| Digitalos |
| Posted 05/09/11 at 07:55 PM | Reply with quote #91 |
|
Quote: Originally Posted by Sandspirit
I get that "we're not really communicating" feeling again. I'm talking about human belief and you are talking about something you think of as objective truth.
Quote: Originally Posted by Sandspirit
I didn't say there was evidence suggesting dinosaurs are roaming the earth that I would accept. I know, I'm asking you to humor me.
Quote: Originally Posted by Sandspirit
I'm saying that those who want (for some obscure reason) to believe the dinosaurs are among us will find reasons for doing so - evidence - just as those who believe the earth is flat or only 10,000 years old will also find evidence. And I'm asking you to provide something, anything, that those people who want to believe that T-Rexs are roaming the earth today can use as said evidence, which is not better explained in another framework. Quote: Originally Posted by Sandspirit
You accept the existence of the Christian God as an objective, even obvious, fact. I don't and neither do the majority of the population of the planet. Actually that isn't true, most of the planet is theistic, and most of those are Christian.
Quote: Originally Posted by Sandspirit
Of course being in a minority doesn't mean or even suggest that you are wrong but many of the the claims Christians make are not verifiable except via personal subjective experience. And that's fine, personal experience and testimony is valid.
Quote: Originally Posted by Sandspirit
However you're not satisfied with that so you look for evidence. And you come up with it in, for example, the fine tuning argument. If you already believe in God this will look like evidence to you of God's existence. If you don't believe in God it very probably won't look like evidence for God. Nonsense. The fine-tuning argument is not evidence for God, it's evidence of an intelligent designer, it could be the predator from the sci-fi movies. As I said, you don't presuppose a belief and look for evidence about it. |
| Loading... | |
| Sandspirit |
| Posted 05/10/11 at 02:54 AM | Reply with quote #92 |
|
Quote: What's the distinction between human belief and objective truth?
Objective truth is independent of human belief.
Quote: Actually that isn't true, most of the planet is theistic, and most of those are Christian.
I guess it depends who compiles the statistics.
Quote: And I'm asking you to provide something, anything, that those people who want to believe that T-Rexs are roaming the earth today can use as said evidence, which is not better explained in another framework.
I didn't say such evidence could exist. What I've said several times is that "the most compelling explanation" or whatever is subjective.
Quote: Nonsense. The fine-tuning argument is not evidence for God, it's evidence of an intelligent designer, it could be the predator from the sci-fi movies.
Ok, that's part of your particular argument, so I'll rephrase for you and say, if you believe in intelligent design fine tuning is likely to suggest intelligent design, if you don't believe in intelligent design fine tuning probably won't suggest the thing you don't believe in.
Quote: As I said, you don't presuppose a belief and look for evidence about it.
It's exactly what Craig has done.
|
| Loading... | |
| Digitalos |
| Posted 05/10/11 at 04:37 AM | Reply with quote #93 |
|
Quote: Originally Posted by Sandspirit
Objective truth is independent of human belief.
Quote: Originally Posted by Sandspirit
I guess it depends who compiles the statistics.
Quote: Originally Posted by Sandspirit
I didn't say such evidence could exist. What I've said several times is that "the most compelling explanation" or whatever is subjective.
Quote: Originally Posted by Sandspirit
Ok, that's part of your particular argument, so I'll rephrase for you and say, if you believe in intelligent design fine tuning is likely to suggest intelligent design, if you don't believe in intelligent design fine tuning probably won't suggest the thing you don't believe in.
Quote: Originally Posted by Sandspirit
It's exactly what Craig has done. |
| Loading... | |
| Sandspirit |
| Posted 05/10/11 at 04:57 AM | Reply with quote #94 |
|
Quote: So in other words human belief is subjective truth?
It's subjective. It may be true. We can't be sure.
The agnosticism that you find so frustrating is comprised of two parts: a desire to remain open to new information and a recognition of my limitations in being able to know for sure anything, particularly with regard to the so-called "why?" questions. I also think a questions such as "what are we?" is impossible to answer with certainty.
Quote: Well that's just not true. The most compelling explanation meets certain criteria, and those are objective criteria not subjective, it's not based on mere whim as to whether we class something as the most compelling explanation...
