So you are leaving open the possibility that the earth is more flat than spherical and the sun revolves around the ecliptic every 24 hours?
Atheism->Deism->Theism
by sabastious 114 Replies latest jw friends
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EntirelyPossible
Oh dear. This thread is full of interesting mistatements. Let's take the more egregious ones in order...
The reality is that neither believers nor unbelievers are right or wrong, they simply are, if that makes sense.
No, that does not make sense. Believers in Jah that think the whole earth was literally flooded for a year are wrong. Unbelievers in Zeus that think 9/11 was a sign that we should worship him more are also wrong. You didn't quantify what the heck you meant at all, so how can this begin to make sense?
Even among "believers" in the Jesus there are those that vociferously deny that other believers are right, valid or even "true" Christians. Your statement is meaningless.
Unbelief is the first step to true belief. If one never makes this venture then one's belief is not founded on anything substiantial. Unbelief provides the energy to fill the void that it naturally creates, it opens up the world where it otherwise was not available.
Meaningless babble. Define "belief", "substantial", "energy" in this context, please.
Unbelief directs you to this crossroad where you have yet another choice.
Wrong. Unbelief is simply not beleiving in something. It is not an active force that directs anyone anywhere.
Theism on the other hand is the assertion that the purpose of existence directly applies to the individual instead of the whole of humanity and beyond.
For some. For others, not so much. Don't be so arrogant as to assume that your ideas about your imaginary friend are the same as everyone else's.
The search for God is eternal, so when you stop searching for Him because you like some theistic framework, you have just jumped into a vicious cycle that has been going on for milenia, so it's important to know exacty what you are doing or else you won't have a chance to retain personal identity, which is the only thing we really have.
You may as well have written "babble babble babble" for all the sense that made.
All we have is our senses which in the end are just perceptions of existence, not existence itself.
Interesting, but wrong. Our senses, by definition, exist, therefore are part of existence itself.
That's why I say it's a young interpretation because when the goddess framework ruled humanity was NOT AS OLD as we are now therefore our current understanding of God will be EVOLVED.
I can agree with this. Earlier in our existence, as a species, we thought of God as a woman. Well, not YOUR god, Sabby, no one had thought of a singular sadistic baby cock loving god that cruel yet, but you get where I am going with this. Later, goddess evolved into a man. Soon, we will realize that god is neither because it's just made up and it turns out the only people that had a hard on for baby foreskins was the Hebrews.
Evolution in action. Soon, God will be something we realized all along was a mere fiction and laugh at. Sab called it here first.
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EntirelyPossible
You assume that God was not known before the writings about him?
Of course not. He just wasn't made up until was AFTER those other Gods and Goddesses were.
But it would make sense that some seeking out their creator would assign that creator a female gender... simply by observing how females bring forth life.
No, it doesn't. Jesus, the one you say to look to, clearly says that he has a father, not a creator that is neither male nor female. Jesus says you are wrong.
Peoples other than the Hebrews worshipped Him and knew of Him, even according to writings in the bible, long before someone was commissioned to write anything down as scriptures.
Oh, sorry, you don't get to use a book about how awesome and all powerful their god is to prove how awesome and all powerful their god is.
Truth be told, the Hebrew god was the son of a much older god in the other writings, the brother of Baal and was whoring it up with some other godesses.
There is even a reference to a book of Adam, that some scholars say may have been written by Adam himself. If this is the case (and if Adam WAS the first man), then this would mean that the OT God was worshiped first.
Of course it doesn't, unless Adam (a word that means "man", BTW) is at LEAST 100K years older than the Bible says, in which case the REST of the Bible is wrong. And those scholars are roughly scholars in the same sense that I am an astronaut. IOW, they aren't.
If a non scientist tries to refute it they are told they require more education on the matter. It seems reasonable to assume that a percentage of people will look at this as some sort of mind control technique. Think about it, you are telling people that they need to be instructed before they are qualified to refute.
Think about it, if you can only count to potato, are you in any way qualified to say 2+2 doesn't equal 4? It seems reasonable to assume that before uneducated people go spouting off on a subject they are woefully ignorant of, they at least have the common courtesy to educate themselves, particularly seeing as how they were given and are being offered chance after chance after chance and, despite that, they choose to wallow in ignorance.
Nothing about our nature, our universe, or God (real or not) ACTUALLY changes.
Well that's patently untrue. 10 million years ago, upright, bi-pedal apes with large brains did not exists. Now we do. Something changed. Just over 13 billion years ago, there were no stars or planets or solar systems or galaxies or globular clusters. Now there is. Something change.
Those who believed in Newtonian physics thought that time and space were constants. In its own time these were the "irrefutable facts" that could not change.
However Einstein argued that the world can make better sense in many ways if we view time and space as flexible.
