then your negligence of key terms renders your so-called empirical investigation half-assed ....
Disproving a Personal God with Science
- Thread starter spidergoat
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We can not prove that the Strings within String Theory exist. The question becomes why do so many scientists have faith in that which we can't prove? One reason is, intutitively, this faith is leading them to their string promised land in the future. The charisma of faith has innovative science applications.
In my experience, people who primarily learn by copying, find that there is no need for faith, other than faith in some form of external free market and political manipulation. That comes from tangible sources even if an illusiin. If you are trying to be creative, and will need to leave the box, you will have to confront the unknown and will need to have faith in a conclusion that is not there yet. You can not depend on humans, since they will try to undermine out of fear of novelty.
Once the final fruit of faith is defined, the copiers once again get to see the tangible and therefore have no need for the charisma of faith. They may wait for the herd leaders to say OK, then they copy.
Faith in God is template for all forms of faith, even for science ideas outside the box of copier traditions. When you begin an innovation, the future is not tangible or even proveable. You will need to have faith so yoy can work the hunch that the future will define itself. The copier will never have to leave the box, so they have little need to make use of faith.
A good analogy would have been the city dwellers and those with the pioneer spirit, who would leave their homes to go west during the American expansion. Those who remain have no need for faith in a dream, that will inspire them to face hardship on their way to their promised land. The copiers get to remain tethered in the local politics and will work hard to undermine those who try to dream, since they do know how to dream. There are certain parts of the brain that you need to develop. Faith exercises those parts with tha part of the brain extrapolatable even in science.
In science, we have the concept of infinity. This is not tangible or proveable. It is useful because it is a mind expanding concept tha can lead the mind out of the box, since it is open and not contained. It have no boundaries and takes faith to accept since it is not tangible but its very nature. The concept of God is very similar but represents infinity at any angle, even including the infinte box of the copiers. The copiers see a finite box and work hard to keep finite. Other needs faith since they are often on their own and don't have the copier group hug as they huddle in the box.
Proving god is a way to place god in the box. But this is not a box concept but represents the box all the way to infinity.
In my experience, people who primarily learn by copying, find that there is no need for faith, other than faith in some form of external free market and political manipulation. That comes from tangible sources even if an illusiin. If you are trying to be creative, and will need to leave the box, you will have to confront the unknown and will need to have faith in a conclusion that is not there yet. You can not depend on humans, since they will try to undermine out of fear of novelty.
Once the final fruit of faith is defined, the copiers once again get to see the tangible and therefore have no need for the charisma of faith. They may wait for the herd leaders to say OK, then they copy.
Faith in God is template for all forms of faith, even for science ideas outside the box of copier traditions. When you begin an innovation, the future is not tangible or even proveable. You will need to have faith so yoy can work the hunch that the future will define itself. The copier will never have to leave the box, so they have little need to make use of faith.
A good analogy would have been the city dwellers and those with the pioneer spirit, who would leave their homes to go west during the American expansion. Those who remain have no need for faith in a dream, that will inspire them to face hardship on their way to their promised land. The copiers get to remain tethered in the local politics and will work hard to undermine those who try to dream, since they do know how to dream. There are certain parts of the brain that you need to develop. Faith exercises those parts with tha part of the brain extrapolatable even in science.
In science, we have the concept of infinity. This is not tangible or proveable. It is useful because it is a mind expanding concept tha can lead the mind out of the box, since it is open and not contained. It have no boundaries and takes faith to accept since it is not tangible but its very nature. The concept of God is very similar but represents infinity at any angle, even including the infinte box of the copiers. The copiers see a finite box and work hard to keep finite. Other needs faith since they are often on their own and don't have the copier group hug as they huddle in the box.
Proving god is a way to place god in the box. But this is not a box concept but represents the box all the way to infinity.
I can measure sincerity empirically by measuring various aspects of their religiosity.
Wellwisher, you are confusing religious faith, which is absolute belief in the absence of evidence, with simple confidence in a scientific hypothesis. The difference is that in science, we can reject that trust if evidence shows us that it is misplaced. In fact, scientists love to prove each other wrong, that's how they arrive at knowledge.
Until you start getting explicit about these "various aspects" and clarify how it renders prayer "sincere" and how such "sincere prayer" warrants a "success rate" you are still being completely half assed in your assessment.
I agree sincerity is difficult to quantify, but we can measure churchgoing, whether they pray every day or often, how strongly they believe in God, how strongly they believe God answers prayers. We can give them lie detector tests. I think it's safe to assume that reportedly religious people are mostly actually religious. This is all we need to show whether there is a prayer effect or not, since it's unlikely everyone in the study is lying. We would still have a substantially religious group compared with a control.
That would depend on what that effulgence is of and what its effects are.
By this reasoning, there would be no difference between a healthy believer and someone with scrupulosity.