"We" being the key word. We define the criteria. Unless you think the criteria are God-given like morals they (the criteria) are shifting sand in the same way morality would be if it were a purely human construct.
Quote: How do you know this is what WLC has done, and how do you know he hasn't found evidence and instead that is the catalyst for his belief?
As I recall he became a Christian in his teens, around 16 or 17. He talks about the personal experience of Christ being the cause of his becoming a devoted Christian.
If you look through the video archives there are a couple of places where he talks about this.
Quote: I don't understand this extreme skepticism, it's quite frustrating and as I mentioned no real discussion can occur as the foundational layers of how we think are so different, and cannot communicate effectively
I agree, you are very certain of everything you say, or rather you state it in a very certain way. I find this equally impenetrable.
And by the way compiling statistics for religious belief is hardly comparable to analysing income brackets.
|
| Loading... | |
| Digitalos |
| Posted 05/10/11 at 06:36 AM | Reply with quote #95 |
|
Quote: Originally Posted by Sandspirit
It's subjective. It may be true. We can't be sure.
So when you show me something like the Flat Earth Society, I find is just as implausible, based on these criteria, as I do if someone said they had evidence for living dinosaurs, and provided only some snippets of evidence which were very vague and unspecific.
So I think my question still stands then, in regards to evidence for dinosaurs roaming the earth. If you cannot put forward something which passes those criteria, then we rightly have no reason to believe this assertion of living dinosaurs.
Right? Quote: Originally Posted by Sandspirit
The agnosticism that you find so frustrating is comprised of two parts: a desire to remain open to new information and a recognition of my limitations in being able to know for sure anything, particularly with regard to the so-called "why?" questions. I also think a questions such as "what are we?" is impossible to answer with certainty. And do you think I am closed to new information, and do not recognize my own limits to knowledge? Quote: Originally Posted by Sandspirit
"We" being the key word. We define the criteria. Unless you think the criteria are God-given like morals they (the criteria) are shifting sand in the same way morality would be if it were a purely human construct. We have devised the criteria, and we may refine the criteria to improve them, but we do not make up ad-hoc criteria, would you agree? Quote: Originally Posted by Sandspirit
As I recall he became a Christian in his teens, around 16 or 17. He talks about the personal experience of Christ being the cause of his becoming a devoted Christian. Right, his personal experience was what lead him to Christ, and since then he has looked into the world around him, and found evidence of Christ in more and more places, and so has formulated these evidences into a central set of arguments which corroborate his personal experience. Which is exactly analogous to my dark matter mention earlier. There was an existing belief, which was rational and credible and he went looking, as did the scientists, and found what he was quite sure was there. Not quite the same as having a belief, such as in a flat earth, and then choosing anecdotal evidences to support it, don't you agree? Quote: Originally Posted by Sandspirit
I agree, you are very certain of everything you say, or rather you state it in a very certain way. I find this equally impenetrable.
And by the way compiling statistics for religious belief is hardly comparable to analysing income brackets. Why is it not comparable, they are statistics? |
| Loading... | |
| Sandspirit |
| Posted 05/10/11 at 03:40 PM | Reply with quote #96 |
|
Quote: So I think my question still stands then, in regards to evidence for dinosaurs roaming the earth. If you cannot put forward something which passes those criteria, then we rightly have no reason to believe this assertion of living dinosaurs.
Right? Firstly, you asked for dinosaurs so here you are. I didn't watch the video (it's too long and life's too short) but if you scroll to the end of the page you'll see a timeline which suggests that the dinosaurs went mostly extinct in 1809, but (the implication is) there may be some still around. The video apparently has interviews with people who claim to have seen one or two T-Rexs. I found this after about 30 seconds on Google but I'm pretty sure if I spent more time I could come up with a society for the promotion of dinosaurs or such like. But seriously folks ... you keep talking about "we" and "criteria" as though there were some universal standard for evaluating evidence. There probably is in some branches of science like physics and biology (in a limited way). But when you get to questions like, is a designer the best explanation for the fine tuning of the universe, there's no universal way of assessing plausability. You will say it's perfectly obvious there's a designer, Krauss will say it's possible there is a designer, Dawkins will say categorically there is no designer (perhaps with a get out caveat to show he's "open to the evidence"). So what are the criteria you keep talking about? Quote: And do you think I am closed to new information, and do not recognize my own limits to knowledge? I have no idea. I didn't characterise myself in order thereby to characterise you. Quote: We have devised the criteria, and we may refine the criteria to improve them, but we do not make up ad-hoc criteria, would you agree?
