rhutchin

So your claim is that it is a myth. Can you prove the truth of that claim? Or is it to be asserted by me that it is true that it is not a myth with the burden of proof on me.

Your argument seems to be that truth is determined by the senses. If a person can see, feel, hear - experience - X, then X is true. If a person can predict X, then X is true (It is true that California will have an earthquake because men are predicting it??). What is it that makes a historical document written by a man calling himself Luke a myth?

The question I posed was not about those who stayed on Mt St. Helens. It was, “What was irrational about those who decided to leave?” The answer, of course, is there was nothing irrational about it.

Considering the changing face of science over the years, I would not agree with the statement, “To conclude that a scientist knows what he is talking about when he says X is rational...” If a non-scientist builds an ark and records a worldwide flood and that information is passed from generation to generation, is there anything wrong with people believing that personal, non-scientific account?

The person can assume that eternal torment could be real based on the historical evidence provided in the Bible (or other sources). It is true that there is no way to determine which of the thousands of gods are responsible. The person evaluates the evidence and chooses which god to embrace. The Wager directs a person to seek out the true God; it does not select that God from among the thousands of gods avaialble. It is your misapplication of the Wager that leads to your erroneous conclusion that “it renders any wager on the matter entirely useless.”

MRM

But Mt St Helens is a bad analogy. Why ?

First we know that Mt St Helens exits
Second we know where exactly it is
Third we know places where you are safe from vulcanos. So moving to a side where no vulcano exits is always a safe bet - the same is not true for potential hells, you don't know where a safe place is. Imagine a world full of vulcanos, no place is free of them, each has the same probability to erupt. Where would you move now ?

Because this would be a methodical error. In this case the option for neither seek hell nor seek escape from hell would missing. I guess that you rhutchin do nothing about vampires. So you don't seek to escape them. Does this meam that you seek the danger from vampires ? Does this automatical mean that you will know travel to Transelvania in the hope that Dracula will get you ? Of course not. Most likely you somply don't take this threat serious and so you neither seek vampires nor you seek to avoid them. Such an option must be included in the wager and with your argument above you would exclude such an option ( intentionally or unintentionally ??? )



No rhutchin - there is no historical evidence in the bible. No other source confirm this claim, no hard evidence or even hint could show that there is a place like the bible hell. It is not even shown in the bible how the textwriters know about such an place - how they figured out that such an place exits and therefore how someone else can verify this claim. Sorry but this is not an evidence that is only a claim - nothing more.

Just because it is written in a book don't make this evidence. Otherwise Stokers "Dracula" book would be evidence for vampires. Or a "Harry Potter" book for wizards. But both books are at best evidence that texts writers can have a lot of fantasy

DMW

Rhutchin, it is really quite simple... if you make a statement that contains only positive terms, it is up to you to show that the statement is true. How you go about proving your statement depends on what the statement contains. For example, saying "in the Bible, Jesus said he was god" can be easily proved (or disproved) by opening a Bible. However, saying "Jesus said he was god" requires a different proof... namely, a proof that Jesus existed and made such a statement. Lastly, saying "Jesus is god" would require proof that Jesus is real and that he is god. In any of these cases, it is the person making the claim (because these are all positive statements) that must prove his/her case.

DMW

aa5874

Rhutchin, the Christian Bible can be easily found to be fiction. Read Matthew 22 v 42-46 and Revelation 22 v16, among the hundreds of contradictory statements.

Even if you prove that Eternal Torment exist, how can you prove dead people go there? Rhutchin, how do you get a 6000 year old corpse, burnt to dust, to walk, fly, swim into Hell? This is absurdity.

Pascal's Wager is useless garbage. The Wager is based on uncertaitny. Uncertainty means that every probable scenario must be taken into consideration. Uncertainty means that the Christian Gods threat will be questioned as well as all other Gods.

Again Rhutchin, even if a place of Torment exist, an uncertain person still has to taken into consideration the probabilities of going there. A person may decide to go Hell rather than live with the Pope in Heaven.

Pascal's Wager is useless garbage.

Wayne Delia

Street_scholar, you have an annoying habit of failing to identify who you are responding to. In order to do that, you have to consciously remove the identifier that is attached automatically to the initial material cited when you hit the "Quote" button. You also appear to be trying to reply to more than one person in a single post; this makes your answers appear more confusing than they already are. Try responding to only one person, one post, at a time. I'll try to sort out your responses to my post from the others you crammed in there.

