Richard Dawkins argument

[Iowa_Mike]

“Everything in the universe points to it’s Maker!”

WRONG. Who or what was the maker. Just because the Bible says so does not make it right. There is a circular argument behind that - Who wrote the Bible? God did… What is the proof - God said so. See how stupid that is. There is no proof for a “Creator/God”.

"No scientist starts from scratch to examine his/her field of study. Their parents/teachers tell them things to accept as ‘proven.’ They all read and BASE their reasearch on what others have said or passed on.

The same with Catholicism!

Our faith is not ‘blind’ faith, but on physical, evidential evidence that has a traceable lineage! Do we need ‘faith’? Certainly! Our trust/faith is that Jesus is Who He Said He Is; That He is the Son of the Living God; the Second Person of The Trinity!"

WRONG. What evidence that can be accepted in a court of law that Jesus existed as outlined in the Bible. NONE.

“God” was made in the mind of humans then used as a big stick to control people. The sordid history of the Roman Catholic Church in it’s first 1,500 years shows that. And by the way the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is the Holy Office of the Inquisition in it’s new name. It might not burn heretics, but it has strong powers. And Benedict XVI was it’s Cardinal Prefect.

This is one of the most cynical, opinionated and incorrect posts I’ve seen on this subject. First of all if agnostics/atheists could prove that God does not exist, the argument would be over and this thread would be considered science fiction.

Science has been unable to prove there is no God, unable to disprove ‘Intelligent Design’ and unable to explain when and how life began…all of their objections are theoretical. Scientists still cannot explain why the world is ordered in mathematics or why they believe the whole universe is so ordered without any proof whatsoever. Does this not fly in the face of the arguments against Intelligent Design?

Your anti-Catholic views seem rooted in bigotry because your arguments are fundamentally flawed. The Catholic Church’s sordid past? Comparing the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to the Inquisition and labeling Pope Benedict XVI it’s Cardinal Prefect? Maybe you could substantiate your arguments with a few facts instead of spewing empty invective.

Here are a few facts for you:

The life and times of Jesus Christ are verifiable, historical fact. Whether you accept or reject Christ’s philosophy and claims to divinity as documented by eye witnesses in the bible is up to you. But ridiculing those that accept Christ’s divinity as a matter of faith, without proof to the contrary, infers something rather unpleasant about you.

The Catholic Church has done more good in the world than any other secular or religious organization. Today the Catholic Church provides more help to the poor than any other organization………period. Look at the Catholic hospitals, universities and charitable organizations that exist throughout the world. Add to this the outreach done by Protestants and you get the largest charitable effort on the planet…all done by those evil God believers!

No Catholic has ever made the claim that the church is perfect. The Church has always had problems and always will have problems, but it survives and thrives after 2000 years. For you to bring up the inquisition and compare the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith to the ‘Holy Office of the Inquisition’ completely ignores the havoc reeked by atheists. One of the most well known atheists known today is Hitler who was responsible for most of the 50 million people killed during WWII; by comparison the inquisition was a non event because it was only responsible for around 2500 deaths.

Finally, since Christ was crucified (a historical fact by the way) Catholics and Christians have been the most persecuted groups in the world and the persecution continues today, even in America. Presently it is perfectly OK to bash Catholics and Christians, just watch the main stream media and read the newspapers. For your 411 we Catholics have the same rights to lobby and express ourselves as any other group. Do you think only non-Catholic or non-Christian groups are entitled to free speech? So instead of spewing your inaccurate, bigoted and anti-Catholic rhetoric, I suggest you fact check your opinions before picking up the pen.

God Bless and Merry Christmas,

Iowa Mike

 

[buffalo]

There’s a world of difference between trusting in the findings of bodies of peer-reviewing experts and blind faith.

l.

Like this?

Peer review and the origin of AIDS – a case study in rejected ideas

 

[cassini]

Like this?

Peer review and the origin of AIDS – a case study in rejected ideas

**On the same subject Buffalo is the book THE CRITERIAN by Jerry Bergman, Ph.D. Onesimus Press, 1984. He opens with a US Supreme Court judgement

‘that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizins to confess by word or act their faith therein.’

