Posts by skeptic2

25

Issuing a Challenge to Atheists and Unbelievers, part II (get your popcorn)

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

question for atheists and unbelievers alike part ii in our last discussion, the focus of attention was whether or not.

there existed a possibility that god existed based on the fact.

that there are a number of claims and reports of individuals .

skeptic2

Wanderer - that UFO you have a screen capture of you is not very convincing. Click the image to see the video:

25

Issuing a Challenge to Atheists and Unbelievers, part II (get your popcorn)

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

question for atheists and unbelievers alike part ii in our last discussion, the focus of attention was whether or not.

there existed a possibility that god existed based on the fact.

that there are a number of claims and reports of individuals .

skeptic2

Do you think that the possibility exists that there is life on other planets?

Of course the possibility exists. Is it probable? I think so. That's not to say it would be very interesting life. Or that it would be around at the same time we are around, and in the our vicinity.

What about UFO's?, There have been a number of reports dealing with such phenomena.

UFOs exist. UFO = unidentified flying objects. The stealth fighter, the flying wing bomber, both were UFOs for about 20 years for instance. I assume though that you mean extraterrestrial visitors. No evidence of that of course. It is unlikely in the extreme that a) life exists within a close enough distance to realistically visit AND b) this life possesses the capability to travel across the galaxy AND c) this life has the capability to detect us and know we are here in order to visit AND d) this life can travel fast enough to visit us such that we are still here by the time they arrive.

And if your answer is yes, the question is—could there be a chance that God exists as well?

The possibility exists that there is a God (I don't see how that is related to extraterrestrial life). The possibility also exists that every person but me has an invisible ethereal Pixie sitting on their left shoulder that tells them what to think and say. Possible but far from probable.

90

what would be "proof" of God's existance to someone?

by BlackSwan of Memphis in

jw
friends

short of god coming down herself to say "howdy y'all!

" what would it take to make you a believer in god?.

not necessarily the god of the bible or any religion in particular, just a supreme deity of some sort, call it ra, thor or chaos.

skeptic2

Short of God coming down herself to say "Howdy y'all!" what would it take to make you a believer in God?

Not necessarily the God of the Bible or any religion in particular, just a Supreme Deity of some sort, call it Ra, Thor or Chaos.

What kind of proof do you need?

First you need to define what a God is.

What kind of proof do you need to believe in life after death?

If there were no connection to the life after, there couldn't be any proof that I can think of. If though, life after death included 'spirit' people communicating back with people alive here, then you could set up some kind of experiment. It's up to the claimant to explain what they can do and to think up a satisfactory protocol.

What kind of proof do you need to believe in mental telepathy?

One hundred simple words written on individual cards. Cards are placed in a box. Person A in room A, person B in room B. At 10 minute intervals (e.g. 10:00, 10:10, 10:20 etc) experimenter selects a card from the box, hands it to person B. Person B then attempts to 'transmit' this information to Person A in the other room. There is no communication between the rooms. At each 10 minute interval person A writes down what they think the word is. A hit is the exact word (which is why we keep them simple, to remove potential for spelling errors, assuming the words are 'transmitted' as sounds rather than the actual letters). Person A must guess more words correctly than we would expect by chance. If this succeeds the experiment is then repeated, but with a stricter protocol, to ensure there was no room for cheating and no mistakes in the first experiment.

let's limit it to those few things.

What would be proof enough?

To get a good feel for how these kind of experiments are constructed, and the thinking that must go into them, take a look at the log of challenge applications for the million dollar challenge, here:

http://forums.randi.org/forumdisplay.php?f=43&sort=lastpost&order=desc

It makes very interesting reading.

149

Issuing a Challenge to Atheists and Unbelievers

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

questions for the atheists and unbelievers understandably, individuals who have left the organization did so for.

personal and more than likely good reasons.

and after reading the .

skeptic2

This page raises a number of issues about the existence of God:

Proof that there is no God (partly serious, partly humor)

But you only really need Occam's razor:

Occam's razor

Occam's razor was formulated by William of Occam (1285-1349) and says: "Non est ponenda pluralites sive necessitate" or in english: "Do not multiply entities unless necessarily" . It is a principle for scientific labour which means that one should use a simple explanation with a few explanatory premises before a more complex one.

Let's say that everything must be created, and that was done by an omnipotent god. A god which stands above time, space, moral and existence, which is self containing and in it self has it's own cause. This entity can surely be replaced by the known world. The world stands above time, space, moral, existence, is self containing and in it has it's own meaning. Most theists agree that god has a nature. Then we must raise the question, who created god's nature? If we just accept that god has a nature and exists without a cause, why not say that the known world just is and that the laws of physics are what they are, without a cause?

God is not really an explanation, only a non-explanation. It is impossible to gain information from non-information so God as an explanation is a dead end. When we have said that the reason for something is that 'god did it that way' there is no way to understand it any further. We just shrug our shoulders and accept things as they are. To explain the unknown by god is only to explain how it happened, not why. If we are to investigate the world and build our views of life from the world, we cannot assume a god. Because adding god as an explanation leaves as many, if not more questions than it explains, god has to be removed with Occam's razor if we are serious in investigating the world.

