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Discussion Forum : Articles and Sermons : 7 Arguments Atheists Can't Use by Eli Brayley

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 Re:

Quote:
Epistemologically, we learn only from our mistakes, by error detection and correction. Hence, Methodologically, the systematic doubt of Scientific Method.

Hi Aaron,

Sometimes it's too late to learn from mistakes. Mistakes can be fatal.
Quote:
Alas, however, I fear that you are missing the boat of fresher revelation by centuries, actually. For faith and the embrace of untestable hypothesis makes error dogmatic, no matter subjective passion. It is your own wishful thinking and spirit of self deception to blame.

If a hypothesis is only a hypothesis (abstract) but is being used to scrutinise reality (whether visible or invisible), we WOULD expect the hypothesis to break or to fail to cover all the information available, because of its limitations. Therefore, any error detected can be at best, incomplete and certainly not dogmatic.
Quote:
I take a heartcry to mean a subjective outpouring, or more generally a yearning.

I'd put the yearning before the cry, but yearning may not last long. And the outpouring - great way to explain it - may also be quite short.
Quote:
And science is defined by the Scientific Method, systematic doubt, all in the quest for truth, truth being correspondence to reality, where scientific hypotheses are such as are testable with conceivable conditions of refutation. The scope of investigation of science includes anything testable and refutable.

I've been thinking about this from a different angle, and would be grateful if you would put your superior brain to this example, and tell me what you think. I'm going to quote from the Old Testament, to show what happens when there IS a God, who CAN fix the problem, but those who DOUBT, reap the reward of their doubt (in this case, death). I'm just not clever enough to be able to show how this fits in with what you've been saying about science, but I think you'll see it immediately, and I'd be grateful if you'd lay it out methodically, and tell me what can be deduced from the scenario about the value of doubt for proving or refuting the hypothesis? Indeed, what is the hypothesis here?

5 And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for [there is] no bread, neither [is there any] water; and our soul loatheth this light bread.

6 And the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.

7 Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD, and against thee; pray unto the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people.

8 And the LORD said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.

9 And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived. (Numbers 21)

 2011/5/10 20:21
AaronAgassi
Member



Joined: 2011/4/11
Posts: 118


 Re:

Alive-to-God, First of all, that's a myth, and second, I am not clear as to the hypothesis allegedly tested or exactly what you are getting at. But I am reminded of how in India, the skeptics had a problem getting the people to trust snake bite serum instead of the prayers of fakirs. The problem was that depending upon the species of snake, most snake bites are survivable to begin with. And so, it appeared that the prayers of the fakirs where generally efficacious. This indeed would be a case where it is clearly safer to learn from the mistakes of others. Fortunately, the stakes are not always that high.

Old_Joe, Rail and protest of shifting sands all you will, but there are no firm grounds. All is subject to conjecture. Absolute certainty is the hallmark of arrogant madness. All that can be done in hopes of drawing ever closer to truth and getting things at all less wrong, is to reason and to look to the evidence, to detect and to correct error as we go, as best as we may, making progress every day. So I feel free to speak even without absolute certainty which is neither necessary nor possible. Just as you are free to attempt refutation thereof. Nothing in life or in science actually waits upon absolute certainty. Shall I take that simply setting the bar impossibly high to absolute certainty, is your best retort? Indeed I may yet change my mind in future, but it'll take more than that! That you refuse to change your mind ever, only means that you can never learn or grow.

 2011/5/11 0:15Profile
ginnyrose
Member



Joined: 2004/7/7
Posts: 7534
Mississippi

 Re:

Aaron,

Many of us here have tried to reason with you, but it seems to be a waste of time and effort - am not sure why I even check out this thread...

Let me tell you a story, a testimony...

A couple of weeks ago a rash of tornadoes hit the south. In my county there were two - twelve hours apart - which later converged with another in Alabama that struck Tuscaloosa. These EF5 tornadoes were very destructive.