Bergman adds: 'In the marketplasce of ideas, govermnent must treat all ideas and their proponents equally. It aids none and hinders none. Protestants and Catholics, Christians and Moslems, theists and atheists, liberals and conservatives, humanists and fundamentalists, all stand on the same footing…

Thats the way it is supposed to work in theory. But in practice, one idea has gained the accendancy and become the official faith, the ‘established religion’ of the state. I refer to evolution and the religion of Secular Humanism, of which evolution is a cornerstone.

Our government spends billions of dollars each year promoting evolution. In public schools, zoos, museums, cultural exhibits, national parks,…

Those who do not accept evolutionary humanism find their religious freedom infringed. They must pay taxes to support the evolutionary establishment… Children who cannot afford private schools must send their children to evolution-teaching schools,

But the persecution doesn’t end there. It is engaged in a ystematic and determined policy of supressing those in academic and scientific community who dare question their beliefs.

Consider and ponder:
One educator who received Outstanding Educator of the Year Award was fired for teaching a two-model approach to theories of origins

A highly competent professor was denied tenure at a state university because his colleagues objected to his two-model approach to origins.

A students doctoral theses was rejected simply because the theses supported the creation model

a student was expelled for calling evolution a theory while the professor insisted it is a fact.

a group of college professors organised a boycott of all text books published by a company that published a small book by an emenent scientists advocating catastrophism instead of uniformitarianism.

In this book, Dr Jerry Bergman, himself a victim - chronicles evidence of religious persecution in America (and God knows where else) today.

And these are only the tip of the iceberg. How many more teachers are not hired, or are fired, students are failed, or grades lowered, promotions denied, admissions in graduate programmes are refused, those rejected books, or articles are denied publication, or scientific projects denied government funding simply because the evolutionary establishment does not believe in freedom and equal rights for creationists?

The Preface of this book talks about the many shocking cases of academic discrimination against professors, scientists and students…**

I could go on but I think we all should have the picture. The next time I read posts like
Originally Posted by AntiTheist
‘There’s a world of difference between trusting in the findings of bodies of peer-reviewing experts and blind faith.’
talking about peer review I will feel like getting sick.

 

[buffalo]

**On the same subject Buffalo is the book THE CRITERIAN by Jerry Bergman, Ph.D. Onesimus Press, 1984. He opens with a US Supreme Court judgement

‘that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizins to confess by word or act their faith therein.’

Bergman adds: 'In the marketplasce of ideas, govermnent must treat all ideas and their proponents equally. It aids none and hinders none. Protestants and Catholics, Christians and Moslems, theists and atheists, liberals and conservatives, humanists and fundamentalists, all stand on the same footing…

Thats the way it is supposed to work in theory. But in practice, one idea has gained the accendancy and become the official faith, the ‘established religion’ of the state. I refer to evolution and the religion of Secular Humanism, of which evolution is a cornerstone.

Our government spends billions of dollars each year promoting evolution. In public schools, zoos, museums, cultural exhibits, national parks,…

Those who do not accept evolutionary humanism find their religious freedom infringed. They must pay taxes to support the evolutionary establishment… Children who cannot afford private schools must send their children to evolution-teaching schools,

But the persecution doesn’t end there. It is engaged in a ystematic and determined policy of supressing those in academic and scientific community who dare question their beliefs.

Consider and ponder:
One educator who received Outstanding Educator of the Year Award was fired for teaching a two-model approach to theories of origins

A highly competent professor was denied tenure at a state university because his colleagues objected to his two-model approach to origins.

A students doctoral theses was rejected simply because the theses supported the creation model

a student was expelled for calling evolution a theory while the professor insisted it is a fact.

a group of college professors organised a boycott of all text books published by a company that published a small book by an emenent scientists advocating catastrophism instead of uniformitarianism.

In this book, Dr Jerry Bergman, himself a victim - chronicles evidence of religious persecution in America (and God knows where else) today.

And these are only the tip of the iceberg. How many more teachers are not hired, or are fired, students are failed, or grades lowered, promotions denied, admissions in graduate programmes are refused, those rejected books, or articles are denied publication, or scientific projects denied government funding simply because the evolutionary establishment does not believe in freedom and equal rights for creationists?

