The kind of experience that destroys culture. When it's illusory edifice crumbles. I hope you are that lucky.
Disproving a Personal God with Science
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The kind of experience that destroys culture. When it's illusory edifice crumbles. I hope you are that lucky.
Unable. Remember, his god manipulates your memory so you can achieve your deserved desires. This person cannot achieve anything, he cannot remember anything, and it's all thanks to brain damage. His god essentially cannot perform in the way it is claimed to.
If a person doesn't deserve to remember this or that, then, according to the reasoning thus far presented by LG, it is consistent that a person would be forgetful.
Woah. Heavy shit, bro.spidergoat said:
There's an experience that isn't specific to culture or "a" culture, that destroys it?
I don't count myself as being any luckier than anyone else, except for the usual "shit, I hope I don't end up like that" stuff.
Granted, but I remember it from other discussions.
Note that the usual experience of our rememberance, knowledge and fogetfulness is that they are limited to begin with - we are aware that we don't remember everything we would like to remember, we are aware that we don't have knowledge of everything we would like to have knowledge of, and we are aware that we don't forget everything we would like to forget.
Nevertheless, we still have some idea that we have free will and that we are independent to some degree.
what on earth makes you think he achieves nothing?
Reasonable naturalistic explanation for an experience (that you yourself have had) which science currently can not explain =/= scientific disproof (or proof).
That faith required of "scientific atheism" is that science will one day be able to explain all things related to the realm of the philosopher.
G.K. Chesterton: “Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative.”
As I made clear in the original post, I cannot disprove all gods, only a personal god, that is, one that listens to believers and changes things in the material world for the better.
As far as science explaining philosophy, I do think there is much it can do in this realm, but obviously much of philosophy is speculation, not based on empirical data.
I think the whole subject of light with relation to the Bible is a non-starter. Relating my experiences was a side-show, and I do not depend on it for my rejection of a personal God. I merely point out that theism does not have a monopoly on transcendent or spiritual experience, which is what would be expected if those experiences were experiences of god.
As far as science explaining philosophy, I do think there is much it can do in this realm, but obviously much of philosophy is speculation, not based on empirical data.
I think the whole subject of light with relation to the Bible is a non-starter. Relating my experiences was a side-show, and I do not depend on it for my rejection of a personal God. I merely point out that theism does not have a monopoly on transcendent or spiritual experience, which is what would be expected if those experiences were experiences of god.
Then this wasn't about disproving a personal god, but disproving that God is a glorified vending machine.
In theism, the qualifcator "personal" can have several meanings, some of them are:
1. that God is a person, as opposed to something that does not have a name and a face,
2. that the relationship between God and the individual is much like interpersonal relationships we are used to between people (such as being friends, parents, etc.), as opposed to a merely formal relationship (such as between the President and the average citizen).
If there is no measurable god effect, then what does he do? A measurable effect doesn't mean that he acts on demand, only that his actions have a minimum of consistency. This doesn't rule out an indifferent god.
That cannot be true, since the mechanisms for those things are fairly well known. There is just no place for him in those processes.
The mechanism of transcendent experience is not well known and (regardless of one's faith in god) may be manifestation of experience of god.
The experience itself is all the proof that the theist needs.
But we are back around the circle again, it's basically what one of the basic disagreements:
"God doesn't exist"
"What I experience is god"
"You can't prove that"
"You can't prove that"
"Your experience doesn't count"
"How can you say that"
"Science has all the answers"
"Science doesn't have all the answers, we are humans and subjective experience does count"
"You can't prove that"
"You can't prove that"...repeat with different examples to try to prove point.
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Except for "science has all the answers", that's about right. The point of this thread is to show what can be demonstrated empirically. I realize that personal experience is all the theist needs.
What you're saying here is, as long as you first define what is a personal god, you can "disprove" it.spidergoat said:
Why does your definition correspond to what is a personal god?
I think it's an example of something you can't explain, so you prefer to leave it in the too hard basket.
Expected by you, or by the people having the experiences? Or are you saying people who have such experiences should only be theists?
That's kind of ridiculous.
It's true that you can only disprove that which has been defined. But I think it's useful to show how science demonstrates that the God most people on Earth worship doesn't exist beyond a reasonable doubt.
