Do you think the question of God is an open scientific question?
Consider the following cases:
1. There is oxygen v. there is phlogiston.
2. There is ether vs. there is no ether.
3. There is natural selection vs. there is no natural selection,
4, The universe had a temporal beginning v. the universe had no temporal beginning,
In each case, possible evidence could have pointed us either way, and seems to have pointed us in one of those ways. Is the question of God like this? Is there a possible set of evidence which, if we had it, would have pointed us toward belief in God, such that failure to find this evidence is evidence against the existence of God?
Lots of people in science would exclude the possibility of a God hypothesis in science on methodological grounds., It is inappropriate from the very definition of science. But if so, science can't provide evidence against God either, since God was excluded on methodological grounds from the beginning,
32 comments:
"In each case, possible evidence could have pointed us either way, and seems to have pointed us in one of those ways. Is the question of God like this? Is there a possible set of evidence which, if we had it, would have pointed us toward belief in God, such that failure to find this evidence is evidence against the existence of God? "
--On the assertions of Christianity, yes.
On the assertion of a deistic god, no.
The Christian god is logically incoherent because it is asserted to have a set of properties that are logically mutually exclusive.
The Christian god is asserted to interact with our physical existence, and is thus, in principle, scientifically detectable. No such scientific detections have been made.
In the traditional interpretations of scripture the age of the Earth has been calculated to be about 6000 years. Dozens of such calculations of faith have been made over the centuries by scholars of many Christian denominations, Ussher being just one of many. All have been scientifically falsified. What used to be accepted as the word of god was found to be scientifically false.
The Christian [G]od is asserted to interact with our physical existence, and is thus, in principle, scientifically detectable. No such scientific detections have been made.
Stardusty has it almost right, in his first sentence. It should have read, "The Christian God is asserted to interact with our physical existence, and is thus, in principle, historically detectable." Unless you count archaeology as a science, there can be no scientific evidence for a historic event. And even in the case of archaeology, there are mountains of corroborating evidence for the historicity of the New Testament. And as for historical evidence, entire libraries are full of confirmation that the Gospels are, well.. the Gospel Truth.
And not only the Gospels. The reality of post New Testament apparitions of Christ and His Mother Mary, such as those at Lourdes, Fatima, Poland (St. Faustina), Champion Wisconsin, and Mexico (Our Lady of Guadalupe) are supported by both archaeological and historical evidence of the same quality as what we have for the Peloponnesian War or the reign of Henry VII.
No God is not a scientific question at all. God is a higher level metaphysically, onto logically and epistemological.
"In each case, possible evidence could have pointed us either way, and seems to have pointed us in one of those ways. Is the question of God like this? Is there a possible set of evidence which, if we had it, would have pointed us toward belief in God, such that failure to find this evidence is evidence against the existence of God? "
--On the assertions of Christianity, yes.
wrong. The absence of scientific evidence can't be evildoer against God because God is not a scientific question. God is not given in sense data and
he's not a thing in creation,
On the assertion of a deistic god, no.
that too
The Christian god is logically incoherent because it is asserted to have a set of properties that are logically mutually exclusive.
that has nothing to do with go being amenable to science nor does it mean that lack of scientific evidence proves lack of god, The assertion itself is wrong as I demonstrated last time.
The Christian god is asserted to interact with our physical existence, and is thus, in principle, scientifically detectable. No such scientific detection have been made.
there is good scientific evidence that God has worked in the world and atheists employ all manner of circular reasoning and game playing to refuse and deny it.Even so this only points to God it's not empirical evidence of God.
In the traditional interpretations of scripture the age of the Earth has been calculated to be about 6000 years. Dozens of such calculations of faith have been made over the centuries by scholars of many Christian denominations, Ussher being just one of many. All have been scientifically falsified. What used to be accepted as the word of god was found to be scientifically false.
That is a totally invalid and laughable argument, no modern theologian takes that seriously not even very conservative ones. Only young earthers who are not worth discussing.
t assumes a level of inerrency and literaslism that is groundless
Blogger Mortal said...