The Preface of this book talks about the many shocking cases of academic discrimination against professors, scientists and students…**

I could go on but I think we all should have the picture. The next time I read posts like
Originally Posted by AntiTheist
'There’s a world of difference between trusting in the findings of bodies of peer-reviewing experts and blind faith.’
talking about peer review I will feel like getting sick.

The evolution business is indeed self perpetuating as you show above.

 

[Bluegoat]

The evolution business is indeed self perpetuating as you show above.

THat could actually be taken as rather funny, I’m not sure if you meant it that way though.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

…I do not have, as itsjustdave1988 said, “faith” in things because someone wrote a paper I read and I agree with it. We do not believe in Dark Matter for example simply because I “read an article on it”.

Nor do I believe a particular religion because someone wrote a bible on it. Muhammed, for example, claims quite a different thing about God, man, and the universe than Christianity. Protestants claim that the Sacred Writings contian 66 books, while Catholics say 73. We are responsible for testing the evidence and drawing a conclusion based upon reason, experience and a wide variety of testimony.

Religions are tested just as often as scientific theories, probably more so. Those that last the test of time are more compelling than others. Atheism, is among many of the various belief systems in the world. Dawkins may not like this, but it is an ancient belief system that has been thoroughly “peer reviewed” and found wanting. It is a belief system that has never been compelling enough to convince more than a rather insiginificant percentage of humanity. The results of the peer review is that athiesm is utter nonsense.

What do people generally think science is?

I believe as Stephen Hawking states, for instance, that scientific theories are “always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how may times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure the next time a result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory.” (Stephen Hawking, A Briefer History of Time, p. 14).

…a process that relies not on one person writing a paper to show something is true, but on something called “peer review”…

Sounds very much like theology.

…There is a hard hard slog behind such papers. There has to be as much, if not the majority, of papers released for peer review turn out to be really really dire and flawed to the point of comedy.

Much like theology.

Marguilis had to go through decades of presentations…

The philosophy and theology of Aurelius Augustinus had to go through over a thousand years of critique, and still counting.

…They do the review, they examine the evidence contained in the papers, they question it themselves, they read how other people questioned it and question their questioning.

Sounds like theology.
continued…

 

[itsjustdave1988]

continued…

Where there is “faith” in that I do not know…

By faith, I believe the original post had in mind the word which derives from the Latin *fideles, *which means “trust.” There’s a measure of trust when gathering the evidence of testimony and evaluating it. For example, when a biologist claims to have collected certain bones from a location, perhaps he’s being truthful, perhaps not. Perhaps the evidence included the jawbone of an Orangutan with filed down teeth. We are called to “test everything,” hopefully before first publishing you “findings.”

All testimony (scientific or otherwise) might be trustworthy, but then again it might be purposefully deceptive or honestly mistaken or erroneous. Can we trust Schodinger’s presentation of quantum physics, for example, must we repeat all of Schrodingers experiments and calculations, to verify for one’s self all that he presented. The latter is rare, since we would never be able to build upon past successes if we repeated the same experiments over and over again because we distrust all prior testimony.

I, for one, have never seen the dark side of the moon. I expect I am like many many people who simply “trust” the testimony of those who have seen the dark side of the moon when they testify to its characteristics. This trust is not blind, as I reason that the testimony is congruent with my own experience and other testimony. But there is an still element of “trust.”

One must trust, for example, the capacity of one’s own reasoning capability. Not all have the same gift of reasoning. To “trust” one’s own ability to perceive and think to be more trustworthy than another’s ability takes just as much “trust” as accepting the testimony of one who claims to be an “expert” in the field.

The scientific method is well suited to some “testing” of evidence, but is poorly suited to other tests. For example, testing the testimony about other persons is difficult to prove or disprove by the scientific method. What do we know that is true about Socrates, for example? How do we know it? The testimony we recieve is ancient. Is it trustworthy? It seems to be completely derived only from what Plato says about Socrates? What if Plato made it up? Can we make certain claims about Socrates based solely upon the testimony of others, primarily one guy? Socratest has had more influence on western society than Dawkins will ever have, and yet all that we know about him derives mainly from the testimony of another.