As far as light, I think it's far to easy to explain. Again, why should I try to refute every interpretation of the Bible? I admit a deist interpretation also fits the data. But there must be millions of interpretations.
If religious experience only happened to certain religions or kinds of religions, that might be significant. I think it's reasonable to trust in reports that someone had an experience. We can know that something happened, but not exactly what it means. If someone I trusted tells me he sees a leprechaun, it's reasonable to conclude that he does see it, but not reasonable that he is seeing a physical manifestation of the mythical being, at least not without further evidence.
As far as light, I think it's far to easy to explain. Again, why should I try to refute every interpretation of the Bible? I admit a deist interpretation also fits the data. But there must be millions of interpretations.
If religious experience only happened to certain religions or kinds of religions, that might be significant. I think it's reasonable to trust in reports that someone had an experience. We can know that something happened, but not exactly what it means. If someone I trusted tells me he sees a leprechaun, it's reasonable to conclude that he does see it, but not reasonable that he is seeing a physical manifestation of the mythical being, at least not without further evidence.
The Bible defines God as light, in the gospel of St John at least.spidergoat said:
But you haven't managed to explain it yet.
If you can explain it, you would also be explaining all the other occurences of this definition. It seems to be a common theme; the definition can be found in other religious texts, it seems to be a fairly old idea.
Why can't you refute even one "interpretation" from the Bible? Why restrict the argument to the Bible?
Science can "prove", by forming theories and testing them experimentally, that the world is logical.
But we also dream, we experience a quite different world in dreams, which is illogical.
Why? And why is science unable to form any really definitive and testable theories about the dream state of consciousness? By which I mean, science can't predict what you will dream, or even tell you much about the content of dreams. Not surprisingly, perhaps, because science is about explaining logical causes and effects, not illogical ones.
Why do these two kinds of consciousness exist? Is it because, in order to see the "point" of logic, or "be logical" as it were, we also need to experience an absence of the same logic? Without the difference in experience informing our consciousness, logic wouldn't mean anything, because there would be nothing to compare it with?
So if all that flies, why does God have to have a logical explanation? Given that science claims light can ONLY be made of photons, it needs to explain how it's possible that we see images when we dream--what with, and how do we see anything in complete darkness? It's not logical, Jim.
Or perhaps the claim that light must be made of photons--and that's what the Bible must mean--is the illogical part. It claims, indirectly, that dreams are impossible.
Since I know I experience dreams, I also know that there is another kind of light, which is made of "brain stuff", or something. It can't be made of real scientific light though, that just doesn't make sense at all.
Unless, wait a sec, science has to accept that experience trumps empiricism. After all, without experience there wouldn't be any empiricism.
Of course, science depends on different individuals being able to report the same experience, and "record it". Unfortunately, dreams can't be recorded, so science has a problem, not people who have dreams.
But we also dream, we experience a quite different world in dreams, which is illogical.
Why? And why is science unable to form any really definitive and testable theories about the dream state of consciousness? By which I mean, science can't predict what you will dream, or even tell you much about the content of dreams. Not surprisingly, perhaps, because science is about explaining logical causes and effects, not illogical ones.
Why do these two kinds of consciousness exist? Is it because, in order to see the "point" of logic, or "be logical" as it were, we also need to experience an absence of the same logic? Without the difference in experience informing our consciousness, logic wouldn't mean anything, because there would be nothing to compare it with?
So if all that flies, why does God have to have a logical explanation? Given that science claims light can ONLY be made of photons, it needs to explain how it's possible that we see images when we dream--what with, and how do we see anything in complete darkness? It's not logical, Jim.
Or perhaps the claim that light must be made of photons--and that's what the Bible must mean--is the illogical part. It claims, indirectly, that dreams are impossible.
Since I know I experience dreams, I also know that there is another kind of light, which is made of "brain stuff", or something. It can't be made of real scientific light though, that just doesn't make sense at all.
Unless, wait a sec, science has to accept that experience trumps empiricism. After all, without experience there wouldn't be any empiricism.
Of course, science depends on different individuals being able to report the same experience, and "record it". Unfortunately, dreams can't be recorded, so science has a problem, not people who have dreams.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Perhaps your statement would hold if you could reproduce the process that transforms food stuffs into energy (like say transforming grass into milk) outside of the organs of a living entity.
The theist, yes.
Perhaps one first needs to be a theist, and only then can one have those experiences.