Posts by skeptic2

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

Hi LT,

I hold down a job as a Mental Health Manager - hardly Joe Quack and his fishing net. I regularly have to write reports that use empirical evidence in a scientific manner.
I've also experienced what I would describe as the so-called supernatural.

The argument that I assume you are making is a non-sequitur.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the novels about Sherlock Holmes, someone who used his critical thinking skills to solve crimes.

So we know Sir Arthur understood what it meant to think critically, but this did not stop him being a very credulous person.

His friend Harry Houdini repeatedly tried to convince him to employ reason in the issues for which he was credulous (communication with the dead, the cottingley fairies, etc), even putting together very elaborate demonstrations to show Sir Arthur how easy it is for the human mind to fool it's owner, or be fooled. But all to no avail.

There is a difference between possessing the capability to think critically, and actually employing it in all situations.

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

Is there proof that we are not actually part of someone's dream?

Is there proof that we are actually part of someone's dream? No.

Is there proof that we are not actually in someone's short story and we exist just in that story?

Is there proof that we are actually in someone's short story and we exist just in that story? No.

We can just keep going and going.

Yes we can.

Proof.............................what IS proof?

Proof is our only tool for weeding out the bad explanations or propositions from the good ones. Because you cannot disprove things does not mean you have to accept their existence as worthy of consideration.

A world without proving is a world we cannot begin to comprehend, because we can't possibly know anything.

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

I took a closer look at the Mexico City UFO video and noticed some oddities. Take a look at the area around the aerials. When the UFO approaches, suddenly the aerial looks like it's been cut out from a different video image. If you look through the entire video there's more anomalies like this. Tell me what you think.

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.