Quite often, I notice that an OP starting a pit thread just draws attention to themselves.
It isn’t about tomndebb, its about badchad isn’t it.
It’s clear that badchad has a fantical hardon against the dominant religion of Christianity. It is not sufficient for him to attack the religion on the basis of political intrusion by lets say fundies into his personal life. He must also attack “liberal” Christians whose beliefs are personal and in no way intrusive on the macro culture. I find that worrisome.
You specifically on this board have constantly attacked Polycrap who has acquited himself and the belief in Christ quite well on this message board. Tomndebb representing Catholicism is propably the No. 2 liberal Christian here who can defend Christianity.
I actually admire you for that. My dad once told me as a kid if I was confronted by a gang, to take on their leader. But badchad its getting tiresome and no one is really listening to you any more. Its now getting personal and you need to back off. Forget about staying the course. You can’t win.
Just in case this hasn’t been made sufficiently clear to you, I could not possibly care less what you think.
And that’s as much as I’m prepared to feed you.
I recall reading an article on Gellar (probably on James Randi’s site) describing a scientific test he agreed to in the '70s and apparently passed. The article I read pointed out that there were some serious flaws in the test’s methodology, though, and Gellar has since refused to be re-tested. The Nature article, assuming it is what is claimed, probably references this test, before its errors were discovered.
As I remember it, the editors of Nature had real doubts about publishing the paper, but as it had generated so much publicity anyway they went ahead and published it, along with a lengthy rebuttal. You can learn more in Randi’s book The Truth About Uri Gellar.
Some of the people who studied him were at Stanford Research Institute (SRI). It is a textbook case of why scientists studying supposed psychics need a magician on board, to look for trickery. Nature doesn’t want to fool you, but some people do.
Something being published in a scientific journal might be more trustworthy than something on a random website, but it can hardly be taken as the truth - unless it gets reproduced, and not even then.
You are just playing games, again. Whatever Bible man may or may not actually believe, I have only challenged him on his statements that were presented as fact.
Had he expressed any of those opinions as opinions–“I believe that…” “I think that…”, etc.–I’d have simply noted that he was welcome to those beliefs, but that I had constradictory evidence. Since he expressed them as facts outside the realm of belief, regardless why he holds those views, I have only challenged his expression as facts.
I am hardly too “cowardly” to play word games with you. I have managed to post to various news groups and message boards for nine years while recognizing that debating beliefs is an unprofitable exercise and I simply choose to ignore attempts to lure me into an activity that provides me neither enjoyment nor profit.
There is no harm in you (pretending to) have a real life so that you cannot participate in a thread on a constant basis. However, you look silly and petulant when you wander off for a while, return to discover that the thread has, in the natural course of message boards, drifted somewhat, fail to take any action to bring it back on track for several more days, then whine and shake your tiny fist that some other person “let” the thread be “hijacked.” The thread wandered on its own. This is in contrast to the thread for which you were advised to take your questions to a new thread after submitting multiple posts designed to drag that thread onto a new topic that would have left the OP unanswered and onto your favorite passtime of bashing believers.
(Mind you, my comment over which you have wailed and gnashed your teeth for lo these many posts was not even a Staff order. I did not post as a Moderator ordering you to go elsewhere, I simply noted, as a poster, that you had initially responded with on-topic posts, then begun to take a thread with a very specific question and attempt to turn it into one of your typical rants against believers. In that thread, you had, in the course of only a few hours, submitted multiple posts that would have derailed the thread. In “your” thread, the topic simply wandered in your absence over the course of multiple days.)
This is simply you attempting to engage me in more word games. Even in boldface, your silly claims are not worth a serious response.
Yeah, I’m not so sure. If 100% of scientific tests conducted on psychic/paranormal abilities have concluded they don’t exist, how open should you really keep your mind? Sure, there may be a slim possibility psychic powers are real, but the probability is basically negligible. Same with “proof” for God - just because it can’t be proven scientifically doesn’t mean there’s a 50/50 probability for God’s existence. It’s actually much more improbable, if you’re using statistics and the scientific method as your tools. Richard Dawkins does a decent job of explaining this in his book “The God Delusion”, which I’m sure many here have read.
The SRI results were completely debunked, and Duke has long since disassociated itself from the Rhine Institute, due in no small way over questions of his methodology. There is no “J.B. Rhine out of Duke University,” at least not in the way you suggest.
The onus of the “looking up” is on the claimant. In this case, that would be you, who claims to have knowledge of “lots of evidence in favor of psychic powers.” And yes, that is a request for a cite. You are rather infamous for providing cites ad nauseum, are you not?
Oh, there’s little doubt in my mind that there’s no such thing as God, and even less that psychic phenomenon exist. I’ve never seen any evidence of the former, and all the evidence relating to the latter has argued against such a thing existing. Based on what I’ve seen so far on both subjects, I’m comfortable in dismissing them. However, I remain open minded to new evidence, which is what I was originally trying to say.
This may be out of place in the Pit, but as one of the believers here, I would like to thank Miller and woodstockbirdybird for expressing such positions politely.
Careful, guys. badchad is going to stomp in here and wave his tiny little finger under the nose of each of you and positively sulk at you for hijacking his thread.
