@shinyblurry

Well, the difference here on the sift is that it is not by default a place for atheists to hang out … If you look at any video on religion here, people feel free to speak their mind about Christianity and Christians but for some reason they take exception when I do the same. I understand what your argument is about and what you're saying, which I appreciate and recognize as being essentially valid, but your comment about being uninvited doesn't apply.

What attracted you into conversation here is that the Sift is a de facto place for atheists to hang out. When you "speak your mind" about religion and atheism, there's two problems. The first is that since we are overwhelmingly non-believers, opinions against atheism and pro-religion are going to irritate a greater number of people, and so get the most attention. Our opinions against religion only offend you and maybe one or two other people ever, that I've seen. It's a numbers thing. Don't take it personally. The second is that, as I've mentioned already in this thread, you do come off supremely arrogant in your beliefs. Just saying, from our perspective. I'll turn it around to your perspective for a second. Consider these two sentences, a) "I consider the Bible to be fairy tales, and I don't understand why Christians people believe it's true." and b) "It's better to question the world rather than blindly accept a book of fairy tales." After which of these two sentences are you more likely to be able to continue reading for several more paragraphs, presumably all written in the same tone, with an open, clear, unangry mind? For most people —even atheists— the tone of the first sentence is preferable and more conducive to communication.

I'll turn it back to the non-theist's perspective now. After listening to a cogent talk from Feynman explaining quite clearly why he would prefer to have no answer rather than possibly have a wrong answer, your first pitch over the plate was, "It's better to know the answer than remain ignorant of it", and then all rest of the stuff that followed that shows you didn't hear what he said at all. Feynman clearly doesn't prefer to "imagine that the answer is something else, because he doesn't like it." Then you used that as a launch pad for an assault on scientists in general through quotemining. I didn't read past the first paragraph. I moved straight down to see the reaction to your tone, and sure enough, it had started in earnest. I'd call that a failure in communication, unless you just wanted to vent, and maybe that day that's all the satisfaction you wanted. OK, but there you are. And you do this often enough, and people will see your avatar at the head of a comment somewhere else, and immediately their minds will shift into attack/defense mode, and your chances of communicating directly to their minds is almost zero – and they haven't even read a word yet.

You're one of the only people here placing a high priority on communicating anything, let alone representing a specific point of view. The rest of us are just here for fun, and there is no success or failure except inasmuch as we enjoy ourselves. So when jinx says, "We're both ignorant. Only one of us knows it", jinx doesn't care how to take it, or how you feel the next time you see the handle. If you're here to represent something, you should really think about the effect you think your message and tone will have every time you hit the "submit" button.

And to your comment about being invited. This place wasn't primarily designed for people to communicate opinions. It was designed for people to enjoy themselves while they procrastinate, feel a part of something, get some pseudo-community feelings going. There's no rule against giving any opinions here, nor against coming in large part to represent a certain opinion, but doing so runs against the main purpose of the place, organically defined by the intent of the people who come. This isn't an ideas discussion/debates forum with focus on arguing points to a conclusion. You can do that, but that's not the main purpose. What you tend to do here makes it more difficult for others to achieve their main purpose here, which is kicking up and not really thinking for an hour or two. And uh-oh, there's a comment from sb, killing the buzz. We could ignore it, but we just can't help reading what it says even though we already know it's almost certain to infuriate us with a relentless brand of reasoning that we do not understand.

I cut out the words you don’t entirely agree with. The rest of my comment is all about our perception of you. That should be important to you if you think God wants you to talk to us and, one assumes, help us learn something. Right? Is that a consideration for you at all?

Sure, and I fully admit I have turned a blind eye to this in the past. I should have been more sensitive to peoples concerns than I have been. I'm sure I've wasted many opportunities with people here as Satan hoped I would. It's been a process of growth and maturity in my walk with Christ, and this will continue until the day I die.

