[QUOTE=Liberal]
Well, then. See that you keep your wits about you in the future.
[/QUOTE]
Don’t tell me what to do, okay? My wits are fine. I made no such assumption because no assumption was needed, you’d already been insulting. I didn’t assume you were insulting, you in fact were. Therefore, you’re mistaken to claim that I rejected the claim. I did not. I rejected that an assumption had been made.
[QUOTE=Liberal]
Well, which perceived slight are you protesting? The one you’ve already rejected, that you’ve been called an idiot? Or the one you’re perceiving now, that a reference to a third person in the past is a reference to you in the present? If I am to apologize, I demand to know what it’s for.
[/QUOTE]
So, you’ve got two misstatements there. First, I didn’t reject what you thought I did.
Secondly, I didn’t claim a reference to me in the present (as you know): “That’s calling a person idiotic, albeit in the past; it’s not calling a demand idiotic. That’s given away by use of the word…um “person.” Hopefully, your highly nuanced skill-set can distinguish that.”
But that’s okay, no need to apologize. I expect this attitude from you.
In fact, I’ll apologize for my charitable response to your listed reasons for why you hold your beliefs.
It was a clearly a waste of my time to attempt to be so gracious. Have a good day.
[QUOTE=9thFloor]
Don’t tell me what to do, okay? My wits are fine. I made no such assumption because no assumption was needed, you’d already been insulting. I didn’t assume you were insulting, you in fact were. Therefore, you’re mistaken to claim that I rejected the claim. I did not. I rejected that an assumption had been made.
[/QUOTE]
I reject your rejection. Show me scientific evidence of your claims. And I don’t mean fifth-grade science fair stuff either. I want something Eugenie Scott level or greater. In addition, I dissume your assumption, reject your premises, scoff at your inferences, and take offense from your conclusion. Also, your questions make me cry. I await your apology.
And lo…
Pah. You expect me to accept that? How can I hold onto my beliefs without your charity? I demand that you reinstate your charitable response at once, lest my belief system crumble all around me.
9thFloor, this is the second time in two threads that you have made a big deal about being insulted because you misread what another poster had submitted. (This sort of stuff is why I wondered whether this was the right Forum for your participation.) Stop reading into other posts insults that are not there and stop hijacking the thread with your demands for appologies or your attacks on other posters based on your imperfect reading of their submissions.
[ /Moderating ]
[QUOTE=Liberal]
Honest question, Voyager. And please believe me. You know that I’ve cited your name many times among the top of the heap of great people on the board. I’m not trying to be a smartass. Not with you. But where do people get this idea of there being traditional believers who see God in the way described? The Love gospel didn’t just fall off the truck yesterday. The OP is talking about Sistine Chapel depictions of God as though people actually envision Him in that way, living in the sky and that by debunking this image a la Yuri Gagarin, they can pull the rug of faith out from under us? I mean seriously, do they not know that “traditional believers” think God is supernatural?
[/QUOTE]
I was raised as a Southern Baptist and that is exactly how God was portrayed. Male, white beard, living in the sky. Also watching everything each human does.
I have no idea if the church I attended does so today, but 40 years ago it did.
[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
I was raised as a Southern Baptist and that is exactly how God was portrayed. Male, white beard, living in the sky. Also watching everything each human does.
I have no idea if the church I attended does so today, but 40 years ago it did.
[/QUOTE]
Yup, same here. And, as noted above, scientific evidence was understood to be consistent with the religious teachings and even in support of it. There was such argument back at the advent of Darwinism and it seems to continue onwards.
[QUOTE=tomndebb]
9thFloor, this is the second time in two threads that you have made a big deal about being insulted because you misread what another poster had submitted. (This sort of stuff is why I wondered whether this was the right Forum for your participation.) Stop reading into other posts insults that are not there and stop hijacking the thread with your demands for appologies or your attacks on other posters based on your imperfect reading of their submissions.
[ /Moderating ]
[/QUOTE]
I made no demands for an apology from **Liberal **or anyone else in this thread. That’s factually incorrect. No apology requested for that error though. 
[QUOTE=tomndebb]
9thFloor, this is the second time in two threads that you have made a big deal about being insulted because you misread what another poster had submitted. (This sort of stuff is why I wondered whether this was the right Forum for your participation.) Stop reading into other posts insults that are not there and stop hijacking the thread with your demands for appologies or your attacks on other posters based on your imperfect reading of their submissions.
[ /Moderating ]
[/QUOTE]
In fact, the **only **demand for an apology in this entire thread was made by your friend Liberal a couple posts up. LOL I trust he’s misreading as well.
I’m done with this subject, thank you for your advise.
[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
Hmmm No that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying I claim my right to interpret the meaning of my own experiences using physical evidence as well as my subjective experiences knowing that I will , like most people, be partly right and partly wrong. As long as my god belief remains provisional and growing, open to new facts and experiences, it isn’t wrong. It’s just my choice of vehicle.
