BurnTheShips

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Posts by BurnTheShips

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  109

  Feb. 15 Study WT - More creationism and stupidity - A response

  by eric356 in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  well, the wt is back on it: "today, there is a rising tide of atheistic and evolutionist propaganda dependent on flawed and baseless reasoning.

  we should not let this flood of faulty thinking confuse or intimidate us.

  " (pg.

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  BurnTheShips

  Thanks TD! Now I can revisit the question!

  You can't prove it?

  You want the truth? You can't handle the truth! It's too spikey and prickly for you!

  BTS
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  44

  Can the existence of God be proved through scientific inquiry?

  by caliber in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  below are thoughts from the posted web site... i am interested in how those who put full faith in the scientific method would answer.. can the existence of god be proved through scientific inquiry?

  can playing the board game monopoly prove whether charles darrow or lizzie magie invented the game?

  can assembling a puzzle of the mona lisa prove the existence of leonardo da vinci?

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  BurnTheShips

  Now I am going to have some fun with Terry with a mild rewrite.

  Judging from the number of Apologist books that come in to the bookstore where I work, Christian believers are obsessed to the point of paranoia about Evolution, Atheism, Gnosticism, bible criticism

  Faith just isn't good enough. Thick books belaboring purile arguments with Ad Hoc responses proliferate.

  Lee Strobel and Josh McDowell have turned these fears into a cottage industry.

  Bart Ehrman has lit a fire and the fireman are running around in circles trying to stamp them out.

  Faith is the only fallback for belief in God and plenary inspiration the only argument for bible infallibility.

  Judging from the number of Atheist books that come in to the bookstore where I work, Atheist nonbelievers are obsessed to the point of paranoia about creation, religion, faith, spirituality.

  Nonfaith just isn't good enough. Thick books belaboring purile arguments with Ad Hoc responses proliferate.

  Richard Dawkins and Victor Stengel have turned these fears into a cottage industry.

  William Lane Craig has lit a fire and the fireman are running around in circles trying to stamp them out.

  Hard atheism is the only fallback for nonbelief in God and materialistic naturalism the only argument for scientistic infallibility.

  BTS
• 
  109

  Feb. 15 Study WT - More creationism and stupidity - A response

  by eric356 in

  1. watchtower
  2. bible

  well, the wt is back on it: "today, there is a rising tide of atheistic and evolutionist propaganda dependent on flawed and baseless reasoning.

  we should not let this flood of faulty thinking confuse or intimidate us.

  " (pg.

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  BurnTheShips

  You can't prove it?

  Hybrid and polyploid speciation have been observed in plants. This can occur over a single generation, and create a new species which is not cross-fertile with the ancestor.

  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2442920/?tool=pmcentrez

  That's the National Institutes of Health, by the way. Not some atheist blog.

  BTS
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  44

  Can the existence of God be proved through scientific inquiry?

  by caliber in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  below are thoughts from the posted web site... i am interested in how those who put full faith in the scientific method would answer.. can the existence of god be proved through scientific inquiry?

  can playing the board game monopoly prove whether charles darrow or lizzie magie invented the game?

  can assembling a puzzle of the mona lisa prove the existence of leonardo da vinci?

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  BurnTheShips

  Superhuman (not supernatural) aliens. Exactly.

  Whats next, your gonna say aliens did it?"

  That's what I probably would say! LOL.

  You are super sharp, Bohm. I always enjoy these discussions.

  When I get to heaven, I'll put in a good word for you.

  BTS
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  44

  Can the existence of God be proved through scientific inquiry?

  by caliber in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  below are thoughts from the posted web site... i am interested in how those who put full faith in the scientific method would answer.. can the existence of god be proved through scientific inquiry?

  can playing the board game monopoly prove whether charles darrow or lizzie magie invented the game?

  can assembling a puzzle of the mona lisa prove the existence of leonardo da vinci?

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  BurnTheShips

  OK. I see what you are getting at. Yes, you do need to make certain assumptions about "God" and also, I might add, about how it would reveal itself.

  Regardless, even a "green cheese moon" could be explained with a naturalistic argument. Although you would claim it as sufficient proof of God, others would not.

  BTS
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  44

  Can the existence of God be proved through scientific inquiry?

  by caliber in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  below are thoughts from the posted web site... i am interested in how those who put full faith in the scientific method would answer.. can the existence of god be proved through scientific inquiry?

  can playing the board game monopoly prove whether charles darrow or lizzie magie invented the game?

  can assembling a puzzle of the mona lisa prove the existence of leonardo da vinci?

