Belief... or lack thereof

[PRmerger]

If only I knew what the God of the Philosophers is…
Care to share?

Annnnd here’s another example that you haven’t examined the arguments for God’s existence.

What you are saying is akin to someone saying, “I have studied anatomy and physiology. But I have no idea what the uvula is.”

Pretty much we can conclude that this person hasn’t really studied A and P. He’s probably just looked at this caricature, and said, yeah, I know all about A and P now.



Why don’t you read up first on the arguments for God’s existence.

I mean, really examine them.

Then come back and tell us how you can accept an Entity who created the universe but reject the God of the Philosophers.

Right now, though, it really sounds like you’re one of those folks who doesn’t know what a uvula is while also proclaiming he’s studied Anatomy.

 

[MPat]

Unbelievable when you first hear it, unless you are in a vulnerable position and influenced by people you implicitly trust…

That seems to make testing if a claim is extraordinary practically impossible and useless…

So… she reports talking to someone… was that someone out of her and producing sound waves? or in her head?

I have no idea. I also have no idea why that would matter.

It is because the premise “everything that begins to exist must have a cause” should be a valid premise to the argument… it is stated as valid for everything we experience daily, chairs, trees, houses, cars, the planet Earth, the Sun, everything… in everything we see a causal sequence of events that leads to those structures… but ultimately, they’re just the rearranging of pre-existent material…
Cosmological arguments tends to extrapolate from these rearrangings (which we typically call creations) to the original cause that started the Big Bang and, possibly, generated the materials we know of from… nothing?
It doesn’t follow. The premise and conclusion stand on two different concepts of “create”, or “begin to exist”.
This mixing of concepts is, I admit, not obvious. When I first saw this kind of argument, I was a bit puzzled… but then I noticed this detail.

OK, that looks like a good first post for a thread in the “Philosophy” subforum.

I suppose I could try to answer it here, but I already hit post length limit writing this post… Perhaps it will be easier to keep posts under it while concentrating on less topics…

A receiver? I’d put an emitter in that comparison.
A radio emitter that has been bashed with a hammer might start malfunctioning. Does it mean that radio waves don’t exist? well, no… but the radio waves that would have been emitted by that particular emitter don’t get to exist, or are too distorted to be meaningful to any properly working receiver

It doesn’t matter what you would put there. If the argument’s form is logical, it should work for anything. Including radio receivers. If malfunctioning of radio receiver doesn’t disprove “imreceiverous” radio waves, malfunctioning of brain also doesn’t disprove immaterial soul or intellect.

The persons who wish to convince you of their belief.

OK, in this case that probably was meant to include me. Sounds, um, profitable… So, what exactly can I expect if I persuade you?

Pascal’s wager works equally “well” to any other religion or belief system.

Not really…

Believe in the god of Islam and cut your losses in the afterlife, or disbelieve that god and go to Islamic hell. Now you too are in the non-believing team. You lose the 92 virgins (or whatever number it is). That’s a mighty big loss

First of all, Islam is monotheistic, thus “God” should be capitalised. Second, Catholics tend to believe that “Islamic God” and “Catholic God” refers to the same God - it’s just that Muslims are somewhat mistaken about Him.

Third, um, no, “92 virgins” doesn’t count as an infinite gain. Such problems also prevent use of Pascal’s Wager by many other religions.

Fourth, the first step of Pascal’s Wager is to try to “win on truth”. Trying to achieve a “win on profit” only comes into play if both options end up being equally likely to be true, for all we know.

Yeah… I should… I try to be as accurate as possible, but sometimes I fail…
Only human…

OK, then let’s try it now. Can you demonstrate that your “rule of thumb” results in less false positives (accepted false beliefs) and false negatives (rejected true beliefs) than, well, some other binary classifier?

