"Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think"

Doctor Who Two wrote:

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You should think of a new handle "Skeptic" is a bit weak.
Try this one out " I'm Damned Sure "
Just a thought.

You can't refute my point. Only attempt to insult me.

Present us with your proof of god or keep your opinions to yourself.

The Dude wrote:

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In that case atheists mustn't be in the minority on Earth.
Oh, wait...

I was referring to the assertion that god is real.
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The Dude wrote:

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Then most people on Earth are mentally ill.
I now understand your fear.

You're right, most people on the earth are mentally ill. Its the definion of believing fervently that something is there when it isn't.
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The Dude wrote:

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And remind us all again how exactly one goes about testing a non-falsifiable concept? Wait a minute, you tripped on this dance already. Oh well.(shrug)

Once again you fail to see the difference between:

1. the possibility of god (disproven already for all proposals of the definition of god)
2. god being real (disproven)

It's a pity you still can't understand this., choosing to arrogantly dismiss the point.

The Dude wrote:

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Repeating assertions with an added insult is not an argument.

Like I said, you're also a person who can't see the difference between having an opinion on something and having evidence for that opinion being provably worthless and ignorant.

The Dude wrote:

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He is correct, you can't falsify a non-falsifiable concept. You claim otherwise. You can't back up your claim. You couldn't months ago, you can't now.

You're wrong today as you were months ago. In fact I remember you stopped arguing this point because you so publicly lost!
The point is that the concept of god IS falsifiable.
Every assertion put forward by theists is testable and probably false.
You simply cannot use a "catch all" fasifiable argument in this context, because you have to treat each case as a special case.
WHY DO WE HAVE TO DO THIS (pay attention Dude, this is where you have trouble)
Because both empirical arguments and arguments from logic wholly disprove the existence of the concept in the first place.
In fact in the entire history of the earth NO THEIST has EVER come up with a version of their god that's unfalsifiable AND real!!! NOONE!
WHY IS THIS.
Because they ALL, I repeat ALL claim that god is real. The moment they claim this, they have lost to the rigours of science, logic & rationality and most importantly reality.
The tests they have never or ever will pass.

Theists job is to dream up impossible situations and claim that they are real.

The scientists job is to take their statement of "it's real" and show them that they are liars (which they've already done)

If dude, after this you still cannot understand why you are wrong, let's once again agree to disagree and never raise this point again.

Because I'm tired of explaining it to you, if nothing else.

humble brother wrote:

Oh, you are one of those "you are wrong, because I say so"-people.

You are wrong because you are wrong. It's not just me saying so.

humble brother wrote:

Had you read my comments in this thread thoroughly I also says that evolution is a pseudoscience according to my strict interpretation of the scientific method.

Had you written your comments thoroughly, you wouldn't be back-peddling.

humble brother wrote:

I also went on to say that in the hypothetical frame of reference of all fossil etc. evidence assumed 100 % accurate evolution must be a fact. As I said: I see an semantic problem with the evolutionary science and the philosophical definition of science.

You called evolution pseudoscience. Now spin away.

humble brother wrote:

Now you apparently have again retracted under your shell to hide. Should you come out again and want to go over all the supposed inaccuracies you listed, I would be happy to go over them case by case and show you how I clarified my explanation if there seemed to be a misunderstanding. Let me know if you want to go over those comments.

No shell. It's merely that discourse needs to be consensual. You are autocratic. I've told you what my terms are - the same I had for ARGUING with IDIOTS - and you both blew it off without even a refusal. What do you think that you have to offer me when what I see from you is fundamental misunderstanding of the subject, a refusal to cooperate with or to even acknowledge your collocutor, and a stubborn unwillingness to admit error.

So, it's no longer about what we want, because it never was for you. Your interests have fallen into the dumper where you put mine. For me, it's now only about what I want. I don't want to guess where you're going, what your point is, or why you don't care to tell me after asking you at least twice.

Is that hiding under a shell? I don't think so. I just won't care about what you want more than you care about what I want. If we can find a topic of common interest to discuss under terms that are mutually agreeable, then I'm there with you. But right now, it's all about what you want. Sorry. Homey don't play dat.

Do you have any idea where your cockroach sock puppet fled to after being requested to provide the exact same information - where are you going with this, and what is you principal thesis? He fled like the limicolous lowlife that he is. He'll be back with a new name starting all over again very soon. Troll.

You don't want to imitate that behavior do you? The result will be the same for you - loss of interest in whatever it is you want. It has been.

-Skeptic- wrote:

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To Dude:
In fact I remember you stopped arguing this point because you so publicly lost!

Your memory is faulty. The Dude trounced you, I trounced you, and others trounced you.

