‘they believe it because it is true’ does not make sense in this context. It should read, ‘they believe it to be true’, which is equivalent to it being a matter of faith. The allusion to something that is true by definition is wholly irrelevant, because the belief at issue is not one that is true by definition. If it were, it would not be debateable, and neither faith nor lack of faith would have any bearing on the matter.
I agree with that as far as it goes.
But if you ask them if it is a matter of faith, or if it is actually true, the ones who will come up to you or knock on your door or testify in a secular hearing using this as a reason to support a secular position will invariably choose actually true.
Thus I am left to take them at their word that it is actually true, in the sense that the sun came up this morning is actually true, or deny their actual words, and assume they meant something else.
Thus, in my experience, the truth is ambiguous at best to these folks, maybe because they can’t distinguish between faith and truth, or why I don’t know exactly, but this has been my experience many many many many times.
The issue in the other thread is not the reason why it appeared to be true at first, but only that it did. Sort of like an optical illusion maybe. We take delight in beig fooled a little bit by a twist of cleverness. Each one is a little different, and so it is here. Perhaps you can go over there and see some other examples of that.
Enjoy!
not_alice: I think the issue you are struggling with – or, perhaps, the issue with which you are feigning struggle – is falsifiability.
The truth or falsity of a testable claim is a different category of claim than the the truth or falsity of an untestable claim.
The OP of the thread that started us down this merry path gave two examples of “factoids” that seemed right at first blush, but were self-evidently wrong after a moment’s thought:
Both of these might fit the “sounds right” portion because both slightly miscast other common claims. The Great Wall is often touted as the only man-made structure visible from space; I’ve also heard the claim that it’s visible from the moon. So an overly brief listener evaluation might conflate those claims and the listener would react favorably. A closer parsing of the claim would make its errors obvious: no matter how tall the Great Wall was, it wouldn’t be visible from its antipodal point on Earth, thus disproving the claim.
The second claim labors under similar difficulties. Because there are 24 time zones in the world, the phrase “It’s five o’clock somewhere,” has a certain ring of truth to it – it is, in fact, always within 30 minutes of five o’clock somewhere on Earth. In addition, the International Date Line guarantees that it’s always two different days at different spots on the Earth. The careless listener may well conflate these two facts and in muddled analytic fashion conclude that indeed, somehow, it must always be Monday somewhere on Earth. Again, though, a moment’s thought will show that if it’s Thursday at noon in Washington, DC (GMT -5) it’s not Monday anywhere on Earth.
Both of these propositions were, in other words, testable – they involved a factual claim that could be readily examined and proved or disproved.
In contrast, the claim about Jesus is untestable. Even though the most ardent proselytizing Christians would, as you suggest, assert that Jesus’ love is a matter of fact, they do not propose any means of testing that hypothesis. To the contrary, their claims amount to, “Trust me, it’s true.” Their actual claims may be more convoluted and build chains of circular reasoning, as in “The Bible says so, and therefore it’s true, and we know the Bible is true because Jesus said so.” Their attempts to claim otherwise notwithstanding, it’s obvious that the general Christian claims about Jesus are untestable.
These claims thus fall into a completely different category, your wide-eyed-innocent attempts to show otherwise notwithstanding. A claim about time zones is testable; a claim about Jesus’ power and love is not. It is on that principled distinction that the two are treated separately.
[quote=“Bricker, post:63, topic:569560”]
not_alice: I think the issue you are struggling with – or, perhaps, the issue with which you are feigning struggle – is falsifiability.
The truth or falsity of a testable claim is a different category of claim than the the truth or falsity of an untestable claim.
The OP of the thread that started us down this merry path gave two examples of “factoids” that seemed right at first blush, but were self-evidently wrong after a moment’s thought:
The Great Wall is often touted as the only man-made structure visible from space;
Actually neither of those “sounds right” to me. You would have to have the assumption that a camera could in space (at least 20 miles away could not focus on something the size of the Great Wall, guessing maybe 20 meters across? That may have been true in the early part of the space age, butit hasnt been true since at least the early 80s.