Not entirely true. Einstein, at least in part, started down his path because it was well know, even in Newton's time by Newton himself, that his work was incomplete because it did not and never could accurately predict certain things like the orbit of Mercury around the Sun.
But a sphere in two dimensions is a circle. So might a sphere be something else in four dimensions?
A sphere, in a two dimensional slice, CAN be a circle. There is a much greater chance that it won't be.
Einsteinian physics has applications on all sorts of levels including in the solar system that Newton also described. Your explanation of truths being expanded rather than refuted is worthy of a Watchtower exposition on "new light".
Well that's just a snarky way of not liking how wrong you are. Newtonion physics work quite well. Einsteinian physics work quite well. Quantum physics ALSO work quite well. They all work differently, at at different scales and in different applications. Einstein's physics are incomplete. That's known. Einstein knew it. Same as Newton with his physics. What's the problem?
Science does not simply grow, it experiences revolutions in understanding, each of which refutes and replaces what went before. It has always done so and there is little reason to believe we are at the end of the road.
That is incorrect. Science DOES grow, SOMETIMES it replaces and/or refutes what went before, often it expands upon what is already know. There is ZERO reason to think we are at the end of the road, there is every reason to hope we are not. That is no reason to misunderstand science, though.
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still thinking
Think about it, if you can only count to potato, are you in any way qualified to say 2+2 doesn't equal 4?
LOL...EP, that is my favourite quote for today...ROFL
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Phizzy
Slimboy paints a picture of Science constantly overturning former facts and Theories, which is true, as Science is constantly trying to explain the real world.
As new facts and discoveries emerge then the body of knowledge produced by the toolkit of scientific method sometimes overturns former ideas, but often simply adds to the body of knowledge.
Irrefutable facts are not rare, and will remain such, or they would not be irrefutable.
Science welcomes new findings, new ideas, new Theories even that may stand alongside existing Theories until a unifying system is developed.
This is one fundamental difference between Science and belief/religion, Science welcomes new facts and discoveries that are testable and have solid evidence, it matters not if these should overturn former theories etc. Science has no sacred cows.
Believers claim their position is unassailable, because they say it is correct, offering no proof in the sense of solid testable facts, and they certainly do not welcome the new kid on the block, any challenge to their imaginary friend is violently opposed.
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still thinking
If we were two dimensional creatures, we would not even see spheres. As three dimensional creatures, we see both circles and spheres. The sphere does not replace the circle. It is just in addition to the circle. In fourth dimension, we would have circles, spheres, AND... something else. Right? (or rather,... probable?)...tec
LOL tec...you got me thinking about spheres now......I found this if you're interested.
Start clicking on some of the links in those links and you go on a real journey...LOL Especially the 3-manifold.
3-sphere
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search
Stereographic projection of the hypersphere's parallels (red), meridians (blue) and hypermeridians (green). Because this projection is conformal, the curves intersect each other orthogonally (in the yellow points) as in 4D. All curves are circles: the curves that intersect <0,0,0,1> have infinite radius (= straight line). In mathematics, a 3-sphere is a higher-dimensional analogue of a sphere. It consists of the set of points equidistant from a fixed central point in 4-dimensional Euclidean space. Just as an ordinary sphere (or 2-sphere) is a two-dimensional surface that forms the boundary of a ball in three dimensions, a 3-sphere is an object with three dimensions that forms the boundary of a ball in four dimensions. A 3-sphere is an example of a 3-manifold.
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sabastious
The flaw in the scientific method is in it's peer review process. Anything that is head by humans is subject to corruption. One person can look at a conclusion of another person and see total folly whereas another will take something special from it. For example I said this in my OP:
The search for God is eternal, so when you stop searching for Him because you like some theistic framework, you have just jumped into a vicious cycle that has been going on for milenia, so it's important to know exacty what you are doing or else you won't have a chance to retain personal identity, which is the only thing we really have.
Consider the difference between these two replies to the same block of text:
This might be my favorite thing that you've ever said, Sab. Well done! - CA
vs
You may as well have written "babble babble babble" for all the sense that made. - EP
The scientific method is about proving a claim wrong which is where it's flaw resides not because it's an illlogical method, but because humans cannot weild it. No matter what we will inject our bias without being completely aware which taints the results. Theoretically the peer review process can get past this, but the fact is that humanity is impressionable and scientists understand this, therefore they set out to influence peer review without fully realizing it which is how corruption works. This is why there must be more than one information generating method other than that of the scientific method, which there are, but science would do well to acknowledge that instead of operating like it's the only show in town.
The purpose of this thread is show the benign differences between believers and unbelievers. It's supposed to put them into one pot and call them all humans who are trying to make the best of their situations here on this planet. Some choose to stay within the realm of unbelief, which offers an eternal search as well, and some choose to venture off into the supernatural. The point is that without unbelief as a foundation belief will not be substantial. It's an eastern mindset where one holds something to be 100% true, but can still cast it aside in an instant when the situation calls for it.
