Your “black box” approach is, of course, exactly the scientific method. You observe, make models, and to the degree that your model makes future predictions accurately you believe that your model is the one to use, even if it hasn’t “solved” the box. In a very real way that is what particle physics is all about, shooting particles at each other and seeing how well the models have predicted which way the trails go. No one has ever really seen a quark. Who knows if better models will supplant Standard Theory? The box is not yet solved, but the process lets us understand the box better anyway.
And it is, I believe, a mistake to apply this approach to religious or moral truths. Moral truths do not hold up to an evidence based review, as Bryan points out. Bad deeds go unpunished all the time. Good people suffer horrible illnesses. Yet those of us who believe believe anyway. In fact religious faith is often that which is believed in spite of the evidence (e.g. Rabbi Akiva who recited the Shma while being burned alive by the Romans). It is only an insecure religious faith that looks to the material world for evidenciary support and is threatened when the evidence fails to appear.
God may be, and God may be unknowable, but the moral truths about what God wants are based on accepting revealed truths in sacred texts and oral traditions and concordance with what we believe in our metaphorical hearts. Neither God nor relgious precepts are or should be evidencary based. Down that path lays folly. For both religion and for science.
Reveled truths is a matter of belief. Not necessarily fact,so it could well mean they are not truths at all. You are taking the word of another human who said God revealed this or that to them. Even that has been translated many ways, so it remains a matter of faith, which I think is a personal decision, and doesn’t make it fact, but if believing helps you or others to better their lives and the lives of others it is okay with me.
Terri’s husband did all he could to kep her alive for many years, even took her to California for therapies that he was told could not do any good. He was faithful for years to a living (as some would call it) corpse. His vow was 'til death do them part. She was technicially dead for many years, just her brain stem was working.
For your sake I hope you never are in his or Teri’s shoes. Just try lying down on a cot with out moving for one month,(with a blind folf over yoour eyes and see how long you would want to live like that. I doubt you would stay for a week.
Monavis, don’t even bother. This subject (Schiavo) was already talked ad nauseum. What lekatt is saying has already been debunked ad nauseum. Yet he/she keeps repeating and spreading the same falsehoods. You can’t fight ignorance unless the other side is willing to listen.
Have you ever noticed how there is really no debate going on between the spiritual and the secular on this board. The secular just announces what is fact and then calls any deviation from what they announce as ignorance or worse.
When I post links they are never read, well maybe a paragraph or two, and never discussed. When I make a good post it is ignored. Like no. 204.
I know you are fearful of truth, if you were not, every possibility would be studied. Every lead followed and considered. Well, maybe some day.
There is a difference between skeptics and scientists.
As Carl Sagan said: “to be skeptical of everything is insanity.”
On the contrary. I have seen many fruitful discussions and several respectful debates between believers and non-believers on this board (which I presume is what you mean by “spiritual and secular”). I have never seen one in which you participated because you always misrepresent what those who do not believe in God actually believe, misrepresent how science works and what it has demonstrated, and lie about what scientists may have said. Thus, once you enter a discussion, there are so many efforts to correct the errors that you post, that the threads are typically derailed by your false claims. (This thread would be a good example.)
Having already disrupted this thread over your misperceptions of science, you are now taking it further afield with your claims regarding the Schiavo case. There are many believers who accept Mr. Schiavo’s narration of events over that of the Schindlers, yet you have falsely portrayed the argument over events (not the debate over what should have been done regarding Ms. Schiavo) as one between “spiritual and secular” people. You simply make it up as you go along.
The debate between truth(fact) and faith goes on and on, but one can believe what they want ,but once faith becomes fact it is no longer Faith,One can believe untrue things,and the majority can be wrong and have been. Just as one can dis-believe true things. Facts can be proven at one point, faith is a personal way of seeing things as we want them to be.
Yes, but facts can not be proven by logic, only first hand personal experience can prove facts. You could not have seen a cave man’s tool would become a television. Just as you can not see humans were single-celled creatures millions of years ago. Without experience there is only speculation and theories.
