Disproving a Personal God with Science

wellwisher said:
Children are probabally afraid to play near you, Dywyddyr, so you may never have observed this child's play.

Little children are more natural than adults, since they are not yet taught how to act. They can be a wild little animals for a few years since it is too cute to resist. If you wish to learn some natural things, observe small children. Their imagination interaction is natural, with children treating this more seriously than adult role play. You can hurt their feelings in you insult their friend. Word of caution if you run the experiment.

Run an experiment to collect your own data rather than memorize and repeat. First try to smile and not be grouchy. Then try to find some small children, who are still allowed to be natural. Ask simiple questions to see if they are natural athiests or do they believe in a world without the known natural laws. After a certain age, these same children will homogenize more into social uniformity with stock answers. Once the answers are not diverse and uniquely cute, and become stock, natural is being lost.

The next study, would be to define the age of atheism. Are these children more natural or more synthetic? Then tell us the results.
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I do think religion is more natural than atheism. But walking is more natural than going to the moon.
 
No, he's exactly right for a change! Great post, wellwisher. That's exactly what's going on, Religion is a form of neoteny, the continuation of infantile traits into adulthood.
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That is one way to look at it. But say the same factors, that are natural within the child, which create the interactive rapport, were maturing at the same rate as the person. Their interaction will continue to advance until it is an adult version of an inner voice.

What your saying is similar to a child just learning to walk. This could mean walking is also neoteny where infantile traits go into adulthood. But what we observe with walking is this simple childhood first step matures with age until infintile walking, in some, can become ballet.

A person who denies the inner voice of the child and tries to get him to repress it would atrophy that interaction. To them this is indeed stuck in childhood.

This would be like being taught not to walk at age 4 even though it was cue before that. Children can then be taught to make fun of the walkers and the adults will be proud. They all crawl on their bellies, full of pride, calling the walkers pathological. We got it backwards.
 
I thought this thread was about disproving a personal God.
But if you guys want to discuss religion, that's another thing altogether.

As for religions being infantile, didn't Jesus say that unless you become as a child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven? What do you suppose that means?
If you suppose it means you won't go to heaven after you die physically, you may be right. However, logically, it also means you may be wrong.

What to do? Perhaps stop supposing?

Nah.
 
wellwisher said:
That is one way to look at it. But say the same factors, that are natural within the child, which create the interactive rapport, were maturing at the same rate as the person. Their interaction will continue to advance until it is an adult version of an inner voice.
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What "interaction"?

This would be like being taught not to walk at age 4 even though it was cue before that. Children can then be taught to make fun of the walkers and the adults will be proud. They all crawl on their bellies, full of pride, calling the walkers pathological. We got it backwards.
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False analogy therefore a false conclusion.

This is about as "smart" as your "animals don't have a god therefore atheists must be part animal" claim.
 
wellwisher said:
That is one way to look at it. But say the same factors, that are natural within the child, which create the interactive rapport, were maturing at the same rate as the person. Their interaction will continue to advance until it is an adult version of an inner voice.

What your saying is similar to a child just learning to walk. This could mean walking is also neoteny where infantile traits go into adulthood. But what we observe with walking is this simple childhood first step matures with age until infintile walking, in some, can become ballet.

A person who denies the inner voice of the child and tries to get him to repress it would atrophy that interaction. To them this is indeed stuck in childhood.

This would be like being taught not to walk at age 4 even though it was cue before that. Children can then be taught to make fun of the walkers and the adults will be proud. They all crawl on their bellies, full of pride, calling the walkers pathological. We got it backwards.
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Children also like to paint the walls with their own shit, it doesn't mean we shouldn't grow out of it.
arfa brane said:
I thought this thread was about disproving a personal God.
But if you guys want to discuss religion, that's another thing altogether.

As for religions being infantile, didn't Jesus say that unless you become as a child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven? What do you suppose that means?
If you suppose it means you won't go to heaven after you die physically, you may be right. However, logically, it also means you may be wrong.

What to do? Perhaps stop supposing?

Nah.
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I think Jesus meant that we need to give up all preconceptions and look at the world as if for the first time.
 