I answered this to Randy, yesterday.
I cannot make the claim that God does not exist… it’s practically impossible to ascertain that with certainty.
Just like it’s practically impossible to ascertain that Darth Vader didn’t exist, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away… he may have… we can’t tell.
But we lead our lives under some assumptions of practical value: Darth Vader and the Force are products of a human mind, fiction, and are not depicting reality, so no, Darth Vader never existed anywhere is our working assumption.
For me, it seems that the Catholic God and all other gods are products of human minds and are not depicting reality. My actions arise from the assumption that no gods exist.

But intellectually I know I can’t make that claim with certainty.

Um, I do not really see how that “working assumption” is supposed to differ from a “belief”…

That’s why I have asked you to say that you lack a belief that God does not exist in those specific words - like the words you used in the first post. You didn’t do so - looks like you have effectively stated that you cannot fully justify or prove this belief instead.

Now, there is nothing necessarily wrong with that. But perhaps we should examine how the presence of such belief (or “working assumption”) fits with your “rules of thumb”.

So, how does it fit with “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary/sufficient evidence.”?

Yes, logical contradictions are barred… but that still leaves way too much to work with.

Well, “impossible” can be taken a bit more loosely, if necessary. It’s just that we have to compare the hypothesis with alternatives. On the other hand, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” completely ignores the alternatives.

 

[pocaracas]

I don’t pick apart any one’s beliefs. Atheism is your belief and I respect that.

I love to talk about my faith with people who are interested. But, why argue? There is no point in it at all.

Well… I would say that atheism is not a belief… but why argue?
Perhaps we could just exchange ideas about what certain concepts represent to us?

 

[pocaracas]

well… …you would ask the scientists …space expanded from an infinitley small point or singularity

The space in the Universe expanded from an infinitely small point… who can we tell if there is space beyond?
We can’t… so better not assume anything about it.

 

[pocaracas]

Annnnd here’s another example that you haven’t examined the arguments for God’s existence.

What you are saying is akin to someone saying, “I have studied anatomy and physiology. But I have no idea what the uvula is.”

Pretty much we can conclude that this person hasn’t really studied A and P. He’s probably just looked at this caricature, and said, yeah, I know all about A and P now.

Why don’t you read up first on the arguments for God’s existence.

I mean, really examine them.

Then come back and tell us how you can accept an Entity who created the universe but reject the God of the Philosophers.

Right now, though, it really sounds like you’re one of those folks who doesn’t know what a uvula is while also proclaiming he’s studied Anatomy.

Very funny, but you’re still not telling me how you make the leap from an entity which creates a Universe to whatever this God of the Philosophers is.
I ask once again, please share your reasoning… or the philosophers’ reasoning.

 

[You]

The space in the Universe expanded from an infinitely small point… who can we tell if there is space beyond?
We can’t… so better not assume anything about it.

you are allowed to think about things, you know. If space expanded into something else there would be waves formed in space as the two interacted during the expansion. A few years ago there was no evidence of interaction with anything else.

 

[pocaracas]

That seems to make testing if a claim is extraordinary practically impossible and useless…

Such were the hurdles that Quantum Mechanics had to overtake…

I have no idea. I also have no idea why that would matter.

It would matter for sound waves can be recorded… sound waves would signal an actual interaction between the divine and physical reality, no brain in the way.
In her head… we have all the problems of having a brain there.

OK, that looks like a good first post for a thread in the “Philosophy” subforum.

I suppose I could try to answer it here, but I already hit post length limit writing this post… Perhaps it will be easier to keep posts under it while concentrating on less topics…

I made this thread have a broad scope on purpose…
I don’t know if you noticed, but I’ve hit that post length limit a few times… I just take the last bit and post it below… Shouldn’t disturb the reading too much.

It doesn’t matter what you would put there. If the argument’s form is logical, it should work for anything. Including radio receivers. If malfunctioning of radio receiver doesn’t disprove “imreceiverous” radio waves, malfunctioning of brain also doesn’t disprove immaterial soul or intellect.

Yeah… but you want a soul to exist immaterially and the brain to be the receiver of that soul.
I think it makes absolute sense that the brain is more like an emitter and everything in the mind is a product of that emitter. Under this scenario, a soul seems like a part of the mind, at best.

