Why God doesn't exist
- Thread starter earth
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There are experiments on prayer which show that it has no statistical effect.
Plenty of experiments were performed on many different things by science and never once did they notice a God. Refer to post #118. There you will find the facts science has determined to be true.
Various sacred texts make statements about the physical universe that can be tested.
...But earth, this is fallacious reasoning by Dr Walker as has been pointed out in previous posts. How can she know what kind of hyper-time exists outside the bounds of our time?
In my library of biopic DVDs, I can access any one at will, yet each contains a whole lifetime encoded on the disk. I exist in a different space-time reality to the lives played out in the DVDs. Our whole history could be like a single DVD in a huge collection.
Or again, there is the 'many worlds theory', where alternate realities are all being played out 'somewhere'. Dr Walker is using a piece of rubbish reasoning here. All she has shown is that she lacks the imagination to conceive of time outside ours.
Considering all the observations made by science... we never found qualia. No poetry nor the sensation of tasting fresh orange juice nor any good jokes.
Conclusion: Science is limited.
The 2006 Benson research (and others) doesn't prove prayer doesn't work or God doesn't exist. It is possible that the need for scientific rigour is incompatible with the process of prayer. E.g. maybe motive (e.g. you need to know and care about the person) is important?
The experiment only showed how difficult it is to do meaningful experiments on things like the effect of prayer. God is not an object or entity which can be analysed by science.
Okay Diogenes' Dog here is how I do it. When removing something you have to replace it with better. The Human specie understands doing better.
You have to do better using a reasonable common sense, practical approach that's suitable in reality, just like Dr. Mary Walker did.
Your replacement has to stay within reality.
Your post, didn't do it.
Even if a hyper-time did exist it wouldn't be beyond or outside time. Time would exist.
p.s give me a dictionary definition for "hyper-time" I couldn't find one.
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The same way that if you really care about not falling off a cliff then you can float when you throw yourself off one?
Not at all - the experiments are easy to do... but difficult for proponents of prayer to face up to the results of them.
Does God in any way have an effect that can be identified / interacted with?
- If not then how do you know God exists? How do you know prayer works?
- If so then it can be assessed by scientific methods - at least to confirm the observations if not to fully understand the workings.
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Your free to continue tossing out failed reasonings to support your cult, but lying to yourself doesn't hurt anyone but you.
I'm amazed you cannot see the flaw in her logic. Hyper-time is my word for a possible higher temporal dimension. My point being, that though we cannot easily imagine temporal dimensions greater than 1 (except by analogy), that does not rule them out, or mean they do not exist!
However, lets try another (different, reasonable, common sense, practical) approach:
A 3D object (e.g. a sphere) passing through a 2D flatland world would appear to the flatlanders as a series of circles, increasing then decreasing again. Agreed?
So, an Eternal Being might be unchanging, but we could still experience different aspects of that Being at different times, as our time-line encounters different parts. This Being is not therefore stuck immobile and helpless like a statue, but appears to change as it interacts with us.
An good metaphor might be truth. We discover 'truth' as we progress in e.g. in science. One generation's truths get superceded by the next. Newton's Theory of Gravity is replaced by Einstein's General Relativity. However, each discovery is like a revolution, the paradigm shifts - it is a deeper encounter with another level of truth, which upsets our previous ideas. Thus our experience of truth is dynamic, our theories are overthrown, our grasp of truth changes. Truth is therefore anything but immobile and statuesque.
That's where you are wrong. If God has any effect on observable phenomenon, it can be studied by science. No discernible effect where there should be one falsifies the initial hypothesis.
I'm not sure I follow your line of reasoning Sarkus... Dr. John Polkinghorne (physicist) has speculated that (if it has an effect) prayer doesn't break any laws of physics, but it could influence the many possible outcomes, by something akin to collapse of a wave function.
I think for many it was disappointing. The majority of remote prayer studies up to that point had shown a positive effect. However, "prayer doesn't work" is not the only conclusion from this study. It highlighted that it isn't simple and repeatable like administering a drug.Sarkus said:
No, I don't think it can be easily assessed by scientific methods. Firstly, the effect of prayer is most often perceptual - it is to see reality differently:Sarkus said:
Perceptual changes are not easily open to scientific analysis, though they are doing work using brainscans in monks and nuns.
Prayer, if it can change physical stuff, is going to be unpredictable in its effects and unique to every situation - it is not a "technology" that can be applied with predictable results. Science needs reliably predictable and repeatable outcomes to identify the laws that govern them. In my own experience of prayer, I have been pleasantly surprised by events conspiring to produce unlikely outcomes, but they are always within the range of what's possible, and a complex process of emergence.
Sorry SG, that's where you are wrong. The majority (58%) of all previous remote prayer studies had shown significant positive results.
However, there are always factors that are not controlled. In this case (as in all previous studies) the researchers assume that prayer works predictably, like a drug. However, that may not be so, it might be unpredictable or perhaps successful prayer depends on any number of unknown factors (such as motivation), which are almost impossible to take into account. We don't really know the first thing about it.