Military studies, law, sociology, philosophy and history are fields of study that seem to rely upon testimony to learn about past human behavior. Since many claims about truth do not lend themselves to being verified by scientifc experimentation, science is limited in its scope. Science might be able to help us understand how old a papyrus is, but can’t tell us if what is written about another person on the papyrus is true or false. Other methods are involved, and each of these methods rely upon reasoning, experience, and the testimony of others, just like science.

However there ARE some who have “faith” as I just defined it. They are told by parents or other people in positions of “authority” that there is such an entity and then they view the world with new eyes and find the things that support this position.

And there are some who view science in the same way. Many of us were told about the “Brontosauraus” as kids. Many of these kids began to view the world with new eyes, which influenced later thinking.

Peer review is good. Yet in practice, “peers” can be a synonym for the “good ole boy” network…you give a good review to my paper, I’ll give a good review to yours." A younger more talented scientest may be reluctant to criticize a paper written by a “tenured” professor since that younger scientist relies upon his indorsement for grant money. Scientists are not immune to corrupt motives.

While peer review is good (in science, in theology, in philosophy, etc.), a review over centuries upon centuries, in fact a review over thousands of years is even better.

 

[Bluegoat]

By faith, I believe the original post had in mind the word which derives from the Latin fideles, which means “trust.” There’s a measure of trust when gathering the evidence of testimony and evaluating it. For example, when a biologist claims to have collected certain bones from a location, perhaps he’s being truthful, perhaps not. Perhaps the evidence included the jawbone of an Orangutan with filed down teeth. We are called to “test everything,” hopefully before first publishing you “findings.”

This is not the only way Christians use the word faith, but it is one of the most important and oldest. It is complimentary with the use of the word to mean “trust in unprovable assumptions.”

Both science and theology and philosophy, and every other human endeavor really, rely on these kinds of faith. Bridge building, art, love - I can’t think of any that don’t.

Alas, a real deficiency in Dawkins is that he does not use these time-tested, peer reviewed definitions of faith that have been accepted by Christians for over 1000 years. Rather, he uses an understanding of faith which makes it contrary to reason or of an entirely different order, which is newer and has also been controversial wherever and whenever it has existed.

And more importantly perhaps, he does not discuss or differentiate between these different uses, but assumes all refer to the latter. Understanding the technical language is an important first step in any field.

 

[Nozzferrahhtoo]

They usually assume much of the work done previously.

Every paper on physics does not take the time to go through all the work done in the early 20th century before it moves on to whatever its topic is.

Yes I fully agree with this and have no issue with it. However this is not what I was pointing out. You are actually disagreeing with me by entirely agreeing with me, which is nice

There is a difference between assuming work done before, and just assuming data you do not have. My post was pointed at the latter, not the former which I have literally NO issue with.

Thus far no evidence has been presented to my knowledge that there is a god entity at all. I have asked and read and searched for 20 years now and I literally have not been shown a scrap of a shred of a small piece of evidence for this.

 

[Nozzferrahhtoo]

Well, if you insist on ahdering to a flawed definition of “faith”, then it’s no surprise that you continually come to flawed conclusions.

The definition you insist on is indeed a redefinition which is completely divorced from the true meaning of the term. It’s not surprising you didn’t know this, because it happened long before you were born.

I think the definition is more than applicable. It is certainly more so than the usual atheist rhetoric of “Faith is belief with no evidence”.

However arguments over terms are indifferent. Make up a new term for what I am saying if you like. Call it Spluddeywuddelybunk if you like. The fact remains that the point I am making stands perfectly well regardless of which term you wish to apply when talking about it.

So if you want me to repeat my point without using the word faith then it would be this:

"The difference between science and religion in the context of this thread is that one assumes data we do not have before coming to its conclusions, while the other does not.

Coming to a conclusion first and fitting the evidence to it second is flawed and would be hammered in scientific peer review. There is a phrase oft repeated in science and also in Maths in the area of Statistics “You can not find your hypothesis within your data”. "

So comparing science and religion and saying they both have “faith” is deeply flawed as the different between how the two operate is stark.

 

[Nozzferrahhtoo]

We are responsible for testing the evidence and drawing a conclusion based upon reason, experience and a wide variety of testimony.