OK, in this case that probably was meant to include me. Sounds, um, profitable… So, what exactly can I expect if I persuade you?

I don’t know… what made you reply to this thread in the first place?

First of all, Islam is monotheistic, thus “God” should be capitalised. Second, Catholics tend to believe that “Islamic God” and “Catholic God” refers to the same God - it’s just that Muslims are somewhat mistaken about Him.

Oh…kay…

Third, um, no, “92 virgins” doesn’t count as an infinite gain. Such problems also prevent use of Pascal’s Wager by many other religions.

Dude… I don’t think they’re regular virgins… they’re, like, virgin forever or something! Way infinite gain!

Now seriously, I guess you’re right… not all religions fit in Pascal’s Wager…

Fourth, the first step of Pascal’s Wager is to try to “win on truth”. Trying to achieve a “win on profit” only comes into play if both options end up being equally likely to be true, for all we know.

Are you telling me that this wager assumes that there’s a 50/50 chance that God exists?
And the remaining 50% is split between no god whatsoever existing, Norse gods existing, Egyptian gods, Greek gods, etc, etc, etc?

OK, then let’s try it now. Can you demonstrate that your “rule of thumb” results in less false positives (accepted false beliefs) and false negatives (rejected true beliefs) than, well, some other binary classifier?

So, if I accept an extraordinary claim as true, how likely am I to be accepting a false claim as true?

Well, I’m not sure anyone has conducted such a study, but it seems intuitively obvious.
Just as a ridiculous example, if I am accepting to extraordinary claims, then, in an extreme case of acceptance, I could end up accepting all the claims from all the religions that exist, plus all the claims of alien abduction and all the claims of innocence from convicted criminals. How would my mind handle all that cognitive dissonance? But for our thought experiment, the important question is: how many of those claims are false, compared to the true ones?

I’d guess many more are false than true.
And that’s why the rule of thumb exists. Doubt any claim that seems to contradict common sense.
The existence of God contradicts my common sense.

Um, I do not really see how that “working assumption” is supposed to differ from a “belief”…

Do cats live under the working assumption that God doesn’t exist?
Do they believe that God doesn’t exist?

I know we can’t really talk to cats to find out what goes on in their heads, but you can make an educated guess.

That’s why I have asked you to say that you lack a belief that God does not exist in those specific words - like the words you used in the first post. You didn’t do so - looks like you have effectively stated that you cannot fully justify or prove this belief instead.

Hmm… indeed I didn’t… must have slipped my mind as I was replying to the other part of that paragraph…
Yes, I lack belief that God does not exist… whatever that may be.
I also lack a belief that fairies don’t exist… it would be so cool, if they did exist!

It would be awesome if God did exist and if he really wanted us humans… all of us… to acknowledge that He exists and want us to be his friends and all… but it doesn’t seem to be that way. More than half the population of the planet is permitted to worship concepts of Him that are not real, nor close enough… and, worse, because of that difference in worship, people fight and kill each other. It would be so easy to put an end to such senseless killing… or rather, to never have let it start… however, it did start and it has been going on for ages.
Hardly impressive… hardly God-like.

Well, “impossible” can be taken a bit more loosely, if necessary. It’s just that we have to compare the hypothesis with alternatives. On the other hand, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” completely ignores the alternatives.

Many alternatives are possible. Many many many.

 

[pocaracas]

you are allowed to think about things, you know. If space expanded into something else there would be waves formed in space as the two interacted during the expansion. A few years ago there was no evidence of interaction with anything else.

Right… no evidence.
That’s why I’m not claiming it to be that way for certain.
We don’t know.

 

[You]

Right… no evidence.
That’s why I’m not claiming it to be that way for certain.
We don’t know.

the point of all of this is that humans think about things even if they don’t know or cannot. Its just what we do. all the great explorers didn’t know anything until they arrived. I don’t really sense the explorer in you.

