BS: The God Delusion 2010

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 04:57 PM

Are you saying that we are hard evidence that there are Aliens that we can't see?

lol

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Smokey.
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 05:00 PM

No, I'm saying that we are the evidence of sentient life in the universe. Personally I'm extremely doubtful there is any more, but I'm open to empirical evidence if or when it turns up.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 05:10 PM

Ah! you are right. He didn't say "other."

But still, the likelihood is with our present knowledge far beyond proof.

>>Personally I'm extremely doubtful there is any more, but I'm open to empirical evidence if or when it turns up.<<

Are you open to "empirical" evidence about God? What I mean is, Would similar evidence convince you that God existed?

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Smokey.
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 05:15 PM

I think so, yes. I don't think I've ever said otherwise.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 05:22 PM

Smokey,

I think you and I have reached an accord.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Mrrzy
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 05:46 PM

Indeed, all us so-called "rational" atheists, those who see no rational reason for believing in deity, would certainly believe in deity were there any actual rational reason.
Nobody has seen deity, so there isn't even the eyewitness testimony that is so impossible to useas data anyway, once you understand perception and memory.
The finding that life began on this planet long before the planet finished forming is evidence for the likelihood of life on any "goldilocks" planet. Whether any of that life became macroscopic is doubtful, given how very little of ours has. Whether any of that macroscopic life developed intelligence is even more doubtful, given how very little has here.
But there are gazillions of planets. Gazillions of infinitesimal chances start to add up to pretty close to one...
So I would agree that there is much more evidence for life, even intelligent life, on other planets, than there is evidence for deity, since there hasn't been any of the latter yet. Not even probabilities...

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 07:40 PM

>>So I would agree that there is much more evidence for life, even intelligent life, on other planets, than there is evidence for deity, since there hasn't been any of the latter yet. Not even probabilities.<<

It really comes down to point of view and what you accept as "evidence."

There is Zero actual evidence of life on other planets, No bones, no bodies, no radio waves. There is zero evidence of intelligent life on other planets, no bones, no bodies, no radio waves.

There is conjecture about all of those things. But there is also conjecture about God. But even accepting your unproved point that there is no evidence for God. Zero is not "much more" than zero so you are incorrect.

It shows that you are not speaking from knowledge. Perhaps you are expressing what you want to believe rather than what you know.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 08:30 PM

"Steve is a troll... If mockery and off topic insults become a legitimate form of debate, his words may have some value."

Well, here's a short collection of valuable words, all from the keyboard of wacko Jacko:

"an anti-theist as nasty as you"

"I'll not be wasting any more time reading your nonsense."

"I will not feed your apparent addiction to bulling [sic] behaviour"

"I am so proud to share a forum with the self-appointed pope of the Atheist Church."

"You really are loony"

"If you care about him, get him some help."

"Before you defend the sanity of his behavior read what he has said."

"He is acting crazy and I am saying so. That is not childish. It is the truth. I seriously hope that he goes and gets himself some counseling."

"Isn't that loony on the face of it?"

"But please note that he plans to bait insult and rant until you tell him to shut up."

"You see? I told you he was insane."

"His behavior is classic insane definition #3…"

"Steve is a troll. A troll who seems to limit his trolling to a specific topic but a troll nevertheless."

"you have allied yourself here with someone who is clearly only here to mock and who travels the Internet to mock as a bit of a hobby"

"What you have been saying seems like a cry for help. Or maybe like a young male trying to get the attention of a young woman by dipping her pigtails in an inkwell."

"You are not an atheist. You are a loon."

"Shaw,
You need counseling. You really do. There are plenty of places to get it besides church. Go get some."

"Smarty Shaw"

No mockery or off-topic insults there then, Jacko. Tee hee!

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 09:07 PM

"I can go around my neighborhood and find people who can tell me about specific prayers they have had answered. I have shared that experience on these threads myself."