Not an oxymoron at all (are you sure you know what an oxymoron actually is?). Rather, that's exactly my point: God existed before He created the universe. With the universe defined as "every non-God thing that exists" (to cover your worries about multiple universes), God must have existed separately from the existence of the universe. If time did exist, then God spent a lot of it utterly alone; if time did not exist, then God was immobile, unable to take any action at all, much less create something.

Well, actually we're pretty sure we DO exist, and that is a true statement. Otherwise, all debate and arguments are a moot point. "We exist, therefore God exists" is obviously illogical.

It's a shame that nothing was written in the Bible about that amazing fact; it was probably omitted because it would make man feel much less special.

Not for nothing, but calling me a "broken record" is an actual example of an ad hominem argument.

Are you familiar with the question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" It assumes that you either haven't stopped beating your wife, or at one time you actually did beat your wife, but stopped. The question does not consider the option that you've never beaten your wife. That's the form your question took.

And my response would be the same: nothing I've said has even remotely suggested that.

Well, then, why not take a stab at my question to you: have you stopped beating your wife? It's only a question. And you're damned if you say "yes", and damned if you say "no".

You've read way too many comic books.

There was one time when I was watching some sort of Power Rangers cartoon with my son Joe, then about 6 years old. One of the characters thanked a Power Ranger for "saving the universe." I explained to Joe what the term "universe" meant, and he immediately got the joke: "Saving the universe - from what?"

Yes, and we know these quantum fluctuations are the communication attempts from the other universes. Top scientists have decoded those messages from the quantum fluctuations, and the message is "Jesus... Saves...." <snicker> Please tell us more about that.

WMD

rhutchin

I like that. In terms of the Wager, we have a person who says to himself, "In the Bible, I read that Jesus said he is God, that He will judge all people, and that those found wanting will be excluded from heaven." He then says, "Is this true?" Well, he doesn't know. He can't prove it is true. That's OK, but what if it could be true. He could be in the position of erroneously calling something false when it could be true (Kinda like a false positive or Type 1 error). The person finds that burden of proof requires that he prove that the Bible is true before believing it, but burden of proof does not eliminate the possiblility of believing the Bible is not true (for lack of evidence) when it is.

How does the person avoid a false positive. He reasons from the other side of the coin, "The Bible is a myth." If he can prove the truth of this, then he avoids any error. However, he finds that he cannot prove the truth of this statement either.

So, what does he do? Pascal devised the Wager to address this situation.

rhutchin

I like the question. If there is no way to escape a possible volcano (earthquake, tornado, hurricane, suicidal Islamic fanatic, etc.) what do you do? I think you can flip a coin or draw straws or whatever and live where the god of chance dictates. However, the issue here is what to do when there is an alleged way to escape. Does a person go and seek out that escape? If the choice is between eternal torment and an alleged escape from eternal torment, the person rationally seeks to escape eternal torment. No one would argue that the rational decision is not to seek to escape eternal torment. Even you know better than to argue that position.

An option other than (1) seek escape or (2) do not seek escape?? What would that option be -- bury your head in the sand and don’t even think about it??

I certainly am doing something about vampires. I have embraced the god of the Bible who has promised to deliver me from vampires and to give me eternal life in heaven with Him.

Can you prove your claim that “there is no historical evidence in the bible”?

Mageth

:huh:

If anyone can decipher the above for me, please let me know. And it certainly doesn't "prove" that I used a Strawman argument.

Street Scholar, forgive me, but you seem to have little understanding of what Strawman arguments (and Ad Homs) actually are.

Who's "playing semantics"? I was pointing out that you incorrectly labeled my observation as an "argument". You should know the difference.

Umm, when did I say that you deny evolution?

And when did I say that you don't agree on the BIG BANG theory?

I responded to your assertion that the "same argument could be applied to many other theories such as the Big Bang, Evolution..." by pointing you to the proper fora where plenty of concrete, scientific evidence can be found for both. Implying that NEITHER is simply a "philosophical construct."

Here, you leap from science to philosophy, or metaphysics if you will.

:huh:

Why would I need to "believe" in zero? I wouldn't call Zero a "theory"; it's more of an axiom.

I fail to see what the point of this is. Scientific theories are not "proven", but are supportable/supported by evidence, tests, predictive power, etc. By application of the Scientific method, confidence in the theories (as to how well they match reality) can be increased (or decreased).