-Sab
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slimboyfat
Bad Pharma!
Exactly.
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rather be in hades
The flaw in the scientific method is in it's peer review process.
no, in science, we have to publish data as well. everything in science is replicable before it becomes law.
you can do what rutherford did
you can do what watson and crick did
you can do what darwin and all these other great scientists did.
if you're results are not replicable, you get called out on it. eventually the truth comes out. it always does bc someone is going to use/need/attempt whatever it is you published as either the endpoint or as a step to their own endpoint.
this is the difference between law and theory. laws are replicable. anyone can prove them if they learn about them.
yes there is corruption, but unlike religion, in science it will be called out
you're forgetting that anyone can do this stuff and anyone can prove it. not just the people at the top. you'd be surprised at how this is applied in business.
pharmaceutical company wants to design a new drug for diabetes. they decide to base their active ingredient on compound a which they believe will communicate with the proper receptor. so in order to make compound a which previously couldn't be made cheaply enough to bring to market, they decide to try out newly published method b which produces compound a as a reaction byproduct.
after several attempts at replicating the results, the chemical engineers and the chemists come to the conclusion they're being bs'd.
this happens a lot. go to any pharmaceutical company in san diego and walk around the offices. they have a never ending stream of publications from the geisel library at ucsd going back and forth because they are using newly published techniques/chemical compounds in their own businesses. sometimes, the scientists even publish their own work if they have the extra time when they find new chemical compounds that formed as byproducts in their work.
it's REPLICABLE.
i think you need to rethink you're understanding of the scientific method and peer review. you need to start with the realization that people publish theories and they publish facts. there is a difference between the two.
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talesin
no, in science, we have to publish data as well. everything in science is replicable before it becomes law.
Really? Really.
You fail to address the issue of CORRUPT SCIENCE ... that is an extremely idealistic POV you are presenting (ie, a fairy tale).
Big Oil, Big Agra, and especially Big Pharma (greedy doctors included in this one).
Here's just one example .... of the MANY to be found in Big Pharma .... Ever heard of thalidomide, Diethylstilbestrol (DES), or fenfluramine/phentermine (Fen Phen)? Perhaps not ...
They cover up their lies until enough people die, or get cancer, and sue them. That is when the truth comes out.
GlaxoSmithKline to pay $3bn in US drug fraud scandal
GlaxoSmithKline is to pay $3bn (£1.9bn) in the largest healthcare fraud settlement in US history.
The drug giant is to plead guilty to promoting two drugs for unapproved uses and failing to report safety data about a diabetes drug to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The settlement will cover criminal fines as well as civil settlements with the federal and state governments.
The case concerns 10 drugs, including Paxil, Wellbutrin, Avandia and Advair.
Deputy US Attorney General James Cole told a news conference in Washington DC that the settlement was "unprecedented in both size and scope".
Doctors bribed
GSK, one of the world's largest healthcare and pharmaceuticals companies, admitted to promoting antidepressants Paxil and Wellbutrin for unapproved uses, including treatment of children and adolescents.
The illegal practice is known as off-label marketing.
The company also conceded charges that it held back data and made unsupported safety claims over its diabetes drug Avandia.
It agreed to resolve civil liability for promoting asthma drug Advair and two lesser-known drugs for unapproved uses.
In addition, GSK has been found guilty of paying kickbacks to doctors.
"The sales force bribed physicians to prescribe GSK products using every imaginable form of high-priced entertainment, from Hawaiian vacations [and] paying doctors millions of dollars to go on speaking tours, to tickets to Madonna concerts," said US attorney Carmin Ortiz.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18673220
We live in a greedy, capitalistic world - and science cannot be trusted.
Let's not forget the DECADES of lies that Big Tobacco propagated until C. Everett Koop, Surgeon General of the USA, had the GUTS to go up against them in 1984 ... I actually watched the 60 Minutes program that Jeffrey Wigand (tobacco company executive) appeared on in 1995, exposing secret reports BY SCIENTISTS that lied about tobacco when his very LIFE was being threatened if he didn't SHUT IT. It took 10 years after Koops' astounding telling of the truth before it was all exposed.
Ten years -- where were the peer reviews? the FACTS were being covered up - with greedy scientists' complicity exposed for all the world to see.
In 1984 he wrote that nicotine has an addictiveness similar to that of heroin or cocaine . Koop's report was somewhat unexpected, especially by those who expected him to maintain the status quo in regard to his office's position on tobacco products. Koop also instituted the practice of requiring rotated health warning labels on cigarette packs and required advertising to include the labels, although some warnings had been required since 1965. Koop issued a challenge to Americans in 1984 to "create a smoke-free society in the United States by the year 2000." [3] As Surgeon General, he released eight reports on the health consequences of tobacco use [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] including the first report on the health consequences of involuntary tobacco smoke exposure.