 

[pocaracas]

the point of all of this is that humans think about things even if they don’t know or cannot. Its just what we do. all the great explorers didn’t know anything until they arrived. I don’t really sense the explorer in you.

hehe. Oh, the explorer is there… but he doesn’t want to waste time going on a wild goose chase.

 

[Bradski]

So just like we don’t throw out owning property because people start wars over property, we don’t throw out religion because people start wars over religion.

We don’t throw out politics either. Which only becomes a problem when people say that this is what you should believe.

Quite easily. You simply talk about the Being who is necessary, eternal, omniscient, omnipotent and immaterial.

Ah yes. The one I don’t believe in. That one.

Consequently, doesn’t it make MORE sense to live your life under the assumption that God DOES exists? Especially in light of the consequences of having guessed wrong?

I see. You must believe. Otherwise, (sotto voce) there will be consequences.

But what you have said doesn’t ring true. If Christianity has a lot going for it in teaching one how to live one’s life (and it does), then one could simply live one’s life on that basis. I could feel free to discount all the nonsense about macro evolution being impossible and the Virgin Mary on a taco and all the other incredible aspects of Christianity and live my life as Jesus would want me to.

Plato said (oops, correction here: Plato is reported to have said) a lot of sensible things that would help us live our lives better. If I follow a lot of what he taught then I think that I would be a better man. But…I don’t have to believe that he existed to do that. There’s no threat of ‘consequences’ if I don’t.

You can read Darwin’s Doubt by Stephen Meyer, Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box and William Demski’s books on Intelligent Design to get an idea why it is so difficult for Darwin to defeat the odds of mutation and gradual change

Ericc, you have a problem. And that is…there is too much to believe. It appears from what you say that you want people to believe in your specific God. The one that couldn’t allow nature to take it’s course and have life emerge and evolve as a natural process. You should know that I have more certainty in the process of evolution than I do about my disbelief in God. That is, I don’t know for a fact that God doesn’t exist, but I do know for certain that Meyer and Behe and Demski are wrong.

So if I have to believe that they are right to believe in your God, then that is impossible.

I was taught all the stories associated with Christianity from birth. We never got into the most esoteric aspects of theology until I was a teenager. But I accepted everything that I was told. As Poca said, this is quite natural. All children are programmed to accept what adults tell them. It’s an evolutionary trait. So I soaked it all up.

Creation, Adam and Eve, the flood, the Virgin birth, stone tablets and burning bushes, parting seas, death and resurrection. The whole box and dice.

Then, approaching an age when I’d started to think a little more critically, it gradually dawned on me that these stories weren’t just stories to help us live better lives. People actually believed it all happened.

Now you can discount some of the Sunday School stories about Jonah and the whale and animals two by two. That isn’t what belief in God is about! But you still want me to believe that macro evolution is not possible. You may as well expect me to believe that someone built an arc.

The question is, how much could anyone, in your opinion, discount before you have left any concept of the Christian God behind? I don’t know about other atheists, but I started as a Christian and then started ticking off various aspects of Christianity as not being credible. Eventually you reach a point where you say to yourself: Hey, there’s nothing really left.

At that point, you pause for a moment the next time you have to fill in a form and state your religion. You used to put Christian because that was how you were brought up and it was what you thought you believed. But there’s not enough left to support that belief so you put n/a.

Incidentally, I didn’t then suddenly start acting un-Christianlike. No-one would have noticed the change. I was still the same guy. I still honoured my mother and father and tried to tell the truth and not intentionally hurt anyone. It beats me why anyone should suggest that ‘there will be consequences’ because I wrote n/a.

In fact, to tell you the truth, it makes me quite angry. That’s a fault, I know. But I’m working on it. Trying to be a good Christian. I’m sure Jesus would approve.

 

[ericc]

Good day

Well, I did get to read about it a bit further elsewhere… so I don’t think my 7th grade history teachings were all that wrong. Very simplified, yes. But wrong… no.

Omission is wrong. Selective presentation can be wrong if the intent is to deprive readers of a balanced or alternative views. Suppressing critics not in your favor is wrong.

