Seems you are behind on your reading, because that proof is already established.
Atheists & Christians in the USA
- Thread starter Fraggle Rocker
- Start date
Seems you are behind on your reading, because that proof is already established.
how come i don't ever here you guys cite the 'in the absence of empirical proof any theory is possible' (i know i am seriously paraphrasing it..)
Empirical proof? I'd be happy for evidence...
Anyway, I don't agree that in the absence of any empirical evidence, any theory is possible. I'd probably go so far as to say that in the absence of empirical evidence NO hypothesis is very useful.
kx000
Valued Senior Member
Enlighten me.
Well, there are these places called 'Libraries',... and books are numbered using the 'Dewey' system, Science books are labelled in the 500's, so you'll need to locate that section, and then go read some.
I suggest you start with basic physics, and work your way up, start at 5th grade texts dealing with Astronomy.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
I'm an atheist in the ontological sense that my working assumption is that nothing corresponding to the traditional religious deities exists in reality. I'm reasonably confident that's the case.
Part of the reason for that ontological atheism is my epistemological agnosticism. I don't think that the traditional religions' claims about their own special revelations are credible and I don't know of any way that human beings can come to know about what are ostensibly transcendental things.
So that's the answer to your question. I don't have faith in any "higher powers" because I don't know of any higher powers to have faith in. Nor do I know of any place called "heaven" or know what somebody might have to do to get into such a place, if it existed.
Obviously I have some familiarity with what the Christian and other religious traditions say about this stuff, but I'm not convinced that the ancient religious traditions possess any real answers to the big questions.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
There are lots of more or less free-lance religious people out there. Millions of them.
In terms of ARIS, the American Religious Identification Survey (the original topic of the thread), I think that free-lance Christian believers would probably fall into the 'Christian, Generic' category. ARIS reports that this is the fourth largest religious grouping in the US, with 32.441 million people, 14.2% of the adult population. My impression is that the contents of this grouping are heterogeneous, ranging from store-front fundamentalist churches to virtual non-believers who nevertheless still want to label themselves 'Christians'.
Many free-lance religious people explore more broadly than that and don't just restrict themselves to Christianity. That's the signature of the 'New Age' tendency, a kind of religious eclecticism where people adopt selected aspects of whatever traditions appeal to them, typically ending up with kind of a personal mix that's unique to them. ARIS classifies these people in the 'New Religious Movements and Other' category. This numbers 2.804 million people and 1.2% of the American adult population.
It's interesting and significant that while the 'Christian Generic' category has held steady at about 14% since 1990, the non-Christian 'NRM and Other' category has grown rapidly, from 0.8% in 1990 to 1.2% in 2008, a rise of 50% in percentage terms while more than doubling in numerical terms.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
For starters, you mean "hypothesis." In science a theory is a hypothesis that has been proven true beyond a reasonable doubt. (Scientists don't phrase it that way but there are so many legal dramas on TV that more Americans know legal language than scientific.)
It is certainly correct to say that anything which has not been proven impossible is (duh?) possible. Nonetheless, the Rule of Laplace is used to allocate science's scarce resources in the most productive way. Laplace's original statement was: "The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness." Carl Sagan restated this as: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." I have fleshed this out to: "Extraordinary assertions must be supported by extraordinary evidence before we are obliged to treat them with respect."
Without this rule, scientists would be run ragged debunking every half-wit hypothesis, and they'd never get any real work done. Civilization would grind to a halt while we patiently tend to a five-mile queue of crackpots. Instead, anything which, indeed, may be possible, but clearly has a probability expressed as a decimal point with quite a long string of intervening zeroes before the first significant digit, will not be accepted as a project by the community of scientists unless its supporter is willing to provide the funding. Otherwise the responsibility falls upon the supporter.
Note that this is not a rejection of the hypothesis, but a prioritization.
Typical hypotheses that can be immediately categorized as "extraordinary:"
- I know that XYZ was discovered so long ago that it's been a fundamental component of the canon of science for centuries, is in all the textbooks, and has been tested aggressively for all those centuries without ever coming close to being falsified. Nonetheless, it is indeed false.
- I may only be in my sophomore year of physics, but I've found the flaw in the Theory of Relativity.
- I know what science says, but my religion's holy book disagrees.
- This came to me in a dream last night and I need the money to test it.