Sciwriter Post #19:

. . . . well . . . perhaps not photons, but maybe some kind of quantum, quark, or string stuff . . . Google "Quantum Spirit" sometime . . . ..
 
spidergoat said:
I do have personal anecdotal experience with enlightenment, which was accompanied by a strange clarity of vision. I think that's what happens when minds (the doors of perception) are opened. It stops filtering what it sees and sees more directly. I cannot verify this scientifically, but I don't think that's important. The fact that this can happen to an atheist following an atheist practice seems to support that this light isn't actually God but some by-product of altered consciousness.
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This is really going somewhere.

I cannot verify this scientifically, but I don't think that's important.
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That may be misspeak? It seems very important that one arguing for the dismissal of things that can not be verified by science is here stating that this moment of clarity was very important but could not be verified. Call it moment of clarity, experience of God, or mind's light, it sure sounds like the same thing to me, just called a different way.

Your altered consciousness is arfa brane's light. The difference is that you filter that experience through the lens of faith that says "there is no God ergo that was not God" while the theist says "that was God".
 
spidergoat said:
I do think religion is more natural than atheism. But walking is more natural than going to the moon.
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That is pretty good there Spidey . I like that . Communal animals congregate. Looter if the cops don't stop em. How do you stop animals from congregating? Should we? Could cause an environmental impact ?
 
familydoc said:
This is really going somewhere.



That may be misspeak? It seems very important that one arguing for the dismissal of things that can not be verified by science is here stating that this moment of clarity was very important but could not be verified. Call it moment of clarity, experience of God, or mind's light, it sure sounds like the same thing to me, just called a different way.

Your altered consciousness is arfa brane's light. The difference is that you filter that experience through the lens of faith that says "there is no God ergo that was not God" while the theist says "that was God".
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Yes, that's exactly correct. I'm suggesting that the experience is human in nature and not specific to a culture, and that different cultures interpret it within that context. If I can offer a reasonable naturalistic explanation, then that beats a supernatural one every time, due to the robustness of the logical basis for empiricism and it's demonstrated power.
 
Originally Posted by spidergoat

I do have personal anecdotal experience with enlightenment, which was accompanied by a strange clarity of vision. I think that's what happens when minds (the doors of perception) are opened. It stops filtering what it sees and sees more directly.
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Dude, oh yeah, the acid was really fuckin good.
 
spidergoat said:
Yes, that's exactly correct. I'm suggesting that the experience is human in nature and not specific to a culture, and that different cultures interpret it within that context. If I can offer a reasonable naturalistic explanation, then that beats a supernatural one every time, due to the robustness of the logical basis for empiricism and it's demonstrated power.
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go go spideys go go spideys go . Your on a roll , Rock and Roll
 
Signal said:
"To have control over rememberance and forgetfulness" means both to bring about that people remember, and that they forget.
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Correct, in this case this particular god is unable to bring about rememberance after a specific date.
 
Signal said:
It is part of the definition of God; or at least a logical implication to the usual definition of God (omnimax, The Supreme, etc.).
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You are using a definition that LG did not define, so it's moot.

Signal said:
To recap:

(I should have added to my question -
I take it you are of the view that God's omniscience and omnipotence and human free will are mutually exclusive?)


You seemed to have come to the conclusion that if God controls what individual beings remember, know and forget, then they have no choice.

Is this your conclusion?
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Of course, because this particular god would control it. Not reality, not you, but a 3rd party entity.
 
arfa brane said:
And what, told my mother who told me?
The question was how do I know, how can I be sure I can see and hear, not how can my mother or a doctor.
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Place your hand in front of your face. Can you see it? Snap your fingers. Can you hear it? Are the results consistent, persistent, and non-contradictory? It's not rocket science.

arfa brane said:
A presence? What kind of a presence?
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Not a kind of presence... just presence. It's there (vs. being absent).

arfa brane said:
What accepts that which is consistent, and persistent? Or contradictory?
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Subjectively, anything that wants to. Objectively, anything that requires information from anything else.
 
Crunchy Cat said:
Not a kind of presence... just presence. It's there (vs. being absent).
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How do you know it's "there"? You mean it's something that "informs" you it's there? Where is "there"?
 
spidergoat said:
I'm suggesting that the experience is human in nature and not specific to a culture
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But every human, including you, identifies with a culture.
This is probably why religions exist.

What kind of experience isn't culture-specific? You mean: "we all enjoy sunsets", type of thing?
 
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