Yes they are… and they weren’t just a few decades ago… Something happened before I was born that set them on this path…
It’s sad.

Following the example set by the leader?

Perhaps Darwin’s theory is indeed no longer the theory that explains the evolution of life on Earth…
Hey, what do you know? it’s not!
They now call it Modern Evolutionary Sythesis and it takes into account a bunch of mechanisms by which evolution can work… also considering DNA and RNA. Maybe you need an update? (that wiki link is a nice place to start)

But proponents of a defective theory continues to abuse those who tout different theories. That is gross injustice and serious inability to accept that their own beliefs were in fact erroneous. Is this an ego problem? Exceedingly smart people that couldn’t accept that they could be wrong? “We haven’t found the evidence to support our theory but we know it is there except we haven’t found it” is not real science. A typical hypothesis goes something like this: Hypothesis A says this, and you look for evidence to support it. If the evidence is not there, you tweak your hypothesis again. Not wait in vain for some evidence that supports one’s theory. Or must one wait till the old guards die out to move on?. "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. " Max Planck… I’ll talk about Modern Evolutionary Synthesis separately.

yeah… but I did say usually.

Without statistics ?

Actually, I am under the impression that, for all religions, the primary means of transmission of the belief is indoctrination of the young. Maybe it’s because of this studies like this: home.snu.edu/~hculbert/ages.htm
They even make my life easy when they say “This data illustrates the importance of influencing children to consider making a decision to follow Christ.”

How does such “influencing” work?..

Firstly, the data covers Americans only. It don’t believe it covers Catholics. Not surprised that children make their commitment at that age because that is heavily influenced by their parents. Which also should throw the question as to who actually answered the survey, 4 year old kids or their parents? And do these kids when they pass the 4-14 age window still show the same commitment? The big drop after that indicates that may be unlikely. And there are studies showing many teens leaving. Which goes back to our argument how much do kids still listen to their parents after they grow up. Teens do have other priorities other than religion. College kids have other priorities. Recent college graduates have other priorities. Listening to parents is not very high on the list of priorities. I saw a survey some time ago that people start to take religion seriously again when they became older, probably past middle age. My memory fails me. It appears indoctrination of the young is not very effective.

If you go back there, you’ll see that the “base desires” remark was one possible mechanism of how to get people to accept a religion. One in a pool of more than one. Meaning it wasn’t a sweeping statement applicable to every single believing individual. I do try to kep myself from that sort of statements… but I can slip up and let one of those out… It seems I didn’t, this time.

Except that out of the pool of many possibilities you filtered out those that favors your agenda only. i.e. naive trust, base desires, objective of eternal life, specialness, negative traits in a nutshell. Where as the primary motivation for the Christian religion is Love of God, not what we can get from God, not love of self.

I believe my senses to convey largely reliable information about the real world. I know that they are limited and believe I’m aware of those limits.

I believe human psychology hasn’t changed much from 100.000 years ago… it must have changed a bit… but not much.
And those base desires must have been present in those people from long ago.

Therefore, it would not be too much of a stretch of the imagination to think that those people, somehow, came up with the concept of the afterlife… the concept of ancestors looking after the living… the concept of a hierarchy in the afterlife… the concept of a ruler of the afterlife realm, the concept that this realm was created by this ruler…
[cont.]

Why should anyone place any credence on your beliefs? If you have no experience in religious affairs or afterlife, how could you be a spokesman for something that you have no expertise in? You can see from outside and make uneducated comments but you can’t be sure what you believe about religion is true. If you have no expertise in afterlife, on what basis do you base on judgement on, other than stretching your imagination? If you do not believe that God exist, how qualified are you to make comments on a subject that requires the existence of God as a basis? Or perhaps you should disqualify yourself?

 

[ericc]

[cont.d]

Why would I wish to get to know a person that I don’t even know exists?

 

[ericc]

Because He can do anything. And He has done everything using what we can describe as natural processes. We describe them as such (even if God was the instigator) because we can understand them.