- My father was a very wise man and he always insisted that this is true.
- I just found this tortilla with a perfect image of Eve's face on it. Yes I understand that no portraits of Eve exist, but I'd know her anywhere.
I'm sure I already posted this on this thread. The Big Bang can be seen as nothing more or less than a local reversal of entropy: organization exists where there was none a moment ago. The Second Law of Thermodynamics clearly allows for spatially and temporally local reversals of entropy. Yes, it appears to be a rather large reversal (and what, pray tell, do we have for a reference standard anyway? It's the only one we know of!) but the Second Law does not impose any maximum size on them. For all we know, Big Bangs may occur at rare intervals, (one googolplex years?) at enormous distances from each other (one googolplex light-years?). We'd certainly have no way of ever knowing!
i couldn't remember it the way i heard it..do you know which one i am referring?
yes,but with proper respect shown to the 'crackpots',they can be educated.(some anyway..)
cute..and understood..
eck..money screws the ideal up..
noted..
that says it hasn't been tested to be true ..(just because X=1 and Y=2 does not make C=3)..?
and a chance that in the discussion to educate the flaw,both would learn..
an excuse to not think.
and usually everyone hears just the 'I need money' part..(specially when you have to prioritize..what better measure?
)actually it would be my Mom..(she was never wrong..
) hmm..could work with the Elvis potato,the cheese shaped like Mary,and of course the Jesus shaped bacon..
kx000
Valued Senior Member
You sciency fucks (thats from the bottom, or top.. idk the good part of my heart) are over complicating it. If you don't belong to a religion you have no reason to follow its guidlines. A religion is nothing more than a social club. The Vatican has hosted a satanic Pope, and Cardinals, this Im sure of.
Faith is the name of the game. We will never disprove God, never ever ever never never never ever.
Faith is the name of the game. We will never disprove God, never ever ever never never never ever.
That's an attitude that will get you far on this forum and I can't say I approve of your choice of social club and faith is nothing more than pathetic hope that you are right in your belief.
You might get roughed up a bit on a science forum but did you really expect anything else, when you flaunt your belief in God the way you do? But think about this, as atheist we had to grow up in a religious world, that wasn't much fun either and still isn't if I want go about about flaunting my atheism. The only atheist I know are right here on this science forum. This is my social club and as far as God goes there's nothing to disprove, and if you want to believe in the tooth fairy I don't really care very much as long as you keep it to yourself.
kx000
Valued Senior Member
Alright, perfect. /thread.
Insert deity here
Registered Member
The responsibility for proof falls on the one making the claim of the existence of something. As for disproving God, we should never try to disprove a negative.
kx000
Valued Senior Member
No, I have a world to straighten out, literally. I have far more important things to do than prove something I know is there. If you can't see it, I can't show you.
That's only because it's not a real idea.
kx000
Valued Senior Member
This argument is pointless. I'm right, your wrong. I win!
It's not pointless, I made a point.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Then you're not much of a scientist, are you? I wonder why you're even here.
All science is peer-reviewed. You have to be able to show what you've found to others. If not the thing itself, then the empirical and/or logical evidence that plainly proves its reality. If we can't see it, then no one is obliged to treat your assertion with respect. That's how science works. It's no different from the precocious sophomore who insists that he's found the flaw in the Theory of Relativity, and when his professor reviews his calculations he finds it riddled with math errors.
Well actually it is different, because that kid at least tried to show us evidence. You guys just insist that we should take your word for it! Yeah right. And I've got a really sweet piece of real estate in Florida that I'll let you have for just $100K. It's lovely, you can take my word for it.
This is why we have no respect for religion (and all other types of supernaturalism) on SciForums. No one has ever presented any evidence that withstood a peer review.
And worse yet, they don't understand why that's a problem!
kx000
Valued Senior Member
God IS NOT SCIENCE. You know God doesn't exist.. But you have no understanding what so ever of what God is, only human speculation on his workings. Why do you even question it, I mean you don't have to prove the negative, right? The only difference between you and I is I have faith in the existence, you have faith in none.
God is not to be questioned, only accepted, or not accepted. Make your choice.
Furthermore, if there were no God I would be God, so therefore there is a God.*/thread
Science can just as much answer questions about god as it can about bees. If god has an effect on the physical world, it can be studied.