Your opinions are simply another kind of dogmatism, even if your conclusions are similar to mine. You keep telling us we do not understand, but its you who is missing the point.

No God falsification argument has ever been conclusive. Likewise no fairy falsification argument has ever been conclusive. We do not have to believe in God or Fairies, but we still cannot conclusively falsify them.

The best you ever managed was a word game where you defined "real" as measurable and observable, then played word-flip by treating "existent" as a perfect synonym for your own specific definition of real. Does not work.

Things can and almost certainly do exist that have not yet been detected by science. The existence of the Higgs Boson particle has been predicted but not established. Do we therefore, like you would, claim that the Higgs Boson particle cannot exist because its reality has not been demonstrated? Nope, that would be stupid.

If you were a REAL skeptic, you would know that in the absence of evidence, the correct answer is "I do not know". You pretend to know the unknown - not skeptical, but dogmatic.

Nontheist wrote:

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No one is gonna get anything past you~, are they?

"You see much that is hidden, Oh Tim."

This caught my eye recently, when I saw you in a cameo in Clash Of The Titans:
http://mimg.ugo.com/201002/36472/cuts/clash-t...

Do you like chicks with pony tails?
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_4xTxyu43Bus/TPOFOfz...

http://www.topix.com/forum/religion/atheism/T...

Doctor Who Two wrote:

You seem to think that a bunch of people sat down and wrote the rules of Christianity. That's not what happened.

You just described the First Council of Nicea.

People wrote your bible, and people interpret it. Nobody else could have.

Doctor Who Two wrote:

Jesus created Christianity from judaism Though his fulfillment of scripture. We worship God by his rules. Our God is all powerful. Our God has wiped out many bad people over the past 6000 years. You labeled this as horrific, as well it maybe. According to God Hell is not a nice place, by his description no one would choose to go there for all eternity. Usually the damned are those that choose not to believe for if they believed why would one choose Hell over heaven.

Hence those of us who do believe in God and Believe in Heaven and Hell can't Bear (as in dancing little red bear) To see that Train heading full speed to the end of track on the edge of the Grand Canyon.(Grand Canyon as in evidence of a great flood).

Why tell me? What you have accepted by faith is of little interest to unbelievers. And your response completely ignores the substance of my post above it (see link above), which was about the effects of the Christian psychology on believers - whether that could be called a mental illness or not. I commented on the deformed nature of faith based thought, which requires assimilating the absurd.

How does your reply relate to that at all?

Aura Mytha wrote:

No there isn't unless displaced, a creature indigenous to a lake or pond (besides a few species known to walk or wiggle out) are forever bound to that lake and river system of lakes and rivers.

If this is not the product of your mind, then you can point to some evidence. Do you have evidence?

Aura Mytha wrote:

Much the same way we are bound to this universe.
There are and have been a few parallel evolutions but there are differences between them.

Do all different parallel evolutions of fish species have gills?

Chimney1 wrote:

Not at all. In fact its an interesting question.
But, knowing as I now do, your style of debate, I simply intend to get you to admit that you shifted the goalposts, and that we have established that the rabbit in the Cambrian is a valid falsification test.
If you can be honest about that, then it might be worth discussing this new subject with you.

Are you trying to say that a single rabbit found in the Cambrian sediments would falsify the whole theory just like that? Really?

You would not try to find fossil evidence that perhaps it had ancestors and there was a previously unknown branch of evolution?

You would not deem a single rabbit fossil in the Cambrian just some error or deception?

Doctor Who Two wrote:

Well the word uni = 1 However there is now hypothesis for billions of parallel universes at which case the name should be changed.

If "uni-" is one, but there are actually multiple "universes," you could go ahead and suggest "multiverse." I think the people that handle these things have a web site for nomenclature suggestions.

You don't even need to tell them you heard it here first. In fact, please don't.

BTW, I really loved your riff on the immaturity of the bear avatar, which you ended with a incisive comment about it needing horns and a tail, followed by a smiley face. I really love those, because they make the comment go from passive-aggressive to friendly.

KittenKoder wrote:

First, there is no unexplainable increase in tectonic activity, it fits so well within predictive parameters that there is no surprise there at all.

I was not talking about "unexplainable". But now that you made a claim, what explanations have you got and what's the scientific research and evidence supporting them?

KittenKoder wrote:

Second, the rise in temperatures, and resulting glacial melts which increase the temperatures as a result, is likely because of a human caused catalyst, until we know the exact catalyst there is a very small chance that it was not human related, but that's a very small chance.

I have no argument against what you say here. I would have to say that there are too many variables for me to speak anything about probabilities. So I'd say these are possibilities with unknown probabilities.

