science and religion (Jesus, philosophy, philosophical, evidence)

[Petunia 100]

Originally Posted by GoCardinals

Because universe is not God.

EVERYTHING is a creation EXCEPT God. This is what makes him God.

Do you have any proof?

[suzy_q2010]

Originally Posted by GoCardinals

.

Here is an example,
The doctor prescribes you a certain medication that you never took before to address a certain condition.

You look at the ingredients.
Do you put the pill under a microscope and verify that it has it all what it the label states? Do you even have knowledge to know and then verify the chemical structure of different compounds in that pill?

And then do you participate in the manufacturer's trials to see if the medicine actually works? Do you participate in the FDA's approval process to see if it has passed the inspections?

Do you have a mouse lab in your basement where you could test the medicine by yourself before believing it works?

The answer is, NO, NO, NO, conclusively.

Why because, you have faith in the doctor, you have faith in the manufacturer and you have faith in FDA.

How did you develop this faith, it's a different story.
But you do PRACTICE FAITH without caring or verifying and evaluating the "evidence and claims" by yourself outside the religious doctrine. You can deny as much as you want, but Oh yes, you do.

Others have evaluated the testing and there are processes to determine that the pill is what the label states. I can read the supporting evidence for myself. Believing the drug is what it is claimed to be is not the same as blind faith with no evidence whatsoever.

Originally Posted by Good4Nothin

Ever since humans were clever enough to invent spears and arrows, war started becoming seriously dangerous.

Technology is definitely to blame for most violence between humans, and it's strange how atheists don't see this. By the way I AM NOT AGAINST TECHNOLOGY. I worked as a computer programmer, so please don't start that. But I try to face reality.

Religion in general doesn't cause wars, just the dogmatic and political aspects of religion.

Before spears and arrows there were rocks. Violence between humans predates technology.

Originally Posted by Good4Nothin

I don't understand why or how the physical brain would generate all these elaborate hallucinations, and atheists don't know either.

We don't have an objective way to decide between that atheists and those who perceive the non-physical. But you can't say there is no evidence. There are tons of evidence -- it just is not observable by those who don't experience it.

Then there is parapsychology -- but atheists simply don't buy it no matter how strong the evidence, so I don't want to get into that. Forget I mentioned it.

How and why of hallucinations:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2660156/.

No need to invoke a non-physical cause for them.

Originally Posted by Good4Nothin

The more details they observe, the more complex the system appears. As knowledge of details increases, comprehension of the overall system does not increase. Scientists realize things are far more complex than they had expected.

This statement is totally false. There are people who can see the forest and not just the trees, and scientists generally expect complexity to increase as they delve deeper into an area of research.

[Good4Nothin]

Originally Posted by Arach Angle

personal agendas will keep this from happening. using science data we can list some traits of the system we are in that most people can agree on. But not all.

heck, gld used the exact same observations to use as support of a pantheist god as trans and trans dismissed it as "samatics". The exact same observations and both dismissed the others claims.

rational people can settle on a reasonable middle ground.

Near death experiences have been studied extensively and there are similarities and recurring themes. Mystical experiences have also been studied, and also tend to have similarities.

[Good4Nothin]

Originally Posted by TRANSPONDER

Don't you se that the whole Abrahamic God -concept makes no sense?

Then don't worry about it. There are many other concepts of universal intelligence.

[Good4Nothin]

Originally Posted by TRANSPONDER

Nobody makes that claim other than Theists who cannot think straight because of Faith. It is blindingly obvious (because we have seen it before) that Go4No cannot comprehend or tolerate the idea of not "Knowing" (on Faith) and admitting that we don't know and logically should not believe a claim until validated. Every time, a God (at least of some kind) is believed on Faith and science is blind and arrogant because it hasn't disproved "God" but still doesn't believe in it. You may laugh, but that is Exactly how they think. I'll bet my house, pension and Ass on it.

You think everyone who is not an atheist thinks exactly the same way.

[Good4Nothin]

Originally Posted by TRANSPONDER

Ah. So it's the Third way (alternative to both Creationism (involving a god) and "Darwinism", whatever that is.

"Shapiro integrates advances in symbiogenesis, epigenetics, and saltationism into a unified approach that views evolutionary change as an active cell process, regulated epigenetically and capable of making rapid large changes by horizontal DNA transfer, inter-specific hybridization, whole genome doubling, symbiogenesis, or massive genome restructuring."

Why this isn't "Darwinism" with an alternative method to genetic mutation I don't know. I have read a few accusations of sloppy and self -contradictory scholarship, but we shall have to see. Challenges to any Theory is always good, provided they can make a case. But here again, we are starting an evolution -science derail, and I don't think the Mods are going to tolerate it much more.

Unfortunately they don't tolerate the number one most important philosophical question of our time. And I have no idea why they don't.

[Good4Nothin]

Originally Posted by monumentus

Why is it when religion, gods, ghosts, or "beings" come up - there is always someone who says over and over again there is "plenty of evidence" but never somehow gets around to presenting _any_ of it?

It is a pattern I have seen repeat itself over many threads on many forums to the point I Think I will call it "Monumentus' first law of internet forums" and it will read "The probability someone will present evidence is inversely proportional to how much of it they keep claiming there is".



What we observe is many people _claim_ to experience the "non physical". But we have zero evidence - contrary to your claims of plenty - that they actually have.



Except our sciences do have a lot of explanations and data on the subject. So I can but suggest you hand your pHd back - if indeed you actually have one and are not lying to us - and go get one from a more reputable and competent establishment. Because it appears the one you claim to have - has failed you.