Indeed and if I want to test the evidence on Dark Matter (since you brought that one up) or any other subject all I have to do is get the peer reviewed papers on the subject and peer review them myself.

However in religion I have quite literally been asking what the evidence is for 20 solid years. I have read, searched, asked, pried and more and I literally, really literally, have not been shown evidence for the existance of the entity in question ever. Not once.

So you can have all the fun you like repeating the line “sounds like theology” over and over but the differences appear very stark to me. Data can quite literally not be peer reviewed if it is not forthcoming.

 

[Nozzferrahhtoo]

I, for one, have never seen the dark side of the moon. I expect I am like many many people who simply “trust” the testimony of those who have seen the dark side of the moon when they testify to its characteristics.

I am afraid this is false in an important way. Indeed most of us “Trust” that this is so on their authority but only while doing so has no implications.

The very second however that data becomes important, it must be confirmed. So I can “trust” what the dark side of the moon is like (to use your example) all I like, but as soon as I want to espouse a view BASED on this claim, I need to verify it. At this point I will not “trust” it any more, but will read the papers, evaluate the data, and see for myself that the claims being made are indeed true.

This is NOT true of religion. You might “trust” that there is a god based on what your authorities tell you. However the second this assumption becomes relevant (say for example someone says “Homosexuality is immoral because it is against gods plan”) then I no longer want to “trust” that there is a god and this is its “plan”. I want the data and I want the verification.

After 20 years of asking, this data simply: Is. Not. Forthcoming.

Not once.
Not even a little bit.
Ever.

Peer review is good. Yet in practice, “peers” can be a synonym for the “good ole boy” network…you give a good review to my paper, I’ll give a good review to yours."

Entirely false, because this is not how it works. If this did happen between two scientists then all the other reviews who peer review the production would call foul instantly. In science you gain points for proving yourself OR other’s wrong. This is the bread and butter of scientists. If 2 scientists engaged in this practise you suggest then the other peers would rip it apart and get themselves ahead in science for good work done. You quite simply could not get away with this.

As you say, scientists are not immune to being corrupted. This could not be truer and I agree with you 100%. However the PROCESS of science is not corruptable, because other scientists benefit greatly from pointing out the corruption in the other ones. One thing we know about humans is if you have a big enough group of them then you are almost 100% guaranteed that if there is a way to get ahead SOMEONE will take it.

And scientists know this. If two scientists review each other favorably in a “scratch me and I will scratch you” form, they both know, beyond any reasonable doubt, that someone will find them out and not only will their papers be withdrawn and rubbished, but the reputations will suffer sometimes irreparably too. Our papers are full of names of scientists who lost their tenure and memberships for falsifying data, results and papers.

Of course religion is NOT like this at all. Concepts such as “faith”, “Blasphemy” and “heresy” and more are built into it specifically to PREVENT people engaging in this peer review practice. There is a reason they say things like “Blessed are those who have NOT seen but believe”. A line that quite simply people should be ashamed as having in their book.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

Indeed and if I want to test the evidence on Dark Matter (since you brought that one up) or any other subject all I have to do is get the peer reviewed papers on the subject and peer review them myself.

I agree. In fact, that’s how I went about studying the evidence with regard to religious (an irreligious) claims. I “peer reviewed” the claims of Buddhism, Hindusim, Daosim, Shintoism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and many other ideologies. I examined the evidence (reason, experience, testimony) of their teachings and found them all to be unconvincing, excepting Christianity.

However in religion I have quite literally been asking what the evidence is for 20 solid years.

I’m free to discuss the evidence with you here: Catholicus Maximus

The best evidence (but not the only evidence) in my scientifically trained mind has been my own experience. No religion (or irreligious belief system) has brought about the “metanoia” necessary in my life, excepting Christianity. My reasoning about my own experiences, congruent with the testimony of others has proved to me that the doctrines of Christianity are true. However, I can understand how skeptics who have not shared the same experience may continue to have difficulty.

For example, I can claim that I was born in Germany. Is such a claim true or false? Can it be “proved?” There exists evidence of my claim, but like most evidence (in science, in law, in military studies, in economics, in politics, in philosophy), it can be reasonably interpreted in various ways. However, that doesn’t mean that the evidence (partial and variously interpreted as it may be) cannot be assented with certainty by rational beings.