" Stardusty has it almost right, in his first sentence. It should have read, "The Christian God is asserted to interact with our physical existence, and is thus, in principle, historically detectable." "
--No, the soul is said to exist and interact with the brain, and thus the soul is in principle scientifically detectable in every one of us. No such detection has been made.
Miracles are said to occur quite frequently. The Catholic church even "verifies" them for sainthood. None have been scientifically confirmed.
All manner of spirits, angels, devils, and demons are said to interact with our physical world. Aside from movies like Angles in the Outfield no scientific documentation of them has been recorded.
" And as for historical evidence, entire libraries are full of confirmation that the Gospels are, well.. the Gospel Truth."
--Funny.
June 03, 2017 7:37 AM
Blogger Joe Hinman said...
SP* The Christian god is logically incoherent because it is asserted to have a set of properties that are logically mutually exclusive.*
"that has nothing to do with go being amenable to science"
--A logically incoherent theory is not scientifically acceptable. If you don't know the need for logical coherence in science you don't know anything about science.
"nor does it mean that lack of scientific evidence proves lack of god,"
--Reading skills. Try actually reading the OP instead of skimming and then stamping out your strawman.
"The assertion itself is wrong as I demonstrated last time."
--You are a legend in your own mind.
SP *The Christian god is asserted to interact with our physical existence, and is thus, in principle, scientifically detectable. No such scientific detection have been made*.
" there is good scientific evidence that God has worked in the world "
--Now you are displaying your fantasy land mind.
"and atheists employ all manner of circular reasoning and game playing to refuse and deny it.Even so this only points to God it's not empirical evidence of God."
--Absence of any specifics is a symptom of your fantasy word stream.
SP *In the traditional interpretations of scripture the age of the Earth has been calculated to be about 6000 years. Dozens of such calculations of faith have been made over the centuries by scholars of many Christian denominations, Ussher being just one of many. All have been scientifically falsified. What used to be accepted as the word of god was found to be scientifically false.*
" That is a totally invalid and laughable argument, no modern theologian takes that seriously not even very conservative ones. "
--Wrong. It's called Young Earth Creationism. It is difficult to get Republicans to deny YEC or acknowledge the fact of biological evolution. The election of Trump is a symptom of how deep this sort of ignorance still is in the USA.
"Only young earthers who are not worth discussing."
--Every Christian was a YEC until just a couple hundred years ago. Dozens of Ussher type calculations have been performed and accepted broadly for nearly the entire Judaeo-Christian history, starting with the traditional Jewish calendar.
Only very recently when science proved religion was wrong did the notion of reinterpreting scripture come about.
Science disproved Christian doctrine, so Christianity changed its doctrine to be less incompatible with science.
June 03, 2017 8:17 AM
Suppose God exists and has properties P1 ... Pn. In order to settle the question of God's existence scientifically, would it also have to be the case that each of properties P1 ... Pn is empirically detectible/measurable using scientific methodologies? If so, then given what those properties are likely to turn out to be, scientific methodologies don't seem especially promising as God-detection candidates. If only some Or even one) of P1...Pn turns out to be empirically detectible (P1, let's say), there will always be the question of how or whether it can be known that the thing having P1 also has all the other properties in question.
Eric Sotnak said...
" Suppose God exists and has properties P1 ... Pn. In order to settle the question of God's existence scientifically, would it also have to be the case that each of properties P1 ... Pn is empirically detectible/measurable using scientific methodologies? "
--No. Only 1 such property would need to be detectable and negated to negate that formulation of god.
If the theist then wants to reformulate god, fine, that is what they have been doing for centuries as science disproves various traditional theistic assertions.
God thus occupies and ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance.
June 03, 2017 11:28 AM
SP: -Every Christian was a YEC until just a couple hundred years ago. Dozens of Ussher type calculations have been performed and accepted broadly for nearly the entire Judaeo-Christian history, starting with the traditional Jewish calendar.
Only very recently when science proved religion was wrong did the notion of reinterpreting scripture come about.
Science disproved Christian doctrine, so Christianity changed its doctrine to be less incompatible with science.
VR: Nope, and St. Augustine is the classic counterexample. The idea that everyone prior to Darwin thought Ussher was right is just nonsense.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/may/22.39.html?start=1
Victor,
I tried the link but is only provides a few general paragraphs before requiring a login.