[/QUOTE]
You can claim the right to interpret your experiences any way you please, but that doesn’t make your interpretation necessarily right or even respectable if you range far enough afield from what is recognized as rational thinking.
(For example, I could decide to interpret all the evidence as meaning that televisions are actually little boxes with actual little people in them acting out the scenes, despite the volumes of evidence against this. Having such an interpretation is my right and priviledge, but nobody’s going to respect it, or respect me for having it.)
If you actually are examining all the available evidence fairly and without bias, though, and not allowing preconcieved notions to color your conclusions, you shouldn’t have too many problems along those lines, though.
[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
I’m not sure how to take this. How is it you get to say what is valid from someone else’s perspective?
This is my objection to a lot of arguments both atheist and religious.
[/QUOTE]
I only meant that, were I in his shoes and had the epiphany myself, I would not have accepted it as very good evidence, since I understand the human brain to have the capability of producing a wide variety of ‘hiccups’, including ones with seeming power and emotional overtones.
(This of course assumes that the epiphany experience did not itself damage my ability to be skeptical with regard to mental hiccups.)
[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
No doubt a lot of people came to beliefs by tradition but for many others it was a sincere spiritual experience that brought them to belief. Even those raised in a church often tell of their own spiritual experiences that are part of their conviction.
These may vary from person to person but they add to the conviction that there is indeed some transcendent other that we have connected with.
[/QUOTE]
A sincere spiritual experience is not an epiphany. From the sound of it, Liberal had the entire ‘text’ of his religion shoved into his brain all at once, in addition to having his entire mental outlook, beliefs, and opinions replaced wholesale. (I concede immidiately that I could have the facts muddled or wrong about his experience; I have not even searched out and read all his prior descriptions of it.) This sort of mass mental shift and alteration is not in the same caliber as feeling all warm and giddy during an energetic church service, feeling peace and love after praying/meditating, or any of the other ‘garden variety’ religious experiences that seem to be byproducts of the belief, not causes of it.
I don’t believe that epiphanies are at all common.
Oh, and:
For those of us who recognize that in these discussions the term “nature” includes everything that actually exists, it would be extremely reasonable to expect about and, indeed, demand evidence for any supposedly real entity called “God”.
I have my own opinions about what’s idiotic.
[QUOTE=begbert2]
For those of us who recognize that in these discussions the term “nature” includes everything that actually exists, it would be extremely reasonable to expect about and, indeed, demand evidence for any supposedly real entity called “God”.
[/QUOTE]
God is by definition supernatural. You may say there is no God. But you may not say that God can be examined by science. Not if you know both what God means and what science means.
[QUOTE=Liberal]
God is by definition supernatural. You may say there is no God. But you may not say that God can be examined by science. Not if you know both what God means and what science means.
[/QUOTE]
On the contrary, if you know what “science” means, you know that anything that can be detected is the subject of science. Using a definition of supernatural that excludes scientific examination must also mean that all claims about experiencing the supernatural at any level are false, including claims about God.
I admit that the term “God” can have various meanings. But unless you’re using a definition that includes either “fictional” or “utterly non-interacting with our reality”, then it must be possible to examine by science. Even if we have to map and interpret everyone’s brain waves to do so.
I think we may be two ships passing in the night. Suppose — just for the sake of argument, suppose — that there exist angels, and that these angels are undetectable by science because they are not made of matter or energy. Now, we both know that science can detect gravity, because mass is affected by gravity. Science can even predict the effects of gravity, like when the comet will return, or how long it will take the cannon ball to fall. But if there were — just if there were, now — angels carrying the comet or carrying the cannon ball, you would not know it because they are not made of things science can detect.
Thanks for patiently playing along, and I do appreciate that you don’t think angels exist. And I even appreciate that the notion of them may violate Ockham’s Razor. However, that isn’t the point of the analogy. The point is that you may say that there is no such thing as the supernatural, but you may not say that if there is a supernatural, then science can detect it. It simply cannot. That’s not what it’s for.
So, you are left to say that there is no supernatural God. But you are not left to say that if there were a supernatural God, science would detect Him. For all you know, everything you are detecting is directly caused by Him. And if it is, then He simply does not show up on your tests.
If, for a man, science is the be-all and end-all epistemology — trumping, I suppose, even reason itself — then I submit that the man has turned science into a dogma all its own, and has made science indistinguishable from religion. I love science. I love my telescope too. But that doesn’t mean that I would use it to hammer a nail into the wall. The right tool for the right job. Science is a tool for examining nature, not God.
If they are not made of matter or energy, then they are products of a vivid imagination.