If I decided it was my civic duty to start showing up at a certain church and talk atheism to the parishioners, I would expect resistance, of course. I would pay very strong attention to how people were reacting to me and what topics or phrases or types of argument were setting people against me, and see if I could understand their perspective and adjust the way I spoke to help them understand me more. In that scenario, my goals for being at the church are different from the parishioners' goals, and since their goals for being there could be fulfilled (perhaps better) by ignoring me and by my being quiet, I’m the one who has to make the effort if I want to engage them.

I agree with you here.

That’s what I meant by "uninvited". It doesn’t mean anyone requires an invitation to join the Sift, or that anybody expects you to leave. It means nobody asked you to come and explain the "truth" of things to us. Our goal here is to kill time, follow political stories, discuss topics of interest to us and generally enjoy ourselves. Your goal here, however vague, is different from our goals, and often in conflict with them. I was enjoying thinking about Feynman’s points, then you come in with your arrogant opener, "It's better to know the answer than remain ignorant of it." Read it again to yourself. How would you react? Take @Quboid’s initial comments seriously too. Don’t nitpick phraseology like "pushing people away from your belief." Look past what you disagree with and address the real content. It's respectfully written and a valid question.

Well, the difference here on the sift is that it is not by default a place for atheists to hang out. It's a place for anyone to hang out and share their videos and opinions. It just so happens it has attracted a lot more atheists than theists and so everything done on the sift is bent towards their worldview, including the videos and conversations. You're right that nobody asked me to come, but I didn't need an invitation either. If you look at any video on religion here, people feel free to speak their mind about Christianity and Christians but for some reason they take exception when I do the same. I understand what your argument is about and what you're saying, which I appreciate and recognize as being essentially valid, but your comment about being uninvited doesn't apply. Atheists run the sift but the sift wasn't created for them.

And I'm actually saying this selfishly because I do want to understand what you’re saying.

And FWIW, everyone sees everyone through a funhouse mirror, especially types we don’t have a lot of contact with and don’t understand. For us, yep, that’s you.

Yes, I see people through my presuppositions. My worldview is the biblical worldview. I do understand you because I used to be in your shoes. I'm sure some of you will say the same thing.

I can provide evidence for any claim I make, if you ask for it. Find the body of Jesus? Don't be ridiculous. How could we? And if someone found the body of Jesus, you'd use bogus science to claim we hadn't proven it to be his, just like you still use bogus science to claim the universe is less than 10,000 years old or that macroevolution is a myth. I routinely claim the Bible is falsifiable on its face, but every time someone falsifies it, you change the meaning of the words, claim it's a metaphor, or do some other dodge, like how you handled the discrepancy between an omniscient God and a God who is surprised to discover that Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit.

Now you're just using fallacious arguments. Why don't you present your very best argument as to what you think falsifies the bible and let's see if it holds any water?

In the example of God being surprised, it is you who are assuming God was surprised. The text doesn't say He was surprised, it only says He asked Adam and Eve what they did. Why do you think that means that God didn't know what they did? How many parents have you heard asking their children whether they did such and such knowing full well that they did do it? That's exactly what God was doing.

OK. Here's the most clear-cut contradiction I’ve come across in the Bible. The topic seems so petty it's almost embarrassing to use it, but compare Matthew 1:8-9 with 1Chronicles 3:10-13. They give incompatible lineages from Joram to Joatham.

The genealogy in Matthew 1:8-9 isn't meant to be a complete record. It is actually a style of writing in Hebrew which is more concerned with symmetry than accuracy. That is why there are 3 groups of exactly 14 generations. Matthew would have assumed that his audience would know the details he left out for the sake of symmetry.

You pulled this out of thin air. Are your answers here divinely inspired?

We can scientifically test for, find and measure the efficacy of self-prayer. It's only prayer for others that consistently has no measurable effect. Science can and does test and prove some prayer effective, so you can't hold that God will not be tested. I've just disproven that.

So I'll ask you again: considering that we can reliably measure the effectiveness of self-prayer, why can't we measure any effects from intercessory prayer on behalf of others?