And there is no necessity that he must do it your way. If he can get from A to B via any method or sequence, why must it be your method or way? Your way is nothing special, you offer no compelling reason that it is superior or better. I have no difficulty in understanding that God created the world his way. Why do you have difficulty with that? In what way does that cause a problem for you?

But now you want to claim that anything that we don’t understand is still the work of God but…this time He can’t use what we would describe as natural causes.

When did I claim that? .

So…anything that we do understand is natural because God wanted it to be that way. And anything that we don’t understand is not natural because…well, God wanted it not to be natural.

I didn’t say that either. I said Nature does not come with built in intelligence. And therefore the intelligence must come from somewhere else. You are making up a lot of things I didn’t say. A desperate move but understandable.

As arguments go, I’m not marking that very highly. It’s classic God of the Gaps. That is: what do understand is natural and what we don’t is divine.

That is your God of the Gaps. I never invoke that. I didn’t claim that even. You are just taking arguments from elsewhere and slotting it here without even realising I am not making those claims at all.

You are saying that life either could not be set up by God to be natural (as is almost everything in the cosmos) or that He decided that this aspect of the universe shouldn’t be.

I didn’t say that. I said that God chose to do it himself.

Do you really think that He made a special effort to instigate life? That it wasn’t happening as part of the natural processes that He had put in place and there was a ‘KAZAM’ moment when it suddenly happened?

Yes and yes. Biblical account it on Day Three for plants, and animals on 5th day onwards.

Was that a microbe? A cell? A virus? Why on earth would He have to bother specifically constructing life when it could (and appears to all intents, should) be part of His initial plans.

Does it matter what His plans are? What the sequence of creation was? What he chose to create first and others later? Do you care? He chose a certain way to create the world. Why would you disagree with what he did? Just because you didn’t like it? And if you don’t think he exist, even less reason for you to care.

You are saying it couldn’t be done. Either that or admit that it could and be done with it.

I didn’t say it couldn’t be done. Stop making things up.

He didn’t choose to do it that way. For example, he took personal charge of Man, formed it and breath life into it. No sir, he didn’t delegated that away. If he did Biblical writers would have recorded it that way. There is nothing to stop biblical writers to say that God made Nature and that from the created Nature life came forth. But each stage of the created world is recorded separately. He created the cosmos. He created animals and plants. He created Man. If the events were to show he created the cosmos and from the cosmos life came out from it, it would be fine too. I don’t see any issues if that were the chain of events. But that wasn’t what was recorded. There is no reason to deviate from the written records.

You keep on flinging God of the Gaps around. I do no such thing. Believers since Genesis always believed that the chain of events happened that way, that sequence. I claim no novel new things. Whatever you are claiming is actually relatively new vs the biblical accounts.

 

[Bradski]

So the God you describe is one that allows nature to take its course on almost everything. We say that ‘nature takes its course’ because we have an understanding of the processes. But there are aspects of existence whereby He has to specifically step in and do that Kazam thing and divinely order things to follow a route that is not natural. We can say ‘not natural’ because it doesn’t and could not (on your insistence) happen naturally.

It just happens that the only occasions where you can claim this is where there is a gap in our knowledge. If there wasn’t a gap, we could say it was part of the natural processes. And God makes an appearance where those gaps occur and fills them in with a divine command. Do you see where the God of the gaps claim comes from?

You appear to be giving indications that you are, if not a creationist, then something quite close to that. Either way, I might suggest discussions steer clear of any aspect of that as any counter will involve evolution and that would be a sure method of having the thread closed.

In any case, the God you have described is not the God of many Christians. In fact, not of many Catholics. In fact, I would hazard that it is not the God of some of the Catholics posting on this thread. I could believe in God. He could exist. I have no problem saying that whatsoever. But as I said, there are too many conditions placed on belief. You HAVE to believe this, you HAVE to believe that. And in your case, you HAVE to believe that God stepped in to organise life and even evolution and that it is not a natural process.