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  BurnTheShips

  Can we agree that this would be scientific evidence for the existence of God?

  So long as a plausible naturalistic explanation could be put forward, no, it would not. I could easily think of some initial explanations that would not require God. So could you, if you tried.

  It might be evidence for you, but not for others.

  The existence of complex life was for a long time a "green cheese moon" moment.

  With Darwin, a plausible naturalistic explanation put an end to it.

  A theory does not even need to be "true", it only has to "work" (not that I am saying that evolution is false).

  Clearly the formation of the earth, or its evolutionary history, and a great number of things cannot be repeated, but they are still subject to scientific inquiry, and our theories (while false in the detail) still carry enormeous explanatory and predictive power.

  While we cannot duplicate the formation of the earth, or its evolutionary history, our theories are testable in the small scale. With regards to planetary formation, we observe the process when we turn our telescopes out to the stars. With respect to evolution, we have demonstrated the process in the laboratory, and by observation of the process in living things.

  BTS
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  44

  Can the existence of God be proved through scientific inquiry?

  by caliber in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  below are thoughts from the posted web site... i am interested in how those who put full faith in the scientific method would answer.. can the existence of god be proved through scientific inquiry?

  can playing the board game monopoly prove whether charles darrow or lizzie magie invented the game?

  can assembling a puzzle of the mona lisa prove the existence of leonardo da vinci?

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  BurnTheShips

  This would mean two things: That God has no explanatory power, and that God has no utillity in terms of forming testable predictions.

  For something to be testable, it must be repeatable, right?

  A single experiment must be duplicable by others to be valid.

  That assumes that God can be subjected to experimentation like we would a lab mouse.

  Under a given set of circumstances, a given set of inputs would cause a given, repeatable set of outputs.

  Of course, from my perspective, God is not a lab mouse that can be tested in this way.

  In this case, it may well be that we are at the relative level of mice, and not at the level of experimenters.

  Now there is a testable prediction, and it does indeed give EVIDENCE against God.

  How is it testable? You say "can", not "will."

  BTS
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  44

  Can the existence of God be proved through scientific inquiry?

  by caliber in

  1. watchtower
  2. beliefs

  below are thoughts from the posted web site... i am interested in how those who put full faith in the scientific method would answer.. can the existence of god be proved through scientific inquiry?

  can playing the board game monopoly prove whether charles darrow or lizzie magie invented the game?

  can assembling a puzzle of the mona lisa prove the existence of leonardo da vinci?

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  BurnTheShips

  God - The Failed Hypothesis by Victor Stenger shows that Science does disprove God and hence the the alternative is that Science could prove God. He follows a number of lines of reasoning to make the point. Stenger shows that maths, quantum physics etc shows no need for God and no external influences can be accounted for. He also discusses theology, philosophy and how these too show God is unlikely.

  The book shows that BTS's comment is not accurate, as science measures what is measurable, not just what is natural. For instance, if God is doing miracles, then these affect nature and so are measurable. If God made the sun stand still, that would have an affect that various of the sciences could observe.

  JWFacts, saying "there is book such and such that shows that I am not accurate" is hardly persuasive. I could say "there is a book such and such that disproves your book such and such" and we'd have a grand time of it.

  BTS
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  237

  Loftus: Are We Angry Atheists?

  by leavingwt in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  john w. loftus responds to the "angry atheist" assertion.

  are we angry atheists?.

  .. if we are angry, christians will see this as a sign we are god haters.

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  BurnTheShips

  Here is what I think is a relatively unbiased account of the matter. Everybody got egg on their faces, IMHO.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair

  And as I suspected would happen, Burn missed the rest of my comment...

  No I did not. Whether Venus of Willendorf, Yahweh of Israel, or the Trimurti, sex has no bearing on the issue. These are all anthropomorphizations created with respect to the Source.

  Merely that MOST humans have a burning NEED for something to worship

  Yes. Humans have burning needs for food, water, shelter, companionship and sex, too. For each of these needs, there is an object that satisfies them.

  Fascinating, isn't it.

  BTS
• 
  237

  Loftus: Are We Angry Atheists?

  by leavingwt in

  1. jw
  2. friends

  john w. loftus responds to the "angry atheist" assertion.

  are we angry atheists?.

  .. if we are angry, christians will see this as a sign we are god haters.

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  BurnTheShips

  "false and contrary to Scripture"

  This was the finding of a single ecclesiastical court....motivated by political matters instigated by Galileo himself.

  He promised to do so, but then went ahead and pubishedDialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in which he defended himself.

  No, he was encouraged by the Pope to publish Dialogue. He was warned however, to not present his theory as factual. This is a historical fact.