My daughter-in-law was here at our house with me when she got a call that a tornado is headed our way from Philadelphia (MS) and will get here in 15 minutes and will you please go to the school and get your children?! After she told me, I grabbed my keys, ran to the car and went to the greenhouses and demanded we all leave because a tornado is headed our way (and we were right in its path). My husband thought I was in a panic - at the time - and over-reacting. I was demanding and insistent and no questions tolerated! If you do not go with me, I AM LEAVING, GETTING OUT OF HERE! But he went with me. I had a delivery to make anyways so we went to Columbus to do that, getting out of harms way. After we were up the road ten miles the sun shone in places and we wondered if I was over-reacting. When we got to the city the electricity was off - due to storms up the line.

When we came home we learned the tornado did go over our town but did not touch down until out of town in a field .75 mile from our GHs. It meandered northeast destroying grain bins and later joining another tornado in AL all the while scattering debris across the countryside, some came from as far away as Philadelphia - an hours drive from here.

Later we learned this tornado that went over us had picked up asphalt off of a road out in a rural community about 15 miles - as the crow flies - from our town. It also plowed a field. It was destructive. We did not know how destructive this twister was until later. All we knew is that there is one coming and that one did hit ten miles north of here 12 hours earlier.

When people heard a tornado was coming they got into their vehicles and ran, or got into storm shelters - they got out of harms way! Few people grabbed things to take with them: they knew there was no time to gather people, things - escape was NOW or get hurt or killed. There is no arguing with a tornado. It is fast and will not consider your opinion at all. It does as it will and you have to submit to its power or be consumed by it. So it is with God: you cannot argue with God and win. Someday his wrath will be visited upon this earth and there is no escape. Those of us who see it coming are yelling at people to run, just like I did to my husband and employee. And we ran and nobody faulted me since for it either.

And that, sir, is the lesson the tornadoes taught many who lived through it. All who were in the area will have a tornado story - all I have talked to was aware of its coming and took measures to escape its wrath. And no one was injured in our county! But it did cause people to think more about God then ever before!

End of story.

And if you disbelieve it, there are pictures on the internet of its destruction. If you still will not believe those pics you are only fooling yourself.


_________________
Sandra Miller

 2011/5/11 7:21Profile









 Re:

Quote:
End of story.



It is indeed!

OJ

 2011/5/11 8:04









 Re:

Aaron

I guess this pretty well sums you up.

2 Tim 3:7-9 Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was.

End of story indeed!

OJ

 2011/5/11 8:27
AaronAgassi
Member



Joined: 2011/4/11
Posts: 118


 Re:

I wish that it was possible better to stick to evidentiary questions of Epistemology, of what is persuasive, how so and why. ginnyrose, as for testimony, anecdotes are rightly considered the most unreliable form of evidence. I fail even to see the relevance of your tornado story, no matter how personal and dramatic. I don't doubt, psychologically, that such events raise awareness of mortality and panicked outcry to God. But is panic and wishful desperation any more than dogmatism and name calling, ever wisely considered the most lucid frame of mind for investigation of reality?

 2011/5/11 13:34Profile
ginnyrose
Member



Joined: 2004/7/7
Posts: 7534
Mississippi

 Re:

Aaron, I invite you to come to Mississippi and Alabama to see the destruction wrought by this twister and interview the people that lived through it. Then you can answer your own question about the validity of reality and its impact on the mind and emotion.

The Bible is full of testimonies of God's working in the lives of people and nature. Romans 1:18-22 discusses this very issue:

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,

19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.

20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

21 For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

22 Professing to be wise, they became fools,

23 and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.


If you choose to ignore the obvious, that is your privilege - God gave you the ability to choose. You cannot say when you appear before God that you were not warned.


_________________
Sandra Miller

 2011/5/11 18:09Profile
ChrisJD
Member



Joined: 2006/2/11
Posts: 2895
Philadelphia PA

 Re:

Hi everyone.

I hope it is alright if I ask and say a few things so late in this discussion.


Something that Aaron said near the end here caught my attention:

"Absolute certainty is the hallmark of arrogant madness."


Aaron, would you be absolutely certain of that?