I have, for example, a birth certificate which states I was born in Germany. However, a skeptic can state, “that’s not evidence, because such documents can be forged.” True. But just because some evidence can be deceptive or erroneous does not mean that we should assume all such evidence is untrustworthy. We are called to “test everything,” and so we ought to also examine the evidence regarding the trustworthiness of such testimony.

Some skeptics can have a tendency to apply the wrong methods to their examination of the evidence about God. To examine truth claims about a person is different than examining the attributes of electricity, for example. ***Nobody can prove beyond all doubt whether or not I was born in Germany. Is that the same as claiming there is no evidence? ***No experiment can be replicated to prove or disprove such a claim. However, my mom knows without doubt, because she was present at my birth. There were other witnesses to my birth as well. I have received testimony directly from witnesses about the facts of my birth, and have no evidence (reason, experience, testimony) to consider their testimony to be erroneous or untruthful. Will that evidence satisfy every skeptic? Probably not. Doubts can surely persists about the facts of my birth contrary to the evidence presented. Some might cling to a flawed epistimology and philosophy that pretends that they shall not be certain of anything to be true unless it is proved beyond all doubt. Yet, that may be how they approach religion, but not how they approach other morally certain decisions they make in their lives. Nonetheless, just because a skeptic rejects the trustworthiness of the evidence does not mean that there is no evidence that I was born in Germany, or that the evidence isn’t enough to be assented to with moral certainty by rational beings.

Evidence about God is similar. It’s there. Yet, it is evidence about a person, about events that have happened in the past, present, and will happen (if the testimony is true) in the future.

Because of that evidence, my atheist wife became Catholic and her becoming Catholic made me look at this ancient religion in a new light, and so I became Catholic (well, returned to the Church, a “revert” so to speak).

Likewise, some rather famous scientists and athiests have also conceded that there is evidence of God’s existence. Sometimes it takes a long struggle to disentagle oneself from the psychological barriers to the intellect and will before one can become open to honestly looking at that evidence. But the evidence (like my evidence of being born in Germany)–which consists of reason, experience, and testimony–is there, capable of being examined by rational beings and assented to with certainty.

If you want to talk more specifics, I will. It’s up to you.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

Whether or not you’d like to enter into further dialogue, I recommend a book called Cosmos, Bios, Theos. It’s a compendium of different views by scientists regarding belief in God. Some quite clearly reject the evidence before them. Others, some Nobel-prize winning scientists–have been convinced that God exists based upon their examination of the evidence.

I also recommend a book by former atheist Antony Flew, called There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind .

Another great source is by Dr. Henry “Fritz” Shaefer. He is the Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and the director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize. His book is called Science and Christianity: Conflict or Coherence?

Dr. Francis S. Collins also has a book called The Language of God - A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Dr. Collins is head of the Human Genome Project and one of the world’s leading scientists.

I don’t know that any of the above books are from Catholic authors.

 

[lorathon]

What would convince an Atheist that there is a God? I have tried to come to some concussion but always fall short of a decent answer.

If God himself came to your door and preformed a miracle I think this would convince you (or would it?). The problem then becomes, how would you as a now former Atheist convince your Atheist next door neighbor who was not there.

In the end there is no way for God to absolutely prove his existence to man without visiting each and every human on Earth on a daily basis. If God just showed up for your 21st birthday party, when you are 50 you might start questioning if he was even there or if it was all a dream.

What type of evidence is needed to prove the existence of God?

 

[itsjustdave1988]

As for “peer review,” I really don’t have time or energy to debate how well or badly such a system is employed in practice, as I think the “peer review” process has itself been “peer reviewed” and has been found wanting.

I will instead leave you with a quote from the former editor of the British Medical Journal: “A systematic review of all the available evidence on peer review concluded that 'the practice of peer review is based on faith in its effects, rather than on facts’.” [Richard Smith, “Peer review: a flawed process at the heart of science and journals,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 2006 April; 99(4): 178–182]

 

[Bluegoat]

Yes I fully agree with this and have no issue with it. However this is not what I was pointing out. You are actually disagreeing with me by entirely agreeing with me, which is nice

There is a difference between assuming work done before, and just assuming data you do not have. My post was pointed at the latter, not the former which I have literally NO issue with.