Perhaps I should have said "virtually every Christian", or "the overwhelmingly accepted Christian view". After all, there could have been a few lone dissenters here or there.
Christians today are at pains to run away from YEC. That was not the case a few hundred years ago, or in centuries past. Here is one list that spans Jewish origins and Christendom:
Early Jewish estimations
The earliest post-exilic Jewish chronicle preserved in the Hebrew language, the Seder Olam Rabbah, compiled by Jose ben Halafta in 160 AD, dates the creation of the world to 3761 BC while the later Seder Olam Zutta to 4339 BC.[60] The Hebrew Calendar has traditionally, since the 4th century AD by Hillel II, dated the creation to 3761 BC.[61][62]
Septuagint
Many of the earliest Christians who followed the Septuagint calculated creation around 5500 BC, and Christians up to the Middle-Ages continued to use this rough estimate: Clement of Alexandria (5592 BC), Theophilus of Antioch (5529 BC), Sextus Julius Africanus (5501 BC), Hippolytus of Rome (5500 BC), Gregory of Tours (5500 BC), Panodorus of Alexandria (5493 BC), Maximus the Confessor (5493 BC), George Syncellus (5492 BC) Sulpicius Severus (5469 BC) and Isidore of Seville (5336 BC).[63][64][65] The Byzantine calendar has traditionally dated the creation of the world to September 1, 5509 BC.
The Chronicon of Eusebius (early 4th century) dated creation to 5228 BC while Jerome (c. 380, Constantinople) dated creation to 5199 BC.[66] Earlier editions of the Roman Martyrology for Christmas Day used this date,[67] as did the Irish Annals of the Four Masters.[68]
Bede was one of the first to break away from the standard Septuagint date for the creation and in his work De Temporibus ("On Time") (completed in 703 AD) dated the creation to 18 March 3952 BC but was accused of heresy at the table of Bishop Wilfrid, because his chronology was contrary to accepted calculations of around 5500 BC.[69]
Masoretic
After the Masoretic Text was published, however, dating creation around 4000 BC became common, and was received with wide support.[70] Proposed calculations of the date of creation using the Masoretic from the 10th century to the 18th century include: Marianus Scotus (4192 BC), Henry Fynes Clinton (4138 BC), Maimonides (4058 BC), Henri Spondanus (4051 BC), Benedict Pereira (4021 BC), Louis Cappel (4005 BC), James Ussher (4004 BC), Augustin Calmet (4002 BC), Isaac Newton (4000 BC), Petavius (3984 BC), Theodore Bibliander (3980 BC), Johannes Kepler (April 27, 3977 BC) [based on his book Mysterium Cosmographicum], Heinrich Bünting (3967 BC), Christen Sørensen Longomontanus (3966 BC), Melanchthon (3964 BC), Martin Luther (3961 BC), Cornelius Cornelii a Lapide (3961 BC), John Lightfoot (3960 BC), Joseph Justus Scaliger (3949 BC), Christoph Helvig (3947 BC), Gerardus Mercator (3928 BC), Matthieu Brouard (3927 BC), Benito Arias Montano (3849 BC), Andreas Helwig (3836 BC), David Gans (3761 BC), Gershom ben Judah (3754 BC) and Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller (3616 BC).[65]
Among the Masoretic creation estimates or calculations for the date of creation only Archbishop Ussher's specific chronology dating the creation to 4004 BC became the most accepted and popular, mainly because this specific date was attached to the King James Bible.[71]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating_creation
Even folks like Newton, Kepler, and Luther made such calculations. Science proved them, and all the rest, wrong, so Christians changed their doctrines.
allof those guys are pre modern science modern dating methods,why should I take Usher seriously Why should I accept the begattes?
Stardusty's claim is that Christians, for the most part, before science came along, held to these positions based on the Bible, and science proved them wrong. The idea was that these guys, as Christians, rightly took those positions until science came along. Further, in this chronology, something essential to Christianity was as stake, and that those in more recent generations who rejected this are accepting a compromised Christianity.
