just what to believe and what not to believe.

Creationists claim evolution is wrong and the universe was created as told in the Bible.

Atheists (who by and large tout science as one reason why they cannot have a belief in God) claim scie ...[text shortened]... , there are always going to be less people with open minds than with closed minds.

With all we disagree on, we have to agree on that one. We as humans cannot just arbitrarily say with certainty there is no god and a true believer can certainly come to the conclusion like yours. I have no problem with people who recognize the truth of the universe, that is to say, its being some 14 billion years old as far as we can determine and if you agree with that but just say your god did it but way back then and designed the universe so we would come about, no problem there.

Of course, you would have to also realize the universe is a pretty big place 🙂 and therefore has room for billions of other planets out there just like Earth with some kind of intelligent life on them also.

Which doesn't automatically make it happen just because I speculate about the possibility but there is also no automatic un-possibility for it either.

I will mention the count is up over 30 now of planets detected near our solar system, like within a few hundred light years, that show they are within the 'goldilocks' zone.

With 30 possible life bearing planets that close it is all but certain, at least for me, life and intelligent life HAS to be present somewhere in the universe and more likely somewhere in our own galaxy, which if true, would imply some in almost every galaxy which now we see numbers in the billions alone.

So the conclusion of all that is this: if your god made our universe for us, it also made it for countless other life forms and therefore we are not, in fact, the crown of creation like fundies like to think us. We would be, as a species, just one of many many other intelligent life forms with unknown abilities, some not as good as mankind, but some much better in some aspects, like intelligence, endurance, strength, ability to fight off infection, better vision, hearing and so forth.

Originally posted by sonhouse
I would assume the serpent disguise had to talk in order to temp little evie. So it was in fact, a talking snake. That is the only conclusion little Eve could come to, not knowing about shape changers.

That serpent was not a snake at the time. It was the most cunning of all the creatures in the garden. The serpent did not crawl on its belly like a snake until after God cursed it. Read the Holy Bible.

Originally posted by sonhouse
With all we disagree on, we have to agree on that one. We as humans cannot just arbitrarily say with certainty there is no god and a true believer can certainly come to the conclusion like yours. I have no problem with people who recognize the truth of the universe, that is to say, its being some 14 billion years old as far as we can determine and if you ag ...[text shortened]... ce, endurance, strength, ability to fight off infection, better vision, hearing and so forth.

Speculating on the age of the universe and evolution does not make those speculations correct. We should go by the authority of the One that knows, not someone who speculates.

Originally posted by RJHinds
Speculating on the age of the universe and evolution does not make those speculations correct. We should go by the authority of the One that knows, not someone who speculates.

Actually, I was talking to someone with a more or less open mind. You were not part of that conversation.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Actually, I was talking to someone with a more or less open mind. You were not part of that conversation.

It is hard to have an open mind about something when you know the truth. 😏

HalleluYah !!! Praise the Lord! Holy! Holy! Holy!

Originally posted by RJHinds
It is hard to have an open mind about something when you know the truth. 😏

HalleluYah !!! Praise the Lord! Holy! Holy! Holy!

Lets analyze that. So for you, truth closes your mind. Glad you can admit that.

So what happens if you find out your truth is total BS? I can guess it would not mean you would all of a sudden have an open mind, instead you would go nuts, kind of like what you are now....

Originally posted by sonhouse
Lets analyze that. So for you, truth closes your mind. Glad you can admit that.

So what happens if you find out your truth is total BS? I can guess it would not mean you would all of a sudden have an open mind, instead you would go nuts, kind of like what you are now....

You are acting like the devil again. I did not admit to not having an open mind on everything. I said, "It is hard to have an open mind about something when you know the truth. I have an open mind on things that I don't know the truth about. But you seem to be the most obstinate person I have ever talked to.

Let me see if I can get this through that thick skull of yours. Truth is truth. Truth is not something someone owns. I don't have my truth and you have your truth. If it is not true, it is false. Creation is true and evolution is false, plain and simple. 😏

HalleluYah !!! Praise the Lord! Glory be to God! Holy! Holy! Holy!

Originally posted by RJHinds
You are acting like the devil again. I did not admit to not having an open mind on everything. I said, "It is hard to have an open mind about something when you know the truth. I have an open mind on things that I don't know the truth about. But you seem to be the most obstinate person I have ever talked to.