If I am such a disruptive individual you should ban me. Then you would have no real opposition to deal with. All those personal things you say I do, and the names you call me really define you, not me. Because one can not see the soul of another until he sees his own.
One can not give love unless he first owns love, one can not give offense unless he own offence. No one can give to another what you does not own.
If you haven’t noticed I have called you no names.
Nice one. No, you didn’t call him any names directly. You merely insinuated them. That’s just fundamentally dishonest, and IMHO not in keeping with your professed beliefs in truth and love.
Nice try. You still didn’t answer my question, which had nothing to to with my rejection of spirituality, and everything to do with your hypocrisy. But if you are too afraid to give a direct answer, we will all know why.
"Belive those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it."–Andre Gide
Well, since I have not called you any names, I would have to say that this is another example of your persistence in misrepresenting the statements of people whom you wish to slur.
To date, while your continued misrepresentations regarding other people is persistent, it has always fallen inside the grey area where someone might think it was simply an “error” or “misunderstanding” on your part. Had there been a clearer example that your distortions were deliberate, you would, indeed, have been warned by now.
As to “real opposition,” I think you unduly flatter yourself. There are many atheists on this board with whom I disagree on spiritual matters. I simply choose to discuss their beliefs (or lack) without lying about what those beliefs (or lack) may be. There are persons with spiritual beliefs on this board with whom I share certain core beliefs and disgree regarding different interpretations of our shared faith. I have no desire to eliminate them from the board. There are several supporters for the Iraq invasion, which I strongly oppose. I have no desire to chase them away.
In fact, the only person with whom I seem to have a problem is the person who tries to tell me that Theodor Dobzhansky, Teilhard de Chardin, Denis O. Lamoureux, Kenneth Miller, Dr. Stephen C. Meyers, Conrad Hyers, Paul Seely, and other conservative (well, not de Chardin, too much) Christians are in some way denying God or spirituality with their scientific defenses of evolutionary explanations of biology, then goes on to make outlandish and unsupported claims about Michael Schiavo, alcoholism, and any number of other phenomena, generally without providing any evidence beyond various false statements regarding the beliefs of others.
The only “opposition” you represent is the effort I have to expend trying to keep a thread on topic after you have lobbed one of your anti-fact screeds into a discussion about which you appear to be ignorant.
It’s easy, when it is a fact that can be readily proved or disproved. That’s what science is all about. A hypothesis or theory is held until it is disproved or replaced by a better one.
That could be because your posts tend to be either an illogical mess, or outright lies. I’ve never seen you make a “good” post.
I like the truth. It’s elegant, simple and pure. It requires almost no what-ifs or strawman arguments, it requires nothing to be cherry picked or taken out of context. It does not require blind faith in the false words of some self enriching witch doctor from some evangelical revival tent TV show. It just is what it is. You are the one who has problems with the truth.
And to believe everything is stupid.
Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see. If you believe everything you read, you better stop reading. There’s a sucker born every minute. I have a bridge for sale in Brooklyn, and some ocean front property in Arizona.
“Consciousness may be more than just a product of brain activity, according to Dr. Jan Holden, a professor in NT’s department of Counseling Development and Higher Education. Holden is involved with a study on near death experiences at the University of Virginia”
“Changes in values and attitudes and the most uniform change that is virtually unanimous among near death experiencers is the complete loss of fear of death. NDEers say that there is no such thing as death of consciousness.” she said. “Paradoxical changes happen in that state of consciousness.” http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=609&id=999952003
The research above is about psychic ability.
I could go on posting many more links of research being done by real scientists, but I won’t. If you want to know truth you will read and learn what is happening in the world of science regarding near death experiences and related subjects.
If you prefer to call this post lies, misrepresentations and such as usually done by the majority of uninformed posters it is your loss.
Actually, I have not. I have noted that you have posted falsehoods, even lies, on the SDMB, but I have not yet called you a liar. If you persist in this behavior, of course, I may be willing to reconsider that situation.
Your forgiveness is as phony as your claims regarding science, so you may extend it or withhold it at your pleasure.