A difference that is of great importance to anyone who has actually been involved with a religion/spiritual path for some time.
Not at all.
The situation is a lot more complex than that.
For one, because in most religions, they have the conception of there being degress of religious/spiritual attainment or classes of believers. Not every believer is the same.
For two, because, as mentioned earlier, there is some measure of pathology.
Religious/spiritual addiction is a field that has recently been studied.
The people might not be lying, but it is reasonable to assume that they are very different, and that the answer to each person's prayers would be different, according to their individual circumstances.
From objective actions, and these observations are extremely useful, and will be correct most of the time, and that is the great benefit.
I had to look up the word scrupulosity, but it apparently means obsessive attention to religious teachings and practices. So from a scientific point of view, I don't see why god would differentiate between them and a "healthy believer".
From every description of a personal God I have read about, praying sincerely as a believer is all you need to do. I'm sure some people are more devout than others, but a simple questionnaire should be reliable enough. Statistically, even self-reporting believers should show some measurable difference in outcomes, for instance recovering from surgery.
From a scientific point of view, a population should be qualified by characteristics inherent to it, not by qualifiers extraneous to it.
Within the major religions, it is believed that scrupulosity is actually due to a weak faith or even lack of faith.
The scrupulous person is the opposite of a believer, even if both may in many ways appear to be the same.
This isn't the only test of a personal god, we can also confirm or deny the proclamations of divine revelation when they predict actual events. In any case, it's up to religious people who want to prove a god to help conduct a test, and put their best foot forward to show a detectable prayer effect. No such test has been published that shows any such (positive) effect.
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If it has qualities other than effulgence and warm fuzzy feelings, we are talking about something different than mere light
it sounds ludicrous.
How does mere number of times praying and attendance to a common place of address equal sincerity?
I mean suppose we were examining sincerity in regards to request to the president. Would you take an individual's number of requests and attendance to white house rallies or whatever as a clear sign of sincerity?
So you think god is honour bound to reciprocate with an individual purely on the basis of their faith in his existence (regardless of what they pray for)?
How does that work?
ditto above
Your data points are simply getting more obtuse, irrelevant and vague.
Not only are you completely depicting "sincerity" in an absurd context that doesn't translate into other social relationships but you are completely bypassing the requirement for sincerity to operate out of mutual obligatory duties (for instance would you grade a sincere husband someone who makes lots of requests to his wife, who has strong faith she will answer those requests etc etc).
In short, you treat god like a gum ball machine, a non-entity devoid of inclination who responds to users like a piece of machinery.
I challenge you to provide an example of a social relationship that incorporates sincerity where one can isolate it purely in terms of what the other does for the person in question.
Actually religious?
As to opposed to "not actually religious"?
You are still being half assed in your assessment due to keeping key terms at an extremely low threshold in clarity.
This simply is ineffective because you have not isolated key qualities of the control group in clear language.
All the errors you incorporate in isolating your core group are simply amplified in whatever conclusions you draw.
Once again you are just getting further and further away from what you set out to achieve in this Thread.
First you declared that science can disprove a personal god.
Then you shifted to proof of god can only be achieved through scientific study.
And now that numerous weak points have been pointed out in your assessment of the scientific requirements for proof of god, you say that it is up to theists to provide a buoyant scientific model for assessment of god (when they general conclude that the scientific - ie empirical - model is as suitable for assessing god as a thermometer is for assessing distance)
If you actually want to discuss how science lends strength to argument that god doesn't exist, you are losing ground.
And you can prove that John doesn't attribute the three words: "God is light" to Jesus?gmilam said:
You can demonstrate that this link I posted has it wrong, then: http://en.hilarion.orthodoxia.org/6_5_7
So this from my original post is also wrong
This argument with you is bullshit, but so is this thread.
Sorry if I haven't explained it clearly. Science disproves a personal god by knocking down all the arguments for god that can be tested empirically. You are pinning your weak point hopes on the human brain and whether brain states like sincerity can be measured, thus undermining confidence in prayer studies. I countered by saying that religions featuring a personal god make testable claims, including that prayers are answered. If everyone in the study is lying about their sincerity, that calls into question the very existence of religious people! I'm willing to concede that everyone could be a secret atheist.
SciWriter,
For crying out loud man, I thought we were getting somewhere.
Objective action does not necessarily reflect our actual feelings or state of mind. A bloke in a fireman costume IS a fireman. Right?
Not necessarily! He's a fireman if he is indeed, a fireman.
Blah! Blah! Blah!
jan.
For crying out loud man, I thought we were getting somewhere.
Objective action does not necessarily reflect our actual feelings or state of mind. A bloke in a fireman costume IS a fireman. Right?
Not necessarily! He's a fireman if he is indeed, a fireman.
Blah! Blah! Blah!
jan.
Remember this one, remember this one well.
The same goes for theists.
And for atheists too, for that matter.
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