First of all, you have the patience of a saint, as my mother used to say, in dealing with Bible man. If I were a mod I’d have warned him long before you eventually did.
I don’t think he has the background, or maybe the capacity, of dealing with facts. His belief is not in evolution or creation per se but in the books he trusts. I don’t think he’s even shown an understanding of the creationist argument - I bet you or I or badchad or cosmosdan could give a more convincing argument for creationism than he is. I’ve participated in the hijack of the thread because examining a true creationist who actually responds (well, in the sense of submitting replies, if not quite in responding to our points) has gotten exceedingly rare. I also like to recycle.
It appears he actually looked at the talkorigins link I posted, but it seems he didn’t understand a word of it.
But, given that his belief is in source material, how is that any different from your belief in the NT over the Koran, say?
Both the Resurrection and a Creation event require miracles. Now, creation is more global, and would be expected to leave more evidence than a Resurrection, which is not there. But the literally earth-shaking events that supposedly went along with the Resurrection in the Bible have left no evidence either. There are some cases where absence of evidence is evidence of absence. If someone told me a troop of trumpet blowing angels descended at the last NL championship game, the absence of the story in the Times is plenty of evidence it is nonsense. I’d say that the Resurrection as it is described in the Bible with zombie saints and earthquakes and a cast of thousands is just as much nonsense as the Creation story. Jesus appearing to only a small circle of friends is another matter, in that there is no expected evidence against it.
It isn’t just words - it is really the heart of whether beliefs are justified.
Do you believe that humans are “basically” good? “Basically” bad? Neither? Do you believe that humans are capable of goodness? Incapable of goodness? Only capable of random acts that are only later judged to be good or bad by some observation by a third party?
What justifies any of those beliefs?
All belief in spirituality or morality (or love) is based on people comparing their own experience to their own expectations and trying to reconcile the two. When joining with others who believe, humans look for explanations that resonate with their own experiences. To the extent that a system of belief fails to provide a story that resonates with one’s own experiences, a person will not follow that system of belief. To the extent that such a system does provide a story that resonates with one’s experiences, a person will follow that system of belief.*
When Bible man claims that entropy prohibits evolution, he is not expressing a belief, per se, but a conclusion based on a belief (thoroughly mixed with either misunderstanding of facts or dishonesty). To the extent that he states his opinions as facts, I am quite comfortable pointing out (for the viewers at home, since he is incapable of actually addressing the issues) the facts behind his claims. I do not recall ever challenging him that the source of his belief was in error, only the bald assertion of facts in contradiction to known facts.
Here is where badchad is frothing at the bit, impatient to rush in and challenge me because people should not believe “stories” and here is where I simply disengage, because badchad–as all humans–also follows stories that make sense to him, even though he pretends that he does not.
Although badchad would like to puff himself up and pretend that I fear him for some odd reason, the reality is that I have always chosen to discuss beliefs at only the level of one-on-one in person and I see no reason to change my approach to the issue just to give him an excuse to keep posting, here. I have never engaged in debates of belief with any number of people before him and he is not worth the effort to change my mind, now.
I don’t believe either. My observations indicate that there is a distribution of “goodness” and “badness” in humans, with some being born sociopaths who can hardly help themselves, and some being born “good” who are just as imprisoned. All the evidence and experience I’ve seen and had seems to indicate this is a lot genetic with a smattering of upbringing. I know way too many kids, adopted into great homes with great parents, who have turned out to be real problems to think it is all upbringing. Goodness is judged socially - a sociopath in our society might have made a great berserker.
I’m not sure what that has to do with anything - but I can’t quite connect the evidence with the hypothesis that God made us good, bad or anything.
As above, one has a certain inborn desire (or lack of desire) for spirituality. cosmosdan has lots, I have almost none. Given that, people find or create stories to support their existing beliefs. My problem with some religions is that those who set themselves up as the owners of a belief system that people buy into use that belief system to get those who buy into it to do something - whether to tithe, stop eating meat on Fridays, or, at its most extreme, blow themselves up for God.
Now, no one has identical belief systems. There are many who have a belief system that involves feeling killing being wrong is more important than following God’s word as transmitted by someone - and they’ll refuse to do evil in the name of god. Even if you call atheism a belief system, there isn’t anyone who can use it to get an atheist to do pretty much anything.
We don’t know where he gets his belief, do we? He probably claims it is from the Bible, but the Bible neither discusses macroevolution or entropy. He almost certainly gets his beliefs from creationist literature, which I think we can safely claim is in error. There might be hope for him if he sees that this literature is not the only interpretation of the Bible possible, and not even a very good one. I see no evidence he can evaluate evidence to confirm or deny the “facts” he claims - his claims don’t even make sense in his own framework.
I don’t know about his agenda, mine is to understand other people’s thought processes. I can say why I believe and don’t believe the way I do, but I’m far more interested in the justification for other’s beliefs, and the actions that they seem to draw from them. I get the people who are spiritual, but who claim no factual basis for it. I don’t get the people who believe in facts by faith. I used to do that - but only when I had never seen evidence or even considered the other side.