Not evidence. Merely claims made by people who actually said prayers hoping to get them answered. Your only "evidence" is that they're friends of yours whom you consider to be nice people, so you'd rather believe them than not believe them. They are biased (or deluded, or lying, or just got lucky). Go round your neighbourhood and find people who have had specific prayers NOT answered. I bet you never ask. Your sharing your experience doesn't mean we have to believe you. You're biased. It isn't evidence without corroboration. It's just claims. You can only give us uncheckable claims. Tell you what. Show us someone with one leg who went to Lourdes, prayed for a new leg and grew one. Now that's what I'd call evidence. Sadly...

As for three billion believing, well you need to provide accurate, checkable stats on that. In any case, three billion believing (as you claim) still leaves over three billion not believing. I won't even bother showing you where that argument goes.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: John P
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 09:38 PM

Just to be clear, I don't have any idea whether or not there is intelligent life on other planets. It's one of those questions that are unanswerable. There is no information available to us. What I did say is that we know that intelligent life has appeared at least once, so it is possible that it appeared more than once. More likely than the existence of gods, for which we don't have the same sort of hard evidence that we do for the possibility of sentient life evolving.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 09:39 PM

"There is Zero actual evidence of life on other planets, No bones, no bodies, no radio waves. There is zero evidence of intelligent life on other planets, no bones, no bodies, no radio waves.

There is conjecture about all of those things. But there is also conjecture about God."
Indeed, no actual evidence. But you are being slightly disingenuous putting conjecture about those things on a parallel footing with conjecture about God. We live on a planet of a particular size a particular distance from a star, and there's life on it. We have already discovered 30 planets belonging to neighbouring stars that are in the ball-park as compared to the Earth in terms of size. Extrapolation from this suggests that there are probably several billion such planets in our galaxy alone (and tgere are billions of galaxies). Now that is not evidence of life beyond the Earth, but it does strongly point to the possibility, within all the laws of physics (a crucial point). I'd say it was almost worthy of a scientific theory. Now none of this applies to speculation about God. There is no evidence that he exists here or anywhere else so there is nothing to extrapolate from. There is certainly nothing in the laws of physics that points to him. There is no starting point at all (except for claims about answered prayers, tradition, ancient stories, God of the Gaps, etc.). Your attempt at comparision is bereft of all logic.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 09:43 PM

We can be as clear as we like, John. The prospect of a response that acknowledges the clarity is remote, sadly. Still, where there's life there's hope.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Smokey.
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 10:00 PM

God grants everyone's prayers - the results are so chaotic it just looks as if he ignores them, aside from the generally underestimated number of mathematically certain coincidences - the absence of which might, ironically, go some way to providing evidence for his existence.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 10:23 PM

>>God grants everyone's prayers - the results are so chaotic it just looks as if he ignores them, aside from the generally underestimated number of mathematically certain coincidences - the absence of which might, ironically, go some way to providing evidence for his existence. <<

If you would care to prove that it is coincidence you would be on to something Smokey. You have no proof or evidence or studies of what you said above there just conjecture.

If you can prove that people are claiming that their prayers are answered are wrong and show how they are wrong that would be nice.

But saying that it is more likely to be coincidence is not proof. I don't think that it is possible to prove that there is a God or not. I said that when I entered these threads. I certainly have not seen any hint of such proof from any of you.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Smokey.
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 11:01 PM

I can't prove anything, Jack. I'm not really in the business of proof, only understanding. I see the phenomenon as naturally occurring coincidence and you don't - I really don't have a problem with that.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Smokey.
Date: 02 Nov 10 - 11:20 PM

The point I was making is that an absence of those inevitable 'coincidences', would, at least to me, look far more mysterious than what actually happens.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Smokey.
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 12:14 AM

If you can prove that people are claiming that their prayers are answered are wrong and show how they are wrong that would be nice.

Some of them have to be wrong, simply because coincidence exists... innit?

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Sawzaw
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 02:14 AM

What does knowledge look like?

How do we know it exists if we can't see it?