I didn't pull it out of thin air. Scripture says do not test the Lord thy God. You haven't proven anything. God will not let you test Him with personal prayer any more than He will let you test Him through the prayers of others. Scripture says God doesn't answer prayers that aren't prayed in faith, so when you are praying just to test Him, you aren't going to get proof He is there. Although there is one test I think God will accept. If you prayed this prayer I think He would answer it:

"God....if Jesus is your Son and He really is the way....and if He really is everything the Bible says about Him....then I will follow Him"

>> ^messenger:
stuff

You pulled this out of thin air. Are your answers here divinely inspired?

We can scientifically test for, find and measure the efficacy of self-prayer. It's only prayer for others that consistently has no measurable effect. Science can and does test and prove some prayer effective, so you can't hold that God will not be tested. I've just disproven that.

So I'll ask you again: considering that we can reliably measure the effectiveness of self-prayer, why can't we measure any effects from intercessory prayer on behalf of others?>> ^shinyblurry:
The Lord doesn't perform on camera for skeptics because He isn't a guinea pig subject to our experiments. Those who test the Lord will not get any results.

@shinyblurry

Humour me and try and read this comment in your head in the voice of someone who wants to help you.

[me:]About your perceived arrogance. I'm not judging anybody on the Sift…. I'm telling you how you come off and how it's affecting your goal. Your spamming of what I consider nonsense into the middle of what I consider rational discussions and your indifference to the fact you're irritating people, in my mind, gives me licence to be blunt. You could accept it as honest criticism and go from there.

[you:]I think you, and many other people here, see me through a fun-house mirror made up of your preconceived notions about God and Christians in general. The reasons I am here are not so cut and dry, but I certainly feel that God wants me to talk to people here.

I cut out the words you don’t entirely agree with. The rest of my comment is all about our perception of you. That should be important to you if you think God wants you to talk to us and, one assumes, help us learn something. Right? Is that a consideration for you at all?

If I decided it was my civic duty to start showing up at a certain church and talk atheism to the parishioners, I would expect resistance, of course. I would pay very strong attention to how people were reacting to me and what topics or phrases or types of argument were setting people against me, and see if I could understand their perspective and adjust the way I spoke to help them understand me more. In that scenario, my goals for being at the church are different from the parishioners' goals, and since their goals for being there could be fulfilled (perhaps better) by ignoring me and by my being quiet, I’m the one who has to make the effort if I want to engage them.

That’s what I meant by "uninvited". It doesn’t mean anyone requires an invitation to join the Sift, or that anybody expects you to leave. It means nobody asked you to come and explain the "truth" of things to us. Our goal here is to kill time, follow political stories, discuss topics of interest to us and generally enjoy ourselves. Your goal here, however vague, is different from our goals, and often in conflict with them. I was enjoying thinking about Feynman’s points, then you come in with your arrogant opener, "It's better to know the answer than remain ignorant of it." Read it again to yourself. How would you react? Take @Quboid’s initial comments seriously too. Don’t nitpick phraseology like "pushing people away from your belief." Look past what you disagree with and address the real content. It's respectfully written and a valid question.

And I'm actually saying this selfishly because I do want to understand what you’re saying.

And FWIW, everyone sees everyone through a funhouse mirror, especially types we don’t have a lot of contact with and don’t understand. For us, yep, that’s you.

If you're asking "Fucking Magnets, how do they work?" in the first place, there is probably some mystery explanation already in your head to explain it. If it's a real question, you can surely google up something to read about that. Whether or not you get good information depends on how much time you put into studying the question. If it's a rhetorical question, you're wasting the time of whoever you've asked by expecting them to take it seriously.

Another good example of this is any discussion with a creationist about evolution. They've heard just enough from pseudo-scientific creationist arguments to know some minor points about evolution, but this comes with misconceptions, flawed arguments, and logical fallacies. When you try to educate these people, you swiftly learn that any attempt to do so is a waste of time and energy. If they really wanted to know they would study for answers, but what they want instead is to shout down the people with the actual knowledge.