149

Issuing a Challenge to Atheists and Unbelievers

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

questions for the atheists and unbelievers understandably, individuals who have left the organization did so for.

personal and more than likely good reasons.

and after reading the .

skeptic2

Personally I do not deny the possibility that god exists - but my investigations have led me to believe that god most likely does not exist. I do not feel the need to attribute what I see and what I can't see, understand, or explain to proof of god's existence. I simply means that I can't explain how it happens or that I can't see it with my naked eye. To me, it's comparable to watching a magic show - it's magic because you don't know how it happens but that doesn't mean that there is no explanation or that it's supernatural.

Well said. That's why magicians, from Harry Houdini to James Randi, make such good skeptics. They understand how to fool people, and how people fool themselves.

103

The God Delusion

by Peppermint in

jw
friends

old dawkins is on the rampage again.

.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/5372458.stm.

skeptic2

TopHat - please....

maybe my explanation earlier wasn't good enough

I'll lay it out simply

Long ago there was only one version of the word theory , it was a scientific word that meant a well-tested explanation of all known evidence.

Over time the word crept into everyday language, and the meaning became distorted, in everyday language theory came to mean a proposed explanation (science calls this a hypothesis).

In science, the meaning of the word theory has never changed, it still means a well-tested explanation of all known evidence.

149

Issuing a Challenge to Atheists and Unbelievers

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

questions for the atheists and unbelievers understandably, individuals who have left the organization did so for.

personal and more than likely good reasons.

and after reading the .

skeptic2

OK the million dollar challenge is out then. I stand corrected.

But still - show your proof of the existence of God to the world and you'll be the worlds most in demand celebrity. You'll be a millionaire in no time. But please, share some with me for coming up with the idea.

103

The God Delusion

by Peppermint in

jw
friends

old dawkins is on the rampage again.

.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/5372458.stm.

skeptic2

Skeptic, I say all creation is "evidence" of an Intelligent creator, and yes we can call him God or Our Father. Randi is looking for something that only HE can imagene....I can't provide Randi with anything except the wonderful way in which we are made and ask if he still thinks we came from a one celled ameba or whatever.

evidence: "the available body of facts or or information indicating whether a belief of proposition is true or valid".

You don't have any evidence. You have an imagination. If you have evidence, not just "evidence" (whatever that is), go collect your million dollars.

EDIT: I stand corrected, the million dollar challenge does not accept religious claims.

The earliest steps involve single-celled organisms exchanging genetic information

Where did the single cells come from?

The sentence you quote is referring to the earliest steps in the development of male/female, not the earliest steps in the evolution of life on earth (in case you didn't know).

But for more information on where the first cells came from, try here:

http://www.onelife.com/evolve/cellev.html

That's just the first result in google when I type in 'evolution first cell', but it should provide a primer on the subject area.

103

The God Delusion

by Peppermint in

jw
friends

old dawkins is on the rampage again.

.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/5372458.stm.

skeptic2

As for a contest?? What has the Paranormal got to do with me interring a contest on Paranormal....and Occult? I think I will pass on that! You misunderstand...I have never seen a spirit.

TopHat - you say the universe is evidence for God. God is a supernatural being. God creating the universe is a supernatural event. Go to James Randi, present your evidence for God creating the universe, or anything in it, and collect your million dollars.

But like I said, please remember me.

Also, you dont seem to have read my link about male/female sex evolution, I'll paste a portion here:

The variety of life cycles is very great. It is not simply a matter of being sexual or asexual. There are many intermediate stages. A gradual origin, with each step favored by natural selection, is possible (Kondrashov 1997). The earliest steps involve single-celled organisms exchanging genetic information; they need not be distinct sexes. Males and females most emphatically would not evolve independently. Sex, by definition, depends on both male and female acting together. As sex evolved, there would have been some incompatibilities causing sterility (just as there are today), but these would affect individuals, not whole populations, and the genes that cause such incompatibility would rapidly be selected against.
Many hypotheses have been proposed for the evolutionary advantage of sex (Barton and Charlesworth 1998). There is good experimental support for some of these, including resistance to deleterious mutation load (Davies et al. 1999) and more rapid adaptation in a rapidly changing environment, especially to acquire resistance to parasites (Sá Martins 2000).

149

Issuing a Challenge to Atheists and Unbelievers

by The wanderer in

jw
friends

questions for the atheists and unbelievers understandably, individuals who have left the organization did so for.

personal and more than likely good reasons.

and after reading the .

skeptic2

Simply, because if
paranormal activity can be proven, who is to say that a high-
er being does not exist.

Paranormal activity has never been proven. If you have the proof, go collect your million dollars.

According to my way of thinking, to deny the possibility that
God exists is a closed-minded position.

I might have an invisible ethereal Pixie sitting on my left shoulder, who tells me what to do and what to say. This cannot be disproved, in the same way that God cannot be disproved. But if you met me, you wouldn't address my shoulder-Pixie, just in case he is there, would you? There are an infinite number of things that might exist. But until some evidence turns up there is no use in considering them.