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 06:42 AM

If you claim that you had a prayer answered there's nothing anyone in the world can do to prove you wrong. If you say there's a God there's nothing anyone in the world can do to prove there isn't. If I tell you that a blue china teapot is in orbit around Mars there's nothing you or anyone else can do to prove there isn't. Geddit, Jacko? But making claims is easy and lazy. Anyone can claim anything. I can claim I saw a ten-foot jellyfish flying over my garden a minute ago and there would be nothing you could do to prove there hadn't been. I don't happen to think that the celestial teapot is there, but if I did and I said so wouldn't you think it reasonable to put the onus on me to provide evidence? Likewise, the burden of providing evidence sits on the shoulders of both those who claim God exists and those who claim they've had a prayer answered, not on those who demur. Calling on sceptics to provide "proof" is just putting the whole issue arse about face. It's a dishonest ploy to divert attention from the real issue, which is your lack of evidence. I've been ticked off for requiring scientific evidence for God's existence. I'm sticking to that but I'll compromise. Any evidence that's objective and independently-verifiable will do me. Something concrete would go quite a way (like that Lourdes person growing a new leg, a flesh-and-bone one I hasten to add, not a concrete one). But large numbers of people making unverifiable claims is not evidence, nor is the fact that religion has been going a long time, nor is the fact that some people of old wrote down stories, nor is the fact that we have magnificent cathedrals... All that is just what people do. You need to show us what God can do and it has to be verifiable by independent persons with no axe to grind. So far, there's nothing in the universe we know of that can't be explained, either right now or in the future, unless we invoke God. And science is relentlessly closing the gaps in understanding all the time.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 12:11 PM

>>If you can prove that people are claiming that their prayers are answered are wrong and show how they are wrong that would be nice.

Some of them have to be wrong, simply because coincidence exists... innit? <<

I will say that some of them probably are coincidences, but what you say does not follow.

They are not wrong because coincidence exist. Coincidence occurs in many areas of life that are not prayer. Also what you are implying here is that coincidence occurs they cannot tell the difference between cause and effect. That is a pretty big leap of faith on your part considering that you haven't talked to them.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 12:14 PM

As I was scanning for other posts to read I noticed the word "Jacko" in a Shaw post. I wonder if he does not realize that I have given up reading his posts for reasons explained earlier?

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: John P
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 12:36 PM

The interesting thing would be to compare how many prayers are reported as answered to how many don't get answered. If we're looking at answered prayers as evidence, the unanswered ones need to be part of the equation. I'm guessing something like a million unanswered prayers for every answered one. If you take out anything at all for coincidence, that doesn't leave much of a positive ratio.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 12:49 PM

Yes, You ARE guessing.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 01:05 PM

"As I was scanning for other posts to read I noticed the word "Jacko" in a Shaw post. I wonder if he does not realize that I have given up reading his posts for reasons explained earlier?"

Excellent. Then I can expect a better chance of my posts being allowed to stand without a load of brainless, angry, Christian insults levelled against 'em. Jacko, if one of your "scans" happens to accidentally cause you to read this, d'ye think you could persuade Ron, Ed and gun-totin' Guest ex-Sanity to send me to Coventry too? Tee hee!

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 01:20 PM

I don't see how it would ever be possible to do a prayers answered/not answered survey. The level of honesty required would not be attainable.

On this business of prayers, and I'm assuming we're discussing prayers that ask God (or one of his henchmen/women) for something, as opposed to those which just thank or praise the Lord in all his glory, etc.(those ones don't require answers), it always strikes me that they are the most un-Christian thing. If you ask God for something, someone else will have to have that something diverted away from him. If you ask God to let someone not die, or get better, you are asking him to unreasonably swell the world's population (it exacerbates the situation when you consider that many of these self-same people also oppose contraception and abortion). Asking God to not allow nature to take its course seems unreasonable to me. Liverpool are playing Chelsea this weekend. If I pray that Liverpool win I'm also praying that Chelsea lose. I mean, how fair would God be if he granted my request? If he did, would I be able to claim it as a prayer answered? No wonder the bugger doesn't answer prayers!