I think what Mr. Feynman is saying here is that if you expect to get a good answer to your question, you should study enough so that he won't have to "dumb down" his answer to satisfy you. If you're actually curious about the answer and want to understand it, you'd oblige.

>> ^Throbbin:

As one who studies and will one day practice Political Science, I'm offended. I can tell you about the conditions and prerequesites for the development of democratic institutions with the same certainty that a biologist can tell you about the conditions and prerequesites for bacterial growth to take place.


i studied political science and practiced law.
one is not a science, and the other has nothing to do with justice

SEXIEST.

Not Sexist!!!!!

>> ^Quboid:

Sexist Astrophysicist. He's got some degrees and stuff too but this is the key one.
>> ^bmacs27:

Seriously though, does he have any real scientific credentials? That is, is he more Feynman or more Hawking?

>> ^bmacs27:

>> ^DarkenRahl:
If we all sat around watching you playing at your hobbies in your off time, we'd likely ask the same thing about your chosen profession, and likely be much more bored having watched what you consider hobbies...>> ^bmacs27:
Does he ever... like... do science?


Seriously though, does he have any real scientific credentials? That is, is he more Feynman or more Hawking?

Ask Pluto.

>> ^Quboid:

Sexist Astrophysicist. He's got some degrees and stuff too but this is the key one.
>> ^bmacs27:

Seriously though, does he have any real scientific credentials? That is, is he more Feynman or more Hawking?


As hilarious as it would be, I think you missed an "e" in your link. Should be: "Sexiest Astrophysicist" not: "Sexist Astrophysicist." Nailed Astrophysicist though :-)

Sexist Astrophysicist. He's got some degrees and stuff too but this is the key one.

Edit: D'oh, that should have been "Sexiest". Original preserved for unintentional comedy. Thanks @bareboards2!

>> ^bmacs27:


Seriously though, does he have any real scientific credentials? That is, is he more Feynman or more Hawking?

>> ^DarkenRahl:

If we all sat around watching you playing at your hobbies in your off time, we'd likely ask the same thing about your chosen profession, and likely be much more bored having watched what you consider hobbies...>> ^bmacs27:
Does he ever... like... do science?



Seriously though, does he have any real scientific credentials? That is, is he more Feynman or more Hawking?

Just saw this comment. Awesome.
In reply to this comment by snoozedoctor:
Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'neil degrasse tyson, lawrence krauss, richard feynman, melodysheep' to 'neil degrasse tyson, lawrence krauss, richard feynman, melodysheep, autotune' - edited by RhesusMonk

Similarly, we can instantiate in enough physical rules to get the "chance" universe you describe going, and its rules could get it to the current state either determinalistically or with some element of randomness. I guess I understand how you're using "chance" here... but I don't know that it's terribly useful. Why should "what humans can predict" be of any relevance philosophically? And if we're using it that way, couldn't we similarly describe God's actions as chance? I mean, surely humans (or angels) can't predict everything he's going to do. Chance seems like a pejorative when applied to God.. and to me it seems like a pejorative when applied to the operations of the universe (except where, again, that operation is actually random).

However, again, I don't think this difference is terribly important. I think I understand what you're getting at, I just see things very differently.

The difference between chance and design is the most important distinction there is. If you don't like the word chance, I will use the word "unplanned", or "mindless". An unplanned Universe has no actual purpose; it is just happenstance. Meaning, your life is just a product of mindless processes, and concepts like morality, justice, and truth have no essential meaning. It means you are just some blip on a grid and there is no rhyme or reason to anything. It also means you will never find out what happened or why it happened because no one knows what is going on or ever will. This will *always* lead you to nihilism.

A designed Universe, on the other hand, does have a purpose. A purposeful Universe means that life was created for a reason. It means that there is a truth, a truth that only the Creator knows. Which means that all lines of inquiry will lead to the Creators doorstep, and that trying to understand the Universe without the Creator is completely futile. It is like looking at a painting with three marks on it..you could endlessly speculate on what the painter was thinking when he painted it. However, no matter how clever you were, you don't have enough information to be sure about anything. To refuse to seek the Creator would be to stare at that painting your whole life trying to figure it out when you have the painters business card with his phone number on it in your pocket.