Whether Christians accepted an Ussher-type chronology or not depended on the extent to which they thought a literal reading was of utmost importance, or whether allegorical interpretations were considered acceptable. Unless a hard doctrine of inerrancy is combined with a lead-footed literalism, the reaction of Christians to discovering that the earth is older than the thought would have to be "Oh, how about that!"
+
Victor ,
You have again fairly summarized my position.
" Unless a hard doctrine of inerrancy is combined with a lead-footed literalism, the reaction of Christians to discovering that the earth is older than the thought would have to be "Oh, how about that!""
--The consequences were frequently not so easy as that. One might well risk formal charges of heresy, a very serious risk at the time.
Changes to doctrine generally come slow and hard. Much personal consternation can be generated in the process. When one lives a whole life believing that the written words are all divinely inspired, and then one must re-interpret them otherwise, that can be a personally difficult prospect. A generational change may well be required with the old men taking their life long beliefs stubbornly to their graves.
I stand by my assertions at the top of this thread in answer to a core question of the OP.
June 03, 2017 1:29 PM
@Strawdusty,
FYI, A working link to the article is here.
--The consequences were frequently not so easy as that. One might well risk formal charges of heresy, a very serious risk at the time.
Who was ever punished as a heretic for arguing about the speculated age of the earth?
Does science have the potential to detect everything that interacts with the physical universe? What happens to the argument that ID has to be ruled out on principle since it appeals to the supernatural. On the contrary, if the supernatural interacts with the universe, by your reasoning, science should be able to talk about it. If you are right, then somebody should have straightened out Judge Jones before he gave his anti-ID ruling in Dover.
Victor Reppert said...
" Does science have the potential to detect everything that interacts with the physical universe? "
--Unless there is some fundamental limit that bars our mid level senses from accessing that level of interaction. For example, if the interaction occurs below the level of quantum uncertainty, we might not, at our mid level of observation, be able to observe that sort of interaction.
But the Christian god is asserted to do things like flood the Earth, make the sun appear motionless in the sky, open up graves so zombies roam about, perform medical miracles, and on and on, all of which are in principle scientifically detectable.
The soul is purported to interact strongly with the brain and is thus in principle scientifically detectable.
"What happens to the argument that ID has to be ruled out on principle since it appeals to the supernatural."
--"Supernatural" is an oxymoronic term. If there is a god, it is part of what is natural.
" On the contrary, if the supernatural interacts with the universe, by your reasoning, science should be able to talk about it. If you are right, then somebody should have straightened out Judge Jones before he gave his anti-ID ruling in Dover."
--The search for intelligent design is not inherently unscientific. For example, just suppose life on Earth was designed by space aliens. Perhaps we could detect design features of life on Earth that have no explanation other than intelligent design, analogous to the classic watch discovered on the beach. So, the search for irreducible complexity in life is not inherently unscientific.
However, the Dover decision was rightly decided because ID as presently actually practiced simply is not valid science. The ID movement is merely warmed over and thinly disguised religious creationism. A Republican appointed federal judge carefully considered a large body of evidence and reached the correct legal decision.
June 03, 2017 6:52 PM
I don't argue that scientific evidence proves God,I argue that some stockinette data warrants belief, that means God is not redactor the level of a hypothesis.
I also agree with Popper that science does not prove hypotheses it disproves them; no scientific evidence, disproves God.
Does science have the potential to detect everything that interacts with the physical universe? "
--Unless there is some fundamental limit that bars our mid level senses from accessing that level of interaction. For example, if the interaction occurs below the level of quantum uncertainty, we might not, at our mid level of observation, be able to observe that sort of interaction.
there are lots of theories that scientists take seriously but that are unprofitable, like string theory.
God is not given in sense data so any warranting evidence is indirect thus not proof but warrant,
" Suppose God exists and has properties P1 ... Pn. In order to settle the question of God's existence scientifically, would it also have to be the case that each of properties P1 ... Pn is empirically detectible/measurable using scientific methodologies? "
--No. Only 1 such property would need to be detectable and negated to negate that formulation of god.
unassuming it;s a property unique to God
But the Christian god is asserted to do things like flood the Earth, make the sun appear motionless in the sky, open up graves so zombies roam about, perform medical miracles, and on and on, all of which are in principle scientifically detectable.
you have no answers for real theologians, modern theologians do not take those myths seriously so by dealing with them as they they are the essence of Christianity you are just making yourself into a laughing stock,
Joe Hinman said...
