Katazia said:
If you use an irrational methodology how do you know the conclusion is valid? Can you demonstrate an alternative proven better method for establishing truth and knowledge?
I didn't propose an irrational methodology either. You're stuck in a rational-irrational loop. Observation, experience and reality comes first, and only
then we try to understand what happened. That's how empirical science developed. Something like history - and most aspects of human experience - are not reproduceable or measureable. Does that mean nothing ever happened or was ever learned until rational methodologies came along? When someone sees a tree fall in the woods and there's no one else to see it - I'm inclined to judge the character of the person before I dismiss what he's seen. Can you measure someone's character scientifically; can you use a rational methodology for establishing his credibility?
There isn't a better method for establishing scientific claims, I agree. But is c20 really making a scientific claim when he says his life has changed dramatically? If you had to follow the measureble aspects and statistics of his life on a chart, you'd have to say it's impossible for him to have changed that much. That's why people sometimes resort to the word "miracle". I don't think it was a miracle - what happened to c20 was a perfectly natural and reasonable result of when God comes into your life.
And people in insane asylums have vivid images and hear voices and they also have no doubt of what they are seeing or hearing. If we are seeking truth then a personal testimony is inadequate without independent verification. Otherwise how do you distinguish the claim from the more credible and believable answer that it is a delusion?
That's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If I rejected reason I would belong in an asylum myself. I could independently verify what c20 experienced, and that's just one of hundreds of similar testimonies I've heard. You should see the expression on someone's face when they find out that what they experienced of God
has be independently experienced by someone else. We're not trying to distinguish scientific claims, that's why we have scientists. But truth has never limited itself to either science or religion, as theists and scientists since time began will be able to affirm.
And here you have the rather clear evidence of a car that can be independently verified, the result and a conclusion can be formed by a rational argument based on real evidence. The claim that “voices spoke to me from above” has alternative and more credible natural explanations. Without any form of independent verification there is no logical reason to believe the claim, and every reason not to.
But that doesn’t make it true that a god did it? It is simply a non-credible and unverifiable claim.
Once again you're artificially removing what God does from how He did it. God doesn't only come into the picture when reason has failed. But if rational methodology was as powerful as you make it out, then it would be able to predict the future. Sometime we need to experience a future we could not predict to realize that God is involved. And it doesn't need to be a miracle, you only need to realize that explaining something doesn't really explain why it happened in the first place.
Sure, you can measure c20's brainwaves, plot his behaviour, conduct rhethorical analyses, but will you ever be able to tell his parents or his friends why he's changed so much? If you called it a mental aberration they would disagree.
A real effect created by belief that in this case has a negative effect. What’s your point? Doesn’t this prove my point that effects can be the result of mental aberrations or the conviction that something false is true?
Yes, beliefs do change your behaviour. So does belief that reason somehow prevents delusion, or that belief in God is unreasonable. That's why we have communities, churches, friends, and laws. But making reason the only common thing between people is very narrow-minded. I believe you've met RosaMagika.
Why not? If you firmly believe that something false is actually true then you will change your life accordingly.
False beliefs should be corrected with love and understanding. Neither God nor science condones them.
There can be no progress if religion ruled everything since the only answer religion offers is that God did it and there is little point looking any further. Progress has only occurred when individuals have questioned the status quo and looked deeper. There are cases however where monks had been allowed to conduct research in order to better reveal the wonders of the lord. Their findings, of course had to fit in with Church doctrine. Unfortunately Galileo and those of similar ilk paid the ultimate price for defying the church and insisting on truth rather than fantasy.
The answer that God did it is no more satisfying than "evolution did it". Do scientists stop their research everytime they find something they were looking for. Don't make the mistake of thinking all non-religious people are ambitious scientists. And I wouldn't be warranted to say that someone who believes in the supernatural is more likely to discover facts that pertain to things that scientists used to categorize as "supernatural" and therefore avoided, even though I'm tempted to.
Strangely enough the greatest technological developments were achieved because of wars and not the reverse. Although I wish it were the opposite.
But that doesn't mean you condone wars, does it? Now how is that "reasonable", if progress is preferable?
Let me make my view plainer – I want the same as every theist – immortality.
Looking for immortality and believing God will grant it are different things. We might achieve near biological immortality and still be destructible. How will you overcome that? It will probably undergo a lot of testing it in the great laboratory of war, and at what cost? Will religion be able to avoid that war, or once again be blamed for it?