You only have to look at other similar contraversial areas of research such as the effects of mobile phone masts on health, to realise how varied and complex the results from different studies can be.
Previous studies did not account for the placebo effect. I can find references for the exact study by tomorrow. No peer reviewed legitimate study has confirmed any statistically significant effect for prayer. Your response is that the effect could be unpredictable (random). If there is no difference between the effect and randomness, it is logical to conclude that there is no effect.
You engage in pure speculation without a single observation or iota of evidence. Or, better known as pure bs.
Then surely it has sweet f.a. to do with God and to do with the process itself, and is thus no proof of God. Further such an event should be repeatable - at least when repeated on a large enough scale... and this just hasn't been borne out whenever it has been tested with suitable rigour.
I'm sure.
Sources please? Surely you don't expect such a casually thrown claim to go unchallenged??
The rational conclusion (even just using Occam's Razor) is that it IS simple - and is a case of "prayer doesn't work".
The quote is laughable and adds nothing to the debate other than someone else's unsubstantiated opinion.
Define "perceptual changes". If it occurs in the brain and if it affects matter then it IS open to scientific analysis.
So it is... what exactly? Something that counters the laws of physics, of chemistry and biology?
Another excuse for interpreting a coincidence as the work of some God? Even the most unpredictable thing we know of... radioactive decay of a single atom... is testable. Not on an individual basis, but get a sample together and you WILL get repeatable results. How big does the sample have to be to test "prayer"? Or every time the results fail to prove that prayer works will you claim it is not a big enough sample?
Yep - and so far it manages to explain things without the need for a randomly influential "prayer" particle.
Yep - it's called COINCIDENCE.
Unfortunately some people dress it up as something more than it is; paint a nice picture with it and end up believing it to be more than it is because the picture is so much more warm and friendly and welcoming than the bare wall of Truth.
I'm guessing you forget all the times there is no coincidence?
If you pray hard, and toss a coin and it lands on the side you prayed for, would you see this as evidence of "prayer"?
Or perhaps winning the lottery?
One man's successful prayer is another man seeing the laws of probability obeyed.
Even if there was such a thing as temporal dimensions time would exist in them too. You’ve yet to disprove Dr. Walkers rational reasonable thinking.
In physics, spacetime is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single continuum. Spacetime is usually interpreted with space being three-dimensional and time playing the role of a fourth dimension that is of a different sort than the spatial dimensions. According to certain Euclidean space perceptions, the universe has three dimensions of space and one dimension of time. By combining space and time into a single manifold, physicists have significantly simplified a large number of physical theories, as well as described in a more uniform way the workings of the universe at both the supergalactic and subatomic levels.
We have three dimensions and then there is time. These higher temporal dimensions you mention has no basis in evidence, wherein, we can find an observable and repeatable and true occurrence. If abstract spaces did exist they wouldn't interfere and would be unrecognizable within our 3 dimensions plus time.
In mathematics and physics, the dimension of a space or object is informally defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify each point within it.[1][2] Thus a line has a dimension of one because only one coordinate is needed to specify a point on it. A surface such as a plane or the surface of a cylinder or sphere has a dimension of two because two coordinates are needed to specify a point on it (for example, to locate a point on the surface of a sphere you need both its latitude and its longitude). Cubes, cylinders and spheres are three-dimensional.
The concept of dimension is not restricted to physical objects. High-dimensional spaces occur in mathematics and the sciences for many reasons, frequently as configuration spaces such as in Lagrangian or Hamiltonian mechanics; these are abstract spaces, independent of the physical space we live in. The state-space of quantum mechanics is an infinite-dimensional function space. Some physical theories are also by nature high-dimensional, such as the 4-dimensional general relativity and higher-dimensional string theories.
Lagrangian or Hamiltonian mechanics are abstract spaces, independent of the physical space we live in. They are mathmatical equations and thats about it. We have no observable repeatable true instances of abstract spaces existing.
Might be unchanging? Any change couldn’t be made in the absence of time. Again Dr. Walker wins. You just used Puff as your basis in making your argument. Puff doesn't exist and only through imagination can one cause him to be. God and Puff are in the same boat.
Newton’s theory of gravity wasn’t cancelled by Einstein’s general relativity. The facts Newton observed are still valid today and just as observable. Einstein improved the thinking or in other words came along with better.
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yup
its omnipotency personified
actually unlike the superman narrative, there are clear distinctions in religious philosophy about the role of the living entity and the role of god. IOW unlike the "superman" narrative (regardless whether you accept the marvel version or some luke warm pseudo science babble about what we can do once we get the upper-hand on our genes), religiousity doesn't offer the futile pretense of usurping god's position.
minus the ontological imperatives of course ....
no
the god narrative doesn't have the incumbent material clumsiness of the superman narrative (regardless of which version one accepts)
yup
surely if there was something beyond the mind and senses we would have found it out now considering all the advancements we have made with our mind and senses ....