[QUOTE=Liberal]
I think we may be two ships passing in the night. Suppose — just for the sake of argument, suppose — that there exist angels, and that these angels are undetectable by science because they are not made of matter or energy. Now, we both know that science can detect gravity, because mass is affected by gravity. Science can even predict the effects of gravity, like when the comet will return, or how long it will take the cannon ball to fall. But if there were — just if there were, now — angels carrying the comet or carrying the cannon ball, you would not know it because they are not made of things science can detect.
Thanks for patiently playing along, and I do appreciate that you don’t think angels exist. And I even appreciate that the notion of them may violate Ockham’s Razor. However, that isn’t the point of the analogy. The point is that you may say that there is no such thing as the supernatural, but you may not say that if there is a supernatural, then science can detect it. It simply cannot. That’s not what it’s for.
So, you are left to say that there is no supernatural God. But you are not left to say that if there were a supernatural God, science would detect Him. For all you know, everything you are detecting is directly caused by Him. And if it is, then He simply does not show up on your tests.
If, for a man, science is the be-all and end-all epistemology — trumping, I suppose, even reason itself — then I submit that the man has turned science into a dogma all its own, and has made science indistinguishable from religion. I love science. I love my telescope too. But that doesn’t mean that I would use it to hammer a nail into the wall. The right tool for the right job. Science is a tool for examining nature, not God.
[/QUOTE]
If science can observe the movement of the comet or the cannonball, then it’s observing the angels, and merely calling them by a different name. More importantly, not only is science observing the angels, the angels are also acting the way science thinks they do, not the way the theist speculates they might.
If God exists, and he interacts with humanity, then these interactions can be studied scientifically - you might say that those interactions with humanity are themselves ‘nature’. Sure, there might be aspects of god or angels that we can’t know about, because those aspects don’t interact with humanity. This isn’t a problem - we don’t know the texture of the surface of a quark either, and that doesn’t bother us. Science is fine with the limitation of the observable, especially since religious people are similarly unable to know about those aspects, since they are completely hidden to us.
So, in short, if there’s anything ‘supernatural’, it’s only knowable to anyone to the degree that it has interacted with ‘natural’ reality, and that ‘natural’ interaction can by definition be studied by science. So everything you can possibly know about God, science can theoretically know about god, except it’d have less in the way of preconceptions and biases sneaking in and corrupting the results. (No offense, but you’re still human.)
(And come now, Czarcasm. Just because we can’t detect it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It just means it has no discernable impact on our reality. Even to theists.)
[QUOTE=begbert2]
You can claim the right to interpret your experiences any way you please, but that doesn’t make your interpretation necessarily right or even respectable if you range far enough afield from what is recognized as rational thinking.
[/QUOTE]
Sure. The point is that the average person is a mix of right and wrong and we all must interpret our subjective experiences to form our imperfect belief systems. So at what point does one imperfect belief system get to call another one “wrong” or “Irrational” Who gets to decide that and gets to declare their opinion more right than the alternatives? The majority? The scientists?
I agree. I think there’s a major difference between believing things in spite of volumes of evidence against X being true and believing something is true with no evidence for or against.
And once again, the nature of religious beliefs is much more and much deeper than just objective physical evidence. It’s inappropriate to judge them solely on objective evidence.
If I’m doing all that then I’d suspect I’m super human or just not human.
I’d hope for some personal honesty and placing a high value on the truth.
Then that would be your perspective not his wouldn’t it?
A sincere spiritual experience can be and often is an epiphany and from my experience in knowing and talking to lots of Christians and other religious people they are more common than you think.
[QUOTE=Liberal]
God is by definition supernatural.
[/QUOTE]
Might not a pantheist (God == Nature) disagree with this?
God can not be defined, because any definition would be a limitation, and God has no limitations. When one experiences God there is more than just a warm peaceful feeling of love, there is knowlege, understanding, and wisdom. This experience can not be framed with words, because words, like definitions, have limited meanings. Others reading the words miss the feelings and understanding that the experience brought to the experiencer. They question the words in a literal fashion as if to understand, but can’t feel the experience through the medium of words often denying its existence. Those who experience do not doubt, they know, but can’t communicate the knowledge except through their thoughts and deeds. Is there really a God, yes there is really a God.
[QUOTE=begbert2]
(And come now, Czarcasm. Just because we can’t detect it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It just means it has no discernable impact on our reality. Even to theists.)
[/QUOTE]
Whether we can detect it yet or not, if it exists, it has matter and/or energy. There is a lot out there that we have yet to detect, but until it is shown otherwise, there is nothing that exists that we are absolutely prohibited forever from detecting.
[QUOTE=the PC apeman]
Might not a pantheist (God == Nature) disagree with this?
[/QUOTE]
Sure. But he wasn’t asking a pantheist. He was asking me. 
[QUOTE=Liberal]
Sure. But he wasn’t asking a pantheist. He was asking me.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, I understand and accept that. And I apologize for bringing it up. I don’t mean to give you grief over it. It’s just that such an unqualified statement struck me as similar to the irritation that sparked this thread.