I worked at the Hubble Space Telescope starting in 1982, and I am pretty sure that three was PR that suggested the cameras, were they to be used on the earth, would be able to focus on the date on a dime in New York City from Washington DC, or something like that. that is approximately 200 miles, roughly the same as the orbit is high. the date of a dime, or even a dime itself, is clearly orders of magnitude smaller than the Great Wall. Stories of spy satellites being able to read, or at least resolve license plates have been legion since then too. And even then, IIRC, Landsat photos were at 10 meter resolution.
On the other hand, you would have to assume the Great Wall is somehow special in its construction. Sure it is long along the surface of the earth, but that is not what makes something visible, it is merely being bigger than the resolution of the camera. many things on earth are wider than the Great Wall, such as an ordinary highway, and I bet some interstates are longer than the Great Wall too.
I am not sure falsifiability is the issue here, but maybe gullibility is.
Uh no - it is visible from space. The reason the claim is false is the claim that only the Great Wall can be seen. Of course of the earth obstructs the view, as in an eclipse, you can’t see it. But barring that, with an absence of clouds or other blocking factors in the wavelength you are looking, the resolution needed to see it is entirely plausible, oven if the orbit itself is pretty oblique.
“Careless” is not the word I would use to describe an adult who hasn’t internalized the notion that the earth rotates once a day, and that is what an ordinary calendar is meant to reflect. But yeah, I suppose that is how the “thinking” would go.
Not true - they offer supposed evidence of it all the time, ranging form some level of peace on earth to God’s intervention in important affairs (such as scoring a winning touchdown 
Whether that stands up to rational, scientific scrutiny is one thing, but then you are suggesting there is only one way to know or measure truth, and even science doesn’t say that.
Actually even that is not really true - there have been studies done, and I am sure there will be more in the future, that were proper clinical studies to test the power of prayer on a patient’s health. To the extent that there are claims that Jesus manifests via certain human or other measurable actions, and there are such claims, it can be tested.
Whether Christians would be prepared to accept the results is another discussion entirely of course.
The OP did not specify why a factoid appeared to be true was a factor, only that it appear to be true. If it was looking for pseudo-science only, such as the explanations you gave, fine, but the OP did not specify that. As an attorney Bricker, I am sure you are well aware reasonable people can have various reasons for their perceptions of truth, and they need not be restricted to the rational realm at all.
My source for the general claims I made above is:
Not relevant. “Testable,” means surviving a test. I suppose you may have met some evangelical football fan who was willing to stake his faith on the upcoming touchdown, but in general, it is only antecedent events that are adduced as such evidence. They are not, then, testable. A test would be the prediction that Jesus allows a given touchdown, in advance, with the understanding that the failure to obtain the touchdown is a failure of the test. This is not generally offered by Christians, although I do know a couple of fervent gamblers who have publicly proclaimed that God’s existence is, for them, a matter to be proven or disproven on an extant sporting event.
Oh, absolutely. If someone claims not only that Jesus exists, but that His intervention is measurable in terms of healing, and is willing to accept the results of a negative outcome, I agree they have provided a testable hypothesis.
Contrary to your claim, though, I know of no Christians who would say that a failure of the numbers to support the efficacy of prayer is a result they’d accpt as evidence that Jesus does not exist.
And I suspect you don’t, either.
Right. So these, as you yourself obliquely acknowledge, are NOT testable claims, and thus are NOT falsifiable.
People can, of course. But that thread pretty clearly restricted itself to testable, falsifiable hypotheses.
Cecil only discusses seeing with the unaided human eye there. That is a pretty narrow view (no pun intended) of “seeing”, especially from space. For example, since Galileo, what 400 years ago, we don’t assume “seeing” involves only unaided human vision when looking from earth into space, why would we make that assumption looking from space to earth?