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 02:08 PM

steve-did,nt think you would stay away long!so now evidence is no longer enough.yes i did look in the dictionary and it does,nt seem to be the same as the absolute proof you and john seem [to claim ]to require.
prayers answered according to the believers request is a case in point.evidence but not proof,but it seems you are implying that jack and his friends are not being truthful when claiming specific answers.
"verifiable evidence by independant.."i suspect means there is nothing you will accept-you would only say it was not independant because it challenges your position!
science certainly closes gaps all the time and thankfully there is more of that now to counter evolutionism
john-seems to me you have backed down on you aliens claim but without admitting it!
jack-am i really that unintelligable?be that as it may,i will dip in and out anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Mrrzy
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 02:13 PM

It really comes down to point of view and what you accept as "evidence."

No, it doesn't. "Evidence" has a definition which is not dependent on point of view.
There *is* a difference between logically concluded, data-based knowledge and belief without such evidence.

There *is* data-based evidence (I know, that's redundant, but I'm emphasiziong here) that life began on this planet before it (the planet) had finished forming.

It *is* therefore likely that there is life on other planets. Note: likely. Not definitely yes or definitely not, but more likely there is life than not.

There are no data that support the hypothesis for deity. None. If there were, I repeat myself ad nauseum here, we would all know that deity existed and the believers would have no need of faith.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 02:38 PM

Mrrzy,

You are going to believe what you wish.

You believe nonsense like this.

>>There *is* data-based evidence that life began on this planet before it had finished forming. <<

No there isn't. That is ridiculous. What evidence? 4 billion year old "fossils" of microbes? In lava or magma or whatever it was? microbes do not have bones. Carbon bonds could not survive the heat. There *is* conjecture. There *is* no way to know.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 03:01 PM

"so now evidence is no longer enough.yes i did look in the dictionary and it does,nt seem to be the same as the absolute proof you and john seem [to claim ]to require."

W i l l y o u p l e a s e l i s t e n.

I have made it abundantly clear that I am not interested in "proof." You can't prove there's a God and I can't prove there's no God. I've said it 'til I'm blue in the face. Evidence is not proof. I'll believe in God if I have evidence. Simple. The main problem here is that you don't appear to know what "evidence" means.

"prayers answered according to the believers request is a case in point.evidence but not proof,but it seems you are implying that jack and his friends are not being truthful when claiming specific answers."

Fanciful, imaginative, hopeful, in denial, deluded, misled...call it what you will. I don't call people liars unless I know they're lying. Bottom line? You're trying to convince sceptics about something and all you can come up with is unverifiable claims about prayers being answered. That is not evidence. Two men have cancer. One prays that he won't die and the other doesn't. Two years later they're both still alive. So that was a prayer answered then, was it?
   
"i suspect means there is nothing you will accept-you would only say it was not independant because it challenges your position!"

Try me.

"science certainly closes gaps all the time and thankfully there is more of that now to counter evolutionism"

You'll never see the day. Evolution is true, old chap. You admit you don't read about it. I suggest you put that right. It's a massive hole in your education.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 03:19 PM

"No there isn't. That is ridiculous. What evidence? 4 billion year old "fossils" of microbes? In lava or magma or whatever it was? microbes do not have bones. Carbon bonds could not survive the heat. There *is* conjecture. There *is* no way to know."

When I was at university I studied sedimentary rocks from Australia which contained fossil prokaryotes (bacteria or cyanobacteria - it's been a long time...) which were three billion years old. Sediments were forming very early in the planet's life. There are indeed no fossils in igneous rocks, but even way back then not all rocks were igneous. The only reason we haven't got more fossil evidence from so long ago is that the rock cycle has destroyed most of it. The Earth was a very different place at that time. There was no oxygen in the atmosphere for a start. Life on earth has played a big part in forming thge environment we have today. There's good evidence for everything I'm saying. Incidentally, you don't need bones for fossils. That's another simplistic Jackism. It's a chilly night so I think I'll just top up the fire with that boneless fossilised wood (coal), or fire up the central heating with that fossilised boneless liquid stuff (oil). At university I also studied soft plant tissue from the Carboniferous, right down to cellular morphology. I have some lovely scanning electron microscope pics of leaf-surface cells from 200 million-year-old ancestors of modern-day conifers. All off the bone.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Mrrzy
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 03:34 PM

Thanks, Steve, kept me from looking things up.