KittenKoder wrote:

As for human extinction, yeah, we could easily wipe ourselves off the planet, or any number of things could, but life will always find a way, so long as there is an atmosphere, complex life will rise to take our place, so long as there is water, simpler life will create that atmosphere, and so long as there is thermal activity ... well, basically, you can never sterilize the planet completely. Tardigrades will survive almost anything.

No debate with this either... All are good points for all human actions adding to natural selection. Don't you think?

It aint necessarily so wrote:

You are wrong because you are wrong. It's not just me saying so.

Thank you for the laughs :D

This was indeed a very good one...

humble brother wrote:

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Are you trying to say that a single rabbit found in the Cambrian sediments would falsify the whole theory just like that? Really?
You would not try to find fossil evidence that perhaps it had ancestors and there was a previously unknown branch of evolution?

OMG. Back to square one. So you did not understand a single thing that I or others said? Go and look, if you can be bothered learning something, at all of the transitions that occurred from the early vertebrates, to the lobe-finned fish, to tiktaalik, through the amphibia, early reptiles, mammal like reptiles, early mammals, placental mammals, all the way up to modern rabbits.

Then stop making silly suggestions that evolutionist would expect to see the same thing replicated twice, ever.

So YES, to repeat the point made and explained over the last few hundred posts, a confirmed find of a rabbit fossil in the Cambrian would be a devastating falsification of evolution.

humble brother wrote:

You would not deem a single rabbit fossil in the Cambrian just some error or deception?

I would expect that is exactly what scientists would first assume, rather than any idiotic notion that a rabbit could evolve twice, and whats more, evolve before ANY of its fossil antecedents appeared for the first time in the fossil record.

However, if the find really was confirmed, then it would be devastating to evolution.

Chimney1 wrote:

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Your memory is faulty. The Dude trounced you, I trounced you, and others trounced you.
Your opinions are simply another kind of dogmatism, even if your conclusions are similar to mine. You keep telling us we do not understand, but its you who is missing the point.
No God falsification argument has ever been conclusive. Likewise no fairy falsification argument has ever been conclusive. We do not have to believe in God or Fairies, but we still cannot conclusively falsify them.
The best you ever managed was a word game where you defined "real" as measurable and observable, then played word-flip by treating "existent" as a perfect synonym for your own specific definition of real. Does not work.
Things can and almost certainly do exist that have not yet been detected by science. The existence of the Higgs Boson particle has been predicted but not established. Do we therefore, like you would, claim that the Higgs Boson particle cannot exist because its reality has not been demonstrated? Nope, that would be stupid.
If you were a REAL skeptic, you would know that in the absence of evidence, the correct answer is "I do not know". You pretend to know the unknown - not skeptical, but dogmatic.

Lots of babble but no counter arguments to my point. Accepting the possible when its proven to be impossible is stupid. It's your problem that you don't get this point.

As I recall, I repeatedly asked you both for something that was both:

1. Real
2. Unfalsifiable.

Neither of you intellectually dishonest persons could come up with anything between the pair of you and subsequently lost the argument.

Give it a rest, and change the subject.

Chimney1 wrote:

So YES, to repeat the point made and explained over the last few hundred posts, a confirmed find of a rabbit fossil in the Cambrian would be a devastating falsification of evolution.

I find it quite odd that if such a find would be made you would not try to see a bigger picture and look for evidence of ancestors for that rabbit fossil. You would just throw your hands in the air and shout "it's all gone! we're doomed, it's all gone!".

Can you honestly say that you would not look for missing links to explain that one fossil and try and generate a record of a new discovered evolutionary branch? Really???

So you're saying that just one singular fossil could destroy the whole evolutionary science?

Doctor Who Two wrote:

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You seem to think that a bunch of people sat down and wrote the rules of Christianity. That's not what happened.

No, what happened was, a charismatic leader left a strong impression on some of his followers who decided to write down what they thought they saw 40 years after the fact, perhaps realising that his promise to return just might not happen in their lifetimes after all.

They also gathered every bit of Messianic prediction they could find and grafted that in to make their story more convincing to themselves and others. Had to be a David connection in there somewhere, etc. They also added in various chunks of legends and myths and street stories currently circulating in the Cult filled Empire into their own story, bits taken from Mithraism, the Cult of Isis, Greek mythology, whatever. Not necessarily deliberately lying, more like saying "yeah, that bit MUST have been true".

Then nearly 300 years later a group of Bishops of the now not so young Cult tried to make some sense of all this amalgum of myths and streamlined it onto a form they found compelling, while persecuting anybody who disagreed with their interpretation.

And that is about it. A load of cobblers.

But you believe it because believing allows you to pretend death is not real.