You are a man of the law, not of science and the statistics of such things, right? for one thing, you don’t need a predetermined “failure” or “success” as outcome to do the experiment. Think about this the next few times you see clinical reports in your favorite news source. Science and math is more sophisticated than relying on “is the light on or off?” to determine the relative effects of various factors. I can’t go into detail here, it is an entire field of study (or more than one) but I bet wikipedia has at least some introl material (not that intro matgerial means written for an 8th grader though) (not saying your knowledge of math is at an eith grade level, just giving you a heads up it is not going to be al that basic, even if it is intro level for that field, you know what I mean)
Yeah, but it could be done.
I don’t think they are obligated to stake their faith on the outcome in order to do the experiment.
Only to the extent that they are willing to participate. Whether the results changed their faith in any way later would be a different study.
Dude, this is not the pit, so I will just say you can;t have it both ways, saying a test can be set up, and then saying it is not testable. Tests have been done and more are probably underway somewhere. It is testable, if you want to claim otherwise, than find those tests, and show why they were not done properly, and then show why the methods could never be adapted to be proper.
No it didn’t, that is nonsense to the point of being a factoid tghat would be good for the thread itself.
The Jesus quote was the very first response. The dispute then broke out before there were any other responses.
The OP itself only specified that the proffer would be “patently wrong [to the point of absurdity]” and “sound right until you think about them”. Even the OP acknowledged that the request as defined was fuzzy, suggesting “if that makes sense” at the end.
Your view certainly falls into the possible ways to interpret that, but it hardly subsumes it.
If nothing else, later people offered other Biblically themed “factoids”, which are hardly testable in the sense you specify, such as “Adam ate an apple”, and the mods made perfectly clear that those were allowed.
So, you offer your type of factoids, and others are free to offer theirs. The OP was a big enough umbrella to allow that.
Not Alice, I can’t even begin to understand what points you think you’re making or what your overall purpose is in this thread. Whether intentionally or not, you come across as someone who simply contradicts whatever other posters say.
If you want to persuade others, may I suggest you re-state your basic point and avoid arguments over the Great Wall of China?
I respond to people as they come in. There are lots of lurkers, I can’t worry about what everyone may or may not understand until thye ask something specific.
BTW, in threads where I am too detailed, anticipating couner arguments, I get chided for that too.
If there is a specific thing you don’t understand but would like to, let me know what it is, and as best you can, your understanding of it and I will try to help.
The beginning of this thread is normally where I would point you for my original point, but thanks to Colibri, he forced separate but related threads into this one, and it might in fact be pretty messed up. Look for the 2 other threads I opened and he closed around the same time as this one.
My original point, that the factoid in question did in fact meet the criteria of the OP, is in one or more of those 3 threads.
ETA: Bricker brought the Wall in, because it was mentioned in the OP of the factoid thread, and he thinks that facoid and the other he listed set the limits on the nature of the factoids the OP wanted, and I disagree. We are not arguing over the Great Wall of China or any aspect of it. It is about rhetorical forms.
How exactly would you test whether Jesus loves you?
My life is my cite
More specifically I referenced above scientific studies that studied the effects of prayer on certain health care. I also mentioned that variations on that type of experiment were certainly possible, and so are similar experiments that rely on the alleged effects of Jesus’ love.
Note that these experiments are statistical in nature, and so would be any conclusions, because that is how science works.
Whether the results could be extrapolated to a particular individual or circumstance would depend on the nature of the data and statistics.
But eventually with enough experiments, if circumstances where it was alleged that Jesus’ love could not be distinguished statistically from situations where no effect would be expected to be present, you’d have to start to draw broader conclusions I suppose.
Beyond that, I have to leave it as an exercise to the reader because the detailed nature of these sorts of experiments is beyond the scope of what I am going to write here, but is well documented elsewhere.