I am refraining from typing We do toooooooooooooooo!

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 03:56 PM

The oldest undisputed fossils, stromatolites, are about three and a half billion years old. As I said, extremely early fossils are very rare because the older the rocks are the more likely they are to have been destroyed by the rock cycle. It isn't beyond imagination that even older life existed - evidence for it, for the same reason, would be pretty tough to come by. We're already, with the fossils we have, only just over a billion years from the formation of the Earth, and who's to say there wasn't life much earlier. Mrrzy's point, that "life began on this planet before it (the planet) had finished forming", isn't too far-fetched. It's also worth pointing out that life has existed on Earth through some extreme environmental changes, which you could argue means that life on other planets is all the more likely. Life is resilient and not too fussy (as long as it has liquid water, on the whole). For billions of years it even got by very well without free oxygen. There are plenty of opportunities for it out there. All we need now is the evidence. I can wait for that.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 04:28 PM

The Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Is it not? Your contention is that it took 1 billion years to form?

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 04:38 PM

So when do you think it "stopped forming," Jack? Care to put a date on it? It certainly wasn't settled in terms of geology, topography and atmosphere after one billion years. It was still a-rockin' and a-rollin' like mad. You could argue that it isn't stable today, but it's as nothing compared to then. I could wish that Mrrzy had said "almost before...", but, like I said, the statement wasn't too far-fetched.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Mrrzy
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 04:38 PM

Look it up.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 04:42 PM

And, like I said, it isn't beyond imagination that life was present a long time before those first fossils we have. Not only were those tiny organisms extremely unlikely to be fossilised anyway, the very oldest rocks have mostly gone, thanks to the rock cycle.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 05:16 PM

Since you are just talking about the atmosphere and perhaps tectonic shifts, you can say that it is still forming now. Most people would not, most people, even most scientists would consider the "formation" of the planet to be a far more dramatic event. But what most people do, how they use words, what has been accepted, has not influenced you to this point. Why should it now? By all means continue with your own faith based belief system with its own interpretation of words. That is what most people do.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Ed T
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 05:45 PM

"And, like I said, it isn't beyond imagination that life was present a long time before those first fossils we have".

We have some posters who cite scientific deduction to challenge a "belief" in a God, (any God,but mostly christianity, btw) now citing "imagination" as a source to base a point on?

What will they think of next?

Using illogical thinking when is convenient to make a point, at that time, hardly seems like anything anyone would look up to.
LOL

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Smokey.
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 06:35 PM

They are not wrong because coincidence exist.

Not what I meant. I meant the existence of coincidence must mean that some of them are wrong - given a large enough sample, of course. That doesn't mean they are consciously lying, because I doubt it would be possible for them to tell the difference. If their prayers appear to be answered that is how they will interpret it because they have faith. The only point I was trying to make was that statistically some of them have to be wrong. My own opinions on this are irrelevant, as is the existence of God. If someone with faith prays for something and it happens, they aren't likely to attribute it to coincidence, they are far more likely to let it strengthen their faith, otherwise what would be the point in praying for it? They might as well do what I do, and just hope. Even if I prayed, the laws of probability won't go away - I'd still attribute it to coincidence because it would not be credible evidence.

Personally, of course, I think it's all coincidence, but that's beside the point. Whether or not God exists, at least some of it must be coincidence, therefore some of them must be wrong. The end result is the same as long as they think their prayers were answered.

Coincidence occurs in many areas of life that are not prayer. Also what you are implying here is that coincidence occurs they cannot tell the difference between cause and effect. That is a pretty big leap of faith on your part considering that you haven't talked to them.

I'm saying they can't tell the difference between God causing something, and a random coincidence causing it. I know I can't - stuff just happens. I have actually talked to some, contrary to your assumption, and it's entirely their faith which convinces them - there appears to be no other available explanation. Are we not agreed there is no actual proof? There is, however, proof of coincidence - unless one is to claim that God controls the laws of probability, and if that was the case I'm not sure where it would leave the gambling industry...