Changing terms a bit, metaphysical (or supernatural) notions like the "god" you describe are not so supported or supportable. "God" remains a "philosophical construct", and as a "theory" is clearly not in the same class as Scientific theories, for example, the Theory of Evolution. Nor is "god" in the same class as mathematical concepts such as Zero.

I did not "ignore it". Again, your "answer" was vacuous. Your "answer" did not answer my question.

Again:

To your assertion:

"Outside of our own universe different laws apply."

I responded with the following questions:

"What laws do you speak of, and how do you know this?"

Your response?

"Well you don’t have to be an astrophysicist to know this go read up on quantum mechanics. "

That is a non-responsive answer, as you did NOT answer as to what laws you were referring to, nor did you answer as to how you can possibly KNOW this.

Umm, no, you did not say that. In any case, I take this response as saying you can't really answer the question.

It is possible that, if there ARE different universes, different laws may apply in different universes. But again, we do not KNOW that to be the case. We're talking about hypothetical things here, Street Scholar, NOT known facts.

When you said "outside of our own universe different laws apply", you were making an assertion of fact that you CANNOT back up. (Two of them, actually, as we do not know if there IS something that could be labeled "outside our own universe", nor do we know that, if there is, that different laws apply there. These things are not KNOWN.)

Just one more assertion that you can't back up, eh?

The only thing we can "relatively safely" do at this point is hypothesize that, if there are different universes, it may be the case that the physical laws are different there.

:huh:

Your example is that, if there are two different universes, the "planets and stars will be in different orbits", and "of different mass, which would have effect on time, (Time Dilation) and also gravity"???

I thought you were talking about "laws" being different, as in physical laws. But the only examples you can come up with "from the top of your head" are different arrangements and masses of planets and stars??? What does that have to do with "laws"?

To be brutally honest, Street Scholar, the above does not bode well for your knowledge of QM, etc.

One thing that QM does not tell us is that "outside of our own universe different laws apply."

Good question. You're certainly not making anything clear. I'm not sure what you need to do to make what you're saying clear. You're on your own there.

OK, thanks for pointing out that you're unclear on what a "law" actually is.

Yes, but Science and philosophy are also distinguishable.

We hypothesize, at this point, that there may be other universes. Again, this is not something we know. Therefore, we cannot know that "outside our universe (e.g., in different universes") different laws apply." At best, we can hypothesize that there may be other universes, and different "laws" may apply, or physical laws, constants, etc. may be different, in other universes.

Again, saying stuff like planets and stars may be in "different orbits" or of "different masses" is missing the "law" boat by a long shot.

What you claimed to know, you cannot know. In my opinion, too many lay people take scientific theories and hypotheses of which they have little real understanding and try to use them to jump through metaphysical hoops with them. That appears to be what you're doing.

I'm not sure; should the "can dismiss" be "can't dismiss" there?

No, I disagree with this. "God", once defined, CAN possibly be "ruled out" without "knowing the full facts". E.g., a strong argument can be made against the existence of a fully defined God with all the omni powers, e.g. versions of the Christian God. It is possible to disprove some concepts without having full knowledge of everything in the universe. I'm not saying that it's been done, but I am saying is that it is wrong to say that it can't be done.

Claiming that we can't disprove or "rule out" some things because we don't have full knowledge of everything, if that is indeed what you're doing, is simply wrong.

An undefined "god" is not of much use, as it has no meaning. Once you start defining god, arguments against god can be made.

Or irrefutable evidence for giant purple people eaters.

Great. Once you find this irrefutable evidence (and, what exactly would this evidence be? That's a good question. And how would we know it if we saw it?), let us know. Until then, god is simply a philosophical construct, and the argument that "out there somewhere we might find irrefutable evidence for god", which evidence itself is undefined, is an empty argument. It carries no weight, and does not provide any support at all for the existence of god.

If you appear to be constructing a strawman, then I'll point it out.

Earlier, you stated: "Same argument applies to believing something can come out of nothing. "

I pointed out, correctly, that no one is arguing that "something can come out of nothing." Here, you were constructing a strawman. No one I know of "believes something can come out of nothing."

Then you made the statement: "We should not even debate on God or rule out God until we know everything about our own universe."

Well, the bit about "we should not debate on God until we know everything about our own universe" is patently ridiculous.