" some stockinette data warrants belief, "
???
Data for god? Say whaaaa?
June 03, 2017 9:18 PM
I've already said it;snot direct. Data intimidating God's activity. Not direct so it's not proof but it warrants belief. Meaning it's good reason to believe.
example: studies of am scale show religious experience is the same around the world. We should expect experiences to be different because religious symbols are different. Religion is culture and religious should experience reflect cultural difference.Yet when the names and stupidity of deities are corrected for all the actual experiences are alike.So a mystic in Japan experiences the same sense of the numinous and Undifferentiated unity as does a baptist in Cleveland. That would indicate an objective reality is being experienced.
Joe Hinman said...
" a mystic in Japan experiences the same sense of the numinous and Undifferentiated unity as does a baptist in Cleveland. That would indicate an objective reality is being experienced."
--Is there a fear object in the universe because we all experience fear the same?
A love object? A confusion object? An anger object?
Is there some ethereal object floating about out there someplace for each and every emotion and sensation we all experience in nearly the same way?
Indeed, there is an objective reality being experienced, the objective reality of our common physical structure. We are all structured at base in nearly the same way. We all feel hunger, temperature, love, anger, and on and on, not because there is some outside object for each of these things, rather, because we are all constructed at base in nearly the same way.
June 04, 2017 6:53 AM
Stardusty Psyche said...
Joe Hinman said...
" a mystic in Japan experiences the same sense of the numinous and Undifferentiated unity as does a baptist in Cleveland. That would indicate an objective reality is being experienced."
--Is there a fear object in the universe because we all experience fear the same?
A love object? A confusion object? An anger object?
Is there some ethereal object floating about out there someplace for each and every emotion and sensation we all experience in nearly the same way?
fear and love are emotions connected to the human psyche, people do not have genetically induced mystical experience not everyone has them, they are not heritable traits of human psyche. Mystical experiences have triggers fear and love and love do not have. fear and love don;t have the kind of specific subject matter and they do have the kind of life transforming effects, they are bindery and universal.
Indeed, there is an objective reality being experienced, the objective reality of our common physical structure.
Religious experience is not induced by a common physical structure, There is no evidence to support this.
We are all structured at base in nearly the same way. We all feel hunger, temperature, love, anger, and on and on, not because there is some outside object for each of these things, rather, because we are all constructed at base in nearly the same way.
lost]s of people don't have mystical experiences so it's not part of a common base. There is no evidence at all that mystical experience is genetic.
Lee A Kirkpatrick, director of graduate studies in psychology at William and Mary, tells us:
"In sum, the moderate habitability of religion, like the identification of a particular brain region, associated with religious experience, tells us virtually nothing about weather religion is the result of an adaptive evolved mechanism designed to produce it. In particular neither should be construed as evidence for an adaptive religion mechanism or system."[10]
According to Kirkpatrick it's way too early to claim there's a God Gene. There's no way to sort out that it's a real gene or just a combination of other genetic traits. Even if there is such a gene that is not a defeat for religion.
One of the main problems with arguing for a God gene is that the kinds of explanations often used to justify it are piecemeal and don't work in terms of genetic theory. For example a common one is cooperation. Religion makes people more cooperative. So people cooperate and that is why they adapt becuase it's an advantage. Or gives hope it gets them through the winter.