I don't agree. "We", if you mean by that human beings, create adhoc criteria for evaluating evidence all the time. Just witness the rise of the New Age and ideas like The Law Of Attraction - this is a very big money-making industry that appeals to millions, mostly in rich first world countries. If you want something more exotic take a look at David Icke - he believes that the world is run by a race of shape-shifting reptiles from outer space. He makes a decent living from book sales and lecture tours. Quote: Right, his personal experience was what lead him to Christ, and since then he has looked into the world around him, and found evidence of Christ in more and more places, and so has formulated these evidences into a central set of arguments which corroborate his personal experience. Which is exactly analogous to my dark matter mention earlier. There was an existing belief, which was rational and credible and he went looking, as did the scientists, and found what he was quite sure was there. Not quite the same as having a belief, such as in a flat earth, and then choosing anecdotal evidences to support it, don't you agree? The difficulty here is that you don't view Christianity as a belief. You view it as the truth. At least I suppose you do. Apart from his teenage experience Craig also believes that it is his vocation, given by God, to argue for the KCA. He states this very clearly when he talks about the early years and his obtaining a research grant for Birmingham University (if my memory serves me well). I fail to see how the belief in Christ and the belief that God has given him a particular task could not impact overwhelmingly on how Craig interpreted evidence when constructing his case. If, of course, you view Craig's belief as the truth there's no problem here. If however you think, as I do, that Craig's belief is just one among many there is a problem about the subjectivity of his interpretation. He may be more serious than many but he's not essentially different. Quote: Why is it not comparable, they are statistics? Yes, but the question "do you earn more than $30,000 a year" is not the same as "Are you ... a) Christian, b) Muslim ...." A relative of mine describes himself as a Christian. However he never goes to church, never prays, hasn't brought up his kids as Christians. When he ticks the Christian box it means something different to you ticking the box but this will never be caught by the stats. Anyway, I accept there are an awful lot of Christian theists in the world, more than any other religion. |
| Loading... | |
| Copleston |
| Posted 07/05/12 at 07:33 PM | Reply with quote #97 |
|
Lawrence Krauss' book, A Universe From Nothing, does not actually say that the Universe came from nothing. What he calls nothing, is really something. It's a sea of energy, not nothing. It is something. He admits this just under the last 10 pages of the book. Though Krauss made some interesting claims, I have to agree with the majority vote that he really didn't do too well. Dr. Craig once again has gained victory and exposed the atheist professors that so often try to destroy Christianity.  |
| Loading... | |
| lovethatjesus |
| Posted 09/11/12 at 01:55 PM | Reply with quote #98 |
|
 You know Christians are desperate when they have to parse a tongue in cheek rhetorical device and deliberately obfuscate the point.
But while we're at it, let's talk about how Dr. Craig's use of Bayesian confirmation theory is inappropriate and tautologous. The whole point of that theory is to quantify how evidence affects belief in something, not whether a hypothesis is true or even probably true. You have to specify priors and likelihoods, like the probability of such-and-such evidence given god exists and given background info (which WLC never specified either). Absent all that, it's just a tautology, which would explain WLC's smugness when referencing it. If you do include those numbers, you're back to square 1, as WLC's priors and likelihoods will be at or near 1 while Krauss's will be at or near 0. Also, the fact that the universe exists has been known, and therefore makes the inequality an equality. I.e., it's background info, not new evidence. Jesus's resurrection is an assumption, not a fact. The other 3 are debatable and/or accounted for by natural mechanisms as Krauss pointed out, so putting them into Bayes' theorem while purposely evading priors and likelihoods is not only mathematically illiterate, but premature altogether. |
| Loading... | |