It seems I’m an atheist as regards all gods except yours. I KNOW yours doesn’t exist. So do I have to keep ticking them off? This one I don’t believe. That one I don’t believe. The one that this person believes in seems less likely, but hers seems possible. Maybe the God of the philosophers. Or can I skip the bits that don’t make sense to me and just go with the bits that do.

Which God is everyone talking about? I’ve been involved with so many threads on so many topics whereby there is disagreement about so many aspects of God. Is there a minimum requirement?

 

[ericc]

Perhaps Darwin’s theory is indeed no longer the theory that explains the evolution of life on Earth…
Hey, what do you know? it’s not!
They now call it Modern Evolutionary Sythesis and it takes into account a bunch of mechanisms by which evolution can work… also considering DNA and RNA. Maybe you need an update? (that wiki link is a nice place to start)

The problem inherent in Darwinism carries over to Modern Synthesis (MS). MS added genes to Darwin’s toolbox and it dealt primarily with transmission of genes from one generation to the next, but not how genes produce bodies. MS is fundamentally incapable of explaining the origin of body plans. You can’t pass your genes information to the next generation if you didn’t have them in the first place. The same question remains outstanding. Where did this new information to make new body plans come from? Irreducible complexity is a tough hill to climb. There is nothing left in Darwin’s toolbox.

 

[Bradski]

So you’re a Creationist. Do I have to believe what you believe in order to believe in God? Or can I discount it?

If I have to, then presumably everyone else has to as well. And they don’t.

If I don’t have to, then what you believe must, almost by definition, be irrelevant.

 

[pocaracas]

Hi ericc

Omission is wrong. Selective presentation can be wrong if the intent is to deprive readers of a balanced or alternative views. Suppressing critics not in your favor is wrong.

Indeed… and we all know the old saying “History is written by the victors”.
I feel fortunate to live in this day and age and realize that today’s historians are intent on providing the most unbiased view possible of past events.
I know that’s not perfect, but it’s what we have to work with…

Following the example set by the leader?

Perhaps the example set by the counter-leader… I don’t know. Geo-politics are above my pay-grade.
Now there’s a game where lies and omissions are in the majority…

But proponents of a defective theory continues to abuse those who tout different theories. That is gross injustice and serious inability to accept that their own beliefs were in fact erroneous. Is this an ego problem? Exceedingly smart people that couldn’t accept that they could be wrong? “We haven’t found the evidence to support our theory but we know it is there except we haven’t found it” is not real science. A typical hypothesis goes something like this: Hypothesis A says this, and you look for evidence to support it. If the evidence is not there, you tweak your hypothesis again. Not wait in vain for some evidence that supports one’s theory. Or must one wait till the old guards die out to move on?. "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. " Max Planck… I’ll talk about Modern Evolutionary Synthesis separately.

So… we haven’t found any evidence for evolution, huh?
Fossils of animals developing adaptations to their environments in successive layers of rock are what?
Evolutionary theory posited that something should carry the “information” from one generation to the next… a few decades later, DNA was found.
The theory expected there to be some animal that bridges purely sea creatures from purely land creature… Tiktaalik eventually surfaced to cover that gap.

Thus far, no more evolved animal fossil has been found in a layer of rock older than its ancestors. No rabbits have been found living among the dinosaurs…
Certainly, there have been found layers which are not linear like we like and so require some geological interpretation that’s not immediately apparent… the crust bends and flips as volcanoes, earthquakes and standard plate tectonics go about their business.

Without statistics ?

Firstly, the data covers Americans only. It don’t believe it covers Catholics. Not surprised that children make their commitment at that age because that is heavily influenced by their parents. Which also should throw the question as to who actually answered the survey, 4 year old kids or their parents? And do these kids when they pass the 4-14 age window still show the same commitment? The big drop after that indicates that may be unlikely. And there are studies showing many teens leaving. Which goes back to our argument how much do kids still listen to their parents after they grow up. Teens do have other priorities other than religion. College kids have other priorities. Recent college graduates have other priorities. Listening to parents is not very high on the list of priorities. I saw a survey some time ago that people start to take religion seriously again when they became older, probably past middle age. My memory fails me. It appears indoctrination of the young is not very effective.