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Ed T
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 06:43 PM

IMO, anyone that says they have experienced or expects a God to intervene in any worldly matter is in dream land. The same for any folks who say that they have experienced a God experience, because they preyed, had faith, or whatever. To me, it is clear bunk...much like astrologg, or dozens of other "bunky" myths put forward by alternative theory folks.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 06:44 PM

"Since you are just talking about the atmosphere and perhaps tectonic shifts, you can say that it is still forming now. Most people would not, most people, even most scientists would consider the "formation" of the planet to be a far more dramatic event."

I actually said that. It'll be really good when you stop scanning and start reading. Duh.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 06:51 PM

"And, like I said, it isn't beyond imagination that life was present a long time before those first fossils we have".

We have some posters who cite scientific deduction to challenge a "belief" in a God, (any God,but mostly christianity, btw) now citing "imagination" as a source to base a point on?

What will they think of next?

Using illogical thinking when is convenient to make a point, at that time, hardly seems like anything anyone would look up to.
LOL"

Keep on lolling, babe. It is actually a statement of fact that there is a possibility of even older life than those earliest fossils. It would be a fool who supposed that, bearing in mind that fossilisation is extremely rare, and that almost all early sedimentary rocks have been destroyed by the rock cycle, the oldest fossils we have were representatives of the very first organisms to inhabit the earth. I'd rather believe that you merely don't get science than to believe that you are a fool. My belief could be misdirected. Try harder, sourpuss.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 06:52 PM

OK you are saying that claimed something extraordinary and decided that in your opinion it was coincidence?

That is valid in my mind, rather than saying that it must be coincidence because coincidence exists.

There are also a lot other factors, if you believe including what you believe.

Lots of people pray for success while at a gaming table. In my experiences their rate of success is pretty close to those prescribed by the probabilities of the particular game.

People who pray for enlightenment, for guidance, for patience, for forgiveness, even from others, often receive it. I realize the psychological implications of the above. On the other hand, no religion I know of promises that you can influence dice with prayer.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Ed T
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 06:59 PM

Please give us more folksy, selective "imagination" stories, Steve. It enhances the space between "name calling" and anti believer dogma versus logical discourse.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Smokey.
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 07:06 PM

People who pray for enlightenment, for guidance, for patience, for forgiveness, even from others, often receive it.

Yes, but the question is, where from? They will assume from God, whereas I would be inclined to think that the mental discipline of praying has focussed their mind and they have done it themselves. That is only my opinion though, based on my own experiences and observations. What others may think is very much their own affair.

OK you are saying that claimed something extraordinary and decided that in your opinion it was coincidence?

I don't understand that question, Jack.. Could I ask you to rephrase it?

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 07:09 PM

Were you saying that your opinion about coincidence was from something you witnessed rather than from the fact that coincidence exists?

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Smokey.
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 07:11 PM

No, I wasn't.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 07:15 PM

>>>Yes, but the question is, where from? They will assume from God, whereas I would be inclined to think that the mental discipline of praying has focussed their mind and they have done it themselves. That is only my opinion though, based on my own experiences and observations. What others may think is very much their own affair.<<<

Well I think the question is "If it works, if it requires faith, if it is a benefit that people have enjoyed for thousands of year, if it is a net mental health benefit, how can it be a delusion?"

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 07:24 PM

So you think that people who pray are wrong because coincidence exists?

If so I disagree, coincidence exists and colors the results of virtually every form of statistical study especially when all other facts are not known.

My grandfather smoked and drank until he died at 86. That is NOT evidence that smoking and drinking are healthy. The other factors that allowed him to live that long could be viewed as coincidence.

Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Nov 10 - 07:40 PM

"Please give us more folksy, selective "imagination" stories, Steve. It enhances the space between "name calling" and anti believer dogma versus logical discourse."

I don't understand this ill-worded post, I'm afraid. I can probably glean from it, just about mind, that you wouldn't understand "logical discourse" even if it reared up and bit you on the cock. Now, what were you saying...?