This appears to be somewhat strawmanish. I don’t think you’ll find a huge contingent of Christians willing to agree that the proposition “Jesus loves you,” is testable by means of measuring relative recovery rates of patients being prayed for vs. those not prayed for.
They don’t have to agree for statistics to be what they are.
No more than you or I would have to agree on what the outcome is or even might be or even what is being tested if we agree to be subjects for a new drug efficacy experiment.
Probably best if the test is double blind, and maybe not all the ones praying are even Christian as a kind of placebo, but like I said, designing experiments like this is a field unto itself.
There are published studies already in this field.
ETA: you appear to have missed where I said after enough tests, a body of work would be built up and broader conclusions could be drawn, this being how science works.
Missed edit window.
Ah also, I think you may also have missed the sense of an indirect measurement I mentioned.
For instance, if Super Bowl MVP were to say on Sunday that “It was due to Jesus that I performed well and we won the game” (a very real possibility of being said, and “Jesus is love”, then it is not much of a stretch to say that Jesus/love is being offered as the factor that was either present or not, or perhaps present to a greater degree for one team than the other.
The statistics, which no way in hell am I even going to summarize beyond this are routinely used to suss out abstract factors and their relative effect or lack of effect. Not undergraduate stuff, but not exotic either. Pretty much every time you read about a new drug or treatment study, they do this in one way or another, which one would see when one reads the actual journal article in addition to the press release or news story.
I didn’t ask about prayer.
I didn’t ask about health.
I just asked one simple question, I will repeat it because you didn’t even come close to answering it:
How would you test whether Jesus loves you?
Hint: The actual answer is “it’s not testable”.
Just in case you think I didn’t read or understand your other posts about some implied indirect connection between Jesus’ love and human’s health, none of that is relevant. It would only be relevant if you first tested and proved a connection between Jesus’ love and those other things such that you knew under what conditions that connection is valid - which of course is not possible even if you could show a connection.
Of course it is relevant, and of course I think you don’t understand how real science is done.
So let me ask you to describe how you would decide if a particular therapy is effective for a specific problem such as “depression” in a population. Your answer will clarify for me your understanding.
Aside from that, how do you know molecules are made of atoms? That alchemy doesn’t work? That there are galaxies or black holes in space beyond our own galaxy? How do you even know that the moon orbits the earth or that there are planets around the sun other than our own?
Hint: statistical analysis of indirect observations that lead to models that predict the results of more observations. Pretty much what I said. And pretty much how the experiments already published on the matter at hand were done.
I disagree completely.
I would say that if prayer is beneficial in patient recovery is more of a proof that Jesus isn’t love. If he was then it wouldn’t matter if you prayed for someone or not. He would heal everyone equally. If prayer did produce an effect* then it would seem to suggest that Jesus loves worship. If you want something good to happen get on your knees boy!
*a paper mentioned in a recent issue of Fortean Times conducted a double blind test on prayer and healing. They split the test patients into 4 groups.
1a: Patients recovering from heart surgery and being prayed for.
1b: Patients recovering from heart surgery and not being prayed for.
2a: Patients who had already recovered from heart surgery and were being prayed for.
2b: Patients who had already recovered from heart surgery and were not being prayed for.
The patients names were split into the prayed for/not groups at random. Surprisingly (or not) those being prayed for recovered more quickly than was statistically likely, * even if they had already recovered before the test took place*. This could suggest that the power of prayer can travel through time. Or it could mean that an external factor hasn’t been counted.
People making this kind of assertion would be unlikely to be arguing for a secular position. Do you understand the meaning of the words you are using?
The fact that they would choose ‘actually true’ does not alter the fact that the assertion under discussion is one of faith. It may be part of their faith that x is ‘actually true’, but this in no way affects the fact that it’s an expression of faith, not fact.
What’s more, ‘actually true’ is a tautology.
But you’re doing it anyway?
CMC fnord!