I pointed out, however, that no one is arguing that we should "rule out God". That's not on the table. Again, if your statement is implying that someone is arguing that we should "rule out God", that would appear to be a strawman of the actual position that's been taken on this thread.

:huh:

If I read part of a book and then choose not to read the rest of it, how does that indicate that I have a "prejudice mentality"? I'm not "prejudging" the book; I'm judging it based on its content. For Zeus' sake, you too often don't show much real understanding of the terms and concepts you toss around.

Umm, so? Does that mean that I should continue to read a book that I judge to be not so good after the first chapter or so? No, it does not. I have better ways to spend my time, better books to read.

No, I don't know what everything is. Do you?

And you don't understand what I was getting at.

If humans have a limited intelligence (which they do), how could a human really understand the (hypothetically) much more complex God? If God exists, it may be possible for humans to learn some limited set of descriptive things about God, but to actually understand God?

Do you really think you can understand other people? How about dogs, or dolphins? Do you really understand dogs or dolphins, what dolphins or dogs are, outside of a rough physical concept?

No. This may seem a bit like semantics to you, but your use of the term "understand" is one more example of a term that I see you misusing. When you say:

"Am not saying we will never be able to understand god"

...in my opinion, you are saying that it may be possible for us to do something that is impossible. We may be able to know something about God, to gain some (necessarily limited) knowledge about "God' if such an entity exists, but understand it? I think not. We can't even really "understand" our pet dogs, and we're much more similar to them than we would be to the hypothetical God.

I'm not sure where you're going with this, as I fail to see how not "understand[ing] where we came from on the grand scale of things" leads to that. How does "I don't know the answer to that" lead one to such a nihilistic view of the universe?

Are you implying that god is necessary to escape nihilism?

You may think that way, but I do not. Do not assume that everyone shares your dour opinion of life without god. We do not.

Where do you get the notion that anything (or everything) necessarily must lead to some esoteric, external "good" for life to mean something to me?

Life is enough. Being human is enough. I can handle it. If you can't, that's your problem.

I have ample motivations in this life not to waste it sniffing coke. I don't need some eternal outcome for my life to realize that.

Why the "garbage" modifier, anyway? That's simply absurd. I happen to think life is wonderful, the most amazing and wonderful thing that's emerged in this universe. If you think life is garbage, again that's your problem, not mine.

Not everyone shares your dour opinion of life without God, or "humans without souls". What the heck, how would a (supposedly) eternal soul add any value to this life anyway? If anything, life is more valuable to me because it is temporal.

I do? How the hell would you know?

The point being....?

And what does Penrose's credentials have to do with my response?

Again, the a posteriori probability of our universe being as it is is 1.0, as the universe is as it is, despite the fact that the a priori probability of the universe being as it is may be extremely high. However improbable the universe is, it is. Both Penrose and you ignore this.

Appealing to Penrose's credentials is non-responsive. And, actually, a fallacy.

No, I did not overlook that. I pointed out:

"Your particular existence is WAY more improbable than Penrose's calculations."

and said:

"These "what are the odds of that???" calculations do amaze and dazzle some people, because the numbers are so large. Me? Meh. If you understand probability a bit, you'll understand that's just the way things come out when you do the calculations. According to probability, nothing should happen. Everything's highly improbable."

Penrose generates a very large number (or, rather, very small number). You're dazzled by it. I'm not. You read things into it that aren't really there. I do not. I recognize it for what it is: a bit of a mathematical trick.

Again with the appeal to authority fallacy.

Penrose's probability calculation dazzles you. It doesn't dazzle me. Again, any outcome, any event, is at least as improbable if one runs the calculations.

It's a mathematical trick that fools the unwary.

aa5874

Rhutchin, the atheists have already given up on your Christian Gods. Again rhutchin, when someone is uncertain about eternal torment, they must take every possible scenarios into consideration, not just the threat of the Christian Gods, all threats and all Gods.

If one is certain that only the Christian Gods' threats are valid, then the Wager is useful. However because of Uncertainty about any Gods, all threats have the same value. It must be obvious that believing that the Christian threat is true may cause one to be doomed, as well as believing the threat of any other Gods.

Pascal's Wager is useless garbage.

Pascal cannot claim to know what happens after death, Pascal cannot claim that the Christian Gods threats are the ony threats.

Dlx2

Rhutchin,

The debate proposal is here

Let's have fun with this one.