Thus far no evidence has been presented to my knowledge that there is a god entity at all. I have asked and read and searched for 20 years now and I literally have not been shown a scrap of a shred of a small piece of evidence for this.

If you are looking for scientific evidence for philosophical questions, than you are simply not going to find it. However, if you conclude that philosophical principles can therefore not be trusted, you are going to also have to reject your scientific evidence.

If you are saying you have never seen philosophical discussions about the existence of god, I can only scratch my head.

 

[MyrielBienvenu]

Hello, I recently watched a TED talk by Richard Dawkins. I think there are a lot of good talks on ted.com. This one is making me question my faith. The talk was about atheism and he said that scientists say they know things because of seeing consistent evidence and observing the natural world. He remarked that it would be very silly if a scientist said he knew something because his parents had taught him to just have faith it was true. What can a Catholic say about this. He is right. A person should believe something after careful consideration, not blind faith. What should the Catholic response be to this? Do we sometimes rely too much on blind faith and not even carefully reflect on what we believe?

This reminds me of that great Catholic writer, G.K. Chesterton. He once said, “If there were no God, then there would be no atheists.”

I think that Mr. Dawkins was right about it being rather silly to believe something even if we don’t have the proof for it. But then, of course, we’ve got a duty to find out why we believe what we believe. I think we must find out why we believe, for example, that Christ is truly present, Body and Blood, in the Holy Eucharist. But we do not believe because of blind faith. We have proof of the Real Presence, so we espouse that admirable belief. Then, we must have faith that Christ is the Son of the Living God, as St. Peter said, and as He has proven.

G.K. Chesterton said that there are only two things which steadily progress. The first is science, and the second is the Catholic Church. They progress because of the accumulation of reason, experience and testimonies of those who have “been there”. Atheism, he also says, is a heresy which cannot progress, because it does not continue from a beginning but rather it destroys its start and starts all over again.

Before I go, let me leave you with the note that this is my own opinion, and that I willingly submit to the Holy Catholic Church, and this quote:

“Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas . . . for it is the assertion of a universal negative.” (G.K. Chesterton)

 

[Annie39]

What would convince an Atheist that there is a God? I have tried to come to some concussion but always fall short of a decent answer.

If God himself came to your door and preformed a miracle I think this would convince you (or would it?). The problem then becomes, how would you as a now former Atheist convince your Atheist next door neighbor who was not there.

In the end there is no way for God to absolutely prove his existence to man without visiting each and every human on Earth on a daily basis. If God just showed up for your 21st birthday party, when you are 50 you might start questioning if he was even there or if it was all a dream.

What type of evidence is needed to prove the existence of God?

I’m a former member of St. Thomas the apostle in Riverside. Still attend there from time to time. Just saying “hi”

 

[Nozzferrahhtoo]

The best evidence (but not the only evidence) in my scientifically trained mind has been my own experience.

Alas there is nothing remotely scientific about this. I’m afraid Anecdote is not evidence. There are people who experience being Napolean reincarnated. There are people who experience alien abduction. We simply do not grant credence to people based on their personal experience. We can not, should not and I will not engage in this.

The first test of any evidence is to ask yourself are you accepting the evidence for what you want to accept it for and disregarding it for things you do not want to accept it for. The answer in this case is a resounding yes. You accept personal experience as evidence for this god entity. However you likely would not accept personal experience for the existence of leprechauns, alien abductions, a still living Elvis, unicorns, or reincarnation etc etc.

On top of this, and I do not mean to suggest you are lying, you can not test personal testimony. All a person saying “I have experienced god” is evidence for is that this person is SAYING they have experienced god. This is not evidence that the person claiming this is telling the truth. They may just want to say it.

At most, personal experience is just an indication of a field worth studying for evidence. The experience itself however is not evidence. If 1 million people claim there is a god and they have experienced it then we use this as an indication that we must look for evidence for this claim. Which is of course why I am on forums like this in the first place. I am not here to convert anyone, but to seek help to find out if such evidence exists for the claims being made. However this 1 million people are not themselves evidence for the claim.