Of course you may be. You certainly stated it without a hint of doubt or skepticism that you could be wrong. And so you should?

But the statement is nonesense. Absolutely.

Skepticism and doubt by means of endless questioning create an illusion of wide-open spaces in the mind, giving the impression of a far distance between things that are actually very near.

Creation and a creator are self-evident and have to be explained away with a never ending set of narratives powered by a combination of imagination, supposition, and fact. It is the presence of that last part, the fact, that acts as a glue to hold them together in the minds of their believers while they overlook cavernous and gaping holes between the occasional appearance of evidence in the stories that never cease to be told, re-told, and re-invented.

Our epistimology is very simple.

It is what John the Apostle said,

"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life;
(For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;)"



John stated that with absolute certainty.

You may call him an arrogant madman.

He said he was sent by Jesus Christ. Who he saw die on a cross. And who he saw alive again.

And he(John), being dead, yet speaks today.


Kind regards,

Chris









_________________
Christopher Joel Dandrow

 2011/5/11 20:45Profile
ChrisJD
Member



Joined: 2006/2/11
Posts: 2895
Philadelphia PA

 Re:

Dear Christian friends,

Could I offer a peice of advice?


A man might try to conceal the fact that his house caught on fire and has burnt to the ground by starting a bunch of small fires in an ajacent field, and if you pay attention enough, he could succeed in obscuring the obvious. That his own house burnt down.


Solomon warned of reasoning with people that he called foolish by way of their own reasoning.


Hundreds of small intellectual fires can't obscure the fact that the house of athiesm caught fire and burnt to the ground long ago.

Our God begins His story without ever trying to prove His own existence. He is present in the first sentence, and He simply said in the beginning...

God.

If there is anything that I can recall He has called anyone to reason about concerning Him and them, it is over their sins - which He said, come, let us reason together, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as wool.

And how was that to be - by His cross.

The death and the burial and the resurrection of Jesus, that is His reasoning to this world, And to skeptics also.

Jesus died.

And He rose again from the dead.

And He is alive forevermore.


_________________
Christopher Joel Dandrow

 2011/5/11 21:11Profile
AaronAgassi
Member



Joined: 2011/4/11
Posts: 118


 Re:

Come now ginnyrose, the calamitous weather in Mississippi and Alabama is scarcely in dispute. And I'll sooner turn for explanation to a Meteorologist than a Theologian.

And ChrisJD, Neither Creation nor a Creator are actually self-evident, merely the obvious first anthropomorphic conjecture in ages past, of human beings, ourselves creators of artifacts. But investigation has proceeded since then, with new knowledge driving new conjecture and more viable hypotheses. You may even have heard tell yourself. No, the house of Atheism is not the one raised to ash. And the glow across the field isn’t from "small fires" or scientific fine points alone, but great discoveries and advances. You use a word that I do not understand: Nietzsche said that there are no facts, only interpretations. In other words, as Popper contends, everything is subject to conjecture. There are no firm grounds, nor need thereof. Indeed, what are "facts"? What does the word even mean? I cannot glean from context whether you intend to denote reality, information, knowledge, truisms or anything else entirely, when you allude to "fact." Nor am I clear for that matter, what metaphor you intend by "glue." All that I can tell you is that real history is often a partial component in legend and myth. And the scientific rational quest for truth does not simply swallow fairytales whole. Only in faith that grasps for any evidence that fits for corroboration, with no standards of refutation, assumes that if there where Pharaohs in Egypt then thus it only follows that Moses performed miracles. The diamonds of truth amid the dross of error and fancy, may come shine apart and even fit together. But the dross of error and fancy must be weaned out. The wide open spaces in the mind are no illusion, not as regards to the range of human imagination. And only by process of elimination through ongoing error detection and correction are the range of viable hypotheses from sheer conjecture narrowed by refutation, fruitfully. How sure am I? I am unawake of any better Epistemological hypothesis. So, how sure do I need to be? Absolute certainty is neither possible nor necessary. Nothing is science or in life actually waits thereupon. You have only been left behind.

 2011/5/12 1:20Profile





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