  Besides, I don't believe anything the Catholic Church has to say in its defense. The original historical revisionists were not Jehovah's Witnesses.

  In other words, you choose to reject any information that contradicts your preconceived notions. I'll keep that in mind, despite the fact that everything I have said is historically accurate. Would you like me to merely dismiss the facts in your arguments as the ramblings of an angry atheist revisionist? I am sure you would not appreciate this.

  Are you serious??? This sounds like the WT saying, "Well we didn't OFFICIALLY state the end would come in 1975." I don't care if it wasn't official doctrine. That shit happened.

  It did happen, but painting the Catholic church of the time as monolithic is not accurate. There were factions, both for, and against, and the case was less about scientific truth than it was about politics and behavior.

  http://townhall.com/columnists/DineshDSouza/2007/11/26/debunking_the_galileo_myth

  The Experiment Galileo Didn’t Do: We read in textbooks about how Galileo went to the Tower of Pisa and dropped light and heavy bodies to the ground. He discovered that they hit the ground at the same time, thus refuting centuries of idle medieval theorizing. Actually Galileo didn’t do any such experiments; one of his students did. The student discovered what we all can discover by doing similar experiments ourselves: the heavy bodies hit the ground first! As historian of science Thomas Kuhn points out, it is only in the absence of air resistance that all bodies hit the ground at the same time.

  Galileo Was the First to Prove Heliocentrism: Actually, Copernicus advanced the heliocentric theory that the sun, not the earth, is at the center, and that the earth goes around the sun. He did this more than half a century before Galileo. But Copernicus had no direct evidence, and he admitted that there were serious obstacles from experience that told against his theory. For instance, if the earth is moving rapidly, why don’t objects thrown up into the air land a considerable distance away from their starting point? Galileo defended heliocentrism, but one of his most prominent arguments was wrong. Galileo argued that the earth’s regular motion sloshes around the water in the oceans and explains the tides. In reality, tides have more to do with the moon’s gravitational force acting upon the earth.

  The Church Dogmatically Opposed the New Science: In reality, the Church was the leading sponsor of the new science and Galileo himself was funded by the church. The leading astronomers of the time were Jesuit priests. They were open to Galileo’s theory but told him the evidence for it was inconclusive. This was the view of the greatest astronomer of the age, Tyco Brahe. The Church’s view of heliocentrism was hardly a dogmatic one. When Cardinal Bellarmine met with Galileo he said, “While experience tells us plainly that the earth is standing still, if there were a real proof that the sun is in the center of the universe…and that the sun goes not go round the earth but the earth round the sun, then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining passages of scripture which appear to teach the contrary, and rather admit that we did not understand them than declare an opinion to be false which is proved to be true. But this is not a thing to be done in haste, and as for myself, I shall not believe that there are such proofs until they are shown to me.” Galileo had no such proofs.

  Galileo Was A Victim of Torture and Abuse: This is perhaps the most recurring motif, and yet it is entirely untrue. Galileo was treated by the church as a celebrity. When summoned by the Inquisition, he was housed in the grand Medici Villa in Rome. He attended receptions with the Pope and leading cardinals. Even after he was found guilty, he was first housed in a magnificent Episcopal palace and then placed under “house arrest” although he was permitted to visit his daughters in a nearby convent and to continue publishing scientific papers.

  The Church Was Wrong To Convict Galileo of Heresy: But Galileo was neither charged nor convicted of heresy. He was charged with teaching heliocentrism in specific contravention of his own pledge not to do so. This is a charge on which Galileo was guilty. He had assured Cardinal Bellarmine that given the sensitivity of the issue, he would not publicly promote heliocentrism. Yet when a new pope was named, Galileo decided on his own to go back on his word. Asked about this in court, he said his Dialogue on the Two World Systems did not advocate heliocentrism. This is a flat-out untruth as anyone who reads Galileo’s book can plainly see. Even Galileo’s supporters, and there were many, found it difficult to defend him at this point.

  What can we conclude from all this? Galileo was right about heliocentrism, but we know that only in retrospect because of evidence that emerged after Galileo’s death. The Church should not have tried him at all, although Galileo’s reckless conduct contributed to his fate. Even so, his fate was not so terrible. Historian Gary Ferngren concludes that “the traditional picture of Galileo as a martyr to intellectual freedom and as a victim of the church’s opposition to science has been demonstrated to be little more than a caricature.” Remember this the next time you hear some half-educated atheist rambling on about “the war between religion and science.”

  BTS (I am out of posts so I have had to append my response to Cheezeit