However I am not even sure why you would want to go to psychology for explanations on this topic. It would seem to me you would be better off with a pHd in Neuro Science or similar to understand these topics. For someone with a claimed pHd in the subject - I am not seeing evidence you know eve the 101 stuff about it.

Neuroscience doesn't explain it either. Psychology overlaps with neuroscience and whatever is known about the brain is known in psychology. Not very much is understood about the brain. Lots of observations and imaging research. That is not the same as understanding.

[Good4Nothin]

Originally Posted by suzy_q2010

This statement is totally false. There are people who can see the forest and not just the trees, and scientists generally expect complexity to increase as they delve deeper into an area of research.

Your statement is totally false. The problem of complexity can be seen in many areas of science. If you ask a cancer researcher why cures have not been found for most cancer, they will say cancer has turned out to be far more complex than they used to think. Ask a psychiatrist why they have not found cures for serious mental illness, and they will admit that the relationship between the brain and mental illness is not understood. Ask a geneticist why mapping the genome has not led to cures for diseases, and they will say DNA turned out to be much more complicated than they used to think. Ask a physicist why they have not discovered an ultimate particle of matter, and they will say atoms turned out to be much more complicated than they used to think.

And there are plenty of other examples. You just have never questioned what they teach in public school about science.

[303Guy]

Originally Posted by GoCardinals

wrong question again.

You cannot decide to create yourself when you don't exist.

This is exactly why god cannot exist. If god is the creator of all things .......

But why should a creator of the universe have always existed in eternity and not the material of the universe?

[monumentus]

Originally Posted by Good4Nothin

Near death experiences have been studied extensively and there are similarities and recurring themes.

Yes but what you contrive to leave out here is that the _reasons_ there are recurring themes and similarities has also been studied and some sound theories produced. Interesting how you leave out the bits that do not suit your narrative isn't it?

For example the similarities always seem to map onto the dominant religion in the location. So the similarities in NDE in the US tend to map onto Christian thought - but when you examine the similarities in India it maps onto the religious imagery there.

This is also matched in areas outside religion. For example after certain hollywood movies became popular in our past and dominant in the culture - the similarities in alien experience around UFOs all converged on little grey aliens with big black insect like eyes.

In other words - the similarities exist because people parse their experiences - or question the experiences of others - through the narrative, language, imagery and concepts dominant in their society at the time.

What you also do not mention it seems is that when people biased _towards_ the after life study aspects of NDE such as "out of body experience" they results fail to find _any_ evidence for the phenomenon at all.

For example Sam Parnia is a big believer in OBE and the after life. Sam created a set of double blind controlled experiments to investigate OBE patients. The study revealed _nothing_ of use or note whatsoever.

Originally Posted by Good4Nothin

You think everyone who is not an atheist thinks exactly the same way.

I would never say that myself. You appear to be turning to the common "Rather than reply to what you said i will instead tell you what you think" fallacy that is so common among your cohort.

But while I would never say all non-atheists thing alike - what I would say is that the same small set of fallacies turn up in the thinking of that contingent with reliable regularity.

Originally Posted by Good4Nothin

Neuroscience doesn't explain it either. Psychology overlaps with neuroscience and whatever is known about the brain is known in psychology. Not very much is understood about the brain. Lots of observations and imaging research. That is not the same as understanding.

Just about everything you wrote there is false - which just exacerbates my suspicion you do not have the phd you claim to have - or much understanding of the subject at all.

Evidence of this comes - for example - in your 0 or 1 black and white all or nothing thinking on the subject of evidence and understanding. You appear to have a very non-scientific impression that a lack of a 100% complete understanding of the topic means somehow we have no explanations, no understanding, and no knowledge.

The fact is that in neuroscience we have _a lot_ of knowledge, data and understanding around the topics of hallucination and this knowledge base is increasing all the time. We are able to contrive to reproduce the things you are calling hallucination with remarkable reliability. Through things like drugs and physical duress such as centrifugal acceleration. We can cause hallucination. Visions. OBE. Feelings of oneness and interconnectedness. And just about every aspect of religious experience ever described. And many of us can reproduce those things in meditation too.

Again - there is much we are still left to 100% explain and understand. But to pretend that <100% is equal to 0% in the way that you do suggests you either do not have a science based phd at all - or the one you do have is from a very poor institute indeed. Like one of those Trump University phone in qualifications.

Originally Posted by Good4Nothin

Your statement is totally false. The problem of complexity can be seen in many areas of science. If you ask a cancer researcher why cures have not been found for most cancer, they will say cancer has turned out to be far more complex than they used to think.

Actually as it happens I have heard quite a few cancer researchers asked that very question and the answer you just shoved in their mouth on their behalf has not been the one I hear them give.

Rather their complaint is that we have one word "cancer" for a vast number of diverse conditions with diverse causes and diverse progression paradigms.

In other words the problem with cancer is not that cancer is too complex. But that cancer is not a thing. It is an umberella term for a vast number of things. Which means the problem is _not_ that cancer is too complex so much as cancer is not even a word.

There will likely never be "a cure for cancer" because there is no one thing "cancer" in the first place. Discussing a cure for cancer or the complexity of cancer therefore makes as much sense as talking about "The Rule of sport". There is no one rule in sport - because "sport" is not a thing but an umbrella term for a vast array of diverse things.

If you want more information on this then there is a good interview between Sam Harris and Siddhartha Mukherjee if you google it. Siddhartha Mukherjee is a cancer physician and researcher. He is an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University and a staff cancer physician at the CU/NYU Presbyterian Hospital and a former Rhodes Scholar.