Yes, that study was only about americans… and all the people who responded were believers, conveying the age at which they feel they started believing.
It’s representative of what happens in most of the western world.
The study was not considering teens who were rebelling… it was considering people who believe.

Except that out of the pool of many possibilities you filtered out those that favors your agenda only. i.e. naive trust, base desires, objective of eternal life, specialness, negative traits in a nutshell. Where as the primary motivation for the Christian religion is Love of God, not what we can get from God, not love of self.

Fair enough.
What does “Love of God” do?

Why should anyone place any credence on your beliefs? If you have no experience in religious affairs or afterlife, how could you be a spokesman for something that you have no expertise in?

Now here’s something ironic…
Who can claim to have experience in the afterlife?

You can see from outside and make uneducated comments but you can’t be sure what you believe about religion is true. If you have no expertise in afterlife, on what basis do you base on judgement on, other than stretching your imagination? If you do not believe that God exist, how qualified are you to make comments on a subject that requires the existence of God as a basis? Or perhaps you should disqualify yourself?

My imagination is quite good, usually… but sometimes it is lacking, I admit.
But it’s enough to assume the existence of God and follow from there. It lacks in that “Love of God” detail, but makes up for it by filling in with believers’ comments.

 

[pocaracas]

Because you are looking for the truth. Scientists keep on searching for things that they didn’t know exist. Columbus didn’t know the New World exist. Scientists don’t know whether life exists in other planets, yet, they spent enormous amounts of time and resources looking for things they didn’t know exist. That is a myopic view indeed if one should only look for things they know exist.

Well, scientists look for things they have good reason to think they are true. Many scientific endeavors have been an utter failure - perhaps we can consider Alchemy one of the first big failures?
Nowadays, with nuclear fusion, we know just what it would take to turn lead into gold: more energy than required to mine gold, so we just don’t do that.

Columbus… do you know the story of Columbus? He was going for India, a place he knew existed. But stumbled on a huge patch land blocking his path. When they first came ashore, they saw people, since some thought they were in India, they called the locals indians… or so the legend goes…

Aristotle had a Eureka moment.
Newton claims an apple fell on his head.
Einstein was just calculating relative motion for electromagnetic waves.

That same answer would also stop people from exploring new worlds, new frontiers, unknown frontiers. Repeat? How many discoveries were successful due to a one time event? At the first sign of failure, stop everything? That is a very depressing thought if one’s life revolve single events. Yeah, I think the light bulb would never have been invented or man ever got to fly if they were based on a 1 -time effort.

All events are single events… but you were proposing that people inflict upon themselves something very similar to self-deception. That is a very worrying thought, if a few centuries ago, people would follow through for they had no notion of that self-deception was a thing.

 

[pocaracas]

The problem inherent in Darwinism carries over to Modern Synthesis (MS). MS added genes to Darwin’s toolbox and it dealt primarily with transmission of genes from one generation to the next, but not how genes produce bodies. MS is fundamentally incapable of explaining the origin of body plans. You can’t pass your genes information to the next generation if you didn’t have them in the first place. The same question remains outstanding. Where did this new information to make new body plans come from? Irreducible complexity is a tough hill to climb. There is nothing left in Darwin’s toolbox.

How genes produce bodies is dealt with in biology. The way it works is pure chemistry.
MS deals with the evolutionary part of genes which are then expressed in terms of physiology and in behavior… if you can believe it, parasite genes can even influence the behavior of their hosts - it’s what Dawkins called the extended phenotype. Another example is how beavers build dams to change how their environment behaves. Yet another example, obviously, is man and his ability to build their environment to suit themselves, instead of relying on the slow slow evolution to adapt to the environment.

New body parts are usually adaptations of previously existing body parts.
Limbs can be seen as extensions of the bacterial flagella… extensions which happen wayyy down the line.