I don't think you're phrasing this in a terribly fair way. Yes, many people assume there's a natural explanation for abiogenesis. This is partly because having another explanation introduces arbitrariness into the system. Say I'm a geologist and I discover Devil's Tower. It's really weird, but my inclination from the very start is that it was formed by similar processes to ones that have explained weird things in the past. Even if I can't postulate even a guess as to why it has those weird columns, I'm not crazy to guess that eventually we'll figure out an explanation that doesn't involve, say, new physical laws or aliens. (And it's certainly not helpful to say "maybe it was made in the flood").

The whole thing is arbitrary to begin with. Naturalistic explanations are assumed apriori, and then the evidence is interpreted through the conclusion. That isn't how science works. You come to the conclusion because of the evidence, not the other way around. I would also note that you would never accept this kind of reasoning from a creationist. Neither does a mountain of circumstantial evidence prove anything.

Abiogenesis is a bigger problem and it's also one that's "lost to time" a bit. It almost certainly requires a mechanism we have yet to identify (or a mechanism someone has guessed at, but hasn't provided good details or evidence for). But, like Devil's Tower, there's no reason to expect that mechanism won't be identified - or that it will require significant changes to our understanding of the rest of science. Again, there's plausible ideas already floating around, and I think we'll probably recreate the process (though likely not with the same actual process) within the next 30 years or so.

Anything sounds plausible, apparently, when you have billions of years to play with. As the earlier quote said, time itself performs the miracles for you. How do you know that the mechanism hasn't already been identified but you have rejected it?

http://creation.com/devils-tower-explained

No... that, I think, is probably our strongest point of disagreement. I'm very much OK with "I don't know", and literally everything I believe has a bit of "I don't know" attached (kind of similar to how everything you believe in has a bit of God attached).

I'm not worshipping ignorance or something - knowing IS better than not knowing. But I'm also not scared of not knowing things - and I'm certainly not just going to pick something and believe in it because I don't like having some of my answer pages blank.

For you, is Scientology better than "I don't know"?

The point I'm trying to make is, I don't know isn't a theory. What most atheists mean when they say "I don't know" is "I know it isn't the Christian God, but otherwise I don't know". The next thing they say is, you believe in God because you're afraid. That I "chose" God because I am scared of death, or because the Universe is too big and scary for my mind to handle the uncertainty of not knowing.

I have to say that this idea of a bunch of hokey. The Christians I know believe in God because they have a personal relationship with Him. It has nothing to do with making a choice..God chose us. He would chose you too, if you were open to Him.

Neither was I afraid of death when I was an agnostic, and I wasn't afraid of saying I don't know (that's why I was an agnostic, because I didn't know). I believe in God because He revealed Himself to me, and that is the only reason. If He hadn't, I would still be an agnostic.

It is credible to believe that the Universe was designed and created by God. We can see that whomever made the Universe is unimaginably powerful, intelligent, exists outside of space and time, etc. Scientology isn't credible and explains nothing. God can explain everything.

Also, thanks for using the big boy version of the Bible. I quite like the Bible artistically, but I can't stand some of the new translations (despite whatever benefits some parts may have in terms of clarity).

Most of the new translations butcher the scriptures. They remove entire verses, words, water down meanings, or just flat out mislead. I can't stand them either. The KJV is the best word for word translation that we have, and although the language is archaic, it is comprehensible with a little research.

>> ^jmzero

About your perceived arrogance. I'm not judging anybody on the Sift. You alone are the one who came here with a single-purpose account to try and convert people to your faith. I'm telling you how you come off and how it's affecting your goal. Your spamming of what I consider nonsense into the middle of what I consider rational discussions and your indifference to the fact you're irritating people, in my mind, gives me licence to be blunt. You could accept it as honest criticism and go from there.