Considerable debate has surrounded the question of the origins and evolution of religion. One proposal views religion as an adaptation for cooperation, whereas an alternative proposal views religion as a by-product of evolved, non-religious, cognitive functions. We critically evaluate each approach, explore the link between religion and morality in particular, and argue that recent empirical work in moral psychology provides stronger support for the by-product approach. Specifically, despite differences in religious background, individuals show no difference in the pattern of their moral judgments for unfamiliar moral scenarios. These findings suggest that religion evolved from pre-existing cognitive functions, but that it may then have been subject to selection, creating an adaptively designed system for solving the problem of cooperation.[11]
That sort of makes one think of genes as little guys holding committee meetings in your head and planning strategy. If it's that cut and dried why not just make a gene for cooperation and cut out the religious mumbo jumo? If it's just an alteration of existing function, then individual conscious decisions may be involved after all. Or, were we provided those functions that we might discover God? The kinds of explainations that require a purpose are counter to the nature of adaptation anyway. As Kirkpatrick explains: "Natural selection is blind to purely psychological effects because being happy in itself does not cause more copies of happiness causing genes to dominate subsequent generations."[12] They can't show adaptability because they can't show it enhances gene frequency. After all some aspects of religion counter to gene frequency such as celibacy?
2: Religious Gene is good argument for God
Nicholas Wade tells us neither side is threatened by a God gene:
But the evolutionary perspective on religion does not necessarily threaten the central position of either side. That religious behavior was favored by natural selection neither proves nor disproves the existence of gods. For believers, if one accepts that evolution has shaped the human body, why not the mind too? What evolution has done is to endow people with a genetic predisposition to learn the religion of their community, just as they are predisposed to learn its language. With both religion and language, it is culture, not genetics, that then supplies the content of what is learned.[13]
So the explainations fall apart, the big coincidence is looming: the thing the atheists and evolutionary psychologists hate the most and seek to destroy with their worship of science is the one best answer to why there would be a gene for God: God put it there. It's counter to the nature of adaptation. Genes can't contrive to plan how to make us more cooperative or give us warm fuzzies to get us through the winter. The nature of adaptation is not a committee of homunculi that seeks to make human life happier and more efficient. Nor can genes understand concepts. We are not born with innate knowledge, that has been considered a primitive and false concept since the seventeenth century. We are born with instincts but that is not the same as innate knowledge. Evolution cannot plant ideas in our minds. So our brains reacting to God talk as they do is totally unexplained and constitutes a good reason to take as a hint the basic idea of a God designed aspect of human nature.
Andrew Newberg, one of the pioneers in researching neural activity of religious experience and God talk tells us that none of the research disproves God, in fact it can't.
…Tracing spiritual experience to neurological behavior does not disprove its realness. If God does exist, for example, and if He appeared to you in some incarnation, you would have no way of experiencing His presence, except as part of a neurologically generated rendition of reality. You would need auditory processing to hear his voice, visual processing to see His face, and cognitive processing to make sense of his message. Even if he spoke to you mystically, without words, you would need cognitive functions to comprehend his meaning, and input form the brain’s emotional centers to fill you with rapture and awe. Neurology makes it clear: there is no other way for God to get into your head except through the brain’s neural pathways. Correspondingly, God cannot exist as a concept or as reality anyplace else but in your mind. In this sense, both spiritual experiences and experiences of a more ordinary material nature are made real to the mind in the very same way—through the processing powers of the brain and the cognitive functions of the mind. Whatever the ultimate nature of spiritual experience might be—weather it is in fact an actual perception of spiritual reality—or merely an interpretation of sheer neurological function—all that is meaningful in human spirituality happens in the mind. In other words, the mind is mystical by default.[14]
This article is a good indication of how ideologically laden the internet is with ideological babble from a social movement that seeks to destroy all forms of knowledge that it does not control. There is no basis for the assertion that neuroscience is destroying religion and yet scientism proclaims itself victorious over all religion merely because it exists. At the same time sound reasons exists in the same material assumed to destroy religion which supports belief in God yet that possibility is totally ignored.
[10]Lee A Kirckpatrick, “Religion is Not An Adaptation,” in Where God and Science Meet: How Brain and Evolutionary Studies Alter Our Understanding of Religion Vol I: Evolution, Genes, and Religious Brainm .Patrick McNamara (ed). London, Westport Connecticut: Praeger. 2006. 159-180, 164.
Kirckpatrick is associate professor of psychology at William and Mary.
[11] Ilkka Pyysiäinen and Marc Hauser, "The Origins of Religion: Evolved Adaption or by Product." Science Direct: Trends in Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 3, (March 2010), 104-109.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661309002897
[12]Kirckpatric Op cit, 167.