Let me see if I can get this through that th ...[text shortened]... , plain and simple. 😏

HalleluYah !!! Praise the Lord! Glory be to God! Holy! Holy! Holy!

Truth is what matches reality.

In reality there is no god.
There was no creator.
And evolution has been observed and confirmed many times over.

You have a closed (and small) mind.

You have no truth.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Truth is what matches reality.

In reality there is no god.
There was no creator.
And evolution has been observed and confirmed many times over.

You have a closed (and small) mind.

You have no truth.

Perhaps you are just as obstinate as sonhouse. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

"What is truth?" is a very simple question. Of course, answering it isn't so simple. We can offer definitions like "Truth is that which conforms to reality, fact, or actuality." But this basic definition is not complete because its definition is open to interpretation and a wide variety of applications. What is reality? What is fact? What is actuality? How does perception effect truth? We could offer answers for each of these questions, but then we could again ask similar questions of those answers.

http://carm.org/what-is-truth

Originally posted by RJHinds
Perhaps you are just as obstinate as sonhouse. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

"What is truth?" is a very simple question. Of course, answering it isn't so simple. We can offer definitions like "Truth is that which conforms to reality, fact, or actuality." But this basic definition is not complete because its definition is open to interpret ...[text shortened]... hen we could again ask similar questions of those answers.

http://carm.org/what-is-truth

A "True Belief" about "Reality" is a belief that accurately matches reality.

This is true regardless of what kind of reality actually exists.


http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth

Truth http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Truth


Correspondence between map and territory.

Alfred Tarski defined truth in terms of an infinite family of sentences such as:

"The sentence 'snow is white' is true if and only if snow is white."

To understand whether a belief is true, we need (only) to understand what possible states of the world would make it true or false,
and then ask directly about the world.

'Truth' is a very simple concept, understood perfectly well by three-year-olds, but often made unnecessarily complicated by adults.

Map and territory http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Map_and_territory

Less confusing than saying "belief and reality", "map and territory" reminds us that a map of Texas is not the same thing as Texas itself.
Saying "map" also dispenses with possible meanings of "belief" apart from "representations of some part of reality".

Since our predictions don't always come true, we need different words to describe the thingy that generates our predictions and the thingy
that generates our experimental results. The first thingy is called "belief", the second thingy "reality".

Epistemic rationality: http://lesswrong.com/lw/31/what_do_we_mean_by_rationality/
Believing, and updating on evidence, so as to systematically improve the correspondence between your map and the territory.
The art of obtaining beliefs that correspond to reality as closely as possible.
This correspondence is commonly termed "truth" or "accuracy", and we're happy to call it that.

What is Evidence http://lesswrong.com/lw/jl/what_is_evidence/

........

Walking along the street, your shoelaces come untied. Shortly thereafter, for some odd reason, you start believing your shoelaces are untied.
Light leaves the Sun and strikes your shoelaces and bounces off; some photons enter the pupils of your eyes and strike your retina; the energy of the
photons triggers neural impulses; the neural impulses are transmitted to the visual-processing areas of the brain; and there the optical information is
processed and reconstructed into a 3D model that is recognized as an untied shoelace. There is a sequence of events, a chain of cause and effect,
within the world and your brain, by which you end up believing what you believe. The final outcome of the process is a state of mind which mirrors
the state of your actual shoelaces.

What is evidence? It is an event entangled, by links of cause and effect, with whatever you want to know about. If the target of your inquiry is your
shoelaces, for example, then the light entering your pupils is evidence entangled with your shoelaces. This should not be confused with the technical
sense of "entanglement" used in physics—here I'm just talking about "entanglement" in the sense of two things that end up in correlated states because
of the links of cause and effect between them.

Not every influence creates the kind of "entanglement" required for evidence. It's no help to have a machine that beeps when you enter winning lottery
numbers, if the machine also beeps when you enter losing lottery numbers. The light reflected from your shoes would not be useful evidence about your
shoelaces, if the photons ended up in the same physical state whether your shoelaces were tied or untied.

To say it abstractly: For an event to be evidence about a target of inquiry, it has to happen differently in a way that's entangled with the different possible
states of the target. (To say it technically: There has to be Shannon mutual information between the evidential event and the target of inquiry, relative to
your current state of uncertainty about both of them.) ..........