I think you, and many other people here, see me through a fun-house mirror made up of your preconceived notions about God and Christians in general. The reasons I am here are not so cut and dry, but I certainly feel that God wants me to talk to people here.

About evidence. You and your religion are the ones showing up uninvited and making incredible claims. If you're making the claim, it's to you to provide a way to prove it. The only way a claim has any meaning is if there's some way to falsify it. But your claim is designed in such a way that it is literally impossible to falsify it. That's the weakness that inspired the spoof deities like FSM and the Invisible Pink Unicorn, and Bertrand Russell's Teapot: in practice, one is exactly as falsifiable as the other. In theory, your faith has seemingly falsifiable statements, but in practice, every time one of them is falsified, theologians and apologists work endlessly to somehow "make" it still hold true, sometimes by changing the meaning of words retroactively, or claiming retroactively it was just a metaphor or whatever. Sometimes it's a legitimate save, but usually it's intellectually dishonest. When someone points that out, you come up with some other intellectually dishonest way of getting out of that too.

This website is open to the public, is it not? If so, then in what sense am I uninvited?

My claim isn't "designed", it is simply the fact of what I believe. I don't modify it to escape someones inquiry. You like to make some bold claims about what it is, or isn't, but you never happen to back them up with evidence. As I told you earlier, it is falsifiable. You could prove it to be logically inconsistent. You could find the body of Jesus. You could disprove the major facts of the bible. You cannot claim it is unfalsifiable. The problem with your spoof deities is that they have no explanatory power. A flying teapot explains exactly nothing..

Here's an example of what I mean: You make the claim that God is all-loving. To me, if words have meaning, "all-loving" that means God will only do loving things. But he commits mass murder several times. Now, any human that even once had ever beat somebody up, even in the heat of passion, would be disqualified from the category of "all-loving". But for God, there's always an apologist loophole because you'd decided beforehand that God was all-loving and will stop at nothing to make sure that label sticks.

What the scripture says is that God is love. Not that He is loving, but that He is love itself. Yes, it is true that God took the lives of thousands of people in the Old Testament because of disobedience. That is indisputable. What you're claiming is that this was "mass murder". The fundamental question being posed here is, does God have the right to take a life? If He does, then there is nothing unjust about what He did, and therefore it is not inconsistent with His love.

Now, God is the author and sustainer of life. Meaning, that life is a gift and a privilege for human beings. There is no fundamental right to be alive. Neither is there anything we can do to continue our life a second longer than God ordains. When we are born and when we die is entirely in His hands. He is the one who is causing our lungs to receive breathe, who is maintaining the coherence in our atomic structure. So what life we do have is a tender mercy from God, especially considering the fact that all of us abuse His creation and spit in His face on a constant basis.

Further, God has ordained that the punishment for sin is death. The people you speak of in scripture were all sinners, and most of them grievous sinners at that. Why is God unjust for enforcing His law? What is wrong with God enforcing His law at His prerogative?

Considering that we live because of God, and that it is a gift which can be revoked at any time because of sin, why is it unjust for God to do so? If you're going to say I am being intellectually dishonest, then prove it and explain why. Where is the flaw in my reasoning here?

Or the claim of intercessory prayer. Of the rigorous studies that have been done, all have said there is no correlation between prayer and positive health effects, even when religious groups sponsor the study. To anybody using reason, this proves that prayer doesn't work. But you need so badly for it to be true that you ignore the statistical evidence, and rely instead on anecdotes or the studies (however rigorous) that showed a positive effect, or you dismiss all the studies because they are science, and science is a false religion, or whatever. Regardless, as the result, "Prayer doesn't work" is unacceptable, any results by any method you will invent fault with, even if you agreed to the method beforehand.

Some Christians may feel that way, but only because they don't understand scripture:

Luke 4:12

And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

The Lord doesn't perform on camera for skeptics because He isn't a guinea pig subject to our experiments. Those who test the Lord will not get any results.

Hebrews 11:6

But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

>> ^messenger