[13] Wade, Op Cit.
[14] Andrew Newberg, Why God Won’t God Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief. (New York, Ballentine Books), 2001, 37,
Blogger Joe Hinman said...
" people do not have genetically induced mystical experience not everyone has them, they are not heritable traits of human psyche. "
--Ad hoc assumption.
"Mystical experiences have triggers fear and love and love do not have."
--Different feelings are different. So what?
" Religious experience is not induced by a common physical structure, There is no evidence to support this."
--The widespread commonality yet substantial variation in specific details is just what would be expected from an emotional experience driven by physical structure.
" lost]s of people don't have mystical experiences so it's not part of a common base. "
--On some level it would be unusual not to have some sort of such experience.
"There is no evidence at all that mystical experience is genetic."
--No poof required is a strong argument relative to goddunnit. If you have to resort to idle speculations about spookstuff you don't have a serious hypothesis, much less theory.
June 04, 2017 1:41 PM
Mind is not reduceable to brain
tardusty Psyche said...
Blogger Joe Hinman said...
" people do not have genetically induced mystical experience not everyone has them, they are not heritable traits of human psyche. "
--Ad hoc assumption.
that's the new meaningless buzz word atheists have pickled up because they think it makes them sound like philosophers. Why don't you expaln to me why it's bad to be ad hoc?
"Mystical experiences have triggers fear and love and love do not have."
--Different feelings are different. So what?
Mystical experience is not a feeling, that's the basic difference you are comparing emotions which are automatic and nested in all human psyches as part of our brain chemistry with experiences which not all people have and are not inherent, not part of us.
Moreover, mystical experience is not a mere feeling it is a level of consciousnesses, or an experience of stimulus which evokes a level of consciousness.
" Religious experience is not induced by a common physical structure, There is no evidence to support this."
--The widespread commonality yet substantial variation in specific details is just what would be expected from an emotional experience driven by physical structure.
(1)I don't think you know what you just said.
(2) you cannot merely assert something of this nature,you have to prove it,I will not accept anything less than a study,
(3) you have no evidence that it's driven by a caliphs stutterer,no one does.The evidence I just quoted by Kirckpatrick, says there is no such evidence.Look at the title of his article: "Religion is Not An Adaptation."
" lost]s of people don't have mystical experiences so it's not part of a common base. "
--On some level it would be unusual not to have some sort of such experience.
wrong. They are wide spread but not universal. The most that's been calculated is one in four that's liberal.
"There is no evidence at all that mystical experience is genetic."
--No poof required is a strong argument relative to goddunnit. If you have to resort to idle speculations about spookstuff you don't have a serious hypothesis, much less theory.
if you have to resort to the inane question begging tactic of calling your opponent's position names then you clearly have no case.
You are obviously begging the question since my argument is obviously proof of an objective reality, you are just ignoring the obvious and sanguinary circle.
1. RE ca't be universal unless it;'s amn expereimnce of an objective reality
2. RE is universal (in terms of uniformity of experience among those who have it)_
3. Therefore, they are experiencing something objective
your answer: "that's just spook stuff."
Of course you have ignored theoretical point that this does not make god a scientific hypothesis. You also did not answer the point before this here I quote several sources saying religion is not genetic.
"Is there a possible set of evidence which, if we had it, would have pointed us toward belief in God, such that failure to find this evidence is evidence against the existence of God?"
As I keep pointing out, *you* are that evidence. That there are rational embodied beings is not merely evidence, but proof, that atheism is not the truth about the nature of reality; which is to say: there are rational embodied beings is proof that there is a rational immaterial being who *is* a who and who is ontologically prior to matter.
Ilíon said...
" That there are rational embodied beings is not merely evidence, but proof, that atheism is not the truth about the nature of reality;"
"non-sequitur. You may as well point at a flower and exclaim "proof, magical pixies created life!"
How absurd.
June 06, 2017 1:49 PM
^ Says a fool who knowingly-and-willfully asserts as being the truth about the nature of reality a metaphysics which logically entails that he himself doesn't even exist.
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